Yurina Yoshikawa is a writer, educator and Director of Education at The Porch Literary Collective here in Nashville. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, NPR, Lit Hub, The Japan Times, The New Inquiry and this autumn she won the inaugural $25,000 Southern Prize for Literary Arts.

Yurina is also a gifted musician, playing viola for the Nashville Philharmonic and serving on the board.

You might think a cap with that many feathers would be a comfortable fit for the head it covers. Not always. Even with the prizes, Yurina battles that sense of not being in the club. I share that feeling, so we got into it — where it comes from, whether it’s true.

That sense of apartness is one of the themes of her short story Dogwood, which she sent me in advance of our conversation. We broke down that piece, the inspiration behind it, and then we talked about the challenge she feels — as a mother, as an educator — of finding time to write. 

As someone who lives on the panic side of the writer’s need to create, I was surprised and impressed by Yurina’s light touch. She takes her time. At some point in the conversation I blurted “You strike me as a well-adjusted person!” I’m just not used to meeting creative people who are equal parts talented and sanguine.

This episode of the Morse Code Podcast is sponsored by Writerfest, a creative gathering for aspiring writers, published authors, screenwriters, poets, and songwriters in Nashville.  Attendees enjoy keynote talks by the best book, song, and screenplay writers in the business as well as in-depth break-out sessions with professional editors, literary agents, filmmakers, and music industry insiders. Writerfest is happening Nov 22 and 23. Find out more information on writerfestnashville.com

Walker Burroughs is a singer, songwriter, guitarist and piano player based in Nashville Tennessee. Best known as a top 8 finalist on American Idol, he toured nationally as the keyboard player in Bobby Bones’ band, and is presently playing shows with fellow Idol alum, season 8 winner Kris Allen. Walker is currently sponsored by Yomega Yo-Yos.

Mason Mecartea is an actor and director based in Nashville, best known for his role as Dan Shelter in Stranger Things, and Cole in Damien Leone's Terrifier 3, which, as of this writing, is the #1 movie in the country.

On the season finale of the Morse Code Podcast, I talk with actor, comedian, musician, and self-proclaimed recovering Pentecostal Andi Marie Tillman about… well a lot of things. When someone shows up for the taping with pointy ears dressed like she escaped from the Renaissance Faire, you know it’s going to be an interesting hour.

If you haven’t caught Andi’s many viral improvs on Instagram and TikTok, I don’t know what your problem is. Her hilarious cast of characters —  Pawpaw and Pam, Charlene and Nashferatu (there are loads more) — do that basically impossible thing: they make you stop scrolling. And watch. And laugh. And then you’re forwarding it on to someone who repeats the process. That’s why she has has a third of a million followers on IG.

I met Pam first, riffing her way through an IG reel. Heavy on the eyeshadow, smack-chewing gum, her mini-confessionals covered some broad territory —  advice for staying married (“since everything that needs to be said has already got said”), reluctant gossip, candid admissions about candid emissions…

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I’m not from Appalachia but somehow I recognized the types: the pentecostal teenage preacher with the drawn-on mustache,  bright-lipped Bethany, sage of the church of Jesus with Signs Following, who fondles the hedonic stones and spouts wisdom sloshed around like stolen water from the baptismal. 

These people are as lovable as they are funny. To see the extant of the impact they’ve had on Andi’s fans, you need only scroll the comments, which are sometimes as hilarious as the things the characters say.

Like a lot people, I saw something special, and followed. So imagine when a few weeks later I met Andi in person at my local water hole in East Nashville, sipping a mocktail. I was surprised to find a thoughtful, quiet person, more inclined to listen than talk. Which is a lot when it’s me you’re listening to.

A few weeks later she and her husband Brandon were in our front yard, playing songs around a campfire. We were neighbors and now we are riends. Life in East Nashville is like that.

To me, Andi is a consummate theater kid, and while I have some weird inclination for the stage, I was always intimidated by the theater types: those outgoing folks who seem to reflect all the light that shines on them, and then some. 

For Andi, it was in the theater that she found her tribe, where she felt most at home. We open our conversation talking about that, about the earliest manifestations of Andi’s prodigious talent, and the unique way she’s gone about finding its outlet.

Over the course of the hour we get into relationships, horror films, transgression and its increased difficulty in an age of tolerance, sobriety (and not-sobriety), and we even play a couple of Andi’s Joni-influenced originals.

It was a joy to speak with someone so imaginative, and it was a fitting end to this wild first season of the Morse Code Podcast. 

Over the course of 46 episodes we’ve had musicians, actors, directors, writers, photographers, comedians — creatives, all. We’ve each got our own thing we’re doing, but what ties this cast of characters together is that all of us are answering the calls to our own creative path, and doing it the best we can in the constantly changing landscape that is modern life. We wish you, and us, luck.

Be back for Season 2 in mid October! 

~Korby

I speak with a rising star in the comedy world, the hilarious and genuine Amber Autry. The before we taped I was in the audience at a sold-out set for Amber’s Summer/Fall residency at Zanie’s in Nashville. Her bits were so seamlessly interwoven with her improvised crowd work that the stitches were invisible — I couldn’t tell where the rehearsed part ended and the improv began. Randa and I laughed our asses off and I left with a feeling that I had just seen someone special. 

On this wide-ranging conversation with our first comedian on the podcast, Amber and I get into her origin story, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, begins in Chicago. She went through the Second City conservatory in improv and acting, but it was a chance encounter with a street musician that threw her into standup. Suddenly found herself at an open mic. Her very first try went well, likely because, as Amber puts it, “I was the only funny person in a lineup of sadboy singer-songwriters.” 

Comparisons between comedy and music aren’t always obvious, but as someone who has played a thousand shows, I have strong opinions about how to put one on. We talk about the similarities and differences between a comedian’s set and the between-song banter of the performing songwriter. In my playbook, every moment onstage counts, and in someways the time between songs is even more important than the songs themselves, because it’s in those moments that you really connect with an audience, or don’t.

I ask how she got so good at crowd work. Unsurprisingly the answer is, practice. Or as Amber puts it, “a willingness to embarrass yourself over and over as you get more comfortable with just having real conversation with audience members and trusting the funny will come.”

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She talks about the value of watching bad comedy, how it can be as instructive as its excellent counterpart. I relate to this in terms of movies and books: how when you watch something that’s boring or sad ordull or off the mark in some way, it gives you an opportunity to reflect on why that is. There’s a connection here to that old saying, “everyone is a teacher.”

Somewhere toward the end we figure out we were both raised in the church, and talk about the good and bad of that experience. From there its a short leap to the subject of therapy, and here Amber shares her surprisingly beautiful strategy for maintaining sanity in an extremely difficult industry. It has something to do with treating yourself like a someone whose well-being you’re in charge of… but you should listen to Amber share the unique, practical application of that slippery approach. 

By way of comparison I share a little of my own background and spiritual journey. There was a long stretch of my life where I was sitting with a buddhist lineage, an experience which culminated with an extended session at a silent retreat at a Vippasana Center in rural Washington. I tell a little about that experience, the hilarity of it and the breakthrough that happened, the

gift that resulted, which has helped me ever since. 

This conversation is a good representation of why I do this podcast. Amber is a bright light in the world. Getting to talk with her had the effect of cracking open my own heart, seeing what was inside — the soft the squishy the scared, and somewhere down in there, the funny. 

Go see Amber, she’s touring constantly!

Find Amber Autry: 

Website https://www.amberautrycomedy.com/Instagram https://www.instagram.com/amberautrycomedy/

On the latest episode of the Morse Code Podcast I speak with Emmy-nominated filmmaker Derek Dienner on his wild journey producing the independently-funded feature film —  “Brave the Dark” starring Jared Harris (Mad Men, Chernobyl) — surviving cancer in his 30s, and staying motivated in a highly unpredictable industry.

Derek and I met at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. He’d recently finished his first feature film and was in the process of finding a distribution partner to help him release it. Randa and I were there for a similar reason, but on the TV side, with Morse Code.

In an industry of ravenous self-seekers, I was struck by Derek’s unusual combination of earnest sincerity and restless determination. He was looking for a solution to his own problem, yes, but he was also interested in mine. Actually interested. 

In a way, we were driven by a similar need — to tell a story as close to our actual lives as possible. In my case it’s the world of the indie-folksinger. In his, it was Stan Deen, a widely-loved teacher and philanthropist from Derek’s neck of the woods, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 

Like the protagonist from, Stand and Deliver, Deen had an extraordinary impact on generations of young people in the area. It was from this well of love and regard that a script was born, led by Deen’s adopted son, Nathan. Derek got involved, and raised an crazy amount of money by reaching out to people in the Lancaster area, setting up meetings over coffee, getting the backers one cup at a time.

People don’t really understand how long it takes to make a movie. It’s years of your life — toiling through constant uncertainty, navigating the seeming-impossible challenges that appear from nowhere. A lot of folks never finish. Understandable why. It’s just really hard.

We talk about the passion that fueled his process, and the belief that sustained him.

Honestly I didn’t know how this episode would go because it was my first with a producer-type. But the time passed faster than I wished and our conversation left me bursting with vim and vigor. It had something to do with Derek’s open-hearted enthusiasm, combined with the refreshing transparency of a passionate filmmaker very much on the front lines of indie filmmaking. 

I believe!

Find Derek: Website: https://makefilms.cc/about/derek-dienner/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/derekdienner/

Natalya Kay is a fiddler in the Irish tradition and a key member of Celtic super group Gaelic Storm. She and I met in the spring of 2020 when she moved into the house next door to mine in East Nashville. I think the first time we jammed was at a party in my front yard. 

I remember thinking two things about that encounter. One was, Man this girl can really play! The other was, being shocked to hear her say she had no interest in any kind of career as a professional musician. 

That seems like a long time ago now. 

This year she played countless festivals with Gaelic Storm, stadium shows with the Zac Brown Band, and a few weeks ago she was at the Hollywood Bowl sharing the stage with Harrison Ford, Jackson Brown and Brandi Carlile. Afterward, she got props from none other than Sir Paul McCartney.

Natalya’s meteoric rise has been the result not of an unrelenting determination, but her genuine talent and as she describes here, a consistent decision to walk through whatever door that opened, despite the chorus of self-doubt ringing in her ears. 

In the course of this lively conversation we come back to the theme of insecurity - a part of every artist’s experience - and of resisting the temptation to let it win. Natalya laughingly describes the moment when she got the call from Gaelic Storm, the gig that ultimately changed her life. She tried to talk them out of the audition, saying she wasn’t a good fit, she didn’t have any experience.

They insisted, she acquiesced. Now she’s on the road traveling the world. 

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As a quiet homeschooled girl from rural Maine, she describes the irony of feeling absolutely at home on stage with GS, how she feels like it’s the most natural thing in the world, being up there in front of all those people, fiddling away.

Speaking of, I ask her about a few of the approaches specific to the tradition of Irish fiddling, the rolls for one. She demonstrates how she does it, right there at the table. It will be interesting to anyone who loves or even has a passing attraction to Irish music. Natalya breaks down the technique and shows how it affects the play of the overall tune. I loved seeing that. 

No player am I in the Irish way, but I do have something of a background in bluegrass and old-time music, and there’s enough of a language shared that I felt I might back Natalya on her performance of Cliffs of Moher, a popular Irish jig which, being in 6/8 time, requires a completely different approach than the 4/4 of its American cousin. I did my best to stay out of the way and let Natalya’s playing shine, a performance that alone was worth the listen.

I hope you enjoy this conversation with a truly fresh voice in Irish Music.

Find Natalya:Website Instagram

I speak with Latin GRAMMY-nominated songwriter, producer, artist, activist, chef and friend Alex Wong about his lifelong evolution as an indie music maker and meaning seeker.

Whether writing and performing his own award-winning songs or producing albums for such luminaries as Vienna Teng and Delta Rae, Alex has always pushed his work beyond conventional ideas of what it means to be an artist. I would  even say Alex is one of the most authentically integrated creatives I know. Everything he does is absolutely Alex Wong.

To wit, in 2023 he launched The Permission Parties, a multi-sensory experience where each track from his upcoming album Permission is paired with a Chinese-inspired dish that shares a common emotion.

I attended an earlier iteration of the Permission party series and can attest to both the delicious food and to Alex’s ability to create syntheses of meaning by combining his personal past and his creative present.

It’s always interesting to me to learn why someone wants to write songs, especially songs in the genre loosely called Folk music but which to me means those written from a personal point of view (as opposed to songs expressly created for commercial appeal). We talk about what got Alex into folk and how the twists and turns of his multi-hyphenate career brought him to East Nashville.

The last third of this episode features a challenging, maybe even difficult conversation in which Alex and I get into our different approaches to the cultural problems our time. Here is the backstory:

In March of 2023 there was a mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, where a trans person killed three children and three adults. You remember. Like everyone else, I was shocked and saddened by the murders and so a few days later I joined several thousand of my neighbors at a vigil downtown. I was disappointed in the ceremony, which to me was a lot less about honoring those poor kids and their families and more about using the opportunity to advance a political agenda. I thought it was tasteless and said so in a short piece posted on Instagram. Alex challenged me in a private exchange. That’s the backstory. 

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I brought it up in the podcast. It was hard for me to talk about, and I think for Alex too, but it was respectful and ultimately productive and I hope it inspires more such discussions in the future. 

It was the most political conversation I’ve hosted on the Morse Code Podcast and it made me reflect me on my conscious decision to stay away from political topics, not only on the podcast, but in my work generally. 

I wonder if that choice is the right one.

On one hand, it’s basic to my personality, this desire to bring people together with my writing and music and to point at what we have in common, what you might call the universalities of being human: falling in love, out of love, being afraid to do something and then doing it anyway, getting old, the crazy mystery that is being alive, that stuff. I’m drawn to novels and songs and artists who are similarly concerned. I’ve always been that way, starting with my college days in Bellingham Washington with my bluegrass band The Barbed Wire Cutters when I would look out from the stage and see loggers and college kid protestor types sipping beers and dancing, enjoying themselves together. 

It felt like a momentary truce in a protracted war, and one that sowed hope that a future resolution was possible. 

Division is the inevitable byproduct of political discussion. Most people don’t seem to mind that, and instead are happy to charge headlong into the us versus them framing of every issue under the sun, from gun control to abortion to free speech to trans issues to the opening ceremonies at the Olympics, with the result that we all very nearly hate each other.

So I think, why add my timid voice to the screaming match? What good would it do?

But there’s another side to that argument, which is maybe best phrased by Plato. 

“If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.”

Its an injunction to participate in a field of battle anathema to my very being. I don’t enjoy arguing and I am not one of those people who needs to be right. I just want to be left alone to do my own thing. But that is perhaps cowardly of me. In fact I spend a lot of my free time listening to different arguments on every controversial issue out there, trying to understand both sides of the argument as best I can so that my judgment might be as sound as possible. But I do so privately, for my own sake. Call it part of a lifelong effort to work out my own salvation in fear and trembling.

But maybe that’s a coward’s quest. I think about that. I notice people who put themselves forward for a truth they believe in and I see how they are pilloried and ostracized and ridiculed. Who would want to do that with their one and only life? Answer: people who are called to do it and for whom not speaking up would be the greater sin.

I think about what that would look like to join those actors and agitators, and the prospect is an unhappy one. But maybe I should think again. Maybe a nuanced voice is needed. Ugh. It makes me very uncomfortable to write that. Which is probably a clue.

To bring it back to Alex and to this podcast, maybe there’s a way forward to engage the issues of our time that would be genuinely productive. This conversation is an example of that possibility, and hope.

Interspersed with this discussion Alex and I play two songs, one he wrote for his daughter and one he wrote for the Palestine people.

Find Alex:Website: https://alexwongsounds.com/IG: https://www.instagram.com/alexwongsounds

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With some artists the creative spark doesn’t stop just because the guitar gets put down. That’s Annie Williams. Anyone who knows her would say the same. From her self-built straw bale house to her hand-sewn performance costumes to her deeply personal songs, the muse follows her everywhere she goes, and does its best to keep up. 

She just released her debut album, Visitor, seven years and one lifetime in the making. Produced with Bill Reynolds of Band of Horses, it’s at once playful and fresh and, like Annie, pretty damn original. The cover of the record is a photograph of the artist jumping through a ring of fire on her motorcycle. The fire was real, the ring was homemade.

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In this thought-provoking conversation we talk about some of the more notable moments in a career nosing into its twentieth year, like, say, her arrival in Nashville. She was living in Wyoming and a touring christian hip hop group saw her play and invited her to roll with them back to Tennessee. I mean of course.

We discuss how her decision to break away from her small business designing handmade bags dovetailed unexpectedly with her first publishing deal, and how that led to sync licenses on several TV shows. 

And you might be hard pressed to get her to admit it, but Annie is an actor, and a good one. She was approached to star in the film A Funeral for Lightning directed by Emily Kai Bock, which premiered at TIFF and went on to win the Grand Jury Award for Best Short Film at the LA Film Festival. Like many of her opportunities, it was gifted, not sought.

There’s a word for people like Annie Williams and that word is autodidact. She teaches herself to do things and then she does those things at her own speed in a sort of secret dance with the world around her. Its an orchestration of energy, at once mysterious and inevitable.

There’s so much I won’t tell you about, so you can discover it yourself. I guess I should say she plays an unreleased song live in the studio.  Emily. Listen:

I hope you take a moment to listen to or watch episode #141 of the Morse Code Podcast. It’s a good one. 

Find Annie:Website: https://annie-williams.com/IG: https://www.instagram.com/anniewilliams___

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I speak with director Spencer Glover about his experience with Disney as a participant in their coveted Launchpad program. Selected from more than 2000 applicants, the longtime Nashville filmmaker spent a year in the incubator, honing his skills under the auspices of industry execs.

The experience culminated in his Disney directorial debut BLACK BELTS, a coming of age Kung Fu story you can watch right now on Disney+. 

Black Belts went on to win a 2024 NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Performance in a Short Form Series. 

Prior to the Launchpad experience Spencer created several films focused on stories that blend genre elements and grounded emotional characters. We met somewhere around 2018 when I was working on the web series version of Morse Code and he had just finished his award-winning film Message Read.

We talk about the launchpad experience, what was good and bad about it, and discuss the phenomenon known as “industry brain” — how in wake of that extraordinary opportunity Spencer has had to learn to resist the temptation to write or direct what the market says it currently wants.

We wax a bit nostalgic for the big budget films we both enjoyed as kids and then Spencer offers his perspective on whether it’s necessary to move to LA to elevate your film career. He himself moved for the Launchpad gig with his partner Kariss and has since stayed. 

Finally we talked about the importance of spending your young years as freely as possible. In that context I share a couple stories from my early twenties, including the time I drove my VW Bus to the end of an unmarked dirt road in southern Utah, hiked eleven miles into the canyon and spent 5 days and nights in the with nothing but a gallon of water and five oranges. 

Oh to be young. 

Find Spencer: Website: https://spencerglover.net/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spenceglover.mov/