Bear's Den , the British band fronted by Andrew Davie and Kevin Jones, first toured the US in a campervan, a trip featured in the 2014 documentary, “Austin to Boston.” Davie and Jones talk with host John Floridis about their 2019 album, "So That You Might Hear Me," and the change in tone it represents. Next, Flathead Valley singer-songwriter and actor Nick Spear explains how projects like the series of music videos shot in Montana ghost towns help him keep “the story” front and center, combining

The vocation of instrumentalist, composer and NEA National Heritage Fellow Rahim AlHaj has brought him joy and exile, praise and torture -- always accompanied by a soundtrack provided by the 5,000-year-old Arabic oud .

Listen now on Musician's Spotlight: Singer songwriter Colin Hay from Men at Work talks with host John Floridis ahead of Hay's March 2020 show in Missoula, MT.

Watching The Lil Smokies set up their acoustic instruments before a show, you'd expect some gentle front-porch picking to follow. In fact, a Smokies extravaganza carries the punch of arena rock filtered through bluegrass. The five-member group from Missoula captured their live-wire onstage act in the recording studio with the recent album Tornillo , melding soulful songwriting and well-honed bluegrass chops into a uniquely sweet, cohesive sound.

Acoustic guitar virtuoso Mike Dawes visits with Musician’s Spotlight host John Floridis by phone and discusses his involvement with the International Guitar Night tour featuring Dawes and three other guitar master from Hawaii, Jim Kimo West, from Finland, Olli Soikkeli and from Turkey, Cenk Erdoğan. Listen now on Musician's Spotlight .

Israeli-American cellist, conductor, and teacher Amit Peled first test-drove the cello at age 10. "I grew up in a rural kibbutz in Israel, and when I was in 4th grade, we were asked what instrument we would like to play. I picked the cello, because of a girl I wanted to get to know." At that time, Peled, who stands 6'5", was more interested in basketball than music. But by age 17, the two passions had swapped places, and his musical engine was firing on all cylinders.

Host John Floridis is spinning tunes for the winter solstice and holiday season, featuring songs by artists who have appeared on Musician’s Spotlight during its 25-year tenure: Ben Harper, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, the Turtle Island String Quartet, Bonnie Raitt, the Indigo Girls, the Cowboy Junkies and Derek Trucks and others.

Jazz guitar master Pat Metheny has won twenty Grammy awards in ten different categories, playing and improvising a style that is modern in conception but grounded deeply in the jazz tradition of melody, swing, and the blues. in 2013, John Floridis welcomed Metheny to Musician’s Spotlight , taking a close look at the art behind Metheny's “bright, accessible modern jazz.”

This week, Musician’s Spotlight features an audience with some of the Crescent City’s funkiest musical kings. In 2010, John Floridis spoke with drummer Stanton Moore and sax and harmonica player Ben Ellman of Galactic , the jam band that’s been “holding uptown down with that funky sound” since 1994. In 2011, vocalist and baritone saxophonist Roger Lewis of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band told John how the legendary group - which began in 1977 as the house band for the Dirty Dozen Social Aid and

The audience at a Bruce Cockburn concert gets boisterous over “If I Had A Rocket Launcher” and reflective with the opening chords of “One Day I Walk” and “Wondering Where the Lions Are.” More than five decades into his career, Cockburn’s guitar craftsmanship and gravelly-to-smooth voice convey wide-eyed wonder, full-on fury and everything in between, delivering the mixture of opinion, observation and quietly stinging humor that characterizes his songs.