Musician's Spotlight

She's won three Grammies, recorded twenty feature albums, commissioned a Pulitzer Prize-winning concerto, been featured on an Oscar-nominated soundtrack, performed in yoga studios and knitting circles, played for the pope...and visited Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

Bassist and vocalist Bridget Kearney of Lake Street Dive joins host John Floridis in conversation from her basement studio in Brooklyn, New York on Halloween Eve, 2020. From their start in Boston in 2004 as a mashup of country, swing-era jazz and classic pop, Lake Street Dive has slowly made its way into the foreground of musical consciousness around the U.S. and beyond. The group took a big step with their slowed-down and funky-grooved cover of the Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back”, the video of which became a YouTube hit with over six and a half million views.

Self-described "instigator" Jayme Stone returns to Musician’s Spotlight to talk about AWake, a recording that "sings from a white-hot core of love and loss." It's accompanied by a lush, immersive website containing a virtual listening post, a visual art project and choreographic interpretations of the songs. Even accounting for the diverse range of Stone's previous collaborations, the sound palette and emotional landscape of "AWake" is a departure. Recalling the LP liner notes he would pore over as a child, Stone says: "I would just sit in front of the record player and listen and leaf through the notes and be immersed in photographs, ephemera and lyrics. I feel like we've lost that in the move to digital, and yet the Internet is an incredible way to share that stuff. We can have things moving and be immersive. I've always wanted to do something like this, and now felt like the opportune time to do it."

In grade school in Malta, Montana, eleven-year-old John Roberts — the trombone player, not the Supreme Court justice — watched as the band director, playing a blues solo, muted the bell of his trombone with a handleless toilet plunger. Roberts's destiny was sealed. "I guess that's my personality right there. I guess I gravitate towards things that are brash and obnoxious."

Bettye LaVette's big ears, wide-open mind and ability to get inside a song's lyric, melodic line and harmonic implications “LaVetticize" every song she interprets. Her career parallels the rise of soul music, and she's among a tiny handful of her contemporaries who continue to create vital recordings.

Master classes in songwriting and online “Kitchen COVID” concerts: when the going gets tough, folk-pop maven and playwright Jonatha Brooke gets improvisational. The enforced touring hiatus brought on by COVID-19 is hardly her first career obstacle: as part of the harmony-rich duo The Story (with college buddy Jennifer Kimball), Brooke garnered rave reviews and major label contracts - only to be dropped a few years later in a 1990s recording industry purge. Brooke shrugged, created Bad Dog Records, and got on with releasing another nine albums.

Since high school, Chris Cunningham and John Hermanson of Storyhill have been mining the synergistic power of harmony singing and the scenic imagery of Montana to forge their memorable, acoustic guitar-based songs. On an auspicious 2020 winter solstice, during the great confluence of Jupiter and Saturn, they chatted with Musician's Spotlight host John Floridis about their new holiday album. Cunningham and Hermanson are eighteen albums into a three-decade recording and performing career which began in 1989 with the release of the cassette tape Chris and Johnny - a production funded by their parents - and which continues today with 2020's Bethlehem, a mix of original and re-imagined Christmas songs.

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.

Whether she’s playing piano and singing jazzy pop songs onstage, or hosting “Saturday Night Jazz” for the Canadian CBC Music network, exuberance is the hallmark of pianist-songwriter-singer-arranger Laila Biali. The Vancouver, BC native has collaborated with Sting, Chris Botti, Paula Cole and Suzanne Vega, and has headlined festivals and venues across five continents. In May 2020, with the tour supporting her new album “Out of Dust” on hold, she’s collaborating with fellow musicians via video, calling the series of recordings “Quarantunes.”

As part of Montana Public Radio's "Honor, Hope and Healing" Week, Musician's Spotlight highlights two individuals, each part of a family musical dynasty, who didn't survive 2020.