Nathans & Roncast

We were fortunate to spend a morning sitting in front of microphones at the Pennsylvania home of Craig Bickhardt, one of our favorite songwriters, a good friend of ours, and a regular collaborator. You can hear Michael’s cello on many of Bickhardt’s recordings, and Michael often backs him up live. He is one of the finest song craftsmen we have ever had the pleasure to have known, and his songs stack up against anyone’s. In this first half of our conversation, Craig will talk about his song “Crazy Nightingale,” originally released on his album “The More I Wonder.” It is […]

Here’s one more single from our live recording of this podcast at the Folk Alliance Region Midwest conference in September. This song is “Blacksnake,” which she originally recorded with her band Weda Skirts. It’s a song about the Dakota Access Pipeline project, which threatens the water supply of Native American communities in South Dakota. To hear the entire live event, click on this link.

Here’s an outtake from our recent live podcast taping at the Folk Alliance Region Midwest conference, held last month outside of Chicago. It’s our regular set closer/encore song, Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” with hand percussion by Elexa Dawson. To hear our interview with Elexa, click here.

We’re presenting some single songs from our live taping of the Nathans & Roncast in Chicago at Folk Alliance Regional Midwest last month. In this episode, Kansas-based songwriter Elexa Dawson sings her song “Mother,” an ode to Mother Earth. Michael adds some tasteful cello to Elexa’s soulful vocals and guitar. She wrote the song in reaction to the Dakota Access Pipeline project. To hear the song in context of the full live event, listen at this link.

We played a few songs before our live taping of our interview with Elexa Dawson at the Folk Alliance Region Midwest conference. Here’s one of them, “Old Joe’s Chair,” written by Aaron and Phil Henry. It’s their song about the relationship between a man and his barber. It’s always good to have someone to talk to, especially during hard times.

In our first Nathans & Roncast recording in front of a live audience, we speak with Kansas-based performing songwriter Elexa Dawson about two songs she wrote about the Dakota Access Pipeline project that threatens the water supply of Native American communities in South Dakota. The songs are “Mother” and “Blacksnake.” We spoke with Elexa at the Folk Alliance Regional Midwest conference in Lisle, Illinois on Oct. 26, 2024. She performs both songs, and we finish the episode with a special treat. Elexa Dawson gives audiences something to cry about. Her hopeful messages cut through the mundane without sidestepping pain. Deeply […]

Richard Shindell is great story songwriter, and wow can he play guitar. Both of those skills — songwriting and guitar work — are on vivid display on one of his trademark songs, “You Stay Here,” off of his album “Somewhere Near Paterson” which was released in the year 2000. It’s a song about foraging and living off the land. At least that’s what we think it’s about.  There’s a vein of every man for himself that runs across this album — sadness, darkness, loss, addiction — but he does it with such amazing ear candy and stellar production, with such poetic […]

In part two of our conversation with the founder of February Album Writing Month, Burr Settles discusses the wonderful and occasionally strange journeys taken by songs written for the challenge. And we take a listen to Burr’s song “Love Out Loud,” which he wrote from a “comments-first” challenge during one FAWM. He built the song entirely around hypothetical feedback left in the comments section of a blank song. Burr was also on the founding team of the language learning app Duolingo. You’ll love the exciting finale of our conversation with Burr Settles. If you didn’t hear part one, here’s a […]

Aaron and Michael take you inside the process of making a set list just before a recent house concert. We write the set list in real time, trading songs back and forth and negotiating the pace of the show and making sure the duo’s songs are well balanced. We make it a tradition to build our setlist just beforehand, to keep things interesting, trading the pen back and forth, putting the songs here and there. In this case, we were sitting in front of an open window in the early fall in Rockport, Mass., waiting to the play the Whale […]

Tens of thousands of new songs, perhaps more, exist because Burr Settles founded February Album Writing Month in 2004. The annual monthlong challenge requires participants to write 14 songs in the 28 days of the month. People from around the world participate, sharing their new creations with each other and providing positive feedback, and building community. Burr also was among the early team that created Duolingo, the app that helps people learn new languages. In part one of our conversation, we talk about what it was like to go viral (twice!), and the technical challenges behind building a platform that […]