Rhythms Magazine

Gillian Welch spoke to Rhythms Editor Brian Wise about her forthcoming Australian tour with her musical and life partner David Rawlings. David was set to join us but was held up in the studio mastering the vinyl version of the Time (The Revelator) album.

Details of the latest tour which begins on February 13 in Brisbane can be found at lovepolice.com.au/tours

On the latest episode of On The Record, Brian Wise and Michael Mackenzie ease into their weekly cultural ramble with the sombre news of Bob Weir’s death—remembering an artist whose band (The Grateful Dead) they half‑followed but wholly respected.

Weir, who died on January 10 at 78 (the same date as David Bowie’s passing—coincidence or cosmic scheduling?), becomes the launchpad for a surprisingly affectionate exploration of Deadhead culture. Michael recalls the excellent Long Strange Trip documentary—long enough, Brian notes, to break a Melbourne Film Festival projector—and the pair marvel at the Grateful Dead’s unique talent for turning concerts into economic ecosystems. 

From there, the conversation pivots to David Bowie's The Final Act documentary (streaming on ABC), Crowded House opening the Australian Open (a first for tennis, apparently), and the AFL's ongoing failure to book local acts for the Grand Final. Why Snoop Dogg over Emma Donovan? Why not Troy Cassar-Daley? The hosts are baffled.

Then there's Bluesfest's controversial booking of heavy metal act Parkway Drive, which has purists clutching their harmonicas. Festival director Peter Noble defends the choice, arguing you can't limit festivals by genre. 

The episode meanders through Lucinda Williams' new album, Russell Crowe's Oscar-worthy turn in Nuremberg, and the existential challenges of songwriting.

On The Record with Brian Wise and Michael Mackenzie is available on all major podcast platforms. Rhythms Magazine subscribers can access exclusive bonus content, including Loretta Miller's debut CD.

Episode Links

Grateful Dead Doco Long Strange Trip – Official Trailer | Prime Video 

David Bowie/Mick Jagger Dancing In the Street 

Bowie: The Final Act on Iview (2025) 

David Bowie - Changes (Live performance Glastonbury 1971) 

Split Enz reuniting for first time in 17 years | 7.30

Lucinda Williams - World's Gone Wrong 

NUREMBERG | Official Trailer #1 (2025) 

The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Goring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII 

Jeff Tweedy: How to Write One Song 

Loretta Miller on Bandcamp 

Subscribe to Rhythms to get Loretta's album on cd 

If On The Record were a boxing match, Episode 5 would open with the bell ringing and Brian Wise and Michael Mackenzie already mid-ring.. The topic? The Golden Globes. The real issue? Whether a film can be called a “musical or comedy” when it is clearly neither, and whether Paul Thomas Anderson should be declared a genius by popular vote or sent to the cinematic sin bin. 

Two overly seasoned cultural obsessives staring at the same screen and seeing entirely different movies.

From there, the episode sprawls—happily and unapologetically—into a wide-ranging conversation about awards hype, viewing expectations, and the strange disconnect between critical acclaim and lived experience. One host praises audacity and subversion, the other demands coherence and restraint. Nobody backs down. Nobody changes their mind. Which, frankly, is exactly how these debates should be conducted.

Luckily, special guest Liz Stringer moves the conversation into other areas that are slightly more important - touring her latest album and raising money to address housing insecurity along with the uncomfortable truth that this is no longer a fringe issue confined to capital cities or stereotypes. 

The show rolls on, touching on music-making, self-management, creative independence, reality TV guilt, Russian books that are abandoned for the sake of mental health, and the eternal question of why we all say we won’t watch that show again… and then absolutely do.

By the end of Episode 5, On The Record has done what it does best: entertained, provoked, and digressed wildly. It’s messy, funny, opinionated, and oddly comforting—like a long conversation you didn’t plan to have, but are very glad you did.

Episode Links

Liz Stringer website 

Episode 5 of On The Record, and the conversation has hit its sweet spot: loose, curious, opinionated—and occasionally interrupted by reality.

There’s a healthy scepticism about hype, a refusal to confuse longevity with importance, and a shared belief that some things still genuinely matter—even if the algorithm disagrees.

Brian Wise brings context and deep musical memory; Michael Mackenzie brings reflection, curiosity, and the occasional philosophical swerve. Together, they interrogate nostalgia without fully surrendering to it, defend enthusiasm when it’s earned, and question why so much modern culture feels like it’s passing time rather than saying something.

There are laughs, strong opinions, thoughtful pauses, and moments where the conversation snaps into focus just long enough to land a point before wandering off again. It’s not a panel show, not a lecture, and definitely not a hot take factory.

Episode 5 doesn’t shout. It knows what it’s doing. Sort of.

Important links

Norma Tanega - Walkin' My Cat Named Dog 

Stray Cats - Runaway Boys 

Ram Jam - Black Betty 

The Rolling Stones - Not Fade Away (Mono) 

The Uncool - the new memoir from award-winning filmmaker and journalist Cameron Crowe 

Grover Lewis article - Hitting The Note With The Allman Brothers Band

Kid Creole & The Coconuts website 

Kid Creole & The Coconuts - Stool Pigeon  

Du Fermier Restaurant website

Florry - First It Was A Movie, The It Was A Book 

Florry website 

David Bowie - Lazarus 

David Bowie website

Brian Wise talks to Paul Kelly in depth about Paul's latest album Seventy. 

Episode 4 of On The Record opens exactly as listeners now expect: however, the technology relents and the Christmas episode is officially underway.

What follows is a warm, rambling, oddly moving conversation about Christmas music, memory, faith, food and survival, with plenty of laughs along the way. Michael Mackenzie declares Christmas music a minefield of bad taste, arguing passionately for carols, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Otis Redding and Silent Night—while firmly rejecting novelty songs, forced cheer and anything involving Santa “rocking.”

Brian revisits his Catholic childhood as an altar boy, including midnight mass duties, Latin confusion, and the moral courage it took to tell an aunt that Sadie the Cleaning Lady was, frankly, not a great gift for a teenage boy. There are transistor radios from Liverpool, early playlists, and the dawning realisation that taste can arrive early—and stay stubbornly intact.

Michael counters with one of the great Christmas stories: a white Christmas spent working illegally in the Swiss Alps, dodging passport checks, sledding home from work, eating communal meals by candlelight, and throwing snowballs under fir trees. It’s nostalgic, cinematic, and only mildly incriminating.

Things take a darker, funnier turn with memories of Christmas stress, maternal meltdowns, and the single most divisive festive dish ever discussed on the podcast: mango pie with gelatin—described as having the texture of a stuntman landing on cardboard boxes.

The episode winds down with gift ideas, band-of-the-year talk, the weaponisation of Santa for child behaviour management, and a surprisingly tender close as the year ends and real life intrudes.

It’s funny. It’s nostalgic. It’s messy. And it’s the most On The Record Christmas you could hope for.

Important Links:

Elvis Christmas Album 

Alligator Records - A Genuine Houserockin' Christmas (2003 Full Album) 

Los Lobos Llegó Navidad 

Otis Redding - White Christmas 

Sister Rosetta Tharpe Silent Night

Episode 3 of On The Record once again proves that no matter how long you’ve worked in media, technology will always sense weakness. 

Once operational, the episode quickly becomes a rallying cry for the quietly furious demographic known as Grumpy Older Men Who Have Had It With Banks. Michael officially embraces his new identity after discovering his bank changed everything without warning, while Brian counters with tales of frozen debit cards, vanished tellers, and the most devastating bank exit in history...

From there, the conversation widens—considerably.

There’s a surprisingly heartfelt discussion about the best technology of 2025, which turns out not to be AI, crypto or anything with a subscription fee, but a lightweight laptop, a digital library card, and apps that simply work. Radical.

Travel takes centre stage next, with Michael recounting a punishing but transcendent hike through Albania’s Accursed Mountains, involving donkeys, snow-capped peaks, dodgy knees and a journey that somehow includes minibuses, boats and a black Mercedes. Brian counters with a pitch for Tulsa, Oklahoma—a city with no tourists, no traffic, a Bob Dylan Centre, a Woody Guthrie Centre, and an offer to pay you $10,000 to move there (family approval not guaranteed).

Music eventually breaks through—this is a Rhythms podcast after all—with Christmas gift recommendations ranging from Mavis Staples and Paul Kelly to Dylan box sets, Patti Smith anniversaries, Springsteen gloom, and vinyl for hipsters aged anywhere between 30 and 60. There are also book tips, documentary detours, and a shared belief that Brad Pitt shirtless does not automatically equal a good movie.

By the end, Episode 3 has covered banks, libraries, hiking, Dylan, Tulsa, laptops, Formula One, Christmas shopping and the philosophy of buying technology like a V8 Mustang—all without ever fully sticking to a plan.

Which, frankly, is exactly the plan.

Essential Links

Brian's fave tech of 2025  

Michael's fave tech of 2025

Michael's Journey through Albania's Accursed Mountains 

Tulsa's Bob Dylan Center 

PBS Documentary on the Tulsa Race Massacre 

Live, work, and grow in Tulsa (incentive program)

The Watchmen TV series that is built around the real life Tulsa massacre 

Louis Theroux talks with David Byrne on Apple Podcasts 

Adam Buxton talks with David Byrne on Apple Podcasts 

Formula 1: Drive to Survive - Season 7 | Official Trailer |

Victorian Record Stores to shop at or online for Christmas 

Captain Stomp 

Brian's Musical Christmas Recommendations

Mavis Staples Sad And Beautiful World 

Episode two of On The Record begins exactly where great podcasts are born: with the crushing realisation that nothing has been recorded. After a brief collective sigh (and a generous decision to “power through”), Michael Mackenzie, Brian Wise and guest Nick Corr regroup and press on—braver, wiser, and still dangerously unsupervised.

What follows is a gloriously eclectic ramble through:

A shamelessly persuasive plug for Rhythms Magazine, which somehow doubles as relationship advice

A sold-out theatre talk about fungi, proving that mushrooms now draw bigger crowds than indie bands

A deep dive into Pluribus, the Apple TV series that turns hive minds into a philosophical Rorschach test (Michael finds it calming; Brian finds it terrifying)

The long-awaited final album from Chris Bailey of The Saints, hailed as a dignified, and moving farewell

Lucinda Williams, political defiance, and why some albums are necessary whether America’s ready or not

A prolonged, reverent detour into Tom Waits, including birthdays, movies, glitter-filled pockets, and the universal agreement that everyone would still fly overseas to see him

Talking Heads nostalgia, Bluesfest ticket shock, and the unsettling concept of “cover bands with original members”

The episode wraps with movies (Dead of Winter, Train Dreams), tears shed in unexpected places, and the firm belief that art about love, loss, and grief is best discussed at length—preferably after checking the record button.

On The Record is a podcast where culture is taken seriously, and tangents are treated as the main event.

Useful Links

Rhythms Subscription For Your Loved One At Christmas 

Order Your Rhythms T Shirt For Christmas  

Merlin Sheldrake Interview 

The Saints Long March Through The Jazz Age 

Lucinda Williams new album World's Gone Wrong 

Lucinda's Honky Tonk in NYC 

Documentary: Finding Lucinda  

Jay Buchanan - Caroline (Official Music Video)

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery | Official Trailer | Netflix 

Tom Waits - "Come On Up To The House" 

Tom Waits Glitter and Doom Live 

Tom Waits - The Acting Years 

Snocaps band site 

The Lemonheads New Album

Remain In Light feat. Jerry Harrison & Adrian Belew | Full Set | Hollywood Arts Park | 3-2-2024 

Caught Stealing Trailer 

Dead of Winter Trailer 

Train Dreams Trailer 

In a gloriously shambolic podcast debut of On The Record, Brian Wise and Michael Mackenzie briefly wrestle with technology; however, once the cockpit stops flashing warnings, they settle into a free-wheeling conversation about music, ageing audiences, dodgy voting scandals, Patti Smith, Beatles archaeology, sci-fi mind melds, and why matinee gigs are the greatest invention since the flat white.

Wise and Mackenzie first teamed up when they co-presented Dig On The Radio, a summer season of music and performances on ABC Local Radio between 2003 and 2006.

Since then, the pair have kept in touch both on and off the air, and decided there might be literally dozens of people eager to hear their meanderings in this new addition to the Rhythms stable.

In this debut episode Michael and Brian meander through:

Acclaimed singer songwriter Gregory Porter, who will be touring Australia in October, spoke to Rhythms editor Brian Wise. Porter talks about his recording career and his influences, including Nat King Cole and Donny Hathaway.