Soundcheck

From the 1940s to the 1960s, Eva Garza’s voice could be heard singing Mexican rancheras throughout Latin America. Though her story and music is largely forgotten today, her genes live on: Garza's great-niece is the Texas singer-songwriter Carrie Rodriguez. In 2016, she released Lola, a bi-lingual record that combines her own Americana sound with the echoes of her family’s musical heritage, courtesy of a crack band led by Luke Jacobs that includes guest guitar polymaths Bill Frisell and David Pulkingham, bassist Viktor Krauss, and others. Carrie Rodriguez plays music from Lola, in-studio.

Thundercat is Stephen Bruner - an electric bassist and vocalist who racked up some serious cred through his session work and touring with Erykah Badu and Snoop Dogg. Since that time, he's parlayed that success into his own solo career; after impressing Flying Lotus while playing on his 2010 album Cosmogramma, the esteemed producer ended up working on the entirety on Thundercat's 2011 debut, The Golden Age of Apocalypse. 

Fast-forward to spring of 2020, when Thundercat released It Is What It Is, another meditation on personal loss, just like that of his 2013 album called Apocalypse. We revisit that 2013 session for this podcast from the archives. 

Set List: 

Bruce Hornsby wrote a classic pop song with “The Way It Is” in 1986 (later sampled by Tupac Shakur for "Changes.") But his new album, Non-Secure Connection, is full of unexpected collaborations with Jamila Woods and Vernon Reid, and the late Leon Russell, as well as sounds drawing from contemporary classical music, hazy drones, driving minimalism, and the film scores he’s done with Spike Lee. (In fact, some of the tunes on the intriguing and at times, daring, record were inspired by music cues written for some of Spike Lee's films.) The one-time member of the Grateful Dead and Bonnie Raitt, Mavis Staples, Chaka Khan, and Willie Nelson collaborator, Bruce Hornsby, joins us to play a couple of songs and talk about a surprising range of wildly eclectic music. 

"My Resolve":

"Shit's Crazy Out Here":

This is "Bright Star Cast" with Jamila Woods and Vernon Reid: 

S.G. Goodman writes songs that deal with the hard lives and hard truths of the rural south. She's a farmer's daughter with a high lonesome sound to her voice who grew up singing in church. Her album Old Time Feeling is about being a progressive, gay songwriter who lives in and loves her conservative Western Kentucky community. She joins us via the interwebs at home to play some of her latest songs. 

"Old Time Feeling": "Supertramp":

Julianna Barwick has been a repeat visitor in the studio (April 2013, Spring 2018.) In 2013, she was teasing songs from the protean, beautifully hazy Nepenthe, to which Sigur Rós's producer Alex Somers lent some of his trademark Icelandic sheen. Barwick's album, Will, preserved that ethereality, but also added sonic jags, peaks, and valleys. (Still no word on whether her collaboration with Dogfish Head brewery had any influence on this ...woozier... sound.) Julianna Barwick performs songs from Will in-studio in this session from 2016. (From the archives.)

On Sunday, pianist Leon Fleisher passed away at the age of 92. In the 1950s and early 60s, Fleisher was one of those classical musicians who was genuinely famous beyond classical music circles. Then disaster struck, and Fleisher was forced to reinvent himself – at least twice. His story is one for music fans (and possibly sports fans, of which Fleisher was one) of all stripes, and he told it over a couple of visits to the Soundcheck studio. 

Celebrate an American original with this special memorial edition of the Soundcheck podcast.      

With his dramatic voice, his elliptical but emotive songs, his classically-derived piano playing, and his striking presence on stage, British artist, poet, vocalist, composer, and musician Benjamin Clementine occupies a singular place in the music world – somewhere between art music and pop. Clementine's debut album At Least for Now won the 2015 Mercury Prize; he was named knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 2019, and together with his spouse and artistic/musical partner, Flo Morrissey, has put out music with as The Clementines earlier in 2020. He joined us at our piano back in 2016 to play music from that Mercury Prize-winning record. (From the Archives.)

Juno Award-Winning pop band from Oshawa, Ontario Dizzy consists of three brothers, Charlie, Alex and Mackenzie Spencer and their friend, lead singer Katie Munshaw. They make self-described “Sad Dream Pop” drawing on the intimate and detailed drama of “all the lousy things being a human entails -being jealous of your friends, pushing away the people you love most, being afraid of aging and death and on and on and on.”  Dizzy connects from Canada to play new music from their sophomore record, The Sun and Her Scorch, live, from their basement quarantine bubble. 

Miami-based Steven A. Clark grew up in the shadow of Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina. There was little about his time there that suggested the sweeping musical sound brewing in his head; he received the distinction of "Most Quiet" in his high school yearbook. Clark broke the silence in 2012 with a well-received indie release cheekily titled Fornication Under Consent of the King (check the acronym), and in 2015, he dropped his major-label debut, Lonely Roller. He's released another full-length since then, 2018's Where Neon Goes to Die, a shiny and glitzy number, which may hide darkness underneath.

The title track from 2015's "Lonely Roller" sets the thematic and emotional stage: an immediately danceable tune that location-checks Las Vegas in the first line. You'd be forgiven for thinking Clark is embarking on an album of sleek but soulless dance-floor bangers, but his voice pierces the gated drums and cavernous reverb on songs like standout "Can't Have," and reveals a sharp observational eye and emotionally capacious lyricist.

Listen to Steven A. Clark play songs from Lonely Roller in-studio from this 2015 session.   

Emmy The Great has always had a way with words. Her big break came in 2009 when she contributed the song “Seattle” to the Brighton Port Authority, an album by famed producer Fatboy Slim that also featured such heavyweights as David Byrne and Iggy Pop. The London-based singer-songwriter showed her fascination with the U.S. in “Seattle,” which had as poetic a description of sunrise as you’ll ever hear in a pop song: “a blue sky forming like a wire warming up America.” In 2011, her second record, Virtue, spawned the single “Paper Forest (In The Afterglow Of Rapture),” which found Emmy “standing in the afterglow of rapture with the words the rapture left.”  Skip to 2015, and Emmy The Great was living in Brooklyn and finishing her third full-length. While the wordplay was as strong as ever, there was an increased depth and elegance of texture. 

Emmy the Great has just released the 2020 single, "Dandelions/Liminal" in advance of her October record, April. For this Soundcheck Podcast, Emmy The Great and her band play songs from the 2015 EP, including the haunted single “Swimming Pool,” in-studio. (From the Archives, 2015.)