Soundcheck

The band Umphrey’s McGee spans a wide range of rock, prog, and pop, yet sometimes dips into jazz and/or improvisation by way of Zappa-inspired hand signals. But it’s also their constantly evolving live experience that has converted a loyal grassroots fanbase over the past two decades. Now Chicago-based, they’re celebrating their 20th anniversary as a band by touring. Umphrey’s McGee performs new material from their record, it’s not us, in-studio. 

Set List:

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For the better part of two decades, the Tuscon-based desert-noir band Calexico has been making Mariachi- and Cumbia-laced expansive Americana. For their latest record (their ninth), "The Thread That Keeps Us," they explore the dual nature of anxiety and hope in these volatile times with some romance and gritty dread. The band joins us to play some of these songs in our studio. 

Set List:

Watch the complete session below:

The Liverpool-born trio known as The Wombats make catchy, guitar-saturated pop with riffs on twisted love songs, or detail-rich bad choices. With all members, Dan, Tord, & Murph now residing in three different locations: London, Oslo and Los Angeles, their latest record,  Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, due out on February 9, was largely written in that modern-day long-distance fashion, with in-person sessions in Oslo.

Fittingly, the band will be supporting The Pixies and Weezer on arena shows this summer, but before they do, they're here to entice us to "Dance To Joy Division" with their explosive guitar-pop.

Set List:

Watch the complete in-studio session:

Since their inception over a decade ago, the string quintet Sybarite5 has built a global audience, from Lincoln Center to The Cutting Room and the Museum of Sex; from the Apple Store to the Library of Congress, and a music salon-like residency at NYC’s the cell, along with multiple international and national tours, residencies, and festivals.

The five players (Sami Merdinian and Sarah Whitney, violins; Angela Pickett, viola; Laura Metcalf, cello; and Louis Levitt, bass) have made it their quest to champion new music by American composers along with other tunes that excite them: arrangements of Radiohead, Taraf de Haidouks, Led Zeppelin, and Astor Piazzolla. Their latest record, OUTLIERS, is a collection of new works composed just for them, and it brings the quintet to our studio.

Set List:

Watch the complete studio session below:

Dreamy slow-core folk duo Lean Year is Virginia-based singer Emilie Rex and filmmaker/musician Rick Alverson, along with contributions from Chicago musician/engineer Erik Hall and guest artists. Their musical palette is one of soft-spoken but direct vocals, a Telecaster guitar dredging through peaceful waters, baritone saxophone and clarinet parts, Rhodes, tape-warps, and waves of strings. Lean Year joins us in-studio to play some of these cutting and quiet minimalist folk tunes. 

Watch their session:

Bette Smith was born and raised in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn – but on her debut LP called Jetlagger she draws on the gospel she sang in the church and the soul music she heard on the block on hot summer nights music growing up on the corner of Nostrand and Fulton.

On the new record, the tunes range from originals to covers of Staples Singers and Isaac Hayes classics, showcasing Smith’s deep, confident, and powerful voice. Amidst rugged, muscular arrangements that hearken to the timeless sounds of Mississippi and Memphis soul and funk, Bette Smith barely contains a New York aggressiveness and passion, and piles on the sexy. Smith and her band play some of these songs, in-studio.

Watch the complete session below.

Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell call themselves Overcoats and make songs that perhaps wear a shiny electronic coat, but underneath, they’re wearing a simple, often old-fashioned weave of vocal harmonies. To describe the music as a mix of folk, pop, & electronic elements would be in the ball park, but their tunes are also a little bit country, and a little bit soulful. They also spent time in Dublin, allowing for traditional Irish influences to seep into their process as well.

On their 2017 record, Young, they explore the tension between genres like bluegrass and electronica, mining dark material that might have come from a journal.

Overcoats play some of these songs live, in-studio. Watch the entire session here:

LNZNDRF is a band composed of Scott and Bryan Devendorf (The National), and Ben Lanz (Beirut, The National, Sufjan Stevens). Their CAN-influenced drone-fuzz psych jams are improvised, then structured into long-form songs, with or without vocals. LNZNDRF plays some of these expansive musical journeys, in tie-dyed jumpsuits, live in the Greene Space. 

The eight song record, also called LNZNDRF, was recorded in a church in Cincinnati over two-and-a-half days, and imbued with a vital spirit hearkening back to the reason the members became musicians in the first place. 

John Doe is a musician, actor, and author, and one of the founding fathers of the L.A. punk scene with his band X, which continues to this day. He has co-authored and collected first-hand accounts of L.A. punk experiences in the book, Under the Big Black Sun. John Doe has also done country and folk music with his other band The Knitters, and released ten solo albums. The last is called The Westerner, which came out last year, and John Doe is back in our studio today to play some of his solo songs.  

Watch his in-studio performance via Facebook: 

Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn have each – in their own separate ways during their separate careers – been reinventing the sound of the banjo. Bela has drawn on jazz, classical, rock, folk, and world music; Abigail is fluent in Mandarin and has used her voice and banjo to draw connections between Chinese and Appalachian music. Together, though, this husband and wife team has released a couple of albums that really go for the old fashioned front porch sound. Their latest record is Echo In The Valley, and they'll play some of it in-studio.

Set List:

Watch the whole session here: