This week we sir down with the amazing Kendra Sheetz! Kendra is a Chicago-based writer, photographer, and music lover. She owns and operates Bad Copy - a music site which covers Punk, Indie, Hardcore, and Alt bands. She runs a small PR company called Type A Promo, which aims to spread the word about amazing up-and-coming Punk bands. And she is the co-host of the enough. Podcast which discusses the darker side of the music industry, specifically abuse, assault, and harassment. She also spends her free time exploring and photographing abandoned structures across the country. 

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This week we sit down with Ian MacKaye. Ian MacKaye!

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This wee we have a wonderful conversation with War On Women's Brooks Harlan!

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This week have a wonderful talk with Daniel Sea.

Daniel Sea (he/they) is a trans non-binary actor, musician and artist. Sea has worked in film, theater and TV series. They played the first recurring transmasculine role on television, appearing from 2006-2009 as Max in Showtime’s The L Word. In 2022, he revised his role as Max for the current iteration of the L Word: Generation Q. They acted in films such as John Cameron Mitchell’s “Shortbus”, and Barbara Albert’s film “The Dead and The Living/Die Lebenden.”

As a conceptual artist, Sea works with interdisciplinary memoir, engaging in processes such as research-based performance, writing, music, drawing, video and photography. Prior to their work acting in mainstream tv and film, Sea came of age as an artist as a part of the queer punk, art and activist scenes of the San Francisco Bay Area, California in the 1990’s. His work transverses from the queer vanguard to the mainstream, intervening on pop culture, infecting the mainstream with a political and magical queer and trans agenda.

In collaboration Marissa Lobô, Jota Mombaça, Juliana dos Santos, and with participation from artist Ani Gonzaga, and activist Sonia Guajajara, Sea was a part of creating the theater piece “Ghost Times/Decolonizing Teatro Mundi”, at the Brüt Theater in Vienna, Austria.

Sea is co-writer, producer and songwriter on“La La La Little Shows”, a decolonial children’s sci-fi series, which includes animation, music performance, narrative storytelling and interviews with artists. This show centers BIPOC and Queer characters and artists.

Sea exhibited in October 2022 in the Library of the Academy of Fine Arts in a group exhibition “Archeology of Whispers”, which involved a photo installation and a solo performance based on research within the library’s archive, as well as a group performance with fellow artists.

Intergenerational communication, accessing transcestor knowledge through corporeal research and memories, intervening on the academy's institutional archive, were some of the themes of Sea's work within the exhibit. Sea, along with the currently unnamed artistic collective who created “Archeology of Whispers”, created a durational performance intervention in the Paintings Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, called “The Sea Room”. The Sea Room is a phantasmagorical journey through the primeval oceans of all life into the European hell of order, extraction, and ascension. It is a response, a call, and a question.

Daniel identifies as trans non-binary and uses he/they pronouns.

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This week with sit down with Matt Kreutz, the founder of Firebrand bread. Matt founded Firebrand with the goal of making a positive impact on his community by hiring homeless and previously incarcerated people. Firebrand was born out of Matt Kreutz's determination to make the best damn bread possible while building a business that helps people. His first job in a bakery at the age of 14.

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Note from Pepper: This episode is special for me. J Robbins is my favorite producer and I never in a million years thought I would get the chance to have a conversation with him. Yay!

Robbins began his career as a bassist for Government Issue, and has also led five of his own bands: Jawbox, Rollkicker Laydown, Burning Airlines, Channels, and Office of Future Plans. He was a touring bassist for Scream and played bass on the debut 7" from Jack Potential, which was issued by DeSoto Records in 1993. More recently he played bass in Report Suspicious Activity with Vic Bondi, which released two albums on Alternative Tentacles Records.

In 2011, Robbins, along with Kerosene 454's drummer and fellow Channels bandmate Darren Zentek, bassist Brooks Harlan, and guitarist/cellist Gordon Withers, released an EP under the name Office of Future Plans. The band, who had been playing since 2009 and released an album on Dischord Records in November 2011, but as of October 2016, they are not together anymore. In May 31, 2019, J. Robbins released his first solo album, Un-Becoming.

Robbins is also a successful producer and engineer for bands such as Ponytail, Clutch (and side project The Bakerton Group), Jets to Brazil, Hey Mercedes, Shiner, Mock Orange, The Pauses, The Life and Times, Miranda Sound, Time Spent Driving, Faraquet, The Dismemberment Plan, The Monorchid, The Promise Ring, Dwindle, Pilot to Gunner, Paint It Black, None More Black, Jawbreaker, Discount, Against Me!, Goodbye Soundscape, Modern Life is War, Stapleton, Murder By Death, mewithoutYou, Black Cross (hardcore), Lemuria, Caustic Casanova, The Sword, Debate (from Sao Paulo, Brazil), Coliseum, Hammer No More the Fingers, Small Brown Bike, Broadcaster, Noyo Mathis and Nakatomi Plaza.

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This week we sit down with the amaizing Kim Coletta! Kim bought her first bass from David Grubbs (Squirrelbait, Bastro, Gastr del Sol) when they both attended college in Washington, DC. After graduating, much to her father's chagrin, she started Jawbox with J. Robbins and Adam Wade. Shortly after, Coletta founded DeSoto Records to put out Edsel and early Jawbox material. Although Jawbox took a long hiatus starting in 1997, they reunited in 2018 and have since toured the U.S. and Europe. All told, the band has played around 700 live shows. Coletta works as a fifth-grade English teacher when she's not playing bass and coaches baseball. She is also a parent to Nick, a 21-year-old University of Vermont student who squeezes in some academics when not snowboarding.

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This week we sit down with the amazing Zach Barocas. Zach is best known for his drumming in Jawbox, The Up On In, and BELLS≥. He is currently at work composing material for his latest project, New Freedom Sound. Since 2001, he has served as editor and publisher of The Cultural Society, a primarily-poetry micropress. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, where they own a stationery store called Measure Twice.

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This week Kevin and Pepper talk with Gordon Withers! Gordon is a Post-Punk Cellist residing in the suburbs of Washington, DC. He plays cello with the J. Robbins Band, New Freedom Sound, Betwixt, and many others. He is best known for his cello tribute albums including Jawbreaker on Cello, Dark Side of the Moon on Cello, and Jawbox on Cello. In his “adulting” time he has a career in the tech industry helping nonprofits make strategic technology choices. Gordon became a hot sauce addict during the pandemic. 

https://www.gordonwithers.com/

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This week we sit down the amazing Jon Wurster! Jon is an American drummer and comedy writer. As a musician, he is best known for his work with Superchunk, the Mountain Goats, and Bob Mould.He is also known for appearing on The Best Show with Tom Scharpling. He's recorded and performed live with Jay Farrar, Ben Gibbard, Robert Pollard, Katy Perry, The New Pornographers, Rocket from the Crypt, Alejandro Escovedo, and R.E.M!

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