Welcome! brothers and sisters to Episode #3—of the Cornbread Cafe.

Echo Sparksl photo courtesy Echo Sparks.

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I am the mongrel, and I will be your waiter today. Cazh and cozy, we’re located at the five-corners of Blues, Americana, Folk, Country, and Gospel. And you can sometimes catch an express to Rock ’n’ Roll at the bus stop across the way. We are the Internet’s new fave hang for the best in a sprawling menu of American Roots music.

On this Episode:

Echo Sparks, “Ghost Town Girl,” Ghost Town Girl

The Suitcase Junket, “What Was I Gonna Say,” Pile Driver

CATFOX, “Mama Don't Say Why," Thank You, I Love You, I'm Sorry

Long Journey, “I First Kissed You,” Fierce Folk

The Hunts, “Lifting The Sea," Those Younger Days

Melika Miller, “Don't Give Up Now,” by single

Munk Duane, “Stupid Pride,” Argue with Gravity

Misty Blues, “Next Time is the Last Time,” Dark and Saucy

The Delta Wires, “Goin' Away,” Anthology

Gus McKay, “Extremely Voodoo,” Salt Flat Mojo Blues

Ray Wilson, “Lone River Dance,” Coming Through in Waves

One Left, “Fare Thee Well My True Love,” This Land I Love

I think we need to clear something up before we get to the music today. A musician expressed the concern that their music wasn’t in the same league as the bulk of the artists we’re featuring on the show. I’d like to think that my response was adequately reassuring, but in hindsight, I’m kinda thinking I could have done better. So let me try again to explain what this show is and is not.

The Cornbread Cafe is a place to showcase some of the best in independent American Roots music. We play tunes that are original, authentic, and well-crafted. Period. It doesn’t matter whether those tunes come from an established artist or an emerging one. It doesn’t matter if half the songs on an EP are a little, you know, kinda “ehh.” Kinda could use a little more polish. That’s not the point of this show.

The point of this show…

And I should pause here to say that I should be so lucky that even half my episodes are winners…

The point of this show is that there’s this huge audience out there that’s fed up with the commercial crap that dominates the airwaves. They’re hungry for music that speaks to them, that says something real. The ingredients of American Roots music are the stuff of real life—good and bad. Not synthetically created in the marketing departments of the corporate tune factories.

So I don’t want hear any more excuses like that. You want us to feature your music, send us an e-mail to [email protected]. I’m going to point out though that we can only include about 1/10 of a percent of the music we’d like to on the podcast. But that’s OK, because we’re going to start livestreaming pretty soon, which will give us a chance to play tons more music. So send it our way.

And if you’re up for an interview, let us know that too. You could end up as a headliner like today’s featured artist, Echo Sparks out of Orange County, Calif. We spoke at length with D.A. Valdez, Cindy Ballreich, and Colleen Kinnick about…about everything, actually, which tends to happen on this show. You can listen to the full interview via the small audio player below the band’s name in the shownotes. And to whet your appetite, we’ll play an excerpt of that conversation in just a bit.

Echo Sparks

> Listen to the full-length conversation with them! <

http://www.greylockglass.com/podcasts/cornbread/echo-sparks_interview.mp3

You may recall that in Episode #1, we got to enjoy “Torch Song” of their 2016 release,