Stephen Wade is a renowned banjo player, folklorist, and author. He joins today to discuss his new book, Our Common Life, and explore our shared musical inheritance, American folk culture, creative individuality, and the promises we make to those whose stories we carry.

Episode Summary

Every traditional song contains more than notes and words. It carries the traces of musicians, families, communities, migrations, technologies, institutions, and individual acts of invention. Bob Dylan may have sung about containing multitudes, but Stephen Wade gifts us with his wonderful and humane understanding of the multitudes contained in a tune. 

In this episode of The Sum of All Wisdom, Scott Catey speaks with renowned banjo player, folklorist, historian, and author Stephen Wade about his new book, Our Common Life: Folk Songs from the Front Porch to the Concert Hall, published by the University of Illinois Press.

Stephen describes traditional music as a collection of “common possessions with individual contributions.” A tune may pass through generations, but it never remains unchanged. Each musician catches it, puts their hands on it, and contributes something of their own, sometimes surprisingly.

Beginning with Stephen’s childhood in Chicago, the conversation follows the people and encounters that shaped his musical life: sidewalk performer Casey Jones and his trained chicken Mae West; blues musicians Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Big Joe Williams; banjo teachers Fleming Brown and Doc Hopkins; and the musicians, writers, and working people whose lives populate Stephen’s research.

Along the way, Stephen traces the African and Caribbean ancestry of the banjo, the meeting of Black and European musical traditions, Chicago’s role as a crossroads for American music, and the relationship between changing instruments, technologies, dances, and communities.

But this is also a conversation about the responsibilities of memory. Stephen explains that his work represents “promises made” to people who trusted him with their knowledge and stories. Research, in that sense, becomes more than documentation. It is an ethical act: gratitude, reciprocity, and cultural preservation.

Episode Highlights

Scott and Stephen discuss:

• Growing up amid Chicago’s sidewalk culture, churches, record shops, radio stations, and blues clubs 
• Casey Jones, the celebrated Chicago street performer who performed with a chicken named Mae West 
• Hearing Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Big Joe Williams, and Mahalia Jackson as a young person 
• Stephen’s early discovery of guitar, five-string banjo, and American traditional music 
• The differences among five-string, plectrum, tenor, fretless, and gourd banjos 
• How musical styles, social dancing, technology, and instrument design influence one another 
• Stephen’s apprenticeship with Fleming Brown and his relationship with Doc Hopkins 
• Pete Seeger’s influential book How to Play the Five-String Banjo
• WLS, the National Barn Dance, and Chicago’s place in American broadcasting history 
• The musical lineage connecting Dick Burnett, Doc Hopkins, Fleming Brown, and Stephen Wade 
• The history of “Man of Constant Sorrow” 
• Chicago as both an arrival point and a dissemination point for American music 
• The African and Caribbean origins of the banjo 
• Cultural sharing and cultural distinctiveness in American folk traditions 
• William Sidney Mount’s painting Catching the Tune
• Folklorist and music librarian Dena Epstein 
• Hilda Polacheck’s transformative childhood experience at Hull House 
• The extraordinary moment Stephen discovered that the historical account he was reading belonged to Dena Epstein’s mother 
• Will Keys, musical self-reliance, and making banjo strings from screen-door wire 
• The relationship between representative musicians and exceptional artists 
• Folklorist and blues researcher Mack McCormick’s idea of “finding the predominances” 
• Uncle Dave Macon and the world contained in “Arcade Blues” 
• Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, and the histories concentrated inside particular places 
• Jack Conroy, Nelson Algren, the Federal Writers’ Project, and American working-class storytelling 
• How Stephen combined banjo playing, tall tales, spoken language, and theatrical performance in Banjo Dancing
• The moment Stephen discovered that musical virtuosity alone was not enough to hold an audience 
• Why performing reveals what a musician has truly learned 
• What it means to catch a tune and pass it forward 

Memorable Moments

Common possessions with individual contributions

One of the conversation’s central ideas is that tradition and individuality are not opposites.

A song such as Big Joe Williams’s “Baby Please Don’t Go” may become a shared cultural possession, but every musician who performs it brings a distinctive history, voice, technique, and sensibility to the music. Even after recorded sound gave listeners a seemingly fixed version, musicians continued to transform songs through performance.

For Stephen, a traditional tune is therefore never the work of only one person. It is an accumulation of encounters.

“There are many people in a tune.”

Catching the tune

Stephen uses “catching the tune” to describe how music passes from one person to another. The phrase evokes William Sidney Mount’s nineteenth-century painting Catching the Tune, which depicts the process of learning music by ear and highlights the physicality of learning, making, and transmitting music.

This kind of learning is bodily, social, and attentive. A musician watches, listens, imitates, remembers, and gradually makes the music their own. The tune is inherited, but it must also be recreated.

Stephen’s own musical lineage extends through Fleming Brown and Doc Hopkins to Kentucky musician Dick Burnett, who published an early version of “Man of Constant Sorrow.” These connections make musical history immediate: not an abstract timeline, but a chain of people who knew, heard, and taught one another, linking communities, geographies, and centuries.

Making a way out of no way

East Tennessee banjo player Will Keys embodies another of the episode’s central ideas: creativity under conditions of scarcity.

Keys developed a highly individual banjo style that he could neither explain nor slow down sufficiently to teach. As a child, he played an instrument strung with wire taken from a screen door. Later, he carved banjo bridges from discarded materials and made intricate objects for friends.

His work exemplified what Stephen calls “making a way out of no way”—using ingenuity, patience, and the materials at hand to create something personal within a shared tradition.

The exceptional and the representative

Which people best reveal a culture?

Stephen recalls a conversation with folklorist and blues researcher Mack McCormick, who encouraged him to pay attention to average practitioners as well as celebrated artists. Duke Ellington and Ernest Hemingway tell us something about American culture, but so do street singers, factory workers, local musicians, crafts...

What happens when we stop asking whether art is successful—and instead ask how it matters?

Singer-songwriter Emma Swift has spent a life listening closely: to records, to other singers, to fragments of language, to the places where songs come from, and especially to Bob Dylan. Her acclaimed Blonde on the Tracks explored Dylan’s songs not as museum pieces to be faithfully reproduced, but as living works to be inhabited, interpreted, and made new.

For Emma, learning a Dylan song is almost an intellectual exercise: “Some people do crossword puzzles to exercise their brain. I learn Bob Dylan songs.” It is, she says, a way of getting inside someone else’s mind.

That idea opens into a much larger conversation about creativity.

Emma and Scott talk about what it means to be an interpreter as well as a songwriter; the singers who taught Emma how to sing; the continuing mystery of Dylan’s work; and why a great song can still “capsize” us decades after it was written. For Emma, interpretation is not imitation. A song can carry traces of Dylan, Marianne Faithfull, Nina Simone, and every artist who has inhabited it before—and still become something new in the hands of the next singer.

They also explore Emma’s own creative process: notebooks, overheard phrases, melodies captured on a phone, collaboration, and the gradual transformation of small observations into finished songs.

And then there is the increasingly difficult question of how we decide whether any of this has succeeded.

Emma thinks visible metrics may be among the worst things to happen to the creative industries. A record, she argues, succeeds first because it sounds good—not because an algorithm, stream count, sales figure, or social-media metric tells us that other people approve of it. Pulling a beloved record from the shelf and settling the needle in the groove is something different: an intentional, intimate encounter between listener and artist. “There’s something kind of sacred in that.”

It is an idea at the heart of The Sum of All Wisdom: listening is itself a creative act.

Along the way, Emma takes us from Sydney to Nashville, where she arrived in 2012 with two suitcases—one containing clothes and the other, somewhat impractically, filled with records. She came looking for the songwriting world of Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, and Gillian Welch, and found a place where she could begin building a creative life of her own.

Ultimately, though, this conversation reaches beyond records, songwriting, or even music.

Emma believes creativity is something much more fundamental. It can mean making a song, a garden, a meal, or a piece of clothing. Art can offer refuge from a destructive world—but creativity also gives us another way of participating in it.

“We’re all born to be creative people,” Emma says. And perhaps the world would be kinder “if everybody felt entitled to be creative.”

Highlights

• Why certain songs “capsize” us
• Bob Dylan and the art of interpretation
• Marianne Faithfull, Nina Simone, and the lineage of a song
• What singers can learn by inhabiting someone else’s music
• Emma’s journey from Sydney to Nashville
• Guy Clark and the power of the unadorned song
• Songwriting through notebooks, overheard language, and collaboration
• Why commercial disappointment isn’t necessarily artistic failure
• The problem with visible metrics and algorithmic culture
• Vinyl, ritual, and the intimate experience of listening
• Why creativity belongs to everyone

About the Artist

Emma Swift is an Australian-born songwriter, currently residing in Nashville, TN. A gifted singer inspired by Sandy Denny, Joni Mitchell, Marianne Faithfull and a plethora of dead poets, her sound is a blend of classic folk, Americana and indie rock. 

In August 2020, she released the critically-acclaimed Blonde on the Tracks, a Laurel Canyon inspired reimagining of some of her favorite Bob Dylan tunes on Tiny Ghost Records. The album received Best of 2020 accolades from Rolling Stone, Nashville Scene, No Depression, The Guardian, and more. 

Her new album The Resurrection Game was released on Tiny Ghost Records on September 12, 2025.

Connect with Emma

Links:

• Linktree: https://linktr.ee/emmaswiftsings 

Cover photo by Autumn Dozier, https://www.instagram.com/autumn.dozier/ 

About the Show

The Sum of All Wisdom: Conversations on Music, Makers, and Meaning is inspired by two key ideas: 

·      Music IS the sum of all wisdom, and 

·      Music is humanity’s oldest way of knowing ourselves, each other, and the world. 

The show offers long-form, reflective conversations with musicians and others who have spent a lifetime honing their craft, and whose work creates meaning, community, and cultural impact. The show prioritizes listening, creativity, and the lived experience of making music as a way of making a living and as a way of knowing the world, each other, and ourselves.

The Sum of All Wisdom is written, produced, and hosted by Dr. Scott Catey. If this conversation resonated, consider sharing it—or carrying something from it into your own listening and creative life. 

What if learning music begins with listening, not learning how to play an instrument or reading notation?

Find a sound. Notice it. Find another one. Play with them. Follow your curiosity. Make a mistake. Keep going.

For Kalani Das, musician, educator, music therapist, author, and master percussionist, music begins with experience, not rules, notation, or technique.

In this episode of The Sum of All Wisdom, Kalani joins me for a wide-ranging exploration of what happens when we stop treating music as something we have to master and begin treating it as something human beings naturally do.

Kalani traces his journey from a dyslexic kid struggling with conventional music lessons to drummer, performer, educator, Orff Schulwerk practitioner, music therapist, and facilitator of musical experiences for people of widely different ages and abilities.

Along the way, he challenges some remarkably persistent assumptions about learning and creativity.

Notation isn't music. Technique isn't a prerequisite for expression. Teachers don't always need to provide answers. And sometimes the most powerful thing a facilitator can do is create a space—and then get out of the way.

Kalani also performs twice for us.

First, he builds an original piece in real time through live looping, moving among percussion, keyboard, ukulele, bass sounds, and Native American-style flute. The performance leads to one of the episode's most important observations: perfection isn't the point.

“Good enough is not only good enough. Good enough is great.”

Later, the conversation turns toward silence, attention, technology, and the grounding experience of making sound. Kalani combines drum, drone, flute, and a reading about space for a striking demonstration of what can emerge from simplicity.

We also explore Kalani's work in music therapy, including traumatic brain injury and addiction recovery; his discovery of Orff Schulwerk; improvisation and play; the importance of letting learners discover things for themselves; and music's extraordinary capacity to create connection.

Ultimately, this is a conversation about permission: permission to play, to experiment, to make mistakes, to listen, and to discover what happens next.

As Kalani puts it near the end of our conversation, being musical is “a way that we not only celebrate who we are, but it's how we remember who we are.” And from there, he’s got one more incredible insight that follows. 

It can also help us “create who we want to be.”

Episode Highlights

·       Why conventional music lessons can sometimes create barriers to music

·       Beginning with sound and experience rather than notation

·       What Kalani learned from Orff Schulwerk

·       Play, experimentation, and the natural ways children learn

·       Why a teacher can be more powerful as a facilitator

·       Kalani's live-looping process and multi-instrument studio

·       Why “good enough is great”

·       Native American-style flutes and musical accessibility

·       Music therapy, traumatic brain injury, and addiction recovery

·       Creating musical experiences that include different abilities

·       Silence as an invitation to participation

·       Listening in a distracted, screen-saturated world

·       Drumming, embodiment, presence, and flow

·       Why simplicity can be extraordinarily powerful

·       Music as a way of celebrating, remembering—and creating—ourselves

Music Featured in this Episode:

• In-episode demonstration & performance

Used with permission

About the Artist

Kalani Das is a musician, percussionist, educator, author, music therapist, and internationally experienced facilitator whose work brings together drumming, improvisation, music education, mindfulness, and community music-making.

His teaching emphasizes accessible, human-centered approaches to music: experimentation before perfection, experience before abstraction, and creativity as something available to everyone.

Kalani teaches drums and percussion, ukulele, and Native American-style flute, and he shares an extensive library of creative and educational material online. His work includes World Drum Club, Kalani Music, Ukulele Club, and his weekly Tuesday Muse Day livestream, plus courses, community resources, and his book The Way of Music: Creating Sound Connections in Music Therapy.

Connect with the Artist

Visit KalaniMusic.com for Kalani's teaching, performances, events, and resources.

On YouTube, find World Drum Club for drumming and percussion instruction, Kalani Music for music and Native American-style flute resources, and Ukulele Club for ukulele instruction.

Kalani also hosts Tuesday Muse Day, a weekly livestream featuring improvisation, live looping, teaching, meditative “yin drumming,” and audience-driven musical challenges.

• Website 
• Patreon: https://patreon.com/kalani 
• Kalani Music on YouTube
• World Drum Club 
• Ukulele Club
• Instagram 
• The Way of Music: Creating Sound Connections in Music Therapy 

About the Show

The Sum of All Wisdom: Conversations on Music, Makers, and Meaning is inspired by two ideas: 

·      Music IS the sum of all wisdom, and 

·      Music is humanity’s oldest way of knowing ourselves, each other, and the world. 

The show offers long-form, reflective conversations with musicians and related professionals who have spent a lifetime honing their craft, and whose work creates meaning, community, and cultural impact. The show prioritizes listening, craft, and the lived experience of making music as a way of making a living.

The Sum of All Wisdom is written, produced, and hosted by Dr. Scott Catey. If this conversation resonated, consider sharing it—or carrying something from it into your own listening and creative l...

Earl Slick has spent more than five decades alongside some of the most consequential artists in rock and roll—David Bowie, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Buddy Guy and many more. And he's not done yet. 

BOWIE: LIVE ON THE LOCH — NOVEMBER 7–8, 2026 Earl is helping lead Bowie: Live on the Loch, an extraordinary two-day celebration of David Bowie at Cameron House on Loch Lomond, Scotland, in aid of Save the Children. The weekend reunites members of Bowie’s legendary Glastonbury 2000 band—including Earl Slick, Mike Garson, Gail Ann Dorsey, Mark Plati, Sterling Campbell—for a live performance on November 8. 

The weekend also features rare Bowie footage, the Duffy Archive exhibition, conversations about Bowie’s legacy, and Earl Slick’s Rock ’n’ Roll Guitar Auction, with proceeds supporting Save the Children. 

Information and tickets: https://www.cameronhouse.co.uk/bowie-live-on-the-loch/

For the podcast conversation, though, Slick doesn’t particularly want to talk about being a guitar hero. 

“I love being a sideman,” he says. “I like to be the guy that supports the guy.” 

In this episode of The Sum of All Wisdom, Earl joins Dr. Scott Catey—with guitar close at hand—to talk about rhythm, instinct, collaboration, creativity, and what it means to discover what only you can bring to the music. In our conversation, Earl takes us inside his remarkable musical life—from seeing the Beatles and discovering Keith Richards to joining David Bowie for the Diamond Dogs Tour and confronting an intimidating question: Was he supposed to replace Mick Ronson by sounding like Mick Ronson? 

Bowie’s answer changed everything: “I love what you do. Do what you do.” 

Earl tells the stories behind his work on Station to Station, including “Stay” and “Golden Years,” and explains why rhythm—not guitar heroics—lies at the center of his playing: 

“The rhythm to me…it’s the heartbeat.” 

He also remembers working with John Lennon and Yoko Ono during the Double Fantasy era, and shares the deeply emotional story of performing “Imagine” with Bowie in Hong Kong on the third anniversary of Lennon’s death. Earl remembers fighting back tears—and knowing that if he looked at Bowie, he might not make it through the song. 

And then there’s Buddy Guy. After playing with Bowie and Lennon and spending decades on some of the world’s biggest stages, Earl says one of the great validations of his musical life came when Buddy Guy invited him to play. The experience left him so exhilarated that he walked around Chicago for two hours the next morning trying to come down from it. 

Near the end of our conversation, Earl describes that disappearance beautifully. When he’s making art or playing onstage, the noise of everyday life falls away. Thinking stops. “I just become me. Whatever the essence of me is.” And perhaps that’s the larger lesson here: greatness isn’t always about standing at the center. Sometimes it’s about listening closely enough to discover what only you can bring—and putting it in service of something larger.

Highlights

• David Bowie and the creative freedom to “do what you do”
• John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Double Fantasy
• Keith Richards and the power of rhythm guitar
• The making of “Stay” and “Golden Years”
• Why Earl Slick loves being a sideman
• Mick Ronson and finding your own musical identity
• Steve Cropper and the lineage of the great sideman
• Playing with Buddy Guy
• Guitars, amps, pickups and playing with your fingers
• Visual art and losing yourself in the creative process
• Why the ordinary world disappears when Earl steps onto a stage

Music Featured in this Episode:

• Slick’s in the moment riffing

All music used with permission

About the Artist

Earl Slick is one of rock and roll’s most distinctive and enduring guitarists. Best known for his decades-long collaboration with David Bowie, Slick helped shape landmark recordings including Young Americans and Station to Station and returned to Bowie’s band across multiple eras. He also played with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on Double Fantasy and Milk and Honey, and has worked with artists including Ian Hunter, John Waite, The Cure, and Buddy Guy. Renowned for his muscular, instinctive playing and deep sense of rhythm, Slick proudly embraces the role of sideman: serving the song, supporting the artist, and always bringing something unmistakably his own.

Connect with the Artist

Links:

• Website: https://earlslick.net/ 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EarlSlickOfficial 
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarlSlickOfficial/ 
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earlslick_official/ 
• Rock & Roll Guns for Hire: The Story of the Sidemen film: https://vimeo.com/227339886 

About the Show

The Sum of All Wisdom: Conversations on Music, Makers, and Meaning is inspired by two ideas: 

·      Music IS the sum of all wisdom, and 

·      Music is humanity’s oldest way of knowing ourselves, each other, and the world. 

The show offers long-form, reflective conversations with musicians and related professionals who have spent a lifetime honing their craft, and whose work creates meaning, community, and cultural impact. The show prioritizes listening, craft, and the lived experience of making music as a way of making a living.

The Sum of All Wisdom is written, produced, and hosted by Dr. Scott Catey. If this conversation resonated, consider sharing it—or carrying something from it into your own listening and creative life. 

Episode Summary

For more than four decades, percussionist, composer, producer, and artist-relations executive Rich Mangicaro has stood alongside some of music's most celebrated performers—including Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh, David Crosby, Venice, and many others. But as Rich explains, lasting musical careers aren't built on virtuosity alone. They're built on listening.

In this conversation, Rich reflects on learning groove with The Drifters, finding his place in Glenn Frey's band, building instruments with Gon Bops, composing music for film and television, and eventually discovering his own artistic voice after decades as one of Los Angeles' most respected sidemen.

Together we explore why percussion is about storytelling rather than timekeeping, what separates great musicians from merely talented ones, how the streaming era has transformed music, and why serving the song often matters more than standing in the spotlight.

This is a conversation about rhythm, humility, collaboration, and the quiet discipline of paying attention.

Episode Highlights

·      Growing up with Ringo, jazz, and Afro-Cuban rhythms 

·      Learning groove from The Drifters 

·      Touring with Glenn Frey and Joe Walsh 

·      Why the best percussionists don't play the most notes 

·      Artist relations and designing instruments at Gon Bops 

·      COVID, creativity, and finding a personal compositional voice 

·      Streaming, physical media, and the economics of independent music 

·      Film music, Hans Zimmer, and why movie scores deserve respect 

·      Rick Rubin and listening as creative practice 

·      Why "you can't converse unless you listen"

Featured Music:

·      Amazonia (Travels) 

·      Flattening the Curve (Dialogues) 

·      The Way It Was (A Dream I Had)

All music used with permission

Memorable Moments

·      "My job wasn't to show everybody how good I was."

·      "You can't converse unless you listen."

·      "Music is conversation."

·      "Play what the music calls for."

·      "Our job is to make people dance."

About the Artist

Rich Mangicaro is a percussionist, composer, producer, music journalist, and artist-relations specialist whose career spans more than four decades at the highest levels of the music industry. Best known for his fifteen years performing with Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, Rich has also toured or recorded with artists including Joe Walsh, David Crosby, Michael McDonald, Aaron Neville, Jeff Bridges, The Tubes, James Morrison, Jackson Browne, and the acclaimed vocal group Venice.

Away from the stage, Rich has become one of the percussion world's leading voices in artist relations, helping shape instrument design while working closely with generations of influential drummers and percussionists. He currently serves as Artist Relations Manager and Product Specialist for Gon Bops, where he also produces and hosts The Percussion Loft podcast.

As a composer, Rich creates immersive instrumental music that blends acoustic percussion, cinematic textures, and melodic storytelling. His three solo albums—Travels (2018), Dialogues (2022), and A Dream I Had (2024)—reflect a lifetime of listening, travel, collaboration, and creative curiosity. In recent years, he has also composed music for television, film, and commercial productions with longtime collaborator Jonathan Clark.

Whether performing, composing, producing, designing instruments, or mentoring fellow musicians, Rich approaches every role with the same philosophy expressed in this conversation: the greatest musicians are not those who play the most notes—they are the ones who listen the best.

Connect with the Artist

Links:

• Website: https://www.richmangicaro.com/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RichMangicaro
• Bandcamp: https://richmangicaro.bandcamp.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richmangicaromusicandmedia
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richmangicaro

About the Show

The Sum of All Wisdom: Conversations on Music, Makers, and Meaning is inspired by two ideas: 

·      Music IS the sum of all wisdom, and 

·      Music is humanity’s oldest way of knowing ourselves, each other, and the world. 

The show offers long-form, reflective conversations with musicians and related professionals who have spent a lifetime honing their craft, and whose work creates meaning, community, and cultural impact. The show prioritizes listening, craft, and the lived experience of making music as a way of making a living.

The Sum of All Wisdom is written, produced, and hosted by Dr. Scott Catey. If this conversation resonated, consider sharing it—or carrying something from it into your own listening and creative life. Until next time: stay curious, keep listening!

Over a career spanning—at this point—more than three decades, Tom Catmull has become one of the remarkable songwriters Montana is known for, not by chasing trends or fame, but by trusting his craft, his songs, and his audience.

In this conversation, Tom reflects on recording his latest album Last Resort, building a musical life, and the lessons that come from decades on stages large and small. Along the way he shares why great performances require musicians to "show their guts," how he avoids crossing what he calls the "cheese line," why words behave like colors, and how his songwriting has changed as he's grown older.

It's a thoughtful conversation about music, storytelling, authenticity, and what success looks like when connection matters more than celebrity.

Highlights

·      Recording a band honestly

·      The evolution of a songwriter

·      Missoula's changing music scene

·      House concerts and human connection

·      The "cheese line"

·      Words as musical material

·      Performance as intimacy

·      Why simplicity is difficult

·      Success beyond fame

Music Featured in this Episode:

• L.O.L.A. Hello
• Narrow
• Puff of Smoke

All music is from the album Tom Catmull's Last Resort, released in December of 2025. All music is used with permission

Memorable Moments

·      "I hadn't put the sound of this band in a bottle."

·      "Open your trench coat and show your guts."

·      That's probably the headline quote.

·      "People long for connection."

·      "I always stay behind the cheese line."

·      "Words are colors."

·      "I listen as much to the way words sound as what they mean."

·      "The more money you make, the less fun you're going to have."

·      "I just want to play good shows."

About the Artist

Tom Catmull is an acclaimed Americana songwriter, originally from Texas, and now based in Missoula, Montana. His music blends infectious melodies, vivid storytelling, and a deep love of language. Across seven albums and long experience touring and performing, Tom has had a multifaceted life in music: he's shared stages with artists including Robert Earl Keen, Junior Brown, and Asleep at the Wheel; he’s played countless theater, festival, and club shows; he's a para-educator, teaching others how to use music to communicate; and and he's built a career around one simple mission: getting exceptional music to you.

Connect with the Artist

Links:

• Website: https://tomcatmull.com/
• Bandcamp: 
  • https://tomcatmull2.bandcamp.com/album/tom-catmulls-last-resort
  • https://tomcatmull.bandcamp.com/  
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.catmull
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tom_catmull_music/

Cover phot credit: Dan Bradner Photography: https://www.danbradner.com/   

About the Show

The Sum of All Wisdom: Conversations on Music, Makers, and Meaning is inspired by two ideas: 

·      Music IS the sum of all wisdom, and 

·      Music is humanity’s oldest way of knowing ourselves, each other, and the world. 

The show offers long-form, reflective conversations with musicians and related professionals who have spent a lifetime honing their craft, and whose work creates meaning, community, and cultural impact. The show prioritizes listening, craft, and the lived experience of making music as a way of making a living.

The Sum of All Wisdom is written, produced, and hosted by Dr. Scott Catey. If this conversation resonated, consider sharing it—or carrying something from it into your own listening and creative life. 

What does a lifetime in music actually look like?

For singer, songwriter, guitarist, comedian, and raconteur Earl Okin, it begins with a wind-up gramophone at the age of three and unfolds across more than seven decades of listening, performing, writing, and constantly refining the craft.

In this conversation, Earl reflects on a remarkable musical journey that has carried him from postwar London to Abbey Road Studios, from touring with Paul McCartney and Wings and Van Morrison to sharing stages with folk, rock, pop, and jazz legends, all while building a career that defies easy categorization.

Along the way, he reveals how songs are really written, why Peggy Lee changed the way he hears and performs music, what João Gilberto taught him about bossa nova, and why the greatest artists are often their own harshest critics.

Join us for a rewarding conversation about creative persistence, living one step ahead of the cultural curve, how to give your craft the right attention, and what it means to spend a career making, living, and loving music.

In this episode

• A postwar London childhood spent with a gramophone and collecting 78s
• Discovering opera, jazz, and the Great American Songbook
• Recording at Abbey Road in the shadow of Sgt. Pepper
• Touring the UK with Paul McCartney and Wings
• Life on the road with Van Morrison
• How songs emerge from instinct, craft, and “finding the gold”
• Learning bossa nova from the Brazilian masters
• Phrasing or virtuosity? What matters most?
• Perfectionism, practice, and the lifelong pursuit of better performances
• The great musicians aren’t always the famous ones
• Writing an autobiography through stories rather than chronology
• Continuing to compose, tour, perform, and create memorable music into his eighth decade

Featured Music

In order:

• “London Now” 
• “Time”
• “Yesterday’s Wine”

All music used with permission. 

Memorable Quote

“You’re playing, and just a lot of clichés come out of your mouth... then suddenly there’s a little bit of gold. You take it, polish it, and eventually it becomes a song.”

About Earl Okin

Earl Okin is a British singer-songwriter, guitarist, pianist, arranger, comedian, and broadcaster whose career spans more than sixty years. Blending jazz, bossa nova, classic songwriting, and sharply observed humor, he has toured internationally, appeared on major television programs, shared stages with legendary musicians, and continues to write, record, and perform today.

His work reminds us that music is not only a profession or a performance; it is a lifelong practice of listening.

Connect with Earl Okin

Links:

• Earl’s Website: https://www.earlokin.net/ 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5NVqliGdTXQoIfOTTzAKxk 
• Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/earl-okin/18143306 
• Earl’s Podcast: https://earlokin.blogspot.com/ 
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/earl.okin
• YouTube: A large number of Earl’s songs and recordings are on YouTube. Here’s a good one to start with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAeKi4Mm0x8&t=65s 

In addition, a documentary is in the works, you can find a trailer and excerpts at the following links:

·       Trailer for Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OirbKMmPB3M

·       Extended Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyMJPsmaLZs

·       Additional  Clip:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilPn_vZc_k8

About the Show

The Sum of All Wisdom: Conversations on Music, Makers, and Meaning is animated by two ideas: 

·      Music IS the sum of all wisdom, and 

·      Music is humanity’s oldest way of knowing ourselves, each other, and the world. 

The show offers long-form, reflective conversations with musicians and related professionals who have spent a lifetime honing their craft, and whose work creates meaning, community, and cultural impact. The show prioritizes listening, craft, and the lived experience of making music as a way of making a living.

The Sum of All Wisdom is written, produced, and hosted by Dr. Scott Catey. If this conversation resonated, consider sharing it—or carrying something from it into your own listening and creative life. 

What does it mean to be a musician in service of others?

Butch Norton has spent a lifetime making other people sound their best.

Over the course of a career spanning more than five decades, he's performed and recorded with artists including Lucinda Williams, Eels, Tracy Chapman, Lowen & Navarro, and many others, while also building an extraordinary body of work as a percussionist, educator, improviser, and collaborator.

But behind the impressive résumé lies a deeper philosophy.

In this conversation, Butch reflects on what it means to be of service—to songs, to fellow musicians, to dancers, and ultimately to the creative process itself. Along the way, we explore his early years growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, his transformative education at the California Institute of the Arts under legendary percussionist John Bergamo, and the experiences that shaped his unique approach to rhythm, movement, improvisation, and listening.

Our conversation ranges from touring with Lucinda Williams and helping launch The Eels, to accompanying modern dance and yoga classes, building percussion instruments from unlikely materials, and even creating an impressive—and unexpected—customized rain stick. Throughout it all, Butch returns to some straightforward ideas: Listen. Pay attention. Stay curious. Try something new.

Whether he's laying down a groove, supporting a singer-songwriter, responding to a room full of dancers, or encouraging younger musicians to embrace mistakes as opportunities, Butch reminds us that great musicianship is rooted not in virtuosity alone, but in curiosity, generosity, and deep listening.

This is a conversation about rhythm, perception, collaboration, and the lifelong practice of staying open to surprise.

In this episode

• Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area during a remarkable musical era
• Discovering percussion after seeing Ringo Starr on The Ed Sullivan Show
• Learning from Anthony Cerone, Charles Dowd, and John Bergamo
• How CalArts reshaped his understanding of music, improvisation, and collaboration
• Launching his professional touring career with Lowen & Navarro
• Joining E and helping form what would become Eels
• Recording Beautiful Freak and Electro-Shock Blues
• Seventeen years touring and recording with Lucinda Williams
• Why great accompanists learn to serve the music rather than themselves
• Performing with modern dancers and yoga practitioners
• Groove, movement, and the science of entrainment
• Improvisation, experimentation, and escaping creative habits
• Building percussion instruments from found objects—including some very surprising source material
• Why mistakes are often the beginning of discovery

Memorable moments

·      "Everything I do is to be of service."

·      "Don't get stuck doing the same things over and over."

·      "Something magical always happens."

·      "Break out of your normal patterns."

Connect with the Artist

Links:

• Website: https://butchdrums.com/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/mynameisbutch
• Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/buick-6/1023585383
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/butch.norton.1

Mentioned in this episode

Artists & Bands

• Lucinda Williams
• Eels
• E
• Lowen & Navarro
• Pat Benatar
• Tower of Power
• Tommy Bolin
• Billy Cobham
• James Brown
• The Beatles
• John Bergamo
• Anthony Cerone
• Charles Dowd
• David Garibaldi
• Mickey Hart
• Harry Partch
• John Cage
• Jeff Tripoli

Other People

• Dave Rundle & Headhunter Sticks & Creations: https://headhunterssticksandcreations.com/

Concepts

• Entrainment
• Groove
• Improvisation
• Modern dance
• Yoga
• World percussion
• Listening
• Collaboration
• Creative experimentation

Explore more

Visit TheSumOfAllWisdom.com for the complete transcript, companion essays, Field Notes, and the Listening Room for this episode, where you'll find additional resources, links, and further exploration of the ideas discussed here.

If you enjoyed this conversation, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing the episode with someone who loves music, creativity, and the stories behind the craft.

About the Show

The Sum of All Wisdom: Conversations on Music, Makers, and Meaning grew from two simple ideas: 

1.     Music is the sum of all wisdom

2.     Music is humanity’s oldest ways of understanding the world.

From there, we dedicated our work to long-form, reflective conversations with master craftspeople who write, make, play, and perform music. The work they do brings meaning, builds community, and creates profound cultural impact. We want to know more about how they do it. That’s the reason for the show. 

The Sum of All Wisdom is written, produced, and hosted by Dr. Scott Catey. If the conversation resonates with you, we hope you’ll consider subscribing, liking, and sharing it—and carrying something from it into your own listening and creative life. 

Few songwriters have constructed imaginative worlds as distinctive, or as enduring, as Robyn Hitchcock. Across more than five decades, his songs have blurred the boundaries between memory and myth, humor and melancholy, everyday observation and surreal revelation. With the publication of his remarkable new memoir Stranded in the Future and the release of his new album The Confuser, it seemed the perfect moment to explore not simply Hitchcock's work, but the imaginative life from which it springs.

Across more than fifty years—from The Soft Boys through his remarkable solo career—Hitchcock has cultivated a body of work where surreal imagery, humor, memory, obsession, and startling emotional honesty coexist in songs that continue to reward close listening.

In this conversation, Scott Catey and guest co-host Andrew Hunt sit down with Hitchcock to discuss his acclaimed new memoir Stranded in the Future, his first memoir 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left, both published by Akashic Books, and his forthcoming album The Confuser, on the Tony Ghost label. The conversation ranges from songwriting, memory, and technology, to creativity and the peculiar relationship between memoir and imagination.

Rather than treating songs as coded autobiography, Hitchcock describes how music grows from memory, mythmaking, and what he calls “hybrids”—real people transformed into constituents of his imaginative landscapes, from which his songs emerge. Along the way, the conversation explores boarding school, Bob Dylan, Syd Barrett, The Beatles, Nashville, mortality, artistic obsession, and the strange ways each of us becomes a custodian of disappearing worlds.

Whether you’re a longtime Hitchcock devotee or discovering his work for the first time, this episode offers a rare look inside one of popular music’s most singular creative minds.

In this episode

• Why Hitchcock says he “never left” 1967 
• Winchester College and discovering Dylan, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and more 
• The difference between factual truth and emotional truth 
• Why “a song is about itself” 
• Mr. A, Mr. B., and Ms. C.: obsession, mythology, and creative life 
• Memoir as reconstruction rather than chronology 
• Writing books on an iPhone in the middle of the night 
• Why creativity is essential to mental health 
• Building The Confuser with Nashville musicians 
• The enduring influence of The Beatles 
• The relationship between songs, memory, and identity 
• Why Hitchcock keeps writing 

Books discussed

1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left

Published in 2024 by Akashic Books.

An evocative memoir of Hitchcock’s fourteenth year, when boarding school, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and the cultural upheavals of the late 1960s permanently shaped his imagination. More than an autobiography, it is an exploration of the year that became Hitchcock’s enduring creative homeland.

Stranded in the Future

Published July 2026 by Akashic Books.

Picking up where 1967 leaves off, Stranded in the Future follows Hitchcock from 1968-1978, the years leading to The Soft Boys while exploring memory, artistic obsession, and the self-mythology that Hitchcock created around the figures who shaped his life. Rather than a conventional memoir, it reads as an imaginative reconstruction of consciousness itself.

Forthcoming Album

The Confuser

Hitchcock’s newest studio album finds him embracing one of the strongest ensemble recordings of his career. Recorded in Nashville with Eric Slick, Todd Bolden, Jeremy Fetzer, Pat Berkery, and a remarkable circle of collaborators, The Confuser combines the melodic adventurousness and lyrical imagination that have long defined Hitchcock’s work with a fresh, deeply collaborative musical chemistry.

During our conversation, Hitchcock repeatedly credits his wife, Emma Swift, as the catalyst behind this creative chapter. It was Swift who encouraged him to record in Nashville, introduced him to key collaborators, urged him to begin writing his memoirs, and continues to serve as producer, tour manager, label partner at Tiny Ghost Records, and what Hitchcock affectionately describes as the “psychic glue” holding the entire enterprise together. The result is an album that feels simultaneously rooted in Hitchcock’s long musical journey and energized by an entirely new creative community. 

Follow Robyn Hitchcock

• Official website: https://www.robynhitchcock.com/
• Bandcamp: https://robynhitchcockofficial.bandcamp.com/music
• Substack: https://robynhitchcock.substack.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robynhitchcockofficial/

Akashic Books

• Website: https://www.akashicbooks.com/
• Stranded in the Future: https://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/stranded-in-the-future/ 
• 1967: How I Got There & Why I Never Left: https://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/1967-how-i-got-there-and-why-i-never-left/ 

About Akashic Books

Akashic Books is an independent Brooklyn-based publisher known for literary fiction, memoir, noir fiction, music writing, and culturally adventurous nonfiction. Since its founding in 1996, Akashic has built a reputation for publishing distinctive voices that often fall outside mainstream commercial categories—making it an especially fitting home for Hitchcock’s memoirs.

About the Show

The Sum of All Wisdom: Conversations on Music, Makers, and Meaning is a long-form, reflective podcast centered on working musicians and music-adjacent professionals whose work creates meaning, community, and cultural impact. The show prioritizes listening, craft, and lived experience over promotion.

The show is written, produced, and hosted by Dr. Scott Catey. If this conversation resonated, consider sharing it—or carrying something from it into your own listening and creative life.

Matthias Sturm: Music, Memory, & the Future of Listening

What happens to art when attention becomes scarce?

In this episode of The Sum of All Wisdom, Dr. Scott Catey sits down with East Germany-born, Paris-based composer, songwriter, and visual artist Matthias Sturm for a wide-ranging conversation about music, memory, politics, and the future of creative work.

Having grown up in Dresden, in East Germany, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Matthias reflects on life under surveillance, discovering Western music behind the Iron Curtain, and how those experiences continue to shape his songwriting decades later. Along the way, he shares stories of underground cassette culture, punk, jazz, Prince, Depeche Mode, and the surprising ways music crossed political borders.

The conversation then turns toward larger questions. What happens when streaming platforms transform artists into “content creators”? Can meaningful music—or any art—survive an attention economy built on distraction? And how should artists respond to artificial intelligence, algorithms, and a culture increasingly driven by speed rather than reflection?

Throughout, Matthias argues for something increasingly rare: art that asks us not simply to hear, but to listen.

This is a conversation about history, creativity, and why slowing down may be one of the most radical things music can still ask of us.

Highlights

• Growing up in East Germany before the Berlin Wall fell
• Living under surveillance and discovering artistic community
• Punk, cassette culture, and youth music behind the Iron Curtain
• Why Prince, Soft Cell, and Depeche Mode mattered in Dresden
• Building concept albums as immersive worlds
• The influence of Bach, literature, and “dark songwriting”
• Touring internationally while balancing family life
• AI, algorithms, and the shrinking attention span
• Streaming, independent artists, and the economics of music
• Why music should be more than content

Music Featured in this Episode:

• Peace on Earth
• All Beauty Must Die
• Puppet Robe Anthem

All music used with permission

Memorable Moments

“How do you create art and music for people who are no longer able to pay attention?”

“Imagine you’re born in a country which doesn’t exist anymore.”

“I’m not a content creator. I’m an artist.”

Connect with the Artist

Music is more than entertainment. It is one of humanity’s oldest ways of understanding the world. This episode invites us to slow down long enough to remember why. Follow these links to learn more about Matthias and his work. 

Links:

• Website: https://www.matthiassturmart.com/ 
• Chateau des Fougis, where Matthias is in residence: https://www.fougis.com
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MatthiasSturm 
• Bandcamp: https://matthiassturm.bandcamp.com/ 
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/matthiassturm/ 
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matthias.maria.sturm

About the Show

The Sum of All Wisdom: Conversations on Music, Makers, and Meaning is a long-form, reflective podcast centered on working musicians and music-adjacent professionals whose work creates meaning, community, and cultural impact. The show prioritizes listening, craft, and lived experience over promotion.

The Sum of All Wisdom is written, produced, and hosted by Dr. Scott Catey. If this conversation resonated, consider sharing it—or carrying something from it into your own listening and creative life.