Third Gear Scratch

Being a body-builder and MMA fighter, Eugene S Robinson was a bit of an anomoly as the charismatic front man for the band he founded OXBOW, and before that in Whipping Boy, a more traditional punk rock outfit in the early 80's. It's in his new book, A Walk Across Dirty Waters and Straight Into Murderer's Row: A Memoir (Feral House) that we learn how he navigated these sometimes murky waters with braun and confrontation, a style he had had time to perfect as a black man in the world of punk rock. He's a direct and brash writer with a penchant for vivid story-telling of his often turbulent life. He's been a contributing writer and/or editor-at-large for GQ, Vice, Hustler and many more magazines and continues to spill his musings on his different platforms; his vlog Show Stomper with Eugene S Robinson allows him a place to air politics and MMA issues, and his blog Look What You Made Me Do, is an often personal, moving and funny account of his life and times. The new OXBOW record Love's Holiday (Ipecac) features the song Lovely Murk which was recently nominated for a Grammy, a first for this human who continues to expand his brand in brilliant ways.

In 1993, Rob Zabrecky was certain he'd seen his future and that future was as a rockstar and frontman for local LA rockers Possum Dixon, his band that had just been signed to Interscope Records for a 3 record deal. But life is complicated. Indeed they had, by all accounts, a pretty great career as an "alternative" band with big tours and big producers like Rik Ocasek of The Cars. But like many other rock stars he fell prey to drugs and all the other issues that can derail a career. So he pivoted, as one does, to auctioneering, a fascinating career path over several years that eventually allowed him the time and resources to begin practicing a secret love; comedy, magic and sleight of hand. He's a handsome man, funny with a charismatic onscreen presence, having acted in commercials, TV and several feature length films in the post rockstar years. That charisma directly aided his new career path into a one-man show made of mentalism, magic and comedy that he has honed over the past 15 years. He now travels the world and has made quite a name for himself in this new career as Zabrecky and is deeply immersed in that distinctive niche, mingling and sharing the stage with some of the biggest acts in comedy and magic.

This is a pre-pandemic revisit to a previous episode from Aug 9, 2019 in which touring and session guitarist Greg Suran visited the TGS studios to talk about his globe-trotting experiences playing in his own Chicago-based band Cupcakes and BlueManGroup before joining The B-52's in which he still enjoys frequent gigs. He later joined Sunny Day Real Estate for their last two studio albums and subesequent tours, and has worked since that time steadily as a session player with the likes of Joe Walsh and Don Felder of the Eagles. He later was asked to join the house band on the set of the American Idol TV show, and most recently has enjoyed a long touring stint with the legendary Lionel Richie. His revisit to the TGS studio here is relevant because since he's been busy with Lionel, Greg was kind enough to ask your host AE to fill in for him in SDRE so it's a great recap with a man who's made music his life and his experiences have forged a human with a rich DNA tapestry.

The 18 year old version of a now grown Tony Higbee would surely be pinching himself for who he shares stages with these days. As a highschool rocker from tiny Monmouth IL, he was a bass player and had evolved into a serviceable chording guitarist in college. It wasn't until he began writing songs in Atlanta with his band Simple Sick Device in the early 2000's that he began to play guitar with more authority mainly because writing songs on guitar was so much more fluid, and that translated into becoming a real guitar powerhouse. He moved to Nashville and started his own band Caprice which begat East Side Gamblers, but it was his ability as a great singer that sealed the deal and he's ended up as an in-demand touring and session guitarist for Tom Keifer, lead singer of the 15x platinum hair-farmers Cinderella. Tom's solo albums have been a huge success and led to their collaborating for more than 10 years now and traveling the globe. That work also helped connect him with Brother Cane whom he also tours with as lead guitarist. He's a cancer survivor and an animal rescuer along with his girlfriend and is most certainly living his best life.

When this episode was recorded, the writers and actors strikes were both still going strong with no end in sight, so resident keyboardist for the Jimmy Kimmell Show, Jeff Babko, was able to find time in his normally very busy schedule to rap with me. In fact, the Kimmell show is just a piece of his crowded schedule, which includes being the touring pianist on stage with Steve Martin and Martin Short, in addition to composing for movie scores like the new Weird Al biopic, Toy Story 4, Encanto, but also recording with James Taylor, Jason Mraz, Shelby Lynne, Simon Philips, Sheryl Crow-- not counting the folks he's played with on Kimmell. He's a funny man, driven to make music with whomever and in whatever forum is available, but usually includes incredible musicians like Vinnie Colaiuta, Jeff Coffin, Matt Chamberlain, Mark Isham and many more. He's a podcast host for the Caffeinated Keyboardist, owns his own studio Tudor Tones and is generally just busy because what in the hell else is there in this life but to make music. He's got a new record called The Libretto Show with bassist David Piltch and is generally just ready to rip at all times.

When heavier-than-anything Louisville band Coliseum began to sense their time together was coming to a close around 2015, band leader and seed-writer Ryan Patterson started to get some glimpses of his next move but was struggling to find his voice within that sylistic change. It was a move from guitar-bass-drums based pummeling into synth-synth-bass-drummachine based songs that were much more mid 80's Dark Wave than Coliseum's post hardcore earth-rattling. Turns out he found his voice in what would become Fotocrime with the help of producer J Robbins (who also produced several Coliseum records) and since 2017 has released a growing catalog of these darkly powerful analog synth-based records, their latest ACCELERATED (Artofffact). Ryan decided to take the Fotocrime recording process into his own hands for Accelerated in his own home studio which has grown to where he can record other projects as needed. It's a huge growth for this seeker, and one consistent with how he has chosen to exist with the help of his own business, SHIRTKILLER.COM which is quite successful in it's own right and gives Ryan an endless supply of subjects to create for and with.

Jason Sipe and Victor Riley of Chicago's own Salvation make a particularly powerful and vicious form of music that many might assume descends from grunge music of the 90's. On the surface perhaps, but this mighty trio, with the help of Mr Mike Lust, a prodigious producer (Urge Overkill, William Elliot Whitmore, everybody in Chicago) and two-time TGS guest has created a moving testament to laying it all out and flinging the resulting blood on the wall. MOCK (Reptillian), their 4th record and first with Reptillian conjures images of bands like Cows, The Jesus Lizard, Unsane, and yeah some very early Nirvana, but is also more immediate and complicated than those RIYLs. Victor and Jason represent what we all represent in the arts which is busting their respective humps to make music and take it on tour, by working jobs that allow them to do just that. In fact, they're both literally at their jobs on the day of this recording and it gives a nice peak into the life of a working musician.

Writer / actor Ryan Raddatz has spent the last 20 years in LA carving out a career in TV and film, first briefly as an actor, before realizing that writing was his true calling. He spent years writing on show for CBS like the recent reboot of The Odd Couple and The Neighborhood with Cedric The Entertainer and dozens more that may or may not ever get made, and has written over 5 seasons of episodes for PBS WordGirl. He's had a great career that has allowed him to raise a family in LA and live at a reasonable middle-class existence. But now the current writers strike is reaching into the months with no end in sight and issues of pay increases and the looming advent of AI and it's ability to pop out scripts with a few prompts can end careers for not only writers but many others in the food chain of the biz. Actors are fighting for Image Privacy as studios will use AI to lift their faces in crowd scenes. Fantastic insight from this great writer.

Guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Niko Wenner has been seeing life through a very different lens since the pre and post pandemic years brought him loss and big gains; his father died and went through a job change and saw some very tough times. But it also brought him a newborn child, his daughter, now almost 3 and has changed how he sees the world and makes music with his long time cohort OXBOW, who have a new record Love's Holiday (Ipecac Recordings). It's a record that is surprisingly straightforward, especially for a band that has been in the middle of the ven diagram between noise, punk, art rock and music concrete. Working with producer Joe Chicarelli (Strokes, Oingo Boingo, Michael Bublé, U2) over the pandemic brought out the rock band in them as he gently suggested that maybe going a little more traditional might in fact be the thing that makes this record stand out for this celebrated experimenting band of over 30 years. Niko is a highly educated and trained classical and jazz player, but can also throw it down with the best of the rockers. It's another brick in the fantastic wall of music that OXBOW has been making for their entire career.

In it's infancy, drummer Jason Gagovski's band Sweet Cobra, was always a 4 piece unit; a giant, crushing, throbbing and roaring missive of urgent importance. The move from 4 to 3 piece however was not their decision, as Matt Arluck had cancer that ultimately took his life, leaving them at a loss for a moment until deciding to move forward as a trio. Sweet Cobra's sound has historically been a highly evolved echo of the giants that came before them. And they are still are that, albeit one that has grown it's sound exponentially on their new record Threes (Hawthorne St), where melody and nuance and reverb state their case boldly and successfully. Jason is the engine behind the band and is not only a talented drummer but a gifted graphic designer who freelanced for a long time before landing his current gig at the Field Museum here in Chicago. In addition to maintaining Sweet Cobra, Suicide Note before it, touring with Cloakroom, creating a side project with Sarah Olmsted called Rows Arc, he's also a proud father of young man that has highlighted and augmented his entire reality and that clearly is evident on this new record of his.