Third Gear Scratch

Cheli Clayton Samaras is a high school buddy of mine and has spent the past 25 years working behind the camera on the biggest movies of our lives, (think Spider Man, Team America etc) as First Assistant Camera A. She spills the goods on her journey, from Louisville to LA and we talk about women behind the camera, run-ins with handsy blow hard directors, unsafe working conditions, 14 hour days, why the IATSE is so important at this juncture right after the Rust tragedy, and why life is so good for her after all her long hours at UPS.

Greg Obis spends his days as part of the elite team at Chicago Mastering Services with Bob Weston (Shellac), his nights making angular new prog punk with his band STUCK, his dawns and dusks running his label Born Yesterday releasing music from some of Chicago's elite new crew like Cafe Racer and Mesh. The gig at CMS mastering records for a living is a dream job he doesn't take for granted, allowing him time to be creative with STUCK and diversify his output with his record label. It's a win/win/win sitch.

For drummer Dave Elitch, teaching the art of drumming isn't a day-job he holds until he can just float off his royalties from playing with artists like Justin Timberlake, The Mars Volta, Miley Cyrus, and M83 among many others, it's actually THE gig while playing with superstars is an added bonus. Dave has found a niche within the drum-educator sphere as one who can instantly "read" a drummer within 5 minutes and open new worlds for new players and vet drummers like Greg Bissonette, Jason McGerr (Death Cab) Ben Barter (Lorde), and even comic Bill Burr. His instructional series Getting Out Of Your Own Way is changing not just bad drum habits but also refocusing lives.

This guest-less version of TGS provides a wrap-up of the most recent Shiner tour and what a hero Mario Quintero of Spotlights was for literally saving the tour, COVID wrecking shop on our desperate existences, my Pitbull Katie Epley's recent surgeries and why she's our hero, why the vaccines are so important even now as we learn their limitations and capabilities, and the valuable currency in our lives known as "greeting strangers with a real smile". It's effectiveness is immediate and powerful. Try the experiment. Happy Holidays to the TGS Faithful. See ya's next year!!

The mind of Chunklet Magazine creator Henry Owings is a many tentacled beast, unable to be sated with just one calling or defined by one title. Archivist, author, designer, show promoter, comedian, producer, tour manager; he's lived, curated, celebrated and skewered, chronicled and helped to establish the Athens/ATL region as the bastion of heavy-duty indie rock history it is. His new book PLUS 1 : ATHENS Show Flyers From a Legendary Scene 1967-2002 puts his multiple talents on display and continues his reign as a fount of energy and infotainment.

When Rigs Of Dad started in IG, musician Ross Hurt had no idea he would have 85k followers in a scant few years. He's parlayed that into the excellent R.O.D. podcast and continues his musical journey started with his band Black Clouds in DC into his current project Burial Waves and their new EP Holy Ground (Dark Operative). It's a sea change in sound for him and Matt Dowling (Deleted Scenes), Jimmy Rhodes (Black Clouds), Kyle Durfey (Pianos Become The Teeth) and Kevin Hilliard (Caverns) as they cast a wide net in their new found dynamic range, as tracked by J Robbins and mixed by Paul Malinowski.

Burial Waves -Holy Ground

IG - @rigsofdad

When Katy Guillen was but a wee lass, her father would bring her around to play her brand of the blues on guitar at open mic jam sessions in KC and the midwest, stoking the fire in her, curating and aiding her evolution from prodigious wunderkind into her current state of songwriting machine and indie-blues stalwart. She prefers writing in collaboration with her amazing trio and sees the reward in a better song, but the seed of the song is Katy, her voice and her guitar. We talk about dark days in the covid, her life in KC, late nights eating with her father after the jams at greasy spoons, the marriage-like existence of a band, and why her new record written over the pandemic is her finest work yet.

Return-guest and songwriter Tierney Tough survived and in fact thrived during the Covid era by hunkering down and creating, starting with a series of covers with her angular pop band The Pauses on the Quarantunes EP, which led straight into the creation of her own solo EP, A Farce To Be Reckoned With. It's a personal high-water mark for this bassist and pianist as she reckons with her life in Florida, first as a native of Orlando and now Gainesville and it's impact on her life and times. We stare down thorny topics like Taco Bell, the risk vs reward of playing live shows now, especially in FL, and why J Robbins of Jawbox is the absolute perfect producer.