In this rerun from 2018, Beth Ditto, former lead singer of the band Gossip, talks about how Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” helped her grapple with complex feelings about her home state, Arkansas. She also talks about returning home after heartbreak and explores making her first record “Fake Sugar.”

Every  Thursday at 7pm CT, KUTX hosts a weekly  Netflix Party featuring a different music documentary. Check it out here. Last week’s movie was What Happened, Miss Simone? and inspired the re-run of this episode discussing Simone’s music and its lasting resonance. Starting this week they’ll be watching the  documentary series Hip-Hop Evolution.

This is the last episode of This Song  for a while. In the meantime, check out our hip-hop podcast The Breaks and the Song Confessional podcast.

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In this rerun from 2018, Liz Phair describes how the 1980s rock song “I Wanna Destroy You” by The Soft Boys put her in touch with her youthful desire to destroy something. We also hear Phair share what it was like to revisit her early 90’s songs on the recent Girly-Sound to Guyville tour. Plus, she shares a bit of parenting wisdom with host Elizabeth McQueen.

Phair has a new record, Soberish, coming out this summer.

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Beloved American singer-songwriter John Prine is on many people’s minds right now. He is currently in stable condition on a ventilator due to symptoms from COVID-19. Our hearts go out to him and his family.  This episode, recorded live in 2018 at Waterloo records, is a testament to Prine’s creativity,  kindness and generosity of spirit. In it, he explains how Bob Dylan’s “The Lonsesome Death of Hattie Carroll” changed his life and goes in-depth on his own songwriting process for his album “The Tree of Forgiveness.

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Watch to the full interview of John Prine’s This Song episode from KUTX’s Facebook page

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On March 10th, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down released a new single called, “Temple” along with an accompanying video. 6 days later residents in the San Francisco Bay Area, where lead singer, songwriter and guitar player Thao Nguyen lives, were ordered to shelter in place. In this episode, Thao talks to host Elizabeth McQueen about the inspiration behind the new song and what it was like to release music during a pandemic. She also shares how making her upcoming record, also called Temple, helped prepare her to address her sexuality publicly and to create a safe space in her life where she could exist as her full self.

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Listen to Thao and the Get Down Stay Down’s new song “Temple.”

Find out where you can Pre-Order “Temple“

Check out Thao and the Get Down Stay Down’s Tour Dates

Watch the Video for “Temple”

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Kathy Valentine, bass player in the seminal 80s all-girl rock group the Go-Go’s, recently wrote a memoir titled All I Ever Wanted. In the book, Valentine explores her unconventional childhood, her time with the Go-Go’s, and her journey to sobriety. In this episode of, Kathy explains what “Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream taught her about herself when she was 9 years old,  describes how she found her creative process as an author and details how music and storytelling intersected in her new book.

Kathy Valentine’s April Book Tour dates are currently being rescheduled, but you can buy a signed copy from one of the bookstores where she was scheduled to appear. Find out where to buy your copy of All I Ever Wanted

Kathy also wrote a soundtrack to accompany her book. Check out the soundtrack to All I Ever Wanted on Bandcamp.

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In this episode, St. Vincent explores how music from early Disney films helped her lay the foundation for beauty and wonder in her own life and work.

“All that stuff, it’s your first introduction to magic…You know I think like, every kid wishes they could be in a cartoon. Like you wish so deeply that your reality could transmutate into that world, and music is the closest you get to come to it.”

She also explains why she approached the songs on Masseduction with a Disney-esque lack of irony.

“That was just sort of a tenet from the beginning…I just felt like OK, what’s the thing that I haven’t done, and I was like I don’t feel like I’ve gone straight for the heart and the jugular.”

St. Vincent and Carrie Brownstein have a new film coming out called The Nowhere Inn, which will be showing at the SXSW 2020 Film Festival

Find out more about the live podcast taping for This Song at SXSW

Listen to Carrie Brownstein explain why she loves “Stay” by Rihanna

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Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw from  Metric talk about  hearing “Teardrop” by Massive Attack early in their musical partnership and how it inspired them, terrified them and helped them find a collaborative way of making music that still works for them today.

“I remember listening to that song…and just feeling like..it was sort of a mix between feeling like anything was now sonically possible, and that I would never achieve anything. Because I felt like it had gone to the heights and depths of what I hadn’t known existed, which is an enlightening and somehow taking wind out of sails moment at the same time.” — Jimmy Shaw, Metric

📸 Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon

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Listen to Art of Doubt

Watch Metric’s stripped down version of “Now or Never Now” backstage at the Austin City Limits Music Festival

Listen to Songs from this episode of This Song

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In this rerun of an episode originally recorded last February, Jackie Venson explains how seeing  “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina,” from the movie “Evita,” changed the way she listened to music and the way she saw herself. Then she describes her journey from classical pianist to blues guitarist. It’s a tale of soul expanding love, self crushing doubt, and musical perseverance.

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Venson will be co-hosting the Austin Music Awards on March 11th at ACLive at Moody Theater. Get your tickets here.

📸 Tristan Ipock

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This week we have a special treat for you! A full episode of the new Song Confessional Podcast!  The Song Confessional project began when Austin artists Walker Lukens and Zac Cantanzaro outfitted a trailer like a Catholic confessional and asked people to come in, and tell anonymous “confessions.” Then they took their favorite stories and gave them to musicians, who wrote and recorded songs based on the tales.  In the podcast you hear it all, the confessional, the song, and an interview with the songwriter.

In this episode you’ll hear a tale of family, weed and secrets, the song it inspired written by Brooklyn based Vlad Holiday, and an interview with Holiday about his boozy creative process.

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Devendra Bahnart talks about how hearing “Just Another Diamond Day” by Vashti Bunyan while busking on the streets of Paris comforted him with a feeling of motherly love that he still turns to today. He also explains how themes of motherhood, love, fear and compassion show up on his latest record “Ma.”

“It’s like once you’re heartbroken, it’s not like ‘That’s it, never gonna be heartbroken again.’ Once you’re not lonely it’s not like ‘That’s it, okay I did it.’ Once you go through a day without making mistakes it’s not like ‘That’s it, end of mistakes.’ It’s this constant thing. I am constantly heartbroken and constantly anxious and lonely and so I have this thing, called art. It’s very beautiful. You have this immediately accessible comfort. This immediately accessible love.”

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Listen to Devendra Banhart’s new record Ma

Check out Devendra Banhart’s Tour Dates

Check out the full session of Devendra Banhart Live in Studio 1A

Listen to Songs from this episode of This Song

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