Zig At The Gig podcast

Formed in 2004 The Old Ceremony has survived longer than many marriages. They’ve

The Old Ceremony's info 

www.theoldceremony.com

Interview with Binnie Klein of In These Trees and Tartie

In These Trees is an alternative indie music project led by Binnie Klein. Klein's lyrical stories are suffused with human longing and memory, and pair gracefully with soulful melodies from the artists who perform her work. With her extensive background in music as a radio DJ and a career in writing, Klein seeks to elevate her words through collaboration with rising artists. "Orchard" is her premier single inspired by her audio memoir, 10 Days in Newark, with music by Australian artist, Tartie. In These Trees and Tartie now have 5 singles out (Orchard, Sky, Ocean, Quiver, Hailstorm, and Ablaze). The album, THE QUIVER, is planned for November 2023. As a long-time DJ at free-form radio station WPKN, Binnie receives many promotional CD’s from hopeful artists. She tries to listen to most of them, just in case there is a gem that will fit with her show’s eclectic mix. When Australian singer/songwriter Tartie sent a few tunes, Binnie chose “Winter’s Girl” to play on her show. The two women, decades apart in age, began to chat on Zoom — about dogs, about music, about politics, finding a wonderful symmetry. Binnie encouraged Tartie to finish up a rough mix of “Ablaze,” about the Australian wildfires, and asked if Tartie might take a look at some lyrics. “Orchard” emerged from that question, and a great geographic distance, and a pandemic — the song, and many others -- began to take shape, with help from producer David Baron of Sun Mountain Studios.

https://www.inthesetrees.com

Interview with Arlen Roth 2024

Arlen Roth is a true guitar legend; part of the list of who he's recorded and toured with contains folks like Simon & Garfunkel (together and individually), John Prine, Phoebe Snow, Bob Dylan, Bee Gees, Don McLean, Levon Helm, Ry Cooder, Duane Eddy, Danny Gatton, Janis Ian, Dusty Springfield, John Sebastian, Johnny Winter and countless more. He also appeared with Ramblin' Jack Elliot and Patti Smith in the Martin Scorcese Rolling Thunder film, created the guitar parts and was consultant and teacher to Ralph Macchio for the legendary blues film, Crossroads. In 2016, he wrote and performed an acoustic guitar piece with Daveed Diggs and Leslie Odom, Jr. of Hamilton for ESPN. Arlen was voted in the Top 100 most Influential guitarists of all time by Vintage Guitar Magazine and top 50 all-time acoustic guitarists by Gibson.com. Now, on Arlen Roth's 20th solo album and his fifth all-acoustic offering, he’s bringing rootsy acoustic music to new heights on Playing Out the String, set for release September 27 and distributed by MVD. The new album was recorded, mixed and mastered by Alex Salzman, who also contributes keyboards to the mix.  Arlen’s previous album, Super Soul Session, with bass legend Jerry Jemmott, sat atop the Blues and Soul charts for 22 straight weeks, and was in the Top 5 for 55 straight weeks this past year. Arlen has also been at the forefront of guitar and music education, with 10 best-selling books, and he was the first-ever to offer video instruction with the giants of the music industry through his “Hot Licks” company, which he started in 1979, and has had millions of students worldwide. His column for Guitar Player magazine was voted #1 by the largest margin of readers from 1982 to 1992, and was also turned into a best-selling book, Hot Guitar. On Playing Out the String,  this all-acoustic, mostly solo album is very personal to Arlen and is really like getting an up-close "at home" concert in your living room. On it, he paints with broad strokes across several genres of music he loves. From "Old Timey" Norman Blake material to country blues from Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Tampa Red; he even makes you feel at home with Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin'" and gives his 12-string guitar a workout on the archetypical, "Walk Right In."

https://www.arlenroth.com

Interview with Jeff Lang 2024

Australian guitarist-songwriter-vocalist-producer, Jeff Lang has built a reputation for making startling music that is accomplished, intricate, gutsy, melodic and loaded with soul. Often taking unexpected turns, he has consistently inspired his audiences by creating a stylistically diverse catalog of over 25 albums. Jeff has mischievously called his music ‘Disturbed Folk.’ One writer referred to him as a “quiet achiever.” But the overall impression one has from observing Jeff’s lengthy career is that of a driven man who keeps his head down, playing and recording music as if his very life depends on it. Outside of his homeland, Jeff has toured the UK, Europe, Japan, India, China, South Africa, New Zealand and Canada as well as concentrated work in the U.S., where he has played upwards of 300 shows, living there for 6 months at a time. He has appeared on prestigious American radio programs A Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage and Acoustic Café. Jeff has shared stages with Bob Dylan, Dr. John, Richard Thompson, Bonnie Raitt, Ani Di Franco, Chris Whitley, Albert Collins, Loudon Wainwright III, Greg Brown, John Butler, AR Rahman and Bob Geldolf, among many others. Jeff has delivered show-stopping performances at festivals all across the globe: The Dublin Blues Festival, Philadelphia Folk Festival, Quebec City Music Festival, Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, Winterhawk Bluegrass Festival, Fuji Rock, Glastonbury, Echo Park China, Ottawa BluesFest as well as on his home turf at Port Fairy, Woodford, Bluesfest Byron Bay and Womadelaide. Jeff Lang’s unique musical vision easily finds a home in myriad settings, from large festival stages to the intimate, long-running Ann Arbor, Michigan club The Ark to the Sydney Opera House. Most importantly, Jeff Lang has achieved what is a rarity in the cluttered world of contemporary sounds: his own voice.

Jeff's info https://jefflang.com.au

 Interview with Eric Earley of Blitzen Trapper 2024

Launched roughly two decades ago in Portland, OR, Blitzen Trapper garnered early attention with a series of self-released albums before breaking out internationally with a pair of critically acclaimed LPs (2007’s Wild Mountain Nation and 2008’s Furr) that would cement their status at the forefront of the modern indie folk revival. Rolling Stone hailed the band’s “hazy, psychedelic Americana,” while NPR praised their “explosive live performances and infectious roots-rock swagger,” and The New York Times compared their songs to Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, and Neil Young. Dates with Fleet Foxes, Wilco, and Dawes followed, as did festival appearances at Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Newport Folk, and Coachella, among others. In the years to come, the band would go on to release six more similarly lauded studio albums, culminating with 2020’s Holy Smokes Future Jokes, which Mojo proclaimed “sound[s] like the Beatles at Big Pink.”

There are numbers so vast they exceed the scope of human reckoning, concepts so immeasurable they surpass our capacity to understand. On their radiant new album, 100’s of 1000’s, Millions of Billions, Blitzen Trapper make peace with the unknowable, surrendering themselves to forces beyond their control as they explore the infinite with a broad mind and an open heart.

Inspired by singer/songwriter Eric Earley’s fascination with Buddhist texts and meditation (the title comes from a phrase that appears over and over in the Mahayana sutras), the album offers a captivating take on rebirth and transcendence, and the circularity of existence, navigating its way through the space beyond dreams and reality, beyond gods and mortals, beyond life and death. The songs here are as sincere as they are surreal, rooted in rich character studies and deep reflection, and unfolding like a riddle-filled journey that asks many questions and offers no answers. The production is intoxicating to match, blending lo-fi intimacy and trippy psychedelia into a mesmerizing swirl of analog and electronic sounds. Add it all together and the result is a gorgeous, sprawling collection wrapped in lush layers of synthesizers and washed out electric guitars–a poignant, expansive exploration of perception and purpose that manages to look both forwards and backwards all at once.

Grog Shop Show Info  NOV-4-24

Blitzen Trapper Info 

https://www.blitzentrapper.net/

Interview with saxophonist Chris Greene

For saxophonist Chris Greene, turning 50 was a double milestone. It inspired him to look back on his career and the strides he has made as an independent jazz artist. It also inspired him to reflect on his life as a husband, father and family man. Little did he know how happily those two worlds would collide.  

Greene was working at home on music for his excellent new album, Conversance, when his attentive 12-year-old son Alex, a talented pianist and drummer and major Star Wars fan, played a melody for him inspired by one of the tunes his old man was playing. The elder Greene liked it so much, he decided to use it as the A section of the song, a six-measure blues in 6/4 time with a bridge. "It was a perfect fit," he says. "It really made the tune." 

Dad properly gave his son a co-writing credit and called the song "The Emperor Strikes Back," also a nod back to Chris' earlier composition, "Future Emperor of Evanston." There are numerous high points on Conversance, but none as high as this one for the older half of this rare father-son collaboration.

Greene, the pride of Evanston, Illinois, has been one of the Midwest's most popular jazz artists since his quartet in 2005. The group, featuring pianist Damian Espinosa, bassist Marc Piane and drummer Steve Corley, was voted best jazz band in Chicago in a poll by the alternative weekly, the Chicago Reader. A fan friendly artist with strong ties to the community, Greene has gifted his followers with a trio of mixtapes by the group that were recorded live various clubs and jazz festivals. Those recordings, dubbed Playtime I, II and III serve as sidebars to his regular efforts, as do a pair of subsequent albums released under the tag PlaySPACE.

Following the single "Beyhive Traffic Blues," featuring emcee D2G, Conversance is the first-ever jazz release for Pravda Records, a prized indie of eclectic leanings that has been releasing recordings since 1984. It is the Chris Green Quartet's first studio album in seven years.

Chris Greene's Info 

chrisgreenejazz.com

instagram.com/chrisgreenejazz

PULSARS mark the end of that era. Leader Dave Trumfio (vocals, guitar, synths production and

PULSARS's Info

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/pulsarsband/?hl=en

Dave hosted his own radio show The Goddamn Dave Hill Show on WFMU in Jersey City, New Jersey every Monday night from 9pm to midnight for years and now hosts the podcast Dave Hill's Podcasting Incident, which is also broadcast on the UK's Fubar Radio, So...You're Canadian with Dave Hill, and History Fluffer, on which he is joined by Jim Biederman, Jodi Lennon, and Chris Gersbeck. Dave is also a frequent contributor to public radio’s Live from Here with Chris Thile and  This American Life. He has also appeared on podcasts like WTF with Marc Maron, The Adam Carolla Show, The Nerdist, and then roughly 78 other ones besides those.

Dave is the author of four books, including his brand new book The Awesome Game: One Man's Incredible, Globe-Crushing Hockey Odyssey, in addition to Parking the Moose (Doubleday Canada/Penguin Random House 2019), Tasteful Nudes (St. Martins Press, 2012) and Dave Hill Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Blue Rider Press 2016). He has also written for the New York Times, GQ, Salon, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, New York Observer, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, VICE, Guitar World, and a bunch of other places too. Comedy legend Dick Cavett called Dave “a major figure among American comic writers, past and present,” which is pretty much the coolest thing that has ever happened as far as Dave is concerned.

Dave is also a musician who currently sings and plays guitar in the power pop band Valley Lodge, whose song “Go” is the theme song to HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and the psych/garage rock band Painted Doll. He was also a member of Cleveland rock bands Sons of Elvis and Cobra Verde as well as Diamondsnake, a heavy metal band with Moby. Additionally, Dave has played guitar for Walter Schreifels and muscle metal band Thor and bass for Lucy Wainwright Roche and former Faith No More singer Chuck Mosley. He also contributed musical scores to films such as Dirty Deeds, Shoot First and Pray You Live, and then some other ones besides those two.

Dave's Info 

https://www.davehillonline.com

The Frans are a public transit-inspired rock band from Cleveland, USA. Their self-titled record was released on March 2nd, 2024. For more information and to become a "Franiac", check us out on social media and other instruments of addiction: https://linktr.ee/thefrans

SEP 19TH Gabriel Xavier & The Neon Saints (Album Release Show) Cleveland OH
Link https://www.facebook.com/share/yTKk1L6V2Zuid2Zm/ 

C-Level Frans cross over track link (To Be Here when finished )