KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts
KUT and KUTX news and music podcasts for Austin, Texas and beyond
In the latest episode of Pause/Play Homer Hill tells the story of the Urban Music Fest and how it’s been hit hard by the pandemic. You’ll also learn the history of the festival, and hear the challenges Homer has faced in his thirty plus years as a Black Business owner in Austin, Texas.
Urban Music Fest
Mr. Catfish
The City of Austin’s Virtual New Year’s Eve
Check out Andrew Weber’s reporting on Venue Funding in Austin
In this episode of The Breaks
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.
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
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”
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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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.
Come to Waterloo Records Thursday, November 21st at 4pm for a live taping of the This Song podcast! Singer, songwriter and author Allison Moorer will join host Elizabeth McQueen onstage to talk about a song that changed her life and about her new book and companion album, Blood. The event is FREE and open to the public. Find more info here!
Allison Moorer plays the Cactus Cafe Thursday night at 8pm. Get your tickets here.
More info about Blood — On October 25th, acclaimed singer/songwriter Allison Moorer will release Blood(Autotelic Records / Thirty Tigers) the first solo album in four years from the Academy, Grammy, Americana and Academy of Country Music award nominated artist. Blood is not only Moorer’s most personal and revealing work to date, but also her finest and most important. Blood stands on its own as a complete work, but the album serves as a companion piece to her anticipated autobiography, Blood: A Memoir, being released on October 29th through Da Capo Press, an imprint of Hachette Books. Blood: A Memoir is a detailed account of Moorer and her sister’s (Grammy Award winner Shelby Lynne) childhood growing up in a troubled home in Southern Alabama, which ended with the well-documented murder-suicide of her parents in 1986. Much of what the public has known about the tragic event begins and ends there. For years Moorer had avoided going into the traumatic details of the abuse, alcoholism, intimidation, poverty and neglect, that existed prior to the deaths, and for good reasons which she addresses in the memoir. Moorer also addresses the fact that there was so much more to her family than tragedy, darkness and what people thought they knew. There was love, there was a protective mother, there was the bond of sisterhood and there was music. There was always music. The album Blood serves as a song cycle featuring ten tracks that directly connect to the people, emotions, trauma, and state of mind that are all detailed so eloquently in the memoir.
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
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In this episode, Mikaela Mullaney Straus aka King Princess describes how listening to “Cosmic Dancer” by T. Rex as a kid made her feel seen. And she explores how anthemic rock bands, along with artists like Prince and Tina Turner helped her understand her gender and showed her how music could transport the listener to another place and time.
“It’s about throwing people into a world. It’s about putting people into something that’s like completely separate from reality.”
📸 Greg Noire
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Check out King Princess’s Tour Dates
Listen to the New King Princess album Cheap Queen
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Indie electronic duo Matt and Kim talk about how “The Mullet Burden” by The Dillinger Escape Plan showed them how intense music could be.
Matt: “I did not even realize that music could be as extreme as that was. Like if I thought that music could be turned up to 10 , it was like, oh wait, you could actually turn up to 12 — there’s like 2 more notches on this thing that I didn’t even know existed.”
The couple also explores how they’ve tried to bring that same kind of intensity to their music, especially their live shows, the toll that intensity has taken on their bodies and what they see as the next phase in their musical lives.
📸: Caleb Kuhl
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Check out The Matt and Kim Podcast
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La Marisoul, lead singer and songwriter for the band La Santa Cecilia explains how Mercedes Sosa’s version of “Yo vengo a ofrecer mi corazón” by Fito Páez helped her understand what a powerful tool music could be for connection and healing.
“I can feel myself connected to the earth when I hear her. I feel relieved. I feel like I’m being held by a motherly force…holding me in melody and words that I need.”
This sentiment is reflected in La Santa Cecilia’s latest, self titled release. The record was written during a year when 3 of the 4 band members lost their fathers and finds the group reflecting on family, love, and loss and connection.
📸 Humberto Howard
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Check out La Santa Cecilia’s tour dates and videos
Listen to La Santa Cecilia’s new self titled record
Watch KUTX’s Pop Up video of La Santa Cecilia performing “Ice El Hielo.”
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Shura is a British singer, songwriter and producer who’s latest record Forevher documents her experience of falling in love with the woman who is now her girlfriend. On this episode, she sat down with host Elizabeth McQueen on the Bonus Tracks stage at the Austin City Limits Festival to explain why “Only Shallow” by My Bloody Valentine terrified her and intrigued her. They also talk about how she went from a teenage musician who was, in the words of her father “allergic to the idea of a chorus” to a writer who excels in writing catchy pop choruses. Shura also explains what it’s like to write an entire album of love songs and why she felt like now was the right time to use female-gendered pronouns in her work.
Get your own copy of Shura’s new record “Forevher”
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This Song host Elizabeth McQueen has been helping produce a new podcast called The Breaks. Every Saturday from 10pm-1am, Confucius and Fresh host a hip-hop show on KUTX called The Breaks. And now every Monday at 2pm the world can hear highlights from their wide ranging conversations about all things hip-hop, Austin’s hip-hop and R&B scenes and their lived experiences in the Live Music Capital of the World on The Breaks podcast.
In this episode of The Breaks, Confucius and Fresh discuss Joe Budden’s beef with Charlamange tha God. From there they call out Austin organizations promoting diversity without including people of color in decision making. Local Austin artist CP Loony stops by for an interview. We hear why Fresh thinks Iggy Azalea is not, in fact, the biggest taint on T.I.’s legacy as part of his Unpopular Opinion, and Confucius encourages everyone to lean into their strengths on Confucius Says.
Follow the Breaks on Instagram and Twitter
Singer, songwriter and producer Finneas O’Connell not only writes and produces music with his sister Billie Eilish, but also makes his own music under the name FINNEAS. He just released a solo EP called Blood Harmony. Listen as he explains why he loved “Holy S**t” by Father John Misty from the moment he heard it and how the song helped understand that when it comes to songwriting, nothing has to be off the table.
“My general rule with songs — it’s the rule I follow with Billie, it’s the rule I follow with every other artist I collaborate with — is like, write about the stuff that you’re uncomfortable writing about, write songs that you’d be scared to put out, because you wouldn’t want the person who it’s about to hear it…and then put it the f*ck out.”
📸 Michael Minasi
Watch “Holy Shit” performed live on KEXP
Listen to FINNEAS’ new EP “Blood Harmony”
Billie Elilish talked to NPR Music’s Stephen Thompson at ACLfest. Listen to that interview here
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Sleater-Kinney’s 9th album “The Center Won’t Hold” came out in August. The album, which was produced by St. Vincent, finds the band exploring lots of new sonic territory. Listen as Carrie Brownstein explains how “Stay” by Rihanna inspired her to write the last track on the new record,”Broken.” Plus, you can hear why she doesn’t think of this album as a sonic departure for the band, but instead sees it as a product of the band’s expanded musical vocabulary.
Check out Sleater-Kinney’s Tour Dates
Buy and/or Listen to “The Center Won’t Hold”
Listen to Songs from this episode of This Song