KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts

KUT and KUTX news and music podcasts for Austin, Texas and beyond

Elizabeth McQueen

This Song: Robert Delong // John Chao of Misha

This week we have the tale of two ten-year-olds. First, the saga of a young Robert Delong (now a songwriter and electronic musician), who as a young boy, heard the song “Stardust” while listening to a cassette of Orson Wells’ “War Of The Worlds” and was then inspired to seek out the harmony that song revealed to him.  Then multi-instrumentalist and sing-songwriter John Chao tells the story of how inadequate record store categorization lead him to his hearing the album “Kiko” by Los Lobos and inspired some his best work.

Watch Robert Delong Perform “Long Way Down” on VuHaus

Watch Robert Delong Perform “Possessed” on VuHaus

Listen to Robert Delong’s full Studio 1A Session

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Listen to songs from Episode 42 of This Song

This Song: Eric Owen of Black Pistol Fire // Modern Outsider Records

Black Pistol Fire Drummer Eric Owen likes the simple grooves but he didn’t know it until he heard Nirvana’s “In Bloom.” Hear about this revelation and how the song lead him to finally learn to play the drums. Then the owners of Austin’s Modern Outsider Records, Erin and Chip Adams, talk about how Suede’s “Heroine” and The Cure’s “Close to Me” set them, in their own ways, on a course to loving songs that were off the beaten path, record collecting and finally starting their own record label.

Listen to Black Pistol Fire’s MyKUTX Guest DJ Set

Listen to Black Pistol Fire’s Studio 1A Performance

Watch Black Pistol Fire Perform “Bad Blood” on VuHaus

Listen to Erin and Chip Adams’ My KUTX Guest DJ Set

Check out Modern Outsider Records

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This Song: Zac Little of Saintseneca // Sons of Bill

Saintseneca’s Zac Little has been writing songs all his life.  In this episode of This Song he tells Jacquie Fuller how Paul McCartney’s  “Uncle Albert” showed him what how expansive making a recording could be, and explains the infinite possibilities contained in a single song.

Then James, Abe and Sam Wilson of Sons of Bill explore how songs by Woody Guthrie, John Prine and Bill Evan’s Trio blew their minds and describe what it’s like to play in a band with your brothers.

Watch Saintseneca perform “Sleeperhold” live in Studio 1A on VuHaus

Watch Saintseneca perform “Such Things” live in Studio 1A on VuHaus

Watch Sons of Bill perform an acoustic version of “The Big Unknown” on Vuhaus

Watch Sons of Bill perform an acoustic version of “Lost in Cosmos” on VuHaus

Subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of  This Song delivered to you as soon as they come out.

Listen to the songs featured in Episode 40 of This Song.

This Song: Hrishikesh Hirway // Basia Bulat

Hrishikesh Hirway produces the “Song Exploder” podcast where artists deconstruct and explain their work. He’s also a musician who leads the band The One AM Radio and and provides the music for the hip-hop project Moors.  Listen as he explains how hearing Asha Bhosle’s  “Yeh Hai Reshmi Zulfon Ka Andhera,” at the age of 6 helped him understand a feeling that he would be able to draw inspiration from for his entire life.

Then Canadian singer-songwriter and multi instrumentalist Basia Bulat explains why a live version of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me,” changed her life.

Subscribe to Song Exploder on iTunes

Watch Basia Bulat perform “Fool” live at the Four Seasons on VuHaus

Subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of  This Song delivered to you as soon as they come out.

Listen to the songs featured in Episode 39 of This Song.

This Song: Alessia Cara // OSHUN

This episode of ‘This Song” is all about inspiring women who just happen to be young.

Alessia Cara is a Canadian singer and songwriter who’s song “Here” hit #1 on the Hot R&B charts. She’s also 19 years old.  Hear Alessia Cara chat with KUTX DJ and Producer Taylor Wallace about how she’s inspired by the music of Amy Winehouse  and Drake and what her current creative life is like.

Then listen as  Thandiwe and Niambi Sala of the New York based hip hop duo OSHUN, both of whom are still in college, explain how songs by Outkast and Billie Holiday  helped them realize what it was they wanted to do with their own music.

Subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of  This Song delivered to you as soon as they come out.

Watch Alessia Cara perform “Here” on solo on VuHaus

Watch OSHUN’s Studio 1A Performance

Download OSHUN’s Mixtape Asase Yaa

Listen to OSHUN on Soundcloud

Watch the video for OSHUN “Protect Your Self”

Listen to the songs featured in Episode 38 of This Song.

This Song: John Doe // Jeff Klein

John Doe fronts the LA punk band X, has a thriving solo career,  has acted in movies and TV and now is an author. He just released a book called “Under the Big Black Sun,” that chronicles the L.A. punk scene from the perspective of the folks who were there. In this episode of This Song he talks about how hearing Lead Belly as a kid gave him a glimpse of the weirdness and darkness that lay beyond the mainstream.

Then Jeff Klein from My Jerusalem talks about how a song by  The Replacements  took him from Neil Diamond and hair bands into the world of music that he genuinely loved and that would eventually inspire him to make music of his own.

 Subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of  This Song delivered to you as soon as they come out.

Check out “Under the Big Black Sun”

Watch John Doe Perform ‘”A Little Help” live on VuHaus

Listen to My Jerusalem’s new single “Rabbit Rabbit” on Soundcloud

Watch  My Jerusalem perform “Born in the Belly” live on VuHaus

Watch My Jerusalem perform “Sweet Chariot” live on VuHaus

Listen the songs featured in Episode 37 of  This Song.

 

This Song: Thao Nguyen // BUHU

Thao Nguyen from Thao and the Get Down Stay Down talks about her love for Lucinda Williams‘ song “Drunken Angel” and the power of the “good hurt.”

Then Juan Mendez Barjau, Clellan Hyatt and Jeremy Rogers of the  Austin band BUHU talk about everything from the importance of good headphones to the placement of Dave Grohl’s drumming to the necessity of love in music.

Check out Thao and the Get Down Stay Down’s new Record A Man Alive

Watch Thao and the Get Down Stay Down on VuHaus

Listen to Thao Nguyen’s MyKUTX Guest DJ Set

Check out BUHU’s new record Relationshapes

Listen to BUHU’s Studio 1A set

Subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of  This Song delivered to you as soon as they come out.

Listen to the songs featured in episode 36 of This Song.

This Song: Bob Boilen // Mobley

Bob Boilen, host of NPR’s All Songs Considered wrote a  new book called “Your Song Changed My Life,”  where he interviewed people about songs that changed their lives. What can we say? Great minds think alike!

Listen as he talks about his own life-changing song —  the Beatles “A Day in the Life,”  which totally opened his mind up to the expansive capabilities of music and art and informed the kind of musician he would become.

Then Austin artist Mobley explores how Kanye West’s “808’s and Heartbreak” showed him how important emotion and vulnerability in music could be and informed the material for his new EP “Some Other Country” which explores his experience of being a black man in America through songs that sound, at first listen, like songs about someone in a bad relationship.

Check out Bob Boilen’s “Your Song Changed My Life”

Check out Bob Boilen’s website where all his music lives

Watch the only existing video of  80’s era Tiny Desk Unit

Watch Mobley’s video for “Solo”

Watch Mobley’s video for “Swoon”

Check out Mobley’s new EP “Some Other Country”

Subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of  This Song delivered to you as soon as they come out.

Listen to the songs featured in this week’s episode.


This Song: M. Ward // Dana Falconberry

Sometimes hearing someone else’s song can make you realize that something that you never even knew existed was possible.  For M. Ward it was John Fahey’s record “The Yellow Princess,” which showed him that an artist could say everything he wanted using only one acoustic guitar.  For Dana Falconberry, it was the songs she learned while playing with Redding Hunter in the band “Peter and the Wolf” which changed her approach to songwriting and performing.

Watch M.Ward perform “I’m Listening” live in Studio1A on VuHaus

Watch John Fahey perform “Red Pony“

Watch John Fahey perform “On the Sunny Side of the Ocean”

Watch Dana Falconberry perform “Cora Cora” live in Studio 1A of VuHaus

Check out Dana Falconberry’s tour of National Parks!

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Listen to the songs featured in episode 34 of This Song.

This Song: James Petralli of White Denim // Bayonne

Songs can serve as musical touchstones that we return to when we want to remind ourselves what we want music to be. For White Denim’s James Petralli, that song is the Grateful Dead’s “That’s It For the Other One,” which helped him realize how he wanted to approach both the guitar and recording. With the song as a starting point, Petralli goes on to explain why drummers are the most important members of the band, why all musical expression is valid and what it was like to record the bands’s new record “Stiff” with Ethan Johns.

Then Bayonne explores how The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”   showed him how powerful openness and vulnerability in music could be and  explains how he approached his new record “Primitives” with that same openness.

 

Watch White Denim perform “Ha Ha Ha Ha Yeah” on VuHaus

Check out White Denim’s Tour Dates

Watch Bayonne, who previously went by the name Roger Sellers, perform “Waves” from him new record “Primitives” Live in Studio 1A.

Check out Bayonne’s Tour Dates

Subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of  This Song delivered to you as soon as they come out.

Listen to the songs featured in episode 33 of This Song.

This Song: Eugene Mirman // Ringo Deathstarr

Eugene Mirman may not be a musician per se, but his new comedy record “I’m Sorry, (You’re Welcome)” is a 9 Volume, 7 LP set of comedy that includes music in the form of meditations and erotic soundscapes.  Listen as he explains to Elizabeth McQueen why he chose to incorporate music into his latest release and stage show and talks about the music that inspires him…or doesn’t.

Then Elliot Frazier and Daniel Corborn of Ringo Deathstarr talk about how hearing Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine when they were kids helped them see that they could make music that was discordant, distorted and totally satisfying.

Find Eugene Mirman’s tour dates here

Listen to Ringo Deathstarr Live in Studio 1A

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Listen to the songs featured in Episode 32 of This Song.

This Song: SXSW Extra! Butch Vig

Producer and Garbage drummer Butch Vig is in town for  SXSW to promote the “The Smart Studios Story,” a documentary about the studio he ran with Steve Marker in Madison Wisconsin where Nirvana’s Nevermind, was recorded.  Butch sat down with host Elizabeth McQueen to talk about how seeing the Who perform “My Generation” on the Smothers Brothers made him want to be become a drummer, and showed him the kind of energy he would later help others capture in the studio.  Along the way talks about what it means to be a producer, how Garbage got started and the beauty of Smart Studios.

Subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of  This Song delivered to you as soon as they come out.

This Song: Mark Mothersbaugh // Sabrina Ellis and Andrew Cashen

It’s an extra special, extra long,  SXSW extravanganza episode of This Song!  First Mark Mothersbaugh describes in vivid detail what is was like to see the Beatles for the first time on Ed Sullivan, and how he became the 5th Beatle, at least in his mind.  Then Sabrina Ellis and Andrew Cashen from A Giant Dog and Sweet Spirit talk about the the riffs and raw power of Iggy Pop, the songwriting of Regina Spektor how they came to write songs together.

Check out the Mark Mothersbaugh’s Myopia at the Contemporary Austin

Watch Sweet Spirit perform “Baby When I Close My Eyes” live from KUTX on VuHaus

Watch the video for A Giant Dog’s “Sex and Drugs”

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This Song: Josh Ritter // John Carter Cash

This Song has gone country! In this episode we have two examples of artists who drew inspiration from the deep well of American Country music.

First Josh Ritter explains how delving into the catalogue of Roger Miller helped him let go of the rules and find his voice for his new record “Sermon on the Rocks.” Then producer John Carter Cash explains why the music of his grandmother, Mother Maybelle Carter,  influenced his musical path even more than the work of his father,  Johnny Cash. He also explains how that music found it’s way onto “Full Circle,” the new record he produced for Loretta Lynn.

Listen to Josh Ritter’s studio 1A performance

Watch Josh Ritter perform “Getting Ready to Get Down” on VuHaus

Watch the Trailer for Loretta Lynn’s new record “Full Circle”

Get the info for Loretta Lynn’s official SXSW show

Subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of  This Song delivered to you as soon as they come out.

 

Listen to the songs featured in Episode 30 of This Song.

This Song: Delbert McClinton // Carrie Rodriguez

Delbert McClinton has spent his life in music paying homage to American blues music.  In this episode of  This Song he tells the story of the first time he heard Big Joe Turner’s  “Honey Hush” wafting out of a window. As he tells Taylor Wallace “The pulse was right where my heart beat.”  From that moment on, he was driven to give everything he had to the blues

Then Carrie Rodriguez tells the story of the first time she heard Bill Frisell while touring in Europe. His version of “Cluck Old Hen” opened her up to the idea that traditional music need not be played in a traditional way, and helped inform her latest record “Lola.”

Listen to Delbert McClinton’s Studio 1A Session

Listen to Carrie Rodriguez and the Sacred Hearts Studio 1A session

Listen to Carrie Rodriguez’s MyKUTX Guest DJ session

Watch Carrie Rodriguez  perform “Frio en al Alma” on Vuhaus

Subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of  This Song delivered to you as soon as they come out.

Listen to the songs featured in Episode 29 of This Song.

This Song: Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater // Cross Record

Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg grew up listening to his parent’s classical music and white bread pop. Then he heard Vic Chesnutt. In this episode of “This Song” you can hear how  Chesnutt’s “Big Huge Valley”  helped him realize there was a whole world of music bubbling beneath the mainstream. Plus, he makes the case that  Nina Simone is the “best popular musician of the 20th century, and maybe the 21st century too.”

Then Emily Cross of the KUTX Artist of the Month Cross Record  describes the effect Imogen Heap’s“Hide and Seek” had on her while her partner, Dan Duszynski, explains how King Tubby expanded his ideas of what music could be.

Listen to Shearwater’s Studio 1A performance

Listen to Cross Record’s Studio 1A performance

Listen to Cross Record’s MyKUTX guest DJ set

Subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of  “This Song” delivered to you as soon as they come out.

Listen to the songs featured in Episode 28 of “This Song”.

This Song: Ian Astbury of the Cult // P.T. Banks

Ian Astbury of The Cult explains the powerful effect that David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” had on him when he was 10 years old and P.T. Banks talks about how Paul Simon’s “Everything Put Together Falls Apart,” helped him understand life, substance abuse and death.

Subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of  “This Song” delivered to you as soon as they come out.

Watch the video for “Hinterland” by The Cult

Watch the video for “Deeply Ordered Chaos” by the Cult

Watch the video for “Dark Energy” but the Cult

Check out the Cult’s Tour dates

Check out P.T. Banks Live Studio 1A Performance

Download P.T. Banks “Resurrection” as part of KUTX’s “Song of the Day” feature.

Watch P.T. Banks perform ‘West Was Won” on VuHaus

Listen to Laurie Gallardo interview P.T. Banks

Listen to the songs featured in this episode of “This Song”.

 

This Song: Jose Gonzalez // Daniel James and Trevor Wiggins of Leopold and his Fiction

In this episode of This Song Jose Gonzalez talks to Taylor Wallace about the many ways  Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” inspired his musical style as does drummer Trevor Wiggins of Leopold and his Fiction. Then, Daniel James, lead singer and guitar player for Leopold and his Fiction, talks about how growing up in Detroit and re-descovering Motown as an adult helped him find his sound.

Watch the live video of Jose Gonzalez  performing “With the Ink of a Ghost”on VuHaus

Watch the live video of Leopold and his Fiction performing “Ride” on Vuhaus

Watch the live video of Leopold and his Fiction performing “I’m Caving in” on Vuhaus

Watch the music video for “I’m Caving In” directed by Trevor Wiggins

Listen to Leopold and his Fiction performing Live in Studio 1A  ay KUTX here and here

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This Song: Benjamin Booker, Laura Patiño

In this episode of “This Song” Benjamin Booker explains how songs by Nigerian artist William Oneaybor, the Zambian band Witch and the Caribbean band The Beginning of the End are all helping him shape the sound of the music he’s writing now, both musically and thematically. Then Laura Patiño of  Holiday Mountain describes how a song by M.I.A. helped her find her power as a woman and her voice as a musician.

Check out David Byrne’s Luaka Bop Records!

Check out Holiday Mountain’s Video for “Bump that Bass.”

Subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of  “This Song” delivered to you as soon as they come out.

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