This Song

This Song: Beth Ditto (Rerun)

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.

This Song: Liz Phair (Rerun)

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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This Song: John Prine (Rerun)

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

This Song: Thao and The Get Down Stay Down

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”

This Song: Kathy Valentine

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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This Song: Metric

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

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This Song: Introducing The Song Confessional Podcast!

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.

This Song: Devendra Banhart

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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This Song: King Princess

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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This Song: The Teeta on “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen

Austin rapper The Teeta breaks down all the reasons he loves “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen and how it influenced the direction he took on “Rain” from his latest record Teeta World.

The Teeta will join Confucius and Fresh, hosts of our hip-hop show The Breaks for “The Breaks Live: Graduation Edition” this Friday, May 10th at Empire Control Room along with Grizz, DJ Manny Mo, and Dj Yupthtsher.

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Listen to The Teeta’s new album “Teeta World”

Get tickets for the Breaks Live: Graduation Edition

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This Song: Cautious Clay On “B.O.B” by Outkast

When Cautious Clay saw the video for Outkast’s “B.O.B” for the first time, the combination of the duo’s rapid fire rap style, techno influenced production and hyper-saturated psychedelic visuals blew his 7-year-old mind. On this episode, he tells us how that experience continues to have a profound impact on his own work, especially on his new project “Table of Context.” Plus, he explores how Outkast, along with his beat-boxing flute teacher, taught him to approach creativity without boundaries.

Cautious Clay just released a new EP called Table of Context

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Listen to Cautious Clay’s new EP Table of Context

Check out Cautious Clay’s Tour Dates

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This Song: Patty Griffin on “Secret World” by Peter Gabriel

Patty Griffin’s latest record “Patty Griffin” is a gorgeous acoustic exercise in vulnerability. The album was borne out of a period in her life where she stepped back from music to undergo treatment for breast cancer.

Listen as she explores all the ways that Peter Gabriel’s “Secret World,” from his epic breakup record up US, impacted her life and her songwriting. Griffin also explores how her friendship with George Reif inspired the song “Luminous Places,” and how important it is for her to allow herself to be vulnerable in her work.

“That’s what I would always like to try to arrive at. Something that’s deeply true and that I learn from. Then I’ve really got something to give”

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Hear Patty Griffin’s new self-titled record “Patty Griffin”

Check out Patty Griffin’s Tour Dates

Check out Patty Griffin’s performance at KUTX Live at the Four Seasons

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Texas Standard: April 2, 2019

The price of a would-be border shutdown? We’ll do the numbers and talk with the mayor of one of Texas’ biggest border cities, Laredo. Plus, 2020: it’s not just about counting votes, but counting heads, too. We’ll look at what’s at stake for Texas in the upcoming census. Also, after previous fits and starts, prospects get real for for full day pre-k covered by the state, we’ll have the latest. And San Antonio goes all in on a plan to let outside organizations run their schools. Also, a fiddle playing son pays tribute to his father and his role in shaping Texas music. All of those stories and then some today on the Texas Standard:

This Song: Amanda Palmer on Nick Cave’s “Magneto”

Amanda Palmer’s latest release, “There Will Be No Intermission” is a collection of devastating songs that explore her experiences with death, parenthood, miscarriage, abortion and living in this current, chaotic moment.

On this special live episode, recorded at SXSW, she explores how seeing Nick Cave’s performance of “Magneto” in the documentary “On More Time With Feeling” showed her how powerful inviting an audience into deeply personal experiences could be. “The ability too walk into the dark and carefully take people with you is why we do our jobs.”

She also describes how powerful it was to see Nick Cave’s bandmates hold space for his grief in the recording studio and how liberating it has been for her own community to hold space for her during the writing, recording and release of the new record.

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Listen to Amanda Palmer’s new record There Will Be No Intermission

Check out Amanda Palmer’s Tour Dates

Check out Amanda Palmer’s Patreon Page

Watch the full, unedited version of this interview on Facebook live

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This Song: Allison Moorer

Allison Moorer just released a new book and record, both titled “Blood.” Both works explore the legacy of her childhood in an abusive, addicted household and examine the impact that her parent’s murder suicide had on her life. In this episode, Moorer describes how “Every Breath You Take” by the Police gave her a window into an entire other world of music, and helped her define herself apart from her family.

Check out Allison Moorer’s tour dates

Buy Blood

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This Song: Jungle

On this episode, Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland, of British electronic pop outfit Jungle, tell us about the Jai Paul’s “Jasmine” and how it helped their band get comfortable with sonic experimentation. “A lot of our music is just accepting bits and pieces that happen around the creation, and ultimately letting the sounds find you.”

Hear how this openness led the duo to include a creaky door solo on their first record and how they continue to try and walk the line between originality and relatability on their latest record “For Ever.”

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Check out Jungle’s Tour Dates

Check out all the things KUTX is doing at SXSW this year

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This Song: Sahana Srinivasan of Brainchild

In addition to being the host of Brainchild, the popular Netflix science show for kids, Sahana Srinivasan is an accomplished actor, comedian, filmmaker, and musician. In this episode, she explains how listening to “Where Will I Go” by Sweet Valley helped her find her voice a young artist. She also tells us about the artistic journey that led her to host Brainchild, and what it’s like being the kind of role model she never had growing up.

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Check out Sahana’s comedy shows in Austin, TX

Check out Brainchild

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This Song: Shy Beast

Shy Beast front woman Mariclaire Glaeser describes how the music of the Cardigans helped her navigate a difficult childhood, bond with her older brother and find her musical way.

Shy Beast is KUTX’s Artist of the Month for January

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Watch the video for “Leave Me/Let Me”

Listen to Shy Beast’s MyKUTX Guest DJ Set

Watch Shy Beast’s Perform “Leave Me/Let Me” in Studio 1A

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This Song: Hrishikesh Hirway // Thao Nguyen

For the last episode of 2018, This Song decided to celebrate some exciting changes at one of our favorite music podcasts. Starting in 2019, Song Exploder host, creator, and producer Hrisikesh Hirway will hand over hosting duties to Thao Nguyen of Thao and the Getdown Staydown.

Listen as Hrishikesh Hirway tells us how listening to Asha Bhosle’s “Yeh Hai Reshmi Zulfon Ka Andhera” as a young child helped open up a well of emotion that continues to inspire him to this day. Then we hear how Lucinda Williams helped Thao Nguyen understand the power of “the good hurt.”

Have a Happy New Year!

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This Song: Nik Ewing, aka Chewing, of Local Natives

Nik Ewing, leader of the band Chewing and bass player for Local Natives, explains why he chose to cover Dennis Wilson’s solo album “Pacific Ocean Blue” in it’s entirety. This project is part of Turntable Kitchen’s Sounds Delicious series, a monthly subscription service where artists cover classic albums and subscribers get a limited edition vinyl copy of each project.

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

Check out the Sounds Delicious subscription series

We talked to Nik for an earlier episode of This Song. Check out this episode.

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