Month: February 2014

Episode 19: Seriously, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

For this podcast we are lucky to have Endless Mike of Endless Mike and the Beagle Club; The One and Only Matt Miller (who is also in The Beagle Club); and Derek Zanetti of The Homeless Gospel Choir to discuss what it means to share one’s personal life through songwriting.   We also discuss Jimmy Stewart’s hometown, a place where emotions are seemingly not allowed, and Derek provides us with perhaps the greatest moment in the history of the podcast.

Endless Mike has a great song called “Out of Respect”  that we talk about throughout the podcast. You can find out more about Endless Mike and the Beagle Club here, and you can see Matt Miller’s newest movie “Hang With Me” here.  Derek is an old vet of the podcast.  He was here previously to talk about his band The Homeless Gospel Choir in Episode 11, and he was here to promote his book Existentialism: The Musical in Episode 15.

As always, there is swearing.

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Episode 18: The Anxieties of Activism or the Joys of Disobedience

Good pal and union brother Clint Benjamin stops by and talks about overcoming one’s inhibitions and speaking out against an unfair situation.  By day, Clint is a writer and adjunct instructor of English at several colleges.  By night, he works to make life better for the folks who do the majority of college teaching as an organizer for the Adjunct Faculty Association.  Clint explains how he overcame his inhibitions and became a media superstar.  Together , we discuss the fear of getting arrested while protesting and what makes the risk worthwhile.

As always we swear.

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Episode 17: I Know It’s Only Rock and Roll, but the Italians Like It.

The second time I saw Bill Toms perform I said that I though every bar in the country should have a Bill Toms clone or bot that can be pulled out whenever folks need to have gospel infused blues rock good time.   Bill has been performing music for 35 years and is a true master of his craft.  Anyone who has seen one of his joyous live shows can understand why I was super happy to spend part of a Saturday morning discussing songwriting, how an album is a document of a time and a place, why Europeans love American music, his awesome new album Memphis, and when those Bill Toms-bots will eventually rise up and take over the world they will only ask for dark chocolate.

You can find out all about Bill Toms at his website, buy all his merchandise here, and if you never saw a Bill Toms show, see what you are missing with this clip.

As always, there’s a little light swearing.

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