Or — and this is equally likely, especially if you’re a college student like me — you don’t.

The divide between older and younger patrons of comedy has never been more apparent to me than on Friday, February 6th at the Englert Theatre, while I watched Tom Arnold’s newest stand-up performance on his 50-city North American “My Crazy X-Wife Tour”. While most of the (primarily older) audience seemed to enjoy themselves during Arnold’s set, I came away from the performance with a different feeling entirely: not quite dislike, but not enjoyment either.

Before I get into my mixed feelings about Arnold’s comedy, I’d be remiss not to mention the positives of the night. Arnold has clearly been in the industry a very long time, and it shows in the quickness and wit of his comedic storytelling. His set is delightfully unpolished, delivered in a slightly rushed conversational style that keeps the jokes coming at a frenetic pace. And even when he’s not focused strictly on jokes, the stories he tells of his time in Hollywood are entertaining enough to keep the audience engaged.

In fact, one of the strongest points of the night was the instant rapport that Arnold had with his audience. He did, of course, attend the University of Iowa, which earned him automatic points. (He was also able to pull former Hawkeye women’s basketball coach Lisa Bluder up on stage to introduce him, which, of course, won our immediate respect.) It seemed like many of the attendees even knew Arnold personally, with a few shouting out to him during the show; he even pointed out his nephew sitting in the front. Arnold was not afraid to engage with the audience members who talked to him during the show, which greatly relaxed the room and made the stand-up special feel more like a family gathering.

In a way, though, I think the “family gathering” aspect of Arnold’s performance also speaks to what I found unpleasant about the show. Arnold opened his set with a joke about going to the Playboy mansion with Donald Trump, which made some of the older members of the audience laugh, but, in the wake of recent news, left me a bit shocked. He then proceeded to “wish [Trump] the best” on his current presidency. The show never got that political again, but I was left with a sour taste in my mouth. That remark colored how I interpreted the rest of Arnold’s jokes, especially those where he describes his encounters with famous men Hugh Grant and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who were both later exposed in sex scandals of their own. Listening to Arnold perform felt like having a conversation with my male Republican relatives: you want to like them because they feel like family, but you can’t ignore the opinions you know they hold, even if they’re not the center of the story.

I can honestly say that I don’t think Tom Arnold meant to make anyone in the audience feel uncomfortable that night. Most of his jokes were woven into lighthearted, silly celebrity stories, many of which did make me chuckle. But during the show, I found myself returning again to that moment at the beginning.

I may not recognize Arnold from his impressive list of achievements, but I did sincerely want to like him. I wanted to be part of the Iowa family he was speaking to that night.

And I guess, in a way, I was. But not in a way I fully enjoyed.

The post Comedy Review: I Was Not the Target Audience for Tom Arnold at The Englert appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Logan Melia: All right, well, you’re hitting the road with The Milk Carton Kids, do you remember the first time you all talked together? Maybe when this tour was starting to get planned out? 

Sierra Hull: Well, we’ve been planning this tour for many months now, but I’ve known these guys for the better part of 10 years or more. But we’ve mostly just gotten to hang out at festivals or cross paths at various events with friends, stuff like that. We’ve never really got to do any serious music making together so I’m excited for this. We’re all kind of hopping on a bus together and just hitting the road for like two weeks and. I’ve been such a fan of theirs. They’re just like amazing singer-songwriters and musicians and I just think it’s going to be so much fun to get to kind of kick back and hear them play every night. It’s one thing to go out and sort of do your own tour, but it’s another thing when you can go do a tour with friends and be inspired every night by other people as well. 

Logan: You have been so active touring this new record of yours, “A Tip Toe High Wire”, but do you remember the very first tour you ever did? 

Sierra: I’ve been playing shows ever since I was a kid. I started playing mandolin when I was eight years old and playing around locally and kind of starting to do like summertime festivals where I would travel and do things here and there, but it was pretty much right after I got out of high school. I mean, as soon as I could sort of really hit the road, I started going out and actually touring more seriously. When I sort of got old enough, I could kind of go without a parent. My parents always worked full-time jobs, so there’s only so much I could do as a youngster. But yeah, I feel like I’ve been kind of touring on and off for many years now. 

Logan: You mentioned growing up and always playing. And you grew up in Byrdestown, Tennessee, a real small town there. And I’ve heard legend of the Dixie Cafe being a lovely place to catch some bluegrass music. Can you attest to that statement? 

Sierra: Oh yeah, the Dixie Cafe. You know, they didn’t do it when I was a kid growing up, it wasn’t a thing yet. So I didn’t like grow up playing there or anything like that. But when I got into my sort of teenage years, probably around the time I was actually like moving away, started hearing, oh, this is a regular thing and there’s jam sessions. And then it was like, oh, well, there’s people playing on stage every week and local musicians. So it just does my heart so good to know that there’s a music scene in my hometown. Because I used to have to go over to the next town, Jamestown, where a lot of my family was from, or kind of go down the road a piece to be able to find any kind of real jams or music. So I just love that The Dixie is bringing music into the community like that so cool.

Logan: Yeah and you are very much at the forefront of this huge bluegrass revival. I’m seeing it as someone who wasn’t really in the bluegrass a few years ago seeing it wash over this this whole music culture right now, and being a part of this leading charge here it seems very cool. How does the bluegrass scene seem now compared to maybe what you were growing up with, does it feel any different? 

Sierra: Well, I just think the music scene, in general, the way we get our music, the way that our culture feels toward music is so different than what it was when I was a kid. I mean, but I’ve been lucky enough to kind of be really immersed in the bluegrass community since I was really young. So in a way, that community is still there. It’s thriving. It always has been, right? It’s always been a big part of my world, but it’s exciting to see it be able to reach a bigger audience in some cases. There’s always been moments I know we’ve got like the big anniversary of the “O Brother Where Art Thou” soundtrack I think hitting this year. And there’s always a wave of something like that that comes along and puts it in the spotlight. You know when I was a kid that was one of the big things, and someone like Allison Krauss kind of being at the forefront of that to see what my buddy Billy Strings is doing these days and the audiences that he’s reaching. The way that bluegrass can kind of coexist alongside a bunch of other styles of music just because I think our culture consumes music that way now, where we can get on our phone and within, 2 minutes we can curate a playlist of everything from bluegrass to hip-hop if we wanted to. So I think it definitely feels different, but I think it’s more, for me, it’s more that the culture around music just feels different. But the bluegrass scene, has always been this beautiful, thriving thing, and it’s cool to see other people start to get a glimpse into that world and that community that I’ve loved since I was a kid. 

Logan: You mentioned the ability to get these wild playlists going on. Do you have anything you wouldn’t expect to be on, you know, bluegrass Grammy nominee Sierra Hull’s playlist these days? 

Sierra: Oh man, I’m all over the map and what I like to listen to. I mean, it’s funny. It’s like I really enjoyed the Justin Bieber performance a lot at the Grammys. 

Logan: With the loop pedal and everything? 

Sierra: Yes, sitting in the room the other night, I mean, he’s such a crazy singer. And so it’s been kind of fun, even some of the things that I was in the room here on the other night, I started going, okay, cool man. Say what you want about pop music and coming from a world like bluegrass and others, a lot of people are like, Oh, I can’t stand the Grammys. That kind of thing is just not their cup of tea. But I’ve always just been someone that loves all kinds of music. And you sit in the room and you hear somebody actually sing live though, I mean, there’s no denying the level of talent in the pop. There really is some incredible singers and some incredible artists so it kind of makes me go home. Maybe I want to listen to some of this stuff that I kind of missed over the last year. I Don’t know, I bop around a lot to be honest with my listening of Joni forever, of course, but then it’s like, I kind of go, oh man, that makes me want to go back down a Joni rabbit hole. There’s so much great music to listen to, for sure. 

Logan: What is the most recent rabbit hole you fell down? 

Sierra: Oh, well, probably Bieber the last couple days, diving into his new record, listening to that a little bit. The total rabbit hole, oh gosh. Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe that just because that’s the last couple days. I’ve probably watched that performance four or five times over the last few days.  

Logan: Do you have any memories of watching the Grammys at all growing up? Do you have any performances that have like stuck in your head? 

Sierra: Oh yeah, it was always cool for me to see as a young bluegrass kid, I mean, I was so immersed in bluegrass. Of course, my friends at school were listening to the popular pop music of the time, but that really wasn’t where I was digging in my heels as a listener. It was all bluegrass, and I was such a big Allison Krauss fan. Of course, Allison’s been a staple of the Grammys for basically her entire career, and has been loved on strongly by those folks. And so anytime I would see someone like her perform, that was always really exciting to me because it felt like there was a part of my world being represented on the big stage like that. 

Logan: You mentioned growing up listening to bluegrass. I saw in some older interviews you brought up how your dad brought home a Larry Sparks tape and Tony Rice and stuff like that. What would you want to show the next generation of bluegrass players right now? What would be your Larry Sparks? 

Sierra: I mean, Larry Sparks is still out there crushing it, to be honest. And I think there are people like Larry, like Belle McCurry, who are still out there really holding the torch for that sort of early bluegrass sound. They’re the closest thing that we have to Ralph Stanley. It’s like you’ve got Larry, who actually played with Ralph ,and you’ve got Dale, who actually played with Bill Monroe. I mean, these guys come come at it with that first generation connection that like the rest of us don’t quite have. And for me, I think for anybody who’s really getting into bluegrass, I love, like I said, all kinds of. The music that I make obviously leans more progressive these days and a lot of what I’m tapping into too, but I mean, at the heart of it, I love that traditional music, and I wouldn’t trade sitting in those jam sessions as a kid singing that. Singing and playing the music of Flatt and Scruggs and Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers and growing up listening to Larry Sparks, people like that, there’s a foundation you build on that first generation music that I think is so important for a young musician who wants to grow up playing these instruments. And even if your heroes are more progressive people, I think there’s no replacement for going back and digging into where this music really comes from. 

Logan: How do you find a balancing act between the two? Because I feel like you do such a good job of doing new and innovative things while also kind of holding down that old Larry Sparks charm. 

Sierra: I don’t think about it that much, to be honest. I think that the foundation and that old-school thing is just a part of me. I mean, I grew up here in Tennessee, too, and that music, kind of the way even culturally, what the music was kind of built on, you know, singing about the little cabin home on the hill and, the hard times in which people, Appalachian people, were facing. It’s like, that’s kind of those stories, even though I grew up obviously in a different time, hence the fact that I think my music reflects a different kind of sound and time as well in order to feel truly authentic to me, I think it kind of has to. But those sounds are like my people, It’s a part of not only just the music I grew up listening to and playing, but the people that I was around too, and people that experienced the music, the things that those stories are all built upon, the sounds of bluegrass really just sound like the part of the world that I come from. So I think there’s the there’s that part of me that will always just reflect in the music because it truly is, as a person, who I am and where I’m from. 

Logan: It’s so ingrained in kind of Tennessee, the culture of it all. Is there anything that you have learned on mandolin or about bluegrass music or anything that has recently come into your ears that you’ve been able to implement into your songs? 

Sierra: I think if you’re really keeping your ears open, there’s always something to be learned and to be brought into the music. You know, I think like coming out of this kind of crazy week I just had, I think there’s a lot of inspiration to be had being in the space, and I was in Los Angeles all week for Grammy stuff. And you’re around all these incredible artists for an entire week, people who are all there celebrating all styles of music and just the love of the craft and the hard work that everybody kind of puts into this too. I know it’s like you kind of go, oh, Grammy week, it’s all about the flash and the awards and getting dressed up and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, that’s fun, that’s true, but it also is like a showing of all the hard work that all these artists put into music over the last year and sort of celebrating that. And so, I think coming home even off of that hearing, like I said, a lot of performances that were inspiring to me, conversations I had with people that were inspiring. All that really starts to get me excited to work on the next thing, so it’s always hard to put your finger on, well, something that you’ve learned directly, whether it be an exact musical phrase or just something in life that happened that inspired you. But I know I certainly feel inspired right now and a real desire to kind of be like, okay, that was fun, now let’s get back to work. Let’s get back to the actual thing we all want to do, which is making music. I came home and I said that to my husband. I was like, well, that was fun, but now I’m like, shoot, I can’t wait to get back to actually playing my instrument and singing songs. 

Logan: Are you writing anything new these days? Do you often write new things casually or do you have to be in a certain mindset to like put down some new ideas? 

Sierra: Yeah, the last couple days I’ve been writing like crazy. That doesn’t always mean that’s something ever going to be heard either, but gathering lyrics and ideas and feeling, I think for me, there’s moments where I can like grasp it and go, I can like connect to something like I’m always writing. But then there’s sometimes when there’s this like real inevitable feeling of I must do it, like I have to do it, and so whatever that is, I feel it right now. And that comes in waves for me. That’s not all the time. Sometimes you can think, well, it’d be good if I got back to writing because I hadn’t been doing it much, but you just don’t feel like you can work on it a little bit. But the connection, I’ve got to do this almost in a therapeutic way, is not there in the same way. And I’ve definitely been filling that pole lately. And I think that’s probably as a result too, the whirlwind of being busy and finishing one project, we put “A Tip Toe High Wire” out not quite a year ago, but almost, and you jump into this whirlwind of being so busy around new music and a new album, and then you sort of find yourself near the end of that cycle, and it’s almost like your emotional space frees up for me, where I can suddenly go, okay cool, we sort of did that thing. Now I can get back to the creative side again. 

Logan: In this past year, you played the Outlaw Music Festival with such a cool variety of artists. I believe the dates I saw had Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Billy Strings, and Lake Street Dive, and a few others. Normally, there’s not too big of an age gap between eighty-year-old Bob Dylan and these younger artists right here. Did you learn anything from that tour being around these older artists? 

Sierra: Well, getting to watch him play, I didn’t even get to meet Bob. I didn’t get to hang out with him, unfortunately, or anything and I think it’s understandable. It’s like Willie’s in his 90s. Bob turned 80, actually, while we were on the road, which is pretty cool. But getting to see him take the stage every night as these legends and when you’re on a tour with Willie and Bob, I think the main takeaway for me was man, songs. They just have songs, It’s like we all, we think about, of course, Bob Dylan probably as a songwriter first and foremost. Willie… Willie’s just such a treasure kind of all the way around, but like he has such an incredible catalog of songs and even songs he didn’t write, his ability to be a storyteller. I remember he would sing this song every night on tour called “The Last Leaf on the Tree”, and I swear I didn’t realize it was a Tom Waits song. It wasn’t a Tom Waits song that I knew, But it was like my favorite in the set every night. Just the way he sang it sounded exactly like he wrote it. I think because they’re such great songwriters and they understand the power of words and lyrics, there’s a delivery that those guys have and what they do that is just, I don’t know, it sort of stands on its own. And then the performance is just like the cherry on top, you know what I mean? So yeah, it just reminded me of like, okay, you gotta have good songs first and foremost first and foremost. All the fancy like tricks and talents of like vocal moves or instrumental whatever prowess, that’s really secondary to the song. It’s pointless without having really good songs in my opinion.

Logan: Do you have any songs that you really enjoy covering yourself?

Sierra: You were talking about that tour, we covered a couple things on that tour, most nights, we have a cover of “Mad World” we do a lot, which is one of my favorites.  On sort of the flip side of that, that’s like moody, edgy, or, you know, lyrically a little bit more edgy than something just straight ahead. But then like on something just completely joyful, it’s like we would, to cover Bela Flec stomping grounds, often. So, I mean, we have a wide range of stuff. I just most recently covered, actually during Grammy’s week, the Americana folks have a kind of tradition. They do a music cares fundraiser show honoring an artist at the Troubadour every year. And this year it was Neil Young. So it’s a bunch of artists singing Neil Young songs and I did the song “Look Out for My Love”, which is such a great song. And yeah, such a great catalog of songs he has to. 

Logan: You went to the Berklee College of Music, and I’m in college right now. Was there any party that wanted a more traditional college experience? Because obviously Berklee’s a little intensive, one might say. Do you at all wish it was a little bit more of the classic American college, or were you just too locked in on the music to even think about that? 

Sierra: You know, I don’t think, to be honest, I would not have gone to college at all if the opportunity to go to Berklee hadn’t kind of appeared. I wasn’t really planning on going, and then I got offered this scholarship, kind of out of nowhere, and  just wound up feeling like, okay, well this is an opportunity that is almost too good to pass up. I should definitely give this a try. But I knew all I ever wanted to do was play music, to be honest. And I think the value of getting an education is so important, and I always tried, I was an honor roll student the whole time I was in school. I always tried to make good grades and cared about getting an education, but I also knew that just going to a traditional college and spending four years and spending the money and things like that and the time, if I wasn’t really going to apply it, I didn’t see the point in the path. You know what I mean? It’s kind of like I knew what I wanted to do. I wasn’t even planning to go to music college because I was fortunate enough just to start young and I already had a record deal and I already could see a path in front of me for starting to tour, even at a small level. So yeah, I don’t know. I think there’s times where of course I can go, what would this feel? If I could just have a normal college experience? I think anybody who doesn’t have something like that, you might kind of go, what would that have been like sometimes. But at the same time, I think I was so fortunate, to just already know what I wanted from life, to know at least generally, where my path was headed and what road I was hoping to take. And I have a lot of friends who are still figuring that out, even in their 30s, and it’s tricky. So I don’t know. It’s a mixed question, sort of, because I think it would have been cool to know what that’s like and maybe feel more relatable to my friends who did have that experience. But at the same time, I wouldn’t change anything about where my path has taken me, because I think this is all I’ve ever wanted. 

Logan: You’re on a pretty cool path right now, I’d say. You’ve been playing music your whole life, like you said. But do you remember the first time in Nashville, Tennessee you sat in the pews at the Ryman? 

Sierra: Oh, man. Funny enough, the first time I ever went to the Ryman, I was on stage. 

Logan: Really? 

Sierra: The first time I ever got to go, yeah. I was 11 years old, and I got to go play the Grand Ole Opry with Allison. And the Opry, in the winter months, usually they move it to the original home of the Opry is the Ryman Auditorium. And so they move it from the Grand Ole Opry House to downtown to the Ryman, and they host their shows there for a couple months. And so it happened to be, this was in November, and they were doing Opry at the Ryman. And so, Allison called me up as a young kid. My biggest hero called me up and asked me to come play the Opry with her. I’ll never forget that for so many reasons. And honestly, that was such a magical experience, just even being in the room. Of course, I knew the history of the Ryman, I still think it’s my favorite venue in the world for so many reasons. The stage they say in which Bluegrass was born, when Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs stand on stage playing banjo at the Opry. But to actually be in the pews, it sounds funny to say I probably played it the first few times before I actually got to see a show there. 

Logan: Wow. I don’t think many people are able to say that. So that’s pretty cool. 

Sierra: That’s insane, I know. I’m so fortunate. But I love being able to go see shows there because I never forget that that magical feeling I had as a kid getting to be there for the first time. 

Logan: I hope the Englert Theater in Iowa City is somewhat memorable enough. You know, it’s not the Ryman, but maybe it’ll leave an impression over here. 

Sierra: Hey, I’ve actually played there once before. Like two years ago, I believe two falls ago. It was a fall tour we did maybe in like October or something. So I’ve definitely been there before and yeah, looking forward to getting to come back. You know, there’s a few venues on this tour we’re doing with Milk Carton Kids that I haven’t done, but then a handful that I’m like, oh yeah, we get to go back to that spot. So yeah, I’m looking forward to it. 

If you think bluegrass isn’t your thing and you find yourself saying things like “they play too fast” and “the banjo scares me”, I am prescribing some exposure therapy on February 12^th. This combination of Sierra Hull and The Milk Carton Kids is a viciously entrancing mixture that is bound to make any non-fan into a fan, any fan into an enthusiast, and any enthusiast into a devotee. You can listen to Sierra Hull’s latest album “A Tip Toe High Wire” here and find tickets for Sierra Hull and The Milk Carton Kids at The Englert Theatre here. 

The post Interview: Sierra Hull appeared first on KRUI Radio.

We were wrong. But that doesn’t mean the description isn’t apt in a different way. Dan Soder, much like a golden retriever, is affably stupid.

This isn’t a dig at Soder; in fact, he said this himself multiple times during his routine. Several of his jokes hinged on his supposed stupidity, from him sheepishly admitting to the audience that he thought “the city” would clean out his grandmother’s house after she passed to mistaking Iowa for Wisconsin in terms of the latter’s considerable population of serial killers. He approached a wide variety of topics in this signature style, finding humor in everything from hair transplants to true crime podcasts to misadventures with his friend’s dogs. This approach to comedy — something along the lines of “confused, but happy to be here” — seems to work very well for Soder, and when he’s on stage, it’s patently clear that he is in his element. He had a very relaxed stage presence, often laughing at his own jokes with the audience. When one section or person in the crowd seemed to respond more to a joke than the rest, he often turned to them as if acknowledging them directly, a personal touch that definitely contributed to his “golden retriever” energy.

But what is to be gained from the comedy of a golden retriever?

As co-writer Bodhi noted upon walking into the theater that night, comedy is uniquely hard to write about. The only thing it really needs to do is make you laugh, so finding any nuance in a joke can be sisyphean, a futile attempt to be sincere in an ironic medium. The jokes were funny, sure, but what does it mean? Why does Dan Soder sell out shows? Why do people find what he has to say funny?

In 2016, one of the most popular comedians was Dave Chappelle. He’s since lost his goodwill with many, but it’s still possible to learn from his style of comedy. Back then, what he said was not only funny, but it also provided nuanced commentary on society. It felt like it was actually informing people, not only making them laugh. This is what makes a comedian stand out from their peers: the ability to speak their mind and tell an impactful story. In a way, a comedian’s punchlines are secondary to the messages they tell between their jokes.

Following this framework, Dan Soder, between the lines, is a reflection of his audience. Most of the people in attendance at the Englert that night were rural, working-class white Americans, and his comedy seemed to speak to them on a deep level. He talked to the audience as if we were sitting around a bonfire together, sharing a beer, telling funny stories. The plainness of his speech and his often crass delivery invited us to see him as a friend, not a performer. In the later parts of his routine, he touched on topics like animal abuse and alcoholism, living in a single-parent household, and growing up poor. He talks about his traumatic childhood so cavalierly that it’s almost as if he assumes you understand where he’s coming from— and a large part of his audience does.

Dan Soder may not have any great revelations hidden within his comedy, but he clearly still works as a comedian. He delivers his material in a way that makes him immediately relatable and likeable. You laugh with him because he’s your friend. 

Much like a golden retriever, his attitude is overwhelmingly positive, and we find him a net positive for comedy. He speaks to his audience in a way that fosters genuine connection, and he made every person in the crowd that night just a little happier— including us.

Co-written by Bodhi Brent and Bailey Vergara

The post Review: A Look at Comedy’s “Golden Retriever,” Dan Soder at The Englert Theatre appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Logan Melia: How are you doing? 

Molly Tuttle: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. 

Logan: Thank you so much for taking time for me. You’ve had an incredibly busy week. Congratulations on the two Grammy nominations. 

Molly: Oh, thank you. So exciting. 

Logan: Best Americana Performance, “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark”, Best Americana Album, “So Long Lone with Sunshine”, and you’re touring that record. It’s a phenomenal, phenomenal piece of work there. How long was that process for you, writing the songs, putting it together, staying in the studio? 

Molly: I started writing some of the songs like four or five years ago. That’s where the seeds of this album started. And then I just kind of kept working on it. And then in the last year, I kind of felt like I had this burst of writing a bunch of songs that ended up on the record and then going back to some older ones and kind of, you know, rewriting sections, editing them a little bit to get them all to where I was really happy with them. And then we went into the studio last fall. spent about a month from the pre-production process to actually tracking all the songs. Went in with Jay Joyce who produced the record and we got together whenever I was off the road and then we had about a week of tracking and then mixed it. I think we got everything finished in last January. So it’s been a long time coming and it was really an exciting and fun process, I worked a lot on this record. I probably spent more time on it than any other record I’ve ever made, so that was just a fun process. I just love being in the studio. I’m just excited for what’s next and certainly excited to be going to the Grammys. 

Logan: Oh, absolutely. Now, when you’re writing these songs, are there any that just fall out of the sky? Is it a really laborious process for you? 

Molly: It really varies song by song, some you kind of have to work more to get them to a good place and then some of them just kind of happen all in one sitting. One of the songs on the record, “Old Me New Wig”, which is where we got the title for the album from, a line in that song. That one just kind of happened in one sitting, but some of the others spent, I like came back to them years later and just kind of kept working at it. 

Logan: You’re touring this new album and You’re still playing some songs from The Golden Highway. How do you create these set lists where you balance the old with the new? 

Molly: Yeah, we’re kind of playing about half the new record and mixing in different ones. There are certain songs off the new record that we still haven’t played live and we’re kind of workshopping them. At soundcheck, we’ll be working on a new song and getting it ready for the stage and so that leaves a lot of room in the set to work in stuff from all my other albums, last two Golden Highway records. Those had kind of become staples of my live shows the last few years so it was fun kind of reworking a bunch of those songs with the new band. And we always do like an acoustic portion of the set as well. So a lot of the set will be with drums and sometimes Ellen Angelico, who’s playing multiple different instruments. She’s playing Dobro, electric guitar, and pedal steel. Mary Meyer is another multi-instrumentalist, she plays mandolin, fiddle, and keys. And then we have Vanessa McGowan who plays upright and electric bass and Megan Jane will be on a full drum kit. And then for the acoustic portion, well, it’s all kind of acoustic because I’m always playing acoustic guitar and Mary’s off and on mandolin or you’ll have the Dobro, but we strip down to do a little one mic portion of the set. And that’s when Megan might go to a washboard or maybe we’ll just do like an acoustic trio portion of the set some nights. And so it’s really fun, it’s like a varied set list each night. I feel like it just allows for so many dynamics within the show to kind of, have some of the bluegrass tunes and then some of them we’ve reworked. And then there’s the new album stuff as well. 

Logan: You mentioned your band, a phenomenal, phenomenal collection of musicians. I’m sure there’s so many incredible ones in your circles, but these are all the best of the best. How did you pick these specific artists? 

Molly: Yeah, I reached out first to Vanessa, who’s the bassist. I reached out to her first, I’ve known her for years. And she’s had experiences being a band leader, which is often times in bands, they’ll be like the front person. And then there might be one of the other musicians who is kind of helping orchestrate all the music and putting it all together. And so she’s just knows everyone in Nashville and has all these connections. So I kind of worked with her to figure out the rest of the band, but I told her like that I would need people who are very versatile because I want to still be able to go from playing a bluegrass tune to playing like a more rockin arrangement of one of the newer songs on the record that might have a need like pedal steel or like keys and drums and this and that. So I really wanted to be able to kind of slide between different genres throughout the night when we’re playing the show. We talked about who would really work with that kind of format, and I think the next person we reached out to was Megan Jane, who’s the drummer, and I’ve actually toured with her before I toured with her in 2022 a little bit. Actually, maybe 2021. I can’t remember now. It was whenever we were coming out of the pandemic, we toured together. And so I knew I would love playing with her because I’d already played with her a bunch. And Ellen is someone I’ve known, Ellen Angelico, plays Dobro and guitar and steel. I’ve known her for many years here in Nashville, she’s worked at all these different guitar shops around town and she’s just a great multi-instrumentalist as well. And then Mary Meyer, who strangely enough, like I actually didn’t really know her before we ended up playing together, but she grew up in a bluegrass family band just like me, but she also kind of has like me branched out into all these different genres. So I feel like it’s just a perfect fit musically for her and I to play together since we both love bluegrass, but we do other stuff too. And it just makes for a really fun show because I feel like we’re all kind of on the same wavelength. 

Logan: You are kind of leading the charge for this new generation of bluegrass. I mean, my 17 year old little sister is like listening to Merle Haggard now because of you and Sierra Hull and Billy Strings and all this new wave of it. Can you kind of feel the excitement about your scene coming up? 

Molly: Yeah, it’s really exciting. I think bluegrass music and roots music in general or Americana or whatever you want to call it, it goes through these waves and different generations that push it into new territories. People I looked up to like Alison Krauss and Béla Fleck, Sam Bush, people who are really pioneering new ways of playing this music. It just feels like a huge honor to maybe be part of that next wave coming along, that someone might look to kind of figure out where it could go next in the next generation after this. So yeah, it just feels kind of like it’s so important to keep this music alive and keep letting it evolve. 

Logan: Your artistry mixed with your phenomenal guitar playing has always put me in mind of Glen Campbell. Do you remember your first time ever hearing Glen Campbell? 

Molly: Yeah, I learned about Glen Campbell when I was a kid because I loved the song “Gentle on My Mind”, but I knew it as a John Hartford song. And then of course, Glen Campbell kind of made it famous. So I listened to his version and that was the first song I ever heard Glen Campbell do. So big fan. And that was kind of how I discovered him through being a big John Hartford fan. 

Logan: You just played that with Sierra Farrell, I think, right, “Gentle On My Mind”? That was a phenomenal video. You had a busy week last week. In addition to the Grammys, you released a cover of a personal favorite of mine, “Fairytale of New York”. 

Molly: Yes, yeah, that was a cover I’ve been doing for a couple years now. Ketch and I, Ketch Secore is the one who I recorded it with, and we’ve sung it together for a few years. I’ve been doing these holiday shows in Menlo Park near where I grew up, and we worked it up for those shows after Shane McGowan passed, who sang the song originally with Kirstie McColl and The Pogues. We’re both big fans of the song and of Shane and The Pogues and everything, so we worked that one up after he passed away. And then it just became kind of my favorite, one of my favorites to bring back around the holidays. And we ended up recording it last year after performing it a couple times. And I’m just happy it’s out in the world to get people in the holiday spirit, even though it is kind of like a depressing holiday song. It’s not your typical cheery Christmas song, but I think that’s what I kind of liked about it. 

Logan: Do you start listening to Christmas music after Halloween? After Thanksgiving? What’s your threshold? 

Molly: I don’t usually listen to it very early. I feel like I wait until after Thanksgiving is probably when I can pivot on to Christmas. I don’t have that many Christmas decorations, I feel like we put up a tree and stuff, but I’m, my house isn’t like the place where you walk in and it’s like, Christmas vomit of the ornaments and everything everywhere. Ketch and I live together and he is kind of the opposite. He has a million Christmas ornaments, so we find our balance of maybe we just put it in certain rooms. I feel like it makes me feel crazy when everywhere I look there’s Christmas stuff. I think he kind of brings out the Christmas spirit in me, but we listen and put on a lot of Christmas music in the weeks leading up to it. So far we haven’t really been playing it around the house, but we did release the cover. So that’s my first contribution. 

Logan: It’s quite the good contribution. It’s all a balancing act, you know? 

Molly: Yes, totally. 

Logan: Are you a big physical media collector? Are you a big like vinyls person or CDs person? 

Molly: I have a fair amount of vinyl that I’ve just kind of acquired through the years. Most of it is people will give me vinyl or I get it from my friends. I have a lot of vinyl from friends of mine who put out records and then some of my favorites I have on vinyl. So I don’t have a massive collection, but I do love spinning records when I’m just around the house, you know, kind of puttering around. It’s just so fun to have a record on. I feel like I miss the days when we all would just sit and  listen to one full record back-to-back. So that’s what it kind of brings me back to, is just appreciating a full album that someone put out. Whereas when I’m kind of like out and about, I might just be listening to music still, but kind of picking my favorite songs here and there, maybe not listening to a full record. So that’s what I like to do around the house is just pull out a record, maybe a classic one that I haven’t listened to in a while. I have Joni Mitchell‘s “Blue” is one of my favorites that I have on vinyl and Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors” is another one I have, and a bunch of older ones like that, just kind of classics. I like just rifling through and picking out one that I haven’t listened to in a while. 

Logan: Yeah, I mean, those are some great picks right there. What is on your playlist nowadays? 

Molly: I’ve been kind of listening to… A couple different things like my playlist is always all over the place. I just found out about this band that I’ve been listening to recently called Geese, they’re like an indie rock band. 

Logan: So good.  

Molly: Yeah, they’re awesome. I only figured out who they were because I kept seeing their name on festival lineups and I thought it was Goose because we’ve been playing a bunch of festivals this year that Goose is on the bill. And then I kept seeing Geese and I was like, ‘What’s Geese?’. Like I’ve heard of Goose, but I haven’t heard of Geese. So I started listening to their music and I became obsessed. So I was listening to them a bunch this last week. 

Logan: Oh, they are great. This is going back to kind of your beginnings a little bit here. You’re a phenomenal clawhammer player. Do you remember like the first song you really got down on clawhammer? 

Molly: Yeah, the first song I ever learned on clawhammer was one called “Little Sadie”, and it’s like this old murder ballad. It’s a really creepy song so sometimes I don’t even like to sing it anymore because it’s like in the first line, he’s shooting someone. And I’m just like, it’s a creepy song. But there’s so many songs like that, the old kind of traditional songs, you don’t know who wrote them, but they tell these kind of disturbing stories a lot of the time. And some of them are really more inappropriate than others in our current day and age but that one is that one is fairly mild by comparison to some others. But that was the first song I learned on clawhammer guitar. That’s one that you can hear it. Like the Grateful Dead did it, Jerry Garcia would sing it and so many people have done it through the years. Doc Watson is another version I really like. So yeah, that was my first clawhammer guitar piece and I learned it from a guy out in the Bay Area, Michael Stadler. I had been playing clawhammer banjo but I’d never heard of clawhammer guitar and he kind of showed me that song and the tuning that I use for it. 

Logan: You mentioned these storytelling songs. The storytelling songs, and you write a lot of songs about the road, it’s kind of Springsteen-y in a way. Are you a Springsteen fan at all? 

Molly: A little bit. He’s actually someone I need to listen to more. I’ve been thinking about that recently. I’m like, dang, especially with like the Springsteen movie coming out. I’m like, I actually don’t know his music as well as I should. I know a few of the hits, obviously, but I’ve never really taken the time to dive in. But I’m sure once I did, it would be like a rabbit hole that I would love going down. Maybe that’s next on my agenda. There’s certain artists like that where they’re like, such iconic artists and I feel like I’ve missed them. Maybe that’s due to growing up just listening to bluegrass and then slowly figuring out like popular music when I was a little older. 

Logan: Are there any other artists on that list that you can think of off the top of your head that you’re like, I need to get into these guys? 

Molly: Yeah, other kind of classic artists that I feel like I haven’t fully, maybe I’ve just listened to like one or two of their records. Like Paul Simon, I feel is someone that, of course, I’ve listened to “Graceland”, but I don’t know that much of his other solo stuff. I’ve been thinking recently that I need to dig into his stuff as well. 

Logan: Thank you so much for taking time with me. You can see Molly at the Englert on the 16^th, later this week. I’m looking forward to a great show. 

Molly: Thank you so much. It’s going to be great. 

Molly Tuttle will play The Englert Theatre on Sunday, November 16th at 7:30. Tuttle will be supported by Joshua Ray Walker and Cecilia Castleman for her Iowa City debut. You can listen to “So Long Little Miss Sunshine” now, and can find tickets for her performance here.

The post Interview & Concert Preview: Molly Tuttle at the Englert, Nov. 16 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

White Reaper

White Reaper was the final headlining act and closed out the night with a bang. Pulling partially from their new album and partially from their old hits, the hour worth of consistently engaging music Louisville alt rockers made the room extremely lively and fun to listen too. White Reaper have been pushing out good stuff in the Indie music scene for the last decade with albums like The World’s Best American Band and You Deserve Love. Their new album Only Slightly Empty maintains this consistency while also introducing more mature theme’s about relationships, fame and our world at large. If you want a more in depth review of the album you can read our review of it by KRUI writer and reporter Will Clair.

World’s Worst

World’s Worst first opened up the show phenomenally pulling mainly from their new album American Muscle. With a variety of influences from genres like Shoegaze, Emo, Grunge & Slacker Rock they had a really great performance filled with a nice mix of more relaxed and more high energy songs. My favorite from the set was their last track Rockets. It ran pretty long but I would’ve listened for 10 more minutes because of how it used its repetitive drumming, hypnotic bass lines and beautiful guitar tones (shoutout fuzz peddles) to create this really powerful and addicting wall of sound. After the set was over I got to speak with two of their band members Zach and Jake and had a nice conversation about some of their origins and influences. They all met in the skateboarding scene around University of Utah and formed Worlds Worst in late 2019, after having to split up briefly during covid they reformed towards the end of 2020 and have been going really strong since. If you wanna hear more about their story you can check out the interview KRUI’s own Logan Melia did with them. Great work and thanks for doing an interview with us World’s Worst!

Lip Critic

Lip Critic really amped up the audience for their half hour. Coming in with two drummers, a power electronic set and a lead singer who you would’ve thought was on coke. The pit went into a frenzy. Moshing, walls of death, crowd surfing and general high energy dancing made for a really fun set. The lead singer added to this quite a bit with running into the crowd multiple times and other crazy hijinks. Their mix between styles of dance and electronic music with more traditional American hardcore and metal makes for a really interesting boundary pushing music.

I wanted to highlight their unique style and genre blending that was seen across their performance and music as a whole. Their set consisted mainly of their 2024 album Hex Dealer which I got to buy a CD of afterwards at their merch stand. After taking it home to listen I immediately felt the same rush I felt at their show within the first few tracks and this kept going for the whole album

Kicking off the album with It’s The Magic, the track starts with a powerful bass and initially calm vocals before slowly introducing more instruments. Going into the second chorus the songs continues to intensify until the screeching vocals and heavy drums in verse three, carrying on for the rest of the song. 

Track two Love Will Redeem You wasted no time amping up. The heavy repetition and vocal effects are extremely effective at creating this chaotic almost manic vibe. This theme of manic anger continues on into the song The Heart, which is seemingly about an inescapable feeling of pain rushing through someone’s heart. The scattered vocal lines mixed with lyrics such as “Is beating inside me, a feeling untimely, can’t fight it off, can’t fight it off” effectively induces this feeling of anxiety and paranoia within the listener.

When speaking with the group after the show they discussed some of their influences within industrial hip hop artists such as Death Grips and Danny Brown, the latter of which they’ve actually opened for. These influences really show within their next two tracks. Starting with Bork Pelly we get a fun posse cut with underground rappers GHOSH & ID.Sus and continuing onto the very catchy Spirit Bomber. Both of them are the first fully rapped songs on the album and feature these very manically delivered non linear lines akin to MC Ride and other industrial hip hop artists.

The second and final feature on the track comes from DJ Izzy Da Fonseca on Death Lurking. The repetitive vocal lines create a very hypnotic yet fun and catchy atmosphere leading perfectly into Milky Max. Their most popular song delivers perfectly on what so much of what makes this album so great from front to back. The infectious riffs, the manic yet catchy lyrics, the insane vocals combining with intense electronic production and live drumming create such a fun and powerful song that was both amazing live and amazing to listen too at home.

The next three tracks are where you can see their hardcore roots blossom further. The heavy drumming in the Sermon outro, the breakneck pace of I’m Alive and the screeching vocals on My Wife and The Goblin really push the listeners stamina with nonstop high energy songs. In The Wawa (Convinced I Am God) in it’s own unique way tells what I believe to be a story of a man rejected by conventional society and norms and turning to find his own truth, ie: convincing himself he’s god. I think this perfectly exemplifies how many of the songs lyrics (despite being seemingly nonsensical) have some deeper ideas and meaning behind them. This concludes with the final track Toxic Dodger a braggadocious track that I see as the group almost manifesting their success within music. Repeating “If you wanna stop me you’re gonna have to kill me” until you believe it as hard as they do, and to be quite honest after finishing this record I think I do.

Even a year after its initial release Hex Dealer still remains one of the most exciting and boundary pushing release’s within underground music and this show was living proof of that. Their high energy genre blending sound and undeniable production talent lead to great albums and even better performances. I think its valuable for music audiences to challenge their ears by listening to music that doesn’t neatly fit into specific genre labels which is why I think artists like Lip Critic are so important. And I would definitely keep them on my radar of up-incoming talent within Electronic, Experimental Hip Hop and Noise music.

The post October 4th: White Reaper, World’s Worst & Lip Critic at Gabe’s. Lip Critic’s Hex Dealer Album & Show Review. appeared first on KRUI Radio.

The performance at Gabe’s is put on by The Englert Theater as a part of their Track Zero Series, more information on tickets can be found here from the Englert Theatre (tickets discounted for students). Opening acts will be performed by Dearborn, a four piece alt-rock band straight out of Iowa City, and pianist Sam Blasucci, a founding member of California-based indie band Mapache.

Dearborn

Dearborn playing in someone’s basement, from left to right: Jonah Marcussen, Aaron Knight, Elijah Mickey, and Elias Smith. Photo via Dearborn.

The funky mask-wearing fellas in Dearborn are hot-on-the-block, forming just last year and released their first EP June 20th of 2025. Leaning heavy on resonance and reverb, Dearborn finds a balance between heavy noise and space to breath. The band features Elijah Mickey on vocals and guitar, Elias Smith on bass, Jonah Marcussen on lead guitar, and Aaron Knight on drums.

Sam Blasucci

Sam Blasucci comes from the avenues of Ojai, California, breaking off from his band Mapache in 2023 to pursue music as a solo artist. His latest album, ALL BLUE, was released last June 6th of 2025, a vulnerable album that invites love through smooth vocals and instrumentals that will fill your ears.

Night Moves

Night Moves has been turning heads since their inception in 2009, and with their latest album Double Life, whole bodies have been contorting to get closer and get their ears on the sound. John Pelant plays his beloved Gretsch guitar and belts out starry vocals, Micky Alfano slams down the bass, Mark Hanson bounces on the drums, and Charles Murlowski gets to twang his own guitar. It was with this ensemble that their latest album Double Life took shape, taking sound fonts from the likes of MGMT, Daft Punk, and Tame Impala. Pelant’s vocals reminds me of a younger version of myself, in a way, setting apart their vibe from those artists. But what is the vibe? According to Pelant, it’s “cosmic twang-rock pop sludge.” Makes sense to me. 

Pelant graduated high school in 2009, his band moved away from the music scene in Minneapolis. Alfano and Mark Ritsema were in the same boat, so the three got together and started working on their vision. As they were on tour, drummer Jared Isabella was recruited to play after talking with Alfano. Two and a half years of work later, and Night Moves released its first studio album, Colored Emotions. They were quickly picked up by Domino Recording Company, an independent record label known for signing other acts like Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys. The next four years were swathed by tours, and it was during this time that Pelant discovered legendary indie music producer John Agnello. Agnello went hard on Pelant to push his voice and feel comfortable in it, resulting in their next album Pennied Days from 2016 and future vocal work. They kept on, adding drummer Mark Hanson and guitarist Charles Murlowski to release their third album in 2019, Can You Really Find Me. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic intercepted their momentum, leaving Night Moves paradoxically still. It would take six more years until their next and latest album, Double Life, which just released on July 25th, 2025.

I’m most excited to hear their new material from Double Life. The first track, Trying to Steal a Smile wastes no time busting a killer groove. State Sponsored Psychosis slows it down, eliciting the feeling of fading away, in a good way. White Liquor is a fantastic blend of folk-rock with their current style, being the main stand out for me. Especially with that soothing harmonica…. Though they have made no promises on their lineup, whatever they play is going to be mega swag money. It will be 3 years and 12 days since Night Moves has played at Gabe’s, so I think we should all be there to give them a warm re-welcoming this Wednesday the 15th.

Tickets are still available from the Englert Theatre (tickets discounted for students), or may be purchased at the door.

The post KRUI Big Room Show & Concert Preview: Night Moves at Gabe’s this Wednesday, Oct. 15th! appeared first on KRUI Radio.

On Saturday October 4th, Salt Late City’s World’s Worst took the stage at Gabe’s ahead of Lip Critic and White Reaper as a part of The Englert Theater’s Track Zero series. The four piece heavy and moody rock band, comprised of Andy Aronson on guitar and vocals, Jake Phillips on bass and backing vocals, Jackson Wise on guitar, and Zach Mayo on drums, took some time after sound check to chat with me. They discussed their latest record “American Muscle”, how they got started playing music, and The Real Housewives of SLC.

Logan Melia: Let’s get rocking and rolling here. World’s Worst, how we doing guys?  

Andy Aronson: Dude, doing well. Stoked to be in Iowa City.  

Logan: Your first time, right?  

Andy: Yeah, first time playing Iowa at all. Ever, really?  

Logan: Okay, how are the vibes? What are we, what’s the feel?  

Andy: Dude, good. We walked around the little main street down there briefly. Beautiful. There’s a lot of people out. A lot of bananas. People are wearing banana costumes  

Logan: Banana bar crawl today.

Jake Phillips: Yeah, we saw a lot of bananas.  

Logan: We have one about once a month. Different themes, different costumes.  

Jackson Wise: You think the bananas might make an appearance here?  

Logan: I have seen a banana here before. I’ve seen a monkey costume here before. I’ve seen many things. An alien, a blow-up alien that crowd surfed.  

Andrew: Dude… If you get the monkey costume and the banana costume in the same room, that sounds dangerous. That could go south.  

Logan: That’s a good one, that’s a good one. Did you prep that one?  

Jake: No, no, no, no, he’s quick.

Jake: Andy’s a shit talker.  

Andy: Something’s speaking through me right now.  

Jackson: His comedy juices are flowing.  

Jake: He’s really good at shit talking. Is he the funniest one of the group?  

Andy: No, I think that depends on the day. I think morning time, Jake is the one ripping. I probably didn’t talk for the first four hours of the day. So it’s Jake’s free range.  

Jake: Yeah, I’m a morning person for sure. 

Logan: Okay, are we talking like long-form jokes like you’re setting up or just, you know, off-the-bat, you know, monkey banana jokes?  

Jake: Just kind of just tweaking, saying like crazy shit, you know? 
 
Andy: Yeah, just let… Just no buffers. 

Jake: Stream of consciousness.

Logan: Okay, yeah, yeah. Is it a pretty cohesive stream of consciousness amongst the four of you?

Andy: By the end of this tour, we gain a hive mind sort of thing where we can all look at the same object and have the same joke immediately, probably. But we’ll get there. I don’t think quite yet.  

Logan: And that’s a family. Now, the tour’s just started. We’re already at day three right now. Milwaukee, Chicago, Iowa City. With some really cool bands.

Jake: We played a couple shows on the way out here too, just to get to Milwaukee. We played Omaha and Minneapolis.  

Jackson: This is day three? Holy shit.  

Logan: It’s been a hike for you guys from Salt Lake City, correct?  

Andy: Yeah, yeah.  

Logan: The scene out there, how is it? As someone who doesn’t really know too much about it, what’s the vibe?  

Andy: It’s great, I love it. I feel like I was talking to someone on this tour about it, that Salt Lake is such a… It’s a pretty isolated place in a way. It’s like far from every other major city. So like the scene feels very tight-knit, where it’s like everyone kind of knows everyone. It’s hard to tour, so it like builds a really strong community in Salt Lake, which I love. It’s like we have so many friends in it that are like, I don’t know, going on years now of like everyone’s bands, iterations and all that. It’s like the same kind of people that you see every time. It’s really nice.  

Logan: That’s really sick. The West Coast, obviously things are more spread out. You mentioned that. Do you find yourself touring the West Coast a lot more? Yeah.  

Jake: It for sure feels like easier for us too, because we have like a lot of friends in California, and we’re like put out… One of the record labels that put us out is from Oakland. So it’s like we have a lot of support in the Bay Area. So California and the West Coast is just like super easy for us to do that loop.  

Zach Mayo: It’s really accessible compared to getting out to like Kansas City. 

Andy: Yeah, it takes us like a few days to get on the East Coast to do it right. But West Coast we can kind of tap in pretty quick. But we really, I mean this year we’ve done, this will be our second time going through the East Coast. But last year we did the West Coast like three or four times. We did a lot.  

Zach: Yeah, too much maybe.  

Logan: You mentioned the Bay Area. I mean what a scene for music. I mean Jawbreaker. 
I mean just like all these incredibly influential bands. 

Logan: What was on your playlist growing up?  

Andy: Yeah, growing up it’s like I think skateboarding, like skateboarding movies and videos. That is like my early exposure to a lot of music. And I found like Dinosaur Junior, Sonic Youth, like all of those that are like still to this day, bands I listen to pretty constantly 
like I found when I was like 11 watching like an Alien Workshop video or something. So that was like my entry point into like music that felt like mine. Not just like things that maybe my parents were putting on the radio or something.  

Jake: I really liked like pop punk and emo when I was like younger. My like older sister liked like Warped Tour music. And so like the suggested videos on like the family computer YouTube would be like blink-182. And I just bumped that like hella. 

Logan: What about you guys?  

Zach: Oh, um, yeah, it was a lot of the kind of pop punk, like Fall Out Boy and sort of the mainstream alternative music that was on the radio. And then kind of like Jake would like recommended shit on YouTube just from looking at that. Yeah. And then I had a drum teacher that had a pretty good taste in music and would like… He knew some guys in Thursday. And so like he taught me how to play a Thursday song. 

Logan: Like Tucker Rule?  

Zach: Oh no, the Car Crash one. Yeah, which I don’t know if people like that much, that’s the one he taught me.  

Logan: They’re crazy. They opened up for MCR. Was that a MetLife or whatever? I’m from the Chicago area. They played this really small venue out in the suburbs to like 200 people or something like that on a Wednesday night. It was one of the most electric shows I’ve ever been to in my life.  

Andy: That’s awesome.  

Logan: You got anything, you know, out of left field?  

Jackson: Well, yeah, I mean, I grew up just listening to whatever my dad had in his car and then started skating. And my first CD I bought was the first song that played on our local skate park’s website. It was One-Armed Scissor by At The Drive-In. So “Relationship of Command” was my first CD and that kind of started my blueprint with a lot of my life. Something that no fifth graders should listen to.  

Logan: Well, I mean, you wouldn’t be here without it. Maybe, maybe.  

Jackson: But you know, At The Drive-In inspired me to start learning guitar and start taking it seriously. The Mars Volta, I don’t sing in this band, but they inspired me to sing. 

Logan: When did you guys start playing your instruments?  

Andy: Dude, I was kind of late to it. I learned like open chords when I was younger. Just like very, but then I like kind of didn’t really care that much and I just wanted to skateboard. And then kind of started teaching myself how to like get around the guitar when I was like 18. Yeah, I had like a little background, but kind of didn’t really pursue it much. Like through high school, I didn’t play like guitar at all.  

Jake: Yeah, I started playing guitar like pretty young. And then I played in the orchestra like in middle school. Like I played the bass in the orchestra and then stopped playing around freshman year. And I actually kind of, the orchestra made me hate music. So I kind of stopped for like, you know, like, I don’t know, from like 16 to 19. I didn’t really play music. Like when I went to college, like I didn’t bring my guitar or like anything.  

Logan: Really?  

Jake: Yeah.  

Logan: I mean, drums are a little harder to take to college.  

Zach: Yeah, absolutely. I started playing the drums when I was like 13 and then stopped at 17. And then I didn’t bring the drum kit out to Utah. I’m from Ohio. So I didn’t bring that out until I think we got a house like our junior year. And then didn’t play the kit at all until like a year later. And when Andrew and Jake wanted to start playing music, so.  

Logan: How about you? When did you start playing guitar?  

Jackson: I started playing guitar somewhere in elementary school. My brother got the red, I guess it was a Squire Strat. I don’t remember. It was some off-brand red, it was a red Stratocaster. And I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. So I essentially just took it.  

Logan: I peeked through your guys’ blog on the website. There was mention of a Stratocaster that inspired, what was it? “No, I’m Not”. Yeah, that’s. Is that going to make an appearance tonight? Is that a on-tour guitar?  

Andy: That’s been my mainstay for a little while now. I love that guitar. It’s so fun, but yeah. I love a Strat. I love the, I like that if you Google guitar, like a Strat is the first image that shows up. It’s like the most normal guitar.  

Jake: It’s like the guitar emoji. 

Andy: Exactly. It’s like the most normal guitar. It’s awesome. 
 
Logan: Yeah. All right. So new record this year, very exciting stuff. You brought acoustics, shakers, a whole bunch of stuff. When you’re recording, do you ever have any off-the-wall ideas where you’re like, “let’s get a mandolin in the mix”? Or any big things you want to bring in later?  

Andy: I had an idea and Jake executed it, but we used a shotgun for a sound.  

Logan: Nice. That’s awesome.  

Jake: Yeah, there’s a song called “Angus” and it goes like, “bow-bow (shotgun sound)”. It’s me playing the shotgun.   

Logan: Is that going to make an appearance?  

Jackson: I don’t think, yeah, I don’t think we can bring that in.  

Jake: Yeah, I don’t think they’d love that one.  

Andy: Venues don’t like that. That sound checker, like, can we check the shotgun? They don’t know how to do that one.  

Logan: Ask “how many mics do you need”.

Jake: We brought up the idea and the guy, we were recording it with this guy named Rocky in his basement and he was just like, oh yeah, hold on. He grabbed his gun.  

Zach: “Yeah, let me get my 11 gauge”.  

Andy: Yeah, we threw a lot of ideas around. He had like all kinds of like kind of toys and random music gear in his basement.  

Jake: We had this pedal steel, or not pedal steel, lap steel. Nice. And like synthesizers and like.  

Andy: Yeah, a lot of things that like we don’t, like we don’t, we knew going into it, it’s like we’re not going to do any of this live. It’s like we’re just using this to like flesh out an idea here. Yeah, but yeah, that’s kind of the whole idea with the record is like we fleshed out all the ideas as like a live performance and then see what holes we can punch in with like different ideas, different, like a new guitar track that we probably can’t play live or like a new synth pad, like, you know, things like that. Just to kind of flesh it all out.  

Jake: Tambourines and shit like that.  

Andy: Yeah, shakers.  

Jake: There’s a couple, we knew we wanted to like take a couple, like I know it’s pretty normal in the grand scheme of music, but for us, it’s a bit of a little like, like, you know, something different.  

Andy: Experimental. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we’re pretty bare bones, at least in the past when we record, it’s like. Guitars. Guitar track, bass track, drums. Let’s get vocals on it, call it a day. But yeah, we spent a lot more time with it on this record.  

Logan: When you bring in someone like a steel guitar, who plays that? Do you bring someone in to play that or do you guys figure it out yourselves?  

Jake: The guy who produced our record, Rocky, played the steel guitar and he actually knew his way around like the synths and drum machines and like tambourine and shit. He’s just like a crazy dude who has a lot of, a lot of weird music knowledge, you know?  

Andy: Yeah, he, yeah, he played the synths, played like a white noise machine essentially at one point. Like he, he was awesome. It was really fun recording with him. He kind of can know, he knows how to get around just about everything. It’s cool.

Logan: How long did it take you to record this record? What was the, how long did it take you to write, you know, all that stuff?  

Andy: The writing process is like probably slowly over a year, I would say. And then recording, we kind of like, we didn’t do it in the traditional sense of like studio time, quote unquote, where it’s like we all had the time off and we all got there and we like muscled it through. We kind of all just like fit in our like work schedule, like head to Rocky’s for like a couple hours after work, try and get a guitar track down kind of thing. Yeah. So probably took around a month.  

Jake: It did take exactly a month.  

Zach: It was like 40 hours. 

Jake: 40 hours in the studio. But like over, over a month. You know, like Zach played, Zach played the drums in like two days and then it was kind of like went and played the bass. Guitars took a lot longer, you know, just a couple hours here, a couple hours, because it was just like a friend’s basement, not like a real studio.

Logan: Oh, that’s a real studio.  

Andy: Yeah. I mean, it’s a real studio to us. We love it. 

Logan: It gets the job done.  

Andy: Exactly. Yeah, it’s awesome. Feel more comfortable doing it like that than maybe going somewhere where, a studio where it feels like you kind of put your money into the machine and it’s like parking meter. It’s like, all right, the clock’s ticking. Get your drum take down. I don’t know. That feels a little stressful. It was, took a little bit of the stress out of it to just be hanging out with your friend in the basement, you know?  

Logan: Yeah. When you’re on tour, I saw the Bedridden inspired kind of the “Gas Hands” riff. When you’re on tour, do you write a lot? Do you find yourself writing riffs, or is it kind of like you’re too busy?  

Andy: I mean, there’s like been times where, you know, you’re just messing around at sound check and a riff comes to you, but I wouldn’t say we’re ever like setting aside time to write or do anything like that. We, uh, I think just with like the exposure to like, like I mentioned the Bedridden thing in the blog, it’s like playing with that band and seeing them play every night for like three weeks or so. It’s like you start to pick up on those things that the tricks or the magic that makes that band sound that way. And like, whether you like it or not, you’re going to start like absorbing that and maybe it seeps its way into your writing. And like, I feel like that song, I found myself being like, oh, this is kind of like a Bedridden type beat because of that. Maybe like not even intentionally. So just, I had heard so much of it that that’s where it ended up with.  

Jackson: I think it’s like inspirational to just like be in all these new places and like you’re sleep deprived. So you’re kind of like emotional, you know what I mean? Like I’d like you come out of it with like, it’s just inspiring in a way, you know, like staring at the fucking plains, you know, like staring at the woods for like hours and hours, you know, in a car. 

Logan: You mentioned just, you know, like the bands and everything. You mentioned Blink-182. Those guy’s over there, White Reaper, opened up for blink-182 like two years ago. That’s kind of insane.

Zach: That’s awesome.

Jackson: I got to interject. Is this White Reaper on house music?  

Logan: They are on the playlist.  

Jackson: The voice, I was like, that’s got to be White Reaper. They’re playing their music at their show.  

Andy: That’s awesome. That’s how you know he made it, man. Yeah, you’re on a dime. 

Jackson: I was like kind of losing. I was like, there’s no way. 

Logan: I’ve heard everything from Miley Cyrus to like Judas Priest on this thing. So it’s, you know, we got a variety here.  

Andy: Yeah, we played some pool. It was a good playlist when we were playing.  

Logan: Yeah, they hold an extremely competitive pool league here on Monday nights. It’s, I’ve never participated, are you guys pool players?  

Andy: Here and there.  

Jake: Jackson’s all right, but we like to play.  

Andy: Yeah, good way to pass time, you know, playing a lot of bars on tour. You end up like, “oh, we got two hours till soundcheck”.  

Jake: It’s better than looking at your phone, you know, playing pool with the boys.  

Jackson: It’s a good money exchanging for time. Yeah, a dollar could be five minutes, could be like 20.  

Andy: Yeah, absolutely.  

Jake: That’s a good way to think about it.  

Logan: But it’s fun. And as long as you’re having fun, you’re winning.  

Jake: 100%.  

Logan: I won’t keep you guys too much longer. I got one final question for you guys. Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.  

Andy: Oh, yeah. 
 
Logan: That’s an insane show.  

Andy: Yes, absolutely. 

Logan: What are your guys’ takes on Salt Lake City Natives? Once again, saw a touch of it in the blog. What’s the, give me your unfiltered thoughts here.  

Andy: I love it. It’s cool. I honestly don’t think my girlfriend put me onto it. I think I put her onto it, which is funny. I love it. It’s great. I think it’s gotten the nation to maybe lend their eyes to Salt Lake City, Utah in a way that they haven’t before. It’s cool. I started it initially being like, I just want to see what businesses they go to. Like, kind of like, do I eat at the same places as them? 

Logan: Did you notice any local spots?  

Andy: Oh yeah. It’s a small city. There’s plenty of overlap. But they’re a little bit of, they live in a different tax bracket than me. So they’re going to a little bit more expensive places. But yeah, it’s great. I love it. New season just started. I was only able to watch one episode before heading out on this tour. I’m definitely going to binge through some once we get back. But I’m excited to see where things go. Seems like Britney is already stirring the pot, man. Classic Britney. We’ll see how that ends up. But we’ll see.  

Jake: I’ve honestly never seen it. This is mainly like, but my older sister really likes it. And so anytime there’s a blog or something, she’ll comment on it and be like, “oh, blah, blah, blah”. 

Logan: Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you guys. It was an absolute pleasure.  

Andy: Thank you so much. This was fun. 

Jake: Yeah, thank you man. 

Zach: Thanks man. 

Jackson: Logey-bear. 

Logan: I’m looking forward to a great show. It’s been a pleasure.  

Andy: Hell yeah.  

World’s Worst made a statement with their performance, setting an incredibly high bar for the bands that followed. Their first journey to Iowa was impactful and bold. I walked out with an anticipation for the next time I will see them live, and a song dedicated to myself. Tune in now, and see them in a small venue while you can. World’s Worst are a can’t miss as they continue their tour across the East Coast with White Reaper and Lip Critic. Their newest record “American Muscle,” is out now.

The post Interview: World’s Worst on their past, present, and the Real Housewives of SLC appeared first on KRUI Radio.

As the sequence ended, the band hopped up and got straight to groovin’ Find Your Way Back, a perfect song to reel us in. Though we’d never heard Jefferson Starship live before, we felt that the band was waiting all along for us to find them. Album by album they went, rapping off their best songs while recollecting stories of old that our souls had somehow always known. Cathy Richardson, their current lead female vocalist, had this great story about how David Freiberg, the last founding member still playing, had the opportunity to join The Grateful Dead before they went off to play live at Egypt in 1978.

It’s not often you go to a concert and get to hear the band play your favorite song, and it’s almost impossible to go to a concert and hear every and only your favorite songs for the entire set. But that’s what happened. I felt bad that the congregation of old-heads weren’t standing up and dancing, because I know I would if I got to hear my favorite band from fifty years ago play live. But I know it was enjoyed by all. Between clapping beats, standing ovations, and hoots’n’hollers, I could feel the love shine through.

Jude Gold absolutely crushed some guitar solos, holding back nothing. Danny Baldwin kept the beat alive and got to sing a few. David Freiberg looked like the happiest man alive, I swear he didn’t stop smiling for a second up on stage. Chris Smith was doing so much work on the keyboard I’m surprised his hands didn’t catch on fire. Best of all was Cathy Richardson, enveloping herself in the mantle of Grace Slick and evolving from it, belting out vocals like it was still the 70s. Once they started playing Jane I knew I couldn’t resist getting up and dancing. Izzy and I were the only ones dancing for the whole song, and Cathy caught on about halfway through. She stepped to the left side of the stage near our seats, singing and strumming, as we were in the heat of a crazed whirl, when she jutted out her pointer finger right at us. In that moment, she was singing for us, and we were dancing for her, and it was like magic. No concert have I ever been to has elicited such a magical feeling in me. 

Jefferson Starship ended with an encore of Volunteers, which really got everyone up and going, feeling patriotic and inspired to make our country a better place. And like that, after just an hour and a half, they were gone. They got up, played their best songs, gave me a memory I’ll never forget, and moved on to do it again in St. Charles, Illinois the next Friday. Funny how quickly the best times move by in a flash. 

Thank you, Jefferson Starship, for keeping the spirit of rock’n’roll alive.

The post Concert Review: Jefferson Starship, September 21st appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Art and writing are very important to the culture in Iowa City. You can see both downtown, painted on the side of a building, pasted to a window, or stapled to a telephone pole. I first found out about the Songwriters Festival while passing the Englert on my way to work. Now, roughly three weeks later, I found myself with a press pass and a journal.

Courtney Marie Andrews

The festival started for me on September 5th, sitting in the way back on a plastic chair in Prairie Lights. At roughly 6 pm, Courtney Marie Andrews made her appearance. Andrews, as an acclaimed singer, songwriter, and author from Arizona, most known for her album May Your Kindness Remain. I was personally incredibly unfamiliar with her work. Despite this, after sitting through her performance, I wanted nothing more than to become familiarized with her work. She opened her set by sharing that her new book, Love Is a Dog That Bites When It’s Scared, had been recently published. She described the collection of poems as a story told in three parts. Part one, falling in love, part two, the fall out, and part three, the love around you.

It’s both impressive and gut-wrenching to see how well she was able to capture the feelings of puppy love. Progressing through the section, the sprinkles of doubt started to make a subtle appearance. I knew I was going to be a mess the moment I saw her pick up the guitar. Each chapter ended with a song, and all three blew me out of the water.

Hearing an artist perform in a large venue is always impressive. The venerable and intimate feeling of hearing Courtney Andrews in the middle of Prairie Lights is completely unmatched.  

Overall, having the experience of loving and losing someone and then finding yourself condensed down into a single hour left me amazed.

Sunny War

After a text from my roommate who was working an event and a quick sprint across downtown to make it to The James Theater, I found myself listening in the middle of Sunny War’s set. Coming from Nashville, Sunny War’s sound is an incredible mix of rock, folk, and gospel. There is no amount of or arrangement of words that could describe her wonderful performance.  

From her set, Have Another Pill, from her Red White and Blue album, stood strong during her performance. Mental health is a concept that has been explored in art for some time. “Have Another Pill” is a key example of this concept. The song details the singer’s first trip to the psych ward, creating a deeply emotional work of art. Watching an artist perform something so intensely personal in a live setting is key to ICSF.

On top of her set, Sunny War kept the crowd entertained with her jokes. Between her ‘you can always just make a face and nod’ and the newly learned knowledge of her dog’s namesake, actor and former firefighter Steve Buscemi, I found it hard to take notes, because every single sentence felt like it the funniest thing in the world.  

Sunny War was the final performance of my evening and was a wonderful note to end my night on.

Overall, both Sunny War and Courtney Andrews’ ability to be completely and wholly open in their art showed in every single second of their performances. Both sets worked as perfect tone setters for what would end up being the rest of ICSF.

The post Concert Review: Iowa City Songwriters Festival, Friday, September 5th appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Assembling The Band

To know Starship’s history, we have to go back to 1970. Paul Kantner, a leading creative force behind the band, was on break from touring. He assembled Grace Slick, Joey Covington, and Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane; David Crosby and Graham Nash; and Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann for his new album: Blows Against the Empire. It would be credited to Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship!

Kantner began to assemble his crew. Slick was already on board. David Freiberg was a founding member of Quicksilver Messenger Service, a popular band during its time, and had played with Kantner during the early sixties. Freiberg supplied him with planetary musicianship throughout his solo career from 1970-74, enough to earn him a spot on the real starship.

Craig Chaquico was a high school english student playing in his teacher’s band Steelwind. The teacher introduced Chaquico to his friend Paul Kantner, who found his guitar playing so out-of-this-world during their collaborations that he earned his position as lead guitar.

Grace Slick was in studio working on her first solo album, and so was Pete Sears, a bassist co-producing an album with a different artist, yet he had no trouble assisting Slick in her project. He had previously played on Papa John Creach’s first solo album, an electric violinist who played with many blues legends. Discussions with both Sears and Creach quickly flew into orbit as they joined the starship.

Last but not least is John Barbata, a drummer who previously worked with The Turtles and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It was during a break in 1972 for CSNY that David Crosby introduced Barbata to the members of Jefferson Airplane. He played drums for their last two albums before the official breakup in 1974, when Kantner approached Barbata with an idea for their next stage: Jefferson Starship.

Golden Years & Hit Songs

So the starship took flight on a mission to spread love with Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, David Freiberg, Craig Chaquico, John Barbata, Pete Sears, and Papa John Creach. After their first album Dragon Fly, previous Jefferson Airplane singer Marty Balin got onboard and helped write one of the band’s most successful albums in 1975, Red Octopus. Hits from this album include “Miracles” and “Play on Love.” Next was Spitfire in 1976, with great tracks such as “With Your Love” and “St. Charles.” Their final album with this lineup produced Earth in 1978, including the awesome songs “Count on Me,” “Runaway,” and “Crazy Feelin’.”

The starship began to run out of fuel in late 1978 after the firing of Grace Slick for her alcoholism. Marty Balin quit just a few months after, and John Barbata was seriously injured in a car accident that forced his resignation. The other members were not deterred. Former drummer for Journey Aynsley Dunbar was brought on board, along with vocalist Mickey Thomas and producer Ron Nevison. With this refuel, the starship flew on.

Their next album Freedom At Point Zero found immense success with the song “Jane” in 1979. Grace Slick returned to grace in 1981 during the recording of Modern Times, in which she sang “Stranger.” Other hits include “Find Your Way Back” and “Stairway to Cleveland,” which hilariously criticized its fans for disliking their change in style over the years. Next was Winds of Change in 1982, with great tracks “Be My Lady” and “Winds of Change.” Aynsley Dunbar was phased out for Donny Baldwin, and their final album was completed in 1984, Nuclear Furniture. Hits from this album include “No Way Out” and “Layin’ It On the Line.”

Kantner became bored with the band’s direction and left it in the remaining member’s hands, but not without enacting a lawsuit to prevent them from using the name “Jefferson Starship.” Kantner left with a cash settlement, and ownership of the name was split between Grace Slick and manager Bill Thompson. However, the core of Jefferson Starship was still there in Slick, Thomas, Chaquico, Sears, and Baldwin (Freiberg got mad and left because he got replaced on piano), so they renamed themselves “Starship” and turned on the thrusters to max power.

Starship went on to produce two albums with these core members, the first arriving in 1985 as Knee Deep in the Hoopla. This album spawned not one, but two number one hits in “We Built This City” and “Sara,” as well as “Tomorrow Doesn’t Matter Tonight.” Their other album in 1987, No Protection, had ANOTHER number one hit with “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” and other bangers Not Over (‘Til It’s Over),” and “Beat Patrol.” Unfortunately, most of the core members left after this album between 1987-89. That was until Paul Kantner came back to re-establish Jefferson Starship in 1992.

Jefferson Starship onstage at Marriott’s Great America (now known as California’s Great America), June 23, 1984, not long before their breakup into Starship. (Left to right: Grace Slick, Mickey Thomas, Pete Sears, Paul Kantner, Craig Chaquico, Donny Baldwin, and David Freiberg.)

Current Day

Over time, Jefferson Starship re-recruited old members and got some new ones. They continued to tour with a new lineup and work on projects from that point forward until Kantner’s death in 2016. In an act of goodwill, Slick and Kantner’s family approved of letting the current members of the band perform as Jefferson Starship for their entire lifetimes.

Today, Jefferson Starship tours with David Freiberg (vocals & guitar), Donny Baldwin (drums), Chris Smith (keyboards), Jude Gold (lead guitar), and Cathy Richardson (vocals, guitar). Their latest album, Mother Of The Sun, includes an awesome rendition of “Embryonic Journey” that I recommend everyone go check out. Jefferson Starship has roots all the way back to the early sixties, and though the style, songs, and members have all changed, the soul still remains.

The show begins at 7:30 this Sunday the 21st, and student tickets are $31.25. I hope to see you there! (I’m especially excited to see Freiberg on stage, still playing at 87 years old!)

Poster for Jefferson Starship’s current 50th anniversary tour.

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