My Weekly Mixtape: Music Discovery & Nostalgia

Just like the handwritten notes tucked inside a favorite cassette, this is a quick update from My Weekly Mixtape.

This time, I'm sharing what's coming up for the show, a few exciting changes behind the scenes, and a preview of what's headed your way in the weeks & months ahead.

Whether you've been listening since the beginning or just discovered the show, thanks for being part of the journey. I can't wait to share what's next!

🎙️...

For some people, Smash Mouth begins and ends with a handful of massive hits. But the band's story goes much deeper than "All Star," "Walking On The Sun," or their immensely popular take on The Monkees’ "I'm A Believer."

This week, founding bassist Paul De Lisle joins me to look back at the road that took Smash Mouth from the ska-punk energy of Fush Yu Mangto multi-platinum success, movie soundtracks, internet memes, and a plac...

FUEL has always lived in that space between legacy and forward motion—where the songs become bigger than the moment they were written, and the story keeps evolving long after those charting moments.

This week, Carl Bell joins me to reflect on that long arc of the band: from the early days of “Shimmer” and “Hemorrhage” finding their way into the fabric of rock radio, to what it means to still be performi...

Think narrowing twenty-five years of dance music down to ten songs was difficult the first time? So did a lot of you!

After our first dive into 10 of the biggest dance tracks of the last quarter century, the messages started rolling in. Some of your favorites were missing. Some songs sparked spirited debates. And more than a few people reminded us just how impossible it is to squeeze twenty-five years of dance-floor history into a s...

This week, I’m skanking my way through 10 ska punk cover songs for you to sink your checkerboard Vans into. From ska punk bands reinventing pop hits, to up-and-coming acts taking swings at ska and punk classics — it’s all stitched together by that unmistakable upstroke rhythm and pure “pick it up” energy.

From basement-show singalongs to Warped Tour staples, ska bands have been flipping familiar songs ...

There’s a story behind the name Parker Barrow — and it’s not just a nod to Bonnie and Clyde.

This week, Megan Kane and Dylan Turner join me to unpack how that outlaw-inspired identity connects to a very real journey — one built less on romance and more on survival. From living in an RV and scraping by, to finding clarity and momentum as a band, this is a conversation about what it actually takes to build some...

This week, I’m digging into 10 songs that all run 10+ minutes — and somehow never feel like it. These are the tracks that keep unfolding, shifting, and pulling you forward just enough that the clock stops mattering. No meandering. No “this could’ve been trimmed” moments. Just long songs that know exactly what they’re doing.

Spanning the rock spectrum — classic rock, metal, punk, prog, and al...

There are moments in life that feel too strange to be real — the kind you replay just to make sure they actually happened. This is one of those stories.

On Saturday, June 17, 2000, during Poison’s Power to the People tour at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ, I went from the crowd… to on stage with Poison.

One minute I’m watching a rock concert. The next, I’ve got Bret Michaels’ microphone i...

This week, we're revisiting my feature-length interview with Tom Keifer, legendary Cinderella frontman, as he reflects on the band's enduring legacy, his acclaimed solo career, and the challenges that nearly ended it.

In this in-depth conversation, Tom shares the stories behind his critically acclaimed solo albums The Way Life Goes (2013) and Rise (2019), offering insight into his songwriting process, musical influences, and the tra...

There’s a moment every parent (or anyone who’s been around kids long enough) recognizes — a song that gets played over and over again… and somehow doesn’t wear out its welcome. That space — where something clicks for kids and doesn’t lose the room for the adults — is harder to pull off than it sounds. And it’s exactly where Laurie Berkner has lived for decades.

This week, she jo...

Most people remember their first concert. I’ve talked about mine more than a few times — David Lee Roth and Poison on the 1988 Skyscraper tour. But the second one hits differently for a lot of people.

For me, it was Aerosmith and Skid Row on the Pump tour in 1990. I was 12, standing there completely wide-eyed, when Skid Row tore into “Piece of Me” and something just clicked — that bass line. That moment...

Upbeat dance classics, pop anthems and heavier rock songs give you one feeling — but what happens when you slow them down, strip them back, and see what lies beneath the surface? This week on My Weekly Mixtape, I explore why slow cover songs often hit harder than the originals, taking familiar pop, rock, and dance hits and reshaping them into something far more intimate.

Across 10 mellow cover versions, I look at how tempo, sp...

Can you narrow 25 years of dance classics into 10 songs? Nice try if you say it's easy!

This week, Jay Sweet joins me to dive into the tracks that kept crowds moving from the early 2000s straight through today — ten songs that shaped twenty-five years of parties, playlists, wedding receptions, late-night drives, and every moment in between.

We’re looking at the hooks, the beats, and the cultural waves that turned these so...

Is there such a thing as a Rush deep cut? To the diehards, absolutely not — but that shouldn’t stop us from trying! As the band gears up for their long-anticipated Fifty Something anniversary tour, I am throwing back to an episode where I was the guest, and joined Steve & Gerry on the Something For Nothing: A Rush Fancast.

In this discussion, we set out to celebrate the overlooked corners of one of the most iconic ca...

Few artists soundtrack the open road quite like Tom Petty. From radio-dominant anthems to overlooked gems hiding deeper in the catalog, his songs feel engineered for long stretches of highway, glowing dashboards, and miles that slip by unnoticed.

This 10-song Tom Petty road trip playlist brings together the familiar hits you instinctively reach for and the lesser-known tracks that hit just as hard. It’s the natural extension o...

Thirty years after Ledbetter Heights first introduced Kenny Wayne Shepherd to the world, we circle back — not just to revisit the songs, but to understand what happens when you’ve lived with them for decades. From the raw instinct of a 17-year-old finding his voice to the perspective that only time, touring, and life can bring, this conversation digs into how those early recordings hold up — and where they’v...

Working in network radio in the early 2000s was a nonstop rollercoaster—long, unpredictable hours, the constant pressure of a 24/7 operation, and a news cycle that could reshape your entire life in an instant. But on the flip side, it also meant crossing paths with the biggest names in music, movies, and television as they moved through studios to appear on stations across the country.

This is one of those moments.

It’s t...

It’s been a few years since Amanda Lyberg of Eva Under Fire last stopped by — and this time, the stakes feel different.

This week, we dig into Villinous, a record that doesn’t just evolve the band’s sound, but reframes it — leaning hard into identity, perception, and what it really means to take back labels that were never meant to empower.

A big part of that conversation centers around the title track, ...

This week, I’m joined by Chris Crabb of The Strike — and we get into how a band built on ’80s new wave, synth pop, and yes, saxophone, turned “The Getaway” into a song that’s taken on a life of its own.

From multiple versions on A Dream Through Open Eyes to a stripped-down take that’s now showing up in wedding first dances, we talk about how the same song can evolve — and what those re...