Music Makers and Soul Shakers with Steve Dawson

Ken Coomer joins me on the podcast today. Ken is a fantastic drummer, producer, and studio owner, as well as one of the few musicians I know that is actually from Nashville! Ken is well-known as the original drummer for Wilco, as well as the last for Uncle Tupelo, bands that literally defined the alt-country genre in the mid-90’s. But before that, Ken came up in the punk and alternative rock scene here in Nashville with his band Cl...

On the show today is singer, songwriter, fiddle player and now producer, Maya DeVitry. Maya is an incredible musician and someone I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with in a number of projects with over the last few years. Originally from Pennsylvania, Maya is known by some for her work with her old band, The Stray Birds, and some from her more recent solo recordings and touring. She has released 4 solo albums since 2019 and th...

Songwriter, blues guitarist and singer Chris Smither joins me on the show today. I had the pleasure of meeting Chris and playing with him this past summer at a festival, and he really was a force of nature. He had an incredible groove between his guitar lines and his powerful foot, all brought together with a voice that has developed so much character over the years it just oozes out of him. Chris grew up in New Orleans, but as you...

Legendary drummer Willie Cantu is on the show today, the sole surviving member of the ultimate lineup of one of the greatest ensembles of all time - Buck Owens’ Buckaroos. I’ve talked about the Buckaroos on this show a number of times - they keep coming up in discussions with various folks, and I’ll say it again that I think that mid to late 60’s lineup is as electrifying a band as any band of that era, no matter what genre. That l...

Guitarist and session ace Richard Bennett joins me on the show this week. Originally from Phoenix, Richard spent the first big chunk of his career in the 70’s LA studio scene, before moving to Nashville in the 80’s where he’s been a mainstay in studios ever since. Richard is known as one of the ultimate sidemen and spent 17 years in Neil Diamond’s band, playing on all of his records and tours from ’71 to ’87. Richard has had anothe...

Jen Gunderman is one of the great keyboard players currently working out of Nashville. She is always busy in recording studios and venues around town with all kinds of bands, but is also on the road as a member of Sheryl Crow’s band, a gig she’s held for over 10 years now. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Jen now and then over the past number of years, always in the studio, and she always shows up to a session with great ideas...

Singer, guitarist, jug-band pioneer and songster Jim Kweskin joins me on the show today. I can’t tell you how many times I heard Jim’s name before I ever heard his music. To the generation before me, he was a total legend, and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band was very influential to many musicians who grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. Jim came up in the Boston/Cambridge area and The Jug Band was legendary around those parts and eventually acro...

Banjo legend Tony Trischka joins me on the show this week. I first saw Tony playing with his band Psychograss back in the 90’s at a bluegrass festival in Vancouver, and have been following Tony’s music ever since. Tony is from Syracuse, and has spent most of his career in the New York area. His early bands included The Down City Ramblers, Country Cooking and Breakfast Special. He also started making really cool solo records in the ...

Pedal steel guitarist Rich Hinman joins me on the show today. Rich is a really creative player who has definitely spent a great deal of time with the classic steel guitar cannon, but has very much branched out and developed his own style and voice on the instrument. He has a great flair for improvisation, and his tone and touch are really of the highest calibre. Rich is currently a teacher at Berklee College in Boston in the guitar...

On today’s show is Missy Raines, one of the great bluegrass bassists out there, not to mention a fabulous singer and songwriter. Bluegrass bass playing is a funny thing - on the surface it seems simple. But there’s a whole other level to it, and when you hear someone like Junior Huskey do it, or Mike Bub, or Dennis Crouch, or Missy Raines, they all play at that level. There’s a way the really good players place their notes, there’s...

On today’s show is Garrett Dutton, better known to you and me as G. Love and his band G. Love and Special Sauce.

G. Love appeared on my radar in the early 90’s when I was just getting into playing in bands. Originally from Philadelphia, but breaking out of the Boston music scene, Special Sauce’s debut album was pretty massive in my world. It mixed blues, soul, rap and hip hop in an organic way that no one else was doing. Garrett was...

The incredible guitarist Duke Levine joins me on the show today. Back in the 90’s and early 2000’s when I was just getting started, Duke was putting out all these really amazing twangy instrumental guitar records. He actually started out as almost a fusion guy on his first album, but pretty quickly veered off into this highly original guitar style that has elements of blues, jazz, country, bebop and influences like Roy Buchanan, Ra...

Dobro master Rob Ickes joins me on the show this week. Rob was kind enough to drop in to the Henhouse to hang for a while, talk and even play a little bit. Rob is one of those players that is so good on one particular instrument that he’s managed to carve out a really impressive career being dedicated to just one thing. And that one thing is the dobro, which is kind of a specific instrument - It’s somewhat married to bluegrass musi...

Margaret Glaspy joins me on the show this week. Her album from last year “Echo The DIamond” was one of my favorite records of the year. Margaret started out as a fiddle player, and played pretty seriously around California as a youngster before dedicating herself to the guitar and eventually going to Berklee for a short time to study. She played around Boston and then moved to New York where she found her way into the creative musi...

My guest this week is the incredible Mississippi songwriter, guitarist and drummer Cedric Burnside.

Cedric comes from a long family line of Hill Country blues musicians. His dad is the drummer Calvin Jackson and he is the grandson of the legendary R.L. Burnside, one of the great traditional Mississippi blues artists of all time. Cedric is an exceptional guitarist and songwriter who seems to have found a unique place in the landscape...

JJ Grey joins me this week to get Season 8 rolling in style!

JJ is an incredible singer, songwriter, guitar player and frontman for his band JJ Grey and Mofro, based in the Jacksonville, Florida area. He’s been making soulful, brash, and deeply authentic soul and rock n roll records since the release of “Blackwater” in 2001. JJ has a brand new album out now called “Olustee”, which is a remarkable record due to the stellar material a...

This episode is just to check in and let listeners know the schedule for the upcoming season, which will begin droping new episodes one week from today. Be sure to subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and thanks for tuning in!

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https://www.makersandshakerspodcast.com

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I’m preparing to release Season 8 starting very soon, but in the meantime, the great Duane Eddy passed away earlier this week and I have decided to re-release our conversation from 2016. That was a 2-part episiode, but I’ve combined them here into one so you can spend a couple hours with Duane and I chewin’ the fat. RIP Duane Eddy!!

You can join our Patreon here to get all episodes ad-free, as well as access to all early episode...