Performance Anxiety
Have you ever wanted to sit down with your favorite artists and talk about what happens behind the scenes? Have you wanted to hear the crazy stories about recording, touring, and creating art that we all know exist? Performance Anxiety gets those stories for you.
Episodes
April 26, 2024 • 77 mins
Today’s guest reminds me to take my time. Please give a Performance Anxiety welcome to singer/songwriter, Lynn Drury. She has made New Orleans her home but she grew up in what sounds like every little girl’s dream, raising and training quarter horses for the rodeo circuit in Mississippi. And she always loved music but never actually considered pursuing it professionally. That is until she was walking around New Orleans and decided ...
Mark as Played
April 18, 2024 • 142 mins
Today’s guest makes me feel like royalty. It’s drummer Michael Bland and he has worked with some of the best in the business. But before that, he played in school and found out he had perfect pitch! Finding that out helped solidify his decision to be a musician. But his parents weren’t exactly thrilled about the idea and pushed him to have a backup plan. That is, until Prince called the house looking for Michael. This started a tre...
Mark as Played
April 10, 2024 • 65 mins
Today’s guest makes me appreciate life a bit more. Welcome a woman who has lived the blues, Bex Marshall. She talks about how she always had this absolute need to learn how to play guitar and the huge impact karaoke had on starting her career. She was singing in a band called Blue Murder before she had to press pause on her music career and get a “real” job. But it wasn’t all that bad. She traveled the globe and it was on a flight ...
Mark as Played
April 3, 2024 • 107 mins
Today’s guest reminds me that not everything is always as it seems. Please welcome Lance Hoppen from the band Orleans. Prior to speaking with Lance, I hadn’t dug very deep into Orleans’ catalog. But when I did I realized that there is a whole lot going on there! The band tends to get lumped into the yacht rock genre but there is so much more to their sound.
Lance gives a history lesson on the band that became the family business. A...
Mark as Played
March 28, 2024 • 59 mins
Today’s guest really makes me want to be more experimental…somehow. It’s Michael Wiener of The Children…(with the ellipses). They have just released what is technically their second album. But good luck finding the first. Michael’s household growing up was not typical. His mother was a pioneering photojournalist and his father was a child Holocaust survivor. And they encouraged his pursuit of the arts and culture, which led him to ...
Mark as Played
March 22, 2024 • 100 mins
Today’s guest makes me wish I had studied more in school. Meet Jason Achilles. This guy’s breadth of talent and interests just blows my mind! He’s not just a talented musician but he’s also an engineer who has recorded the sounds of Mars from a microphone system he was in charge of on the Mars rover. And apparently this kind of professional diversity runs in the family. By the way, he uses one of the microphones that didn’t make it...
Mark as Played
March 14, 2024 • 54 mins
Today’s guests exemplify the virtue of patience. Please welcome Jim Suhler and Buddy Whittington of the band Texas Scratch. Their debut album was released recently…14 years AFTER it was recorded. And if you’re asking why, I’m not even sure the band can answer that. Texas Scratch is a Texas blues album that was recorded in New Jersey. Maybe that’s why it took so long…the universe couldn’t believe such a great blues album could have ...
Mark as Played
March 5, 2024 • 70 mins
On this episode of Side Projects, I am joined, once again, by London’s Modern Guilt. Or at least most of them. Scott, Jaz, and Andreas are joined by their producer Mikey Buckley of Desert Ships. Missing during this recording are Dan and Glyn. And Glyn is especially missing, as he has left the band; but they tell me it was on good terms. We’ll see about that. But that situation actually factors into the topic of this episode: the im...
Mark as Played
February 28, 2024 • 92 mins
Today’s guest makes me want to push through the rough times. Please welcome Blake Lewis. You might remember him from Season 6 of American Idol. But there is so much more to Blake than being one of the most unique contestants on one of the hottest properties on television. He grew up with his mom playing bluegrass banjo, which is why he rebelled into electronic music. He was the first contestant on Idol to beatbox. So, naturally, Bl...
Mark as Played
February 22, 2024 • 73 mins
Today’s guest is revelatory. I’m extremely happy to welcome author Joel Selvin to the podcast. He’s written a book called Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey Of Jim Gordon. The title tells it all. It’s the story of one of the (if not THE) greatest drummers of all time and his mental health battle that ultimately ended in tragedy.
Joel masterfully tells the story from Jim’s beginnings, how he started playing drums,to touring with Th...
Mark as Played
February 14, 2024 • 78 mins
Today’s guests make me appreciate the patience of others. Please welcome, for the third attempt, Andre and Terence from Locrian. What you’re listening to is our third attempt at this episode. The first was scrapped due to a computer malfunction. The second had an iphone issue. So take three was the final attempt! And it was worth it. Locrian has a new album set to release so the timing couldn’t have been better. Terence and Andre t...
Mark as Played
February 7, 2024 • 91 mins
Today’s guest makes me want more names. It’s Jeremy Wilms and we’ll go through all his different names throughout this episode. But each one has a reason. Jeremy is his family’s musical version of “3rd time’s a charm”. He’s managed to study and play guitar with some amazing people. After college, he moved from Duluth, GA to NYC and kept studying in the form of open jam sessions with his neighbors and some naked people.
Jeremy is a...
Mark as Played
January 31, 2024 • 63 mins
Today’s guest makes this episode kind of literal. Meet Elisa Di Napoli, AKA Elyssa Vulpes. She does so many things, it’s really tough to pin it down. However, one of the areas she specializes in is hypnotherapy. She has an entire program to help artists over come…wait for it…PERFORMANCE ANXIETY! But you don’t just start out in life as a hypnotherapist. Actually, Elisa’s first career choice was a cartoon singer.
Elisa talks about h...
Mark as Played
January 24, 2024 • 65 mins
Today’s guest brings me back to a simpler time. Welcome Natalie Ribbons of Tele Novella. I learned about her family connection to radio and her parents’ decision that she should be a concert pianist after they inherited a piano. While Natalie may have disagreed, it IS what got her singing and steered her to a performing arts high school (after getting kicked out of her previous school). That’s where she took secret guitar lessons.
...
Mark as Played
January 17, 2024 • 104 mins
Today’s guest makes me feel free. I can’t help that one and you’ll see why in a second. My guest is Malcolm Bruce. In addition to being the son of legendary bassist Jack Bruce, he is, himself, quite a gifted and accomplished musician. In this episode we figure out where we’re going wrong, discuss growing up as Jack Bruce’s kid, and when he began writing, music and other things. This was so much fun because it was the epitome of a c...
Mark as Played
January 11, 2024 • 47 mins
Today’s guest makes me feel velvety. And that works on a lot of levels here. Welcome Stan Demeski, drummer for The Feelies. They’ve released their first ever live album. But there isn’t a Feelies song to be found on it. It’s all Velvet Underground, all the time. But before we get there, Stan talks about his early days; being a product of New Jersey school bands, his early recording history, and how he started playing with The Feeli...
Mark as Played
January 9, 2024 • 68 mins
Today’s guests make me feel informed. I’m joined by electronic artists Moe Espinosa (AKA Drumcell) and Surachai. But we didn’t get together to talk about electronic music, DJ’ing, or producing. We are discussing their business venture, Onyx Record Press. Of course we start off talking about their earliest musical experiences and how they started their careers. Moe and Surachai tell how they met the other two main players in Onyx, G...
Mark as Played
January 2, 2024 • 70 mins
In this episode, we discuss something I have no idea about. How is that different from any other episode, you ask? Well in this one, I’m joined by Benjamin Wright of Benjamin Jayne and Jeremy Toback of Renee and Jeremy and Brad. We all got together to talk about music and psychology. That’s a pretty broad brush but since Benjamin is a psychologist during the day, I felt we were in good hands. We begin by asking the question, are th...
Mark as Played
December 29, 2023 • 52 mins
Today’s guest makes me feel honored. It’s Jad Fair and he doesn’t do many interviews. So when we were able to make this happen, I was thrilled. Jad is one half of Half Japanese (¼ Japanese?). And he’s not even actually Japanese! I learned that and a lot more in this episode. OK, I knew he wasn't any Japanese before doing this podcast. But what I DID learn was how Jad creates his unique music. It began when he and his brother David ...
Mark as Played
December 20, 2023 • 82 mins
Today’s guest makes me feel artificially intelligent. Welcome back Fredrik Sareoa of Datarock. And with his band’s new release and their use of AI in different aspects of the album, I thought he’d be the perfect person to have on for a discussion about artificial intelligence in music. But that’s not all we talk about. Fredrik gives new bands some wardrobe advice, how he’s always worried about being sued, Superman’s sex life, what ...
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.
A straightforward look at the day's top news in 20 minutes. Powered by ABC News. Hosted by Brad Mielke.