Transmissions

Transmissions :: A Conversation With Steve Gunn

Were joined by singer/songwriter/producer/guitarist Steve Gunn for this episode of the Transmissions podcast—completing our round of talks with the participants of the Gunn/Lattimore/Tyler canceled tour. But there’s much more to hear here than another pandemic rap. Topics of conversation include the new Livin’ In Between EP, which pairs Gunn’s last Lagniappe Session with a brand-new cover of Neil Young’s “Motion Pictures,” Steve’s hardcore youth, immersion in the experimental Philadelphia sce...

Transmissions :: A Conversation With Buck Curran

On this episode, we caught up with guitarist and songwriter Buck Curran. Formerly one half of the psychedelic duo Arborea, Buck is currently situated in Bergamo, Italy, in one of the areas hit hardest by COVID-19. Though he’s quarantining with his family, he decided now was the right time to release his third solo album, No Love is Sorrow.  It’s a gorgeous and comforting record. Writing about it for AD’s Bandcamping feature, Tyler Wilcox said the lp was full of “melancholy but uplifting folk...

Transmissions :: UFOria (1985)—An Appreciation

Welcome to the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions podcast, and this episode, we’re encouraging you to watch UFOria, a 1985 science fiction comedy starring Cindy Williams, Fred Ward, and Harry Dean Stanton. At once sweet, earnest, silly, and wry,it was a flop upon initial release and has subsequently slipped through the cracks of cinematic history—but thanks to an enterprising YouTuber, you can join AD’s Jason P. Woodbury and Chad DePasquale in falling under its strange spell. “This is one of th...

Transmissions: A Conversation With Jesse Jarnow

And we’re back. For this episode of Transmissions, we’re joined by author, WFMU DJ, and historian of all things “heady,” Jesse Jarnow. His writing has been published by Relix, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times, and in addition to his beautifully written and deeply researched books, which include Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock, Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, and Wasn’t That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of A...

A Conversation With Mary Lattimore

Transmissions :: A Conversation With Patterson Hood

Transmissions Podcast: A Conversation With William Tyler

For the last decade, William Tyler’s widescreen guitar epics have told wordless stories, about forgotten histories, American myths, backroads, and mystic visions. On this episode of Transmissions he discusses traveling to Nashville as the pandemic spread and the art he’s been enjoying while hunkered down.

Transmissions :: Strange Days—A Conversation

Social distance dispatching. Some background, to start. In recent weeks, we've been assembling elements—interviews, readings, scripts, segments—for the next season of the Transmissions podcast. But the onset of global pandemic has caused us to consider: What feels important right now? Would discussing it help? To that end, we're taking the Transmissions podcast weekly for now, and featuring check-ins between AD founder Justin Gage and editor Jason P. Woodbury. We have a lot of plans for the p...

Transmissions :: Jeff Parker on Suite for Max Brown

New year, new decade. Welcome to the future, it’s 2020 and you’re tuned into Transmissions, Aquarium Drunkard’s monthly podcast, featuring, as always, sounds and ideas that inspire us, the team behind Aquarium Drunkard. Your hosts are founder and editor Justin Gage, and editor Jason P. Woodbury. Our guest this episode, is guitarist and composer Jeff Parker. Parker is best known for his work with Tortoise, the Chicago Underground Quartet, and Isotope 217, and he’s worked with a wide cast of n...

Transmissions Podcast :: Don Muro / The Replacements

Welcome to the final 2019 episode of the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions podcast. On this episode, we sit down with educator, synth pioneer, and all around genuine soul Don Muro. Earlier this year, Flannelgraph Records continued its archival dig into his treasure trove of sounds with a reissue of Anthology, his 1981 LP featuring jazzy funk, synth pop, and progressive fusion rock. Back before synth culture was a thing, Muro and his compatriots adhered to a DIY ethic. I sat down with Don to tal...

Transmissions Podcast :: Whitney/Don Slepian/Nick Cave’s Ghosteen: A Discussion

Boys and girls, All Hallows’ Eve is here, and you’re tuned into the October edition of the Transmissions podcast. The veil is thin and we’re back with another round of discussions and digressions. On this episode, Chicago’s Whitney discusses Forever Turned Around, the group’s sophomore lp. Then, New Age pioneer Don Slepian takes us back to the early ’80s. And to close out, a long ramble about Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ haunted instant classic, Ghosteen.   Whitney’s second new album, Fore...

Transmissions Podcast :: Devendra Banhart/Kristin Hersh/Bill Orcutt

Welcome to the September edition of our monthly Transmissions podcast, our series of conversations with musicians and artists about why—and how—their art exists. On this episode, Aquarium Drunkard founder Justin Gage sits down at AD HQ with Devendra Banhart to spin selections and discuss his new album, Ma. Then, Jason P. Woodbury joins Throwing Muses founder, solo artist, and writer Kristin Hersh backstage to discuss future sounds from Throwing Muses and Don’t Suck, Don’t Die, her book about ...

Transmissions Podcast: Lower Dens / Rain Phoenix

Welcome to a late summer edition of the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions podcast. On this episode, we’ve got two talks taped at AD HQ in Los Angeles. Up first, Lower Dens’ Jana Hunter. On September 6th, Lower Dens releases its fourth LP The Competition. The conversation reflected on Hunter’s solo beginnings, the formation of Lower Dens and the project’s subsequent sonic evolution over the past ten years. Also discussed were the intervening years between 2015’s Escape From Evil, Hunter’s expe...

Transmissions Podcast :: Tim Heidecker/John Coltrane ’58/Jonathan Rice at Gold Diggers

You’re tuned into the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions broadcast…welcome back. We’re happy to launch the third season of our out-there conversations about art, culture, and whatever else gets our imaginations going. Glad to have you along for the ride. This month, we bring you the uncut edition of Justin Gage’s conversation with comedian, musician, actor, songwriter, and all-around creator Tim Heidecker. Heidecker put together a playlist of the classic rock that inspired his latest, What The ...

Transmissions Podcast: Foxygen/Rozi Plain/Juan Wauters

Transmissions Podcast: Jason Mantzoukas/Remembering Sara Romweber/Low: On Double Negative

Welcome to the March edition of the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions podcast, our monthly collection of audio esoterica and conversations—superbloom edition. We’ve got a pretty interesting collection of talks this month. First up, actor, writer, and covert ethnomusicologist Jason Mantzoukas joins co-host Jason P. Woodbury at Gold Diggers Sound in East Hollywood to discuss the ways improv comedy and jazz inform his work on shows like The Good Place, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Big Mouth, and Parks a...

Transmissions Podcast: Bruce Hornsby / William Tyler

Greetings from the rainy west. Welcome to the February episode of the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions podcast. This episode, we’ve got a duo of musicians whose art blurs the lines between minimalism, the avant-garde, and Americana (whatever that word means in this fractured age). This episode, we’re joined by guitarist William Tyler. You might recognize him from our podcast’s theme song, “Four Corners,” or the essay he recently penned for Aquarium Drunkard, “Cosmic Pastoral,” which drew lin...

Transmissions Podcast: Twin Peaks / Desert Oracle / Sarah Louise

The owls are not what they seem. In fact, maybe nothing is exactly what it seems. Welcome to the January 2019 edition of Aquarium Drunkard’s Transmissions podcast, our monthly audio digest of the strange, fascinating, and out there. In this episode— the first of the new year—your hosts Justin Gage and Jason P. Woodbury pay a visit to the Washington town of Twin Peaks, with a conversation about the cult TV show, its many mysteries, and its 2017 revival. Then, a talk with guitarist North Carol...

Transmissions Podcast :: Year In Review / A Reflection: Vince Guaraldi Trio — A Charlie Brown Christmas

Dip into this nog. Welcome to the December edition of the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions podcast. We just published our massive and overstuffed Year in Review feature, and to celebrate, members of the AD crew —including your hosts, Justin Gage and Jason P. Woodbury, plus Tyler Wilcox and Marty Sartini Garner, to discuss the year in music. Touched on: some of our favorite albums, essential reissues and archival sets, and what music the AD team is planning on spending time with in the new ye...

Transmissions Podcast :: Irmin Schmidt (CAN) / Lola Kirke / Lagniappe Sessions

Welcome to the November edition of the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions podcast. It's nearly the end of the year, and we're looking back on 2018's Lagniappe Sessions. Launched in 2011, the Lagniappe Sessions is an audio series that features artists covering songs that mean something to them. Hailed as "an amazing deep cut creation factory" by Jesse Jarnow, author of  Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America and Wasn’t That A Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of ...

Transmissions Podcast :: Kurt Vile / ECM Records / James Booker

Happy Halloween and welcome to the October edition of the Transmissions podcast. Hope you enjoyed our bonus podcast episode, featuring AD’s Halloween mix. If you haven’t heard it, check your feed or MixCloud. It’s essential listening. Our topics today aren’t quite as spooky, but they’re good nonetheless. First, Kurt Vile. Earlier this month he released his seventh lp, the beatific Bottle It In via Matador Records. He swung by the AD HQ to sit down with Justin and discuss the new record, reco...

The Aquarium Drunkard Show (Halloween Edition)

AD Halloween Intro ++ Eartha Kitt – I Want To Be Evil (AD Halloween Version) ++ The Munsters – Munster Creep ++ Bob McFadden & Dor – The Mummy ++ Danny Ware – The Zombie Stomp ++ The Sound Offs – The Angry Desert ++ The Blue Echoes – It’s Witchcraft ++ The Tomko’s – The Spook ++ Scotty Macgregor And His Spooks – I’m A Monster ++ Screaming Lord Sutch – She’s Fallen In Love With A Monster Man ++ The Gories – Casting My Spell ++ Baron Daemon & Vampires – Ghost Guitars ++ Elvira – End of Side On...

Transmissions Podcast :: Matt Sullivan of Light in the Attic / In Conversation: Howe Gelb, Steve Wynn, and Robyn Hitchcock

We’re back. The weather is beginning to turn. We’re almost there. Welcome to the September edition of the Transmissions podcast. On this episode, we sit down with three legends of independent music: psychedelic singer/songwriter Robyn Hitchcock, Giant Sand leader Howe Gelb, and Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate. Since emerging in the ‘80s, they’ve amassed incredible catalogs, and they’re all still making vital and poetic records. We spoke earlier this month at HOCO Fest, a multi-day festival...

Transmissions Podcast :: Nate Chinen’s Playing Changes / Exploring Japan’s Kissa Bars / Little Wings

Welcome to the August edition of the Transmissions podcast, just under the wire. We’ve got a great episode this month. First, Aquarium Drunkard’s Mary Sartini Garner sits down with Nate Chinen, author of a new book, Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century. A longtime New York Times critic and scholar, Chinen’s new book explores the shape of modern jazz, examining how the art form has incorporated new genres, how jazz education has shaped a new generation of players, and where jazz is heade...

Transmissions Podcast :: Yosuke Kitazawa / Remembering Richard Swift / Strange Stars

Humid funk out there, but we’re keeping cool. You are tuned into the July edition of the Aquarium Drunkard transmissions podcast, our monthly series of features interviews, and audio esoterica. On this episode, Justin Gage sits down with crate digger and producer Yosuke Kitazawa, to discuss Light in the Attic Records’ Japan Archival reissue series, which kicked off last year with the essential rock/folk/and pop compilation Even a Tree Can Shed Tears, picks up next month with a grip of Haruom...

Transmissions Podcast :: Jim James + Cornelia Murr/Talk Show: Robbie Simon

And we’re back. Welcome to the June edition of the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions podcast, our monthly series of features, interviews, and audio esoterica. This month, we have two in-depth conversations. Up first, Jim James of My Morning Jacket and singer/songwriter Cornelia Murr. They’ve both got new records at the ready. On June 29, James releases Uniform Distortion, a collection of celebratory and clamorous rock & roll jams, via ATO Records. And on July 13th, Murr releases Lake Tear of t...

Transmissions Podcast :: Gillian Welch / Shinya Fukumori Trio / Marissa Anderson

And we’re back. Welcome to the May edition of the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions podcast, our recurring series of conversations and audio esoterica. On this program, we’re joined by singer/songwriter Gillian Welch. Along with her partner David Rawlings, Welch has tapped into the wellspring of American vernacular music. Her albums — including 2001’s Time (The Revelator) and 2011’s The Harrow & the Harvest — are part of one of the strongest bodies of work in modern folk music. Welch is about ...

Transmissions Podcast :: Mind Over Mirrors/Remembering Art Bell/The Nels Cline 4

  Welcome to the April edition of the Aquarium Drunkard podcast, coming in from West of the Rockies. On this program, we explore the late night radio theater of the late Art Bell. The Coast to Coast AM host passed away on Friday, April 13th, and we’ve spent the days since exploring his classic archives. Aquarium Drunkard founder Justin Gage and co-host Jason P. Woodbury sat down to reflect on Bell’s singular voice, dedication to chronicling the unknown, and status as a purveyor of genuine ...

Transmissions Podcast :: Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968/Abstract Truths/Environments

Welcome to the March installment of Aquarium Drunkard’s recurring Transmissions podcast, a series of interviews and audio esoterica. This month, we’re centering in on a sense of place. First, we sit down with author and musician Ryan H. Walsh to discuss his new book, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968. In ’68, Boston was roiling with counter-culture activity. Occult circles were thriving; the underground press was emerging; the Velvet Underground, on loan from New York, was playing trans...

Aquarium Drunkard: Transmissions Podcast - Laraaj / Itasca / Maggie Smith & Jerry David DeCicca

Welcome to the February installment of Aquarium Drunkard’s recurring Transmissions podcast, a series of interviews and audio esoterica from Aquarium Drunkard. Welcome to the February edition of Aquarium Drunkard’s recurring Transmissions podcast — just under the wire. We’ve got an introspective episode this week. First, we sit down with Kayla Cohen of Itasca, to discuss her new mini-album, Morning Flower. It’s a collaboration with writer and artist Gunnar Tchida, and it focuses especially on...

Transmissions Podcast :: Voyager Golden Record/Tim Heidecker/Jesus People Music

Welcome to the January installment of Aquarium Drunkard’s recurring Transmissions podcast, a series of interviews and audio esoterica from Aquarium Drunkard. For our first episode of 2018, we explore three unique stories. First, we dive into the story of Ozma Records’ new reissue of the Voyager Golden Record. Launched into outer space in 1977 onboard the Voyager space probes, the Golden Record was a sort of cosmic mixtape, designed by a team led by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan as a representat...

Transmissions Podcast :: Paul Major / 2017 Reissues

Earlier this year, we published an interview with Major and he played selector on the Aquarium Drunkard Show on Sirius XM, pulling out rare psych, private press oddities, and much more. He’s the subject of a new book, Feel The Music: The Psychedelic Worlds of Paul Major, and the compiler of an accompanying soundtrack, Feel the Music Vol. 1, both out on Anthology. The book compiles scans of Major’s rare record catalogs, which featured his hallucinatory music writing, alongside essays by his f...

Aquarium Drunkard: Sidecar (Transmission Seventeen)

Krano – Mi E Ti Ryley Walker – Everybody Is Crazy (Amen Dunes) Kacy & Clayton – The Siren’s Song Joan Shelley – Over And Even Meg Baird – Counterfeiters Jennifer Castle – Sailing Away Steve Gunn – Way Out Weather Anna St. Louis – Fire Jana Hunter – A Bright-Ass Light Angel Olsen – The Sky Opened Up Sweet Tea – If I Were A Carpenter Heron Oblivion – Beneath Fields

Transmissions Podcast :: Hiss Golden Messenger

On Hiss Golden Messenger’s new album, Hallelujah Anyhow, songwriter M.C. Taylor stares down darkness, only to find it’s simply “a different kind of light.” It’s a record about chasing freedom and finding hope in unexpected places: among worn guitars, in clouds of smoke, and in the sound of wafting Caledonia soul music. The record continues Hiss’s evolution from solitary, lonesome folk to celebratory and loose country rock and soul. It’s “music for hope,” Taylor says, and though it doesn’t hi...

Transmissions Podcast :: Psychic Temple and Hiss Golden Messenger on Bright Phoebus

On this installment, we sit down with Chris Schlarb of Psychic Temple to discuss Psychic Temple IV, a melange of West Coast pop magic, sophisticated textures, and exploratory rock & roll. It’s a record that finds Schlarb commanding a vast ensemble of players — including Max Bennett (Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, the Wrecking Crew), Terry Reid, current and former members of Cherry Glazerr, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Cryptacize, the Dirty Projectors, and many more. Schlarb is a true journeyma...

Transmissions Podcast :: Nick Lowe

Welcome to Aquarium Drunkard’s Transmissions Podcast, a recurring series of conversations with songwriters, authors, and creators about what drives their art. We’re proud to share an interview with Nick Lowe this week. AD’s Jason P. Woodbury talked with the producer, songwriter, and performer, who’s made records with Elvis Costello, the Damned, Squeeze, Johnny Cash, and dozens more, and penned classic songs like “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding,” “Cruel to Be Kind,” “I L...

Transmissions Podcast :: Strand of Oaks

t. For this episode, AD’s Jason P. Woodbury sat down with Timothy Showalter of Indiana’s Strand of Oaks to discuss the band’s latest album, Hard Love, which melds Showalter’s love of dub reggae production with heartland rock and the big beat sound of Creation Records’ heyday.

Transmissions Podcast - Lonnie Holley

For this episode, Woodbury sits down with artist and musician Lonnie Holley. His sculptures, assembled from found objects, seemingly align each random component with meaning. In 2012, Holley released his debut album, Just Before Music, on Atlanta label Dust to Digital. Reviewing the record, AD’s A. Spoto wrote, “He sings with an intense, emotional voice and unleashes lyrics without consistent meter or rhyme over gossamer keyboard lines that hang in the ether. His music is a blues nebula, spl...

Transmissions Podcast :: Weyes Blood

Welcome to Aquarium Drunkard’s recurring Transmissions podcast. Today, we continue our mini-series in collaboration with the folks at Mexican Summer. In March, AD’s Jason P. Woodbury headed out to Marfa Texas to attend Mexican Summer’s Marfa Myths Festival, a four-day, multi-disciplinary celebration of art and music in West Texas, which resulted in his essay, “There’s No Such Thing As Nowhere.” For this episode, he sat down with Natalie Mering, who records as Weyes Blood. We’ve long been ...

Transmissions Podcast :: Eileen Myles

For this episode, Woodbury down with poet and novelist Eileen Myles. She came up in the ’70s, at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project in New York. In 2015, her 1994 novel Chelsea Girls was reissued; in 2016, she released a collection of poems written between 1975 and 2014 called I Must Be Living Twice. In this episode, Myeles discusses her process and her next book, Afterglow, and along the way we’ll hear some selections of Myles’ poetry, pulled from her live album Aloha/Irish Tree, paired with rec...

Transmissions Podcast :: Allah-Las

Welcome to Aquarium Drunkard’s recurring Transmissions podcast. Today, we’re launching a new mini-series in collaboration with the folks at Mexican Summer. Last month, we sent AD’s Jason P. Woodbury to Marfa Texas to attend Mexican Summer’s Marfa Myths Festival, a four-day, multi-disciplinary celebration of art in music in West Texas, which resulted in his essay, “There’s No Such Thing As Nowhere.” While out there, Woodbury hooked up with a number of Myths performers to record interviews....

Transmissions Podcast :: Ryley Walker

On last year’s Golden Sings Which Can Be Sung, Chicago-based singer and guitarist Ryley Walker came into his own. It wasn’t his first great record, but it was his most realized, a work that added shades of jazz, psychedelia, and experimental rock to his soulful folk sound. Writing about the record, AD’s Chad DePasquale said: “On two previous two long-players, comparisons to artists like John Martyn, Bert Jansch, Tim Buckley, and Nick Drake dominated conversations about Walker, but his lates...

Transmissions Podcast :: Daniel Lanois

As a producer, Daniel Lanois has been instrumental in crafting definitive records by U2, the Neville Brothers, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Neil Young, and more. His productions have a trademark quality -- swampy and percussive, psychedelic but as earthy as the dubs of his noted influence Lee "Scratch" Perry -- that he also brings to his records as a songwriter and composer. His latest, Goodbye to Language, out now on Anti Records, is one of his best. Accompanie...

Transmissions Podcast :: What's Left in the Velvet Underground Archives?

With the release of the Complete Matrix Tapes last year, you might be wondering: What exactly is left in the Velvet Underground archives? On this, the seventh episode of AD’s Transmissions podcast, we invite Aquarium Drunkard’s VU expert Tyler Wilcox (Doom and Gloom From the Tomb, author of Pitchfork’s Invisible Hits column) to speculate wildly about what’s left out there: songs which may or may not exist, early demos, legendary live performances and more. Along the way, Wilcox spins rare V...

Transmissions Podcast :: Jesse Jarnow's Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America

A decade-spanning look at the Grateful Dead and the culture the band spawned, it's one of our favorite books of the year, one that explores of underground economies, thriving art scenes, cyberspace frontiers, the advent of psychedelia, the birth of the jam band movement, mystically motivated science projects, and much more through the lens of America's home brewed cosmic roots ambassadors. In his review of the book for AD, our own Tyler Wilcox wrote: Heads is an essential piece of undergrou...

Aquarium Drunkard: Transmissions Podcast - Damien Jurado / William Bell

Welcome to the fifth episode of AD's re-booted Transmissions podcast, our recurring series of in-depth conversations and unexpected sounds. As we did with our last episode, we're halving the show today, speaking with two disparate artists. Up first, we sat down with singer/songwriter Damien Jurado. Starting off in the Seattle hardcore scene, Jurado evolved with moody albums like Rehearsals for Departure and Ghost of David, full of stark and heartbreaking vignettes. At the start of the cur...

Aquarium Drunkard: Transmissions Podcast - Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids / Eleanor Friedberger

Welcome to the fourth episode of Aquarium Drunkard’s Transmissions podcast, our recurring series of in-depth conversations and unexpected sounds.. On this week’s episode, we’re splitting our time with two unique artists. Up first is Idris Ackamoor, leader of the intergalactic combo the Pyramids, whose new album We Be All Africans is a potent mix of soul, funk, world music, and spiritual jazz. Next, we hop in the van with singer/songwriter Eleanor Friedberger. As one-half of Fiery Furnaces,...

Aquarium Drunkard: Transmissions Podcast - William Tyler

On this week’s episode Jason P. Woodbury speaks with Nashville-based guitarist William Tyler. As a sideman, Tyler’s guitar work has appeared on records by Lambchop, Charlie Louvin, Candi Staton, Hiss Golden Messenger, Silver Jews, Wooden Wand, and dozens more, but since the dawn of the decade, he’s focused mostly on his own records, vivid instrumental soundscapes which connect country and folk traditions to kosmische musik and ambient soundscapes. His latest, Modern Country, was release...

Aquarium Drunkard: Transmissions Podcast - Car Seat Headrest / Replacements

On this episode, we spoke with Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest, whose new album Teens of Denial comes out this Friday via Matador Records. It's a fantastic record, bigger and more fully realized than before, and it reflects the transition from solo project to full band. We also spoke to author Bob Mehr about Trouble Boys, his affecting book on the Replacements. Mehr's one of the best music writers working, and his book dives deep and comes up with even more than one could expect. Onwards . ...

Aquarium Drunkard: Transmissions Podcast - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

It's back. Welcome to the first installment of Aquarium Drunkard's re-tooled podcast. Picking up where the Sidecar (Transmissions) left off, this new show will be an audio companion to the blog proper, a late night broadcast exploring pop culture through an esoteric lens, featuring music, literature, film, and other dispatches from parts unknown. Beginning now, expect a new episode every other week. Our debut features Jason P. Woodbury's interview with longtime AD favorite Will Oldham, AKA ...