Soundcheck

The London-based Vermont-born singer/fiddler/banjoist/guitarist and scion of a family of shape-note singers, Sam Amidon, has a reputation for having collected, re-imagined, and performed American traditional tunes or other folk music, in addition to collaborations with Kronos Quartet and composer Nico Muhly. In spring of 2017, Amidon released his first album of original music, which is an experiment in trying out the Appalachian music he loves, as well as "improvisation, beats, Don Cherry, Vermont, London." Sam Amidon joins us live to play songs from that record, The Following Mountain. (From the Archives, 2017.)  

Songwriter Aimee Mann left her successful major label band Til Tuesday back in the early 1990's and never looked back. Her stunning recording resume includes classic songs from "Magnolia," include the Oscar-nominated "Save Me", as well as numerous records, released on her own label. Many of her slow, bruising, crafty, and catchy songs may shine with sadness on the outside, but as ever, they bristle with smart observations and intriguing perspectives. Aimee Mann and her trio play songs from her 2017 record, Mental Illness, in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)

Beirut-based indie-rock band Mashrou’ Leila tackles taboo topics - political corruption, same-sex love, religion (inter-religious marriage), and Middle Eastern feminism. Their catchy and danceable Arabic pop songs are full of guitars, drum machines, samples, violin and frontman Hamed Sinno’s sensual voice. In the years since they first formed in 2008, they’ve become both enormously popular and enormously controversial, even banned in some countries. Mashrou’ Leila’s 2015 record, Ibn el Leil - means ‘son of the night.’ They play music from it live in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)

The Mexican singer-songwriter and arranger Silvana Estrada offers poeticism and a fresh take on traditional folk music resulting in a deeply heartfelt and lyrical sound which may tug at the heartstrings. A multi-instrumentalist raised in a musical home in the mountain town of Veracruz, she plays the Venezuelan cuatro (a four-stringed guitar) in many of her songs. The tangled roots of her musical influences mix the folk stylings of son jarocho (from the Gulf Coast of Mexico), Portuguese fado, jazz torch songstresses, and the classical influence (she performed baroque choir music in her youth.) Silvana Estrada plays haunting songs of love and loss on the cuatro, as a preview of her new album, Marchita ("withered"), onstage at The Greene Space. - Caryn Havlik Set list: "Tristeza," "Marchita," "Te Guardo" Watch "Marchita": Watch "Tristeza": Watch "Te Guardo":

Guitarist and singer Margaret Glaspy released her album Emotions and Math in 2016, and promptly found herself on a whole bunch of year-end lists of the best albums of the year, including those of the New York Times and NPR. It’s not hard to hear why – at times Glaspy snarls her way through love’s trials and travails, while her guitar snarls and thunders right along with her. At others, she offers something a little more subdued, even melancholy. Glaspy and her trio join us to play songs from Emotions and Math, in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)  

John Doe is a musician, actor, and author, and one of the founding fathers of the L.A. punk scene with his band X, which continues to this day. He has co-authored and collected first-hand accounts of L.A. punk experiences in the book, Under the Big Black Sun. John Doe has also done country and folk music with his other band The Knitters, and released ten solo albums. The last is called The Westerner, which came out in 2016, and John Doe returned to play some of his solo songs in-studio in 2017. (Archives.)

The west coast-based sound-maker and experimenter Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith weaves melodic patterns and pulses, using various analogue synthesizers – like the rare EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer, a vintage Buchla modular synthesizer, earning her a fun title as a composer and producer – “synthesist.”  On Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's 2017 album, The Kid, she crafts a playfully strange expression of human awareness via these synthesized sound designs that falls neither in the pop world nor the avant/classical one. Synthesist, producer and composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith joins us in the studio to perform some of her recent creations. RIYL: the films of Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli, Suzanne Ciani, Joshua Light Show, Euclidean geometry, Anna Meredith, and s t a r g a z e.    

Listen to London’s Afrofuturist jazz masters Sons of Kemet, New York-based poet, composer, and stutterer JJJJJerome Ellis, and the custom baritone guitar of South African Guy Buttery. AND you must see and hear the prepared guitar of Sardinian composer, ethnomusicologist, and instrument builder Paolo Angeli, who filmed a beautiful remote session on the shores of Sardinia. Grammy-winning diva Angélique Kidjo brings a super-charged performance to The Greene Space and puts an exclamation point on 2021. - Caryn HavlikSet list: Sons of Kemet – "Hustle"JJJJJerome Ellis – "Bend Back The Bow and Let the Hymn Fly," excerptPaolo Angeli – "Jar'a Suite," excerptGuy Buttery – "Kya Baat"Angelique Kidjo – "Mother Nature" Watch the Best of 2021 performances for the Soundcheck Podcast: 

Hear/Watch some of the 2021 highlights for the Soundcheck Podcast by Amsterdam-based Turkish psych band Altin Gün, London pianist and soundscape artist Neil Cowley, composer/vocalist/pianist Samora Pinderhughes’ art/protest songs, and Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti. Plus, singer and guitarist Torres and her band, live from The Greene Space. - Caryn Havlik Altin Gün – “Ordunun Dereleri” Neil Cowley – “String Think” Samora Pinderhughes – “Stare Straight Ahead”Mabe Fratti – “Nadie Sabe”Torres – “Thirstier” Watch the Best of 2021 performances for the Soundcheck Podcast: 

Los Angeles-born, Virginia-based singer-songwriter Angelica Garcia harnesses some country-blues twang, playing songs from her debut full-length, "Medicine for Birds," live, with her full band, in the studio. She taps into the magnolia trees, starry skies, and the ghosts of gothic Americana, written in her newfound isolation of a dusty old parish house in Accomac, Virginia.  

Sam Lee is much more than a musician - he's a storyteller. In "Blackbird," from his album The Fade In Time, his deep croons and intricate vocals breathe life into forgotten stories, drawing you into a colorful and heart-wrenching world. The album title is appropriate, since he collects traditional English songs and repurposes them for a new place and time.  Not many traditional English folk singers came from North London, studied at Chelsea School of Art and worked as a forager and wilderness expert during the day and burlesque dancer by night. Lee however is not in the majority - his charisma and talents spurred an apprenticeship with the great Scottish Traveller singer Stanley Robertson along with a Mercury Prize nomination. Lee has blazed a trail for burgeoning song collectors and inspired a new generation to tap into the storytelling of present and past minstrels. He performs in-studio in this 2015 session from the Archives.  Setlist "Over Yonder's Hill" "Blackbird" "Lovely Molly"

Lou Reed. Dr. John. Bruce Springsteen. John Cale. Levon Helm. Garland Jeffreys has collaborated with all of them, and his gravelly voice, roots-rock DNA, and trenchant writing has always channeled the best bits of each of them.  A recording artist since the 1960s, Brooklyn native Jeffreys has had more career ups (and downs) than most artists can dream of today, but he's riding yet another wave of creativity and energy. His loose and rollicking 2013 album Truth Serum was lauded by critics and fans. He was a 2015 inductee into the New York Blues Hall of Fame, recognizing just one facet of his kaleidoscopic musical persona. All the late-period vigor and recognition has him revisiting one of his earliest successes, 1977's Ghost Writer. A frothing cauldron of, yes, blues, but also soul, funk, Exile-era Stones rock—and an inspired dose of reggae—Ghost Writer revealed a burgeoning, observant poet of the streets as well as a sharp-eared pop chameleon.  Garland Jeffreys visits the studio to talk to host John Schaefer about the NYC that inspired Ghost Writer, and to play a handful of the album's standout tracks.

London-based dance music artist, classically trained pianist/composer, and Chicago native Kate Simko, along with the London Electronic Orchestra, combine harp, violin, cello & laptop, live in the studio. Layers of clubby electronics and keyboards support delicate harp, violin and cello melodies. Altogether, the result is a buoyant, airy, and uplifting hybrid dance music - something like a film score for a documentary about a days-long party in Ibiza. (From the Archives, 2017.)  

Singer, guitarist, songwriter, and label owner, Jennifer O’Connor has gone from acoustic guitar to plugged-in rockenroll band and now to crafting nostalgic-sounding Logic-based songs in her 20-year career. Her latest album is the perhaps misleadingly-titled Born at the Disco, recorded in large part by O’Connor herself at home, upending her usual process by using drum machines and synths to play and create, with touchstones like the Jesus and Mary Chain and maybe the Swedish pop artist, Robyn. Jennifer O'Connor plays her emotional and intimate indie pop songs remotely from her home. - Caryn Havlik Set list: "Born at the Disco," "Less and Less," "Who Can You Kiss" Watch "Less and Less": Watch "Who Can You Kiss":

Since forming back around the turn of this century, the New Pornographers have consistently been one of indie rock’s top attractions - reliable purveyors of big hooks, anthemic choruses, and Technicolor orchestrations. The band is a supergroup of sorts, with a mutable lineup of singers and instrumentalists, but the first among equals has always been vocalist and songwriter Carl Newman. He joins John Schaefer to talk about the band’s 2017 album, called Whiteout Conditions. AND, some of the band plays live in this session from the Archives.