The Sound Podcast with Ira Haberman

In late 2018, The Infamous Stringdusters released "Live from Telluride". The 20 song album was indeed taken from an entire performance at that famed festival, and the set spans the bands 12 year and 8 album career. A Hard Life Makes a Good Song was a track off their 2017 Grammy award winning record Laws of Gravity. Though the album was released back in November, the boys have been on the road, you know, doing what they do, so up until recently we haven't had a chance to catch up with anyone to talk about the live release, or their winter tour plans. Finally, we tracked down Dobro magician Andy Hall to talk about the live release and all the other things they have going on. Of course, you can also catch The Dusters on the road and you can check thestringdusters.com for all the relevant details and more.

We’ve all been listening to the Disco Biscuits forever. We always keep an eye out for Marc Brownstein’s work, since we appreciate his work on bass, and he has similar taste in music. So when we read that he started this new project called Star Kitchen, a Funk type thing, we were jonesing to hear exactly what was going on. Luckily there is some music floating around, and we’re fortunate that tapers like Eric McRoberts who make awesome live recordings was at Stageone in Fairfield, Connecticut to catch Star Kitchen last week. Once we heard the music, we had to get Brownie on the line, to ask what was going on with Star Kitchen.

We have so much fun putting this show together each week. If you see a live show or listen to one, and hear something incredible, please reach out either on social media or leaving a message on our hotline at 628-643-2443! We'd love to hear from you and potentially include your song in our show. Remember, all of these songs and the shows they are taken from can be found at nugs.net for download or on the nugs.net app.

The Lil Smokies are a progressive bluegrass band has been around since 2009 and has gone some personal changes but have pretty much solidified their lineup since 2015. One of the newest members of the band is Matt “Rev” Rieger, a strapping grizzled guitar player who’s stellar picking and strumming certainly adds to the band’s sound. We caught up with Rev chillin’ ahead of a gruelling tour schedule that sees the band on the road for most of January through March.

It would be nearly impossible for me or the rest of the team to be aware of every band out there that somehow in some way fits into the community of music we bring you. So it's nice when a band reaches out to us to tell about their project and what they are up to. We can't feature all of them on the show, but there was something about The Alpine Camp that really intrigued us. Probably the blend of musicianship, song writing and fun, that caught our attention.

The end of the year for the scene always means lots of great NYE runs for some of our favorite bands, and 2018 was no different. These are five live songs from various NYE run performances by Infamous Stringdusters, Greensky Bluegrass, Umphrey’s McGee, Widespread Panic and Phish. 

Welcome in to our very last show of 2018. It has been an incredible year, and this will mark our 95 episode of the year. We thanked a whole bunch of people for their contributions for our year in Episode 163 so listen back to that show at thesoundpodcast.com or on your favourite podcast platform to hear all about the wonderful people that we can’t thank enough for 2018. We decided instead of putting another highlight show that we would instead offer up this playlist of some of our favourite songs from 2018’s episodes. Let’s face it when you do 95 shows, thats a lot of music, so we’ve purposely left out songs you would have heard in our two recap shows, so that you can enjoy some fresh tunes you may or may not have heard over the course of the last twelve months. Sorry, we just couldn’t include everything. We’ve also broken the sets up into different categories, so if you don’t feel like sticking through an entire set, you can skip ahead to the next batch of songs. Finally, while we’ll tell you the artists that are including in each set, you’ll be able to head back to thesoundpodcast.com to get a full song listing and find out what episode each of these guests appeared on, so that you can listen back to our interviews.

These are the top 5 most listened to episodes of 2018. It's an intriguing list of musicians and genres, and music and includes some heavy weights in the scene, both past and present.

By the end of 2018, we will have produced 95 episodes of the Sound Podcast. We thought it would be awesome to look back at the year that was and share with you the top 10 episodes based on downloads of the show. This is the first of our two part series. Here is the first part from that top ten list...

Scott Metzger is like crazy busy. Aside from the Showdown Kids, he has own trio Wolf! that plays surf/soundtrack rock, Joe Russo's Almost Dead, and like 4 other projects that he appears with. His 2018 could be an entry on its own in Wikipedia under Jam Bands. Truth is, Scott is supremely talented and thats why he either wants to play with other musicians or gets too because well, as soon you'll soon hear, everyone loves playing with the guy. We caught up with Scott to reflect on 2018 and hear about his upcoming plans for 2019.

We're big fans of the Greensky Bluegrass sound, because although they are bluegrass in name, they rock and jam pretty hard for a group that features traditional acoustic instruments like mandolin, banjo and dobro, aside from acoustic guitar and upright bass. All for Money will be the seventh album for this band that has been slugging it out on the road for 18 years. We caught up with Michael Bont to talk about All for Money and all things Greensky as they our affectionately called. All for Money is an incredible record which really should make top ten lists next year. There are so many great songs on the record, that I suspect will get lots of play on the road this winter, and well into the Greensky touring schedule. If you've never seen these guys, I'd encourage you to do so, and if you have you are already am sure well into their music. I mean honestly, how could you not be. For more on Greensky Bluegrass visit their website at greenskybluegrass.com.

The Motet have been on our radar for a long time. We like their version of Funk, Soul and R&B quite a bit. They have a new record "Death or Devotion" which is dropping January 25th, so it just made sense to sit down and talk with someone from the band before they hit the road. Luckily, we tracked down Lyle Divinsky a fairly new member to the group. In fact in 2016 three new members were added to the line-up, Lyle, Parris and Drew. The Motet also have an extensive tour coming up, and you should definitely check them out on the road at themotet.com.

While I'm not generally a Jamtronica fan, when Frames Per Second hit my inbox I gave it several spins before reaching out to the Lotus team to get someone on the show. Actually, Frames Per Second was somewhat of a surprise for fans of this band, since they released it without the typical fan fare, build up, or hype that is assumed for new releases. I caught up with Luke Miller to talk about the new record and their plans for 2019. For more on Lotus check out lotusvibes.com.

The Kitchen Dwellers are a straight ahead bluegrass/newgrass band from Montana. We caught up with Max Davies and Torrin Daniels on a rare off day, to talk about the Reheated Vol. 1 EP, their gruelling tour schedule and the potential of a new record in 2019. Shhhh don't tell anyone. Our conversation started though with a discussion around the inspiration to cover The Band. While there are some tribute concerts a la "The Last Waltz" revisited, for whatever reason, The Band probably don't get their proper due in the Jam Band community... until now.

While you may not have heard of Ben Sparaco and The New Effect yet, no doubt in the coming year you will. Ben, a Florida native, has played in a Grateful Dead cover band and has performed with Butch Trucks amongst other jam band notables. The New Effect came together in 2017 as a trio with Berklee College grads Anthony Quirk and Adam Discipio in Nashville. The trio has spent a lot of time on the road and plan to get at it in an even bigger way in 2019. I recently sat down with Sparaco to learn more about the New Effect, their music and their plans. You can learn more about Ben Sparaco and the New Effect at bensparaco.com.