Zig At The Gig podcast

Willie Nile

Interview with Willie Nile !

The Great Yellow Light is filled with passionate guitar-driven, melodic songs, a mix of anthemic
rockers and sensitive ballads with a subtle socio-political message throughout. Willie was joined
in the studio by his core band Jimi Bones – electric & acoustic guitars, backing vocals, Johnny Pisano – bass, backing vocals and Jon Weber – drums, providing soaring lead vocals, electric guitar and piano himself. Besides Earle, special guests include Irish music icon Paul Brady on vocals, The Hooters’ Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian on keys and strings respectively, Black 47 members Larry Kirwan, Fred Parcells, and Chris Byrne and legendary sidemen Waddy Wachtel and David Mansfield.

Nile’s love for life and music has powered his 45-year recording career. The Buffalo, NY native made his way to New York City in the early 1970s. After establishing himself as a popular presence on the downtown club scene, Willie attained national recognition through his widely acclaimed first three major-label albums — Willie Nile, Golden Down and Places I Have Never Been. Next, he then embarked on the indie route with a long series of well-received album releases including Beautiful Wreck of the World, Streets of New York, House of a Thousand Guitars, The Innocent Ones, American Ride, World War Willie, New York At Night, Children of Paradise, The Day The Earth Stood Still, the acoustic If I Was a River, and the covers collection Positively Bob: Willie Nile Sings Bob Dylan. Working on his own terms has allowed Willie to expand his audience to encompass much of the planet. He’s toured North America and overseas regularly building a sizeable and devoted following for his incendiary live performances. His loyal fan base includes such admirers as Bruce Springsteen, with whom he’s guested onstage on multiple occasions, and Pete Townshend, who personally requested him as the opening act on the Who’s historic 1980 U.S. tour. The list of avowed Nile fans also includes Bono, Lou Reed, Ian Hunter, Graham Parker, Jim Jarmusch, Little Steven, and Lucinda Williams, who once remarked, “Willie Nile is a great artist. If there was any justice in this world, I’d be opening up for him instead of him for me.” Appropriately, an Austrian filmmaker is currently making a documentary film about Willie, with new footage shot in Italy, England and America.

http://willienile.com/

https://www.facebook.com/willie.nile

 

Michael "Miguel" Happoldt of Sublime, The Ziggens, Perro Bravo, and Skunk Records

Interview with Michael "Miguel" Happoldt of Sublime, The Ziggens, Perro Bravo, and Skunk Records.

Listen to The Ziggens new surf Epic Well Qualified To Represent The L.B. sea, Vol 1, and Vol 2 here:

Spotify :

https://open.spotify.com/album/2S4KiTerZoted6WEsjmpws?si=4fcr6_6jQ-uydV2z5Hhnzg

Apple:

https://music.apple.com/us/artist/the-ziggens/65727399

Keep up With The Ziggens and Skunk here :

https://www.instagram.com/skunkrecords

https://www.instagram.com/theziggens

https://www.facebook.com/SkunkRecords

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063538901887

https://theziggensofficial.com

Pre Save Vol 2 here :

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/theziggens/well-qualified-to-represent-the-lb-sea--vol-2?utm_campaign=website&utm_medium=Email+&utm_source=SendGrid

 

About Michael "Miguel" Happoldt :

While studying at California State University, Dominguez Hills, Happoldt met alternative rock group the Ziggens. He began recording and producing with the group and eventually joined to record their first album, C0002. Inspired by the punk rock and DIY movements of SST, BYO and Dischord Records tracks, in 1989 Happoldt created the logo and label Skunk Records and released the Ziggens' album on cassette. In 1990, Happoldt moved to Long Beach, California, where he met Sublime's Bradley Nowell at a party. Happoldt invited Sublime to make some live-to-DAT recordings. Intrigued by the Ziggens' cassette release, Nowell played a four-song demo for Happoldt, which Nowell had recorded before meeting Happoldt, and asked him to put it out on Skunk Records. Happoldt has been involved in some capacity with the Long Beach Dub Allstars, the supergroup Volcano, Lucky Boys Confusion, Unwritten Law, Slightly Stoopid, and Long Beach Shortbus.

Double Vee Returns!

Interview with Allen and Barb Vest of Double Vee.

Allan was the primary songwriter, lead vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist for indie/orchestral pop band Starlight Mints, producing and releasing four albums between 2000 and 2009, with legendary producer Dave Sardy co-producing the critically acclaimed debut album, The Dream that Stuff was Made Of. Major motion pictures and television series have utilized his music, with TV shows including Malcolm in the Middle, Californication, One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl and movies including Barnyard, Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj and The Art of Getting By. The BBC mini-series Demons effectively used "Eyes of the Night" off the 2006 album Drowaton as the series' theme song. Allan's instrumental scores have been featured in Disney animated shorts, writer/director Mickey Reece's movies Seducers Club and Punch Cowboy, and in projects by Canada-based writer/director Erahm Christopher and features helmed by award-winning director Bradley Beesley among other productions. Allan has produced and arranged music for clients including Francine, Skating Polly, Student Film and Bishop Allen. He also composed the theme music for the podcast In Sickness and In Health with Dr. Céline Gounder.  

Barb’s diverse background includes sixteen years in public radio where her achievements included writing, hosting, and producing Filmscapes, a nationally syndicated film music program. She edited a music webzine for several years and marketed and produced eight garage sale/shows featuring local bands and merchants. While Barb’s vocal music history includes appearing in themed cover shows and providing backing vocals on recordings for local bands, her love of music began with her family, with her grandmother regularly putting a tape recorder on her piano bench and singing along to her original compositions, before she passed away after a sudden heart attack at the age of 57.  Barb grew up singing around the piano with her mother and sister.  She enjoyed writing poetry and short stories during her younger years and loves exploring the inventive worlds of lyrics and songwriting with Allan. 

When they're not creating new music, Allan and Barb enjoy working with clients…teaching, recording, producing music and videos and more. In their free time, they like to travel, watch movies, hike, and spend time with friends and family. Favorite hiking trails include Angels Landing at Zion National Park, Precipice Trail at Acadia National Park and the Cape Lookout Trail in Oregon. They love concocting meals in the kitchen together and especially savor making Caesar salads at home and trying them anytime they're on the menu at a new restaurant. They’re grateful to be producing music and appreciate the support of their listeners. 

http://doubleVee.net.
http://doubleVee.bandcamp.com.
http://YouTube.com/@doubleVeeBand.
http://Facebook.com/doubleVeeSongs.
http://Instagram.com/doubleVee_band.

 

Arad Evans of The Whimbrels.

Interview with Arad Evans of The Whimbrels.

The Whimbrels is an outer-borough masterpiece. The sound is dense, polyrhythmic, hard, and sweet, hooks and riffs to save your soul pop out at unexpected moments. The players’ credits--The Glenn Branca Ensemble (dating to the 1980s), The Swans, J. Mascis--predict the guitar- driven, sonic onslaught of The Whimbrels, captured on their startling debut. A Whimbrels show involves racks of guitars, tuned in different and unconventional ways with the players constantly switching between them. The Whimbrels album showcases this. There are counterpoint choirs, dueling e-bows phase against each other, chunking, poly- and cross- rhythmic interludes, soaring arias of distortion from Westberg and Evans’ strangely melodic and inventive guitar. Evans’ and Hunter’s vocals front a three-guitar line up tuned every way but normal. The ax men are veterans with contrasting styles that come together in a potent whole. The beats are smart and unrelenting. The album concludes with the instrumental Four Moons of Galileo, four short sections with the inner two framed by shimmering walls of descending, slowly evolving harmonies. The title recalls the four moons discovered by Galileo, suggesting the many more then lurking unknown in space.

ARAD EVANS (guitar, vox, primary songwriter) was a member, recorded and toured with Glenn Branca’s ensemble from the 1980’s until Branca’s death a few years ago. He is founder and still performs with Heroes of Toolik. In addition to Branca, he has played with Quiet City, Rhys Chatham, Ben Neill, John Myers’ Blastula, The SEM Ensemble, The New Music Consort, Virgil Moorefield’s Ensemble and many other groups. “A truly inventive and surprising guitar player.” (Rick Moody, The Rumpus Aug. 25, 2016).

www.thewhimbrels.com

Facebook: The Whimbrels

Instagram: the_whimbrels

Robert Scheffler

Interview with : Robert Scheffler

Songwriter, singer and guitarist Robert Scheffler has been called a “songwriter’s writer” and
“unquestionably one of the best performers in the New York area” by local reviewers. Previous
record releases include Needles (EP), Pretty Town and Life of Luxury (including tracks produced
by Jim Rondinelli [Wilco, Matthew Sweet]). His work has appeared on dozens of TV shows and
several short film soundtracks. One song, “Rendezvous,” figured prominently (and dubiously) in
a movie that The New York Times labeled “an unpalatable mush.” The film wasn’t great but it
wasn’t all that bad–Emmy Rossum was in it.
When Scheffler isn’t writing songs, he’s making furniture. His partner John knew his latest
project was all but finished when Scheffler started making trips to the lumberyard.

www.robertschefflermusic.com

https://www.instagram.com/robertscheffler_music/

 

Chris Stamey

Interview with Chris Stamey.

Chris Stamey began writing and playing music in grade school in Winston-Salem, NC, in the
mid 1960s, in what is known now as the Combo Corner scene. In 1976, while studying music
composition at UNC-Chapel Hill, he self-released Sneakers, one of the very first American
“indie” records. The following year, he relocated to Manhattan to play and record with Alex
Chilton in the burgeoning CBGB rock scene, then formed The dB’s with fellow Carolinians Will
Rigby, Gene Holder, and Peter Holsapple, with whom he made several acclaimed records of
original material, including Stands for deciBels (self-produced with Alan Betrock)
and Repercussion (produced by Scott Litt). 
During the next decade and a half in New York, Stamey worked with a wide variety of
musicians. He recorded well-received solo records for A&M and Warners and was a part
of Anton Fier’s Golden Palominos project, alongside an international touring cast that
included Michael Stipe (R.E.M.), Jack Bruce (Cream), Carla Bley, and Bernie Worrell
(Talking Heads, George Clinton). He continued recording and producing upon returning to NC
in 1993. 
His recent releases include The Great Escape, Lovesick Blues and Euphoria, as well as Falling
Off the Sky with The dB’s and A Brand-New Shade of Blue with the Fellow Travelers. As a
producer and a featured singer/songwriter with the Paris-based Salt Collective project, he
collaborated with Matthew Caws (Nada Surf), Juliana Hatfield, Richard Lloyd (Television),
Matthew Sweet, Peter Holsapple, and Susan Cowsill, among others. As a producer, arranger,
and mixer, he has worked with over a hundred artists, including Ryan Adams, Alejandro
Escovedo, Kronos Quartet, Flat Duo Jets, Skylar Gudasz, Branford Marsalis, Tift Merritt,
Le Tigre, Those Pretty Wrongs, and Yo La Tengo. 
From 2010-2018, Stamey was orchestrator and musical director for an international series of
concert performances of Big Star’s classic album Third, alongside Big Star’s Jody Stephens, Ray
Davies, members of the Posies, R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, Wilco, and Yo La Tengo; Thank
You, Friends, a concert film of these arrangements, was released by Concord in March 2017. He

currently tours as a member of Jody Stephens’s Big Star Quintet, whose line-up includes Mike
Mills (R.E.M), Pat Sansone (Wilco), and Jon Auer (Posies). His original radio musical about the
early ’60s in Manhattan, Occasional Shivers, premiered nationwide on Christmas Day 2016. A
“songwriting memoir,” A Spy in the House of Loud (Univ. of Texas Press), was published in
2018, followed in 2019 by his first printed collection, New Songs for the 20th Century, with a
companion two-disc CD (Omnivore Recordings). 

open.spotify.com/artist/1i7YYagcULgnW5Qilsto1d
music.apple.com/us/artist/chris-stamey/4034250
youtube.com/channel/UCG3O3S8Zg_WJoz2uTt_duig#
instagram.com/mrstamey/?hl=en
facebook.com/chrisstameymusic/
twitter.com/chrisstamey

songkick.com/artists/186319-chris-stamey
bandsintown.com/a/78299-chris-stamey
deezer.com/us/artist/1279457
tidal.com/browse/artist/3611403
qobuz.com/us-en/interpreter/chris-stamey/515742
audiomack.com/chris-stamey
music.amazon.com/artists/B008LPNC4M
@chris-stamey.bsky.social

 

The Trouble Notes

Interview with Bennet Cerven of The Trouble Notes.

 

Hailing from three different continents, The Trouble Notes blend folk traditions from around the world with a driving, modern energy that transports audiences on a musical journey like no other. Their signature sound, led by Bennet Cerven's virtuosic violin melodies, combined with Florian Eisenschmidt’s dynamic guitar rhythms and Julian Lardis’ powerful percussion, creates a truly immersive live experience. Having played at some of the world’s most iconic festivals—including Glastonbury, Boomtown, and Fusion Festival—their performances are not to be missed.

TICKETS for Thursday July 3RD Negative Space Cleveland OH: 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-trouble-notes-at-negative-space-cleveland-tickets-1286009261319

 

 

The Trouble Note's Info 

https://thetroublenotes.com/

https://www.facebook.com/TheTroubleNotes/

John Leon of The Royal Arctic Institute (part 3)

Interview with John Leon of The Royal Arctic Institute. John returns for the third time to talk about The Royal Arctic Institute's new self titled album. 

The Royal Arctic Institute is a cinematic instrumental post-jazz group from New York City. They have been recording and releasing records since 2017. Since forming in 2016, the band has been a revolving door of different musicians comprising several different lineups. The current lineup is composed of drummer Lyle Hysen (Das Damen, Arthur Lee), guitarists John Leon (Roky Erickson, Summer Wardrobe, Abra Moore) and Chris Robertson (Elk City, James Mastro), and bassist David Motamed (Das Damen, Two Dollar Guitar, Arthur Lee, Townes Van Zandt). The band name is a reference to the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. All four members of the Royal Arctic Institute have spent decades playing in various ensembles, working as studio musicians, backing musicians, and touring musicians.

This self-titled fourth full-length recording from The Royal Arctic Institute is the first to include guitarist Chris Robertson. According to the band, Robertson is a crucial addition to the group, as he provides an added dimension to The Royal Arctic Institute sound and creative process, particularly because this debuts the group as a two guitar quintet. The decision to present this new album as a self-titled record is tightly connected to the band’s excitement about their current musical direction.

The new album also marks the first time The Royal Arctic Institute is working with Ray Ketchum of Magic Door Recording. Ketchum, often noted for his engineering and recording work on the last handful of Guided by Voices albums, helped steer the band towards an approach which allowed for a rich and fully developed sonic experience. Ketchum’s keen and well attuned ear in the studio made it possible for The Royal Arctic Institute to focus more on the nuances they had been developing on previous releases, something apparent on “Twigs Of Cries, Feathers Of Sobs.” As guitarist John Leon points out:

 

 

 

 

https://www.theroyalarctic.com/

Pete Francis Returns to Zig At The Gig !

Pete Francis founding member of Dispatch returns to Zig At The Gig.

Tickets for June 13th.

Pete Francis Tickets for June 13th Winchester Lakewood OH

 

Long Legged Fly C-Level and Pete Francis Pre- Save Link

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/clevel/long-legged-fly-feat-pete-francis

Pete Francis Heimbold grew up in Riverside, Connecticut, taking early influence from the reggae music of Bob Marley along with classic songwriters like Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell. While attending Middlebury College in Vermont, he connected with fellow musicians Chad Urmston and Brad Corrigan. The trio formed Dispatch, a rangy roots-inspired indie band who became a fixture of the East Coast club, festival, and jam circuits. Between 1996 and their 2002 hiatus, Dispatch released four studio albums and a live record, building a sizable audience through heavy touring and grassroots promotion. Francis stepped out in 2001 to make his solo debut with So They Say, an album that bore some resemblance to his work in Dispatch and contained several songs they had played live together. When the group officially announced their hiatus, he kicked into gear, issuing a prolific string of albums through his Dragon Crest imprint. In addition to solo releases like 2003's Untold and 2008's Iron Sea and the Cavalry, he also teamed up with Craig Dreyer for the 2006 joint album Everything is One. Meanwhile, Dispatch continued to gain new followers despite their hiatus and in 2007, they reunited for a charity concert at New York's Madison Square Garden. After a surprise sellout, two more dates were added, both of which also sold out. Francis then teamed up with fellow New Englanders Barefoot Truth for a 2009 EP, then issued his fifth solo album, The Movie We Are In, in 2010. 

In 2011, Dispatch officially reformed and resumed touring and recording. Although the band occupied much of his focus, Francis continued to record on his own, releasing 2013's Immodal Implozego and a 2015 compilation, Dragon Crest Collective, Vol. 1. In 2019, after three more studio albums with Dispatch, Francis left his longtime group and resumed his solo career in earnest. For a few years he focused on singles and EPs like Humble Down and Sun Fuzz, both of which were released in 2021. He also built his own home studio and began self-producing his music. With its vibrant electronic sounds and drum loops, 2023's PTRN SKY! marked a tonal shift for Francis and was his first home-recorded album. The following April he explored his reggae influences on the sunny EP Neon Light Blind.

Steve Short of Brahctopus

Interview with Steve Short of Brahctopus and formally of Stationary Pebbles.

June 13th Pete Francis of Dispatch with C-Level, and Brahctopus at The Winchester Lakewood OH. 

Pete Francis Tickets

About Brahctopus.

Brahctopus is fronted by a ukulele-wielding vocalist with a passion for lyricism. Three unique guitarists and a keyboard wizard feed off one another for ripping solos and lifting harmonies while the bass and drums create rhythmic bliss.

The most recent release is an episodic concept album that coincides with the first volume of a graphic novel, the Proto Terrestrial Freedom Movement. Available on all streaming outlets!

www.brahctopus.com