My Favorite Album with Jeremy Dylan

Today, Tony-nominated musician and actor Sarah Stiles (Tootsie, Billions, Avenue Q) joins me on the release day of her new EP ‘You Can Ukulele With Me’ to celebrate the wonderful world of Cyndi Lauper. We delve into loving the album as a kid, her intense emotional reaction to seeing Cyndi sing ‘Time After Time’ in person, the real feminist themes of ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, Cyndi’s incredible music videos, her vocal influence on Sarah, how Sarah’s album eschews the traps of most actors-turned-musicians and whether some music legends have unknowingly already played their last gig.

10 Sep 202028min

Today we’re bringing you the first in a new regular feature on the podcast. Once a month, I’ll be joined by a guest from music, movies, politics, literature or more, but not to discuss their favorite album. These will be compelling conversations about their favorite film, or book, or maybe even important world events. Today, friend of the show, Emmy-winning writer/director Jeff Greenstein (Friends, Will & Grace, Mom, Desperate Housewives) returns to delve into the eerily relevant 1976 Alan J Pakula classic thriller ‘All the President’s Men’, which tells the true story of how Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke open the incredible Watergate scandal and helped bring down President Richard Nixon. We talk about the film’s commitment to truth and authenticity, the blending of real archival footage with actors playing real people, how Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman compare to the real life Woodward and Bernstein, differences between the book and film, the way Deep Throat has entered the pop culture lexicon, screenwriter William Goldman’s contentious relationship to the project, the comparisons and differences to the film ‘The Post’ and how to make a thriller compelling when everyone in the audience knows the ending.

7 Sep 20201h 17min

20 Aug 202042min

Today I’m joined by composer David Hirschfelder (Australia, Strictly Ballroom, Sliding Doors) to take the show’s first cautious steps into the world of jazz fusion, with Weather Report’s 1977 classic ‘Heavy Weather’. After a brief discussion of David’s majestic 80s mullet, we dive into all of it - fusing electronic sounds and rock attitude into celebrations of trad jazz, the surprising hit status of ‘Birdland’, how it inspired David to fuse electronic and acoustic sounds and influenced his scores for films like ‘Strictly Ballroom’, how the album has dated in a positive way, seeing the band live in their heyday and the genius of bass legend Jaco Pastorius.

17 Aug 202032min

Long time friend of the show and queen of the sadcore bangers Emma Swift returns to mark release day for new album ‘Blonde on the Tracks’, which features her beautiful interpretations of songs from across Bob Dylan’s vast songbook. We delve into how the project came to be, how each song was chosen, the different challenges in recording obscure and well known Dylan songs, why ‘I Contain Multitudes’ forced her to learn to record at home during lockdown so she could add it to the record, lyrical pronouns and subverting gender norms, how to cast songs for her voice, recording the album in the city where Dylan cut some of his own masterworks and much more. Songs discussed include Queen Jane Approximately, I Contain Multitudes, One Of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later), Simple Twist of Fate, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, The Man in Me, Going Going Gone, You’re A Big Girl Now

15 Aug 202046min

Guitar icon Joe Satriani joins me to dive into Jimi Hendrix’s magnum opus ‘Electric Ladyland’. Starting with discovering Hendrix through his older sisters back in the late 60s, Joe opens up about what makes the album so special and how its influence has loomed over him for more than fifty years. We discuss how music of the era reflected social upheaval, the progression and maturation of Hendrix’s music leading up to this album, how the album was recorded and how it pushed the technological boundaries of the era, the contributions of guest musicians and engineer Eddie Kramer, the influence Hendrix had on his 60s guitar hero peers and more. Plus, we talk about Joe’s time playing Hendrix’s material live on the Experience Hendrix tour and his philosophy on how to approach the songs and how to avoid doing an impression of his hero.

11 Aug 202045min

Grammy-award winning singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist wunderkind Sarah Jarosz joins me to talk about Shawn Colvin’s classic ‘A Few Small Repairs’ album, from discovering it as a prepubescent growing up in Texas to falling in love with the album on a whole new level during an I’m With Her tour a few years ago. We dig into the way the Texas singer-songwriter scene loomed over Sarah as a child, meeting and working with Shawn and other legendary musicians including Paul Simon, the many subtleties in the arrangements throughout the album and how she teamed up with the album’s producer, friend of the show John Leventhal, to make her brilliant new album ‘World on the Ground’.

6 Aug 202035min

Note: This interview was recorded before the death of George Floyd and the subsequent protests. This week, TV legend Shawn Ryan (creator of The Shield, SWAT, Timeless and more) takes me back in time 30 years to talk about the debut album by The Beautiful South ‘Welcome to the Beautiful South’. Shawn talks about discovering music in the pre-internet age, the lineage of the Beautiful South in cult heroes The Housemartins, the contradictions between the albums’ sound and lyrical content, the controversial album cover and how the album served as a bizarre soundtrack to the Rodney King police brutality and aftermath in 1991. Plus we talk about how Shawn has used music in his TV projects, discovering new music through his work, the music he loves to write to and why Coldplay earned his respect on The Shield.

4 Aug 202042min