Underwater Sunshine

With the coronavirus keeping us all sheltered at home, we decide to just do a LIVE podcast and just talk about whatever everybody wants to talk about. Zaniness ensues.

Work in the studio is going really well and it’s giving us a chance to feature all these killer Garden Sessions. This week’s artist come from the far-locales of Vancouver, BC and Denton, TX. Dig the exotica!

I’m busy in the recording studio this week so we continue featuring October’s Garden Sessions. This week it’s two more great bands Wild Pink and The Harmaleighs. Dig this!

We had an incredible Underwater Sunshine Festival in October and the Garden Sessions were amazing. This week’s podcast features performances and interviews with two of our faves: Kid Sistr and Matt Sucich. Dig it!

Welp. As the nation celebrates Part 2 of our 1999 podcast, I personally celebrate Day 2 of food poisoning. Although I’m less excited about one than the other, I recognize the humanity inherent in both. To paraphrase Edward R Murrow...good night and good bleccchhhh

We celebrate being slightly late celebrating the 20th Anniversary of 1999, a record which actually came out 38 years ago. This was an incredibly fertile period in the Purple One’s career and we bellyflop into it, splashing music over two separate podcasts.

After the critical acclaim of Dirty Mind(1980), Prince’s first real encounter with mainstream mass culture ends disastrously on the Rolling Stones Tour. In the wake of those experiences, he goes back to the studio and crafts the kind of response only he could make...Controversy (1981). We take a look. Dig it!

Is there any doubt in your mind what these next few podcasts are all about? We start at the beginning and take a deep dive into maybe the best there ever was. This motherfucker was simply VIOLACEOUS! Prince Rogers Nelson.

We get into our first Garden Sessions of the year, checking out October’s performances with Maria Taylor, The Accidentals, and Sarah Jaffe. It’s all kinda awesome. Oh yeah...and soup. We talk about soup.

It’s Winter and we’ve been staying indoors so we talk about the movies and music we love lately and why Star Wars is endlessly frustrating.

Part Two of our trip through the wonderful, tragic, and triumphant life of Daniel Johnston. Check it out!

In the wake of some hard times, we examine the wonderful, tragic, and triumphant life of Daniel Johnston.

We return with a Garden Session from the Spring featuring sets and interviews with the great Jesse Malin and Red Wanting Blue, who, as it turns out, are not from Canada, have never been from Canada, but have actually visited Canada and thought it was lovely. We agree completely. Dig it. PS. Sorry about the infrequent podcasts as of late. The holidays and various family difficulties for both myself and James have cut into our ability to record. We’ll be back on track soon!

James & I convene onstage Saturday night at the Underwater Sunshine Festival to host a live podcast, answer your questions, pat ourselves on the back with microphones, and generally self-congratulate in front of an audience. Zaniness ensues. We love you all.

The boys finish prepping for the festival this weekend and we’re thrilled to announce the last minute surprise additions of Petal and Stephen Kellogg to the Underwater Sunshine lineup. Don’t forget the Saturday session opens with James and I onstage for a live podcast recording at 6pm! Check it out!

The boys take another trip through the bands playing the Underwater Sunshine Festival, including a brand new Jordan Klassen tune and the very special reveal of a new Maria Taylor song called “Waiting In Line” featuring me, Adam, singing with her! Check ‘em all out!

The Underwater Sunshine Festival is coming Nov 8-9 and we’re so excited to spend the next few weeks previewing the incredible artists who’ll be playing. C’mon! Check em’ out with us!

Back for more checkered flags and a few bumps in the road. We talk about the later years as The Cars make a massive comeback, call it quits, and then get back together to make some really good music one last time. It’s a really sad but appreciative farewell to Ben Orr and Ric Ocasek. Seriously. Let The Good Times Roll.

With apologies/acknowledgement to Paula Vogel’s brilliant play (which returns to NYC this coming Spring w/its original cast of Mary-Louise Parker & David Morse), we examine an entirely different life in Cars and say goodbye to one of our heroes.

The boyz explore the work of Matthew Koma’s Winnetka Bowling League along with the new releases from a few other pals. It’s a good time. Trust me.

Omigod. So much great music and none of it from 1969. Welcome back time travelers! Phones are smart and people are stupid and we’re finally home. (smile) Thankfully, the Music is always good no matter when we are.

In which the boys finally wrap up Woodstock, somehow managing to cover a 3-day festival in only 6 weeks. What can we say? We’re talkers. Day 3 stretches into Day 4 with Edgar Winter, Blood Sweat & Tears, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Sha-Na-Na, and Jimi Hendrix.

Day 3 at the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair gets off to explosive start with Joe Cocker and never really lets up. We can’t help ourselves so we only deal with half of it in our penultimate Woodstock podcast. But you still get Country Joe & The Fish, Ten Years After and THE motherfucking BAND!!! It’s an experience. Get some!

The seemingly endless 2nd day of Woodstock finally comes to close with a soul-baring Janis Joplin Set and a powerful close by the Jefferson Airplane book-ended around furious historic and impossible-to-top sets by Sly & The Family Stone and The Who. Along with Santana some 14 hours earlier, Sly & The Family Stone and The Who play the greatest sets at Woodstock in my opinion.

Day 2 at Woodstock finally starts to cook until the Dead arrive in all their acid-drenched glory and somehow manage to both break the stage and fry all the electronics at the same time, causing the world’s biggest rock concert to grind to a screeching halt. Zaniness ensues.

In which Day 2 at Woodstock begins more in fits and starts than anything else. The acoustic folk music of Day 1 was supposed to give way to the electric rock and roll of Day 2 but instead, the biggest rock concert ever got stuck in, of all things, traffic. Dig.

If you ever do something really cool and all your friends come over along with all their friends and a few hundred thousand friends of friends of friends so it’s basically the most people ever in one place and some bands play and everybody gets really fucking high and has a good time (except for a guy who gets run over by a tractor and someone who doesn’t take their insulin) and then fifty years pass without anything like that really ever happening again...we’ll probably decide to do some podcasts about that shit too. Day 1. Woodstock. Dig it.

If Scott Fitzgerald had heard Emotions And Math, his book might’ve had an entirely different heroine. We have...so we do. Margaret Glaspy is simply fucking amazing and we spend a podcast talking about just that.

In which the boys reflect upon the brilliant visionary music of both New Delhi/London-based Prateek Kuhad and Brooklyn’s own Wilder Maker as seen through their performances on the last and first days of April’s Garden Sessions. We listen and discuss.

In which the boys can’t seem to stop having fun with Garden Sessions so this week we delve into Eric Hutchinson and Bear Cub. You’re gonna dog this. Or dig this.

In which the boys talk to the completely awesome Kiley Lotz, the brilliant singer/songwriter behind Petal, check out her Garden Sesh, and then have an epic chat with the legendary Cyndi Lauper and her bandmates-for-the-night Hollis Brown all about growing up in Queens and playing rock and roll.

James is out of town recording this week so we spend this podcast on Garden Sessions and interviews with Maria Taylor, Cameron McGill, and Ryan Hamilton. You’re not going to want to miss this one. We talk about stuff. PS. Thanks to Courtney Barnett for the title assist.

In which we talk not a whit about Spock, Dr or Mr, and instead concentrate solely on Superstar’s brilliant 1988 release Palm Tree, which is either their masterpiece or…well, not, depending on whether you simply happen to think some other record is…or, I suppose, isn’t, as the case may be. How do you feel about run-on sentences? I love them sometimes…but…well, not all the time.

We continue the epic tale of the Bellshill Glasgow kids we began in the "Teenage Superstars" episode by taking a deep dive into the music of one of my all-time faves: Joe McAlinden and his amazing band SUPERSTAR. This is music that’s completely out-of-print and unavailable. You can’t hear it on Spotify and it’s nearly impossible to find a copy of this album anywhere. There’s really only one place you can easily hear this music and that is RIGHT HERE. Underwater Sunshine presents….SUPERSTAR!

We stick with the Garden Sessions for one more week, this time featuring the incredible Twinspeak music of Ganessa & Tiffany James’ band Onliest, our interview with Roan Yellowthorn, and the wild visionary folk music of Teddy Thompson. You’re gonna flip. Dig it.

We stick with the Garden Sessions but this time we begin by announcing one of the bands we discovered playing their Garden Session who are going to be playing the next Underwater Sunshine Fest in November...SKOUT! Plus we play the Garden Session and our interview with Fort Frances and finish up with some Amy Vachal and a little Matt Sucich. Dig the good word!

We go back to the Garden Sessions and visit with the bands Fairhazel (from London by way of Boston), Wild Pink (straight outta Brooklyn!), and finish with our pal Taylor Carson (all the way from Portland, Oregon, which - oddly enough because it’s landlocked - does actually have a port).

It begins with a breathtaking version of “Bleed” and goes from there. In order to get in the mood for the release of more Garden Sessions, the Sunshine Boys finally release the long awaited Sesh and interview with Stew & The Negro Problem, pretty much Adam’s favorite band in existence. We talk some shit, they play some magic, and on top of that you get a little of the end of their Bowery Electric set and THEN...we rock a little Kasey Anderson for good measure. It don’t get any better than this. Get sum.

It’s time. One last look at a few artists playing the Fest and then...here comes the Sun! This week we check out Fairhazel , Amy Vachal, Eric Hutchinson, Wild Pink, and...Cyndi Lauper.

In the next-to-Final week leading up to the Underwater Sunshine Festival April 5-6 at The Bowery Electric, the Sunshine Boyz take a look at the musical stylings of Ryan Hamilton, Hollis Brown, and Fort Gorgeous and then prepare to dive into the miasma of joy and electricity and alcohol that is UNDERWATER SUNSHINE!! Come join us in the sun!!!

In which the Underwater Sunshine Festival draws another week nearer and we dig into four more incredible bands traveling here to play from places like Pennsylvania and Ohio, from as close as Brooklyn here in NYC and as far away as Pullman in western Washington state, AKA the town that gave us Klay.

We go deep on a few more artists playing the Underwater Sunshine Festival in April, this time shining the spotlight West Coast, then East Coast, and finally North to our friendly neighbors across the border. They’re coming from all over to play this one! Why? Because flights are cheap, because we’re all kinds of cool, and because - apparently - nobody thought to build a wall above Michigan. (shrug)

In which the boyz begin the march to the Underwater Sunshine Festival by playing some of their favorite new music, including a Brooklyn band, a Brooklyn boy, and a few once and future Outlaws.

In which James has a song he wants to play and I reveal some of the effects of Christian religious fervor on Jewish kids from Berkeley.

In which all good things come to an end and the boys talk it through.

In which the boys revisit 1971, a banner year for Rod & Woody. Not many people can make three albums in one year. Honestly, I have trouble keeping up with one album in three years.

It’s hard enough to make a great band. And it’s nearly impossible to make a great band which then makes a great record. So how the hell did Rod Stewart and Ron Wood manage to make TWO great bands together at the same time and THEN make nothing but KILLER albums with both of them. We take a look.

In which the boys accidentally get off on a tangent and forget to ever come back. Plus...we release a new song just cuz we can’t think of anything else to say.

Well, my computer came back to life so we made salmon and ate it. Could this have any less to do with anything? Next week...revolutionary haddock!