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Transmissions

Aquarium Drunkard

Weekly interviews with musicians, artists, authors, and filmmakers presented by Aquarium Drunkard.

music music commentary

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63:12

Transmissions :: Cochemea

Transmissions ·

2025/12/17

This week’s conversation with Cochemea Gastelum brings our season to a close. The saxophonist and bandleader joins us to discuss his beautiful LP Ancestros Futuros, out now on Daptone Records. Mining his Indigenous roots, soul jazz, and funk, it's a fantastic album, and it completes a trilogy that began with 2019’s All My Relations, continued with 2021’s Baca Sewa, and now concludes. Cochemea’s resume is lengthy. He worked extensively with the late soul singer Sharon Jones as part of her Dap Kings

75:15

Transmissions :: Mike Ayers (The Untold Story of '90s...

Transmissions ·

2025/12/10

The '90s were a strange time. From Gregorian chants to swing bands, you never knew what would make it onto the radio. But some of the strangest groups to improbably infiltrate the mainstream came from the post-Grateful Dead jam band scene. Our guest today is Mike Ayers, author of ⁠Sharing in the Groove: The Untold Story of the '90s Jam Band Explosion and the Scene that Followed. ⁠The book, an oral history, is really a blast. It covers all the big players of the era: Phish, Blues Traveler, Spin

70:37

Transmissions :: Steve Wynn (The Dream Syndicate)

Transmissions ·

2025/12/03

Welcome back to Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury. This week on the show, a return guest: Steve Wynn of The Dream Syndicate and solo fame. He last joined the show part of a trio: in 2018, we taped with him, Howe Gelb of Giant Sand, and Robyn Hitchcock live at the KXCI studio at Hotel Congress in Tucson Arizona. That talk also made it into the Transmissions feed again in 2020. This time, Steve is with us to discuss the 40th anniversary reissue of The Dream Syndicate’s second album, 1984’s

92:36

Transmissions :: Steve Von Till

Transmissions ·

2025/11/26

Welcome back to Transmissions. This week: Steve Von Till, of sludge legends Neurosis, the tribal ambient spin-off Tribes of Neurot, solo albums under this own name, and the psych folk project Harvestman. He runs the independent label, Neurot Recordings. And as if all that isn’t enough, he’s also a poet, and an educator—when he’s not playing music, he’s bringing knowledge to the next generation, working as a fourth grade teacher in North Idaho. If you’ve been listening to Transmissions for awhile,

57:37

Transmissions :: Kate Pierson (The B-52s)

Transmissions ·

2025/11/19

This week on Transmissions, Kate Pierson, vocalist and keyboardist of The B-52s. Writing about the legendary Atlanta band, AD founder Justin Gage says, “The B-52’s 1979 debut album ushered in a practically fully formed sound/band. No one else was doing this…whatever ‘this’ was.” Indeed, The B-52s created a one-of-a-kind sound, blending punk, funk, and art-pop, and while they broke into the mainstream with ubiquitous radio hits, they never sacrificed their avant-garde edge. This fall, the band

73:57

Transmissions :: Gary Lachman

Transmissions ·

2025/11/12

This week, we present a conversation with writer, rock & roller, and esoteric scholar Gary Lachman, author of a new memoir, Touched By the Presence: From Blondie’s Bowery and Rock and Roll to Magic and the Occult. In it, Lachman charts his journey from a young New Jersey misfit immersed in comic books and paperback fiction to his days playing bass in Blondie as the band rose to stardom from the New York City punk underground. Blondie would go on to have a top-ten hit with his composition, “(I’m

77:00

Transmissions :: DM Hotep (Sun Ra Arkestra)

Transmissions ·

2025/11/05

Though he departed this earthly realm in 1993, Afrofuturist and free jazz icon Sun Ra’s cosmic tones continue to echo through the spaceways. A composer, poet, and some might even say a prophet, Ra seemed to understand that his work would outlive him, staging: “In some far off place, many light years in space, I’ll wait for you. Where human feet have never trod, where human eyes have never seen. I’ll build a world of abstract dreams and wait for you.” This week on the show, we sit down with Sun Ra

37:38

Transmissions :: Emmylou Harris

Transmissions ·

2025/10/29

Welcome back to Transmissions, a weekly interview podcast created and curated by Los Angeles online music magazine Aquarium Drunkard. This week on the show, host Jason P. Woodbury speaks with a living legend, and one of our all-time favorite vocalists and songsmiths: Emmylou Harris. On November 7th, New West Records will re-release an expanded edition of her 1998 live album Spyboy, back in print after 27 years. Recorded in the wake 1995’s Wrecking Ball, an LP that redefined Harris for a whole new

70:53

Transmissions :: Pam Grossman

Transmissions ·

2025/10/22

Welcome back to Transmissions, a weekly podcast series from Aquarium Drunkard. This week on the show: Pam Grossman, host of The Witch Wave podcast and author of a new book, Magic Maker: The Enchanted Path to Creativity. This show, at its core, is about the relationship between magic and art. What do we mean by magic? Let’s turn to Grossman's book for a helpful take. She writes that magic is quote, “a way of shifting one’s entire mode of being in the direction of Creative Force and interacting with

37:30

Preview: Fela Kuti: Fear No Man

Transmissions ·

2025/10/15

Subscribe to ⁠Fela Kuti: Fear No Man.⁠In a world that’s on fire, what is the role of art? What can music actually…do? Can a song save a life? Change a law? Topple a president? Get you killed? In Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, Jad Abumrad—creator of Radiolab, More Perfect, and Dolly Parton’s America—tells the story of one of the great political awakenings in music: how a classically trained 'colonial boy’ traveled to America, in search of Africa, only to return to Nigeria and transform his sound into a

60:57

Transmissions :: The Cosmic Tones Research Trio

Transmissions ·

2025/10/15

This week on the show, the Portland-based group of Roman Norfleet, Harlan Silverman, and Kennedy Verrett, aka The Cosmic Tones Research Trio. “Cosmic” is a term that has, thanks to critics and writers, become a little overused. Practically every indie rock band or country-based singer/songwriter with an effects pedal employs “cosmic” touches these days. But in the case of the Trio? Well, it’s actually earned. Inspired by the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, the experimental

65:41

Transmissions :: The Autumn Defense

Transmissions ·

2025/10/08

This week on Transmissions, we’re toasting harvest season with John Stirratt and Pat Sansone of The Autumn Defense, who release their first album in a decade this week. It’s called Here and Nowhere, out October 10 on Yep Roc Records.You might know John and Pat from their work in Wilco; Stirratt is a founding member, and Sansone joined in 2004. But the duo’s work in the Autumn Defense stretches all the way back to 1999, when they formed the Laurel Canyon-style folk rock band in New Orleans. Here

65:56

Transmissions :: Dan Wriggins (Friendship)

Transmissions ·

2025/10/01

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. This week on the show, Dan Wriggins of the Philly band Friendship. Earlier this year, the band released its fifth album, Caveman Wakes Up. Fans of the roots-informed indie rock of Wednesday and MJ Lenderman—frequent collaborators with Friendship—will find plenty of busted and bruised glory in these songs, which fall on the shaggy end of the alt-country spectrum. But for us, it’s Wriggins’ wry and sly lyrics that really seal the deal. Take “All Over

67:39

Transmissions :: Joan Shelley (2025)

Transmissions ·

2025/09/24

Welcome to Transmissions. This week, singer/songwriter Joan Shelley. Her haunted folk songs and crystal clear voice have long made her a favorite of the Aquarium Drunkard crew. Writing about her last one, 2022’s The Spur, Tyler Wilcox wrote: "At this point in her career, we would probably settle for a ‘pretty good’ album from Joan Shelley…But no, The Spur continues an unbroken streak of masterpieces for the Louisville-based artist.” And, while Shelley, and her daughter and husband, Nathan

68:30

Transmissions :: Jens Lekman

Transmissions ·

2025/09/17

This week on the show, Jason P. Woodbury speaks with Swedish songwriter Jens Lekman. Woodbury has been listening to Jens for just about 20 years—introduced by the 2005 compilation, Oh You're So Silent Jens. Though the comp features songs ingeniously constructed using samples, it was Lekman’s voice that made Woodbury such a fan. Not just his deep, sonorous croon; we mean "voice" in the writing sense: Lekman has a signature ability to sound funny and sad at the same time, or wounded yet somehow

71:12

Transmissions :: Marissa Nadler

Transmissions ·

2025/09/10

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. Our guest this week is Marissa Nadler. Last month, she released her 10th album, New Radiations, via Sacred Bones Records. Like much of her work, New Radiations exudes—like how we didn’t say “radiates” there?—a spooky, haunted feel. Following 2021’s full rock band outing The Path of the Clouds, the self-produced new album finds Nadler focusing on sparser, more solitary zones, her subtle finger-picking augmented by touches of electric guitar, pedal

56:05

Transmissions :: Bret McKenzie (Flight of the Conchords)

Transmissions ·

2025/09/03

Welcome to the kick off of Transmissions' new season with your host, Jason P. Woodbury, after a wonderful summer mini-series from Tyler Wilcox, All One Song: A Neil Young Podcast. We first encountered this week’s guest, New Zealand songwriter, actor, and composer Bret McKenzie, as one half of the indie pop/comedy duo Flight of the Conchords in the mid-2000s. But did you know that before that, he was a member of one of New Zealand’s most popular reggae party bands? "Just for context, reggae music

70:38

All One Song :: Jason P. Woodbury on "When Your...

Transmissions ·

2025/08/27

Welcome back to All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. We’ve spent the summer talking with some great musicians and writers about the strange and wonderful Neil Young universe. And we’ve had a good time. But all good things must come to an end! After today’s episode, we are handing the keys back to Jason P. Woodbury, the host of Transmissions and editor of Aquarium Drunkard. — he’s got an incredible season of interviews coming your way as summer turns to

66:40

All One Song :: Ethan Miller on "Music Arcade"

Transmissions ·

2025/08/20

Welcome back to All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. All summer long, we’re talking to some of our favorite musicians and writers about their favorite Neil Young song. Or at least one of their favorite Neil Young songs.This week, our All One Song guest is Ethan Miller. Ethan has been a longtime fixture in the underground, first coming to my attention back in the early aughts as the co-founder of the psych noise pioneers Comets on Fire. But Ethan is

65:18

All One Song :: Jesse Jarnow on "Sedan Delivery"

Transmissions ·

2025/08/13

This week’s All One Song guest is the definition of a multi-hyphenate — your friend and ours, Jesse Jarnow. Jesse is an incredible writer, having penned such essential books as Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock, Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, Wasn’t That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the American Soul, and the forthcoming epic, The Invisible Hit Parade: A People’s History of Recorded Music.You’re probably going to recognize Jesse’s voice

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