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PODCAST

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth

The Sharp Notes is a conversation podcast exploring music, sound, and the craft behind the records we love. Host Evan Toth speaks with musicians, producers, and industry voices about the art of listening and the stories pressed into every groove.

music music interviews

All Episodes

44:27

Jude Warne Returns: America Paperback Release and the...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2026/02/27

We welcome back a familiar and always thoughtful voice in music criticism and biography, Jude Warne. With the recent paperback release of her acclaimed authorized biography America: The Band, and the arrival of her deep-dive study Lowdown: The Music of Boz Scaggs, Jude joins us at a moment when her work continues to expand its reach and sharpen its focus. We have spoken together a few times now, but the road never seems to double back. Each visit opens a new corridor into the music. She also ...

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58:09

Alan Light on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and His New...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2026/02/18

This episode is a little different, because what you’re about to hear was recorded live, in front of an audience, right here inside The Sharp Notes record store at the Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey. You might catch the room in it: few laughs, knowing nods, and shoppers walking past our front window. My guest is author and music journalist Alan Light. Over the years he’s written as a rock critic for Rolling Stone, served as editor-in-chief at Vibe and Spin and he’s a regular ...

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37:32

Studio Confidential Preview: Sylvia Massy on...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2026/02/11

This episode’s guest is one of those rare studio minds who makes the control room feel less like a workplace and more like a laboratory with excellent taste. Sylvia Massy is a producer, mixer, and engineer whose credits stretch from punk grit to arena-scale rock and beyond. Her name is often spoken as she produced Tool’s Undertow, but her story doesn’t start with platinum plaques. It starts in the mid-’80s trenches, making compilations, working with punk bands, engineering metal records, and ...

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30:48

One Musician, Many Names: A Conversation with Lucien...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2026/02/04

Some conversations begin with music. This one begins with language. A little French. A little English. When this interview takes place, it's a late night in Brussels, where the streets are quiet, the restaurants are closing down, and Lucien Fraipont (fray-pon), who records and performs under the names Robbing Millions and DUID, is generous enough to stay awake a bit longer and talk about his multifaced career in music. What follows is less an interview and more a map of how a musician becomes...

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46:07

Larry Jaffee on Record Store Day, the Vinyl Revival,...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2026/02/04

Welcome to The Sharp Notes Podcast. I’m Evan Toth, and this episode was recorded live in front of an audience at The Sharp Notes record store inside the Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey. My guest is author, journalist, and vinyl-world lifer Larry Jaffee, a guy whose career has basically been one long field recording of the music business, from punk chaos to pressing plant logistics. Larry wrote Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century, the inside story of ho...

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34:35

Stéphane Wrembel Translates Django Reinhardt in New...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2026/01/21

There are musicians who treat tradition like a museum, and then there are musicians who treat it like a passport. Stéphane Wrembel belongs firmly in the second category. You may know his work from the soundtracks to Midnight in Paris or Vicky Cristina Barcelona, those melodies that drift in from another time but somehow land right in your lap. His newest release, Django New Orleans II: Hors-Série, leans into that same sensation. It’s a record that threads Django Reinhardt’s Jazz Manouche thro...

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37:23

Doing It Yourself: Tamar Berk’s new album ocd and the...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2026/01/08

Independence in music is usually described as freedom. In practice, it is a long sequence of decisions that can’t be outsourced. Writing the songs. Recording the tracks. Producing the record. Paying for the mistakes. Owning that outcome. That path has shaped Tamar Berk’s career from the start. Working largely outside the industry’s infrastructure, she has built a body of work defined by personal control, emotional directness, and the pressure of doing it all yourself. Her new album ocd was re...

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37:29

Eternity’s Children Reconsidered: Steve Stanley on...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2025/12/19

For nearly three decades, Steve Stanley has been one of the quiet architects behind how we remember mid-century American pop. His work as a reissue producer and archivist has revived artists who slipped through the cracks of the industry machine, restoring not only their music but the cultural scaffolding around it. From Del-Fi to Rev-Ola to his own Now Sounds imprint, Stanley has built a body of work that treats forgotten pop not as nostalgia but as evidence: proof that the margins of the 19...

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55:54

Tom “Grover” Biery Reframes Classic Albums for the...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2025/12/11

It’s a remarkable moment to be a record collector. Music lovers have never had more ways to hear their favorite albums in whatever format feels right: hi-res files, streaming on the move, the whole buffet. And yet, there’s a meaningful difference between a solid pressing and a pressing built to be the definitive document of an album. Audiophile labels have chased that ideal for decades: each working to deliver versions that honor the intent and the sound. Plenty of listeners have caught on. I...

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48:00

The Craft of Clarity: Bob Hazelwood and the Andover...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2025/11/26

There are people who make great sound feel less like a secret society and more like an open door. Bob Hazelwood is one of them. He is the Director of Engineering and Product Development at Andover Audio, and his career runs through many major players in the industry. He grew up in South Jersey, built his first amplifier at fifteen, and has been chasing better sound ever since. He loves working with his hands, he loves creating things that actually make life feel richer, and he has a deep beli...

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41:45

The Sound of a Better Education: Inside Kaufman Music...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2025/11/05

Everyone agrees that music and the arts are essential — they make us smarter, more empathetic, more human. You’ll hear it in every school mission statement, every campaign speech, every conversation about what “really matters” for kids. And yet, walk into most public schools and the first thing on the chopping block is still the music program. It’s as if we all nodded our heads in agreement and then quietly decided to spend the money somewhere else. Our guest today, Anthony Mazzocchi, has bui...

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46:27

Small Rooms, Big Stakes: One Night Live Fights to...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2025/10/29

There’s a question that’s been circling the music world for a while now — and it’s only getting louder: how does a new artist actually get heard today? Because if you look around, the industry that once thrived on risk and discovery now seems to cling to nostalgia like a life raft. Major labels and festival lineups read like a roll call of the same veterans — the safe bets, the proven draws — while entire generations of emerging voices wait at the edges, wondering where exactly the door went....

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51:48

The House of Wax: Chad Kassem on Building a Vinyl...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2025/10/23

This episode feels like a meeting across time — the past, present, and future of vinyl commerce sitting down for a conversation. On one side of the table, there’s Chad Kassem — the founder of Acoustic Sounds, Analogue Productions, and Quality Record Pressings — a man whose passion for high-fidelity sound and meticulous craftsmanship helped revive the vinyl industry when nearly everyone else was going digital. And on the other side, there’s me — a fella who just opened The Sharp Notes, a new b...

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37:31

Put the Phone Down, Pick the Record Up: Discogs VP...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2025/10/15

Be honest — when was the last time you listened to a record all the way through, without checking your phone? No notifications. No scrolling. No playlists on shuffle. Just… listening. In a world that never stops pinging, Discogs — yes, the massive online music database and marketplace — is asking us to do something radical: to step away. On October 18th, they’re launching a global initiative called Dis/Connect, it’s a day that invites music lovers everywhere to unplug from devices, skip the...

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28:06

The Zombies Never Die: Colin Blunstone on the...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2025/10/08

Few albums in the history of rock music have had a journey as unlikely—or as triumphant—as Odessey and Oracle. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios in 1967 during the final months of the original Zombies, the record was released only after the band had already broken up. And yet, what emerged from that bittersweet moment was a British psych-pop masterpiece: an album that gave us “Time of the Season,” and later earned its place on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and today...

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45:51

From Toto to Thriller: Steve Porcaro on Music,...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2025/09/25

Few musicians have had as wide-ranging an impact on popular music as Steve Porcaro. As a founding member of Toto, his synthesizer work helped define an era—on hits like “Africa,” “Rosanna,” and “Hold the Line.” But his influence doesn’t stop there. Steve co-wrote “Human Nature,” one of the most enduring tracks on Michael Jackson’s Thriller, still the best-selling album of all time, and he became a go-to sound architect for legends from Quincy Jones to Don Henley. His textured, atmospheric pro...

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22:08

Keeping the Beat: Tito Puente Jr. on Legacy and Latin...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2025/09/16

Tito Puente was more than a legend of Latin music, he was a cultural force who reached far beyond the Latino world. For those of us who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, his presence was everywhere. By the time of his passing in 2000, his loss resonated deeply, especially here in the New York City metro area, where his music had long been part of our region’s heartbeat. His son, Tito Puente Jr., has embraced that legacy while shaping his own path. As you’ll hear, he doesn’t simply perform—though ...

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30:25

Luke Marzec Makes Something Good Out of Nothing | The...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2025/09/10

Meet Luke Marzec, a British singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist whose music lives at the crossroads of soul, jazz, and modern storytelling. His new single, “Growing Up With You,” is a heartfelt reflection on the friendships that shape us — a theme that runs deeply through his latest album, Something Good Out of Nothing. Luke studied classical and jazz at the Royal College of Music and Trinity Conservatoire, but his path has never been a straight academic line. He’s just as comfortab...

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34:18

The Return of Geoff Wilkinson: Us3’s Soundtrack For a...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2025/08/20

In the 1990s, Us3 reshaped the global music landscape by fusing hip-hop and jazz in ways that felt both groundbreaking and a little bit inevitable. Their 1993 debut, Hand on the Torch, became Blue Note Records’ first platinum-selling album and introduced an entire generation to the possibilities of genre fusion. Yet, after a run of chart success and international touring, the project receded from the spotlight, and founder/producer Geoff Wilkinson stepped into other creative lanes. After a de...

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39:23

Anything Is Possible: Chris Stamey’s Soundtrack of...

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth ·

2025/08/06

Chris Stamey has long been a quietly pivotal figure in American music. From co-founding the influential avant-pop band The dB’s and releasing early indie classics, to his work with Alex Chilton, Big Star’s Jody Stephens, and a wide array of sonic adventurers, his career has bridged the experimental and the melodic, the cerebral and the emotional. With his latest album, Anything Is Possible, Stamey returns not to the past, but to the feelings that defined it, particularly the wonder and ...

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199 results

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