I’ve known about John Batdorf for a long long time but because of my personal musical biases I never really took the time to listen closely. I recently was reminded of his name and his music from listening to Mike Marrone’s show on The Loft on XM Satellite Radio as I drove to work early in the morning. Still it was not enough to get me to move in the direction of purchasing some music by John Batdorf or go back and listen to the early Batdorf and Rodney or even John’s band Silver. I grew up in the 1970’s listening to Zeppelin, Springsteen, Pink Floyd, AC/DC – bands like Seals & Crofts, Bread, America, and the like were not my style and as I grew older and even started (ironically) to play my own music in a style akin to those bands I still harbored a bias. But thank you lord that I have come across John Batdorf’s latest CD “Old Man Dreamin’” because it is amazing. The album is one of the few recent albums that I have enjoyed from track 1 to track 11. The playing is superb, the production is excellent and the songwriting displays a craftsmanship that is worthy of study. We had a great conversation about the present and the past – check it out and please leave a comment and visit John’s site to get the CD!

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I’ve been itching to get a producer on the show for a while and I’ve finally tricked one into coming on, well not really, I just asked nicely. Cameron Mizell is actually a friend of Carla Lynne Hall’s (see episode 20) who I recently interviewed. Carla told me what great work Cameron does with his own music and then she also told me that he works with other indie artists as a producer. I checked out his website (www.cameronmizell.com) and also his blog (www.musicianwages.com) and was blown away by his guitar chops and the variety of music that he had his fingers in. Take a listen to this interesting conversation about what a producer does and how they help an artist approach their own music. You’ll be hearing music not only from Cameron, but Lauren Zettler and Erika Lloyd as well. Please leave a comment and visit the artists websites and buy their music!

~ Darryl

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I found Matthew Moran on Twitter. I’m not quite sure I remember exactly where and how, but I followed his links out of Twitter and on to his website where I was taken with his approach to songwriting and to his music as a business. The more I look at musicians and songwriters in these ever evolving days of the internet download the more I see a business store front. I also see a person that can diversify and Matt is that: diversification. We had a wonderful conversation about songwriting, the music business and how technology can help the business model of the modern musician. Please leave a comment, visit Matthew’s site and support his music.

~ Darryl

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coco_lafe

Welcome to episode 19 of Unsigned Underground. I’m very pleased to be back at it and producing this podcast. I had to take sometime off to re-evaluate what I really wanted to promote with this show and I came the conclusion that I wanted to interact more with the artists I presented on the show – so I decided that I would focus mainly on interviews and not do a radio style show. There are a lot of great indie-artists out there that need to have their music exposed, but to just roll out the tune in a radio show doesn’t seem to really be the best thing.  I tune in to shows like Fresh Air and New Sounds on NPR/WNYC because I want to hear the story behind the story: why did that sing get written? what are you doing to promote yourself in this DIY  wild-west and get recognized? And of course it still comes down to the Music.

So for my relaunching episode I’m going to be talking to Coco and Lafe – two very interesting people who have taken their music and put it to the forefront of their lives. They describe themselves as a couple of “empty-nester baby-boomer back-porch songwriters turned street performers turned full-time touring musicians”. The spin that they’ve put on their music business is to tour Farmer’s Markets and then to solicit house concerts from the audience when they come up to buy a CD or sign the list. They are a throw-back to the ancient minstrels who traveled from town festival to town market playing for tips. But in these days of declining record sales and questionable recording contracts, this type of tour and self-promotion seems like genius.

Take a listen and leave a comment -

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Music Waiting To Be Heard!

~ Darryl


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