Unsigned Underground

Toronto based singer-songwriter Kim Jarrett has a voice that fuses decades of pop music in a familiar and welcoming sound. Listening to Kim’s music takes me back to the soft FM stations of the 1970’s while still evoking the modern era and her own style. Kim Jarrett is an award winning songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and session player. We sat down to talk about the music scene in Canada, her upcoming CD and being an indie musician. Take a listen to this episode and please leave a comment – let us know what you think.

*note that there is an episode discrepancy on the audio – this is episode 30. I must have been so absorbed by Kim’s music that I forgot where I was!

When you listen to Morgen La Civita’s music the first thing you ask yourself is ‘Where is this girl coming from?’. The music is hard to pigeon-hole and presents a challenge to the listener when trying to divine the source of her inspiration. Americana? Yes. Blues? Yes. Popular song? Yes. Middle Eastern? Yes. Morgen definitely presents us with a melting pot of styles and influences nicely tied together with a sultry voice and excellent production value. In this episode of Unsigned Underground we talk about changing directions, writing contemporary songs while reaching into the past and Morgen’s upcoming CD “From the Basement”.

In this episode of Unsigned Underground we’ll be talking to Adam Stokes, songwriter, musician and world traveler. Adam has been all over this country spreading the word about his music and he’s been living down south – way down south as in Guatemala where he took up residence and toured Central South America while his wife worked as an archeologist. We’ll be talking about how living in another country can influence your songwriting, writing his second album and when he’s going to get back out there on the road. Listen and leave a comment!

I think that what I really dig about Miriam Jones is that I hear in her music a lot of artists I like: Glen Hansard, Dar Williams, Emmy Lou Harris, Shawn Colvin and even Leonard Cohen. But as with all excellent artists, Miriam takes those glancing comparisons and creates her own mosaic portrait of herself. Miriam’s lyrics are poetry and Miriam’s melodic sense is exquisite. Listen in on our conversation about 70’s pop music, gigging in the UK and songwriting and let us know what you think.

Tim Gleeson’s approach to music is simple: a good story, a little love, a memorable melody and some spare change. I put Tim’s new CD “No Sad Songs” on and I felt myself relax into the comfort of the back porch in mid-July. Nothing is over done and yet the songs all feel full and ripe. Tim is no slouch when it comes to performing having toured with Sister Sledge, a career as an LA session man and opening for Jazz singer Anita Bakers’ Rapture tour. Listen to Tim andI talk about the new CD and how he’s handling being an indie musician these days. Let us know what you think.

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 -

~ Darryl