WNXP Podcasts – Details, episodes & analysis

This week for What Where When-sday, we discuss the Celebrate Nashville Cultural Festival happening this Saturday at Centennial Park. 

Our special guest this week is former Nashvillian JD McPherson. He explains why the new record, Nite Owls, took seven years to arrive, how his daughter inspired one its greatest songs and how his covers EP opened the door to the new album’s direction.

Legendary singer, songwriter, and producer Swamp Dogg has a new documentary called "Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted" which you can check out during Americana and Nashville Film Fest. Director Isaac Gale and editor Paul Lovelace joined us to talk about the film and the subject of the film Swamp Dogg talks Americana Fest & new album Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th ST.

Last week, we introduced you to Lovenoise. Now we’re zooming in on exactly how they pushed through barriers that had long existed in Nashville. We’re also going to travel further back in time, to the heyday of Nashville’s Black music scene, and the role the city played in unraveling it. Then we’ll meet the first generation of R&B players, hip-hop MCs and neo-soul singer-songwriters who found what they’d been looking for at those Lovenoise Sunday nights.

In the early 2000s, Holt and his fellow Lovenoise founders may have been new to putting on events – aside from the party promotion that some of them had dabbled in – but they were savvy enough to learn from what was already working in Nashville. That meant borrowing from the strategies of a couple of country-oriented showcases that were considered institutions in the city.

This week for What Where Wednesday, we discuss Music In My Neighborhood with Kimberly Kraft McLemore, VP of Education and Community Engagement for the Nashville Symphony. It’s a weeklong musical takeover of the North Nashville and Bordeaux neighborhoods — in a partnership with the symphony and local organizations to highlight the history, culture and residents.

Record of the Week artist Madi Diaz has a lot going on. Since her reign as WNXP’s Nashville Artist of the Month a couple of years ago, she’s been co-signed by Muna and Waxahatchee. Her friend Kacey Musgraves jumped on a duet. She was picked by Pitchfork as a top album and Rolling Stone recently proclaimed this “the year of Madi.” Oh and Harry Styles handpicked her to not only open some shows but to join his band for a massive world tour! In our interview Madi explains how that experience “blew the lid off” her thought process around songwriting and recording. She shares a unique, recurring performance dream and a real-life nightmare (with a happy ending) that brought that feeling to life while opening for Styles. And she walks us through several tracks on Weird Faith, expanding on the big picture themes she tackles in songs like “Kiss the Wall,” “God Person” and “Obsessive Thoughts.”

Sometimes, a concert can be so big that it makes the local news. Like in 2021, when legendary rapper Nas performed with the Nashville Symphony. So how did that watershed moment come to be? Behind the scenes — for some 20 years — the music promotion company Lovenoise was laying the groundwork, carving out “a safe space for Black culture,” and boosting artists of color.

“Making Noise” is a joint production by WPLN and WNXP, the sister stations of Nashville Public Radio. Senior Music Writer Jewly Hight reported the stories and hosts the show.

The editors and producers are Tony Gonzalez, Justin Barney, and Marquis Munson, with additional editing and guidance by LaTonya Turner, Meribah Knight, Nicole Kemp, Jason Moon Wilkins and Magnolia McKay. Fact-checking by Emily Siner.

The logo is by Mack Linebaugh, the accompanying live event on March 3 is directed by Nicole Kemp, and digital support comes from Rachel Iacovone and Carly Butler.

The music you heard comes from Blue Dot Sessions and from the creative commons of the Free Music Archive, where we found the artist Holizna and his tracks “Bus Stop,” “Chills,” “Life on Cassette,” and “Busking in the Sunlight.”

This week for What Where Wednesday, we discuss Chuck Indigo: Live From $ville with Carlos Partee, owner of Cashville etc. There’s a ton of nicknames to describe Nashville. Music City, more recently the It City, but Cashville as a moniker has embraced the city's black community. Partee has taken the name and turned it into a clothing and community brand highlighting black creatives through fashion and music. I sat with Partee at Cashville store front in 100 Taylor’s Arts Collective to discuss what the word Cashville means to him and the music showcase happening on Thursday.

Big Sigh is the fourth LP by British singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Marika Hackman, and her first original material in several years. The songs that make up Big Sigh are lush, expansive, thoughtful, and deep, so unsurprisingly my conversation with Marika Hackman felt that way, too. Hear Hackman discuss the making of Big Sigh -- a collection of tunes about "relief, release and acceptance" that comes with the "tackling of quite dark themes."

"Making Noise" is a four-part series by WPLN and WNXP about how the music promotion company Lovenoise has changed the music landscape of Nashville. Subscribe now!