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!

This week for What Where When-sday, we discuss Black History in Music: Work, Worship, and Celebration at Jefferson Street Sound Museum with Lorenzo Washington, founder and curator, and Karen Lynn Coffee, vice president. Taking place every Saturday during the month of February, the event features an exclusive art exhibit that aims to celebrate businesses and entrepreneurs that made Jefferson Street a musician haven. Washington and Coffee discussed the event and the museum’s mission to keep the memory of thriving times on the historic street. 

Our Record of the Week is Katy Kirby’s Blue Raspberry. After graduating from Belmont University here in Nashville Tennessee, Katy Kirby released Cool Dry Place on the Keeled Scales record label out of Austin. The record received acclaim far and wide. The folks over at Anti- Records, home of Tom Waits and Fleet Foxes noticed it too and signed a record deal with Katy Kirby. The new label has a new expansion of sound on the record and features many Nashville musicians and explores concepts of religion, personal identity and what it is to be real.

Outside of being one of Nashville's most prolific MCs, Brian Brown's passion outside of music is sports. You can hear it in his lyrics you can see it on his social media the avid Detroit Lions fan and our WNXP Nashville Artist of the Month spoke about his love for the Lions and playoff prediction, the Tennessee Titans new head coach, and playing NFL Blitz while writing his breakout 2020 project Journey.

One name that has kept popping up in the Nashville hip-hop scene since the late 2010s is Lul Lion. At shows, on projects and in collectives, she was often the only woman in the mix. And her music is really the only record there is of her story — she’s rarely given an interview.

The Tennessee native seemed to drop off the radar last year. Senior music writer Jewly Hight tracked her down in her current home LA, where she’s been reinventing herself. Her new EP, “Speed of Love,” is WNXP’s Record of the Week.

This week for What Where Wednesday, we discuss Cannery Hall with general manager Brent Hyams. The site off 8th Avenue South formerly known as Cannery Ballroom, Mercy Lounge and the High Watt, sold to a New York-based real estate company back in 2019. After undergoing renovations for the new space, the new Cannery Hall is set to start running shows starting tonight. Hyams discuss the process and vision for the venue.

Ty Segall is inarguably prolific. The indie rock artist will drop his 15th full-length album, Three Bells, early this year. It must be a combination of all the aforementioned factors, with the underpinning of just being a very cool dude, that keeps the SoCal native pumping out the jams. His tour brings him to Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl on April 24, and we talked about Three Bells right before he began rehearsal for this new batch of songs.

• Webpost

Our guest this week is Rachel Scarbrough, a former Nashville resident who’s worked with Ground Control Touring to bring Saturday’s Abortion Access Benefit at DRKMTTR to fruition. This fundraiser show (100% of ticket proceeds go to regional organizations supporting reproductive rights) is one of five held around the country on the same night, and Nashville’s boasts a stacked bill of some of our favorite acts, including current Nashville Artist of the Month Brian Brown, plus WNXP regulars Soccer Mommy, Sn​õ​õ​per and Mali Velasquez.

Nashville singer/songwriter Alanna Royale uses her classic soul and R&B influences to explore the highs and lows we universally experience in life while sharing her own personal experiences on her latest album Trouble Is. She linked up with Kelly Finnegan of Monophonics to produce the record during the pandemic and during a time when she was dealing with her own personal trauma. Going to therapy helped her in her songwriting for this album and helped her be more vulnerable and honest with the stories she wanted to tell.

This week for What Where When-sday, we discuss the 31st annual Let Freedom Sing with Dr. Jeffery Ames, director of choral activities at Belmont University and conductor of the event. Happening at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center this Sunday, the choose-what-you-pay community event honors the life, legacy and triumphs of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The Nashville Symphony, Celebration Chorus and their Youth Chorus will perform classical works. Ames, who is going into his third year conducting the event, talks about his vision for the performance.

• Webpost

Olivia Barton is a bighearted songwriter who wears her emotions on her sleeves and in her songs. 2023 was a big year for Barton, she featured on a song with her partner Corin, whose artist name is Corook on the song “If I Were A Fish” which has now been watched and listened to over 20 million times and has been made into a children’s book. In December Barton released her EP Big Sad which is our Record of the Week.

Generations of rappers have made music repping where they came from and how it’s shaped them. After spending most of his 30 years in Nashville, hip-hop artist Brian Brown has arrived at his own way of doing that. Senior music writer Jewly Hight says the Nashville Artist of the Month has a keen eye on those who’ve been shoved aside in his changing city.

This week for What Where When-sday, we discuss Analog at the Hutton Hotel with Director of Programming Meredith Dimenna. Located on West End Ave, Analog provides an intimate space for artists and songwriters to engage and interact with their audience, giving them an up-close and personal experience while also featuring recurring events from Super Felon, Southern Rounds, and Analog Soul on Sundays. We spoke with Dimenna and discussed how the space came together and the overall mission for the venue.

This week for What Where When-sday, we discuss a booze-free option to bring in the new year with Stephanie Styll, owner of Killjoy, Nashville’s first booze-free beverage shop in the Wedgewood-Houston area. Killjoy will host A NYE PARTY at The Eastsider and she joined me to discuss the event and how the idea for the shop came together. 

This week for What Where When-sday, we (WNXP's Marquis Munson and WPLN's Rachel Iacovone) set out to show you a different side to the holiday pop-up scene. Yes, we've compiled them all in our interactive map below, but the places we stopped on our personal bar crawl were away from the downtown rooftops, all offered food and were two-out-of-three family friendly.

After six full length records, indie rock veterans Real Estate show no sign of slowing down or staying complacent. Their latest record Daniel showcases the band’s ability to create consistently hooky songs that are universally approachable and pleasant, but it also pushes their sound to new bounds. Recorded at the historic RCA Studio A in Nashville, the New Jersey quintet embraced a bit of twangy tradition, following the current trends of many of their indie peers. Still, Real Estate stays loyal to the jangly guitars and sweet songwriting fans have come to expect.

Watch Real Estate perform “Water Underground,” “Flowers” and “Haunted World” live at WNXP’s Sonic Cathedral here.

Late last year, the Nashville hip-hop collective Six One Tribe released its first album and put on its first real show. Senior music writer Jewly Hight says that was just the prelude to the group’s incredibly productive 2023. She went back to TRIBE headquarters to get the rundown on what the former Nashville Artist of the Month accomplished over the last 12 months.

• Webpost

In 2021, Nashville-based Megan Piphus made headlines, when she became the first Black woman puppeteer on Sesame Street. That led to another big milestone: her first album, “Spaceships & Dreams.” Senior music writer Jewly Hight says that, too, is a head-turning project, a hip-hop kids album with a colorful cast of guests.

• Webpost

This past spring, Nashville artist Corook had an emotional day — then put on a green frog shaped bucket hat, spent 10 minutes writing a silly song, uploaded 50 seconds of it to TikTok and changed their life.The comments on the video, now viewed more than 19 million times continually say how wonderful it is to see someone who is so authentic and fun. But Corook says that for them to figure out who they really are, a couple things had to happen first.

• Webpost

On The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess Chappell Roan balances piano ballads about leaving home to achieve her dreams and lusting to meet an ex with outright bangers about the joy of starting a little drama on a Saturday night and ditching basic dudes for super-ultra-modern-girls like herself.

• Webpost

It’s been a big year for Nashville’s non-country music scene from the triumphant return of emo powerhouses Paramore to the rabid response to indie queen Mitski. But there’s only one artist who’s racked up a billion combined streams on a single song.

Stephen Sanchez tapped into a multi-generational audience with the throwback sound of “Until I Found You.” It was a hit on the radio, YouTube, and yes, TikTok. While Sanchez is not alone in achieving virality it’s how he’s handled the spotlight and who he’s shared it with that sets him apart.

• Webpost

Chicago-based quartet Deeper is currently touring in support of their third full length and our Record of the Week Careful! WNXP’s Celia Gregory spoke with the band when they stopped in Nashville earlier this month.

The 13-track album marks Deeper’s debut on the revered indie label Sub Pop and demonstrates a wow-worthy evolution of their already tight sound. While the post-punk outfit calls to mind classic guitar rock from the likes of The Cars, David Bowie, The Cure and Television, these guys have modern tools in their arsenal that obviously weren’t available in the ’70s and ’80s like effects pedals allowing for loops and layers, drum triggers and endless options for tone.

• Webpost

Laetitia Tamko’s speaking voice is as sultry and instantly soothing as her singing voice, and that’s saying something. Connecting with me via Zoom from Paris, where she was touring with Arlo Parks, the artist who makes music as Vagabon greeted WNXP’s Celia Gregory smiling, seated in the borrowed bedroom of a friend’s child. It was just days after the release of her third LP Sorry I Haven’t Called, an album she calls “a miracle” to have even been made. 

It’s not a record about grief – in fact it’s quite whimsical, sassy, sexy – but most of these songs were born out of the chosen solitude she afforded herself to mourn the loss of a dear friend and musical collaborator, Eric Littman, back in 2021.

• Webpost

Some of Tré Burt’s earliest musical memories are from watching “The Temptations” television miniseries, and listening to recording artists like Prince, Michael Jackson, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, War, and Bobby DeBarge. The Nashville-based singer/songwriter especially cherishes those musical moments because he was able to share them with his grandfather Tommy Burt, who was the inspiration for Tré’s third album Traffic Fiction.

Around the time he was writing these songs, Burt’s grandfather was struggling with early onset dementia and was slipping away each time Tré saw him. He preserved those moments of connection by using a tape recorder during some of those final conversations. In early 2023, his grandfather Tommy Burt would pass away, and Tré would use some of those voice recordings throughout the record.

• Webpost

On this album, The Window, Ratboys recruited one of most sought after producers in indie rock, Chris Walla. He produced breakthrough records like The Decemberists’ The Crane Wife, Tegan and Sara’s The Con, and both Transatlanticism and Plans for his former band, Death Cab For Cutie. Walla’s touch on The Window maximizes the ten years of Ratboys coming together to make the transformative album of their career. It’s earthy and comforting. It accomplishes big moments without sounding like it’s trying too hard. Moments soar, moments wander, moments come back to earth and settle in.

• Webpost

It was big news when the founder of Rolling Stone magazine spelled out his view that the musical geniuses are white men, and artists who happen to be Black or women don’t have much to say that’s worth hearing. Allison Russell is one Black woman whose artistry and activism is taken seriously, and after last week’s Americana Music Awards, she has the trophy to show it. She’s also WNXP’s Nashville Artist of the Month for September. 

Senior music writer Jewly Hight says that Russell’s recent work — from her new album to her community organizing — transcends limitations.

• Webpost

This week for What Where When-sday, we talk Hispanic Heritage Month with WPLN’s own Rachel Iacovone.

Brooklyn-based trio Nation of Language has referred to their new full-length record as one for the emotional “wayfarer.” They elaborated on the theme that pervades their third LP Strange Disciple and connects its ten robust, synth-forward tunes.

Jalen Ngonda has described his music as modern soul and R&B, while trying to fit the Beach Boys and the Beatles somewhere in between. The DC-born, London-based singer-songwriter’s music could sound like a call back to the days of Motown and Stax Records and you can hear those elements on his debut album Come Around and Love Me. But it wasn’t digging through crates or going through his parents’ record collection that helped him discover the music that would later influence him.

• Webpost

On “Over and Over,” the first single released from Becca Mancari’s Left Hand, they relive an important, early phase as a queer and gender expansive person: They call back to the youthful disregard and fleeting bravado felt after they escaped the rejection of the religious world in which they were raised, found a new home in chosen family and an uninhibited way of presenting themselves. With longtime collaborator Juan Solorzano, Mancari cast off restrictions and finally produced themselves on Left Hand, creating their most expansive work yet.

• Webpost

Nashville band Snõõper’s debut LP is not a concept record preaching the gospel of exercise. But the group does punch above their weight.

Having formed just three years ago, the first songs and videos born out of COVID infections and forced off-work time for singer Blair Tramel and guitarist Connor Cummins, they’ve landed incredible opening slots and generated loads of hype for a new band, here and abroad. Their songs are so fast and compact, you might double-check your playback settings when streaming Super Snõõper, which is shorter than the average Nashville commute, 14 songs totaling just 23 minutes.

• Webpost

Back in the mid-2000s, Be Your Own Pet frenetically tuneful punk sneered at the trappings of adulthood with snottily on-the-nose wit. After a 15-year hiatus, the second lineup reunited and recorded Mommy, a nervy new album, funkier, keener and muscular than any of BYOP’s previous work.

• Webpost

After a collection of mixtapes starting in 2012 with The Mickstape, Mick Jenkins released his breakout project The Water[s], prequel to his third mixtape Trees & Truths. Despite releasing bodies of work dating back to those collections of mixtapes, EPs, and albums from The Healing Component and Pieces of a Man. It was after his third album Elephant in the Room where he knew something had to change. 

With this new level of freedom, Jenkins was able to create his latest project The Patience and album title appropriate for the patience he had to endure to get to this stage of his career.

• Webpost

The Age of Pleasure is that “paradise found,” where she can, and does, love quite freely. “We’re in the Age of Pleasure baby, the Age of Pleasure,” Monáe reinstates to me over Zoom. On her last album, Dirty Computer, Monáe’s alter-ego Jane 57821 led a group of Black femme dissidents who broke free from The New Order, the totalitarian group of oppressors, and now they are living and loving in the Age of Pleasure.

The “paradise found” in The Age of Pleasure is an island of Black beauty, somewhere in the humid Caribbean, where it’s always golden hour, fresh fruit is being served in abundance to a beautiful group of people who do not make a distinction between friends and lovers.

• Webpost

The bulk of Bully, the musicial monkier of Alicia Bognanno, fourth full-length LP Lucky For You serves as “one big love song to” 80-pound Shepherd-Husky mix named Mezzi. So when Mezzi passed away last year it upended Bognanno. It’s still a characteristically loud collection of tunes drenched in distorted guitars but it also captures the tenderness Bognanno felt and still feels now in Mezzi’s absence.

• Webpost

Plenty of other artists have communicated significant matters through name changes this century. (Think: ANOHNI shedding Antony for a name that aligns with her identity as a trans woman; The Chicks distancing themselves from a regional term that romanticizes the old, segregated South; Yasiin Bey retiring the moniker Mos Def in favor of owning his personal evolution and conversion to Islam.)

Lo Naurel’s decision to no longer make music as Lauren McClinton falls squarely into that tradition of signifying artistic transformation.

• Webpost

Bonny Doon’s new record Let There Be Music is our Record of the Week. It’s a sunshiny record, dare I say breezy with its “ohh sha laa laa”s and “nah nah nah nah”s. It’s a cold beer on a hot day kind of record. It’s as comforting as a worn-in porch chair. It an album that is decidedly happy and sounds like a group of friends who are relaxed and comfortable in their identity as a band.

• Webpost

Most artists move to Nashville to be part of the music community and land opportunities in the business. Not Conner Youngblood. He’s the WNXP Nashville Artist of the Month. And he’s quietly done his thing here for a dozen years. Senior music writer Jewly Hight met up with him at the one place that tenuously connects his new latest project to Nashville.

Before Palehound released “The Clutch,” a rippin’ rock song and the first single off of their new LP, Eye On The Bat, we’d most recently heard the vocals and elevated guitar work of El Kempner as one half of the duo Bachelor. Kempner teamed up with Melina Duterte of Jay Som to form the supergroup and deliver the stand-out 2021 record Doomin’ Sun. But just as the recording of Doomin’ Sun was finished in early 2020, and Kempner hit the road with Palehound to tour their own solo work, the world shut down.

Eye On The Bat, a 10-song collection written around and largely about that holiday break-up, finds Kempner once again excelling at the plainspoken.

• Webpost

Michael is Killer Mike’s most personal and vulnerable album to date — an audio biography of the nine-year-old Michael Render on the album cover, a boy with a halo and devil horns over this head dreaming about being an emcee and the challenges he would have to go through to get there. From drug dealing in Atlanta on the song “Something for Junkies” to saying his mother, Denise, was dead for the first time on the song “Motherless,” each song on the album serves as chapters in the journey of Michael Render.

• Webpost

Hip-hop is known as aspirational music. Six One Tribe, Nashville’s largest hip-hop collective, is living its own version of that. The group is working to accomplish what once seemed impossible for the genre they love in the city they call home. Senior music writer Jewly Hight digs into the vibe of TRIBE, our WNXP Nashville Artist of the Month for June.

• Webpost