Transmissions

One of the pet theories we've nursed on this show is that music allows the right listener to do something like travel through time. Or, maybe, a better way to say it would be: music allows us a way to step briefly outside of the experience linear time.

Our guest this week on the show, Ishmael Butler of Shabazz Palaces and Digable Planets, is used to swimming in waters where science fiction weirdness and musical expression mingle. Shabazz Palaces' new album, It’s a Style Sport, represents a new high water mark for the Seattle-based rapper; at on...

Social media is a strange thing. Not long ago, Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury was retweeted by famed MTV News legend Kurt Loder. Loder was sharing a repost of a viral video featuring Detroit band Protomartyr, performing their song “Jumbo’s” at a BBQ in 2011.

In the video, frontman Joe Casey smokes a cigarette and sips whiskey, alternating between deadpan ambivalence and dark menace as he prowls the stage and the band churns behind him. Loder noted, "Apparently [rock & roll] actually will never die…"

This week on Transmissions, w're speaking with return guest Joe Casey of Proto...

Hippies, Thugs, and Heroes finds guitarist Richard Thompson sounding as savage, lyrical, and eloquent as ever. This week on Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions, we're pleased to welcome Thompson back to the show.

If you dig this show, there’s a pretty solid chance that you already know that he's one of the founding fathers of British folk rock, known for his work with Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, his former wife Linda Thompson, Nick Drake and others.

Writing about Thompson, Aquarium Drunkard’s own Tyler Wilcox praised his “unparalleled instrumental prowess, his superhumanly sensitive tone, and his singula...

Stones Throw is one of the most dynamic labels of the 21st century. The label's founder, Peanut Butter Wolf, joins us to discuss the label’s journey, from a small backpacker hip-hop imprint to an Adult Swim-boosted powerhouse, to the diverse roster of post punk, electro, and R&B artists taking the stage to celebrate Stones Throw’s 30th anniversary on Saturday, October 16, 17, and 18th in Highland Park.

Presented by Lodge Room and KCRW, Stones Throw 30 speaks to just how expansive the the label’s sound is in 2026, from the fuzzed out synth punk of N8NOFACE to the...

Certain people play guitar in a way that is immediately recognizable, no matter the context. Our guest this week on Transmissions, Johnny Marr, is one of those guitarists. As a founding member of legendary indie band The Smiths, as well as a collaborator with groups like The The, The Pretenders, The Cribs, Modest Mouse, and Electronic, his sound is recognizable, a blend of jangle, chime, bite, and attitude. 

But this recognizability never comes at the sake of the song. In fact, that’s what makes Marr so iconic, not just his tone or his parts, but the way...

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. This week on the show, guitarist and psychotherapist Matt Baldwin, who is here to teach you How To Play Guitar. 

OK, not exactly. But Baldwin is the author of How To Play Guitar, a series of zines that have been collected into a handsome book edition. If you’re just picking up the instrument, well, Baldwin isn’t writing about how to play a C chord or run scales. 

These aren’t “how to” guides so much as “why to” prompts, stressing intuition over technique, dismissal of music industry norms, and the i...

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury. This week on the show, comedian James Austin Johnson joins us to dive into the music nerd obsessions of his new comedy special, He'll Yeah.

You've likely seen JAJ on the TV. He's known for portraying Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and occasionally, Bob Dylan, on SNL. But He’ll Yeah’s vignettes and on-stage footage find Johnson creating a more "indie rock" styled special—something deeply specific to his own life and interests. In other words, if you're coming for Donald Trump impressions, you're out of luck. But if...

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury. This week on the show, writer and musician Sam Sodomsky, who records and releases music—a lot of it—under the name The Bird Calls.

His latest slice of literate folk rock and alt-country songcraft is called Take Leave, and it was released on August 28 via Ruination Record Co.

Inspired by songwriters like Dan Bejar of Destroyer, who’s appeared here on Transmissions and Bruce Springsteen, who has not appeared on the podcast—yet—Take Leave rattles with downcast charm. Its songs are sly and full of kn...

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury. This week, we’ve got something extra special: a behind the scenes look at the forthcoming documentary, Sun Ra: Door of the Cosmos, a sonic cinema odyssey through the life, work and philosophy of the surrealist composer and musician. 

In addition to a conversation with director Drew DeNicola, who you may know from the 2012 doc Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, this episode will present archival material gathered for the film, including interviews and statements from Ra himself, rare recordings of the Sun Ra Arkestra in action, and...

Since 1998, Jim James has led My Morning Jacket. In the early 2000s, the band's blend of Southern rock, psychedelia, dub, classic songcraft, loner country, and experimental folk put them on the forefront of festival stages.

Last year, MMJ released its 10th studio LP, the Brendan O’Brien-produced Is, and earlier this year, they dropped Peacelands, an anti-ICE collection of acoustic music. And now, James has a new solo album: Wowed Out. It’s his first solo music in eight years, and a killer return to form. 

Inspired by the nonstop deluge of information we are all e...

Welcome back to Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury. This week on the show, another talk that spun out of our Big Ears hang out, a conversation with a journeyman musician Fred Thomas.

Even if you don’t know Thomas’ name, you’ve heard him: In the ‘90s, he was responsible for the math rock band Chore; from there, he joined up with Warren Defever’s genre bending indie rock outfit His Name Is Alive, alongside groups like Lovesick and his own band Saturday Looks Good To Me, who melded Detroit R&B and soul to twee indie pop. 

Since 1999, Atlanta label Dust-to-Digital has created lavish boxsets, books, and collections of gospel, folk, blues, field recordings, and other sounds sourced from deep global archives.

Led by April and Lance Ledbetter, the label has been responsible for works like Goodbye, Babylon, a landmark 2003 gospel collection which inspired Brian Eno to say, "I love this kind of archaeology of the beginnings of music, in this case soul and rock ‘n’ roll …[it] features hair-raising sermons, the greatest hits of pastors." Other engrossing deep dives include Music of Morocco: Recorded by Paul Bowles, 1959; Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the Wo...

Describing the sound of Sacred Harp singing can be difficult. Arcane, otherworldly, and overwhelming, it’s a unique a cappella form of shape note Christian hymn singing that was born in England in the 18th century, but took root in the American south. It’s not something you listen to so much something as experience. 

This week on Transmissions, host Jason P. Woodbury speaks with Matt Hinton. Along with his wife, Erica Hinton, he’s the director of the 2006 documentary Awake, My Soul: The Story of The Sacred Harp; in 2025, the duo returned to the film, remastering it and...

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury. This week on the show, we welcome Nashville-based music journalist, critic and author Erin Osmon, to discuss her tremendous book, Won't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America, which chronicles how heartland rock, typified by artists like Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Tom Petty, Bob Seger, and more, brought a populist, Americana-inspired sound to the airwaves of the radio and MTV.

Along the way, Osmon shines a light on lesser heralded artists in the heartland canon, including Bonnie Raitt, Lucinda Williams, and Tracy Chapman, explores the...

Occasionally, a song breaks forth from the void and strikes you like a bolt of lightning. That’s how we felt first hearing “Rockcurry,” from the late dub pioneer Lee “Scratch” Perry and electronic duo Mouse on Mars’ Spatial, No Problem, released earlier this summer on June 5th via Domino Recording Co.

The song feels a little like plugging a fork into an electrical socket, à la
Twin Peaks: The Return. Shock. Boom. A whole new world.

This week on Transmissions we're joined by Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma, Mouse on Mars, calling in from Germany...

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury.

Near the end of his latest LP Indigo Park, our guest this week, Bruce Hornsby, sings something of a conclusion. Or perhaps, a belated introduction:

"I've been seeking magical thinking/I think I detect a trend/This could be the start of something/Or this could be an end."

The lyric isn't cited to suggest the 71-year-old songwriter is going anywhere. If anything, Indigo Park speaks to the hot streak Hornsby's been on since 2019's Absolute Zero. With that album, he began mining...

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury. There are certain artists who straddle the line between music and prose, between songwriting and music writing. Think of Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo, who spent his early years as a rock journalist, or the doomed Peter Laughner, or even Lester Bangs, who cranked out a couple of raucous singles on Ork Records in addition to his pioneering criticism. 

Then there are the patron saints of this dual discipline: Patti Smith and today’s guest, her longtime collaborator Lenny Kaye. Kaye’s creative output is kaleidoscopic: he’s...

Annahstasia is one of the most exciting singers and songwriters in the modern folk space.

Originally courted by major labels in her youth, she found herself drifting away from the bedroom pop and R&B genres where music business execs thought she belonged. Drawn to folkier material, she emerged in the 2020s with a sound that blends the soul jazz of Terry Callier with Nick Drake’s hushed chamber folk, her magnificent voice way out front in the mix, sometimes recalling the fullness of singers like Odetta or the jazzy sway of Hejira-era Joni Mitchell. 

In...

Hello and welcome to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury, presented by the Talkhouse Podcast Network.

We're kicking off our new season with a fantastic guest: Don Was.

Was' CV is stunning. In addition to his genre-bending work with Was (Not Was), Don has collaborated with some of the most respected artists in music history: Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, The Rolling Stones, The B-52s, Ringo Starr, Roy Orbison…the list could go on.

These days, you can find Don with his band, The Pan-Detroit Ensemble, whose latest album is called Groove in...

Tyler Wilcox has spent season two of All One Song conversing about Neil Young with musicians, writers, and artists. And now, we’ve reached the end of the road for this Neil journey, with a very special guest: Lee Ranaldo, dropping in to discuss “Down By The River.” Lee is a founding member of Sonic Youth. Along with Thurston Moore, Lee redefined how we hear the electric guitar in a rock setting. Sonic Youth is no more, but they just released a wild Plunderphonic collage from the archives: Diamond Seas. 

Ranaldo joins us to talk about a Neil cl...

We’re coming dangerously close to the end of the road for this latest season of Neil Young deep dives. And the end of the road is the topic at hand when it comes to today’s song — “Berlin.” Now, we’ve covered some deep cuts over the course of the past two seasons. But “Berlin” has to be one of the deepest. It was passed over on the recent Archives Vol. III box and you can’t even stream it via Neil’s site; the only official way to experience this moody tune is to watch In Berlin, the concert film that...

Hello and welcome back to All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions with your host Tyler Wilcox.

We’ve covered a lot of Shakey ground so far during seasons one and two, leaping from decade to decade, from era to era, from album to album. It’s easy to do when you’re dealing with a body of work that is so vast, spanning 60 years now. But somehow, we’ve yet to talk about any songs from Zuma. Neil fanatics — like our hero — can be an ornery, contrarian bunch. It would be tough to get t...

As the second season of All One Song rolls on, we’re talking to some of our favorite musicians and writers about their favorite Neil Young songs. And we have got a doozy of a Neil Young song to talk about today — “Ambulance Blues."

First appearing as the closing track on Neil’s 1974 masterpiece On the Beach, this is one of the man’s major works, a long, dark dirge that surveys the surreal mid-1970s landscape, from Patty Hearst to Richard Nixon, all accompanied by a brilliantly skeletal musical backdrop from Ben Keith, Rusty Kershaw, Ralph Molina and...

In case you haven't caught on already, All One Song host Tyler Wilcox loves talking about Neil Young. And he's always fascinated by where these free-form conversations go, whether it's deep dives into lyrical obsessions, personal history, chord progressions, Shakey lore … or some indefinable blend of all of that. 

This week’s episode is no different! We’re back in the 1990s this time around, taking a look at a song from Harvest Moon — “From Hank To Hendrix.” It’s a song that has been a regular setlist inclusion ever since it first appeared in late 1991. Young usually does it...

The second season of All One Song rolls. Throughout seasons one and two, we’ve jumped from era to era, from style to style, from album to album. But no one has had the guts yet to tackle one of Neil’s true masterpieces, his most visionary set of lyrics, his most powerful statement. That’s right, friends, we're talking about “T-Bone.” 

Released in 1981 on Re*ac*tor, “T-Bone” is perhaps the most boneheaded, monomaniacal tune in Neil’s entire discography, a grinding, nine-minute three-chord Crazy Horse jam that features only these words to guide us: “Got mashed potatoes, ai...

Hello and welcome back to All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions with your host Tyler Wilcox, a longtime Aquarium Drunkard contributor and Neil Young fanatic. And I’m guiding you through a second season of talking with some of our favorite musicians, writers and artists about their favorite Neil Young song. 

Pretty much every one of our guests complain about one thing: having to pick just one Neil Young song. His is a catalog of such consistency and strength that it can feel virtually impossible to have just one favorite. So as...

Hello and welcome back to All One Song, a Neil Young podcast with your host, Tyler Wilcox. Though he's never spoken with Neil himself, over at Aquarium Drunkard you can check out Wilcox's interviews with several of Neil’s associates: Guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro; bassist Billy Talbot; and multi-instrumentalist Nils Lofgren.

Chatting with these musicians, who have spent a good portion of their lives onstage or in the studio with Neil, offers a look behind the curtain into Shakey’s creative process.

And now, add Micah Nelson to that esteemed list. Since 2014, Nelson has served as one o...

Welcome back to All One Song. We're spending the spring of 2026 talking to some great musicians, writers and artists about their one favorite Neil Young song. But even if the concept is simple, one thing is for sure: these conversations go all over the place, kind of like a long Old Black solo on “Like Hurricane.” And that’s how it should be, right? 

Now, host Tyler Wilcox has been contributing to Aquarium Drunkard for well over a decade now, serving as the site’s resident Neil Young aficionado. But he's got competition! Scott Bunn is one of AD’s e...

Hello and welcome back to season two of All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions with your host Tyler Wilcox, a longtime Aquarium Drunkard contributor and Neil Young fanatic. We’re spending some time this spring traveling deep into the Shakey-verse, talking with some great artists about their favorite Neil Young songs.

On a recent episode, Brigid Mae Power and Wilcox went deep into Neil’s classic lament “Albuquerque”—both agreeing Neil nailed the stark, lonesome vibe of the American southwest in that song. If you’re going to try to evoke those kinds...

Neil Young's "Albuquerque." A Ditch Era classic, it was recorded with the Santa Monica Flyers in 1973 and released on 1975's Tonight's the Night. Like the Southwestern town its named for, "Albuquerque" is stark, beautiful, and lonesome—leaving in its wake melancholy and a craving for fried eggs and country ham. Joining us to discuss the various landscapes of "Albuquerque" is Brigid Mae Power. Since her debut a little over a decade ago, the Galway-based singer songwriter has built up a visionary and cosmic discography. Tune in as we explore the contours of yet another number in the ever-rolling "All On...

Hello again! Welcome back to All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. Last summer, we spent a couple months talking to some of our favorite musicians, writers, and artists about their favorite Neil Young songs … and it was so much fun that we’re doing it all over again with a bunch more great guests.

Put on your Rust-o-Vision glasses, Neil freaks … we’re going deep into the Shakey-verse one more time. 

Our guest today selected what is the newest Neil Young song—as of this recording—that has made it out into the...

Transmissions is back with a special episode: Tyler Wilcox in conversation with underground music lifers Thurston Moore and Kramer.

On May 1, the duo release their new album together, They Came Like Swallows - Seven Requiems for the Children of Gaza, out on Ethan Miller’s Silver Current Records, and ahead of their appearance this week at Big Ears Music Festival in Knoxville, Wilcox caught up with them to discuss the new collaboration, their storied history together, and that time the Butthole Surfers freaked out Alex Chilton.

Speaking of Big Ears, Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions will be th...

This week’s conversation with Cochemea Gastelum brings our season to a close. The saxophonist and bandleader joins us to discuss his beautiful LP Ancestros Futuros, out now on Daptone Records. Mining his Indigenous roots, soul jazz, and funk, it's a fantastic album, and it completes a trilogy that began with 2019’s All My Relations, continued with 2021’s Baca Sewa, and now concludes. 

Cochemea’s resume is lengthy. He worked extensively with the late soul singer Sharon Jones as part of her Dap Kings ensemble and has played with the Budos Band, Antibalas, Robert Walter’s 20th Congress, A...

The '90s were a strange time. From Gregorian chants to swing bands, you never knew what would make it onto the radio. But some of the strangest groups to improbably infiltrate the mainstream came from the post-Grateful Dead jam band scene. Our guest today is Mike Ayers, author of ⁠Sharing in the Groove: The Untold Story of the '90s Jam Band Explosion and the Scene that Followed. ⁠

The book, an oral history, is really a blast. It covers all the big players of the era: Phish, Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, Widespread Panic, Dave Matthews Band, but...

Welcome back to Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury. This week on the show, a return guest: Steve Wynn of The Dream Syndicate and solo fame. He last joined the show part of a trio: in 2018, we taped with him, Howe Gelb of Giant Sand, and Robyn Hitchcock live at the KXCI studio at Hotel Congress in Tucson Arizona. That talk also made it into the Transmissions feed again in 2020. 

This time, Steve is with us to discuss the 40th anniversary reissue of The Dream Syndicate’s second album, 1984’s Medicine Show, which has been reissued in expanded form...

Welcome back to Transmissions. This week: Steve Von Till, of sludge legends Neurosis, the tribal ambient spin-off Tribes of Neurot, solo albums under this own name, and the psych folk project Harvestman. He runs the independent label, Neurot Recordings. And as if all that isn’t enough, he’s also a poet, and an educator—when he’s not playing music, he’s bringing knowledge to the next generation, working as a fourth grade teacher in North Idaho.

If you’ve been listening to Transmissions for awhile, you know that we’re hardly dogmatic when it comes to genres, but...

This week on Transmissions, Kate Pierson, vocalist and keyboardist of The B-52s. Writing about the legendary Atlanta band, AD founder Justin Gage says, “The B-52’s 1979 debut album ushered in a practically fully formed sound/band. No one else was doing this…whatever ‘this’ was.” Indeed, The B-52s created a one-of-a-kind sound, blending punk, funk, and art-pop, and while they broke into the mainstream with ubiquitous radio hits, they never sacrificed their avant-garde edge. This fall, the band embarked on a co-headlining tour with Devo—we recorded this talk just before they departed on the jaunt—and last week, Kate P...

This week, we present a conversation with writer, rock & roller, and esoteric scholar Gary Lachman, author of a new memoir, Touched By the Presence: From Blondie’s Bowery and Rock and Roll to Magic and the Occult.

In it, Lachman charts his journey from a young New Jersey misfit immersed in comic books and paperback fiction to his days playing bass in Blondie as the band rose to stardom from the New York City punk underground. Blondie would go on to have a top-ten hit with his composition, “(I’m Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear” penned about te...

Though he departed this earthly realm in 1993, Afrofuturist and free jazz icon Sun Ra’s cosmic tones continue to echo through the spaceways. A composer, poet, and some might even say a prophet, Ra seemed to understand that his work would outlive him, staging:  “In some far off place, many light years in space, I’ll wait for you. Where human feet have never trod, where human eyes have never seen. I’ll build a world of abstract dreams and wait for you.” 

This week on the show, we sit down with Sun Ra Arkestra guitarist DM Hotep, who...

Welcome back to Transmissions, a weekly interview podcast created and curated by Los Angeles online music magazine Aquarium Drunkard. This week on the show, host Jason P. Woodbury speaks with a living legend, and one of our all-time favorite vocalists and songsmiths: Emmylou Harris. 

On November 7th, New West Records will re-release an expanded edition of her 1998 live album Spyboy, back in print after 27 years. Recorded in the wake 1995’s Wrecking Ball, an LP that redefined Harris for a whole new generation, Spyboy finds Harris and her band—Buddy Miller, Brady Blade and Daryl Johnson—on the road an...