Will Sheff on his new album Nothing Special

This special episode is a nice long interview with Will Sheff, a musician best known as the songwriter and frontman of Okkervil River. We talk about his new album Nothing Special, which is his first record under his own name, and why he decided to step away from the Okkervil River name. We get into some fairly deep stuff about music and creativity in this conversation; I think you'll enjoy it whether you know Will's music or not. All of the songs in this episode are from Nothing Special except for the first song, which is "Mary On A Wave" by Okkervil River.

Eric Renner Brown on the post-pandemic concert industry

This episode features Billboard journalist Eric Renner Brown, who has spent a lot of the past few years covering the concert industry for Pollstar. We talk about his experience of covering the industry through the chaos of the first phase of the pandemic, and what's been happening since things have mostly resumed in the current phase of the pandemic. If you subscribe to the Fluxblog Patreon you can hear a tangent we went on about the current jam band scene with a focus on Goose, Billy Strings, and Dead and Co. this coming weekend.

Louie from Pop Pantheon

This episode features Louie, the host of the Pop Pantheon podcast. We talk about the show and his history as a DJ and along the way go off on tangents about several pop stars including Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Rihanna. If you love pop this episode is for you!

Flopuary Marathon featuring Molly O’Brien

This episode is a marathon of all four episodes of FLOPUARY, a miniseries meditation on the concept of flopping by myself and Molly O'Brien of And Introducing. The miniseries was previously behind the paywall on the Fluxblog Patreon and originally came out in February of this year. We cover a lot of interesting ideas in this one, I'm really proud of it and excited for more people to hear it. In addition to getting deep into philosophical matters we go deep in discussing some specific artists including Madonna, Katy Perry, Elton John, U2, George Michael, and Taylor Swift. 

DANPILLED V: Steely Dan chat with Carrie Courogen and Jesse Hawken

Everyone's favorite sporadically produced and confusingly released Steely Dan podcast is back! This time Jesse Hawken and I are joined by the writer Carrie Courogen to talk about recent Dan shows, the whole Aimee Mann thing, a recently unearthed Dan cover of Joni Mitchell, and a bunch of classic songs including "Deacon Blues," "Glamour Profession," "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," "My Old School," and "Green Earrings." We also discussed "Barrytown," but that clip will only be available to Fluxblog Patreon subscribers.

Brian Hiatt of Rolling Stone

This episode features Brian Hiatt, the host of the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast and one of the most prolific features writers in the history of that magazine. In this conversation we talked about his long career at Rolling Stone, how he approaches talking to some of the most famous people in the world, and changes in what people want from artist and celebrity profiles through the years.

Briana Cheng on A&R for 4AD and B4

Karina Longworth of You Must Remember This

This episode features Karina Longworth, creator and host of the long-running film history podcast You Must Remember This. In this conversation we talk about her current ongoing series Erotic 80s/90s, the formative influence of Madonna, MTV's The Real World, art school, the fallout of the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial, and her approach to curating history.

Nabil Ayers

This episode features Nabil Ayers, president of the Beggars Banquet label group and author of the new memoir My Life in the Sunshine. We talk about the book, which is largely about his complicated relationship with his biological father, the musician Roy Ayers, and also get into his extensive experience in the record industry.

Tom Scharpling

Here's the first episode of a new season of Fluxpod! Tom Scharpling is one of the best broadcasters in the world – he's the host of The Best Show, in which he frequently collaborates with his long-running comedy partner Jon Wurster, and the co-host of Double Threat along with Julie Klausner. This is a long and fun conversation that covers a lot of ground – the challenge of recording the audio book version of his memoir It Never Ends, how he and Jon have worked to keep the Best Show fresh for over 20 years, his relationship with Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young's bodies of work, and being terrified by Michael Stipe when he was a teenager in the early '80s. If you love Tom, this will be a big treat. If you don't know Tom... you're still probably going to have a good time with this one.