How Good It Is

John Hall, you may remember from a couple of episodes ago, is the founder of the band Orleans. He recently released a solo album, his seventh (if you count the John Hall Band material). After spending some time in local and national politics, he returned to Orleans and they're still making music. In fact, at the time of the previous interview they were putting the finishing touches on Orleans' first Christmas album. That album is now finished and is available for your purchasing and listening pleasure. It's called New Star Shining, and it's a great piece of work. There's a lot of original material, a traditional Christmas carol and a single song from more recent holiday music canon. For lack of a better term, it's a kind of Yacht Rock Christmas album. I think the rowdiest track on it is their version of "Winter Wonderland." John and I met in the atrium of a Nashville hotel (more details during the show itself), and I do hope you'll forgive a little ambient noise. Plus, there was a little bit of both of us fidgeting with our handheld microphones. For all that, once again John comes through as a very thoughtful fellow. By that I mean he's not spouting out canned answers to the questions I asked (although some of them were inadvertentely rehearsed--my recorder failed and we had to start over again). And even with that technical glitch, he was both gracious and forgiving, and managed to make me feel not as stupid as I originally felt when I looked at the recorder in horror and realized what happened. Also, I'm a complete idiot because I didn't ask for an autograph, or a selfie of the two of us, or anything. So this recording is the only evidence that we were in the same space together. As an aside, the next day I was in the Podcast Movement conference and chatting with the people from ElectroVoice Microphones. I was using some new EV microphones for the interview. I told them about my interview "right over there in the atrium," and some of the issues I had with the fidgeting noises and such. While we chatted, one of the EV reps walked away and then came back. He handed me a box and said, "Here, try this one." It was a different model microphone, which he said would probably solve that problem. Boom! Free microphone! I used it to record some other material you'll hear in an upcoming episode and I think you'll notice the difference! This is why I worship at the Church of ElectroVoice. I did get the opportunity to thank them again a couple of days later. So here is my follow-up interview with John, which we did during the first week of August this past summer. Enjoy! Sorry, no transcript available for this episode. Enjoy this instead. Click here to support the show as a Patron.

We celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing with a look at three records that commemorated the event.

Despite the lyrics, David Allan Coe's breakout hit isn't about a woman.

True story: I hire models from Fiverr to do these pictures. All three of them, coincidentally, are from the same (non-US) nation. I don't do that on purpose but I'm starting to think I have a "type". Thanks for your patience as the show migrates from one server to another. As I noted on the social media, I'm working hard to make it as invisible as possible if you listen via Google or Apple or Spotify, etc. And the website here is going to look kind of weird for awhile with a lot of double posts for previous episodes, until I pick my way through and fix them, one by one. Fun, Fun, Fun! This week, we're taking yet another look at a few songs which you may not have known were covers, and nearly all of them were suggested by a listener named Kim, who didn't feel that a shout-out was necessary, but obviously I don't feel the same way. Kim had a list of songs that could work, and I said "Sure" to most of them, with a single exception, and that's mostly because the story is a little convoluted and I may have to turn it into an episode of its own down the road a ways. Anyway: a new hosting partner means a new player here on the webpage for you, and I do have a little bit of customizing control over it (something I didn't previously have at all), so I'm happy to hear your suggestions. And, of course, please let me know if you hit any weird technical snags. Finally, as promised: here's the original French song I discussed during the show. Check out those lyrics; it's rather poignant. Click here for a transcript of this episode.

Phil Spector was looking for some male acts to pad out his all-female stable of talent when he heard the Righteous Brothers. Shortly thereafter they recorded a song that few people thought would be a hit.