
DEVO
Explicit content warning
12/16/21 • 15 min
Gerald Casale's music career spans more than 40 years. He came to prominence in the late 1970s as co-founder and bass player of the new wave band Devo, which released a Top 20 hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It". Casale is the main lyricist and one of the main composers of Devo's music and directed most of Devo's music videos. He is one of only two members (along with lead singer and keyboardist Mothersbaugh) who have been with Devo throughout its entire history. Casale's brother Bob also performed with the band.
Casale pursued a solo career in 2005 while still a member of Devo with the project Jihad Jerry & the Evildoers. The project received little promotion beyond a music video for the single "Army Girls Gone Wild." Jihad Jerry performed at several shows near the end of Devo's 2006 tour, performing the song "Beautiful World". He has also performed occasionally with other bands.
Casale has also directed music videos for other recording artists, including The Cars ("Touch and Go"), Rush ("Mystic Rhythms"), A Perfect Circle ("Imagine"), Foo Fighters ("I'll Stick Around"), Soundgarden ("Blow Up the Outside World"), and Silverchair ("Freak" and "Cemetery"), among others.
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Gerald Casale's music career spans more than 40 years. He came to prominence in the late 1970s as co-founder and bass player of the new wave band Devo, which released a Top 20 hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It". Casale is the main lyricist and one of the main composers of Devo's music and directed most of Devo's music videos. He is one of only two members (along with lead singer and keyboardist Mothersbaugh) who have been with Devo throughout its entire history. Casale's brother Bob also performed with the band.
Casale pursued a solo career in 2005 while still a member of Devo with the project Jihad Jerry & the Evildoers. The project received little promotion beyond a music video for the single "Army Girls Gone Wild." Jihad Jerry performed at several shows near the end of Devo's 2006 tour, performing the song "Beautiful World". He has also performed occasionally with other bands.
Casale has also directed music videos for other recording artists, including The Cars ("Touch and Go"), Rush ("Mystic Rhythms"), A Perfect Circle ("Imagine"), Foo Fighters ("I'll Stick Around"), Soundgarden ("Blow Up the Outside World"), and Silverchair ("Freak" and "Cemetery"), among others.
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Jorma and Vanessa Kaukonen
In a career that has already spanned a half-century, legendary guitarist and vocalist, Jorma Kaukonen is one of the most highly respected interpreters of American roots music, blues, and Americana, and at the forefront of popular rock-and-roll. A member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and a Grammy recipient, he is a founding member of two legendary bands, Jefferson Airplane and the still-touring Hot Tuna. Jorma Kaukonen’s repertoire goes far beyond his involvement creating psychedelic rock; he is a legend and one of the finest singer-songwriters and master instrumentalist in music today. Jorma tours the world bringing his unique styling to old blues and writing new songs with insight and imagination.
He and his wife Vanessa also discuss their homebased, Fur Peace Ranch. Built in 1989, Jorma and Vanessa looked at a piece if property in Meigs County, Ohio and conceived what Jorma calls, “a ranch that grows guitar players.” Not a fantasy camp, but this would be a place where both budding and seasoned musicians could immerse themselves for several days, and emerge with renewed inspiration and tangible progress in their music.
Tune into Fur Peace Ranch for an upcoming live stream with Jorma.
Learn more about Lyte.
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Jon Weisberger
Immersed in the bluegrass scene since the early 1980s, Jon Weisberger has enjoyed success in multiple aspects of the music business and community. As a music journalist, his work earned him two International Bluegrass Music Association awards, as well as the Charlie Lamb Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism, while his resume as a bluegrass broadcaster includes more than a dozen years as producer and co-host of the popular SiriusXM Bluegrass Junction show, “Hand-Picked With Del McCoury. As a bassist, Jon spent more than 17 as a member of both Chris Jones & the Night Drivers (with whom he recorded seven albums) and the Roland White Band (whose 2018 all-star Tribute To The Kentucky Colonels he produced), while making appearances on stage or in the studio with a variety of other artists ranging from Country Music Hall of Fame member Tom T. Hall to Jim Lauderdale, Pam Tillis and bluegrass Hall of Famers Hazel Dickens, Del McCoury and Alice Gerrard. Today, he serves as an A&R Director for the Crossroads Label Group, while producing a growing group of artists that includes Carley Arrowood, Aaron Burdett, Fireside Collective, the Alex Leach Band, Unspoken Tradition and the award-winning collaborative series, Bluegrass at the Crossroads.
Still, Jon is best known as one of bluegrass music’s most prolific and widely recorded songwriters. In 2012, after a year in which more than two dozen of his songs were recorded, he was named the IBMA’s first Songwriter of the Year. His songs have appeared on 5 Grammy-winning bluegrass albums, including 4 of the past 5 recipients, and on another 5 nominated projects. To date, he’s credited with more than 200 cuts by the Night Drivers (including multiple #1s); the Infamous Stringdusters; the Travelin’ McCourys; the O’Connor Band; the Del McCoury Band; Billy Strings; Thomm Jutz; Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver; Balsam Range; Blue Highway;Sierra Hull; Jim Lauderdale; Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers; Lindsay Lou; Carley Arrowood; the Danberrys and more. Jon released his first album of his own songs in 2008 (If This Road Could Talk), and followed it up in 2014 with I’ve Been Mostly Awake; both albums featured a stellar list of players and co-writing guest singers ranging from IBMA Male Vocalist of the Year Shawn Camp to IBMA Female Vocalists of the Year Dale Ann Bradley and Claire Lynch to Americana favorite Kim Richey. In 2018, he and banjo player Justin Hiltner issued Watch It Burn (Robust Records), an entire album of co-writes that featured backing from a dozen young musicians, including award-winning guitarist Molly Tuttle; the duo have a second project—a bluegrass gospel EP—slated for an early 2022 release.
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