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In Summer 2022, Jon Batiste left his longtime role as band leader for Stephen Colbert's Late Show. Longtime bandmate and sometime replacement Louis Cato stepped into the role, breathing new virtuosic role As Colbert noted at the time, "Give him an afternoon, he'll learn how to play Mozart on a shoehorn." Cato joins us to discuss his journey, music school, becoming a parent at 19 and his soul new record, Reflections, for which he played every instrument.

The term "love letter" is criminally overused in this industry, but you'd be hard pressed to find a more appropriate phrase for Fall Through. The book finds cartoonist Nate Powell reconnecting with the punk rock touring days of the 90s. Before his career as a cartoonist, Powell played in bands, including his time as one of the longest tenured members of Little Rock's Soophie Nun Squad.The artist joins us to relive those times and discuss his friendship with civil rights pioneer, Congressman John Lewis. Transcript available here.

The Workbench is an ode to the power of objects. The EP is the celebration of the titular possession Brian Harnetty inherited when his father passed. It's an tribute to a man who could seemingly "fix anything," a trait the musician admits he did not inherit. The younger Harnetty is, however, a whiz at creating songs with his hands, incorporating a wealth of found sounds for a richer portrait of his late father. Transcript available here.

September marks 25 years since the release of 69 Love Songs. The landmark triple-album cemented frontman Stephin Merritt's states as one of the finest songwriters of his generation. A quarter-century later, the songs don't always come as easily to Merritt. At his most prolific, however, the musician wrote more than enough to carry him through the rest of his career. "No one would ever know if I never wrote a song again in my life," he explains, "because I could just use the ones I already have that I haven't found an album for yet." Transcript here.

Ten years is forever in the rock world. There were times it seemed Camera Obscura might never return. The 2015 death of longtime keyboard player Carey Lander put the group’s future in limbo. For the first time since the mid-90s, the band went on indefinite hiatus. An invitation to perform at the Belle & Sebastian curated Boaty Weekender cruise brought the band back together in 2018. Plans to record an album two years later were themselves put on hiatus, courtesy of a global pandemic. On May 3, the band returns to form with Look to the East, Look to West. Transcript available here.

For our conversation, Emel Mathlouthi popped into a Brooklyn coffee shop. It’s a little cacophonous, but also a fitting microcosm of the city she now calls home. The musician moved to the States after a stint in Paris, but a part of her home country of Tunisia always remains close. As she broadens her cultural and musical horizons, the North African country continues to inform both. Her latest album, MRA, pushes Mathlouthi’s explorations further still, courtesy of songs performed and produced entirely by women. Transcript here.

Fifteen years is forever in the world of popular music. But the number doesn't tell the whole story. While it's been a decade-and-a-half since Mary Timony released her last solo record, the low-key guitar god has been plenty busy. She's released a pair of albums as part of Ex Hex, a record with indie rock supergroup Ex Hex with members of Sleater Kinney and cofounded Hammered Hulls with childhood DC punk friend Alec MacKaye. Timony joins us to discusses her latest, Untame The Tiger.

Few individuals have left as an indelible a mark on late-20th century American popular culture as Don Was. As a producer, he work includes some of music’s biggest names, including Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and Iggy Pop. In the 80s, he found success on the other side of the microphone as one-half of the Was (Not Was). In 2012, he became the president of legendary jazz label Blue Note Records and six years later began performing regularly alongside Bob Weir in The Wolf Brothers. His latest project, Don Was and The Pan-Detroit Ensemble, finds the musician reconnecting was jazz performance by way of the city of his birth.