Sending Signals

The Four Tops formed in Detroit in 1953, originally named The Four Aims. They’re a cornerstone of American pop music and helped propel the Motown label to international recognition. Although ostensibly a soul vocal...

Charlie McCoy has an incredible musical CV to look back on. His relationship with Bob Dylan began when he was asked, at rather short notice, to join the session for “Desolation Row”. He went on to assemble the core band...

The Twilight Sad are a Scottish indie rock band, currently consisting of Andy MacFarlane and frontman James Graham who joins me this episode to discuss their new album “It’s The Long Goodbye”. It’s an appropriate title...

This episode I am joined by two-time Academy Award nominee, film editor Pamela Martin. She edited the recent Springsteen biopic “Deliver Me From Nowhere”. The film was directed Scott Cooper, adapted from Warren Zanes’...

In February 2025 at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, something incredible happened. Jason Narducy, alongside actor Michael Shannon, were out touring their R.E.M. tribute project, where they perform early albums in...

Always a pleasure to have Steve Howe on the podcast. The Yes guitarist joins me this time to discuss a couple of reissues from his solo back catalogue; “Natural Timbre” and “Portraits of Bob Dylan”. The former being an...

The past 3 decades have brought their share of ups and downs for Feeder. They’ve enjoyed 11 top ten albums, and various hit singles, but had to weather the tragic loss of drummer Jon Lee in January 2002. It was against...

Steve Rothery is a founding member of one of my all time favourite bands, Marillion. Despite various personnel changes in the early years of the band, Marillion have maintained a stable line-up for the past 36 years...

This summer sees the release of an expanded edition of Richard Hawley’s breakthrough masterpiece “Coles Corner” with an accompanying tour. Richard joins me for an epic chat about the making the record, his family...

On February 27th 2023 Ben Kweller received the worst phone call imaginable. His 16 year old son Dorian had died in a car accident. An oncoming truck had veered into Dorian’s lane and a downed tree had gone through his...

Tom Sheehan was born in Camberwell, South London. He was an in-house photographer for CBS Records in the 70s, and went on to be the chief photographer for Melody Maker. He enjoyed long-term working relationships with...

Nels Cline was born in California in January 1956. He started played guitar at the age of 12 and his early career is fairly jazz-based, before stretching into other directions. He has played guitar for Wilco, one of my...

Wolfgang Flür was born in Frankfurt in 1947 but moved to Düsseldorf in the early ‘50s, which has been home ever since. As a young man he played in the band The Sprits Of Sound, and studied to be an architect, hoping to...

Wendy James is tied up with some of my earlier memories of music. She fronted the band Transvision Vamp, who were hard to ignore in the late 80s. Songs like “I Want Your Love” and “Baby I Don’t Care” were pretty big...

Pat Arnold has had quite a life. Born in 1946 she grew up in LA, and was in an abusive marriage with two kids while still a teenager. In 1965 she got a chance to audition for Ike and Tina Turner’s band as an “Ikette”...