Ritzy Bryan of the Joy Formidable discusses why her Welsh heritage is so important to her music, how her time on Atlantic Records helped inform her understanding of the music business, and how her guitar acrobatics hurt her Fender as well as the forehead of Joy Formidable bassist Rhydian Dafydd.
Jon Kull has orchestrated more than 100 Hollywood films, including Black Panther, Hunger Games, X-Men Apocalypse, and many more. Here he talks about his life, career, education, and what drives him, as well as Berklee Online's Master of Music in Film Scoring. He also discusses the unlikely turn of events that led one of his compositions to become the MacGruber theme song.
Bonnie Hayes talks songwriting for Bonnie Raitt, touring with Bob Seger, playing keys for Billy Idol, and being blown away by the Sex Pistols in 1978, and how all of that led to her coming to teach at Berklee College of Music and Berklee Online. Her most recent Berklee Online course, Arranging for Songwriters: Instrumentation and Production in Songwriting, is enrolling now!
With a career that spans more than 60 years, and includes just about as many hits, Chip Taylor doesn’t need to write any more songs. But that doesn’t mean he’s showing any signs of stopping. He releases a new album, The Whiskey Salesman in May, and in this discussion that spans his entire career, he talks about how his songs “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning,” may or may not be related, his favorite versions of his songs, his brother Jon Voight, how Quincy Jones discouraged him from pursuing a musical education, and his reaction to seeing Jimi Hendrix perform his iconic guitar sacrifice during a performance of a Chip Taylor song.
Evan Dando has been releasing music for more than 30 years, reaching a commercial high point in the early and mid 90s with the Lemonheads albums It’s a Shame about Ray and Come on Feel the Lemonheads. Most of the attention came from a cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” which Dando wasn’t too happy about for a while, but thanks to Martin Scorsese, he's not so down about it anymore.
TJ Connelly is an entrepreneur, music curator, and creative technologist, best known for his work as the DJ at Fenway Park for the 2018 World Series Champs, the Boston Red Sox. He's also known for his work at Gillette Stadium, where he's the DJ for the home games of the 2019 Super Bowl champs, the New England Patriots. He has also DJed for the Boston Bruins at the Boston Garden since 2017, and has recently covered a number of Celtics games. TJ also has experience DJing several regular shows on Boston FM stations, including WZBC, WMBR, and WFNX. If you're not a fan of Boston sports, or of sports at all, you'll still enjoy hearing TJ discuss his career as a DJ, and the strategies he employs to move a crowd.
Tony Trischka's list of collaborators includes Pete Seeger, Bela Fleck, Earl Scruggs, and Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers, so it's no surprise that he has been called “perhaps the most influential banjo player in the roots music world.” His 2007 album Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular earned him his first Grammy nomination, as well as awards for Banjo Player of the Year, Recorded Event of the Year, and Instrumental Album of the Year from the International Bluegrass Music Association. In this edition, of Music Is My Life, he discusses his communist father, his love of "MTA," and auditioning for Bruce Springsteen.