Preparing for an interview is generally a prerequisite for an enlightening and wide-ranging conversation – except in this case. My chat with Frames and Swell Season-performer-turned-Once co-star Glen Hansard, who’s at the center of a November 8 Westword profile, happened on the spur of the moment; I received a call…
The mini-profile of Northern State that appears in the November 1 issue of Westword springs from the following maxi-Q&A with Julie Potash, one of three MCs in the sprightly hip-hop act. It’s her second interview with the paper, but the first one to actually appear in print; a previous article…
Nick Hutchinson recently had the chance to chat with legendary bluegrass purveyor Pete Wernick about his influences, how he got his nickname and the difference between playing with Hot Rize and with Flexigrass. We ran a few highlights from their conversation in the November 1 issue, and here, in the…
Public Enemy’s Chuck D is among the greatest innovators in hip-hop, and unlike so many of his peers, who’ve either disappeared from the scene or have transitioned into other sectors of the entertainment universe, such as acting or reality TV, he’s still spitting rhymes with something approximating his original fury…
The following Q&A with keyboardist Marco Benevento, who’s at the heart of an October 25 Westword preview of area appearances by the Benevento Russo Duo, was a family affair. The phone conversation began as Benevento was checking on his infant daughter, Ruby, who’d just gone down for a nap. He…
Hardcore is one of the purest forms of expression in music. More visceral than cerebral, the music is simple, direct and explosive. There’s no pretense or subtext — nothing to analyze. And, refeshingly, its practioners and enthusiasts are generally as straight-forward and no-nonsense as the music, which means they’re unaffected…
Don’t be frightened. Bassist DJ Wilson of Scary Kids Scaring Kids doesn’t come across as particularly terrifying in either the profile of the band published in the October 18 Westword or the full Q&A, reproduced below. Wilson begins by talking about his hometown of Gilbert, Arizona, before transitioning into his…
The October 11 profile of Dallas Taylor, lead singer of Maylene and the Sons of Disaster (seen above in a graphic photo from the new Sons’ CD II), was drawn from the following interview. It’s a freewheeling and revealing look at a man who believes that bloody tales of mayhem…
Eric Shiveley is quite the character. Several years ago, a week or so after he’d appeared in my column with a brief one-line mention of how I’d dug his music and everything he’d had a hand in producing at that point, he sent me a note (which I still have…
Every once in a while, asking a stupid question pays off. As evidence, consider the following Q&A with guitarist Simon Taylor-Davies of Klaxons, a buzzy British band profiled in Westword’s October 4 edition. In about half of the pieces about this particular STD and cohorts James Righton and Jamie Reynolds,…
Steve Bays, Hot Hot Heat’s frontman, had a lot more to say than we could squeeze into Westword’s September 27 profile, as demonstrated by the attached Q&A. At interview time (on September 12, the day after HHH’s latest CD, Happiness Ltd., was released), the band was heading north to Los…
Had ax-expert Saul Hudson chosen to perform under his given name, he might never have succeeded in the music business, let alone made it to the cover of the forthcoming video game “Guitar Hero III.” Lucky thing he changed his moniker to Slash. During the Q&A below, which formed the…
Why stop at a Heaven and Hell concert preview item like the one in Westword’s September 20 issue when you’ve got a chance to chat with one of the architects of Black Sabbath? That’s what we asked ourselves — and the conclusion we drew accounts for the following conversation with…
As any regular concert-goer knows, shows get canceled all the time — and if notice of schedule changes reach newspapers like this one in time, articles about such gigs get the ax, too. During my years at Westword, such a turn of events has meant that three interviews I conducted…
The Wayne Coyne profile that appears in the September 13 edition of Westword represents the SparkNotes version of a recent interview. Below, find the original text of our conversation with the Flaming Lips frontman, appearing unabridged and in its entirety. Coyne talks amusingly and at length about his band’s 2006…
Space: When it comes to physical newspapers, there never seems to be enough of it. But on the web, there’s room aplenty – and that capacity allows us to expand a Now Hear This concert preview item about the Used that appears in the September 13 Westword to a full…
The Arcade Fire is one of the exciting and inventive acts to come out in the few years. Inventive instrumentation, and plugs from people like David Bowie, made their debut album Funeral a Cinderella success story and overnight they became the next it band. And they’ve capitalized on that success…
Josh Rouse cannot make a dark-sounding record to save his life. His latest offering, Country Mouse, City House, was supposed to contain the musical equivalency of a New England winter day: overcast and cold with a high probability for snow. Instead, the disc sparkles with sunshine, smiling melodies and enough…
Members of many bands big enough to be booked at Red Rocks aren’t interested in doing press — unless the show’s selling poorly, that is. But not only were some of the men in Sound Tribe Sector 9 eager to speak for the September 6 profile accessible here. All of…
Drummer Zach Velmer of Sound Tribe Sector 9, which gets the profile treatment in Westword’s September 6 issue, is an lively guy. He talks in the early portions of the interview below about how school instructors recommended that he take up drumming as a way to channel all of the…
Jeffree Lerner, the percussionist for Sound Tribe Sector 9, profiled in the September 6 edition of Westword, was the last member to join the band, and the most experienced going in, having previously served as a drum tech on extended tours by Colorado’s Leftover Salmon. In conversation, he comes across…
David Phipps plays keyboards for Sound Tribe Sector 9 (read more about them in this September 6 Westword article), but he’s also the group’s reigning tech guru — the musician as responsible as anyone for making the band sound forward-looking and adventurous. On top of that, he oversees STSP’s website,…
