In-Studio Performance: Joe Pug

Singer-songwriter Joe Pug dropped by the station on April 30th, ten days after his 31st birthday and just a few weeks after the release of his third album, Windfall. Pug had visited the station previously while promoting 2012's The Great Despiser, a tour that nearly burnt him out on making music altogether. After kicking the session off with "Bright Beginnings", the first track from the new record, he went into detail about how he almost quit music entirely. He had been touring non-stop and by the end of the tour he was "really low on [him]self, low on music" and wanted to take a step  back in order to gain perspective as he "needed to have joy while making music". (Though let's not forget his gorgeous rendition of Bruce Springsteen's "Downbound Train" on Dead Man's Town A Tribute To Born In The USA from 2014.)

"If Still It Can't Be Windfall the whole way through.
Found"was the second tune he played, which he wrote on an out-of-tune piano he found on Craig's List. He found a section of the site dedicated to people with pianos they are trying to get rid of--if someone can get it out of their house then it's theirs. The track is particularly powerful and Pug strategically placed it last on the album. "People don't listen to full albums anymore", and he wanted to make sure people listened to

Windfall was recorded at Shangri-La studios, with a simpler approach to songwriting and recording than Pug's previous efforts. He also cites more contemporary influences on this album as well--M. Ward, Josh Ritter and Ryan Adams among others, and finishing out the performance with "Burn And Shine".

Joe Pug will be supporting Brandon Flowers in the UK next month, as well as performing at the Green River Festival on July 12th, and Newport Folk on July 25th (Friday). More information can be found at JoePugMusic.com.

In-Studio Performance: Claudia Russell and Bruce Kaplan

Husband and wife duo Claudia Russell and Bruce Kaplan celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary just a few days ago. "This is our Silver Anniversary" Russell joked when they stopped by the station for an in-studio session and interview with Dave on April 10th, performing a set that included "You Are The Light", a song that they had meant to perform at their wedding. The two met when their individual bands booked a gig at the same club and entered into not only a life partnership, but a musical partnership as well. "Most couples argue about money and the house, we argue about song keys," Kaplan laughed.

The first song in their set was "Pirate Girls", coincidentally the opening track on their latest album All Our Luck Is Changing. It describes an intimate friendship between two young girls prior to one moving away--painting a picture of large backyards and summer days spent outside until dark. Both are images from Russell's childhood, though not describing a single friendship of hers but bits and pieces from many, "a conglomeration, like bringing different bits of clay together". Kaplan, who co-wrote the song--stated that though he only wrote two lines, he did have two close friends who moved away in his childhood and that feeling is what the song evokes for him. 

"This song is arguably a jig," Kaplan said as the duo launched into their second tune "Follow Your Tail Lights Home", also from All Our Luck Is Changing. Peter Case, whom Kaplan had known since 1979. Russell had taken two of his songwriting classes as well. Describing the process they said, "Peter is kind of a beatnik... he always gives 110%." 

Russell and Kaplan closed out the set with "I Remember The Wind". They perform at The Linden Tree Coffeehouse in Wakefield tomorrow, April 11th, and Club Passim at 3:30 PM Sunday, April 12th. More information can be found at ClaudiaRussell.com. 

In-Studio Performance: Session Americana 3/31

Local folk-rock super-group Session Americana are no strangers to the WUMB studio. The band includes members of New England outfits  Maybe Baby, Treat Her Right, Chauncey, Resophonics, Face To Face, The Funky White Honkies and Morphine among others. The whole group currently consists of Billy Beard, Ry Cavanaugh, Dinty Child, Jim Fitting, Jon Bistline, Kimon Kirk, Laura Cortese, Dietrich Strause, Jefferson Hamer, Alec Spiegelman, Adam Moss, Anais Mitchell, Zachariah Hickman, Charlie Rose, Duke Levine, Eliza Carthy and Jennifer Kimball. The original lineup—Sean Staples, Cortese, Child, Beard, Fitting, Bistline, Hamer, Kirk, and Cavanaugh—formed in 2004 at Toad in Cambridge, the band facing each other around a table with a single microphone in the center, a tradition they continue.

The entirety of Session Americana was represented in-studio at WUMB on March 31^st by four of its members; Ry Cavanaugh, Jim Fitting, Laura Cortese, and Dinty Child. They kicked off their set with “All For You”—a co-write between Cavanaugh and Dietrich Strauss—from their latest record Pack Up The Circus featuring Cavanaugh on vocals, Fitting on harmonica, Cortese on fiddle and vocals and Child on accordion. 

Pack Up The Circus, the band’s 9^th overall release, was created partially utilizing the recent phenomenon of online crowd-funding campaigns. The band self-funded the album as much as they could before turning to crowd-funding—which they see more as pre-sales than anything else—recording the majority of it in three days. It also features many guest performers who had toured with the band members in the last few years. 

Anais Mitchell who had worked with the band off and on for five years or so, and was the first person to bring the band to perform out of town when they opened for her and served as the “shepherd” of the group, guiding them along and finding the ability to mesh all of the “strong personalities in the room”.

Pack Up The Circus is currently available. More information on Session Americana can be found at SessionAmericana.com.

In-Studio Performance: Patrick Coman, January 23rd, 2015.

WUMB’s very own Patrick Coman, host of Local Folk,(Saturdays from Noon to 2PM) switched sides of the mic on January 23^rd to perform tracks from his brand new album Reds & Blues for Dominick’s weekly Local Spotlight. In addition to being a musician and the host of Local Folk, Coman serves as the organizer of the For The Sake of The Song series, a concert series featuring bands and songwriters performing either the music of or music inspired by their favorite artists. It was through this series that Reds & Blues really came together, particularly in the almost-title track “Red Diamond Blues”—inspired by Bob Dylan and The Band’s The Basement Tapes—with which he started the set.

                Being such a fixture in the Boston music scene it would  be reasonable to assume that Patrick Coman is a Boston native. This, however, is not the case. His journey began in Oklahoma and made a stop in Berlin before landing him in Boston, his home of the last five years. He chronicles this trip in the song “Foreign Tongue”—influenced by Tom Petty’s Wildflowers—written during his move to Boston.  When asked about living in such different locations he said, “I met a girl and followed her around”. Coman then finished the set with “My Baby’s Been Good To Me” written for that same girl.

                The Reds & Blues CD release party will be at The Lizard Lounge in Cambridge on January 24^th. Coman and will play two sets;  one of his own songs followed by a cover-set featuring music from the seven albums that influenced the record. More information at PatrickComan.com.