Fun 2 Know Podcast w Dan Buskirk

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Fun 2 Know Podcast w Dan Buskirk

The Fun 2 Know podcast with Dan Buskirk contains interviews with writers, musicians, and artists with fresh perspectives about their work and their lives.

13/08/2024

New Episode!
https://soundcloud.com/fun2know/f2k-ep-54-pianistcomposerbandleader-lafayette-gilchrist
F2K Ep. 54: Pianist/Composer/Bandleader Lafayette Gilchrist!
(photo courtesy of Bruce Woods)

On today's show, it's the Baltimore-based pianist, composer, and bandleader Lafayette Gilchrist. Lafayette is an extravagantly-gifted instrumentalist and composer, the type of pianist often described as a “two-handed player” for the strong rhythms of his left hand and his nimble melodicism of his right. His deep understanding of the music's history find him schooled in piano styles that go back at least a century, as well as having a modern spirit that places him in conversation with the piano's contemporary improvising explorers. Born in D.C., Lafayette could be seen as an example of great tradition of the area's musical talent, players that had to be versed in the ideas and the styles of the North while containing the soulful feel of Southern sounds.

Since his debut THE ART IS LIFE from 1993, Lafayette has produced over a dozen releases, playing solo, in duos, in trios and with often his septet, The New Volcanoes. He has also toured and recorded with saxophone legend David Murray and his music is heard in the HBO series', THE WIRE, THE DEUCE and TREME. His most-recent release UNDAUNTED drew wider attention to Lafayette's talent, and when I met up with him it early August in was just before a sold out show appearing at Chris Jazz Cafe in Philly.

We talk about Lafayette discovery of the piano, finding mentors in area jazz greats Grachan Moncur III and saxophonist Carl Grubbs. We talk about records that inspired him, his philosophy in leading a band, his musical work with children and even our mutual love of cats. Lafayette was gracious enough to conclude the interview post-gig, so we'll get a rare pre-and-post gig conversation on this latest episode...

12/06/2024

New Episode! Wildly entertaining joyride with that ball of creative energy Steven Erdman!
https://soundcloud.com/fun2know/f2k-ep-53-artistmusician-steven-erdman
F2K Ep. 53 - Artist/Musician Steven Erdman
Here's the part where I give a brief introduction to this episode's guest, something particularly difficult with a guest as extravagantly talented as Steven Erdman. He might be best described as a one-man production company, having skills as a graphic artists with hand-illustrating skills, a songwriter and producer, an animator and filmmaker, and set designer and creator and over the last thirty odd years has worked on projects at Nickelodeon and MTV, contributed artwork to numerous publications and gave birth to the weirdo rock sounds of Lard Dog & The Band of Shy, known for their surreal theatrical performances.

Erdman has rubbed shoulders and collaborated with a cavalcade of well-known talents, over the course of the episode we'll hear anecdote about everyone from James Brown, Van Morrison, Natasha Lyonne, Clarence Reid aka Blowfly, The Sun Ra Arkestra's Marshall Allen, one-time bandmate Norah Jones, and more. It all makes for a decidedly epic and entertaining conversation, as Erd discusses his many setbacks and drive to keep creative, or as he proclaims, to “Yam On!”

10/11/2023

Fun 2 Know Podcast w Dan Buskirk
New Episode!
Episode 52: Saxophonist and Poet Elliott Levin
https://soundcloud.com/fun2know/f2k-ep-52-saxophonistpoet-elliott-levin
On today's show saxophonist, flautist, composer, poet, Elliott Levin. Levin is a Philadelphia-born talent, who has traveled far and wide in his career, establishing himself as an iron man of music, ubiquitous across the city of Philadelphia since the 1970s, playing countless gigs across numerous styles. Soon after picking up the saxophone, Elliott fell under the spell galvanizing jazz pianist Cecil Taylor while Taylor taught at New Jersey's Glassboro State College. Levin first found acclaim touring around the world with Philly International giants Harold Melvin & The Blues Notes for over a decade and his career in jazz and improvised music has seen him performing and recording with The Sun Ra Arkestra's Tyrone Hill & Marshall Allen, Mother of Invention keyboardist Don Preston, Sonic Liberation Front, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, The West Philadelphia Orchestra and Odean Pope's Saxophone Choir and his poetry has been published in The L.A. Weekly.

I'd been wanting to get Elliott in front of a microphone for sometime, and our conversation didn't disappoint. When I spoke to Elliott has was just back from a tour of Mexico and earlier this month he celebrated his 70th birthday with a concert in Philadelphia, leading a band featuring 99 year-old Sun Ra Arkestra bandleader Marshall Allen. We discuss his upbringing in West Philly, college in the turbulent early seventies, touring the world with The Blue Notes, his collaborations with Marshall Allen, poetry, his friendship with hippie legend Buzzy Linhart, a saxophonist's life during quarantine and more, as well as hearing a bit of the music Elliott has recorded over his career.
(photo: Elliott Levin by David Bas)

19/05/2023

F2K Podcast - Ep.51: Novelist Mike DeCapite:
https://soundcloud.com/fun2know/f2k-ep-51-novelist-mike-decapite
On today's show, it's the second appearance of writer Mike DeCapite (previously on F2N Ep. 20), whose latest novel, JACKET WEATHER was published in late 2021 by Soft Skull Press, home to works from everyone from Dennis Cooper to Noam Chomsky. DeCapite is originally from Cleveland and the son of novelist Raymond DeCapite, a novelist whose well-reviewed work was first published in 1960. Mike DeCapite moved from Clevleand to Brooklyn in 1987 and moved in the circle around fellow Clevelanders Pere Ubu, the seminal art punk group. DeCapite's poetic fiction would be appear in various publications over the years and his naturalistic slices of life have always revealed a deep connection to music and has made fans of an impressive range artists of various backgrounds; JACKET WEATHER includes blurbs from filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, Sonic Youth bassist Lee Ranaldo and writer Lucy Sante.

DeCapite's 1998 novel THROUGH THE WINDSHIELD drew raves for Mike's story of kicking around with small time gamblers in the city of Cleveland, an excerpt from Mike's unpublished follow-up RUINED FOR LIFE would appear along with his father's work in Harper's THE ITALIAN AMERICAN READER, and now JACKET WEATHER arrives, further refining DeCapite's anecdotal storytelling to a fine point. The novel centers around a relationship DeCapite begins with June, a figure of romantic interest DeCapite had known casually back in the 1980s where she was doing P.R. for Pere Ubu. Now decades later, DeCapite is taken a back by the strong attraction he feels to a woman extracting herself from a curdled relationship. With the lightest of touches across bite-sized chapters, DeCapite casts an alluring story of unsentimental optimism in the just-dimming light of middle-age.

Publishers Weekly said:
"Spare and lyrical . . . DeCapite has a poet’s eye for the city’s majestic details, and illustrates how his characters come to see the same things differently over the years . . . A worthwhile meditation." —

from Kirkus Reviews: "So very real . . . A sad but sweet song about the uncertainty of middle age and how funny it is when time slips away."

We try an keep things loose and casual of these Fun 2 Know interviews, so much so people often think I'm just interviewing friends, but here I actually AM interviewing one of my closest friends, although it has been decades since I hung with Mike after work every Monday in San Francisco, where Mike would serve some ambitious entrees and we'd talk movies, music and writing. The last time I talked to Mike was just before pandemic restrictions hit in 2020, now, three years later, Mike was in Philly to do a reading with Warhol biographer Victor Bockriss and we sat down at the kitchen table the following day to record this interview where we talk about JACKET WEATHER, seasonal memories, '90s Dylan, middle-aged love, writing about s*x and divining renewed inspiration.

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