American Song

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Catching You Up

New to the series? Here’s where we are. Episode One was the birth of American radio: a box in the living room that started talking in the 1920s and became the most intimate machine Americans had ever owned. Episode Two was the complicated part. Edwin Armstrong invented FM and RCA buried it. Television took radio’s stars. Black radio, the disc jockey, and rock and roll moved into the empty rooms, and the payola hearings made sure the independent DJs paid for it. You don’t need either episode to follow this one, but they’re both in the feed, and they’re both pretty good, if I say so myself. And I do.

Moving the Story Forward

In April 1967, a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound former Top 40 star named Tom Donahue sat down at a San Francisco radio station so broke its phone had been disconnected. He put on a record and let it play all the way through. Then he put on another one. Nobody had told him he couldn’t.That’s how freeform FM started, more or less. Larry Miller, the overnight man, would like you to know he’d been doing it for two months already.This is Part One of the story. It’s about the government order that accidentally emptied the FM dial, and the people who walked in and started playing whatever they wanted. Listeners built antennas out of coat hangers. The staff went on strike at three in the morning, on the air, and the bands came down to play in the street. Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh dropped by the studio with a stack of records and called their own debut album a turd. On a commercial radio station.You’ll hear the real thing: Tom Donahue on KMPX in 1967, Scott Muni and Alison Steele, the Nightbird, on WNEW-FM in New York, and Michael Tearson on WMMR in Philadelphia, recruiting doctors for a free clinic in the middle of his overnight shift. Two guests who were there tell it from both sides of the glass. Brad Kyle was a nineteen-year-old DJ in Houston who once phased two copies of a KISS album by hand to make a car crash sound better. Bruce Warren was a kid in Philadelphia with his radio tuned to WMMR, who grew up to help build World Cafe.For a few years, a person with a stack of records and an opinion could put a seventeen-minute song on the radio and nobody got fired. This is the story of those years. Part Two is about who paid for them.

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Perseverant. By the time you finish listening to my interview with emzae, you’ll have a good idea about why I’ve started my introduction like this. Other words also apply. Intelligent. Interesting. Insightful. Inspiring. These words also seem uniquely appropriate for this singer-songwriter from Derby, England. emzae and I met for this interview across the span of one continent and one ocean but by the end of our conversation, I felt like we were a little bit closer. I think you’ll have the same experience.

emzae is the stage name of Emma, a singer-songwriter, producer, and mixing engineer from Derby. She calls her hometown an engineering city with little creative heritage or pathway. She coined the name in a 2009 MSN Messenger chat. For years afterward she drew artwork with it splashed across the front, rehearsing a future she wasn’t sure she’d be allowed to have.

The road there was not direct. Chronic illness, M.E. and OCD, arrived in her teens and took her out of school at fourteen. She finished her schooling in a hospital outpatient classroom and taught herself the rest: singing, guitar, piano, production, and mixing. You see - there it is; perseverance. In 2014 she began posting demos to SoundCloud, many of them recorded on a guitar she’d received at seventeen, purchased at Argos. One of the songs she wrote for her first acoustic project earned her first BBC “Introducing” play. Then came “Lucid Dreaming,” a trip-hop-tinged confession of how badly she wanted to make music for a living. It was the first song she felt proud enough to share with her own family. You’ll get to hear a number of her songs, interwoven through this interview.

That song opened the door to All Those Things I Thought I Knew. Taking six years to complete, her debut album was released in September 2023 on her own label, Zirconia Records. She wrote it, played it, sang every layer of it, produced it, and mixed it. She then toured it, remixed it, and pressed it on vinyl with money she didn’t really have.

Since the Beatles and the Stones first took American R&B home and handed it back, British pop has been talking back to American song. emzae belongs to a newer branch of that family tree: the artist who is also the engineer, the label, the publicist, and the booking agent. Perhaps I should go back and insert the word, multi-faceted, up there at the top? She has written candidly about the cost of that arrangement. She describes it as a fine line between “protective hyper-independence and simply screwing yourself over.” She has also written about walking away from the major-label dream in favor of something she could actually sustain.

Today she mixes and produces for other artists through her studio, Zirconia Audio. In October 2026 she played her first full-band show, and her second album is well underway.

In this conversation, recorded in August 2026, we go song by song through All Those Things I Thought I Knew. We also talk about building a career outside the system, and what it takes to keep making art when your body sets the schedule.

More Ways to Enjoy American Song!

Visit us on Substack. Drop us a note and share your ideas for future shows, see more of our new artist interviews. Read our blogs. It's all on Substack. Use the link!
https://substack.com/@americansong

Joe Hines is now live on GUTSY radio twice a month on Saturdays at 5 pm Eastern time. Great music, fascinating stories, good vibes! See the Gutsy show schedule for details.

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At the start, radio was like the Wild West. Anyone could get on the air, and it was all fair game: preachers, farmers, a quack broadcasting from Mexico. But that was before the networks moved in, before the payola hearings took the records out of the DJs' hands, and ultimately before a single law in 1996 sold the dial to a few corporations. Signalis the story of American radio's hundred-year fight between the people who wanted to say something and the people who wanted to sell something. Because the good guys win in the end, free voices keep getting through anyway.

Last time: Signal Episode One, “Hello, World,” covered radio’s first three decades. We listened in as a man on a Pittsburgh rooftop in 1920, read election returns into a microphone without a clue as to whether anyone was listening. In just three short years from that random starting place, there were 556 stations. In the beginning, Boy Scouts built crystal sets. Families gave the radio the best spot in the living room. Farm wives in the Depression found company in it, and FDR comforted a nation in it. For a brief, chaotic window, anyone could get on the air: preachers, poultry farmers, Pedro González speaking Spanish to Los Angeles, and a goat-gland doctor blasting half a million watts from across the Mexican border, where a six-year-old Johnny Cash heard the Carter Family for the first time. Then NBC and CBS moved in and turned all that noise into a business.

Radio was built on the fact that people would crave a voice they trust.

Then television showed up and took the business away.

Now: This is Episode Two and its about what happened in the empty room TV left behind. The big stars packed their bags and left: Jack Benny, Bob Hope, the Lone Ranger all headed for that little box with the fishbowl screen. Meantime, a transmitter, a microphone, and a stack of records were left to hold down the fort. That turned out to be enough. It actually birthed the DJ.

Episode two is also the tragic story of Edwin Armstrong, who invented FM radio and was destroyed by the company that should have made him famous. So much for gratitude and fair dealing. And this is also the story of WDIA in Memphis, where Nat D. Williams reached one in ten Black Americans and B.B. King sang jingles. This was also the open range prowled by wildman Wolfman Jack, howling across the border at 250,000 watts. Look again and its also the story of payola hearings: Alan Freed lost everything, Dick Clark lost nothing, and anyone paying attention could see why.

My episode two guest is Bruce Warren, who has spent more than 35 years at WXPN Philadelphia, most recently as Assistant General Manager for Programming and Executive Producer of NPR's World Cafe. He’s living proof that some vestiges of the 1950s still remain. The listener-supported model that a pacifist invented in Berkeley, CA in 1949 is the same one that pays NPR station bills. The promotion game that brought down Alan Freed still happens to a lesser extent; these days its concert tickets now instead of cash. And the formatted, playlist-driven radio the payola hearings created leads straight to today, where one voice-tracked DJ can "host" six cities at once.

Turn it up. The static’s the good part.

Did you miss the first episode - Signal: Hello World? No problem! It's available here on your favorite streaming platform or on the American Song website. Check it out - you won't want to miss it!

Get in touch: I'd love to hear from you! Find American Song on Substack.

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In 1920, a radio signal was a rumor with electricity behind it — a handful of amateurs in garages and attics, broadcasting into a void nobody had proven was listening. There were no networks, no formats, no rules, because nobody in power had figured out yet that there was anything here worth controlling. That's the world this episode opens in: the accidental birth of American radio, before it belonged to anyone.

"Hello, World" traces how a scattered hobby became a national voice — and sets up the argument this whole series is built on: American freedom tends to live in the places nobody's bothered to claim yet. Episode one of Signal, a new American Song series on the rise, fall, and strange afterlife of American radio, is live now.

In this episode:

• Robert Baden Powell (founder of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts) talks to parents
• KDKA Pittsburgh. 11/2/1920. First Commercial Radio Broadcast
• W.K. (Old Man) Henderson - Hello World (1930)
• KPBS Classics - Ballad of an Unsung Hero
• Father Couglin - 12/11/1938
• The Amos 'n Andy Show - Courtroom Catastrophe
• Orson Welles - War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast (1938)
• FDR Fireside Chat on Banking
• Edward R. Murrow - The London Blitz

And here's what comes next:

Radio didn’t stay innocent for long. Neither did anyone, really.

A man invents FM radio, and the company profiting from it steals it out from under him and leaves him with nothing. For thirty years after that, nobody wants what he built. Turns out neglect was the best thing that could’ve happened to it — because ignored is free, and free is where a DJ can play whatever he wants, for as long as it deserves to be heard, with nobody telling him otherwise. That part is genuinely glorious. It’s also, like most glorious things, temporary.

Because eventually somebody in Washington signs a piece of paper almost nobody reads, and in a few short years radio stops belonging to the people who loved it and starts belonging to a balance sheet. Local voices get replaced with automation. One January morning, a chemical disaster hits a small town, and the station legally required to warn people doesn’t answer the phone — because there’s nobody left inside to answer it. That’s not a metaphor. That’s what corporate greed actually costs.

The people radio pushed out never stopped loving it. They rebuilt it somewhere else — podcasts, Substack, stations run by people who remember what this was supposed to sound like. Something America loved got taken away by greed, and then, quietly and stubbornly, brought back from the ashes by the people who never let go of it.

That’s also an American pattern. It happened to jazz. It happened to punk. Over the next six episodes, we watch it happen to radio.

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Today’s episode is an interview with the Southern California based singer-songwriter, Anson Corsair. His remarkably open interview reveals some of the highs and the lows he’s lived through and how he’s processed these events into a growing group of beautiful songs. While American Song generally covers some of the most well-known musicians throughout the canon of popular music, these artists are just the tip of the iceberg. Interviews with people like Anson help us appreciate just how rich the music world is. Writers like myself have an opportunity to shine a light on the immensity of what’s found below the waterline!

With a sound that is reminiscent of Jack Johnson, John Mayer, and Ed Sheeran, Anson’s songwriting craft is elegant, and poetic. In this interview, he goes deep on the many life experiences that have shaped who he is and how he understands his world.

I hope you’ll enjoy today’s show!

Learn more about Anson Corsair:

Website: https://www.ansoncorsair.com/

Instagram: AnsonCorsairMusic

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/ansoncorsairmusic

Spotify

Follow American Song on Buzzsprout or your favorite streaming platform and connect with me on Substack!

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Today on American Song, I’ll introduce you to my friend, A.J. Deiboldt. A.J. is a singer-songwriter originally from upstate New York, now making his music in a small town in the woods of Tennessee just outside Nashville. American Song is a show that celebrates the history, breadth and richness of our country’s music in all its flavors. Writing memorable and sensitive songs in the style of Chris Whitley, and with historic connections to acoustic blues pioneers such as Ledbelly, Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Johnson, A.J. is certainly no stranger to this legacy. By the end of this interview, I think you’ll end up agreeing , he represents the music well! A.J.'s songs are beautifully crafted, and his musicianship is finely nuanced and highly developed. I’m proud to have him on.

Music In This Episode

• Some Day's Gonna Come Some Day
• Diamond's In The Dust
• Steal Away
• The Old Ways
• Pretty Days

Look for A.J. Deiboldt at:

Substack: The High Notes

YouTube: AJDeiboldt

Connect with us online! American Song on Substack.

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New Wave was born in a New York dive bar, then it got on a plane. In England it picked up eyeliner and a synthesizer where its guitar used to be. But somewhere over the Atlantic, in a few very specific places, it also picked up something heavier: a government watching.

This is the final episode in our New Wave series, and it's the one where the genre stops being an aesthetic and starts being evidence. In Chile, three teenagers formed a band while Pinochet's regime was still making people disappear — and wrote songs about it anyway. In Argentina, a junta collapsed the same year its kids started plugging in synthesizers. In South Africa, artists built entire careers on saying things apartheid censors weren't fast enough to catch. None of these bands set out to be political. The regimes they lived under made that decision for them.

Germany, South Africa, Latin America, and back around to post-Franco Spain — the biggest songs from the boldest bands in each, made under governments that would've preferred they stayed quiet, played anyway.

This is Dancing Under Fire. Across different times, places, artists and eras, it's a now familiar story in hipper clothes and different accents. American music keeps leaving the country and coming back changed — recognizable, but not asking permission anymore.

Music In This Episode

Germany

• DAF - Der Mussolilni
• Spider Murphy Gang - Skandal Im Sperrbezirk
• Nina Hagen- Du Hast Den Farbfilm Vergessen
• Ideal - Blaue Augen
• Ideal - Wir Stehn Auf Berlin
• Ideal - Monotonie
• Nena - 99 Luftballons
• Nena - Irgendwie Irgendwo Irgendwann
• Peter Schilling - Major Tom (Völlig Losgelöst)
• Peter Schilling - Die Wüste Lebt
• Falco - Ganz Wien
• Falco - Der Kommissar
• Falco - Rock Me Amadeus

South Africa

• éVoid - Shadows
• éVoid - Taximan
• éVoid - I Am a Fadget
• éVoid - Urban Warrior
• Brenda Fassie - Weekend Special
• Brenda Fassie - Black President
• Brenda Fassie - Memeza
• Paul Ndlovu - Khombo Ra Mina
• Solomon Linda - Mbube

Latin America

• Los Prisioneros - La Voz de los '80
• Los Prisioneros - El Baile do Los Que Sobran
• Los Prisioneros - Tren Al Sur
• Los Prisioneros - Eléctricas
• Soda Stereo - Por Qué No Puedo Ser del Jet Set
• Soda Stereo - Nada Personal
• Soda Stereo - Persiana Americana
• Soda Stereo - En la Ciudad de la Furia
• Soda Stereo - De Musica Ligera
• Caifanes - La Negra Tomasa
• Caifanes - La Célula Que Explota
• Caifanes - Nubes
• Caifanes - No Dejes Que
• Radio Futura - Enamorado De La Moda Juvenil
• Radio Futura - Escuela de Calor
• Radio Futura - Semilla Negra
• Radio Futura - 37 Grados

Come visit with us on Substack!

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Britain just turned the lights fluorescent. The future arrives every Wednesday now, whether you're ready or not.

Picture 1979 England: factories closing, Thatcher cutting glass with every syllable, and a music press so brutal it could make or break a band before the tea went cold. Punk already burned down the house. Now a blond former schoolteacher from Newcastle who sounds like a cathedral trying to seduce you, a man dressed as three centuries of fashion history simultaneously, and a band that named itself after a hairstyle and a bomber are about to rebuild it — colder, sharper, and somehow more danceable.

This episode: The Police turn jazz chords into a global empire. The Clash and XTC ask exactly how much pop a protest song can survive. Siouxsie and the Banshees, Squeeze, and Tears for Fears each find a different way to make precision sound like feeling. Elvis Costello smuggles class warfare into a piano hook your kids could hum.

Then the screen turns on. MTV launches with nothing to play but the eccentrics nobody else wanted — and the eccentrics become the biggest stars on Earth. Until two artists the network never planned for, Michael Jackson and Prince, force the door open and rewrite who gets to be on television at all.

The future was never going to be warm. But it was going to be brilliant.

Songs In This Episode

• The Clash - Career Opportunities
• XTC - This Is Pop
• The Police - Message In a Bottle (No Vocal)
• The Police - Roxanne
• The Police - Walking On the Moon
• Squeeze - Tempted
• Adam and the Ants - Kings of the Wild Frontier
• The Cure - A Forest
• Siouxsie and the Banshees - Cities in Dust
• OMD - Enola Gay
• Tears For Fears - The Hurting
• Tears For Fears - Mad World
• Tears For Fears - Shout
• Tears For Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World
• Elvis Costello - Pump it Up
• Elvis Costello - Watching the Detectives
• Elvis Costello - Oliver's Army
• Elvis Costello - Alison
• Elvis Costello - Radio, Radio
• The Monkees - (Theme From) The Monkees
• The Buggles - Video Killed the. Radio Star
• Michael Jackson - Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough
• Prince - Controversy
• Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
• Prince - When You Were Mine
• Prince - 1999
• Prince - When Doves Cry
• Falco - Der Kommissar (German Version)

Interviews With

• Sting
• Adam Ant
• Elvis Costello
• Michael Nesmith
• Andy Summers

Join American Song on Social Media

Substack: https://substack.com/@americansong

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It was the late 1970s and early '80s. New York was bankrupt. Akron's tire factories were closing. Regular families were struggling with double-digit inflation. The AIDS epidemic was raging. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the US boycotted the Olympics in protest. John Lennon was assassinated. And somewhere in the background, always, that low hum — nuclear warheads, patient at the edge of the light.

Into that America walked Blondie, Talking Heads, Devo, the B-52s, the Cars, and Oingo Boingo. You Might Think you know what they were doing. Quirky! Fun! Great hair!

Here's what they were actually doing: holding a mirror up to everything that was broken and making it danceable. Whether that was a fun house mirror or a regular one — you'll have to decide.

This episode, we find out what New Wave was really made of. And who was really making it.

Continue the American Song journey on Substack!

Music Featured In This Episode

• Blondie - X Offender
• Blondie - Rip Her to Shreds
• The Stillettos - Anti Disco
• Blondie - One Way or Another
• Blondie - Heart of Glass
• Blondie - Call Me
• Blondie - Rapture
• Blondie - Dreaming
• Talking Heads - Psycho Killer
• Talking Heads - Take Me to the River
• Talking Heads - Life During Wartime
• Talking Heads - I Zimbra
• Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
• Talking Heads - Burning Down the House
• DEVO - Jocko Homo
• DEVO - Whip It
• DEVO - Wiggly World
• B-52s - Planet Claire
• B-52s - Rock Lobster
• The Cars - My Best Friend's Girl
• The Cars - Just What I Needed
• The Cars - You Might Think
• Oingo Boingo - Capitalism
• Oingo Boingo - Only A Lad
• Oingo Boingo - Private Life
• Oingo Boingo - Dead Man's Party
• Oingo Boingo - Goodbye, Goodbye
• Oingo Boingo - We Close Our Eyes

Interviews With

• Chris Stein
• David Byrne
• Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerry Casale
• Cindy Wilson and Fred Schneider
• John Lennon
• Rick Ocasek and Benjamin Orr
• Brandon Flowers
• Danny Elfman

Continue the American Song journey on Substack!

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Five hundred million years ago, ( approximately 1977), something extraordinary happened on the floor of an ancient sea. Life — which had spent billions of years as little more than a few unremarkable blobs drifting in the dark — suddenly exploded into every possible form simultaneously. Claws. Fins. Shells. Eyes. Creatures of impossible elegance and alien strangeness, emerging from the murk and becoming something the world had never seen before. Scientists call it the Cambrian Explosion. It was the moment life stopped playing it safe.

Rock music had its own Cambrian moment. And like the original, it happened in the dark, in conditions nobody would have designed on purpose, among creatures that looked like nothing that had come before.

This is the first episode of American Song: New Wave — a new series tracing the origins, explosions, and enduring legacy of the genre that turned anxiety into an art form, made nervousness a fashion statement, and somehow got America dancing to songs about the end of the world.

In this episode: Kraftwerk emerges from postwar Düsseldorf like something that evolved independently of everything else — precise, alien, and more perfectly adapted to the future than anything sharing its environment. The Ramones reduce rock to its purest possible form and discover that what's left is still everything. Television proves that minimalism and virtuosity are not opposites. And Patti Smith walks into a twelve-foot room on the Bowery and claims the entire territory of rock and poetry for herself, without asking anyone's permission, because it hadn't occurred to her that permission was required.

New Wave didn't descend from the mainstream. It crawled up from somewhere older and stranger and more alive — from musicians too weird, too restless, or too furious to stay in the shallows. This is where it started. This is the murk.

Music In This Episode

• Peter Gabriel: Intruder
• Kraftwerk: Autobahn
• Kraftwerk: Trans Europ Express
• Gary Numan: Cars
• The Feelies: The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness
• Ramones: I Wanna Be Sedated
• Ramones: Beat on the Brat
• Ramones: I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend
• Television: See No Evil
• Television: Marquee Moon
• Patti Smith: Gloria
• Blondie (Rhythm Only): One Way Or Another
• B-52's: Rock Lobster

Interviews

• Ralf Hutter (Kraftwerk)
• Hilly Krystal (CBGB's)
• Marky Ramone (Ramones)
• Tom Verlaine (Television)
• Patti Smith (Patti Smith)

Next episode: Blondie. Talking Heads. Devo. The B-52s. Oingo Boingo. New Wave goes national — and it turns out the whole country had been waiting.

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Part 1

Happy New Year, Everybody! (Even if you're reading this in July....)

Across the last five seasons of American Song, we've traveled the arc of American music and listened to some of the greatest songs ever recorded, by some of the best loved artists over a century of thrilling music that changed the world.

But what about all those artists whose music is as good, if not better, than those "giants", who (but for the fickle finger of fate) never got the massive acclaim that those rarified few received? What is it within a songwriter that drives their art and compells them to write, even if they're not filling stadiums, or winning Grammy's (questionnable why some of the folks who do receive them deserved it!).

I've been fortunate to share many road miles with one of these artists for most of my life, and in today's episode, I introduce him to you.

In 1995, LA Time music critic, Mike Boehm, said this about Mark's first album: "The two albums I couldn’t stop listening to in ’95 were a tie for the number-one position in my Top Ten. [One of these was] Mark Davis, “You Came Screaming”. Davis’ first album is graced by superb melodies and hall-of-fame influences. His intensely realized subject is the embattled condition of idealism in a fallen world."

Other music critics have said this:

"Getting at large truths with songs full of human-scale detail and unsentamentalized beauty. - Los Angeles Times

“Davis is truly a master of his craft… able to lift spirits even while supporting the weight of the world.” - Orange County Register

I hope you'll listen closely to this two part episode. I have a special feeling that when you do, you just might come to love this music and appreciate this artistic soul as much as I do.

Learn more about Mark Davis and support his music through these links:

https://songrites.com/mark-davis-and-the-inklings

https://markdavisinklings.bandcamp.com

Get in touch!

Part 2

Happy New Year, Everybody! (Even if you're reading this in July....)

Across the last five seasons of American Song, we've traveled the arc of American music and listened to some of the greatest songs ever recorded, by some of the best loved artists over a century of thrilling music that changed the world.

But what about all those artists whose music is as good, if not better, than those "giants", who (but for the fickle finger of fate) never got the massive acclaim that those rarified few received? What is it within a songwriter that drives their art and compells them to write, even if they're not filling stadiums, or winning Grammy's (questionnable why some of the folks who do receive them deserved it!).

I've been fortunate to share many road miles with one of these artists for most of my life, and in today's episode, I introduce him to you.

In 1995, LA Time music critic, Mike Boehm, said this about Mark's first album: "The two albums I couldn’t stop listening to in ’95 were a tie for the number-one position in my Top Ten. [One of these was] Mark Davis, “You Came Screaming”. Davis’ first album is graced by superb melodies and hall-of-fame influences. His intensely realized subject is the embattled condition of idealism in a fallen world."

Other music critics have said this:

"Getting at large truths with songs full of human-scale detail and unsentamentalized beauty. - Los Angeles Times

“Davis is truly a master of his craft… able to lift spirits even while supporting the weight of the world.” - Orange County Register

I hope you'll listen closely to this two part episode. I have a special feeling that when you do, you just might come to love this music and appreciate this artistic soul as much as I do.

Learn more about Mark Davis and support his music through these links:

https://songrites.com/mark-davis-and-the-inklings

https://markdavisinklings.bandcamp.com

Get in touch!

Factories closing, marriages cracking, the glitter of the ’80s hiding a lot of hurt—Part 3 lives right in that gap between the American dream and the American day-to-day. Bruce digs into Darkness, The River, and Nebraska, writing about people who rarely get a mic: laid-off workers, young couples in over their heads, neighbors hanging on by their fingernails. Then Born in the U.S.A. turns into a worldwide roar, and politicians try to strip the songs of their doubts and their compassion. We end in East Berlin, 1988, with Springsteen singing to a divided crowd about freedom and walls coming down, and we ask: what if this kind of complicated, honest patriotism was the version we measured ourselves against instead of the cheap, loud kind?

Music in this Episode: Bruce Spingsteen (With and Without) the E Street Band

• I Fought the Law - Live
• Badlands
• The Promised Land
• Prove it All Night - Live from Hammersmith Odeon. 1978
• The Ties That Bind
• The River album medley: Point Blank/ The River/ Hungry Heart/ Cadillac Ranch/ I'm a Rocker/ Drive All Night
• Atlantic City
• Johnny 99
• Born in the USA
• Born in the USA Nebraska era demo
• Downbound Train
• Dancing in the Dark
• Chimes of Freedom - Live in East Berlin 1988

Archival Interviews

• Letter to You era interview
• NPR/ Loren Anki - Born in the USA
• NPR/ Terry Gross

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Part Four is where the story cuts close to the bone. Bruce lets the E Street Band go, stares down his own failures on Tunnel of Love, and writes The Ghost of Tom Joad for the people that some Americans prefer not to see: migrants, the unemployed, the left-behind.

The band reunites, “American Skin (41 Shots)” forces a conversation about race and fear, and The Rising and Wrecking Ball turn grief and economic anger into something like a shared civic ritual. We carry all of that forward into Trump’s first administration and Charlottesville, and we hold Bruce’s choices up as a different model of Americanness—one where loving your country means telling it the truth and standing with the people it’s hurting, even when that costs you.

Music in This Episode: Bruce Springsteen (With and Without) the E Street Band

• Tunnel of Love
• Human Touch
• Living Proof
• The Ghost of Tom Joad
• Theme from Ken Burns 'The Civil War'*
• The Price You Pay**
• American Skin (41 Shots)
• This Land Is Your Land

Archival Interviews

• Rick Rubin/ Malcolm Gladwell
• Mark Maron
• Howard Stern
• Bank Street Podcast

*As performed by my second cousin, Molly Hines of Wilmington, NC. A massively talented violinist, during our family reunion in Yellowstone National Park; Summer, 2025. Thank you, Molly! Visit https://www.mollyjhines.com/

** E Street Band backing track; no vocals.

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Part Five starts with a funeral and a realization: when Bruce's friend and former Castile's band mate, George Theiss, dies, Bruce becomes the last man left from his teenage band. That shock pushes him into Springsteen on Broadway, Western Stars, and Letter to You—projects that ask what kind of ancestor, and what kind of citizen, you want to be when you’re running out of time.

We follow him into those late-career marathon shows and finally to a 2025 European stage, where he calls out a "incompetent, corrupt, and treasonous administration" and then sings about hope, duty, and “we the people” anyway.

This final chapter ties Bruce back to everyone we’ve studied in 2025 on American Song—including Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Cockburn, Randy Newman, Warren Zevon and Jackson Browne —and makes the subtext plain: if we want a better America, we’re going to have to live up to the American values embodied in the songs of the artists we say we admire.

Music In This Episode: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

• My City of Ruins
• Shackled and Drawn
• Rocky Ground
• Sundown
• Hello Sunshine
• Last Man Standing
• One Minute You're Here
• The Power of Prayer
• Long Walk Home
• We Shall Overcome

Archival Interviews

• Rick Rubin/ Malcolm Gladwell

Get in touch!

Part two picks up in the clubs and dives where Bruce and the band are trying to outrun obscurity. We walk with them through the struggle to get the first records heard, the critics who saw the spark, and the brutal work of making Born to Run: months of second-guessing, endless mixes, and the very real possibility that it might all collapse under its own ambition. We hear about Jon Landau’s famous “I saw rock and roll future” review, the Bottom Line breakthrough, the U.K. trip that almost derailed him, and the strange, exhausting new life of a band suddenly under the lights. This chapter closes with one of the great stories in the Springsteen mythos: the bomb scare in Milwaukee, the evacuated club, and a night that turns from chaos into a legendary, delayed show—a perfect snapshot of how fragile and how powerful this whole thing really was.

Music in this Episode: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

• Born to Run
• Thunder Road
• Jungleland
• Tenth Avenue Freeze Out
• Kitty's Back
• Mountain of Love
• I Fought the Law

Archival Interviews

Mark Maron Interview

Rick Rubin/ Malcolm Gladwell Interview

Get in touch!

We start the series in 2025, at Springsteen's show in Manchester, UK where he makes a landmark statement about America's "leadership" before we flash back to his formative years.

A cramped house in Freehold. A father smoking in the dark kitchen. A kid staring at the radio like it’s a way out and a way in. In Part one, we meet Bruce not as a legend, but as a working-class American kid learning early what struggle, pride, and community look like. As we follow him into those early Jersey bar gigs and up to the Cherry Hill shows, we start using his story as a counterexample to our current politics: a picture of American life rooted in responsibility, neighborliness, and the refusal to quit on your own town.

Music in This Episode: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

Land of Hopes and Dreams

Growin' Up

Baby I*

It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City

Spirit in the Night

Rosalita

* Bruce's first teenage band, The Castiles.

Archival Interviews

Mark Maron

Howard Stern

Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell

Get in touch!

For over five decades, Jackson Browne has stood at the intersection of melody and message—crafting songs that speak not only to the heart, but also to the conscience. In an age of division and disinformation, his music feels like a lifeline to an older, more grounded sense of American democratic values—truth, empathy, accountability, and moral courage. This episode dives into Browne’s lifelong journey as both a master songwriter and a tireless activist, examining how his music has evolved into a public reckoning with the soul of the nation.

He grew up in Southern California, crossing the "Orange Curtain" from the sleepy bedroom towns of Orange County and making his way into Laurel Canyon, and from his earliest days playing shows at the Troubadour, Browne’s lyrics were already infused with a deep introspection and a search for authenticity. But as the political landscape shifted in the 1980s and beyond, so too did his writing—growing sharper, more explicit, and unapologetically political. With albums like Lives in the Balance and The Naked Ride Home, he began naming names, challenging war, corporate greed, and environmental neglect. Browne wasn’t content to merely reflect the times—he wanted to change them.

This episode traces the arc of his transformation—from a quiet observer to a clarion voice for peace, climate justice, and human rights. We explore his deep friendships with figures like David Crosby and Bonnie Raitt, his influence on the Eagles and the Southern California sound, and his early alliances with causes like MUSE and the anti-nuclear movement. But we also go deeper: into the heartbreak of Phyllis Major’s death, the personal toll of activism, and the spiritual core that drives his pursuit of justice.

Jackson Browne’s legacy is not one of stardom chased or fame inflated. It’s a body of work that demands we pay attention—not just to the world around us, but to the values we claim to stand for. In a moment where America seems to be asking itself who it really is, Jackson Browne has never stopped answering with clarity, humility, and song.

In This Episode

Songs by Jackson Browne, except where noted otherwise

• These Days
• Where I’m From
• These Days (Nico (From Chelsea Girl)
• To Ramona - Bob Dylan
• Doctor My Eyes
• Take It Easy (Jackson Browne/ The Eagles mash-up)
• Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
• For Every Man
• Running on Empty
• Before the Deluge
• Lives in the Balance
• I Am a Patriot
• I’m Alive
• Which Side
• Downhill From Everywhere
• Standing in the Breach

Dig Deeper

To learn more about several of the topics discussed in this episode, I encouirage you to check out these other American Song episode.

Action: Reaction - American Bands and American Society Respond to the English Invasion

Punk - The Shot Heard Round the World

The Singer-Songwriters Part Two: Truth to Power

Get in touch!

In this episode of American Song, we explore the life and legacy of Warren Zevon, one of America’s most fearless and darkly funny songwriters. Known for his biting wit and uncompromising honesty, Zevon built a career chronicling the messier sides of the human experience—addiction, regret, heartbreak, and mortality.

From his early days as a struggling songwriter in Los Angeles to the unexpected success of “Werewolves of London,” Zevon never stopped grappling with the contradictions of fame and self-destruction. We trace how his battles with alcoholism nearly cost him everything, and how sobriety led to some of his most poignant work, including “Detox Mansion” and “Reconsider Me.”

When faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis, Zevon responded the only way he knew how: with humor and unflinching clarity. His final message—“Enjoy every sandwich”—has become a lasting reminder to savor the ordinary moments, even when life feels overwhelming.

Drawing parallels between Zevon’s story and today’s America, we consider what his example has to offer in an era of division, anxiety, and distrust. In a time when many feel adrift, Zevon’s insistence on telling the truth—even when it was uncomfortable—feels more important than ever. His songs are proof that honesty and irony can coexist with tenderness and hope.

Through archival interviews, cultural commentary, and the music itself, this episode reflects on what it means to face your demons, make peace with impermanence, and still find something worth laughing about. Whether you’re a lifelong fan or just discovering his work, this is an invitation to see Warren Zevon not just as a songwriter, but as a guide to living—and dying—with your eyes wide open.

Warren Zevon's Songs In This Episode

• Desperadoes Under the Eaves
• Veracruz
• I'm Your Mutineer (Bob Dylan)
• French Inhaler
• Outside Chance (The Turtles)
• Follow Me (Lyme & Cybelle)
• Poor, Poor Pitiful Me
• Tenderness on the Block
• Werewolves of London
• Lawyers, Guns & Money
• Detox Mansion
• Sentimental Hygiene
• Raspberry Beret (Prince Cover)
• Run Straight Down
• Splendid Isolation
• I Was in the House Til the House Burned Down
• For My Next Trick, I'll Need a Volunteer
• Disorder in the House
• Keep Me in Your Heart For A While
• Mutineer
• Keep Me in Your Hear For A While (Eddie Vedder)
• Looking For the Next Best Thing

Archival Interviews

• Crystal Zevon
• Waddy Wachtel
• Jason Zevon
• Warren Zevon
• David Letterman

Related Episodes - Dig Deeper!

The Singer-Songwriters: Truth to Power/ Bruce Cockburn

God's Song and Other American Prayers: The Story of Randy Newman

The Singer-Songwriters: Part One/ Bob Dylan

The Masters of Funk

Get in touch!

You could think of Randy Newman as a musical Mark Twain.

His songs draw up from a range of curiously disconnected observations about life in this era’s America in some of the same ways that Twain’s pen spoke of the America he lived in. Twain’s Mississippi paddlewheels churned the dark waters of that rolling river mixing old and new, sacred and profane and In his songs, Newman is doing the same thing. He draws from American roots music, Tin Pan Alley, the blues, and orchestral pop. You’ll instantly recognize a Randy Newman song from his instantly hummable tunes mixed with wry humor, irony, and social commentary. His songs are full of wry observations about slightly uncomfortable subjects.

Randy Newman knows America in all its contradictions—its kindness and cruelty, its promises and hypocrisies. His songs expose the voices we pretend not to hear, from backroom bigots to lonely losers, from crooked politicians to a God who’s tempted to give up on us. Listening to Randy is like reading between the lines of the American songbook—he doesn’t just entertain, he reveals. And maybe, by sitting with his uncomfortable truths, we can wake from our own fog, and see this country—its history, its people, its future—with clearer eyes.

If ever there was a time when we needed clearer eyes, this is that time.

In This Episode

• Piano: You've Got a Friend in Me
• Randy Newman - Golden Gridiron Boy
• Soundtrack from The Grapes of Wrath
• Marilyn Monroe - Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend
• Soundtrack from Hello Dolly
• Three Dog Night - Mama Told Me Not to Come
• Randy Newman - Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear
• Randy Newman - I Think It's Going to Rain Today
• Randy Newman - Short People
• Randy Newman - How Great Our Lord
• Randy Newman - Shame
• Randy Newman - You Can Leave Your Hat On
• Joe Cocker - You Can Leave Your Hat On
• Randy Newman - Baltimore
• Randy Newman - God's Song
• Randy Newman - Sail Away
• Randy Newman - Political Science
• Randy Newman - Rednecks
• Randy Newman - The Girls In My Life (Part 1)
• Randy Newman - Old Kentucky Home
• Randy Newman - The Natural
• Randy Newman/ Billy Crystal/ John Goodman - If I Didn't Have You
• Randy Newman/ Sarah McLachlan - When She Loved Me
• Randy Newman - A Few Words in Defense of Our Country
• Randy Newman - I'm Dreaming
• Randy Newman - I Love L.A.