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…

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 s…

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 …

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-revie…

It is the interview I conducted with director Sean Baker that planted the seed for today's episode, which is the long-delayed fiftieth episode of Fun 2 Know. It was three years ago that Rob Burson was in pre-production for his debut film HELL OF A HEARTACHE when he stumbled across the Fun 2 Know interview with Sean Baker, whose films PRINCE OF BROA…

On today's show: Austin, Texas musician and thereminist, Aileen Adler. I first met Aileen back in the late '80s during the halcyon days of Tower Records, when we both worked at store #173 on South Street in Philadelphia. I moved to Alaska and then San Francisco in the early '90s, around the same time when Aileen moved to another artist's hub, Austi…

Our guest today, guitarist Nick Millevoi. To quote his bio, “Nick Millevoi is a guitarist and composer whose music searches for the sonic cracks between jazz, rock and roll, noise, and modern composition.” Nick has performed with Mostly Other People Do the Killing, Nels Cline, Marc Ribot, and Jamaaladeen Tacuma, the duo Archer Spade with trombonist…

Today, bassist extraordinaire, Jamaaladeen Tacuma. Jamaaladeen was our guest back in Episode 11 of the podcast, where we talked about growing up in Philly, his discovering the bass in his teen years, his joining Ornette Coleman's electric Prime Time band while still a young man, as well as his world travels and his love of fashion. A few months bac…

On today's show: music historian Elijah Wald. I was just hanging out in my South Philly neighborhood when I happened to get introduced to Elijah, a music historian who has written over a dozen books, mainly on the subject of roots music but also on subjects as diverse as hitchhiking, the cultural phenomenon known as “the Dozens” and the genetics in…

Early on in the show's history I had Monnette on the short list of Philly-area musicians with which I wanted to interview. I'd long been a fan of the records she recorded in the mid-1970s for the prestigious Steeplechase label, a Danish label who continues today to make important records for artists who have gone slept-upon back here in the states,…

F2K Episode 44: The enduring musician, Kenn KwederIt's the show's proud third appearance from our most popular guest, musician Kenn Kweder. Kweder (who appeared previously in Ep. Six, Ep. Seven, and Ep. 30 of the FUN 2 KNOW podcast) has been a beloved fixture of the Philadelphia music scene since rising up from the Philly streets in the mid-seventi…

Kenn Kweder talks about his 1975 gig with Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye at Glassboro State College in New Jersey. From the soon forthcoming episode 44 of The Fun 2 Know podcast...Von Fun 2 Know Podcast

On today's show, with trumpeter and composer Jaimie Branch. I'd seen Jaimie's name in the credits of releases by bassist Jason Ajemian, in the large band of Keefe Jackson, with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and saxophonist Jarrett Gilmore but she didn't really capture my attention until her stunning debut with her band Fly or Die arrived on the Interna…

On today's show, Matt Prigge. Matt has written about film since the late 1990s, originally at The Philadelphia Weekly, then for four years as the film editor at The Metro, the free commuter paper that has editions in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia. Matt is a particularly engaging writer with an unusually firm grasp on a wide range of cinema…

On today's show, Heather Henderson and Emery Emery, who together host both the award-winning Ardent Atheist podcast as well as the podcast, Skeptically Yours. I've known Heather since back in the early 2000s, when she was part of the Philly-based burlesque troupe The Peek-a-Boo Revue, who specialized comedy and satire along with classic strip routi…

On today's show, our guests are Michelle MF Ausman and Kimberly Vice of the musical duo Hestina. Named after a genus of butterflies, the duo's 2016 nine-song release, BLOSSOM TALK is a tour-de-force of harmony vocals, literate lyrics and rhythmically-propelled melodies that haunt long after they hit their climax. With the easy accessibility of mode…

On today's show: Film director Sean Baker and film critic Piers Marchant. First, a very recent conversation I had with filmmaker Sean Baker. I was so taken with Sean Baker's 2015 film TANGERINE, famously and beautifully shot from an Apple iPhone, that I started tracking down his earlier work, four fascinating films, including two brilliantly-execut…

On today's show: a conversation with poet and author Maryan Nagy Captan Maryan is a poet, writer and performer currently centered in Philadelphia. Born in Cairo, Egypt, Mayan's parents immigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s where they earned a somewhat hard-scrabble living and raised two girls. With English as a second language, Maryan approached lang…

In the 90s I began seeing Travis Crawford's byline pop up in assorted magazines, and over the years he has written for publications including Film Comment, Filmmaker, Fangoria and increasingly in the liner notes of archival DVDs. Currently he writes regularly for the U.K. Publication, the Calvert Journal. Crawford's always intelligent and passionat…

On today's show, a conversation with author and comedian Ritch Shydner. Ritch Shydner rode in on the wave of the 1980s stand up boom, playing stages coast-to-coast, working with the best comedians of the era along the way appearing on HBO, David Letterman, both Jay Leno and Johnny Carson's TONIGHT SHOW as well as working and writing on shows incl. …

On today's show, vocalist, bandleader and songwriter, Brandy Butler I first met Brandy Butler when she worked with my wife at a Philadelphia charter school, when Brandy was fresh out of college and teaching music to elementary school kids. I was aware that Brandy and her band Saigon Slim were performing around town in the same era when the Philly b…

Today's show: entertainer John Davidson. The family traveled up to Saratoga Springs last month as my wife appeared in the pilot of a TV program called "The Caregiver Connection," following the stories of people involved in health care in America. The pilot was hosted by a guitar-strumming John Davidson, who has been an ubiquitous TV presence since …

On today's show, composer, alto saxophonist and the new Director of Jazz at Princeton University, Rudresh Mahanthappa. Rudresh Mahanthappa came out of Boulder Colorado, was educated by Berklee College of Music and DePaul, and received national attention not long after moving to New York in 1998 where he soon beginning collaborating with the then up…

Mary Lattimore has been lending her harp to a number of avant rock recordings for over a decade, as well as releasing her own haunting improvisational work for labels including Thrill Jockey and Ghostly International. Our conversation was recorded just days before Mary left Philadelphia (where she lived for a decade) to relocate in Los Angeles. We …

On today's show, violinist Diana Monroe. I spent most pf the 90s living in San Francisco and when I returned to my old home of Philadelphia around 2000, I was struck by how rich a pool of musical talent existed in Philadelphia, particularly across the world of Philadelphia jazz. A great place for talent spotting is in Bobby Zankel's incredible jazz…

It's the return F2K's most popular guest, musician and songwriter Kenn Kweder. Our two-part episodes 6 & 7 squeezed in a lot of Kweder's story, growing up in Philly and playing hundreds of gigs a year for decades on stages between New York and Baltimore but mainly in and around Philly, where Kweder is nearly a household name. In the year and a half…

Today it's conversation with writer, music journalist, WFMU DJ and record producer Kurt Gottschalk. Originally out of Illinois, Kurt's earned a masters at the Columbia School of Journalism in 1997. He has written about arts and politics for All About Jazz, Signal to Noise, Time Out-New York, The Village Voice, The Wire and publications in Canada, F…

Today show, an epic conversation with artist and painter Skirmantas Pipas. Skirmantas Pipas is a Lithuanian-American artist in the process of painting fantastic otherworldly landscapes that serve as History Paintings of a world yet uncharted. I first met Skirmantas (aka "Skip") when he briefly worked at a Philadelphia cafe in my neighborhood, a lov…

Today our guest is novelist Beth Hahn. Beth received her masters in writing from Sarah Lawrence and has had her short fiction published in The Hawai'i Review, The South Carolina Review, The Emrys Journal and Necessary Fiction. Her debut novel THE SINGING BONE through Reagan Arts in hardcover, e-book and as an audio book as well. The book is a sort …

Today, our first show to feature two segments, and three guest as we welcome film director Jeremy Saulnier and Will and Brooke Blair, known professionally as The Blair Brothers. The Brothers are childhood friends of Saulnier's who have scored all three of his features as well as writing and performing with two popular Philadelphia bands over the pa…

On today's show, musician blogger and label owner, Jim Slade. I met Slade back in the mid-80s, when his band Nixon's Head was a regular in Philadelphia area clubs. A five-piece rock and roll titan, The Head specialized in loud rock and roll inspired by 60s garage pop nuggets and the early New Wave all brought to life by a quintet of close-knit frie…

F2K Ep. 24 William ParkerAmong the most prominent New Yorkers in the world of contemporary jazz and creative music, Parker first gained notice playing with the groundbreaking pianist Cecil Taylor in the 1980s and has gone of to release dozens of his own recordings on numerous labels internationally as well as on his on Centering label. Parker has w…

Episode 23: Cellist Tomeka ReidWe caught our guest today composer and cellist Tomeka Reid in the midst of a career moment. She arrived in New York City from Chicago on January 1st 2016 to join her quartet for their NYC debut, just two days after Ben Ratliff described Reid in the NYTimes as “A new jazz power source.” Over the next two weeks she play…

Multi-disciplinary artist Stephen Decky originally came out of Southern New Jersey but has flourished in his many artistic endeavors since moving to Northampton, Mass. twenty years ago. His paintings present Decky's uniquely sweet but treacherous world filled with anthropomorphized fruit and critters, angels and demons and 50's-styled spaceships th…

Mike Ferguson, aka Mick Cancer of the Philly punk band The Sic Kidz is our guest. The Sick Kidz, the brainchild of Ferguson, were willed into existence as a literary prank come to life. The band can make their claim as being Philadelphia first punk band as that cultural revolution blew its shockwave out from New York City and across the globe. The …

Writer and novelist, Mike DeCapite is on today's show.. In the late eighties DeCapite began building a cult audience for his free-floating fiction when punk legend Richard Hell's literary magazine CUZ excerpted DeCapite's unpublished novel “Through the Windshield” in its first three issues. The novel is a gorgeously-written reverie to Mike's hometo…

Writer, film director and musicologist Robert Gordon is a specialist in the music and history of the town of his where he still lives, the legendary American Music hub of Memphis Tennessee. He's written about Muddy Waters. Al Green, B.B. King, Otis Redding, Alex Chilton and beyond. Many writers have charted the course of Memphis music but almost no…

Tara Murtha award-winning journalist and author of a new volume in the 33 1/3 book series on Bobbie Gentry. Murtha began to make waves with her writing in the early 2000s, focusing both about issues of social justice and writing about pop culture for the Philadelphia Weekly. Her coverage of criminal abortion Dr. Kermit Gosnell garnered attention an…

Nicole Mitchell, flutist, composer and bandleader is our guest on today's show. . Around 2001, Ms. Mitchell began to receive notice for her work around Chicago, quickly releasing a flurry of releases on the Delmark, RougeArt nad Firehouse 12 labels, all capturing her spirited flute and her deep well of memorable compositions. Her reputation began t…

On today's show Filmmaker Mike Dennis. Mike is the founder of Reelblack, currently in its 16th year. Through Reelblack Mike has exercised his multifaceted talents as a production house for hire, as a producer for his own films, making content for their YouTube channel ReelBlack TV (currently at 5 million hits and climbing) and as a promoter of over…

Jordan McLean on today's show, the composer, Antibalas trumpeter and co-founder of the System Dialing record label. Antibalas is the Brooklyn Afrobeat band that took the lead in re-popularizing the classic sound of Fela Kuti's revolutionary music beginning in the late 90s. Antibalas' success and McLean's probing playing has presented numerous music…

Kathy O'Connell, the Peabody award-winning host of WXPN's KID'S CORNER and formerly KIDS AMERICA is our guest. In a medium famous for its transient careers, Kathy has remained an institution in Philly, broadcasting her children's live call-in talk show for over twenty five years, bringing generations of kids to their radios with her gregarious natu…

Lucky Episode 13: David West Part 2:Our second of a two-part episode with San Francisco poet David West. In this second part, our discussion travels beyond history and biography and into the realm of pure conversation and gives us a look at how David uses the knowledge and wisdom he has collected to navigate the world. The topics swing through ever…

David West, revered San Francisco poet is our guest for Part One of a two-part episode. Like Bucky Sinister, whose interview kicked off our first podcast, David West was a prolific participant of the San Francisco spoken word scene of the 1980s and 1990s, a scene that spawned such memorable writers as Daniel Higgs, Michelle Tea and the Sister Spit …

Bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma is in the interview chair this episode. Not to discount the hard work that makes it possible, but for the music lover, Tacuma's career seems like a dream. After a couple years woodshedding on the electric bass as a North Philly teen, his talent is spotted and he is whisked away to the major leagues of jazz, first with org…

Greg (WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY?) Proops' weekly podcast THE SMARTEST MAN IN THE WORLD delivers comedy and political wit by the bushel as he records the show from stages around the globe. Greg Proops also has a monthly spin-off podcast, The Greg Proops Film Club where he hosts and discusses classic films. Discussion of film and classic Hollywood take…

Greg Proops has been a showbiz fixture for over the last 25 years, as a popular stand up, and as the guy with the glasses from the long-running "Whose Line is it Anyway." He's been the voice of "Bob the Builder," the announcer in the "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" pod race scene, as well as being seen in a myriad of other appearances. Proops' own …

Al Young's credentials are voluminous. He was appointed poet laureate of California in 2005, by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger no less, Al Young has been honored with Fellowships from Guggenheim, Fulbright, and the National Endowment for the Arts, he's won the American Book Award twice, he's written for Rolling Stone, and authored many volumes of e…

Ep. 7: KENN KWEDER Pt. 2 The second and final part of our conversation with Kenn Kweder. Kenn survives beyond the record industry's cold reach to deliver a series of riveting indie releases straight from the heart of Kweder. A true troubadour, Kweder plays a near 300 gigs a year that gives him perch to observe the endless mating ritual of the young…

Songwriter and Rock Star Kenn Kweder sits down to tell his epic story. First climbing to local Philly fame in the late 70s with his band the Secret Kids, a great batch of songs and the charisma of their frontman led Kweder and the band to be branded, “This Next Big Thing” from out of Philly. Whether it was a record company recession or Kweder's rep…