Fun 2 Know Podcast

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 and more accolades beginning in 2011, and she has worked for The Gun Crisis Project, RH Reality Check and the Women's Law Project. We talk about her experiences in journalism later in the interview, the opening subject at hands is Murtha's first book, inspired by the 1967 Capitol Record LP by Bobbie Gentry, ODE TO BILLIE JOE. The record was the debut of the 23 year old singer-songwriter and its title track reveals the mystery of a young man's death cryptically discussed over the evening's meal. There has been decades of conjecture over what Billie Joe and the song's narrator threw off that bridge but over time another mystery has emerged as the popular entertai

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 to stretch out to Europe and worldwide collecting accolades and commissions and fronting groups like The Black Earth Ensemble, The Black Earth Strings, Ice Crystal and Sonic Projections. In 2009, she became the first female President of the AACM, the legendary Chicago-born collective whose initials stand for The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and has been home to many of the greatest jazz musicians of the last fifty years. Ms Mitchell has been a Downbeat poll winner, was the Chicago Tribune's 2006 "Person of the Year," and in recent years has left her home in Chicago to live and teach in California at UC Irvine. If musically Mitchell we

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 200 film events in and around the Philly area. Check out their regularly updated website at Reelblack.com Besides being a ingratiating conversationalist, Mike is a graduate of film programs of both NYU and the American Film Institute. Mike's own story as a filmmaker spans a fascinating era in black cinema, heading to New York at few years after Spike Lee broke out of NYU with SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT, then going to school in LA in the 90s, where he interned on THE COSBY SHOW and was a witness to Hollywood in the years when films like The HOUSE PARTY series, MALCOLM X and Mario Van Peebles POSSE were being produced. We get to hear how Mike's career found its feet

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 musical opportunities for the trumpeter, including collaborations with David Byrne, Angélique Kidjo. Daptone Producer Mark Ronson, The Roots, St. Vincent, TV on the Radio and Valerie June. But it was his collaboration with jazz legend Ornette Coleman that led to this discussion. In 2009, McLean, Amir Zev, and Adam Holzman, partners in the band Droid, worked together with Ornette on a series of recordings that would be released late in 2014 under the title “New Vocabulary.” The recordings brought Coleman's saxophone into soundscapes unlike anything he had recorded over his 40 odd year career. I heard a few jazz purists complain, but that's certainly nothing new w

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 nature, her library of music for for taking calls from kids engaged by a wide variety of topics the show has touched on over the years. Kathy's skills flow so naturally in part because she spent a good portion of her youth as a somewhat crazily devoted fan of kid's show legend Soupy Sales, who ruled the New York airwaves in the 1960s. Kathy haunted the show's taping with a small army of similarly obsessed, mostly young girl fans, and fomented a relationship with the comic in his later years. While Soupy and his wife Trudy became like parents to Kathy, the story of her own family exudes some very real drama, as well as her travels throughout her radio career, includi

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 everything from Thelonious Monk, W.B. Auden, Shakespeare, Dante, Mark Twain, The Pussycat Dolls, Hip-hop, the politics of protest, Obama, cultural inertia, and television, but as rambling as things get, David always brings it back to poetry, letting us see the world through the poet's eyes.

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 collective, Eli Coppola, Beth Lisick, David Lerner and many more. Week in and week out, David West would bring the reading's volume down to stillness as his gentle voice and his writing brought a ragged range of characters to life, some transcendent and some miserable, but David made them all human and beguiling in their own way. As wise and he was funny, David has slipped away from the world of readings to quietly ponder Shakespeare, politics and the arts while bringing a certain grace as a secretary hiding away in the business world. This episode was recorded in David's Bernal Heights kitchen as the sun and a bottle of red wine slowly disappeared. Unfolding

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 organist Charles Earland, who had a sizable hit with the tune “Black Talk” in 1969 and then famously with jazz legend Ornette Coleman in his ground-breaking band, Prime Time. In 1975, at the age of 18, Jamaaladeen packed his bags and relocated for six months to Paris with Ornette's band, playing and recording the classic LP DANCING IN YOUR HEAD. From there Jamaaladeen's world expanded, playing international stages, releasing his own records and playing with Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana, The Roots, Nona Hendryx, Kip Hanrahan, The Golden Palominos, and James Blood Ulmer on numerous and far-reaching sessions. Jamaaladeen's playing exhibits a good-humored excitement tha

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 takes up a big part of this week's program but we also discuss Greg's on-running chat shows, feminism and misogyny, family, Udo Kier, Ian Banks, Fiona Apple, Paul Mooney, silent film, True Jackson VP and we hear Greg's Jeff Goldblum imitation, not once but twice.

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 podcast "The Smartest Man in the World" was cited in 2014 by Rolling Stone as a top comedy podcast and is a weekly live monologue by the gifted improviser that swings through current events, pop culture, film and music geek valentines, and surreal flights of fancy, all with an old time Lefty passion that is unheard of in the old media. Greg was passing through Philly on a three-night stand at he Helium comedy club in Philly when he stopped by to be interviewed at our Center City kitchen table. In Part One we talk about everything from class, the U.S. military, today's San Francisco, Ringo, Leslie Gore, and Proops' many stops along his 30-odd year career. Part

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 essays, poems and five novels, including SITTING PRETTY, SNAKES and SEDUCTION BY NIGHT. We discuss Mr. Young's trail from Mississippi to Detroit in the 1940s. His time in NYC, his friendship with Charles Mingus, his screenwriting days with Cosby, Poitier & Pryor and his undying love for jazz.

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. Kweder shares all he has observed in this raucous talk, sharing his philosophies on the modern world, people's changing relationship to music, and the wisdom of “The Sandwich Trick.” Plus, Kweder meets Dylan! All music from Kenn Kweder – KWEDEROLOGY Vols. 1&2

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 reputation for drunken recklessness that foiled this big break is uncertain but Kweder's commitment to music never waned. Still playing a near 300 gigs a year, the troubadour has soldiered on, his passion for life and music intact. In the first of two shows, Kweder discusses his working class roots and his rise to local legendhood.

Longtime FRESH AIR producer Amy Salit joins F2K for a Conversation. A lifelong music lover with roots in community radio, Amy is starting her 30th year a producer on the National Public Radio interview institution. We talk to Amy about growing up a young Jewish Beatles fan in Lubbock Texas, her radio beginnings at WCUW in Worcester, Mass., Amy's thoughts on the changing spirit of Austin's SXSW festival, the current state of the music industry and some of Fresh Air's most memorable guests.

Sculptor and visual artist Al Farrow's hosts F2K in his San Rafael studio for the second and final part of a discussion of his life and work. In this second half Al talks about the rising political content in his work that sometimes hampered him commercially and finally his breakthrough in his sixties with an ambitious series of religious reliquaries made of bullets, gun parts and bones.

Sculptor and visual artist Al Farrow's hosts F2K in his San Rafael studio for part one of a two part discussion of his life and work. Farrow's journey has taken him from working class roots in Brooklyn to San Francisco in the summer of 1967 to Marin Country, where he scuffled to create art that contains messages of beauty, struggle and politics. The artist's series of religious reliquaries composed of gun parts, bullets, and bones showed with Shepard Fairy's work in D.C. in 2008 and has been collected by The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Henry Plotnick, an minimalist electronic musician who has just unleashed his second release BLUE FOURTEEN at the age of thirteen, joins F2K in conversation. Sitting at his keyboard on his bedroom floor, Mr. Plotnick discusses his musical education, his love of jazz, and the sad state of Bar Mitzvah playlists. The show wraps up with a live performance with Henry at the keys.

Episode 01: Bucky Sinister In this debut episode we have an interview with poet/writer/comedian Bucky Sinister. Mr. Sinister discusses the 90s San Francisco poetry scene where he hosted infamous weekly reading at the dive bar The Chameleon, his Arkansas upbringing, his transition to sobriety and stand-up comedy and making a safe place for women to say "shut up" to men.