Hardcore-Troubadours.com www.hardcore-troubadours.com

It's podcasting time again!! This time poet and musician Matt Urmy sat down with us for a very pleasant afternoon. We had so much fun, in fact, that we talked for 3 hours. To save your sanity, I've distilled the conversation and the music down to just under and hour. For you listening pleasure, you can get the 'cast at ITunes, or simply download it here (right click and 'save file as').

Matt is wonderful, but if you want the true experience of what it was like in the HCT living room that day, I suggest you listen to it after only 5 or so hours of sleep, when you are hungover and have started drinking at lunch time. I won't admit whether those were the exact conditions of the day, but recreating those conditions might actually make us sound less obnoxious (or at least you'll understand us better).

Matt is one of those people you want to spend a starry, warm night on the porch with. Bottle of whiskey, guitar, fireflies and endless delightful conversation. He's pretty, he's smart, he sings with a soul-nicking raspiness. I've never had conversation with that I didn't leave inspired.

First podcast of the New Year! Are you as excited as we are? You should be! This time around we have the boys from The Fox Hunt from West Virginia. Well, we don't have them right this moment, but we had them for awhile when they came through town to play a show with our friends The Magpies. Alas, much to our dismay, we had to release them back into the wild. But before we did, we got a podcast chock-full of fantastic old-timey music out of them.

The Fox Hunt is made up of John Miller, Ben Townsend and Matts Klein and Metz. They have one album out, available on CD Baby with a few more slated for release throughout the year, so stay tuned.

Once again it's podcasting time! This go 'round Tommy Womack came a spend part of his afternoon talking to us and singing for us. He's been in bands you might have heard of, Government Cheese and the bis-quits. He plays amazing solo shows, recently bring spoken word into his sets to amazing effect. He's written a couple books, The Cheese Chronicles and The Lavender Boys and Elsie (which isn't yet available, so after you listen to this call your favorite publisher and beg them to make this book available to you, though you can read parts of it here, on Tommy's site: http://www.tommywomack.com).

His new album, There I Said It! is available now and full of songs he might describe as being full of middle-aged anxiety, politics and not a little joy. They are surprisingly universally applicable, given the subject matter.

I know you hear an awful lot around these parts about Lucero and Cory Branan, but I swear, they don't pay us for this. Hell, they'd have to be an awful lot more famous before they could even afford our bar tab. No, we talk endlessly about them because they are made of one hundred percent natural homegrown awesomeness. What's more awesome that going to see their shows? Having them come to HCT HQ to record a podcast.

That's right, my babies, Ben Nichols of Lucero and Cory Branan, together, not only for they Brew City Tours, but right here in our living room mocking each other, us and everything else in the world. What we have here in the end is a podcast that goes from soft and subdued to a little raucous. You'll want to tune in for the songs and the stories. You'll enjoy the second listening to suss out the funny bits happening in the background.

We sat down here in the new/em HCT HQ with Moriah Harris and talked about Nashville, Old Time music, bluegrass, women in music and our usual nonsense. She plays some of her own songs for us with her guitar and some toe-tapping fiddle tunes.

We sat down on a cold, rainy afternoon to record a podcast with Wes Charlton (http://www.wescharlton.com/wes/) to talk about his new album, absinthe, music and canoeing. He sang us a few songs, we made him a few drinks. All in all a regular day's work here at HCT HQ. This is the first podcast we've had real technical difficulties. Sadly I couldn't be bothered to check to make sure we had batteries that worked and neither of us was smart enough to remember the AC power was an option so we got cut off a couple times. But we managed to save all Wes' gorgeous songs and funny stories and that's what's really important here, eh? Who care if the editing makes us all sound slightly insane. We'd sound slightly insane anyway, right?