Above The Basement - Boston Music and Conversation

Chuck Clough and Ronnie Hirschberg
Above The Basement - Boston Music and Conversation

Above the Basement offers casual and candid discussions with musicians, artists, producers and others from Boston and beyond. Conversations will inform and entertain listeners with experiences from those shaping Boston's music community and for whom music is a passion. You will hear their stories, hardships ​​faced and overcome... ​ and why they love what they do.

  1. Episode 187 - Linnea Herzog

    09/09/2021

    Episode 187 - Linnea Herzog

    Linnea Herzog is someone you don’t miss when you walk by her. Or see on stage.  And I would surmise at her day job as a neuroscientist at The Broad Institute, you can’t miss her there either. Musicians are smart.  But some are smarter than others, especially when you get a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University where Linnea studied how taste and spatial information are processed in the rodent hippocampus.  Linnea is actually our second musician/scientist we’ve spoken to at The Broad Institute.  A few years ago, we talked with Infectious Disease Expert, Professor at Harvard University, and musician Pardis Sabetti. Anyways, Linnea is all punk and glam and a fearless rock star. Having got to the Rock and Roll Rumble finals in 2019 with her former band Powerslut, when the pandemic hit, she decided to go in a new direction with her new band Linnea’s Garden. Linnea is a do-it-yourselfer, and she certainly does it all. Her debut EP, “Nowhere Friday Nights,” is out now on Red on Red Records and she is preparing to release a full length shortly. I hoped to publish this episode before they played at The Sinclair in Cambridge, MA, but life got in the way a bit.  So while I missed the opportunity to plug her Sinclair show, she already has several more lined up this fall.  I was able to get a recording from the Sinclair show that you can hear at the end of this conversation, so make sure you stay for that! Linnea was a great chat and I had a fantastic time talking to her.

    44 min
  2. Episode 186 - JJ Gonson

    08/05/2021

    Episode 186 - JJ Gonson

    I saw my first show at Once Ballroom in Somerville a few years ago, entering the building, wondering if I just walked into a bar mitzvah, or as JJ Gonson first thought when she saw the room for the first time, a high school prom. But on the raised stage I saw the band, Dada. That was only the first time among many. Mostly I was there for the infamous Boston Emissions Rock and Roll Rumble, where the place transformed into a community of music fans and bands who supported each other and the music for which Boston is famous. JJ Gonson saw the room not as a ballroom, but as an opportunity to share her love of music with the world. That may sound a bit cheesy, but JJ is all about the music. Starting off as a rock photographer, (she is responsible for the Elliott Smith self-titled album cover as well as his Roman Candle album), she eventually began to manage Elliott’s band Heatmiser and then Elliott himself before he left us all too soon. ONCE was to become a catering company but soon morphed into one of the great, unique independent venues in Boston. COVID hit hard, unfortunately, and ONCE had to close. But the community JJ worked so hard to pull together through music, well, pulled together to raise money to try and keep ONCE alive. And while the venue did eventually have to close, she was able to go virtual with the ONCE Virtual Venue to give musicians the ability to continue playing for people. It also gave JJ the opportunity to search for another location, which she found at Boynton Yards. I’ll let her talk about that. But JJ continues to fight for venues, Boston music, and the musicians that make up this amazing city, through her incredible work with Save Our Stages and the National Independent Venue Association. Suffice it to say that we are all fortunate to have our friend JJ Gonson on our side.

    55 min
4.9
out of 5
32 Ratings

About

Above the Basement offers casual and candid discussions with musicians, artists, producers and others from Boston and beyond. Conversations will inform and entertain listeners with experiences from those shaping Boston's music community and for whom music is a passion. You will hear their stories, hardships ​​faced and overcome... ​ and why they love what they do.

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