Sew:YKnot?

Chris Parker
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  • Music Interviews

An eclectic podcast connected to the site SewYKnot.com, focusing mostly on music and musicians but also to lesser extent sports, arts, culture, policy and news. Hosted by long-time journalist Chris Parker (The Guardian, Variety, Billboard, Undark, Village Voice, High Times, LA Weekly). He's been writing about music for three decades and has interviewed hundreds of musicians, including big hitters like Ray Davis, Lindsay Buckingham, George Clinton, and cult faves like Mastodon, Neko Case, Conor Oberst, Joss Stone, M Ward and countless others. Has also interviewed 4 Nobel Prize winners. multiple senators, and several NBA MVPs, Theme Music "So Why Not?" by Marvin Etzioni.

Episodes

  1. 4d ago

    Sew:YKnot?'s Wolves 2026 Preseason Preview Podcast

    This podcast is to celebrate the coming season, and is sort of the corollary to last week's preseason analysis post, Wolves' Ball Addition Signals Renewed Focus On Transition, Pick'n'roll And Movement. We were inspired to invite Abhinav Bethi by a very good initial Substack post analyzing the Ball addition in the Wolves sub-Reddit. Though he's in India, he was quick to respond to our entreaties and sharp in his basketball analysis by and large. While we hope to have a variety of guests discussing the Wolves this season, we're almost assured to have Abhinav back. During the podcast we discuss LaMelo Ball's addition, his impact on the offense, and how this reduced responsibility might help Anthony Edwards. We discuss the makeup of the frontcourt and especially the "4" in the absence of Randle & Reid, and how Williams, Lyles and Kuminga bring length, quickness and athleticism that was missing from the position, and for all three, this is a bit of second bite of the apple after disappointing starts to their careers. We also discuss how these moves might reflect the Wolves post-season struggles and specifically what kind of offensive sets this represents and how this increased efficiency will help, alongside what their main issues were in the playoffs last year defensively and how these new additions help to address that. Finally we talk about the issue of spacing, how the added ballhandling will allow the Wolves to take better advantage of it, and how the challenge will be to find a "4" that can consistently hit their threes. We finish by discussing our takes on potential finals teams.

    Sew:YKnot?'s Wolves 2026 Preseason Preview Podcast

  2. Oct 4

    SewYKnot? Interview musician Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate, Baseball Project) discusses Los Angeles post-punk scene, Paisley Underground, his memoir, Bob Dylan stories, staying passionate

    We discus how the early eighties Los Angeles scene really designed the template for what became underground music culture and the careers and outside-the-lines existence is due to he and his peers. We talk about how Dream Syndicate ripped off the Stooges and other acts besides the Velvets. How there is no real due for artists, as much as you might feel they deserved more accolades. We discuss how much fun he has with the Baseball Project and Gutterball and his desert isle discs and what a fascinating mysterious weirdo Dylan was and how he feared writing his memoir but now that he has he's excitedly working on the second book. And we spoke about how you stay passionate and don't sell out by not resting on your laurels and always challenging yourself with new potentialities or re-exploring old ones and how much he loves playing solo.

    SewYKnot? Interview musician Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate, Baseball Project) discusses Los Angeles post-punk scene, Paisley Underground, his memoir, Bob Dylan stories, staying passionate

  3. Sep 25

    SewYKnot Podcast interview with Will Kaufman on American Songs of Protest & Struggle

    American Cultural; Critic living in England, Will Kaufman jumped the pond from New Jersey in the eighties for post-grad and liked it so much, he didn’t come back. He made fine use of that early education though, when he became a professor on American Lit and an expert on Woody Guthrie. He’s just released his second volume in a series on American songs of protest and struggle, this running from the post-war to the current day. Kaufman’s a sharp, expansive thinker (as well as a guitarist) and the conversation wanders freely around subjects of music, literature and politics. We discuss how Will became an expert on Woody Guthrie, Woody's aesthetic, the difference between struggle vs. protest songs, and the Mermaid Avenue/Man in the Sand sessions with Wilco, notably, Jeff Tweedy, and Billy Bragg, We talk a bit about Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs and Pete Seegar, as well as the emergence of bee-bop, Ella Fitzgerald and Sara Vaughn. We also discuss hip-hop, punk and the Paul Simon/Martin Carthy row over “Scarborough Fair,” and how that illustrates many of the contradictions of the cultural appropriations argument, which at its core is just about acknowledgment in the first place. We discuss the challenges of describing music no one has ever heard and how one collapses 80 years of modern music history into a single volume. We dig into the challenge of satire and its role as a vehicle of speech and how it dovetails with protest, the question of whether it’s legal to sing your testimony to the court, how protest and satire function to diminish the perceived power of the oppressors and the lessons this might hold for this moment in time.

    SewYKnot Podcast interview with Will Kaufman on American Songs of Protest & Struggle

  4. Sep 14

    SewYKnot? Interview with musician Colin Blunstone (solo artist / The Zombies)

    The Zombies have one of the most extraordinary stories in all of Rock'n'Roll. They won a battle of the bands to earn a recording contract, and during that first session recorded the iconic "She's Not There" with its slinky bass line, cool organ sound and sweet 3-part harmonies. As it turns out, the first engineer passed out drunk, and had to be replaced. The band were a huge sensation, and washed up a few years later. However, months after they had broken up, with the insistence of Blood Sweat & Tears' Al Kooper, their song, "Time of the Season," became a slow-burn hit. It allowed Blunstone to leave his 9-5, and become a musician again, creating the gorgeous baroque pop solo album, One Year, that would be an enormous influence on many nineties indie pop artists even beyond the obvious once like The Delgados and Belle & Sebastien. He continued to release solo albums and now has over a dozen. Around the millennium, he and Rod Argent reformed the Zombies, whose music was now held in higher regard than at any time in their career, and launched a second run showcasing their still abundant skills to those still curious. Meanwhile, Blunstone has continued to build and grow, as he puts the finishing touches on his first album of entirely original content -- only his own songs -- at the age of 81. It's never too late to try something new. We talk about the many fortuitous incidents that led to their creation, the slow slippery slide when you stop atop the pole, and the many mitzvahs that have allowed him to not just endure but grow, and make music with the same set of childhood chums his entire life.

    SewYKnot? Interview with musician Colin Blunstone (solo artist / The Zombies)

  5. Aug 26

    SewYKnot Interview with Tim Fite, discussing his values, sampling, hip- hop and his recent emphasis on visual art

    We discuss Fite's course as an artist, how viral music success took him off the visual art path he was initially on and he followed that for a dozen years. We don't talk so much directly about his music as the ideas that generated the music. (On some level doesn't the music speak for itself?) We also spend a lot of time unpacking the idea of identity and good and evil, which can be a way for people to avoid their own responsibility and culpability when bad things happen, And we talk a lot about making art and his process and how one communicates whether on the more broad shallow pool of mass popularity or in sinkholes, and how he's kind of merged the two in his video for Resist. It's very much a conversation more than a lot of questions.

    SewYKnot Interview with Tim Fite, discussing his values, sampling, hip- hop and his recent emphasis on visual art

  6. Jun 1

    Musician David Dondero traverses his nearly 40-year career, discusses the troubadour lifestyle, and his new novel, Chaos the Cat.

    David Dondero has been making music for 40 years, starting out as a drummer in the indie rock act Sunbrain, where he first started writing songs and singing. He played in This Bike is a Pipe Bomb while working in a little punk rock club and inspired by Simon Joyner began making music as a solo artist. His keening tenor was an inspiration to Conor Oberst, and he developed a friendship with the entire Saddle Creek crew. He's released 15 albums, traveled the country and worked in a pot farm for a while which inspired his new book, Chaos the Cat. He speaks to us from Jersey City, NJ. We discuss the Midwestern vibe, moving, Dave's wandering nature, his early DIY punk underpinnings, sobriety and stepping back from music for a moment to better appreciate life, which now includes painting and short story writing. We discuss his book Chaos the Cat inspired by his job doing carpentry on a pot farm, and we discuss his last album, 2023's Immersion Therapy, about the culture and the "orange goblin." The opening comment refers to this song ("When the Pendulum Swings").

    Musician David Dondero traverses his nearly 40-year career, discusses the troubadour lifestyle, and his new novel, Chaos the Cat.

  7. Jun 1

    Sports Economist Dr. David Berri discusses WNBA contract, MiLB, & Sports Stadiums

    Dr. David Berri is a professor of economics at Southern Utah University and a past president of the North American Association of Sports Economists, He's written a half-dozen books (and authored or co-authored over 90 scholarly pieces) including most famously, The Wages of Wins: Taking Measure of the Many Myths in Modern Sport, which looked at how player contribute to wins in the different sports. He drew controversy at the time for denigrating the contribution of NBA scorers, which further analysis (or eye-tests) have essentially borne out. He's contributed his writing to numerous entities including New York Times, the Atlantic.com, Time.com, Vice Sports, Huffington Post, and Forbes. We discuss the WNBA's historic new collective bargaining agreement, put that in context, and discuss minor league baseball, volleyball, how deeply participatory most sports are in relation to basketball and end talking about the economics of public stadium financing.

    Sports Economist Dr. David Berri discusses WNBA contract, MiLB, & Sports Stadiums
  • 7 Episodes

About

An eclectic podcast connected to the site SewYKnot.com, focusing mostly on music and musicians but also to lesser extent sports, arts, culture, policy and news. Hosted by long-time journalist Chris Parker (The Guardian, Variety, Billboard, Undark, Village Voice, High Times, LA Weekly). He's been writing about music for three decades and has interviewed hundreds of musicians, including big hitters like Ray Davis, Lindsay Buckingham, George Clinton, and cult faves like Mastodon, Neko Case, Conor Oberst, Joss Stone, M Ward and countless others. Has also interviewed 4 Nobel Prize winners. multiple senators, and several NBA MVPs, Theme Music "So Why Not?" by Marvin Etzioni.

Information

  • Creator
    Chris Parker
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    7
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © SewYKnotPublishing 2026
  • Show Website
    Sew:YKnot?