Taste the Music: Conversations about creating.

Mark Griffin

Taste the Music is a show where the artist tells their story about what drives creation. Here we’re going to figure out the reasons we’re driven to make music, and how that vocation ends up forming in some people, or maybe in all of us. Each week we’ll hear an account of the path to creation by artists, and we’ll try to get at a few questions: why do this? Why write a song, paint a painting, recite a poem, tell a joke, or craft a beer? And we’ll also seek to answer another question, something that we hope gets at a cultural truth about who we are as a people: why do we choose to sometimes not do these things?

Episodes

  1. Jun 11

    Soft Rock with John Christensen

    This week, on Taste the Music, John Christensen draws a straight line from hair metal to acid jazz, and leaves nothing in between. The lanking upright bass player’s 2024 album, Soft Rock, absolutely rips. There are riffs, like the first lines of the opening track, The Loudest Whisper, that sound like an arena rock band could have played them. With rock gods Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai as major influences, John's music has a harder edge to it, yet, John’s melodies are like his overall personality; there are subtleties. A 13/8 time signature here. A delicate chord change there. A transition from one ballad to another that makes you feel like redemption might just be around the corner for the human race. Thanks to the caring and thoughtful John Christensen for joining us today on another episode of Taste the Music. You can find all of John’s music, including his brilliant album, Soft Rock, at https://johnchristensenmusic.com. This episode was written and produced by Mark Griffin. Taste the Music was created by Whitney Mann and Mark Griffin.

    50 min

  2. Jun 4

    Whitney Mann and the Electric Heart

    Today, on Taste the Music, show co-creator Whitney Mann comes to talk about her new single, called Electric Heart, that is available everywhere on Friday . She also reveals some ways the scene has changed and some ways it hasn’t, and how a person in her esteemed position stops worrying so much about the past. Whitney Mann, singer, songwriter, and storyteller, has played with the likes of Willie Nelson and Loretta Lynn. Her melodies, a combination of country grit and folky singer/songwriter assuredness, rope you in from the moment they waft across the bar and into your ears. Whitney has a new single, Electric Heart, coming out Friday June 5 on Bandcamp and all the other places you can listen to music. It’s a banger. She’s playing Tumbled Rock Brewery in Baraboo on June 6 and August 16, Sheboygan July 9th, Shell Lake on August 16 – she’s everywhere – then a very special Electric Heart EP release show on September 11 at the Burr Oak with some very very special guests and surprises. Don’t miss it. Learn more at Whitneymann.com. Today’s show was produced and edited by Mark Griffin. Taste the music was created by Whitney Mann and Mark Griffin. Every episode, including the very first episode of Taste the Music in which Whitney Mann tells her origin story – it’s a beautiful episode – is available at TasteTheMusic.org or all the places you get your pods.

    44 min

  3. May 21

    Helen Feest: Building community one jam at a time

    Feestet's jazz jams are steaming hot affairs, even when the air is crisp in the atmosphere. Bandleader and singer Helen Feest belts out tunes on vocals, and the band warms up the already misty crowd while jammers await their turn on the stage. Today, on Taste the Music, Helen Feest joins us to talk about the vibe, how she got into this crazy thing called jazz singing, and what kind of outfit she’s running anyway (it turns out it’s a good one). She also gets into how a very old way of getting paid might just be making a comeback (not that one!). And it’s helping build a little community, too. Today’s episode of Taste the music was written, produced, and edited by me, Mark Griffin. You can check out more of Helen Feest and the Feestet’s music at Feestet.com. Taste the music was created by me and Whitney Mann, who has a new single out on Bandcamp, right this second! Solid horns!

    47 min

  4. May 15

    Paul Otteson: Finding Purpose in the Music

    Paul Otteson’s music is like a message in a bottle that was tossed in a loch west of Glasgow, that drifted along the jet stream to the New World. It stopped in Brooklyn’s folk revival scene in the early aughts to pick up a pleasant spacey jangly sound that eschews the stomp clap hey of the early teens and it made its way via the fur trade up to the waters of the Gitche Gumme and down to the land of Dejope. Today, on Taste the Music, Paul Otteson talks about the passions that made his journey in songwriting worth it - and they weren’t always musical in nature. He also tells us about the reckoning that comes with comparing yourself to others, and about the comfort that can follow. Today's episode was produced, written and edited my me, Mark Griffin, and engineered by Aaron Scholz at WORT studios. You can learn more about Paul Otteson and his band Faux Fawn at PaulOtteson.com or on Bandcamp. As usual, you can find all episodes of Taste the Music at TastetheMusic.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

    58 min

  5. May 7

    Uriel Lopez Rodriguez: Bringing the Love to Music Performance

    Today, on Taste the Music, on 89.9 WORT FM Madison and TasteTheMusic.org, Madison band Automatic Lover’s front man Uriel Lopéz Rodriguez takes us on a ride through his musical history, from a kid who couldn’t stop dancing to a short political career in Mexico, to Arizona, Colorado and finally back to Wisconsin, when a week visiting friends led him back to the music scene he couldn’t avoid. It seemed like wherever I went last summer, Automatic Lover was there, a rhythm section, horns, keys, stalwarts in their craft of groove. And up front on vocals, Uriel Lopéz-Rodriguez, clapping his hands, urging the crowds, electrifying the audience with each beat. The music, a sound that’s somehow a fusion of latin funk, Reggae, hip hop, and groove rock. An amalgam, a reflection of what a diverse music town is on its best days. Lopéz Rodriguez talks about forming Automatic Lover, why he’s committed to it, and the idea that maybe a vocation isn’t singular. Maybe it’s a patchwork of creation, iteration and praxis, incubating a social movement of love that’s a lot more complex than it looks on paper.

    44 min

  6. Apr 24

    Louka Patenaude, the Musical Chameleon

    Today, Louka Patenaude joins us on Taste the Music. Patenaude is a chameleon of sorts. There’s the singer songwriter, sometimes with a country sound. There’s the bluegrass picker, then there’s the sultry 70s Grant Green sounding Jazz man. There’s the jangly indie pop that emanates from some of Patenaude’s tunes like From In My Tea, and there’s this off-kilter interpretation of Bob Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice, that dutifully transcribes the tune down to a minor scale, while preserving the melody. A local Madison yokel, Louka Patenaude studied with the famed Richard Davis (RIP) at UW–Madison, who himself was known for being a jazz contemporary of Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Joe Henderson, but also for being a pop staple. You hear Davis on Bruce Springsteen’s early albums, Van Morrison, Bonnie Raitt. It makes sense, then, that Patenaude plays like one of his heroes, weaving in and out of Madison's various musical pockets, to create a space all unto his own. So, grab a root vegetable, get comfy, and Taste the Music. Today’s episode was written and produced by Mark Griffin. Taste the Music was created by Whitney Mann and myself.

    46 min

  7. Apr 17

    The Writer: How one storyteller turned to a life of words

    In today’s episode of Taste the Music, our host, Mark Griffin, tells his own story of becoming a writer. Why would anyone do such a thing in the first place? And why keep doing it? For Mark, it started with a dreaded blue exam notebook, refashioned into a weekly journal by his fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Brauer. Her assignment: write what’s going on with you. It was a fun activity that was better than rehashing the same math assignments over and over again. So he kept doing it. One day, though, he just didn’t feel like completing the assignment. So he drew a picture of an ogre with a smirking jack-o-lantern mouth. Then he engaged in the time honored tradition of putting his head down on his desk after finishing an assignment early. This one act led to a cascade of events that ended up with Mark pursuing a career in science and culture writing. There was the story for his college newspaper (no edits) and a misunderstanding at a party with someone who thought he was a writer, at a time when he didn’t see himself as one. Then there was Mark’s interview technique. When he was young, he noticed something about the way he could sense other people’s feelings through their facial expressions. Mark felt like he could almost read their minds. Developing this skill was a challenge for teenager Mark, but as an adult, he could use this skill to interview scientists, cancer patients, taco truck owners, and jazz bass players with the same ease. Musician and today’s co-producer Whitney Mann then returns to grill Mark about his experiences in writing, revealing some insights into how we pass on those traits to our kids.

    45 min

  8. Apr 10

    Episode 1: Whitney Mann and the Box in the Basement

    Musician Whitney Mann was on her way to stardom in the music business. She had opened for some of her heroes, like Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, and Guy Clark. One day, she misplayed a song on stage, and that turned into a case of stage fright, unraveling her performance before her very eyes. After a few years of trying to settle her nerves, Whitney Mann hung up her guitar and put all her memorabilia in a box in the basement. It wasn't long until that box – and her own voice – started calling out to her from storage. Today's episode of Taste the Music is about how Whitney Mann responded to the calling to keep writing and playing, and what's happened since. This episode was written, edited, and produced by Whitney Mann and Mark Griffin and originally appeared on WORT-FM 89.9 in Madison.

    48 min

  9. Season 1 Trailer

    Taste The Music: Episode 1 Trailer with Whitney Mann

    Today we launch Taste the Music and give you a little taste of our first episode with Wisconsin singer and songwriter, Whitney Mann. Whitney weaves the story of her rise in the music industry and the sudden stops she took along the way. Listen to the full episode 1:00 PM Central on wortfm.org or subscribe to hear it anytime on TasteTheMusic.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode was written, edited, and produced by Mark Griffin and Whitney Mann.

    2 min

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Taste the Music is a show where the artist tells their story about what drives creation. Here we’re going to figure out the reasons we’re driven to make music, and how that vocation ends up forming in some people, or maybe in all of us. Each week we’ll hear an account of the path to creation by artists, and we’ll try to get at a few questions: why do this? Why write a song, paint a painting, recite a poem, tell a joke, or craft a beer? And we’ll also seek to answer another question, something that we hope gets at a cultural truth about who we are as a people: why do we choose to sometimes not do these things?

Information