Maya Hawke first became known to wide audiences as an actress — especially through her work in Stranger Things — but she's been quietly building a parallel life as a songwriter of genuine depth. Since her debut album Blush in 2020, she's released four records.

Her latest, Maitreya Corso, arrives at a pivotal moment: the album follows her marriage to longtime musical collaborator Christian Lee Hutson, and centers on a fictional persona through who Hawke explores ego, ambition, and the strange labor of making something. Recorded in Woodstock and New York City late last year, it's co-produced by Hutson and Jonathan Low, with cover art drawn from watercolors Maya painted herself.

On today's episode Justin Richmond sat down with Maya Hawke and her husband and co-producer Christian Lee Hutson live at SXSW to talk about the making of Maitreya Corso, and what it means to finally come together as partners in both life and work.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Maya Hawke and Christian Lee Hutson HERE.

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In the latest season of Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell is looking at the origins and consequences of mistakes—why we make them, the context in which we make them, and what happens after we make them. Years ago a music producer named Irv Gotti—a hitmaker for Jay-Z, Ja Rule, and Ashanti—was tapped by Sony Music to make a record with Jennifer Lopez. They wanted a big hit. And Irv delivered. But then he made the biggest mistake of his career.

Find more episodes of Revisionist History wherever you get podcasts.

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The magic of Bruce Hornsby isn't just that he's one of American music's great piano stylists — or that he wrote one of the most unlikely pop hits of the 1980s, a song about racism with two improvised solos that nobody at his label thought should be the single. It's how relentlessly he's kept moving, long after he had any commercial reason to.

Hornsby grew up in Williamsburg, Virginia, and got discovered playing a steak and ale joint across from the Hampton Coliseum by Mike McDonald. He scored his first big hit in 1986 with "The Way It Is. What followed was a long, restless second act: teaching himself two-handed independence by scheduling benefit concerts just to give himself a hard deadline, making jazz records with Jack DeJohnette and Christian McBride, bluegrass records with Ricky Skaggs, and going deep into Shostakovich fugues that now shape everything he writes.

On today’s episode Bruce Headlam sat down with Bruce Hornsby at the piano to talk about all of it. But they started somewhere unexpected: a steak and ale restaurant in Hampton, Virginia, in the fall of 1978.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Bruce Hornsby HERE.

Time-coded chapters:

(01:26) Discovering Musical Influences

(09:24) Success of “The Way It Is”

(15:51) Crafting Unique Sounds and Styles

(20:30) Collaborations and Songwriting Process

(26:40) Exploring New Directions in Music

(33:20) The Challenge of Musical Growth

(39:10) Jazz and Bluegrass Fusion

(44:47) The Art of Improvisation and Composition

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