I speak with award-winning music photographer Michael Weintrob about his unusual path through the visual side of music, and how keeping his head down and his heart open has resulted in one of the most exciting careers in the business.

Michael and I met around 2013. I was instantly struck by his combustible hustle, a kind of leaning forward in life. I was rocking bowties back then (call it my Willie Wonka phase) and… he grabbed me in my native habitat.

I’ve been following him ever since — through his launch of the Instrumenthead series, his installations at Jazzfest in New Orleans, the two exquisitely crafted Instrumenthead coffee table books, and the Instrumenthead Live concert series he produced during the pandemic, which featured more than 70 concerts filmed and broadcast out of the Weintrob studio.

Pivot, move forward, pivot, move forward.

Along the way Michael has cemented his reputation as a go-to live concert photographer for some of the coolest venues in the world: Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Ascend Amphitheater, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Newport Folk Festival, the Barcelona Jazz Festival and Bluegrass Underground.

In this wide-ranging conversation, we talked about the evolution of Instrumenthead, from its genesis as a spontaneous idea backstage, to a slowly accruing catalogue of artists and opportunities. How it was anything but an overnight success.

We also share stories of loss and tragedy — Michael going through a cousin’s suicide and the death of my little sister — and how those life experiences changed our perspective and priorities.

I also share a story I’ve never told before about a fated trip to see the Grateful Dead my senior year of high year, and the tragedy that happened along the way.

Throughout, we take a look at some of the artists captured in Weintrob’s camera, and learn why he chose the poses he did. Artists like Derek Trucks, Rhiannon Giddens, Bootsy Collins, Mickey Hart, and… me.

I have a ton of respect and admiration for Michael Weintrob. A guy who not only blazed an original path through a fraught industry of intense competition and constant uncertainty, but who came out of it creating somethingculturally important, historical even.

Website https://michaelweintrob.com/Instagram https://www.instagram.com/michaelweintrob/

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I speak with author Liz Riggs about the impending publication of her debut novel, Lo Fi out on Riverhead Books June 9. Liz’s publisher was kind enough to send me an advance copy, and from paragraph one I recognized the reverb-drenched setting — the live bands, late nights, broken AC, unravelling yard parties, and half-remembered conversations over hand-rolled joints — as my own.

I was a devoted participant of the world of Lo Fi, namely the post-flood Nashville of the 2010s.

A lot of us hit the clubs, played on their stages, closed down the dive bars. Some remain (The Basement, The Blue Room, The 5 spot) many do not (RIP Mercy Lounge, 12th and Porter, Radio Cafe) but Lo-Fi’s long lines and lazy dreamers was for me an irresistible reminiscence of a Nashville that no longer exists.

Because the protagonist was so well-drawn, I assumed Liz herself worked at a club in town. She didn’t, it turns out. We talk about what she did do, and how her fangirl inclinations (she admits to a teenage fascination with a well know 90s boyband) were easily grafted onto her enthusiastic main character.

I’m always fascinated to hear an author describe her path to publication — everyone’s is different, and in listening to the particulars of one I find inspiration for my own way forward. We talk about Liz’s journey, from writing drafts in longhand, to the nail-biting weeks, days and hours where she awaited her prospective publisher’s final word as to Lo-Fi’s fate.

We discuss her decision to set the story in a time that predates the social-media everything culture of today, and how that absence made it easier to tell a story about criss-crossed communication and the innocence of fledgling love. We compared notes and found some shared ground in our attraction to artists who write their own material, as opposed to those who sing the songs other people make for them.

Finally we talk about what’s great about living in a town with enough neon appeal to be called “It City” by the New York Times, and what’s maybe not so great about that.

If you like books like Nick Hornby’s High-Fidelity, or Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments, you’ll find a lot to love in Lo-Fi. Here’s a link to pre-order the book, and if you live in Nashville Liz is celebrating with a release show June 9 at the OG Basement with performances by Chris Housman and Vinnie Paolizzi.

Find Liz:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/riggser/

Website https://www.lizriggs.com/

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I caught Ryan Culwell — singer-songwriter, panhandle poet and father of four — on a recent pass through town, to talk about songwriting from a personal perspective, growing up in the Texas Panhandle, and what made him move back after a decade in the Nashville hopper. I’ve know the man for almost twenty years. I’ve been his fan and I’ve caught his shows. A few weeks ago I saw a post he wrote in white heat and flung against the wall like a dish in a fight. Anyone who has driven five hundred miles too far to play a show that didn’t mean much beyond the comped meal will recognize the pain and frustration and insane hope in it. “Sometimes,” he writes, “I wake up in a panic at 3am or drift off into nightmares at the dinner table only to have my kids pull back into the real world when they ask if I can pass the salt.”

I don’t have kids but I do know the kind of paralyzing scary that comes with the head-first approach to life-leaping. Take your shots, sure, but miss too many and the hunger stops being poetic.

It’s one thing to do that when you’re twenty-two and single, it’s another thing when you’ve got a wife and a family. Ryan’s been married I don’t know how long, and with four kids, prudence might suggest a turn toward the surer waters of life’s long river. I asked him about that. It was the one time in the interview he got emotional.

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I won’t spoil the surprise but I will say there’s a celestial oasis out there somewhere for the artist partner. These brave and faithful men and women are hitching their wagon to a summer tornado. Aren’t sure where you’re going and you don’t know when you’ll land.

This was one of the more candid conversations we’ve had on the podcast. Like Ryan, it was raw and honest and with a kind of heartbroke hope I’ve come to recognize in artists who do what they do because there’s nothing else they can.

We talked about how pretending everything is awesome gets you nowhere. The idea that if you leave home, you won’t come back; even if you do, home changes, you change. He landed on Wendell Berry’s advice — that you can’t fix the world, but you can put two things back together. We discuss Voltaire’s similar take two centuries earlier, take that the best you can do in life is tend an admirable garden.

In discussing his rural Texas background, we hit on Ryan’s love for people with a “knowledge of the hands” who can fix things, build things and the pleasure that comes with seeing the results of your labor.

Finally we pick a couple songs together — two Ryan Culwell originals.

I hope this conversation puts a crack in your heart. I hope it makes you less sure about what you think you know. And I hope it compels you get a little more familiar with Ryan and his music. He’s a good one and he’s out there. Go find him.

Find Ryan instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanculwell/ website: https://ryanculwell.com/