When you’re alone in the woods with a dog as much as I am, there’s a lot of time to listen.
To what, though. Music? A podcast? Lately for me, it’s been podcasts about music. Sometimes it’s “Sound Opinions,” hosted by Chicago critics Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot, or “Indiecast,” with Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen. By highlighting new releases and revisiting unsung acts or albums from the past, both shows have turned me onto stuff I didn’t know or hadn’t bothered to check out.
That’s the reason I listen to music podcasts: to discover something new or unfamiliar. I can get into a rut pretty easily; a song or artist strikes my fancy and then takes over my brain. (See Japanese Breakfast or Lucy Dacus.) But I’m also curious about what people who aren’t critics recommend or enjoy. The BBC’s long-running “Desert Island Discs” pod is OK, but ultimately it’s more about the fancy guests — model Kate Moss, “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, director Steven Spielberg, etc. — than the music that is/was important to them. (On a recent episode, actress Cate Blanchett said she “weeps with joy” every time she hears “The Pilgrims’ Chorus” by German composer Richard Wagner. Seems a tad dramatic.)
Probably because our musical tastes align, I’ve started listening to Mark Caro’s “Caropopcast,” a series of candid, deep-dive conversations with notable folks who’ve been making music for decades. Talking about his early influences, the great Mitch Easter, a member of Let’s Active and the producer of the first two REM albums, mentioned his affection for The Move’s 1971 LP “Message From the Country,” which he said was hugely important to him when he was young. I didn’t know it and couldn’t wait to listen.
But forget famous people and what they like. Often it’s neither new nor unfamiliar. Moss, for example, still has “Sympathy for the Devil” in heavy rotation. There are a couple of podcasts I listen to precisely because they highlight bands that I (and, I’ll bet, many others) know very little, if anything, about — hard-working acts who aren’t widely known despite, in many cases, having released several records and toured relentlessly. Hearing these rags-to-rags stories isn’t only enlightening, it gives you a lot to listen to while in the woods with a dog.
One such podcast is “LIFERS,” hosted by Scott Lucas, frontman for the band Local H, which had a hit in the 1990s with “Bound for the Floor.” “LIFERS” is as amusing as it is edifying, with Lucas and his cohorts — Ben Reiser and the often unintentionally hilarious Gabe Rodriguez — talking to rockers who grind out a meager living in the music biz but persist because, well, it’s all they want to do. As Mike Watt would say: Much respect!
Perhaps because Lucas hails from Zion, Ill., the podcast has a heavy regional vibe, which I appreciate. I knew bupkis about The Cupcakes, Kill Hannah, or Fig Dish (Chicago), Guzzard (Minneapolis), Sullen (St. Louis), or Radkey (St. Joseph, Mo.) before hearing band members share their backstories. (If I have a complaint about “LIFERS,” it’s that it’s very dude-centric.) Two of my favorite episodes feature Jeff Murphy, from the pioneering ’70s power-pop band Shoes — also from Zion, Ill., it turns out — and Herb Rosen, bassist for Rights of the Accused and The Beer Nuts. (Rosen tells some stories that’ll make you laugh — and, in one case, wretch.)
Then there’s “Blowing Smoke with Twisted Rico,” hosted by Steev Riccardo, a former A&R guy at Enigma Records, among other labels. Like “LIFERS,” “Blowing Smoke” is kind of parochial, focused mostly on under-the-radar acts from around Boston and New England. Don’t get me wrong — that’s a good thing, especially for listeners who may be unfamiliar with, say, the discographies of Richie Parsons (Unnatural Axe), Lee Harrington (The Neighborhoods), Mark McKay (Slapshot), or Hilken Mancini (Fuzzy). I also like that Riccardo switches it up sometimes, talking to music-adjacent folks like photographer J.J. Gonson, longtime WMBR-FM DJ Joanie Lindstrom, and 18-year-old Katy Nathan, who loves Joe Perry so much she started an Instagram fan page honoring the Aerosmith guitarist.
I haven’t listened to every episode of “LIFERS” and “Blowing Smoke with Twisted Rico,” but I am aware of at least one instance of overlap: Ed Valauskas, who plays bass in a variety of Boston lineups and also manages the North Cambridge recording studio Q Division, has been a guest on both shows. A lifer, indeed.
Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com.