The Barry and Joe Show

Barry Funkhouser

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Episodes

Melody Federer
Aug 17 2023
Melody Federer
Melody Federer’s music is at once enigmatic and candidly charming. Texas-born with a nomadic soul, she honed her craft in New York, Paris, Los Angeles and Nashville and now lives in Seattle, where she continues to gain recognition as an up-and-coming talent in the world of Indie and Alt music.A noted solo artist as well as an accomplished writer for various musicians, her style is genre agnostic, and her stage presence is effortlessly versatile. She can capture a room with just her voice and guitar or with a full band, and she holds her own standing in as a guest with legends of the industry.Her talent has taken her around the globe to historic venues and buzzing clubs, having performed at the Musee D’ Orsay in Paris, Paris Fashion Week, The Royal Hall in London, New York City’s Harvard Club and Zinc Club, The Basement in Nashville, and The Morrocan lounge and The Saban in Los Angeles. She’s played numerous other shows and festivals in major North American and European cities and a large portion of her past solo tracks have been, and are currently being featured on multiple SiriusXM channels as well as tastemaker radio stations like WXPN and KUCI.Melody has worked with a vast range of musicians, from major pop artists P!nk and Hilary Duff, to electroclash producers Plastik Funk and Gazzo. She’s written R&B tracks for Kelly Rowland, traditional folk-rock tunes for Jacob Whitesides, and crafted alongside titans of the jazz world like Michael Buble and the legendary Burt Bacharach.Her penchant for word play and her emotional, memorable, and passionate toplines have put her in the songwriting room with the likes of GRAMMY Award Winners Emory Dobyn, Mike Pool, Daniel Tashian and GRAMMY Nominees Scott Chesak, Billy Mann, Chad Carlson, and Roget Chahayed.Coming off recent successes with collaborators Plastik Funk, Telykast, and SAMATHA, Federer has been preparing new solo material as a follow up to her 2017 debut album Where The Dogwoods Bloom. Throughout 2019, she released a number of singles including “The Song’s Gone Wrong,” “Someday,” “Midwest,” and “How’s Heaven Today?” for a series dubbed the #SinglesClub.Her sophomore full-length album finds her evolving once again drawing sonic comparisons to artists like Jenny Lewis, Blonde Redhead, Sharon Van Etten and Neko Case. Her album " Chapters From the Fairytale" is slated for a Septemeber 2023 release with the next single out August 18th .
Ava Earl
Aug 11 2023
Ava Earl
The phrase, “Ava, you are a lot,” has been a familiar refrain in the life of Alaska singer-songwriter Ava Earl. Uttered with loving amusement by her parents, mild frustration by more than one teacher, and joyful admiration by a few key mentors, this notion of “being a lot” is at the heart of her latest studio album, fittingly titled, Too Much. Earl is currently a junior at Northwestern University, located just outside of Chicago, where she’s channeling her near boundless energy into a packed schedule of academics, athletics, and of course, music. Her studies include political science, critical theory, and creative writing. Before and after class, she’s also racking up some serious mileage as a member of the school’s NCAA Division-I cross country running and track teams. Somewhere in there, she also writes music. How does she make it all work? “Really, I think this is just the way I’m wired,” she says. “I’ve been balancing school, running, and music since I was about ten. The stakes are obviously higher now—and I definitely get stressed at times, but running and music have always been my two biggest loves, so taking both of these things to a higher level makes me incredibly happy.” Last fall, Earl was one of seven Northwestern runners who helped the team qualify for the cross-country national meet. It was the first time the team made it to nationals in 20 years. That’s the kind of success Earl hopes to mirror with Too Much. “I honestly do see a lot of similarities in this trajectory,” she explains. “We made it to nationals because we put in the work, we had the support of our coaches, families, and friends, and we believed in our potential. I feel that exact way about my music right now.” Having opened for the likes of Maggie Rogers while still in high school and releasing four albums by the time she was 18, Earl has already solidified herself in the Americana scene as an emerging artist. She made a big step up in 2021 with her album The Roses, produced by GRAMMY-nominated JT Nero. Well received by Americana UK, Holler, and American Songwriter, several songs were featured on Spotify editorial playlists, with “Mountain Song” amassing more than 100,000 streams. Too Much continues on this path. Produced by JUNO-winner Zachariah Hickman and recorded at Great North Sound Society in Maine, the album champions a new sound––one that breaks away from previous recordings while staying close to Earl’s unique writing style. Rooted in lyrical rock, there are tracks that evoke the pop sounds of Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, and Gracie Abrams, while others hint at Americana artists Phoebe Bridgers, Elliott Smith, and Laura Marling. Thematically, the album takes us through Earl’s journey of early adulthood, including the concept of being “too much.” “Women are often told or made to feel like we are too much,” Earl says. “We are too much for our surroundings, too much for our peers, too much for our own good. We are supposed to wait our turn, couch our ideas in questions, and just be small. That’s never worked out for me. From a young age, I have been labeled ‘too much’ and I know from experience, I couldn’t be less if I tried. This album works through those feelings of being too much—both for others and sometimes for myself.” The title track, “Too Much,” tackles this duality head-on. Written in the aftermath of COVID shutdowns and her experience of sudden and permanent single-sided deafness, the deceivingly upbeat tune confronts her hearing loss anxieties, which are purely internal, as well as her romantic insecurities, which are far more external. In “Ears Bleed” the concept of “too much” turns wholly inward. “After going deaf in my right ear, I was left with emotions that took months to unravel, sort, and explain. Six months in, I thought I had come to a semblance of peace when this song tumbled out of me, surprising me with a pain that was still so palpable,” she says. Songs about being too much for others tend to have more bite. That’s certainly the case with “Better Than,” and “The Things You Said,” where Earl works through old feelings of being too eager and too earnest, labels that she says used to make her feel embarrassed, but today she wears with pride. “I am too much, and I don’t think that will change,” she states. “But I do hope that this album can show other women and girls like me that being too much is actually a wonderful thing.”
Christian Lopez @christianlopezmusic
Aug 9 2023
Christian Lopez @christianlopezmusic
West Virginia-born songwriter Christian Lopez caught the attention of major Nashville talent-spotters while in his late teens. Starting with 2014's EP “Pilot”, he released a series of albums that earned him an audience despite diverging from the contemporary country mainstream. A native of Martinsburg, Lopez started taking piano lessons at five but was first strongly drawn to music when he was nine, during a family trip to a dude ranch in South Dakota that featured a Western-style band. He took up the guitar, fronting an AC/DC-inspired outfit in high school, but switched to country when his father bought him compilation albums by Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Johnny Cash. "It was then that I realized that meaning and message could matter in music," he has said. Fronting the Christian Lopez Band, which took cues from the Avett Brothers and the roots music of his home state, Lopez traveled to Nashville and caught the attention of producer Dave Cobb, who steered him in the direction of modern country songwriting without losing the distinctive mix of influences that had shaped the young performer.Lopez signed to the Blaster label and released his debut album, the Cobb-helmed Onward, in 2015 at age 19. That landed Lopez on the 2016 season lineup of Mountain Stage, the West Virginia Public Radio program with a national reach, and on the radar of the large All Eyes Media agency. A track from Onward, "Will I See You Again," notched more than one million digital plays largely without benefit of radio airplay or major publicity. For his second Blaster album, Red Arrow, Lopez worked with producer Marshall Altman. One track, "Still on Its Feet," featured Vince Gill on guitar, and top session fiddler Stuart Duncan appeared as well. Red Arrow was released in the fall of 2017 in both CD and LP formats as well as online. Lopez's tour dates for early 2018 included venues in college towns including Tuscaloosa and Auburn, Alabama.Lopez released a series of digital singles in 2020, beginning with "Sip of Mine," then running through "Who You Really Are,” "Sick of Me," and "Tanglin." Eventually leading to the release of his 3rd full length album release, “The Other Side” in 2021, working along side producer, Robert Adam Stevenson; who also co-produced Lopez's latest release "Magdalena" alongside Christian himself. -James Manheim
Sandy Bailey
Jul 12 2023
Sandy Bailey
Sandy Bailey’s sound has often been compared to a spectrum of acts, including Norah Jones, Patsy Cline, Susan Tedeschi, and Patti Smith - yet she possesses a sound all her own. Her latest recording, Daughter of Abraham, will be released summer of 2023 on Red Parlor Records. The upcoming ten-song collection, expertly produced by Bailey, showcases her signature sound, but with a bolder, more idiosyncratic attention to detail. Incorporating elements of gospel blues, soul, and classic Americana, the depth of her songwriting stems from her life and identity as a biracial woman and single mother who abandoned a Pentecostal upbringing in favor of a life of art-making and rock and roll. The artist, Sandy Bailey, is discovered in each profound, candid tune. Her influences are on display from track to track. The first radio single “I Ain’t Your Honey” is a declarative groover with a soulfully lilting vocal, stating clearly the boundaries of a relationship. “Get The Message Through” shows Bailey’s Americana roots. Her straight-forward vocal approach in the vein of Emmylou Harris is a warm reminder of 1970s folk-rock with a modern lyrical bent. The compelling title track is the story of an enslaved black man in 1859 walking north to freedom by starlight in the dark cover of night. “He almost forgot about the holes in his shoes when his stomach started growling,” she sings. The song is one of hope and survival, played to perfection with upright bass, subtle use of a baritone ukulele, a hauntingly reverberant piano, and electric slide guitar. “Light of the day, my inner flame/I am weary, guide my way,” Bailey reflects on her own self-doubt, and inspired by Abraham, sings her way through her troubles. Her gospel influence comes through on “Bottles of Emptiness” with Hammond organ taking the lead, while Bailey’s production chops shine on “Like You Loved Me”. The outro lifts into the stratosphere with a Thom Yorke-style vocal and swirling rock instrumentation.The new recording includes performances by acclaimed musicians; guitarist Ryan Hommel (Amos Lee), bassist and engineer Marc Seedorf (Dinosaur JR, Lou Barlow), and drummer Don McAulay (The Rolling Stones, Neil Young) as well as neighbors, parents, coworkers, and even Bailey’s kids. It’s an alluringly moody, genre-defying album, alternating in tone between the laid-back cool of Bonnie Raitt and the no-fucks-given fire of Joni Mitchell, tempered with moments of genuine, heartbreaking vulnerability. Daughter of Abraham is the sound of a woman living her life.