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After a too-long hiatus, and ongoing issues with time management that baby steps may help to minimize, RadioMike and his Fevered Brain are making a slow return to the local music that has piled up for quite some time. Things and distractions have overwhelmed us for quite some time, but we have never stopped discovering music, new and older. For now, the shows include the artists and tunes below, but we may add an opening voice over at some point. Would you like that addition? I am still thinking about how that could play out, either at the beginning or the end. It certainly won’t be an hour-long show. That’s a bit too much at the moment. For now, this is a good way to get back into this whole thing. We hope you enjoy, and please let us know how you like it and what else you’d like to see and hear on the show and website.
Bay Station, out of California’s Bay Area, is a fun Americana band featuring Deborah Crooks (a local featured on our shows before) and Kwame Copeland. Their website has a lot more information, but this is a fun little alt-alt country folk ditty that is difficult to sit or stand still while your radio is dancing and waltzing away on a hum.
Cat Nap, describe themselves as alternative with an emo edge and an undercurrent of dreamy shoegaze. Those elements bubble under and occasionally rise throughout this recent release. What I hear is some danceable and fun pop punk that I haven’t heard in forever, probably since punk went formula and mainstream. This is unfortunately not mainstream. It should be, and punk could be fun again.
Emma Hunter’s “Snake” (single) is the lead in to an album titled Yolanda. If the single is any indication of the rest, it will be a wistful, lonely Mexican desert affair evoking a 1950’s movie landscape or slow lightly-twangy ballad with some undercurrents of trip hop from her collaborators. And now I want to hear the whole album. All of it can be found on her website and at Bandcamp.
The Artist FKA Vince (AKA TAFKA Vince) has been playing in and around Chicago for several years with rock outfits (possibly with one musician I know from a while back) and finally decided to record a solo outing, playing on all instruments in back and in front. It’s a bit sparse but beautiful like the some of the tracks that preceded this. He has recently released an EP where this is featured.
Other Wether is a haunting band, based out of Los Angeles, acoustic, contemplative, and instrumental focused, though there is this one music video dedicated to Anne Frank that they released as a single last year that is just haunting. The band is a project of Michael Rains. Unfortunately, I am unable to uncover any additional information other than the links included here. If you are in Los Angeles, you might want to seek them out if they perform locally.
Terence Minogue is a composer based in Los Angeles with quite a storied history if you read his bio at his website. He forwarded over a few sample tracks for me to explore and the one used here seems a to be one of the more playful tracks but still fitting for the ethereal atmosphere on this leg of the show we have traveled. Among other things, he received some accolades for his arrangements on two Jim Croce albums. Among other things, he has also scored a film soundtrack and wrote a concerto for a Northern California symphony orchestra.
Orchestra Fuego is a recent discovery that never disappoints. While there are some traditional elements to their repertoire, this is music that goes hard. While not the first Hispanic-themed band featured on this podcast, it is probably the first orchestra that travels the world spreading joy, dance, and tunes. The album featured here, Mambo Mania, includes some traditional tracks with a twist (La Bamba), there are some fine originals, too. They tour. See them wherever you are if you can.
Lady Adrena is a first for us in a long while. It’s pure blues with some updated 21st century story lines, but nothing ever changes with the blues. We all have them, and we all experience them in our own way. Lady Adrena makes it fun, and I need to hear more. She’s a solid slow-burning belter.
Funkturm are a powerhouse quartet that none of have ever heard of until now. Manuel Engel seems to be managing several projects at once. His presence is embodied somewhere in the track used here. Hardcore freeform jazz is where my heart and soul have been for the last twelve years or so, and I finally found a collective worthy of including here. Behind it all is Manuel Engel who plays locally in Switzerland, with occasional forays into the UK and probably the rest of Europe (but not the United States, yet, alas). According to his website, he has developed this project into an “experimental quartet formation featuring prepared piano, double bass, and two drum sets.” His website project can be found here, his website is here, some recordings here, and his other project, MetaMarie Louise, can be found here.
Deborah Crooks, a member of Bay Station, featured at the beginning of our show, but also an older friend from my time doing this show in Austin, TX quite a while ago. Her new album, I Was Yours (released in 2025) is a collection that takes inspiration, according to her website, from “cities, records, chocolate, fault lines, surf spots, keychains, dorm rooms, deep seas and sly creatures.” May the characters of a lived and living life inspire each of us in our own way. The album ranges from blues-inspired rock, to folk, to ballad. She’s been doing this for years. She tours, mostly in California, if you live near, and you need a recharge.
Jay A Hoffman is a singer-songwriter folk storyteller based out of Wisconsin and tours in that general area. His music is straightforward and Americana-flavored, but there are probably a few tunes that employ a double entendre now and then as some folks who have folked in the past and throughout the history of folk music far and wide will aver. He tours regionally, but I’ll betcha he’ll play a house show if you’re up for it.
Until next time,
RadioMike