Interviews – Page 4 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E13: Meatwound

Florida’s Meatwound came into being circa 2014. Threading together strands of hardcore, noise and sludge rock, Meatwound’s mutant sound is a little like what might be described as psychedelic noise power violence with caustic vocals and seething guitar work driven by almost mechanistic rhythms. The group’s new album Macho (out now on Threat Collection) reveals a band that seems to be tearing in all directions with its sharp-edged sonics and a left field sensibility in fusing heavy and aggressive music. The cover in its bright and dark pink is a send-up of the concept of “macho” and the songs are infused with a sense of humor and the absurd. With titles like “Frank Stallone,” “Obese Variants,” “Pig, Tu” and “Barking Dog As Plot Device” it’s clear that Meatwound while making music that can be taken seriously don’t take themselves too seriously as artists. Think something like Killing Joke doing a collaborative album with Napalm Death.

Listen to our interview with Meatwound vocalist Daniel Wallace on Bandcamp and follow the band at the links below.

meatwound.com

Meatwound on Bandcamp

Meatwound on Instagram

Meatwound on Facebook

threatcollection.com

Threat Collection on Instagram

Threat Collection on Bandcamp

Threat Collection on TikTok

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E12: Knox Chandler

Knox Chandler, photo courtesy the artist

Knox Chandler made a name for himself as a musician with bands and artists like The Psychedelic Furs, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Cyndi Lauper. He also performed with, recorded, arranged and produced for REM, Depeche Mode, Grace Jones, Marianne Faithful, Natalie Merchant, Tricky, The Golden Palominos and others. He spent ten years living in Berlin, Germany where he developed a technique called “Soundribbons” in which iPads are used to process and manipulate guitar signals to produce uniquely evocative soundscapes often incorporating field recordings and interactive visuals for live performance. In Berlin Chandler also earned a post-graduate degree in education and served as the head of the guitar department at BIMM College. On May30, 2025 Chandler released his debut solo album The Sound. Rather than the usual type of musical album, it is a set of deep field ambient and otherwise cinematic mood music paired with a visual memoir in book form depicting his shift from urban to rural living where he currently resides in the New Haven, Connecticut area. The vividly rendered collection of images and paintings are served well by the methods Chandler used to process and craft the music and vice versa.

Listen to our interview with Knox Chandler on Bandcamp and connect with the artist at the links below.

knoxchandlermusic.com

Knox Chandler on Instagram

Knox Chandler on Facebook

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E11: Jeffery Broussard and The Nighttime Syndicate

Jeffery Broussard grew up in a musical family in Lafayette, Louisiana. His father Delton was an accomplished musician and his mother Ethel performed a cappella juré music in the home. The younger Broussard started playing drums in Delton Broussard and the Lawtell Playboys when he was eight years old but went on to play the accordion as his main instrument in his teens. Jeffery formed his own band Zydeco Force very much informed by the music he came up playing and the group while not a touring act released seven albums between 1990 and 2004. Broussard decided to create a more musically traditional band with his next project Jeffery Broussard and the Creole Cowboys in 2005. In 2025 the musician and singer released the debut album of his new outfit Jeffery Broussard and The Nighttime Syndicate. Bayou Moonlight released via Fairgrounds Records May 23 on 12” vinyl, digital download and for streaming. The new record reflects Broussard’s charismatic and vital performance style with vibrant and passionate delivery that has made him a Zydeco-nouveau start with an ear for taking the traditional forms and giving it a spirited form.

Listen to our interview with Jeffery Broussard on Bandcamp and follow him at the links below.

nighttime-syndicate.band

Jeffery Broussard and The Nighttime Syndicate on Instagram

Jeffery Broussard and The Nighttime Syndicate on Bandcamp

Jeffery Broussard and The Nighttime Syndicate on Fairground Records

Jeffery Broussard and The Nighttime Syndicate on Facebook

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E10: Charming Disaster

Charming Disaster, photo by Shervin Lainez

Charming Disaster is a Brooklyn-based duo who have developed a style that has been described as goth-folk. But Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris seem to have a knack for crafting deeply imaginative pop songs with an experimental and theatrical flair. Their latest record The Double released on May 16, 2025 on vinyl, CD and of course digital platforms. As with previous efforts the band explores concepts in its songs this time through the vehicle of songs dealing with an alternate reality where magic is a feature of life, time travel, the flora taking over civilization and a re-imagining of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The album deftly incorporates elements of fantasy and science fiction in telling engaging stories and of left field adventure and of struggling with depression and transforming tragedy into something more productive. Utilizing ukulele, guitar, foot percussion and beautiful vocal harmonies Charming Disaster’s dark cabaret style is the kind that transcends genre and musical era with an immediacy that instantly draws you into its unique creative vision.

Listen to our interview with Charming Disaster on Bandcamp and follow the group at the links below.

charmingdisaster.com

Charming Disaster on Facebook

Charming Disaster on Instagram

Charming Disaster on YouTube

Charming Disaster on Bandcamp (to order vinyl and get a download)

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E09: Charlie Kendall of METALSHOP

Charlie Kendall’s METALSHOP has re-launched in 1995. From 1984-1995 the original run of the syndicated radio program was a well-curated show that broadcast on more than 250 radio stations across the country. It featured interviews with heavy metal and hard rock musicians across a broad spectrum of fame and notoriety. The new weekly show incorporates original feature segments into its new content and will showcase new and classic music and interviews and presented with the same gritty accessibility that made the original show a true touchstone for that music. The new show can be heard online on demand on its Mixcloud account and on the air in select markets.

Listen to our interview with Charlie Kendall on Bandcamp and follow METALSHOP at the links below.

charliekendall.com

METALSHOP on Facebook

METALSHOP on YouTube

METALSHOP on Facebook

METALSHOP on Instagram

METALSHOP on Twitter

METALSHOP episodes on MIXCLOUD

METALSHOP Merch

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E08: MikelParis

MikelParis is perhaps best known these days as a keyboard player in the rock band O.A.R. but for many years he was also a cast member of the STOMP touring show as well as working with Pink, Train, The Dan Band and Jewel. All along MikelParis has developed his “GuitarDrumming” style of playing acoustic guitar. It combines his technique for playing piano, his honed sense of complex rhythms into a fluid and endlessly evolving sound that incorporates intuitive and expressive improvisation and songwriting acumen. His latest, and fourth, album GuitarDrumming 01 has the musician bringing in peers and friends like Vernon Reid (Living Colour), G. Love and Of Good Nature. The sound is richly varied and at times is reminiscent of 90s Peter Gabriel as the latter further integrated non-Western rhythms into his pop songcraft. The album released on March 28, 2025 on 12” vinyl, digital download and streaming services via ZP Records.

Listen to our interview with MikelParis on Bandcamp and follow him at mikelparis.com.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E05: Detention

Detention (back left is Kevin Shields), photo courtesy the artists

Kevin Shields enlisted in the Coast Guard when he was 17-years-old. But as fate would have it he was stationed in Alameda, California as he was growing tired of 70s rock and learned about punk. That post allowed him the time to go to Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco a few nights of week to witness firsthand the excitement of early West Coast punk acts Dead Kennedys, DOA and Black Flag among others. When he got back home to New Jersey in 1981 he had all the inspiration he needed to start his own band so he recruited his brothers and himself bought a bass that he would eventually learn to play. Their band Detention was a raucous and wiseacre bunch whose first show at Raritan Manor was hosted by Matt Pinfield when he had his first radio DJ stint at WRSU at Rutgers. The police busted the show. But the band went on to record several of its songs many of which were filled with an irreverent spirit but others with more than a touch of social consciousness. Detention put out a self-produced, self-titled album in 1985 before breaking up. But the band’s legacy continued in college radio and beyond up to now with the wonderfully humorous and tasteless “Dead Rock ‘n Rollers” single. Its cover art has been endlessly imitated and the song itself in the realm of “Take The Skinheads Bowling” as an underground classic. The single and choice cuts from the self-titled album as well as unreleased material was released on vinyl in 2024 as Dead Rock ‘n Rollers on Left For Dead Records.

Listen to our interview with Kevin Shields on Bandcamp and visit the Left For Dead Records for more information and to order the vinyl.

leftfordeadrecords.com

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E04: Mike Baggetta of mssv

Comprised of guitarist and vocalist Mike Bagetta, bassist mike watt and drummer Stephen Hodges, mssv is a band whose music defies easy genre categorization. Early on it was mostly or entirely instrumental but with vocals introduced more prominently on its second studio album Human Reaction and an attentive listener can hear rock and jazz roots in the mix with elements of improvisation. But on the group’s new record On And On (out March 7, 2025 via BIG EGO Records on vinyl, download and streaming) the detailed songcraft makes it obvious that the group has always been about songs but that this time the loose concept album explore themes of impermanence and chance in society, in our, on the planet and in our own minds. Utilizing detailed compositions and a keen ear for atmosphere and texture in building the emotional resonance of the songs the band uses the vehicle of the album as a commentary on and celebration of the life we live every day and its own essential significance to everything connected to it.

Listen to our interview with Mike Baggetta and follow the musician and songwriter as well as mssv at the links below.

mikebaggetta.com

mainsteamstopvalve.com

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E03: Nikki O’Neill

Nikki O’Neill, photo courtesy the artist

Nikki O’Neill was born in Los Angeles but mostly grew up in Stockholm, Sweden and now calls Chicago home. The cultural influences in her development as a human probably goes some way to explain how her fusion of Americana, Soul, Gospel and Blues comes off like a confident yet self-aware manifestation of the finely honed pop songs of the late 70s and early 80s with some of its own roots in R&B. O’Neill’s new, and third solo, record Stories I Only Tell My Friends dropped March 14, 2025 on 12” LP vinyl CD, digital download and streaming. The album is full of vibrant energy and instantly relatable tales of having moved from the West Coast to the Midwest and holding on to a sense of self that isn’t jaded and numbed by the pace and demands of our current society. Throughout the record, O’Neill seems to struggle and come to terms with existential doubt, demonstrating she is more than slightly familiar with the importance of learning to come at the world like you’re new to so many things again and again to bring a freshness of spirit to life and one’s creative work. The effort to do so abundant from song to song.

Listen to our interview with Nikki O’Neill on Bandcamp and follow O’Neill at the links below.

nikkioneill.com

Nikki O’Neill on YouTube

Nikki O’Neill on Instagram

Nikki O’Neill on Facebook

Nikki O’Neill on Bandcamp

Nikki O’Neill on Bandsintown

Nikki O’Neill on Bluesky

Nikki O’Neill on Apple Music

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E02: Michigan Rattlers

Michigan Rattlers, photo courtesy the artists

Michigan Rattlers is a band of lifelong friends who have been in bands together since they were in their early teens and started recording their songs in 2016 under their current name. The band’s first two albums offered beautifully pastoral Americana about everyday life, articulating the aspirations of yearnings that would be recognizable instantly to anyone that has spent more than a few months contemplating what it is you really want and what you have and what you value. The 2024 album Waving From A Sea is a creative leap forward for the band with more atmospheric elements and a songwriting style more in line with the kind of power pop one heard in the late 70s or in a more modern era with the likes of The War on Drugs. The songs tie the feelings to a strong sense of place both physically and psychologically at a time when you’re re-orienting your life and finding the anchors in your psyche that remind you of the contexts that have helped shape you and the boundaries you have moved beyond.

Listen to our interview with singer Graham Young on Bandcamp and follow Michigan Rattlers at the links below. Michigan Rattlers are currently on tour with a stop at Meow Wolf in Denver on Thursday, February 20, 2025 with Elias Hix, doors 7pm.

michiganrattlers.com

Michigan Rattlers on Facebook

Michigan Rattlers on Apple Music

Michigan Rattlers on Bands In Town