Summary

This week, we’re disappearing down some serious rabbit holes. From the casual Aussie swagger of Bel Air Lip Bombs to the psychedelic sway of Alex Chilton’s cover of “Rubber Room,” the episode is a love letter to overlooked tracks that quietly demand a place in your rotation. Charles Hale, Sloane Spencer, Rachel Cholst, and Kim Ware come together like a carefully sequenced mixtape, swapping stories about their latest musical fixations and music Venn diagrams that overlap way too much and not at all. Punk-leaning jazz that used to be in a duo with a noted blues musician, and a lot of tiny touchpoints connecting us to the music. So throw on your headphones, pour yourself a drink, and sink into the rich, unpredictable soundscape of the Dive Bar Music Club.

Catch Our Tastemaker Playlists

1. Apple Music
2. Tidal

Bands Featured in Episode 2

1. Alex Chilton (Big Star, The Box Tops)
2. Audrey Hobert
3. Becky Warren
4. The Belair Lip Bombs
5. Fust
6. Gladie
7. Johanna Rose
8. Minus Five
9. Valerie June

Venues Mentioned

1. The 40 Watt Club, Athens, GA

The Regulars in Episode 2

1. Rachel Cholst
2. Charles Hale
3. Sloane Spencer
4. Kim Ware

Musicians Also Mentioned

1. Augusta Koch (Cayetana, Gladie)
2. The Baseball Project
3. Buffalo Nichols
4. Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys)
5. Dolly Parton
6. Emily Ray (Indigo Girls)
7. Florry
8. Geese
9. Gracie Abrams
10. Hurray for the Riff Raff
11. Indigo Girls
12. Jeff Rosenstock
13. Louis Armstrong
14. M. Ward
15. Nickel and Rose
16. Neko Case
17. Peter Buck
18. Porter Wagoner
19. R.E.M.
20. Replacements
21. Scott McCaughey
22. Self Esteem
23. SG Goodman
24. Steve Wynn
25. Sun Volt
26. Taylor Swift
27. Young Fresh Fellows

Recommended If You Like

Dive Bar Music Club, 90s alt rock, emerging songwriters, indie rock playlists, music podcasts, female vocalists in rock, Australian indie bands, Bel Air Lip Bombs, Alex Chilton, Big Star, record collecting, Americana music, Southern indie rock, music industry discussions, Jeff Rosenstock, indie music scenes, underground music recommendations, vinyl records, music discovery, music and mental health,

indie music podcast, music nerd podcast, underground music podcast, music roundtable podcast, best new indie bands, independent music podcast, music discovery podcast, alternative music podcast, podcast for music lovers, dive bar music podcast, low key music podcast, deep cut music discussion, music tastemakers podcast, music festival discoveries, music zine culture, DIY music scene, touring musician stories, hidden gem bands, vinyl collector podcast, music conversations podcast,

Automated Transcript

Speaker A

00:00:01.200 - 00:01:47.260

Welcome to the Dive Bar Music Club podcast, where the guest hosts drop in and out, but the opinions are always passionate and the playlists loud. It's like cheers if everyone at the bar had a strong take on 90s alt rock or a suspicious number of burned CDs.

Around our table, you'll find an emerging touring songwriter, a former cult band favorite whose work since then is even more interesting.

I a portrait photographer with a not so secret metal penchant, a record store owner who learned about Swifties the hard way, a retired folk singer who regrets nothing, and a zine maker with more cool music projects than we can count.

We're all just here to share what we're currently obsessed with and maybe convince someone that, yes, that weird Icelandic synth folk band is worth a listen. Okay, that last one's probably me, Sloane Spencer. It's Dive Bar Music Club. Low key, high taste happy hour for music nerds. Well, hey, y', all.

It's Sloan Spencer, and we are back with another episode of Dive Bar Music Club. This time diving into a few new friends. We've got Charles Hale joining us today, Rachel Colst and Kim Ware.

Hope you all had a chance to listen to those introductory bio episodes so you can get to know a little bit about them.

And if you haven't had a chance to listen to any of our prior episodes, every time we have a show, we like to start it off with everyone sharing one of the three things they've been listening to lately. Now, because I get to be the ringleader of all the episodes, I'm going to sit this one out and just kind of act as cat wrangler.

And I'm going to let our guests talk about the music that has been on their playlist lately. So let's dive in with a new friend, Kim Ware. Hey, Kim, what have you been listening to lately?

Speaker B

00:01:48.180 - 00:02:50.010

So I have been listening to a lot of, like 20, 25 releases, right? And around the end of the year, I was trying to catch up on things that I was not able to get to earlier in the year.

And Bel Air Lip Balms was one of them. I think I had seen the name come up from time to time. It stood out because I was like, what is this?

Because at first I thought it was like Chapstick lip balm, but it's not. It turns out it's like a skateboard or something is where they got their name. But, yeah, I love their album.

I had never heard of them until this year. They're from Australia. Their album is entitled Again and there's one track in particular, if you've got the time. It's the name of it.

This, like, just so freaking catchy. And, yeah, I just. I love them. It's just, like, really cool indie rock with female vocals, really neat guitar interplay stuff.

So that's one that I've been loving.

Speaker A

00:02:50.650 - 00:02:56.490

We'll kind of do a little roundtable. Rachel and Charles, have either of you heard of this band before? Bel Air Lip Balms?

Speaker C

00:02:56.970 - 00:03:08.650

Not at all. But once you said they were Australian, I was like, this makes sense.

There's just this sort of casualness that I feel like I've heard from other Australian bands. Not casual, but, like, effortlessness. Yeah.

Speaker D

00:03:09.610 - 00:03:27.110

I had not heard of them, but I did really enjoy that song, and I listened to the whole album, and I. I enjoyed the whole thing. I was surprised, but I'm also always happy when there's young people making rock music with instruments.

Speaker B

00:03:27.190 - 00:03:35.590

Yes, I know. That was one of the things when I first heard them, too. I was like, oh, these. These kids are pretty young. And, yeah, they're great.

Speaker A

00:03:36.310 - 00:03:46.250

I was not familiar with them at all. And I listened to the one song, and then I also went ahead and was like, wow, I'm checking out this whole entire record. So I. I'm super thrilled.

How did you know?

Speaker B

00:03:46.250 - 00:04:09.730

I don't. I really don't remember, honestly.

I think I had seen the name come up a couple of times, probably in, like, one of my streaming algorithms or something, I think on Tidal. Because I listened to Tidal a good bit, and I think it came up on that, and.

But it took me a while to actually, like, check it out, and then instantly I was like, oh, my God, this is like, my new favorite thing. Yeah.

Speaker A

00:04:10.450 - 00:04:11.570

Shout out to title.

Speaker B

00:04:11.570 - 00:04:11.970

Cool.

Speaker A

00:04:11.970 - 00:04:19.390

Rachel is our title expert helping us get our playlist over there. So that's pretty cool. Speaking of which, Rachel, what have you been listening to lately?

Speaker C

00:04:20.110 - 00:04:35.310

I wanted to dedicate my first song of the episode to Becky Warren, the writer of Dive Bar Sweetheart. It was just stuck in my head as soon as you invited me to be on the podcast alone. And it just seems like it's sort of the perfect theme song for us.

Speaker A

00:04:35.710 - 00:04:44.920

Well, you and I had a little chat about that, and I will admit to just shamelessly tagging Becky Warren in social media, who thought it was hilarious and reshared it.

Speaker C

00:04:46.360 - 00:06:08.890

Yeah, I did a little digging on her today, because I was thinking she hasn't put out new music since her last album, which was, I think, the very end of 2019, and it was called the six season. And then that ended up being very relevant to everybody else. But she's really cool, so if anyone out there hasn't listened to her music yet.

Her first couple albums were concept albums. The first about veterans, war surplus, and then the second one is about homeless people, specifically the stories of homeless people in Nashville.

And then she finally turned to writing about herself with the sixth season, and that was an album about depression. And all of a sudden, the medication she had been on just kind of stopped working.

And, you know, it's always such a roller coaster to have to, like, readjust your meds. And it's just like an amazing album. Just great sense of humor, as always.

And she hasn't put out an album since then, but according to her Instagram, she had, like, two posts on her official Instagram this year, and one of them was that she had started a sub stack like everybody else and that there's more music coming.

But I'm curious to read the substack because there is an entry there about how she's just continuing to live a life in music without being beholden to the album cycle. And I'm sure Kim has some thoughts on that, too.

Speaker B

00:06:08.890 - 00:06:33.010

Yeah, Yeah. I, like, I really appreciate that, and I think a lot of people are starting to do that as we get older, and it's harder and harder to.

I mean, so many reasons, right? It's harder and harder to make money on music. And, yeah, touring is also really tough.

And so I like when I see people that are just like, you know what? I'm going to do this, like, at my own pace. That makes sense for me and is healthy.

Speaker C

00:06:34.100 - 00:06:34.340

She.

Speaker D

00:06:34.980 - 00:07:00.180

She. Several years ago, she got in with the Indigo Girls, and she's been an opener on a bunch of Indigo Girls dates sort of all over the Southeast.

So I feel like she's been doing stuff, just not releasing records, but I. I feel like she's probably open for the Indigo girls 10 or 15 times since that last album came out.

Speaker B

00:07:01.210 - 00:07:13.770

Yeah, that's how I had heard of her, actually, through Indigo Girls, so that's cool. Yeah. And I. I was glad that you brought her song Rachel, because I actually. I was a fan of that sixth season. Is that what it's called?

Speaker C

00:07:14.330 - 00:07:20.250

Yeah. And Emily Girls was on there, too, as well as I think their longtime producer.

Speaker B

00:07:21.370 - 00:07:24.410

Very cool. Yeah, I like. I like her stuff a lot.

Speaker A

00:07:24.810 - 00:07:40.310

I love how this brings up so much great overlap for all of us in different areas of both our interest, but also just little tidbits that we can p. I had completely forgotten about the association with Indigo Girls. And now I'm like, how did I not know that? Charles, you've always got interesting things in your ears. What are you listening to lately?

Speaker D

00:07:40.790 - 00:09:41.150

So the thing I listed was an Alex Chilton song. Alex Chilton, being from Big Star, he put out a solo record in the 90s, and I just bought it in the last year or two called Feudalist Tarts.

And, you know, I don't digest an album sort of all at once and, and very thoroughly. So I probably had the record a few months before. I really picked up on a song on the B side called Rubber Room.

And it's a weird and strange, trippy song. And then I looked at the back of the album cover and saw that Porter Wagner wrote the song, which really confused me because this is a.

A psychedelic song about someone locked up in a padded room in a mental institution, which does not feel like the kind of thing that Porter Wagner would have ever written about. But sure enough, I. I went looking. I found the Porter Wagner version. And it's not as if Alex Chilton took a standard country song and made it trippy.

The Porter Wagner version is also weird and trippy. And I guess that he. His version came out in the 70s and he was trying to latch on to the counterculture. But the Alex Chilton version is great.

It's longer than the Porter Wagner version, so there's, you know, more guitar solos, more psychedelic effects. But I'm. I'm a huge Alex Chilton fan.

And just the thought that he hears this Porter Wagner song and decides, nope, I'm taking that into the studio and I'm going to make it even weirder, and puts it on a record just excites me no end.

Speaker A

00:09:41.790 - 00:10:30.950

This is fascinating to me. So I have no problem exposing my complete lack of knowledge when it comes to music.

So I was a big Replacements fan, and the first time I ever heard the name Alex Chilton was, of course, from their song Alex Chilton. And then that led me back in the day to go to the record store and ask some questions. And here's the weird part.

I knew the band the Box Tops, really, really well. I did not know Chilton by name, nor that he was the lead singer as a teenager, but I had never heard of Big Star at that point, not at all.

So I kind of worked backwards on all of that, of finding Chilton's name from the replacement song, going to the record store, learning about his at the time, solo work, and they assuming I knew Big Star when I did not. But me then being like, oh, yeah, I know all the Box Top stuff. So how on earth did you become a Chilton fan?

Speaker D

00:10:31.430 - 00:10:33.670

I'm a rock and roll kid from the South.

Speaker B

00:10:33.990 - 00:10:35.350

I mean, me too, though.

Speaker D

00:10:36.470 - 00:12:13.190

I know, but I came to it the same way you did, essentially that it starts with the...