Stephen Kallao

Kurt Vile's song "Loading Zones" is in my head. It's a song about Kurt's adventures driving around Philadelphia. In particular, I've been thinking the last few minutes, wherein he repeats this line over and over: "I park for free."I parked for free. Until I didn't.

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Doyle Bramhall II is a musicians' musician.

In the 1990 book  Bound To Lead: The Changing Nature Of American Power, economist Joseph Nye introduces us to a term he coined; soft power. Soft power is the act of trying to change things through coercion and appeal rather than force and intimidation. In the book, Nye's talking about government and politics, but our guest today, Doe Paoro, writes intimately about the power dynamics of her personal relationships. And Soft Power is the name of her new album.

There's one obvious thing to get out of the way up front. Yes, The Nude Party actually played without clothes during the band's formative years at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. During their college years, the members hadn't picked a name for the band and because of their lack of wardrobe, the locals dubbed the group "The Naked Party Band."

Watching Joseph Arthur and Peter Buck of R.E.M. onstage together as Arthur Buck shows an obvious dynamic in energy. Arthur's a firecracker; a ball of energy. He sings with all his heart and his body. For three minutes and thirty seconds, Arthur explores the stage while shouting out to the heavens.

So much of the music of the last few years has been influenced by the sounds of the 1980's. The revolutionary (and affordable) gear made it's way into musicians hands and people continue to go back to those sounds and textures. However, for this generation of young adults making music, there's another decade to explore ripe with it's own stylistic quirks — the 1990's. Hatchie is one of those artists.

Ten years ago, my guest introduced himself to me as a lanky, biracial kid from suburban Chicago who graduated from Harvard with a Kenyan diplomat for a dad. Nope, I wasn't interviewing Barack Obama. It was Tom Morello. If he had dropped Neo-Marxist into his introduction, the jig would have been up.

If you've been to New Orleans, you know how easy it is to strike up a conversation with a stranger on the street. It just happens! It's also how the band The Revivalists was founded.

My introduction to Dave Wakeling was a little unusual. Sure, I'd heard The English Beat as a kid growing up, (shout out to my Dad who had ALL of their vinyl), but the first time I saw the ska crooner pogoing around the stage was at a club show in a tiny college town in Illinois back in 2001. And that was 19 years after the last Beat record at the time, 1982's Special Beat Service.

When you work at World Cafe, you quickly realize you are not making an episode entirely on your own schedule. The biggest moving pieces are, of course, the guests. We hope to catch them for a few hours as they criss-cross the country in search of sharing their craft and art with an audience, and hopefully some merch sales. It's part of our job to be ready then, for the tiniest of windows.