PODCAST · music
Third Gear Scratch
by Allen Epley
Musician/engineer/bartender Allen Epley talks with artists of all walks and at all levels of success about their own unique journeys and jobs they've worked in order to follow their passions. Many successful musicians, actors, filmmakers, composers, and comedians still have side gigs that afford them the ability to create their art for us. Some get to work in their chosen field and some work jobs that are convenient and make that buck. It is this unique hustle that's at the heart of this podcast. How exactly does the sausage get made when there are bills to be paid? And what drives these maniacs to make our desperate lives better with their art when the pay-off often fulfills their hearts but not their bank accounts?
Episodes
-
FINAL EPISODE! 189 Chris Metcalf
WARNING! All ye who put your ears toward this episode should know that it is the final installment of Third Gear Scratch, which appropriately features one of my closest friends and bandmates, Mr Chris Metcalf of our band, The Life and Times. But before that Chris had done much wood-shedding with...
-
Episode 188 - Blake Smith
Blake Smith and his rock band Figdish from the 90's Chicago scene has never taken things too seriously; never been careerists, and in fact went out of their way to indulge in hijinx and sabotage, despite ending up with 2 hugely influential records and a solid major label record deal. This was the...
-
Episode 187 - Vasily Deris
The service industry has always been in actor Vasily Deris' blood, seeing as how his family owned a group of restaurants in Crown Point IN just south of Chicago. He had been working 12 hours a day in multiple restaurants each for more than a decade but his true calling is on the stage; any and…
more -
Episode 186 - Chris Simpson
Going back to school to study World Religions just seemed like the right thing to do for Chris Simpson, the hugely talented solo artist operating under Mountain Time and formerly of the bands Mineral and later The Gloria Record. Minerals influence and impact from the late 90's cannot be…
more -
Episode 185 - Gerald Dowd
Gerald Dowd is the rare working musician who is actually making his living directly from his drumming gigs with an extremely wide range of musicians, from Eddie Vedder to Mavis Staples to Robbie Fulks to Neko Case to Justin Roberts, not to mention fantastic players that you may not have heard or…
more -
Episode 184 - Blake Fleming
After 13 years of teaching percussion as an adjunct faculty member at a nearby college in upstate New York, Blake Fleming was unceremoniously let go, common with many colleges and shrinking enrollment that is plaguing the academic world. But the loss of this relatively low-paying gig was a…
more -
Episode 183 - Brandon Butler
When the highly respected label The Numero Group approached Brandon Butler, the voice and heart of KC heart throbs Boy's Life, about doing a retrospective of his influential band, his initial thought might've been there's not enough material to reissue, considering they only released 2 full…
more -
Episode 182 - Eric Abert
In September of 2020, deep into a pandemic that seemingly had no end in sight, Life and Times bassist Eric Abert made a big decision to move from the place he'd called home for most of a decade, Chicago, and to move back to Collinsville IL outside of St Louis. It wasn't for nothing; in fact it…
more -
Episode 181 - Coley Dennis
Guitarist Coley Dennis is the heartbeat of his band Maserati since their inception in very early 00's and continues to be that even when they have to play live and tour without him. It would appear almost like a franchise to the uninitiated until you realize how connected this band is and has…
more -
Episode 180 - Timothy Showalter
In 2021, in full pandemic tilt, Timothy Showalter aka Strand Of Oaks, released a brilliant record in the vein of much of his stratospheric catalog called In Heaven (Dead Oceans) but decided not to tour on it, because that's what you didn't do during those heavy days; tour. Instead, he shut it all...
-
Episode 179 - Aaron Stone
As the frontman, face and heartbeat of his band My Epic, singer/guitarist Aaron Stone started his rock band long before he ever imagined having and wife and now 4 year old child and would never have believed his band would still be making music. in fact they're making music on a killer label…
more -
Episode 178 - Steve Lamos
U of I in Champaign / Urbana in the 90's was typical of many satelite college towns to big cities with a happening urban center, dive bars and house parties for the indie scene to procreate within. Drummer Steve Lamos' band American Football was one of the bands within that scene that made a…
more -
Episode 177 - Chris Enriquez
Somewhere in the late 00's, drummer Chris Enriquez felt the familiar and invetible societal pull of many artists to finally "get a real job" after over a decade with his bands On The Might Of Princes, Long Island hardcore/emo heros, and Gracer after Princes disbanded. He left it behind and began...
-
Episode 176 - Conan Neutron
There was a point maybe 10 years ago give or take, in which bandleader, frontman, guitarist, singer songwriter, podcaster and outsized personality Conan Neutron had a reckoning or awakening of sorts in regards to his bands and the dynamic within, which had taken a not-good turn. The Conan Neutron...
-
Episode 175 - AC Paterra
Deep into the pandemic, drummer AC Paterra and his musical partner in Zombi, bassist-keyboardist Steve Moore also went deep; deep into the sounds and songs that created who they have become today as a pillar of Relapse Records, a label often associated with noisy artists. However the songs that...
-
Episode 174 - Tristan Shone
Putting a band together for a younger Tristan Shone 20 years ago was not as easy as he thought it might be, so he used his knowledge of mechanical engineering and sense of tenacious autonomy to create his own instruments that would allow him to make live music on his own; Music without the use of...
-
Episode 173 - Tim Kasher - Live at Fitzgerald's
Singer/songwriter/frontman Tim Kasher has been such a prolic maker of music over the past 25+ years with his bands Cursive and The Good Life and his solo records as his vehicles and conduits of creativity, so busy in fact that he has released a new album almost every year since 2000. Tim traveled...
-
Episode 172 - Jordan Zadorozny Pt Deux
Multi-instrumentalist/producer/mixer Jordan Zadorozny created his one man band Blinker the Star in the mid 90's and made a huge splash with his 2nd album August Everywhere with Ken Andrews (Failure) behind the mixer. 28 years and 12 full length albums later JZ has released Animal Math...
-
Episode 171 - Jay Ryan
Artist and musician Jay Ryan remembers the moment that he began to create the animal-based characters that inhabit his hand-printed concert and event posters that have become ubiquitous in the rock world; he was just out of college at U of I in Champaign and was bogging down and unable to finish…
more -
Episode 170 - AE Holiday Wrap-Up Of 2023!!
Episode 170 of Third Gear Scratch, in which our hero, Alien Epilepsy waxes and wanes about this year of our Lord, Two Thousand and Twenty Three. It's been a year of triumphs and struggles which has seen AE release his first and only solo record 'Everything' (Spartan) and tour on it, create a new...
-
Episode 169 - Eugene S Robinson
Being a body-builder and MMA fighter, Eugene S Robinson was a bit of an anomoly as the charismatic front man for the band he founded OXBOW, and before that in Whipping Boy, a more traditional punk rock outfit in the early 80's. It's in his new book, A Walk Across Dirty Waters and Straight Into...
-
Episode 168 - Rob Zabrecky
In 1993, Rob Zabrecky was certain he'd seen his future and that future was as a rockstar and frontman for local LA rockers Possum Dixon, his band that had just been signed to Interscope Records for a 3 record deal. But life is complicated. Indeed they had, by all accounts, a pretty great career…
more -
Episode 167 - Greg Suran Revisited (orig Aug 9, 2019)
This is a pre-pandemic revisit to a previous episode from Aug 9, 2019 in which touring and session guitarist Greg Suran visited the TGS studios to talk about his globe-trotting experiences playing in his own Chicago-based band Cupcakes and BlueManGroup before joining The B-52's in which he still...
-
Episode 166 - Tony Higbee
The 18 year old version of a now grown Tony Higbee would surely be pinching himself for who he shares stages with these days. As a highschool rocker from tiny Monmouth IL, he was a bass player and had evolved into a serviceable chording guitarist in college. It wasn't until he began writing songs...
-
Episode 165 - Jeffrey Babko
When this episode was recorded, the writers and actors strikes were both still going strong with no end in sight, so resident keyboardist for the Jimmy Kimmell Show, Jeff Babko, was able to find time in his normally very busy schedule to rap with me. In fact, the Kimmell show is just a piece of…
more -
Episode 164 - Ryan Patterson
When heavier-than-anything Louisville band Coliseum began to sense their time together was coming to a close around 2015, band leader and seed-writer Ryan Patterson started to get some glimpses of his next move but was struggling to find his voice within that sylistic change. It was a move from...
-
Episode 163 - Salvation's Jason Sipe and Victor Riley
Jason Sipe and Victor Riley of Chicago's own Salvation make a particularly powerful and vicious form of music that many might assume descends from grunge music of the 90's. On the surface perhaps, but this mighty trio, with the help of Mr Mike Lust, a prodigious producer (Urge Overkill, William...
-
Episode 162 - Ryan Raddatz
Writer / actor Ryan Raddatz has spent the last 20 years in LA carving out a career in TV and film, first briefly as an actor, before realizing that writing was his true calling. He spent years writing on show for CBS like the recent reboot of The Odd Couple and The Neighborhood with Cedric The...
-
Episode 161 - Niko Wenner
Guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Niko Wenner has been seeing life through a very different lens since the pre and post pandemic years brought him loss and big gains; his father died and went through a job change and saw some very tough times. But it also brought him a newborn child, his...
-
Episode 160 - Jason Gagovski
In it's infancy, drummer Jason Gagovski's band Sweet Cobra, was always a 4 piece unit; a giant, crushing, throbbing and roaring missive of urgent importance. The move from 4 to 3 piece however was not their decision, as Matt Arluck had cancer that ultimately took his life, leaving them at a loss...
-
Episode 159 - Laurent Schroeder-Lebec
Laurent Schroeder-Lebec's love of heavy, ground-breaking, earth-shaking music is well established by his band Pelican and their diverse discography over the past 20 years. But somewhere around 2012 LSL began to feel the tug of a different calling; starting a family and supporting that family to…
more -
Episode 158 - Jim Hanke
When Vinyl Emergency podcaster Jim Hanke was in school at UW Milwaukee with a double major in Communications and Journalism, he probably never dreamed that one of his future endeavors would be an answer to a question on the famous game show Jeopary. But that's what happened with Biscuits and Jam…
more -
Episode 157 - Travis Talbert
Travis Talbert has made the music biz his living, or maybe it's the music that made him do it. He's a touring and session pedal steel player and guitarist for other touring artists like Arlo McKinley but has also busied himself with his band Frontier Folk Nebraska and now more recently with his...
-
Episode 156 - Chris Neville
Chris Neville is a busy man; As the core member and founder of Tributosaurus, a collection of session killers from Chicago that regularly honor a certain artist or band with sold-out highly perfected tribute concerts featuring almost granular details of that artists recordings (i.e. 6 people to...
-
Episode 155 - Tim Rutili
Tim Rutili is not only from the influential and highly regarded art folk skronk rock band Califone, he in fact is that band. Certainly not to say he's not the only person who makes Califone Califone, indeed that band is more like a collective, often made of 15 humans or more for any given record,...
-
Episode 154 - Gabe Larson
Gabe Larson was actually closer to his maternal grandfather than his paternal grandfather, Waldemar or Wally, the one he named his band after and most likely the man from whom he inherited a bit of his sadness and ennui. And it's this general bout with depression that plays a central role on his...
-
Episode 153 - Jerry A Lang
The idea to rerelease a remixed version of The Badge, a notoriously anti-cop song, from Jerry A Lang's highly influential punkrock band Poison Idea's 3rd album Feel The Darkness (Vinyl Solutions/American Leather) was not exactly his. In this chat it becomes clear how a current Portland police...
-
Episode 152 - Sarah and Mario Quintero
Both Sarah and Mario Quintero of the post-everything band Spotlights have been guests on TGS previously, but never at the same time. It is clear that regardless of the music that they make together, beautifully crushing songs that push sonic boundaries with every release, these two are best…
more -
Episode 151 - Santi Garcia
Producer Santi Garcia was just 12 years old when he approached the radio station in his town with an idea: his own radio show playing new music he loved. His exuberance and love of music led him to recording bands who came to him wanting to be recorded. He borrowed the only 4 track recorder in…
more -
Episode 150 - Pete Stahl
DC punk icon Pete Stahl and his guitarist brother Franz were heavily influenced by their father who was in the biz in the 60's as a band manager. Pete has ridden his simple and profound love of music through a long life of traveling the globe not only as a musician with his band. the godfathers…
more -
Episode 149 - Rhonda Lyne
As Executive Director of the Midwest Music Foundation, Rhonda Lyne sees it as her duty to see through the vision of her friend and musician Abigail Henderson, a talented singer/songwriter with her band The Gaslights in the mid 00's. Abigail was diagnosed with cancer in 2008 and a benefit called...
-
Episode 148 - Stephan Hawkes
When Stephan Hawkes was but a teenager, he and his band at the time called Tibanna, made their first recording with Paul Malinowski of Shiner in the midwest, far away from his hometown of Portland OR. That band ran its course as bands do, but Stephan caught the bug for recording and fell in love...
-
Episode 147 - Taylor Dupuis
Singer/actor Taylor Dupuis has had the same dream as many of us dreamers of living a busy and successful artistic life and she's definitely been living that nocturnal event out to a T. Her band Roanoke which she started with her then boyfriend Joe Beesley has just released their new EP called…
more -
Episode 146 - Alan Cage
After more than 15 years of drumming for Quicksand, Seaweed, Burn and before--and after that, Beyond, with a fair amount of storm and stress in the Quicksand years in particular, Alan Cage wanted to prove to himself that he could master something else in his life, completely unrelated to anything...
-
Episode 145 - AE Reflects On The Last and New Year
Big A is back from an end of year hiatus and takes Episode 145 of TGS to reflect on the year that was 2022 and some positive thoughts on the year ahead, 2023. Last year was tough for many people for many different reasons but we're all hoping for a fresh start moving forward, beginning with the...
-
Episode 144 - Kendall Wind
Growing up in upstate New York, young Kendall Wind took piano lessons before migrating to bass guitar and leaning into The Rock Academy founded by School of Rock's Paul Greene. Her piano knowledge would later inform her bass and guitar playing in the band she put together at Rock Academy with...
-
Episode 143 - Van Wilks
Austin TX has evolved for better and worse over the past 50 years and Texas blues guitar rock legend Van Wilks has been witness to and in the middle of all of it. In fact the city named November 6th Honorary Van Wilks Day in 1997. Van gets much love from guitar wizards like Eric Johnson and Billy...
-
Episode 142 - Jarboe
Right after Jarboe had migrated from the Deep South to New York in the early 80's, she saw Michael Gira and Swans perform and knew that was her destiny. Swans impact today is felt in bands like FACS, Godflesh, Neurosis, Isis and Napalm Death with Jarboe and Michael as the figure heads of Swans....
-
Episode 141 - John Lombardo
Many musicians, waiting for their new record to be pressed, have mused to themselves about starting a vinyl manufacturing business, but John Lombardo actually put a real plan together with 3 other friends to create Smashed Plastic here in Chicago. John pieced together this coalition from his life...
-
Episode 140 - Ben Jorgenson
When Ben Jorgenson began to write a new record for his band Armor For Sleep, their first new music in over 10 years, his mind began to conjure a dystopian world, a post apocalyptic Earth with a museum that held pieces of the old world to remind us all of the past. It also happened that he was...
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
Musician/engineer/bartender Allen Epley talks with artists of all walks and at all levels of success about their own unique journeys and jobs they've worked in order to follow their passions. Many successful musicians, actors, filmmakers, composers, and comedians still have side gigs that afford them the ability to create their art for us. Some get to work in their chosen field and some work jobs that are convenient and make that buck. It is this unique hustle that's at the heart of this podcast. How exactly does the sausage get made when there are bills to be paid? And what drives these maniacs to make our desperate lives better with their art when the pay-off often fulfills their hearts but not their bank accounts?
HOSTED BY
Allen Epley
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Third Gear Scratch have?
Third Gear Scratch currently has 100 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Third Gear Scratch about?
Musician/engineer/bartender Allen Epley talks with artists of all walks and at all levels of success about their own unique journeys and jobs they've worked in order to follow their passions. Many successful musicians, actors, filmmakers, composers, and comedians still have side gigs that afford...
How often does Third Gear Scratch release new episodes?
Third Gear Scratch has 100 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Third Gear Scratch?
You can listen to Third Gear Scratch on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Third Gear Scratch?
Third Gear Scratch is created and hosted by Allen Epley.
URL copied to clipboard!