NYS Music is proud to launch Empire State Music Podcast bringing our audience the best of bands from across New York State. With host Andy Hogan, the podcast can be found on Soundcloud and will bring the best up and coming musicians from around the state, established acts and the local voices that tie together the various music scenes from around the state. Hogan, a Buffalo resident, will host the podcast, his second after What Was I Saying? and one that Hogan sees great potential for.
“If nothing else, I hope this podcast contributes to the never ending effort of continuing to unify the music scene throughout NYS. There are so many incredible local acts throughout the state that are made up of some really cool cats who, in my opinion, deserve a platform to be able to really express themselves; what makes them tick, and where their creativity comes from. In order to do so, I want to get to the roots of these bands and musicians; not only how they get to where they are, but how they fit in to the grand design of music history in America, and where they are headed down the line.”
While a student at SUNY Geneseo, Andy hosted a weekly radio show which eventually became What Was I Saying?, which he co-hosted with Paris Peters. The podcast took a back seat while Andy joined Ponder (formerly Ponder the Giraffe), but has since been reborn with a new focus on the bands and artists from across New York State, as Empire State Music Podcast. Listen to episode 1 with Tough Old Bird, a folk band out of Western New York.
More than midway through their show, lead vocalist and guitar slinger Marty O’Reilly apologized that they weren’t playing straightforward folk music. Of course, no apology was necessary. The crowd had already been moved to multiple standing ovations and were visibly having a hard time containing their gyrations to the confines of their seats. No apology was necessary, regardless, because their music was their music and no one in the room was there to judge its purity. While the promoter’s name may be Honest Folk, the ‘folk’ could just as well refer to the people, not the genre. That is, the people who book the shows, the people who support the shows, the people who attend the shows and the people who play the shows, honest folk one and all.
The band is touring behind their recently released album Stereoscope, a labor of love that was years in the making, featuring songs conceived of from a cabin in picturesque Santa Cruz, California. O’Reilly’s emotional and weathered voice could evoke those landscapes on new ones like “Stereoscope,” “Ghost” and “Let the Wind In,” though they were being played on a drearily rainy and cold day in Rochester, New York. The cozy and dimly lit brick confines of Good Luck made for just as perfect a setting for the rich tapestries being constructed between the finger picked guitars and vibrantly ethereal fiddle. Goff’s drums, which meandered between intricately understated and invigoratingly punctuated, and Berry’s bass boomed and moaned at all the right junctures. They weren’t afraid to let the music take control of the band. The reins were loose and the tunes stretched their legs, arriving at some rather brilliant moments, delighting the band and audience alike.
