Podcasts about Conway

Conway roasts a “long-lost friend” who resurfaces just to beg for Del Mar tickets, warns listeners about “mushing” and shark-filled oceans, and invites fans to join a special Zoom event for the upcoming Conway Cruise to Alaska and Canada on August 6th. Plus, tourism dips in Vegas, San Diego debates nonprofit beach permits, tsunami warnings questioned after Russia's 8.7 quake, and we say goodbye to TV icon Loni Anderson at 79.

BANG! @southernvangard radio Ep442! BACK FROM SUMMER! BACK TO BACK! Vangardians, we are back in business after an extended summer break, and boy do we have quite the episode for you. WORLD EXCLUSIVES from ILLUSTRATE, SENOR KAOS, EDDIE MEEKS, VON PEA, SUPASTITION MRK SX, 4IZE GODBLESSBEATZ DOE BOY PHILLY JALEN FRAZIER, K-PREZ….aaaaaand BREATHE….Meeks brought the tequila through! Goodness gracious sakes alive it's that #SMITHSONIANGRADE #YOUWAAAAALCOME // southernvangard.com // @southernvangard on all platforms #hiphop #undergroundhiphop #boombap Recorded live July 27, 2025 @ Dirty Blanket Studios, Marietta, GA southernvangard.com @southernvangard on all platforms #SmithsonianGrade #WeAreTheGard twitter/IG: @southernvangard @jondoeatl @cappuccinomeeks Pre-Game Beats - Al Rock “Southern Vangard Theme” - Bobby Homack & The Southern Vangard All-Stars Talk Break Inst. - “TNT (Tobacco & Trees)” - KanKick “Off Broadway” - Senor Kaos x Illastrate ft. Von Pea & Eddie Meeks ** WORLD EXCLUSIVE ** “Bear Hill" - Raekwon “Wonderful” - The Fifth Degree ft. Terror Van Poo X Tons (prod. CNR_JAXX) “The Eliminator” - Senor Kaos x Illastrate ** WORLD EXCLUSIVE ** "Wild Corsicans” - Raekwon, Conway the Machine, Benny the Butcher & Westside Gunn “Rari Keys” - Minister Hyde & Mondo Slade “Book Of Eli” - Joe D. Talk Break Inst. - “Revolution With Tosh Leading” - KanKick “Check In” - MRK SX x Illastrate ** WORLD EXCLUSIVE ** “Writings On The Wall” - Senor Kaos x Illastrate ft. Supastition & 4 Ize ** WORLD EXCLUSIVE ** “Mad Scientist” - Yah Sin ft.. Method Man “Primavera” - M-Dot & Confidence ft. Big Shug & Royal Flush “The Omerta” - Raekwon & Nas “Frida Kahlo” - K-Prez (prod. godBLESSbeatz) ** WORLD EXCLUSIVE ** “Work Hard, Play Harder” - UFO Fev & Big Ghost Ltd ft. Jose Santiago “18 Ballgames” - OT The Real x 38 Spesh “Cheddar Biscuits” - Doe Boy Philly (prod. godBLESSbeatz) ** WORLD EXCLUSIVE ** Talk Break Inst. - “Cosmic Propane” - KanKick “Cold Blooded” - Spit Gemz x D-Styles “Checkmate” - Reek Osama & Perutheproducer “Play Ya Position” - Al Rock ft. Chrisfader & Eddie Meeks “Trust Me” - Al Rock ft. J Scienide “Art Piece” - El Gant ft. Ras Kass “Fried Rices” - Jalen Frazier (prod. godBLESSbeatz) ** WORLD EXCLUSIVE ** “Better” - Lord Juco & The Standouts “Jasmine's" - Benny The Butcher ft. Westside Gunn (prod. Daringer) “Smithsonian” - Machacha ft. Jamil Honesty & André DeSaint “X-Rays” - Lord Juco & The Standouts Talk Break Inst. - “EVALC Clone” - KanKick

Special Guest: Chris Broussard - In this inspiring episode, sports analyst and faith-driven leader Chris Broussard joins thepodcast to explore what it means to become an irreplaceable leader—someone whose presence elevates the team, the culture, and the mission. Through the lens of faith, integrity, and performance, Chris unpacks practical leadership principles rooted in action, not just words. To learn more about Chris Broussard and mission, visit https://kingmovement.com.

Threshold Choir sings for dying patients When Johanna Asher moved to Philipstown from Georgia in 2020, she had to leave behind the Atlanta Threshold Choir, which sings to people in hospice or palliative care, so she formed a Hudson Highlands chapter. It came together organically, she says, as she made friends with other singers. A year ago, she and Donna Reilly, Kate Conway, Melissa Angier and Michele Wolfson began learning the Threshold Choir's songs. They visited their first patient earlier this year. The national Threshold Choir was founded in 2000 in northern California by Kate Munger. It has since expanded to include nearly 200 chapters, spanning Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., the Netherlands, Mexico and Guatemala. "When I heard about this, I just thought this is such a special thing," says Patti Cooper of the choir, which now has 10 members. "I want to be sung to at any crisis time in my life." Adds Conway: "This fills up that need to sing, and it's moving for the patients." The Hudson Highlands Threshold Choir practices every other Monday at Taconic Rehabilitation and Nursing in Fishkill. It sings to patients there and at Taconic Rehabilitation in Beacon and the Sapphire nursing home in Wappingers Falls. The national organization recommends that chapters have 15 songs they know by heart and offers about 300 selections on its website. Each chapter has five to six songs they sing often, Asher says. There is conversation and laughter between songs, although some patients may be sedated. Because only three or four choir members visit at one time, each must be able to sing in at least two pitches and handle multiple parts of each song. The practices can be intense. "It's almost like a sport for me," says Conway. "When I leave, I feel like I got this singing workout." The choir usually starts with "Rest Easy," by Marilyn Power Scott, because "everyone needs to rest easy," Asher says. "Rest easy. Let every trouble drift away. Easy… rest easy…" For more information, see thresholdchoir.org/hudsonhighlands. To request a Threshold Choir visit, see thresholdchoir.org/request-singers.

Conway County Hospital Board updates construction project; Little Rock man convicted in death of Conway resident; UACCM celebrates 101 GED graduates; Kiwanis plans Back to School Bash; Morrilton offense previewed; we visit with Arkansas Secretary of State Cole Jester.

Tim kicks off the show with a look at the weekend forecast and why San Francisco is stuck in a cold summer rut. Then, ABC's Alex Stone joins to discuss Deion Sanders' recent bladder cancer diagnosis—and the importance of getting your health checked. It's time for You Got Monks'ed as Michael Monks drops by with fast food stories and updates on the possible return of ICE raids to Los Angeles. But the hour takes a serious turn as breaking news hits: an active shooter situation unfolds on NYC's Park Avenue near the NFL and Blackstone HQs. Tim provides real-time updates, then shifts back to SoCal to unpack how crime waves and street takeovers are shaking up the Valley. Tim kicks off the show talking about the weekend forecast, and San Francisco having a colder than usual Summer. Then ABC's Alex Stone joins the show to discuss the recent bladder cancer diagnosis of Deion Sanders and what it means for getting your health checked!  It's time for ‘You Got Monks'ed,' where Michael Monks drops in to talk fast food stories and gives Conway the latest updates on the potential of the ICE Raids returning to LA.  Tim is on Breaking news out of NYC, where there is an active shooter on 52nd and Park Avenue, right at the NFL and Blackstone building headquarters. Tim explains where the shooting has taken place and the tourist-y nature of the area.  Tim continues with coverage of the breaking news out of NYC where a shooting has happened in / around the NFL and Blackstone headquarter building on 52nd and Park Avenue. And then Tim shifts gears back to LA, talking about the crime wave influence hitting the Valley here in SoCal along with the street takeovers that inevitably lead to looting.  

Update on shooting at Conway; FBI seeks suspect in party shooting at Conway; Conway County Quorum Court approves funding for title search to move forward on consolidating levee districts; JPs establish Housing Task Force; local teachers selected to participate in Master Teachers program through Arch Ford; local students awarded scholarships from Farm Bureau; AGFC offers tips on safe boating during excessive heat events; we visit with Conway County Judge Jimmy Hart.

Brought to you by Crain Buick GMC of Conway

KVOM NewsWatch, Monday, July 28, 2025 - Shooting leaves two dead in Conway; Renovations completed for meeting space for children at DHS; SCCSD school year nears, orientations and parent night events planned; we talk with Donnie Crain of the Morrilton Area Chamber of Commerce.

Thomas Conway joined us for this week's Global News slot...

Uber adding women-only ride option in pilot cities. Who are more chatty men vs. Women drivers // Howlin' Rays in Pasadena named Best Chicken Sandwich! // Sleep trackers cause orthosomnia. What does your sleep tracker reveal about you? Are you obsessed with your sleeping habits? // Conway on Demand– thanks for listening to the podcast, you know you can out us as Pre Set #1---Rancho cucamonga burglary in jewelry store 

Tim Conway Jr. kicks off the show with the sad news of Hulk Hogan's passing at 71—and in true Conway fashion, honors him by bringing in a hot dog steamer. Petros & Money swing by with an update on The Duke of Sports dating contest, and later, Tim reveals that Jay Leno once wrestled Hulk Hogan (!), and the two are now teaming up to sell cars—Tim heads up the “cream puff” division. The hot dog party heats up as ketchup controversies and bathroom habits take center stage. Then, it's back to business with updates on the Encino crime patrol, a shoutout to AM 570 for the hot dog inspiration, and a preview of Dine LA 2025 at JW Marriott, including a plug for local favorite Savoca. 

CHI-SVM hospital in Morrilton earns honors from American Heart Association; Bargains Galore on Highway 64 to be held first full weekend in August; Westrock Coffee opens additional facility in Conway; today's the deadline to sign up for Leadership Conway County 2025-26 class; 2025 high school football season starts in five weeks; we visit with Kevin Van Pelt of the Conway County Extension Service.

JR Runyon, Eric King, & Matt Wilcox talk Faulkner County Sports live each Friday Morning on KAT Country 98.9/92.5, 92.7 JACK FM and My Country Y107.

US President Trump said they will have straight, simple tariffs of between 15% and 50% on countries, while he added the US is in serious talks with the EU and if they agree to open up to US businesses, US will let them pay lower tariffs.Reports noted that the US and the EU were closing in on a trade deal with a 15% tariff rate, albeit this is yet to be officially confirmed, and White House Trade Adviser Navarro said to take the reports with a pinch of salt.EU member states are set to vote on EUR 93bln of counter-tariffs on US goods on Thursday and a broad majority of EU members would support using the anti-coercion instrument in the event of no US trade deal and US tariffs of 30%.Alphabet (GOOGL) shares rose 1.7% after-market following earnings whilst Tesla (TSLA) slipped 4.4% as CEO Musk warned of “rough times”.APAC stocks mostly extended on gains; European equity futures indicate a higher cash market open with Euro Stoxx 50 futures up 1.3% after the cash market closed with gains of 1.0% on Wednesday.Looking ahead, highlights include Global PMIs, German GfK Consumer Sentiment, US Jobless Claims, Canadian Retail Sales, ECB & CBRT Policy Announcements, Speakers including RBNZ's Conway & ECB President Lagarde, Supply from Italy & US.Earnings from LVMH, BNP Paribas, TotalEnergies, STMicroelectronics, Dassault Systemes, Carrefour, Michelin, BE Semiconductor, Richemont, Nestle, Roche MTU Aero, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds, IG, Reckitt Intel, American Airlines, Blackstone, Dow Chemical, Nasdaq, Union Pacific, Honeywell & Keurig Dr Pepper.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

US President Trump said they will have straight, simple tariffs of between 15% and 50% on countries, while he added the US is in serious talks with the EU and if they agree to open up to US businesses, US will let them pay lower tariffs.European bourses continue to gain, albeit are off best levels; US futures mixed, GOOGL +3%, TSLA -6% in pre-market trade.GBP lags on soft PMIs, EUR eyes ECB and potential EU-US breakthrough.EGBs hit by trade updates, Gilts off lows post-PMIs, USTs await data.Crude rises on trade optimism and geopolitics, gold unwinds risk premium.Looking ahead, Global PMIs, US Jobless Claims, Canadian Retail Sales, ECB & CBRT Policy Announcements, Speakers including RBNZ's Conway & ECB President Lagarde, Supply from the US.Earnings from LVMH, Carrefour, Michelin, Intel, American Airlines, Blackstone, Dow Chemical, Nasdaq, Union Pacific, Honeywell & Keurig Dr Pepper.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Christina Lecuyer is a confidence coach living in Conway, AR. Previously a professional golfer turned television personality, Christina soon realized that her wealth hadn't brought her happiness. After years of battling low self-confidence, an eating disorder, and tying her worth to external validation, Christina has created what she refers to as “the best life ever” which includes a business coaching clients from around the world. Through her signature “Decision, Faith & Action” framework Christina has helped thousands of clients curate their own “best life ever”. Christina is one of only a handful of coaches that specializes specifically in building confidence using a 1:1 coaching model, because she believes it's the long term accountability and support from working on both mindset and strategy that creates sustainable and enjoyable long term results of self trust and confidence.

Ald. Bill Conway, 34th Ward, joins Steve Dale, filling in for Lisa Dent, to discuss the NASCAR Chicago Street Race not returning in 2026. Ald. Conway shares that while NASCAR will not be in Chicago next year, the street race could return in 2027. Then, he discusses the CTA and the budget cliff that the […]

Údarás na Gaeltachta, in collaboration with University of Galway, has announced funding for two postgraduate bursaries worth €10,000 each for students enrolling in the University's MA in Planning and Development programme this September. The postgraduate bursary scheme was first launched in 2024 and is designed to support Irish-speaking graduates with an interest in contributing to the sustainable development of Gaeltacht areas. Sustainable development bursary for the Gaeltacht regions Along with valuable work experience with Údarás na Gaeltachta, the bursaries will enable successful applicants to gain insights into the unique planning and development challenges faced by Gaeltacht communities, including those related to economic, social, educational, sociolinguistic and cultural development. Tomás Ó Síocháin, CEO of Údarás na Gaeltachta, said: "We are delighted to support this innovative programme. It equips recipients with comprehensive expertise to address the planning and development challenges that public agencies face when implementing investment and development strategies in Gaeltacht and rural areas. By strengthening capabilities within Local Authorities and planning organisations, we are preparing the next generation of professional planners to champion sustainable development in Gaeltacht regions for years to come." Dr Thérèse Conway, Director of the MA in Planning and Development at University of Galway, said: "Having planners that understand the unique context of minority language areas is central to the future of Gaeltacht regions. These very generous bursaries will fund two Irish speakers, who along with their language abilities, will learn the required planning acumen, through the MA in Planning and Development programme, to engage with these unique areas." Eoin Brett, a 2024 bursary recipient and MA in Planning and Development student, said: "Receiving the Údarás na Gaeltachta bursary gave me direct experience in planning for the future of Gaeltacht communities and a chance to apply what I was learning in the classroom to real projects. The experience gave me a better understanding of how planning decisions affect everyday life in Gaeltacht communities and the unique needs of these areas." The MA in Planning and Development at University of Galway prepares graduates for careers in land use and physical planning, surveying, community and regional development, and sustainable planning practice. This bursary offers a unique chance for Irish-speaking graduates to contribute to the preservation and growth of Gaeltacht communities while advancing their professional qualifications. The deadline for applications is Friday August 15th, 2025. For more information contact Dr Thérèse Conway, Programme Director, at therese.conway@ universityofgalway.ie or visit https://www. universityofgalway.ie/courses/ taught-postgraduate-courses/ planning-and-development.html. See more breaking stories here. More about Irish Tech News Irish Tech News are Ireland's No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland's No.1 Tech Podcast too. You can find hundreds of fantastic previous episodes and subscribe using whatever platform you like via our Anchor.fm page here: https://anchor.fm/irish-tech-news If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming Podcast email us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie now to discuss. Irish Tech News have a range of services available to help promote your business. Why not drop us a line at Info@IrishTechNews.ie now to find out more about how we can help you reach our audience. You can also find and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.

The requests keep coming in, and this time it's Reba & Vince's 1993 powerhouse ballad, "The Heart Won't Lie". In the canon of country duets, this one holds a unique place. Conway & Loretta this ain't, but how does this arrangement fit the adult contemporary context leading up to it, and what does Disney have to do with it?

On this edition of In Black America, producer and host John L. Hanson, Jr. concludes a discussion of the challenges and opportunities for African American women in the real estate and facility management industry with Denita R. Conway, founder and president of Proven Management LLC, a leading transition planning and logistics company specializing in project […] The post Denita R. Conway, pt. 2 (Ep 34, 2025) appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

It's a somber start to Friday's show as Tim Conway Jr. covers the devastating news of a tragic accidental explosion that has claimed the lives of three L.A. County Sheriff's deputies — the worst departmental loss since 1857. KFI's Michael Monks joins Tim to provide the latest updates on the heartbreaking incident, while Tim calls for political unity in the wake of the tragedy. Fox LA's Elex Michaelson reports live from the scene as the procession for the fallen deputies is just about to be underway. Plus, Tim updates listeners on a sudden flash flood alert across L.A. as the city reels from a dark day.

This episode we are joined by poet and author PS Conway (@ps.conway) as he shares a his list of five books to be castaway with. This list is for readers who seek literature that blends epic storytelling with profound emotional and philosophical depth. These works explore themes of identity, memory, faith, and freedom—often through lyrical prose and innovative narrative styles. Ideal for those who aren't afraid to get a little lost in complexity, wrestle with meaning, and emerge changed by the journey. Perfect for lovers of classics who crave both beauty and challenge in their reading. Join the Books to Last Podcast, where book lovers share their top 5 must-read books for a dream getaway. Inspired by BBC's Desert Island Discs, each episode features fun stories, book recommendations, and heartfelt conversations. Tune in for inspiring tales and discover your next great read!Guest Details:Book: https://a.co/d/cRGyuyoWebsite: https://psconway.com/Poetry: https://poetrybyps.com/Instagram: @ps.conwayPodcast:W: https://anchor.fm/bookstolastpodTwitter: @BooksToLastPodInstagram: @BooksToLastPodMusic by DAYLILY@daylilyuk on Instagramhttps://open.spotify.com/artist/31logKBelcPBZMNhUmU3Q6Spoiler WarningBooks Discussed:The Fellowship of the Ring by John R. R. TolkienWatership Down by Richard AdamsThe Sound and the Fury by William FaulknerA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James JoyceSong of Solomon by Toni MorrisonHis Dark Materials by Philip PullmanHeart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Clare's senator has spoken in the Seanad for the first time since his resignation from Fine Gael's Parliamentary Party five months ago. Senator Martin Conway left Fine Gael in February of this year after being arrested in Dublin in January for public intoxication which prompted an ongoing disciplinary process within the party. The Ennistymon native has received over €5,200 in Parliamentary Standard Allowance payments since February according to Oireachtas data despite not having spoken in the Houses of the Oireachtas since November of last year. Senator Conway broke his silence on the second-last day of the Seanad term before the summer recess by addressing the Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, Patrick O'Donovan, on the subject of inclusivity in sport.

Will the victim's family and the public get access to all the evidence in the Idaho4 murder case? This critical gag order hearing today could determine whether chilling details about Bryan Kohberger and the brutal murder of four young Idaho students are unsealed for the world to see. Welcome to Surviving the Survivor, the show that brings you the #BestGuests in all of #truecrime. As families and media await more insight into Bryan Kohberger's motive, a critical gag order hearing is set for July 17, 2025 to determine if pre-sentencing restrictions on discussing court details will be lifted. This hearing could unlock new revelations about his alleged online alias and shed light on digital evidence tied to the case. STS Host Joel Waldman will be watching it live along with #BestGuests who will provide analysis. Bryan Kohberger confessed to the horrific November 13, 2022 stabbings of four University of Idaho students and plead guilty on July 2, 2025, to avoid the death penalty. He will now face four consecutive life sentences plus ten years and has given up his right to appeal. Evidence against him included DNA on a recovered knife sheath, phone data, and surveillance footage. We remember the lives of the four victims senselessly murdered in Moscow, Idaho: Ethan Chapin: A 20- year-old from Conway, Washington who was staying with his girlfriend, Xana Kernodle, the night of the murder. Ethan was a triplet. Kaylee Goncalves: A 21-year-old from Rathdrum, Idaho who was murdered in her home next to her best friend, Maddie. Xana Kernodle: A 20-year-old from Avondale, Arizona, who later lived in Post Falls, Idaho. She was murdered at her home with her close friends and boyfriend. Madison Mogen: A 21-year-old from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho who many believe was the intended target. Maddie was murdered next to her childhood best friend, Kaylee.More of STS:Links: Https://linktr.ee/stspodcastGet Joel's Book: Https://amzn.to/48GwbLxSTS Merch: Https://www.bonfire.com/store/sts-store/Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SurvivingTheSurvivorCatch us live on YouTube: Surviving The Survivor: #BestGuests in True Crime - YouTubeVenmo Donations: @STSPodcast or Https://www.venmo.com/stspodcast#bryankohberger #trial #courtroomdrama #hearing #murdermystery #gagorder #stsnation #newsupdate #moscowidaho #idaho4update #truecrimecommunity #truecrimepodcast #truestory

Alex Stone, LAPD say Robin Kaye and her husband were murdered last Thursday by a man who was burglarizing their home, but they weren't found until Monday when a welfare check was called on them because they had not been heard from since Thursday.  Detectives believe Kaye, who was a senior music producer on American Idol, and her husband interrupted the man when they came home, there was a struggle, and he shot and killed them.  The home was not ransacked.  While the 22-year-old in custody allegedly went into the home as a burglar, his ultimate reason for being inside is not clear.  Last week the LAPD was called to the home for a possible burglary but cleared after seeing no signs of a burglary.  It is believed that was the incident when the couple was killed.// National Hot Dog Day and The Foosh aka The Wilderbeast was cut-off from KLAC's Hotdogs! Conway wonders how Foosh's young stomach can tolerate this number of hot dogs! // The Foosh visited Petros & Money on Hotdog day! // Alaska 7.3 earthquake. The tsunami warning was canceled following 7.3 earthquake in Aleutians. Neil Diamond surprise appearance at his Beautiful Noise musical.  #AlaskaEarthquake #Aleutians #Earthquakes #HotdogDay #EncinoMurders 

Hour 2 kicks off with an Angel Martinez live traffic update on the I-15 truck fire debacle—one lane's open, but delays continue. Then, Tim dives into a bizarre arrest involving a CSU professor tied to the recent ICE raid at a marijuana farm. The professor claims innocence, but the video says otherwise. Conway gets nostalgic about childhood fart humor (as only he can) before covering a tragic workplace accident involving a meat grinder. Later, Tim chats with Peter Gillooly, CEO of The Wellness Company, about how to stay healthy while traveling this summer. The hour wraps with the weirdest headline of the day: Elmo's social media account gets hacked with offensive content—why does a puppet have Twitter anyway? And did you know chimpanzees are trend-followers too?

Join the conversation with C4 & Bryan Nehman.  It's the 5 year anniversary of the C4 & Bryan Nehman Show!!  C4 & Bryan started the show this morning discussing the Betsy Fox Tolentino interview with David Collins from WBAL TV 11.  President Trump has had it with Putin.  City Councilman Mark Conway joined the show in-studio discussing opioids & more.  The Epstein chaos continues.  Listen to C4 & Bryan Nehman live weekdays from 5:30 to 10am on WBAL News Radio 1090, FM 101.5 & the WBAL Radio App.

This week on In Black America, producer and host John L. Hanson, Jr. begins a conversation with Denita R. Conway, founder and president of Proven Management LLC, a recognized leader in the moving and logistics industry, specializing in project management, interior design and transition planning, discussing the challenges facing African American women in the real […] The post Denita R. Conway, pt. 1 (Ep. 33, 2025) appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

Fred Roggin wraps up his Friday fill-in with a fast-paced and fun Hour 3! He talks with California State Senator Tony Strickland about what's really going on with the state's crime numbers, underfunded reform efforts like Prop 36, and the broader mismanagement in Sacramento. Then, Fred welcomes in-stadium entertainment legend Jay Flats — the voice behind the LA Kings' live events — who's now taking the Wheel of Fortune on the road. They discuss Jay's fascinating path from hockey hype man to game show host. Finally, Fred closes the night with the Conway crew in a classic whip-around, sharing what everyone learned from the show.

Presented by Hawks Homes in Conway & Bryant

In Hour 2, Mark Thompson and the Conway crew track the latest on the Rancho Fire in Laguna, where progress is being made. Mark then takes a step back to reflect on the wildfires that rocked LA six months ago, highlighting how far the city has come—and how far it still has to go. KFI's own Heather Brooker shares a powerful audio retrospective from the frontlines of KFI's wildfire coverage, offering a deeply personal lens on the crisis. The hour closes on a lighter note, with the crew's July 4th plans and a look at the rising trend of drone shows replacing traditional fireworks.

 On today's episode, I am so excited to introduce you to my friend and mastermind client, the extraordinary marketing coach and super copywriter, Ashley Conway!In this episode, we're going to be diving into mistakes that you might be making in your business that are causing you to blend in with the crowd and losing you valuable leads. How can you write copy that allows you to truly stand out from all the voices on the internet? How can you write copy that attracts your ideal audience? Are you falling into some of these common mistakes and misconceptions?I can't wait to discuss all of these things and more with you on today's episode. Let's dive in!>> At 2:58, before discussing mistakes people make in their copywriting, Ashley tells us some common mistakes business owners make when it comes to hiring a copywriter for their business. >> At 5:51,  we talk about  mistakes that her clients are making right now that are causing them to blend in and to lose leads. Ashley gives us some examples of what good stand out marketing would look like versus blend in marketing.>> At 14:13, Ashley goes into some real life examples of what she sees when business owners start to get their marketing and messaging right; and she even offers a FREE training you can download and watch that discusses the top 10 most common copywriting mistakes business owners make. Important Links:Follow Ashley on Instagram: @beweirdmarketingWatch Ashley's FREE training: 10 Reasons You Aren't Standing Out From Your CompetitionFollow Rachel on Instagram: @rachelrmcmichaelGet your High Converting Landing Page Template: rachelmcmichael.com/landingpage

On this episode of Talking Cents, I'm joined by Chad Roller from our Conway office, and we're digging into something that might sound like a problem for future you: Social Security. I know, it feels far off, but trust me - it's worth paying attention to now. We'll cover how it affects your paycheck, why when you claim it matters, and how to build it into your bigger retirement plan. Plus, we'll talk about what could happen if the system changes. Visit https://www.ssa.gov for more information on your Social Security benefits. And if you're looking for tools to help in your journey to true financial independence, visit https://sparkmywealth.com

Happy 4th of July 2025! -  Tim remembers Cal Jam Festival 1974 // Disneyland with the Conway's

The first literary biography of Tim O'Brien, the preeminent American writer of the war in Vietnam and one of the best writers of his generation, drawing on never-before-seen materials and original interviews. "Vietnam made me a writer." —Tim O'Brien Featuring over one hundred interviews with family, friends, peers, and others—not to mention countless exchanges with Tim O'Brien himself—Peace is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O'Brien (St. Martin's Press, 2025) provides a nearly day-by-day, gripping account of O'Brien's thirteen months as an infantryman in Vietnam and gives equal diligence to reconstructing O'Brien's writing process. This meticulously researched biography explores the life and journey that turned O'Brien into a literary icon and a household name. It includes an unpublished short story about O'Brien from a college girlfriend, documentation of his comical involvement with the Washington Post's coverage of Watergate, and a 1989 attic exchange between American and Vietnamese writers on the eve of the publication of O'Brien's most beloved book, The Things They Carried, years before the two countries normalized relations. Peace is a Shy Thing is as much a history of the era as it is a story of O'Brien's life, from his small-town midwestern mid-century childhood, to winning the National Book Award and his status as literary elder statesman. A story which Vernon, a combat veteran of the Persian Gulf War and a literary scholar trained by officers and professors of the Vietnam era, is uniquely suited to tell. Guest: Alex Vernon (he/him) graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (the only literature major in his class of over a thousand), served in combat as a tank platoon leader in the Persian Gulf War, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The recipient of an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Book Award and a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship, he is the M.E. & Ima Graves Peace Distinguished Professor of English at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: https://scholars.duke.edu/pers... Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jennapittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The first literary biography of Tim O'Brien, the preeminent American writer of the war in Vietnam and one of the best writers of his generation, drawing on never-before-seen materials and original interviews. "Vietnam made me a writer." —Tim O'Brien Featuring over one hundred interviews with family, friends, peers, and others—not to mention countless exchanges with Tim O'Brien himself—Peace is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O'Brien (St. Martin's Press, 2025) provides a nearly day-by-day, gripping account of O'Brien's thirteen months as an infantryman in Vietnam and gives equal diligence to reconstructing O'Brien's writing process. This meticulously researched biography explores the life and journey that turned O'Brien into a literary icon and a household name. It includes an unpublished short story about O'Brien from a college girlfriend, documentation of his comical involvement with the Washington Post's coverage of Watergate, and a 1989 attic exchange between American and Vietnamese writers on the eve of the publication of O'Brien's most beloved book, The Things They Carried, years before the two countries normalized relations. Peace is a Shy Thing is as much a history of the era as it is a story of O'Brien's life, from his small-town midwestern mid-century childhood, to winning the National Book Award and his status as literary elder statesman. A story which Vernon, a combat veteran of the Persian Gulf War and a literary scholar trained by officers and professors of the Vietnam era, is uniquely suited to tell. Guest: Alex Vernon (he/him) graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (the only literature major in his class of over a thousand), served in combat as a tank platoon leader in the Persian Gulf War, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The recipient of an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Book Award and a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship, he is the M.E. & Ima Graves Peace Distinguished Professor of English at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: https://scholars.duke.edu/pers... Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jennapittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

The first literary biography of Tim O'Brien, the preeminent American writer of the war in Vietnam and one of the best writers of his generation, drawing on never-before-seen materials and original interviews. "Vietnam made me a writer." —Tim O'Brien Featuring over one hundred interviews with family, friends, peers, and others—not to mention countless exchanges with Tim O'Brien himself—Peace is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O'Brien (St. Martin's Press, 2025) provides a nearly day-by-day, gripping account of O'Brien's thirteen months as an infantryman in Vietnam and gives equal diligence to reconstructing O'Brien's writing process. This meticulously researched biography explores the life and journey that turned O'Brien into a literary icon and a household name. It includes an unpublished short story about O'Brien from a college girlfriend, documentation of his comical involvement with the Washington Post's coverage of Watergate, and a 1989 attic exchange between American and Vietnamese writers on the eve of the publication of O'Brien's most beloved book, The Things They Carried, years before the two countries normalized relations. Peace is a Shy Thing is as much a history of the era as it is a story of O'Brien's life, from his small-town midwestern mid-century childhood, to winning the National Book Award and his status as literary elder statesman. A story which Vernon, a combat veteran of the Persian Gulf War and a literary scholar trained by officers and professors of the Vietnam era, is uniquely suited to tell. Guest: Alex Vernon (he/him) graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (the only literature major in his class of over a thousand), served in combat as a tank platoon leader in the Persian Gulf War, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The recipient of an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Book Award and a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship, he is the M.E. & Ima Graves Peace Distinguished Professor of English at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: https://scholars.duke.edu/pers... Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jennapittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Happy 4th of July Weekend!!Jay Leno joins Conway... Just wind them up and let them go!Also, Mark Thompson's feelings about tipping... And... THE DON PARDO COMPETITION.Thompson.Cro.Two men enter.One man leaves in glory.

Conway remembers going on a date in 1981 at the Getty. He just HAD to know the score of the Dodgers game... Smooooooth... Nobody likes getting yelled at... Nobody.Richie has worked in this building for a few years now... He has been staring at a giant mural painted on the wall inside the studio of Vin Scully, and he DOES NOT KNOW WHO VIN SCULLY IS.

Chief Operating Officer, Abbie Moore oversees direct-to-consumer digital solutions that improve the lives of pets and the people who love them. After 18 years of senior leadership at Adopt-a-Pet.com, Abbie joined Petco Love in 2022. Image recognition to return lost pets. // The Middle TV show. Shark 16' Great white comes close to fisherman in CA. Gummies and the trending brands  // In California, the taxability of gummies depends on whether they are considered a food product or a candy. Food products are generally exempt from sales tax, while candy is typically subject to it. Conway's gummies story // Another fight on a flight, this time on Frontier Airlines #PetLove #Petco #Pets #Dogs #LostPets #Sharks #FrontierAirlines #FightonFlight 

Illegal fireworks bust. Petros & Money pissed about Ska-Foosh's birthday. // David Vassegh, Dodgers reporter on Clayton Kershaw's 3000th strikeout // Conway gets mistaken for working at so many places. Like Target, REI, Home Depot, Target // Sean 'Diddy' Combs verdict: Combs won't be freed before sentencing. Combs was acquitted on racketeering and sex trafficking charges but found guilty of lesser charges. He denied all of the allegations.  #Fireworks #Diddy #Dodgers #HomeDepot #Target  

The Foosh's birthday! 37 is when you turn down trouble! Conway's first Dodger game. Clayton Kershaw to get his 3000th strikeout! Holiday & Dodger traffic with Angel. Did he? evidently Diddy did not // Michael Monks, L.A. City Council to crack down on bus tours of Pacific Palisades And L.A. City Council ban the “N” and “C” words // Senator Tony Strickland on the new gas tax and travel for the 4th of July weekend // Dodgers and CLayton Kershaw making history. 

James and John discuss Etsy finds: Macintosh keychains, 3D Mac icon wallart, Apple logo socks. They look at Conway's Game of Life for Mac, and news includes the end of FireWire, Spigen iMac shaped Watch charger stand, a miniature Mac how-to, Mac-colored filament, and a Mac Classic emulator called Snow.       Join our Facebook page, follow us on X (Twitter), watch us on YouTube, and visit us at RetroMacCast.

Tim dives into the wild world of niche dating websites and reflects on the legacy of late KTLA anchor Sam Rubin. Things take a comedic turn with a Conway-as-Mark Thompson impression. Later, Tim breaks down the partial verdict in the Diddy trial and speculates on what's next as jurors head back into deliberations. Then, a special interview with retiring Huntington Beach PD helicopter pilot Mark Wershing about his legendary career in the skies. The hour wraps with a wild story out of Sherman Oaks involving a runaway tow truck and a dumped stolen vehicle.

You got Monks'ed - Tim opens the show with Michael Monks discussing his now-trending display-model couch story, which has a new ending twist, and then they discuss the ongoing tension between the Justice Department and the leadership of Los Angeles, namely, Mayor Karen Bass. // Tim gives an update on the Inland Empire fires which seem to thankfully be dissipating. And then Conway moves on to discuss some sad changes happening in Santa Monica, including the famous Nordstrom store closing. // California Gubernatorial candidate, Stephen Cloobeck joins the show to talk about his campaign and vision for Los Angeles. // Conway shifts to discussing dating apps and warns listeners to be careful of the scams going on – people are losing their life savings – and Tim questions what goes in the con process that someone would send money to a stranger they've never met. Tim plays a news clip of a tragic story about a mother who went on a date and wound-up dead.  

In this episode, Rebekah Fincher, Chief Administrative Officer at Conway Regional Health System, shares her journey in healthcare leadership, the critical maternal care needs in Arkansas, and her passion for expanding graduate medical education to strengthen the state's future physician workforce.

George Conway and JVL break down a stunning whistleblower complaint accusing Deputy AG nominee Emil Bove of telling colleagues the DOJ should ignore court orders and deport migrants anyway. They explore the Supreme Court's unexplained decision enabling deportation to dangerous countries, the Kafkaesque Abrego Garcia case, and the GOP's broader assault on Harvard. It's a legal and political breakdown—Conway says bluntly: “The criminals are in charge.”

For those who haven't heard the announcement I posted, songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the second part of a two-episode look at the song “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, and the intertwining careers of Joe Boyd, Sandy Denny, and Richard Thompson. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-one-minute bonus episode available, on Judy Collins’ version of this song. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by editing, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum For about an hour this was uploaded with the wrong Elton John clip in place of “Saturday Sun”. This has now been fixed. Resources Because of the increasing problems with Mixcloud’s restrictions, I have decided to start sharing streaming playlists of the songs used in episodes instead of Mixcloud ones. This Tunemymusic link will let you listen to the playlist I created on your streaming platform of choice — however please note that not all the songs excerpted are currently available on streaming. The songs missing from the Tidal version are “Shanten Bells” by the Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” by A.L. Lloyd, two by Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, three by Elton John & Linda Peters, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow” by Sandy Denny and “You Never Know” by Charlie Drake, but the other fifty-nine are there. Other songs may be missing from other services. The main books I used on Fairport Convention as a whole were Patrick Humphries' Meet On The Ledge, Clinton Heylin's What We Did Instead of Holidays, and Kevan Furbank's Fairport Convention on Track. Rob Young's Electric Eden is the most important book on the British folk-rock movement. Information on Richard Thompson comes from Patrick Humphries' Richard Thompson: Strange Affair and Thompson's own autobiography Beeswing.  Information on Sandy Denny comes from Clinton Heylin's No More Sad Refrains and Mick Houghton's I've Always Kept a Unicorn. I also used Joe Boyd's autobiography White Bicycles and Chris Blackwell's The Islander.  And this three-CD set is the best introduction to Fairport's music currently in print. Transcript Before we begin, this episode contains reference to alcohol and cocaine abuse and medical neglect leading to death. It also starts with some discussion of the fatal car accident that ended last episode. There’s also some mention of child neglect and spousal violence. If that’s likely to upset you, you might want to skip this episode or read the transcript. One of the inspirations for this podcast when I started it back in 2018 was a project by Richard Thompson, which appears (like many things in Thompson’s life) to have started out of sheer bloody-mindedness. In 1999 Playboy magazine asked various people to list their “songs of the Millennium”, and most of them, understanding the brief, chose a handful of songs from the latter half of the twentieth century. But Thompson determined that he was going to list his favourite songs *of the millennium*. He didn’t quite manage that, but he did cover seven hundred and forty years, and when Playboy chose not to publish it, he decided to turn it into a touring show, in which he covered all his favourite songs from “Sumer Is Icumen In” from 1260: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Sumer is Icumen In”] Through numerous traditional folk songs, union songs like “Blackleg Miner”, pieces by early-modern composers, Victorian and Edwardian music hall songs, and songs by the Beatles, the Ink Spots, the Kinks, and the Who, all the way to “Oops! I Did It Again”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Oops! I Did it Again”] And to finish the show, and to show how all this music actually ties together, he would play what he described as a “medieval tune from Brittany”, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”] We have said many times in this podcast that there is no first anything, but there’s a reason that Liege and Lief, Fairport Convention’s third album of 1969, and the album other than Unhalfbricking on which their reputation largely rests, was advertised with the slogan “The first (literally) British folk rock album ever”. Folk-rock, as the term had come to be known, and as it is still usually used today, had very little to do with traditional folk music. Rather, the records of bands like The Byrds or Simon and Garfunkel were essentially taking the sounds of British beat groups of the early sixties, particularly the Searchers, and applying those sounds to material by contemporary singer-songwriters. People like Paul Simon and Bob Dylan had come up through folk clubs, and their songs were called folk music because of that, but they weren’t what folk music had meant up to that point — songs that had been collected after being handed down through the folk process, changed by each individual singer, with no single identifiable author. They were authored songs by very idiosyncratic writers. But over their last few albums, Fairport Convention had done one or two tracks per album that weren’t like that, that were instead recordings of traditional folk songs, but arranged with rock instrumentation. They were not necessarily the first band to try traditional folk music with electric instruments — around the same time that Fairport started experimenting with the idea, so did an Irish band named Sweeney’s Men, who brought in a young electric guitarist named Henry McCullough briefly. But they do seem to have been the first to have fully embraced the idea. They had done so to an extent with “A Sailor’s Life” on Unhalfbricking, but now they were going to go much further: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves” (from about 4:30)] There had been some doubt as to whether Fairport Convention would even continue to exist — by the time Unhalfbricking, their second album of the year, was released, they had been through the terrible car accident that had killed Martin Lamble, the band’s drummer, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson’s girlfriend. Most of the rest of the band had been seriously injured, and they had made a conscious decision not to discuss the future of the band until they were all out of hospital. Ashley Hutchings was hospitalised the longest, and Simon Nicol, Richard Thompson, and Sandy Denny, the other three surviving members of the band, flew over to LA with their producer and manager, Joe Boyd, to recuperate there and get to know the American music scene. When they came back, the group all met up in the flat belonging to Denny’s boyfriend Trevor Lucas, and decided that they were going to continue the band. They made a few decisions then — they needed a new drummer, and as well as a drummer they wanted to get in Dave Swarbrick. Swarbrick had played violin on several tracks on Unhalfbricking as a session player, and they had all been thrilled to work with him. Swarbrick was one of the most experienced musicians on the British folk circuit. He had started out in the fifties playing guitar with Beryl Marriott’s Ceilidh Band before switching to fiddle, and in 1963, long before Fairport had formed, he had already appeared on TV with the Ian Campbell Folk Group, led by Ian Campbell, the father of Ali and Robin Campbell, later of UB40: [Excerpt: The Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Shanten Bells (medley on Hullaballoo!)”] He’d sung with Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd: [Excerpt: A.L. Lloyd, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” ] And he’d formed his hugely successful duo with Martin Carthy, releasing records like “Byker Hill” which are often considered among the best British folk music of all time: [Excerpt: Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, “Byker Hill”] By the time Fairport had invited him to play on Unhalfbricking, Swarbrick had already performed on twenty albums as a core band member, plus dozens more EPs, singles, and odd tracks on compilations. They had no reason to think they could actually get him to join their band. But they had three advantages. The first was that Swarbrick was sick of the traditional folk scene at the time, saying later “I didn’t like seven-eighths of the people involved in it, and it was extremely opportune to leave. I was suddenly presented with the possibilities of exploring the dramatic content of the songs to the full.” The second was that he was hugely excited to be playing with Richard Thompson, who was one of the most innovative guitarists of his generation, and Martin Carthy remembers him raving about Thompson after their initial sessions. (Carthy himself was and is no slouch on the guitar of course, and there was even talk of getting him to join the band at this point, though they decided against it — much to the relief of rhythm guitarist Simon Nicol, who is a perfectly fine player himself but didn’t want to be outclassed by *two* of the best guitarists in Britain at the same time). And the third was that Joe Boyd told him that Fairport were doing so well — they had a single just about to hit the charts with “Si Tu Dois Partir” — that he would only have to play a dozen gigs with Fairport in order to retire. As it turned out, Swarbrick would play with the group for a decade, and would never retire — I saw him on his last tour in 2015, only eight months before he died. The drummer the group picked was also a far more experienced musician than any of the rest, though in a very different genre. Dave Mattacks had no knowledge at all of the kind of music they played, having previously been a player in dance bands. When asked by Hutchings if he wanted to join the band, Mattacks’ response was “I don’t know anything about the music. I don’t understand it… I can’t tell one tune from another, they all sound the same… but if you want me to join the group, fine, because I really like it. I’m enjoying myself musically.” Mattacks brought a new level of professionalism to the band, thanks to his different background. Nicol said of him later “He was dilligent, clean, used to taking three white shirts to a gig… The application he could bring to his playing was amazing. With us, you only played well when you were feeling well.” This distinction applied to his playing as well. Nicol would later describe the difference between Mattacks’ drumming and Lamble’s by saying “Martin’s strength was as an imaginative drummer. DM came in with a strongly developed sense of rhythm, through keeping a big band of drunken saxophone players in order. A great time-keeper.” With this new line-up and a new sense of purpose, the group did as many of their contemporaries were doing and “got their heads together in the country”. Joe Boyd rented the group a mansion, Farley House, in Farley Chamberlayne, Hampshire, and they stayed there together for three months. At the start, the group seem to have thought that they were going to make another record like Unhalfbricking, with some originals, some songs by American songwriters, and a few traditional songs. Even after their stay in Farley Chamberlayne, in fact, they recorded a few of the American songs they’d rehearsed at the start of the process, Richard Farina’s “Quiet Joys of Brotherhood” and Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn’s “Ballad of Easy Rider”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Ballad of Easy Rider”] Indeed, the whole idea of “getting our heads together in the country” (as the cliche quickly became in the late sixties as half of the bands in Britain went through much the same kind of process as Fairport were doing — but usually for reasons more to do with drug burnout or trend following than recovering from serious life-changing trauma) seems to have been inspired by Bob Dylan and the Band getting together in Big Pink. But very quickly they decided to follow the lead of Ashley Hutchings, who had had something of a Damascene conversion to the cause of traditional English folk music. They were listening mostly to Music From Big Pink by the Band, and to the first album by Sweeney’s Men: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “The Handsome Cabin Boy”] And they decided that they were going to make something that was as English as those records were North American and Irish (though in the event there were also a few Scottish songs included on the record). Hutchings in particular was becoming something of a scholar of traditional music, regularly visiting Cecil Sharp House and having long conversations with A.L. Lloyd, discovering versions of different traditional songs he’d never encountered before. This was both amusing and bemusing Sandy Denny, who had joined a rock group in part to get away from traditional music; but she was comfortable singing the material, and knew a lot of it and could make a lot of suggestions herself. Swarbrick obviously knew the repertoire intimately, and Nicol was amenable, while Mattacks was utterly clueless about the folk tradition at this point but knew this was the music he wanted to make. Thompson knew very little about traditional music, and of all the band members except Denny he was the one who has shown the least interest in the genre in his subsequent career — but as we heard at the beginning, showing the least interest in the genre is a relative thing, and while Thompson was not hugely familiar with the genre, he *was* able to work with it, and was also more than capable of writing songs that fit in with the genre. Of the eleven songs on the album, which was titled Liege and Lief (which means, roughly, Lord and Loyalty), there were no cover versions of singer-songwriters. Eight were traditional songs, and three were originals, all written in the style of traditional songs. The album opened with “Come All Ye”, an introduction written by Denny and Hutchings (the only time the two would ever write together): [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Come All Ye”] The other two originals were songs where Thompson had written new lyrics to traditional melodies. On “Crazy Man Michael”, Swarbrick had said to Thompson that the tune to which he had set his new words was weaker than the lyrics, to which Thompson had replied that if Swarbrick felt that way he should feel free to write a new melody. He did, and it became the first of the small number of Thompson/Swarbrick collaborations: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Crazy Man Michael”] Thompson and Swarbrick would become a brief songwriting team, but as much as anything else it was down to proximity — the two respected each other as musicians, but never got on very well. In 1981 Swarbrick would say “Richard and I never got on in the early days of FC… we thought we did, but we never did. We composed some bloody good songs together, but it was purely on a basis of “you write that and I’ll write this, and we’ll put it together.” But we never sat down and had real good chats.” The third original on the album, and by far the most affecting, is another song where Thompson put lyrics to a traditional tune. In this case he thought he was putting the lyrics to the tune of “Willie O'Winsbury”, but he was basing it on a recording by Sweeney’s Men. The problem was that Sweeney’s Men had accidentally sung the lyrics of “Willie O'Winsbury'” to the tune of a totally different song, “Fause Foodrage”: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “Willie O’Winsbury”] Thompson took that melody, and set to it lyrics about loss and separation. Thompson has never been one to discuss the meanings of his lyrics in any great detail, and in the case of this one has said “I really don't know what it means. This song came out of a dream, and I pretty much wrote it as I dreamt it (it was the sixties), and didn't spend very long analyzing it. So interpret as you wish – or replace with your own lines.” But in the context of the traffic accident that had killed his tailor girlfriend and a bandmate, and injured most of his other bandmates, the lyrics about lonely travellers, the winding road, bruised and beaten sons, saying goodbye, and never cutting cloth, seem fairly self-explanatory: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Farewell, Farewell”] The rest of the album, though, was taken up by traditional tunes. There was a long medley of four different fiddle reels; a version of “Reynardine” (a song about a seductive man — or is he a fox? Or perhaps both — which had been recorded by Swarbrick and Carthy on their most recent album); a 19th century song about a deserter saved from the firing squad by Prince Albert; and a long take on “Tam Lin”, one of the most famous pieces in the Scottish folk music canon, a song that has been adapted in different ways by everyone from the experimental noise band Current 93 to the dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah to the comics writer Grant Morrison: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Tam Lin”] And “Matty Groves”, a song about a man killing his cheating wife and her lover, which actually has a surprisingly similar story to that of “1921” from another great concept album from that year, the Who’s Tommy. “Matty Groves” became an excuse for long solos and shows of instrumental virtuosity: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves”] The album was recorded in September 1969, after their return from their break in the country and a triumphal performance at the Royal Festival Hall, headlining over fellow Witchseason artists John and Beverly Martyn and Nick Drake. It became a classic of the traditional folk genre — arguably *the* classic of the traditional folk genre. In 2007 BBC Radio 2’s Folk Music Awards gave it an award for most influential folk album of all time, and while such things are hard to measure, I doubt there’s anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of British folk and folk-rock music who would not at least consider that a reasonable claim. But once again, by the time the album came out in November, the band had changed lineups yet again. There was a fundamental split in the band – on one side were Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson, whose stance was, roughly, that Liege and Lief was a great experiment and a fun thing to do once, but really the band had two first-rate songwriters in themselves, and that they should be concentrating on their own new material, not doing these old songs, good as they were. They wanted to take the form of the traditional songs and use that form for new material — they wanted to make British folk-rock, but with the emphasis on the rock side of things. Hutchings, on the other hand, was equally sure that he wanted to make traditional music and go further down the rabbit hole of antiquity. With the zeal of the convert he had gone in a couple of years from being the leader of a band who were labelled “the British Jefferson Airplane” to becoming a serious scholar of traditional folk music. Denny was tired of touring, as well — she wanted to spend more time at home with Trevor Lucas, who was sleeping with other women when she was away and making her insecure. When the time came for the group to go on a tour of Denmark, Denny decided she couldn’t make it, and Hutchings was jubilant — he decided he was going to get A.L. Lloyd into the band in her place and become a *real* folk group. Then Denny reconsidered, and Hutchings was crushed. He realised that while he had always been the leader, he wasn’t going to be able to lead the band any further in the traditionalist direction, and quit the group — but not before he was delegated by the other band members to fire Denny. Until the publication of Richard Thompson’s autobiography in 2022, every book on the group or its members said that Denny quit the band again, which was presumably a polite fiction that the band agreed, but according to Thompson “Before we flew home, we decided to fire Sandy. I don't remember who asked her to leave – it was probably Ashley, who usually did the dirty work. She was reportedly shocked that we would take that step. She may have been fragile beneath the confident facade, but she still knew her worth.” Thompson goes on to explain that the reasons for kicking her out were that “I suppose we felt that in her mind she had already left” and that “We were probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, though there wasn't a name for it back then.” They had considered inviting Trevor Lucas to join the band to make Denny more comfortable, but came to the (probably correct) conclusion that while he was someone they got on well with personally, he would be another big ego in a band that already had several, and that being around Denny and Lucas’ volatile relationship would, in Thompson’s phrasing, “have not always given one a feeling of peace and stability.” Hutchings originally decided he was going to join Sweeney’s Men, but that group were falling apart, and their first rehearsal with Hutchings would also be their last as a group, with only Hutchings and guitarist and mandolin player Terry Woods left in the band. They added Woods’ wife Gay, and another couple, Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, and formed a group called Steeleye Span, a name given them by Martin Carthy. That group, like Fairport, went to “get their heads together in the country” for three months and recorded an album of electric versions of traditional songs, Hark the Village Wait, on which Mattacks and another drummer, Gerry Conway, guested as Steeleye Span didn’t at the time have their own drummer: [Excerpt: Steeleye Span, “Blackleg Miner”] Steeleye Span would go on to have a moderately successful chart career in the seventies, but by that time most of the original lineup, including Hutchings, had left — Hutchings stayed with them for a few albums, then went on to form the first of a series of bands, all called the Albion Band or variations on that name, which continue to this day. And this is something that needs to be pointed out at this point — it is impossible to follow every single individual in this narrative as they move between bands. There is enough material in the history of the British folk-rock scene that someone could do a 500 Songs-style podcast just on that, and every time someone left Fairport, or Steeleye Span, or the Albion Band, or Matthews’ Southern Comfort, or any of the other bands we have mentioned or will mention, they would go off and form another band which would then fission, and some of its members would often join one of those other bands. There was a point in the mid-1970s where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport Convention while Fairport Convention had none. So just in order to keep the narrative anything like wieldy, I’m going to keep the narrative concentrated on the two figures from Fairport — Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson — whose work outside the group has had the most influence on the wider world of rock music more broadly, and only deal with the other members when, as they often did, their careers intersected with those two. That doesn’t mean the other members are not themselves hugely important musicians, just that their importance has been primarily to the folk side of the folk-rock genre, and so somewhat outside the scope of this podcast. While Hutchings decided to form a band that would allow him to go deeper and deeper into traditional folk music, Sandy Denny’s next venture was rather different. For a long time she had been writing far more songs than she had ever played for her bandmates, like “Nothing More”, a song that many have suggested is about Thompson: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Nothing More”] When Joe Boyd heard that Denny was leaving Fairport Convention, he was at first elated. Fairport’s records were being distributed by A&M in the US at that point, but Island Records was in the process of opening up a new US subsidiary which would then release all future Fairport product — *but*, as far as A&M were concerned, Sandy Denny *was* Fairport Convention. They were only interested in her. Boyd, on the other hand, loved Denny’s work intensely, but from his point of view *Richard Thompson* was Fairport Convention. If he could get Denny signed directly to A&M as a solo artist before Island started its US operations, Witchseason could get a huge advance on her first solo record, while Fairport could continue making records for Island — he’d have two lucrative acts, on different labels. Boyd went over and spoke to A&M and got an agreement in principle that they would give Denny a forty-thousand-dollar advance on her first solo album — twice what they were paying for Fairport albums. The problem was that Denny didn’t want to be a solo act. She wanted to be the lead singer of a band. She gave many reasons for this — the one she gave to many journalists was that she had seen a Judy Collins show and been impressed, but noticed that Collins’ band were definitely a “backing group”, and as she put it “But that's all they were – a backing group. I suddenly thought, If you're playing together on a stage you might as well be TOGETHER.” Most other people in her life, though, say that the main reason for her wanting to be in a band was her desire to be with her boyfriend, Trevor Lucas. Partly this was due to a genuine desire to spend more time with someone with whom she was very much in love, partly it was a fear that he would cheat on her if she was away from him for long periods of time, and part of it seems to have been Lucas’ dislike of being *too* overshadowed by his talented girlfriend — he didn’t mind acknowledging that she was a major talent, but he wanted to be thought of as at least a minor one. So instead of going solo, Denny formed Fotheringay, named after the song she had written for Fairport. This new band consisted at first of Denny on vocals and occasional piano, Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, and Lucas’ old Eclection bandmate Gerry Conway on drums. For a lead guitarist, they asked Richard Thompson who the best guitarist in Britain was, and he told them Albert Lee. Lee in turn brought in bass player Pat Donaldson, but this lineup of the band barely survived a fortnight. Lee *was* arguably the best guitarist in Britain, certainly a reasonable candidate if you could ever have a singular best (as indeed was Thompson himself), but he was the best *country* guitarist in Britain, and his style simply didn’t fit with Fotheringay’s folk-influenced songs. He was replaced by American guitarist Jerry Donahue, who was not anything like as proficient as Lee, but who was still very good, and fit the band’s style much better. The new group rehearsed together for a few weeks, did a quick tour, and then went into the recording studio to record their debut, self-titled, album. Joe Boyd produced the album, but admitted himself that he only paid attention to those songs he considered worthwhile — the album contained one song by Lucas, “The Ballad of Ned Kelly”, and two cover versions of American singer-songwriter material with Lucas singing lead. But everyone knew that the songs that actually *mattered* were Sandy Denny’s, and Boyd was far more interested in them, particularly the songs “The Sea” and “The Pond and the Stream”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “The Pond and the Stream”] Fotheringay almost immediately hit financial problems, though. While other Witchseason acts were used to touring on the cheap, all packed together in the back of a Transit van with inexpensive equipment, Trevor Lucas had ambitions of being a rock star and wanted to put together a touring production to match, with expensive transport and equipment, including a speaker system that got nicknamed “Stonehenge” — but at the same time, Denny was unhappy being on the road, and didn’t play many gigs. As well as the band itself, the Fotheringay album also featured backing vocals from a couple of other people, including Denny’s friend Linda Peters. Peters was another singer from the folk clubs, and a good one, though less well-known than Denny — at this point she had only released a couple of singles, and those singles seemed to have been as much as anything else released as a novelty. The first of those, a version of Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” had been released as by “Paul McNeill and Linda Peters”: [Excerpt: Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”] But their second single, a version of John D. Loudermilk’s “You’re Taking My Bag”, was released on the tiny Page One label, owned by Larry Page, and was released under the name “Paul and Linda”, clearly with the intent of confusing particularly gullible members of the record-buying public into thinking this was the McCartneys: [Excerpt: Paul and Linda, “You’re Taking My Bag”] Peters was though more financially successful than almost anyone else in this story, as she was making a great deal of money as a session singer. She actually did another session involving most of Fotheringay around this time. Witchseason had a number of excellent songwriters on its roster, and had had some success getting covers by people like Judy Collins, but Joe Boyd thought that they might possibly do better at getting cover versions if they were performed in less idiosyncratic arrangements. Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway went into the studio to record backing tracks, and vocals were added by Peters and another session singer, who according to some sources also provided piano. They cut songs by Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “You Get Brighter”] Ed Carter, formerly of The New Nadir but by this time firmly ensconced in the Beach Boys’ touring band where he would remain for the next quarter-century: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “I Don’t Mind”] John and Beverly Martyn, and Nick Drake: [Excerpt: Elton John, “Saturday Sun”] There are different lineups of musicians credited for those sessions in different sources, but I tend to believe that it’s mostly Fotheringay for the simple reason that Donahue says it was him, Donaldson and Conway who talked Lucas and Denny into the mistake that destroyed Fotheringay because of these sessions. Fotheringay were in financial trouble already, spending far more money than they were bringing in, but their album made the top twenty and they were getting respect both from critics and from the public — in September, Sandy Denny was voted best British female singer by the readers of Melody Maker in their annual poll, which led to shocked headlines in the tabloids about how this “unknown” could have beaten such big names as Dusty Springfield and Cilla Black. Only a couple of weeks after that, they were due to headline at the Albert Hall. It should have been a triumph. But Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway had asked that singing pianist to be their support act. As Donahue said later “That was a terrible miscast. It was our fault. He asked if [he] could do it. Actually Pat, Gerry and I had to talk Sandy and Trevor into [it]… We'd done these demos and the way he was playing – he was a wonderful piano player – he was sensitive enough. We knew very little about his stage-show. We thought he'd be a really good opener for us.” Unfortunately, Elton John was rather *too* good. As Donahue continued “we had no idea what he had in mind, that he was going to do the most incredible rock & roll show ever. He pretty much blew us off the stage before we even got on the stage.” To make matters worse, Fotheringay’s set, which was mostly comprised of new material, was underrehearsed and sloppy, and from that point on no matter what they did people were counting the hours until the band split up. They struggled along for a while though, and started working on a second record, with Boyd again producing, though as Boyd later said “I probably shouldn't have been producing the record. My lack of respect for the group was clear, and couldn't have helped the atmosphere. We'd put out a record that had sold disappointingly, A&M was unhappy. Sandy's tracks on the first record are among the best things she ever did – the rest of it, who cares? And the artwork, Trevor's sister, was terrible. It would have been one thing if I'd been unhappy with it and it sold, and the group was working all the time, making money, but that wasn't the case … I knew what Sandy was capable of, and it was very upsetting to me.” The record would not be released for thirty-eight years: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Wild Mountain Thyme”] Witchseason was going badly into debt. Given all the fissioning of bands that we’ve already been talking about, Boyd had been stretched thin — he produced sixteen albums in 1970, and almost all of them lost money for the company. And he was getting more and more disillusioned with the people he was producing. He loved Beverly Martyn’s work, but had little time for her abusive husband John, who was dominating her recording and life more and more and would soon become a solo artist while making her stay at home (and stealing her ideas without giving her songwriting credit). The Incredible String Band were great, but they had recently converted to Scientology, which Boyd found annoying, and while he was working with all sorts of exciting artists like Vashti Bunyan and Nico, he was finding himself less and less important to the artists he mentored. Fairport Convention were a good example of this. After Denny and Hutchings had left the group, they’d decided to carry on as an electric folk group, performing an equal mix of originals by the Swarbrick and Thompson songwriting team and arrangements of traditional songs. The group were now far enough away from the “British Jefferson Airplane” label that they decided they didn’t need a female vocalist — and more realistically, while they’d been able to replace Judy Dyble, nobody was going to replace Sandy Denny. Though it’s rather surprising when one considers Thompson’s subsequent career that nobody seems to have thought of bringing in Denny’s friend Linda Peters, who was dating Joe Boyd at the time (as Denny had been before she met Lucas) as Denny’s replacement. Instead, they decided that Swarbrick and Thompson were going to share the vocals between them. They did, though, need a bass player to replace Hutchings. Swarbrick wanted to bring in Dave Pegg, with whom he had played in the Ian Campbell Folk Group, but the other band members initially thought the idea was a bad one. At the time, while they respected Swarbrick as a musician, they didn’t think he fully understood rock and roll yet, and they thought the idea of getting in a folkie who had played double bass rather than an electric rock bassist ridiculous. But they auditioned him to mollify Swarbrick, and found that he was exactly what they needed. As Joe Boyd later said “All those bass lines were great, Ashley invented them all, but he never could play them that well. He thought of them, but he was technically not a terrific bass player. He was a very inventive, melodic, bass player, but not a very powerful one technically. But having had the part explained to him once, Pegg was playing it better than Ashley had ever played it… In some rock bands, I think, ultimately, the bands that sound great, you can generally trace it to the bass player… it was at that point they became a great band, when they had Pegg.” The new lineup of Fairport decided to move in together, and found a former pub called the Angel, into which all the band members moved, along with their partners and children (Thompson was the only one who was single at this point) and their roadies. The group lived together quite happily, and one gets the impression that this was the period when they were most comfortable with each other, even though by this point they were a disparate group with disparate tastes, in music as in everything else. Several people have said that the only music all the band members could agree they liked at this point was the first two albums by The Band. With the departure of Hutchings from the band, Swarbrick and Thompson, as the strongest personalities and soloists, became in effect the joint leaders of the group, and they became collaborators as songwriters, trying to write new songs that were inspired by traditional music. Thompson described the process as “let’s take one line of this reel and slow it down and move it up a minor third and see what that does to it; let’s take one line of this ballad and make a whole song out of it. Chopping up the tradition to find new things to do… like a collage.” Generally speaking, Swarbrick and Thompson would sit by the fire and Swarbrick would play a melody he’d been working on, the two would work on it for a while, and Thompson would then go away and write the lyrics. This is how the two came up with songs like the nine-minute “Sloth”, a highlight of the next album, Full House, and one that would remain in Fairport’s live set for much of their career: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth”] “Sloth” was titled that way because Thompson and Swarbrick were working on two tunes, a slow one and a fast one, and they jokingly named them “Sloth” and “Fasth”, but the latter got renamed to “Walk Awhile”, while “Sloth” kept its working title. But by this point, Boyd and Thompson were having a lot of conflict in the studio. Boyd was never the most technical of producers — he was one of those producers whose job is to gently guide the artists in the studio and create a space for the music to flourish, rather than the Joe Meek type with an intimate technical knowledge of the studio — and as the artists he was working with gained confidence in their own work they felt they had less and less need of him. During the making of the Full House album, Thompson and Boyd, according to Boyd, clashed on everything — every time Boyd thought Thompson had done a good solo, Thompson would say to erase it and let him have another go, while every time Boyd thought Thompson could do better, Thompson would say that was the take to keep. One of their biggest clashes was over Thompson’s song “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”, which was originally intended for release on the album, and is included in current reissues of it: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”] Thompson had written that song inspired by what he thought was the unjust treatment of Alex Bramham, the driver in Fairport’s fatal car crash, by the courts — Bramham had been given a prison sentence of a few months for dangerous driving, while the group members thought he had not been at fault. Boyd thought it was one of the best things recorded for the album, but Thompson wasn’t happy with his vocal — there was one note at the top of the melody that he couldn’t quite hit — and insisted it be kept off the record, even though that meant it would be a shorter album than normal. He did this at such a late stage that early copies of the album actually had the title printed on the sleeve, but then blacked out. He now says in his autobiography “I could have persevered, double-tracked the voice, warmed up for longer – anything. It was a good track, and the record was lacking without it. When the album was re-released, the track was restored with a more confident vocal, and it has stayed there ever since.” During the sessions for Full House the group also recorded one non-album single, Thompson and Swarbrick’s “Now Be Thankful”: [Excerpt, Fairport Convention, “Now Be Thankful”] The B-side to that was a medley of two traditional tunes plus a Swarbrick original, but was given the deliberately ridiculous title “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”] The B. McKenzie in the title was a reference to the comic-strip character Barry McKenzie, a stereotype drunk Australian created for Private Eye magazine by the comedian Barry Humphries (later to become better known for his Dame Edna Everage character) but the title was chosen for one reason only — to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the song with the longest title. Which they did, though they were later displaced by the industrial band Test Dept, and their song “Long Live British Democracy Which Flourishes and Is Constantly Perfected Under the Immaculate Guidance of the Great, Honourable, Generous and Correct Margaret Hilda Thatcher. She Is the Blue Sky in the Hearts of All Nations. Our People Pay Homage and Bow in Deep Respect and Gratitude to Her. The Milk of Human Kindness”. Full House got excellent reviews in the music press, with Rolling Stone saying “The music shows that England has finally gotten her own equivalent to The Band… By calling Fairport an English equivalent of the Band, I meant that they have soaked up enough of the tradition of their countryfolk that it begins to show all over, while they maintain their roots in rock.” Off the back of this, the group went on their first US tour, culminating in a series of shows at the Troubadour in LA, on the same bill as Rick Nelson, which were recorded and later released as a live album: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth (live)”] The Troubadour was one of the hippest venues at the time, and over their residency there the group got seen by many celebrities, some of whom joined them on stage. The first was Linda Ronstadt, who initially demurred, saying she didn’t know any of their songs. On being told they knew all of hers, she joined in with a rendition of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles”. Thompson was later asked to join Ronstadt’s backing band, who would go on to become the Eagles, but he said later of this offer “I would have hated it. I’d have hated being on the road with four or five miserable Americans — they always seem miserable. And if you see them now, they still look miserable on stage — like they don’t want to be there and they don’t like each other.” The group were also joined on stage at the Troubadour on one memorable night by some former bandmates of Pegg’s. Before joining the Ian Campbell Folk Group, Pegg had played around the Birmingham beat scene, and had been in bands with John Bonham and Robert Plant, who turned up to the Troubadour with their Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page (reports differ on whether the fourth member of Zeppelin, John Paul Jones, also came along). They all got up on stage together and jammed on songs like “Hey Joe”, “Louie Louie”, and various old Elvis tunes. The show was recorded, and the tapes are apparently still in the possession of Joe Boyd, who has said he refuses to release them in case he is murdered by the ghost of Peter Grant. According to Thompson, that night ended in a three-way drinking contest between Pegg, Bonham, and Janis Joplin, and it’s testament to how strong the drinking culture is around Fairport and the British folk scene in general that Pegg outdrank both of them. According to Thompson, Bonham was found naked by a swimming pool two days later, having missed two gigs. For all their hard rock image, Led Zeppelin were admirers of a lot of the British folk and folk-rock scene, and a few months later Sandy Denny would become the only outside vocalist ever to appear on a Led Zeppelin record when she duetted with Plant on “The Battle of Evermore” on the group’s fourth album: [Excerpt: Led Zeppelin, “The Battle of Evermore”] Denny would never actually get paid for her appearance on one of the best-selling albums of all time. That was, incidentally, not the only session that Denny was involved in around this time — she also sang on the soundtrack to a soft porn film titled Swedish Fly Girls, whose soundtrack was produced by Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow?”] Shortly after Fairport’s trip to America, Joe Boyd decided he was giving up on Witchseason. The company was now losing money, and he was finding himself having to produce work for more and more acts as the various bands fissioned. The only ones he really cared about were Richard Thompson, who he was finding it more and more difficult to work with, Nick Drake, who wanted to do his next album with just an acoustic guitar anyway, Sandy Denny, who he felt was wasting her talents in Fotheringay, and Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band, who was more distant since his conversion to Scientology. Boyd did make some attempts to keep the company going. On a trip to Sweden, he negotiated an agreement with the manager and publisher of a Swedish band whose songs he’d found intriguing, the Hep Stars. Boyd was going to publish their songs in the UK, and in return that publisher, Stig Anderson, would get the rights to Witchseason’s catalogue in Scandinavia — a straight swap, with no money changing hands. But before Boyd could get round to signing the paperwork, he got a better offer from Mo Ostin of Warners — Ostin wanted Boyd to come over to LA and head up Warners’ new film music department. Boyd sold Witchseason to Island Records and moved to LA with his fiancee Linda Peters, spending the next few years working on music for films like Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange, as well as making his own documentary about Jimi Hendrix, and thus missed out on getting the UK publishing rights for ABBA, and all the income that would have brought him, for no money. And it was that decision that led to the breakup of Fotheringay. Just before Christmas 1970, Fotheringay were having a difficult session, recording the track “John the Gun”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “John the Gun”] Boyd got frustrated and kicked everyone out of the session, and went for a meal and several drinks with Denny. He kept insisting that she should dump the band and just go solo, and then something happened that the two of them would always describe differently. She asked him if he would continue to produce her records if she went solo, and he said he would. According to Boyd’s recollection of the events, he meant that he would fly back from California at some point to produce her records. According to Denny, he told her that if she went solo he would stay in Britain and not take the job in LA. This miscommunication was only discovered after Denny told the rest of Fotheringay after the Christmas break that she was splitting the band. Jerry Donahue has described that as the worst moment of his life, and Denny felt very guilty about breaking up a band with some of her closest friends in — and then when Boyd went over to the US anyway she felt a profound betrayal. Two days before Fotheringay’s final concert, in January 1971, Sandy Denny signed a solo deal with Island records, but her first solo album would not end up produced by Joe Boyd. Instead, The North Star Grassman and the Ravens was co-produced by Denny, John Wood — the engineer who had worked with Boyd on pretty much everything he’d produced, and Richard Thompson, who had just quit Fairport Convention, though he continued living with them at the Angel, at least until a truck crashed into the building in February 1971, destroying its entire front wall and forcing them to relocate. The songs chosen for The North Star Grassman and the Ravens reflected the kind of choices Denny would make on her future albums, and her eclectic taste in music. There was, of course, the obligatory Dylan cover, and the traditional folk ballad “Blackwaterside”, but there was also a cover version of Brenda Lee’s “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”] Most of the album, though, was made up of originals about various people in Denny’s life, like “Next Time Around”, about her ex-boyfriend Jackson C Frank: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Next Time Around”] The album made the top forty in the UK — Denny’s only solo album to do so — and led to her once again winning the “best female singer” award in Melody Maker’s readers’ poll that year — the male singer award was won by Rod Stewart. Both Stewart and Denny appeared the next year on the London Symphony Orchestra’s all-star version of The Who’s Tommy, which had originally been intended as a vehicle for Stewart before Roger Daltrey got involved. Stewart’s role was reduced to a single song, “Pinball Wizard”, while Denny sang on “It’s a Boy”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “It’s a Boy”] While Fotheringay had split up, all the band members play on The North Star Grassman and the Ravens. Guitarists Donahue and Lucas only play on a couple of the tracks, with Richard Thompson playing most of the guitar on the record. But Fotheringay’s rhythm section of Pat Donaldson and Gerry Conway play on almost every track. Another musician on the album, Ian Whiteman, would possibly have a profound effect on the future direction of Richard Thompson’s career and life. Whiteman was the former keyboard player for the mod band The Action, having joined them just before they became the blues-rock band Mighty Baby. But Mighty Baby had split up when all of the band except the lead singer had converted to Islam. Richard Thompson was on his own spiritual journey at this point, and became a Sufi – the same branch of Islam as Whiteman – soon after the session, though Thompson has said that his conversion was independent of Whiteman’s. The two did become very close and work together a lot in the mid-seventies though. Thompson had supposedly left Fairport because he was writing material that wasn’t suited to the band, but he spent more than a year after quitting the group working on sessions rather than doing anything with his own material, and these sessions tended to involve the same core group of musicians. One of the more unusual was a folk-rock supergroup called The Bunch, put together by Trevor Lucas. Richard Branson had recently bought a recording studio, and wanted a band to test it out before opening it up for commercial customers, so with this free studio time Lucas decided to record a set of fifties rock and roll covers. He gathered together Thompson, Denny, Whiteman, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Pat Donaldson, Gerry Conway, pianist Tony Cox, the horn section that would later form the core of the Average White Band, and Linda Peters, who had now split up with Joe Boyd and returned to the UK, and who had started dating Thompson. They recorded an album of covers of songs by Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Otis and others: [Excerpt: The Bunch, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] The early seventies was a hugely productive time for this group of musicians, as they all continued playing on each other’s projects. One notable album was No Roses by Shirley Collins, which featured Thompson, Mattacks, Whiteman, Simon Nicol, Lal and Mike Waterson, and Ashley Hutchings, who was at that point married to Collins, as well as some more unusual musicians like the free jazz saxophonist Lol Coxhill: [Excerpt: Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band, “Claudy Banks”] Collins was at the time the most respected female singer in British traditional music, and already had a substantial career including a series of important records made with her sister Dolly, work with guitarists like Davey Graham, and time spent in the 1950s collecting folk songs in the Southern US with her then partner Alan Lomax – according to Collins she did much of the actual work, but Lomax only mentioned her in a single sentence in his book on this work. Some of the same group of musicians went on to work on an album of traditional Morris dancing tunes, titled Morris On, credited to “Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield”, with Collins singing lead on two tracks: [Excerpt: Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield with Shirley Collins, “The Willow Tree”] Thompson thought that that album was the best of the various side projects he was involved in at the time, comparing it favourably to Rock On, which he thought was rather slight, saying later “Conceptually, Fairport, Ashley and myself and Sandy were developing a more fragile style of music that nobody else was particularly interested in, a British Folk Rock idea that had a logical development to it, although we all presented it our own way. Morris On was rather more true to what we were doing. Rock On was rather a retro step. I'm not sure it was lasting enough as a record but Sandy did sing really well on the Buddy Holly songs.” Hutchings used the musicians on No Roses and Morris On as the basis for his band the Albion Band, which continues to this day. Simon Nicol and Dave Mattacks both quit Fairport to join the Albion Band, though Mattacks soon returned. Nicol would not return to Fairport for several years, though, and for a long period in the mid-seventies Fairport Convention had no original members. Unfortunately, while Collins was involved in the Albion Band early on, she and Hutchings ended up divorcing, and the stress from the divorce led to Collins developing spasmodic dysphonia, a stress-related illness which makes it impossible for the sufferer to sing. She did eventually regain her vocal ability, but between 1978 and 2016 she was unable to perform at all, and lost decades of her career. Richard Thompson occasionally performed with the Albion Band early on, but he was getting stretched a little thin with all these sessions. Linda Peters said later of him “When I came back from America, he was working in Sandy’s band, and doing sessions by the score. Always with Pat Donaldson and Dave Mattacks. Richard would turn up with his guitar, one day he went along to do a session with one of those folkie lady singers — and there were Pat and DM. They all cracked. Richard smashed his amp and said “Right! No more sessions!” In 1972 he got round to releasing his first solo album, Henry the Human Fly, which featured guest appearances by Linda Peters and Sandy Denny among others: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “The Angels Took My Racehorse Away”] Unfortunately, while that album has later become regarded as one of the classics of its genre, at the time it was absolutely slated by the music press. The review in Melody Maker, for example, read in part “Some of Richard Thompson’s ideas sound great – which is really the saving grace of this album, because most of the music doesn’t. The tragedy is that Thompson’s “British rock music” is such an unconvincing concoction… Even the songs that do integrate rock and traditional styles of electric guitar rhythms and accordion and fiddle decoration – and also include explicit, meaningful lyrics are marred by bottle-up vocals, uninspiring guitar phrases and a general lack of conviction in performance.” Henry the Human Fly was released in the US by Warners, who had a reciprocal licensing deal with Island (and for whom Joe Boyd was working at the time, which may have had something to do with that) but according to Thompson it became the lowest-selling record that Warners ever put out (though I’ve also seen that claim made about Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, another album that has later been rediscovered). Thompson was hugely depressed by this reaction, and blamed his own singing. Happily, though, by this point he and Linda had become a couple — they would marry in 1972 — and they started playing folk clubs as a duo, or sometimes in a trio with Simon Nicol. Thompson was also playing with Sandy Denny’s backing band at this point, and played on every track on her second solo album, Sandy. This album was meant to be her big commercial breakthrough, with a glamorous cover photo by David Bailey, and with a more American sound, including steel guitar by Sneaky Pete Kleinow of the Flying Burrito Brothers (whose overdubs were supervised in LA by Joe Boyd): [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Tomorrow is a Long Time”] The album was given a big marketing push by Island, and “Listen, Listen” was made single of the week on the Radio 1 Breakfast show: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Listen, Listen”] But it did even worse than the previous album, sending her into something of a depression. Linda Thompson (as the former Linda Peters now was) said of this period “After the Sandy album, it got her down that her popularity didn't suddenly increase in leaps and bounds, and that was the start of her really fretting about the way her career was going. Things only escalated after that. People like me or Martin Carthy or Norma Waterson would think, ‘What are you on about? This is folk music.'” After Sandy’s release, Denny realised she could no longer afford to tour with a band, and so went back to performing just acoustically or on piano. The only new music to be released by either of these ex-members of Fairport Convention in 1973 was, oddly, on an album by the band they were no longer members of. After Thompson had left Fairport, the group had managed to release two whole albums with the same lineup — Swarbrick, Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks. But then Nicol and Mattacks had both quit the band to join the Albion Band with their former bandmate Ashley Hutchings, leading to a situation where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport plus their longtime drummer while Fairport Convention itself had no original members and was down to just Swarbrick and Pegg. Needing to fulfil their contracts, they then recruited three former members of Fotheringay — Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, Donahue on lead guitar, and Conway on drums. Conway was only a session player at the time, and Mattacks soon returned to the band, but Lucas and Donahue became full-time members. This new lineup of Fairport Convention released two albums in 1973, widely regarded as the group’s most inconsistent records, and on the title track of the first, “Rosie”, Richard Thompson guested on guitar, with Sandy Denny and Linda Thompson on backing vocals: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Rosie”] Neither Sandy Denny nor Richard Thompson released a record themselves in 1973, but in neither case was this through the artists’ choice. The record industry was changing in the early 1970s, as we’ll see in later episodes, and was less inclined to throw good money after bad in the pursuit of art. Island Records prided itself on being a home for great artists, but it was still a business, and needed to make money. We’ll talk about the OPEC oil crisis and its effect on the music industry much more when the podcast gets to 1973, but in brief, the production of oil by the US peaked in 1970 and started to decrease, leading to them importing more and more oil from the Middle East. As a result of this, oil prices rose slowly between 1971 and 1973, then very quickly towards the end of 1973 as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict that year. As vinyl is made of oil, suddenly producing records became much more expensive, and in this period a lot of labels decided not to release already-completed albums, until what they hoped would be a brief period of shortages passed. Both Denny and Thompson recorded albums at this point that got put to one side by Island. In the case of Thompson, it was the first album by Richard and Linda as a duo, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Today, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, and as one of the two masterpieces that bookended Richard and Linda’s career as a duo and their marriage. But when they recorded the album, full of Richard’s dark songs, it was the opposite of commercial. Even a song that’s more or less a boy-girl song, like “Has He Got a Friend for Me?” has lyrics like “He wouldn’t notice me passing by/I could be in the gutter, or dangling down from a tree” [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “Has He got a Friend For Me?”] While something like “The Calvary Cross” is oblique and haunted, and seems to cast a pall over the entire album: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “The Calvary Cross”] The album itself had been cheap to make — it had been recorded in only a week, with Thompson bringing in musicians he knew well and had worked with a lot previously to cut the tracks as-live in only a handful of takes — but Island didn’t think it was worth releasing. The record stayed on the shelf for nearly a year after recording, until Island got a new head of A&R, Richard Williams. Williams said of the album’s release “Muff Winwood had been doing A&R, but he was more interested in production… I had a conversation with Muff as soon as I got there, and he said there are a few hangovers, some outstanding problems. And one of them was Richard Thompson. He said there’s this album we gave him the money to make — which was I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight — and nobody’s very interested in it. Henry the Human Fly had been a bit of a commercial disappointment, and although Island was altruistic and independent and known for only recording good stuff, success was important… Either a record had to do well or somebody had to believe in it a lot. And it seemed as if neither of those things were true at that point of Richard.” Williams, though, was hugely impressed when he listened to the album. He compared Richard Thompson’s guitar playing to John Coltrane’s sax, and called Thompson “the folk poet of the rainy streets”, but also said “Linda brightened it, made it more commercial. and I thought that “Bright Lights” itself seemed a really commercial song.” The rest of the management at Island got caught up in Williams’ enthusiasm, and even decided to release the title track as a single: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Neither single nor album charted — indeed it would not be until 1991 that Richard Thompson would make a record that made the top forty in the UK — but the album got enough critical respect that Richard and Linda released two albums the year after. The first of these, Hokey Pokey, is a much more upbeat record than their previous one — Richard Thompson has called it “quite a music-hall influenced record” and cited the influence of George Formby and Harry Lauder. For once, the claim of music hall influence is audible in the music. Usually when a British musician is claimed to have a music ha

Kevin Roberts, Kellyanne Conway, Ben Rhodes and I battled it out a few weeks ago on a stage in Toronto. This was for a Munk Debate on the motion: “Be it resolved, this is America's Golden Age.” It might not surprise you that I was arguing the negative, alongside Rhodes, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama and the co-host of “Pod Save the World.” Roberts and Conway were on the other side. Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation and an architect of Project 2025. Conway was Donald Trump's senior counselor in his first term. The Munk Debates organization has kindly let us share the audio of that debate with you. If you haven't heard of the Munk Debates, you should really check it out. It's a Canadian nonprofit that, for more than 15 years, has been hosting discussions on contentious, thought-provoking topics. If you go to its site and become a supporter, you can watch the entire video archive. A classic I recommend: “Be it resolved, religion is a force for good in the world” with Tony Blair debating Christopher Hitchens.Note: This recording has not been fact-checked by our team. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.