The one and only Charles Alexander joined us to talk us through how artists get paid through streaming, how to use streaming and other tools to grow your fan base, and what the Music Modernization Act means for artists and songwriters when it takes effect this year. Charles is the founder of label services and music marketing companies, Systemic and Outside The Box Music. He’s been an in-demand speaker at events and conferences like South by Southwest, Music Biz, CD Baby DIY and the Americana Music Festival and an adjunct professor at MTSU in its recording industry program. With a resume lik ..read more

Current New Mexico volunteer fireman and frontman of the band Jubal, Taylor Kress joins us to talk about their newly pressed special edition burgundy 180g vinyl for their album 'County Ball.' It's the very first record on our very own Beer Me That Vinyl label! We talk a lot about the album, what the band has been up to this year, what it's like having band members living in different states, and of course, Taylor's chickens. Pick up your copy of County Ball here: Born & Raised Store Recording this episode was a ton of fun. It was friends catching up. You can tell while listening that at ..read more

We’ll spare you the intro where we’re like “2020 was a tough year, but yada yada yada whatever whatever.” No more of that. We’re looking forward… That is, after one last look back. The truth is, the Knoxville music community came up with some pretty good releases over the last year. As this city so often does, we made the best with what we had. Posted below is a playlist full of some of our favorite songs from Knoxville artists in 2020, but it’s not finished yet. If you have any suggestions, hit us up on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and comment your picks ..read more

It’s that time of year again. Millions of Spotify users are showing their friends the year-end review of their own listening habits in well-designed sharable snippets. In this episode, we’ll talk about the power of a word-of-mouth generating marketing tool like Spotify Wrapped. As all of those stories are being shared, this is also the time of year in which many like to remind people that Spotify’s payment structure for artists is not great. The second half of this episode digs into why that is and what, if anything, can artists be doing to work toward changing it. Also on this episode, Gar ..read more

In an increasingly divided and polarized country, public figures who are nearly universally loved are an increasingly rare thing. Is it her philanthropy? Is it her angelic singing voice? Is it her down-to-earth personality? Many have posited that it's her natural aversion to 'getting political', but is that even the case? On this episode we discuss what's to love about Dolly, and trust us there is a lot. We also chronicle Dolly using her voice on political issues and lay out how she's able to do so without alienating significant chunks of her fan base. It may just be that she's a more skille ..read more

In this episode of the B&R Music Podcast, we talk about what the live music landscape looks like going into 2021. How long will it be until things are fully back to normal? Will there ever be such a thing as fully back to normal? What will the transition period of integrating shows back into our lives look like? How tenable are all the alternative concert ideas that we've seen in 2020 in a post-COVID world? We'll answer all these questions and more with as much optimism as possible! We actually had to record this episode twice. The first attempt was a real bummer. In what was supposed t ..read more

Kelsi Walker joined us in the B&R Studio to share her new song “All Experts.” It’s a beautiful, culturally relevant song, and we are thrilled to be able to share it with you. “I feel like we are just in a sea of opinions constantly, and that a lot of those opinions are very rigid. And I think that for movement to exist, for change to exist, and for relationships to get better there needs to be a general openness. We have to be open and receptive of the idea that we have things to learn from other people and seeing what’s going on around us.” — Kelsi Walker on her song "All Experts If you’d ..read more

Jazz? Jazz. Here? In East Tennessee?? If you didn’t have a keen ear, or if you just haven’t been out and about to see live music in a long time (like just about all of us) it could be easy to miss that we have some incredible jazz players right here in Knoxville. One such player and a great facilitator of the jazz scene is Brian Christopher Clay. We had the honor of talking to him and getting to know his backstory, and it did not disappoint. The one and only Brian Clay joins the B&R Pod to talk about something we very rarely get the chance to talk about: Jazz. But more importantly we ge ..read more

This month’s Beer Me That Vinyl record is an absolute beauty. 12" vinyl copy of the 10th anniversary edition of Thrift Store Cowboys’ Lay Low While Crawling or Creeping. The cover is a letterpresse by the band. Only 50 copies were pressed. The songs, carefully and masterfully produced by Craig Schumacher (Calexico, Iron & Wine) are earthy, gritty, and poetic and have a surprising delicacy and intricacy with catchy refrains/ This album features Colt Miller, Amanda Shires, Todd Pertll, Daniel Fluitt, Clint Miller & Kris Killingsworth. PURCHASE THE RECORD AND/OR BEER HERE We were fort ..read more

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