Matt Keating is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has been playing music since he was a kid, and recording ever since his debut album Tell It to Yourself was released in 1993. As NPR music accurately put it, "Matt Keating has established himself as one of America’s great under-the-radar songwriters.”

Raised in a family that was constantly moving around the country helped shape Matt, and songwriting became one of the ways he tried to untangle that.

Matt lives in NYC and is also a father, husband, and teacher of music, along with being an avid student of Buddhism and Yoga, both of which we talk about today. We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, so buckle up!

And the music you will hear in this episode is Matt’s work, and the links will be available at the end and on our website.  

In today's solo episode, Alan shares a little history of what led to launching this podcast, and also a story about his son that touches on being present, vulnerability, and how we are sometimes our own worst enemy.

Steve Michener is a husband, father, nurse, musician, and writer. If you’re of a certain age, and followed the music scene at all in the 80’s and 90’s, especially in Boston, then you have no doubt listened to, or at least heard of some of the bands that he has played bass in. These include the Volcano Suns, Dumptruck, and Big Dipper, whose music you heard in the intro, and will hear as we go out today as well.

Recently, Steve also started to write about his album collection in a Facebook group called Steves Random Record Collection Countdown, where for one full year he is picking an album each day and writing about it. How he came to own it, where he was in his life at the time, and other memories that get jogged by that particular record. 

It’s a fascinating endeavor and one that I am personally enjoying greatly. We’ll talk about that, and many other things in our conversation today.