Gwen Thompkins

Beware the Ides of March!

Is any un-heeded warning more frightful? Poor Julius Caesar, he never saw it coming — and from so many in the Senate! Luckily, his assassination in 44 BCE has inspired this week's exploration of songs about betrayal.

Don't miss the Music Inside Out grand slam this week. We're playing some of the best stories, songs, and moments from our first season. Review with us, if you will, our musical guests and hip shakin' moments.

When does a side dish become the main attraction?? When it's as hot and zesty as Shannon Powell on the bandstand. 

Forget "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." In New Orleans, it's more fun to play three degrees of David Torkanowsky.

As a piano player and band leader, Torkanowsky is equally comfortable pushing the edges of jazz, funk, blues and rhythm and blues. Aside from his solo projects, Torkanowsky has collaborated with so many musical legends — Irma Thomas, Allen Toussaint, Danny Barker, Earl Turbington, Tony DaGradi, George Porter Jr., Zigaboo Modeliste, Dianne Reeves and Errol Garner, among them — that he now enjoys his own legendary patina.

At Music Inside Out, we can't save your soul. But we can help you sponge it clean.

For half a century, New Orleans producer, arranger, and songwriter has given entertainers around the world something to sing about. 

He's written R&B, funk, jazz, rock and country. And he's learned a few things along the way. Toussaint shares his creative insights with Music Inside Out.  Lesson Number One: The artist is king... or queen.  

As noggins in New Orleans go, there is no noggin like that of singer-songwriter Alex McMurray. He's got more original characters in his head than a Hollywood film library. Why else would McMurray write a song about the man who shot the man who shot Liberty Valance? (Spoiler Alert: John Wayne is in the crosshairs).

The poetics of pickup trucks and cutoffs are not lost on Jim McCormick. Nor are the subtleties of Trans Ams and the beverage choices of the young and hay-baling set. And that's how it should be for a poet-turned-Nashville songwriter. 

The only thing more fun than talking to Shannon Powell is listening to him play. Powell is one of the most charismatic drummers to ever grace a stage. His secret? "I'm happy," Powell tells Music Inside Out. "I was a happy child. I'm a happy spirit."