Feestet's jazz jams are steaming hot affairs, even when the air is crisp in the atmosphere. Bandleader and singer Helen Feest belts out tunes on vocals, and the band warms up the already misty crowd while jammers await their turn on the stage.

Today, on Taste the Music, Helen Feest joins us to talk about the vibe, how she got into this crazy thing called jazz singing, and what kind of outfit she’s running anyway (it turns out it’s a good one). She also gets into how a very old way of getting paid might just be making a comeback (not that one!). And it’s helping build a little community, too.

Today’s episode of Taste the music was written, produced, and edited by me, Mark Griffin. You can check out more of Helen Feest and the Feestet’s music at Feestet.com. Taste the music was created by me and Whitney Mann, who has a new single out on Bandcamp, right this second! Solid horns!

Paul Otteson’s music is like a message in a bottle that was tossed in a loch west of Glasgow, that drifted along the jet stream to the New World.

It stopped in Brooklyn’s folk revival scene in the early aughts to pick up a pleasant spacey jangly sound that eschews the stomp clap hey of the early teens and it made its way via the fur trade up to the waters of the Gitche Gumme and down to the land of Dejope.

Today, on Taste the Music, Paul Otteson talks about the passions that made his journey in songwriting worth it - and they weren’t always musical in nature. He also tells us about the reckoning that comes with comparing yourself to others, and about the comfort that can follow.

Today's episode was produced, written and edited my me, Mark Griffin, and engineered by Aaron Scholz at WORT studios.

You can learn more about Paul Otteson and his band Faux Fawn at PaulOtteson.com or on Bandcamp.

As usual, you can find all episodes of Taste the Music at TastetheMusic.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Today, on Taste the Music, on 89.9 WORT FM Madison and TasteTheMusic.org, Madison band Automatic Lover’s front man Uriel Lopéz Rodriguez takes us on a ride through his musical history, from a kid who couldn’t stop dancing to a short political career in Mexico, to Arizona, Colorado and finally back to Wisconsin, when a week visiting friends led him back to the music scene he couldn’t avoid.

It seemed like wherever I went last summer, Automatic Lover was there, a rhythm section, horns, keys, stalwarts in their craft of groove. And up front on vocals, Uriel Lopéz-Rodriguez, clapping his hands, urging the crowds, electrifying the audience with each beat. The music, a sound that’s somehow a fusion of latin funk, Reggae, hip hop, and groove rock. An amalgam, a reflection of what a diverse music town is on its best days.

Lopéz Rodriguez talks about forming Automatic Lover, why he’s committed to it, and the idea that maybe a vocation isn’t singular. Maybe it’s a patchwork of creation, iteration and praxis, incubating a social movement of love that’s a lot more complex than it looks on paper.