Exclusive Acoustic Conversations with Matthew Price tracks are available for free to anyone who subscribes to the show in iTunes or the Acoustic Conversations newsletter. Here’s what you’ll get:

1. Revolution
2. Idol
3. Until Sunlight Touches the Ground
4. One Hit Wonder
5. My Jesus, I Love Thee (Cover, Trad.)
6. Not Just On Valentine’s Day

As usual, all tracks are 256k AAC Mp4’s in the feed. We hope you enjoy them! You can learn more about Matt on his site, www.matthewpricemusic.com, and buy his music in .

Exclusive Acoustic Conversations with Jake Oken-Berg tracks are available for free to anyone who subscribes to the show in iTunes or the Acoustic Conversations newsletter. Here’s what you’ll get:

1. Come Down
2. Far From Home
3. In Front of Me
4. Out the Door
5. End of the Innocence (Don Henley and Bruce Hornsby)
6. Love Letter (The Retrofits)

As usual, all tracks are 256k AAC Mp4’s in the feed. We hope you enjoy them! You can learn more about Jake on his site, www.jakeokenberg.com, and buy his music in the iTunes Store.

The great thing about the vast majority of musicians is that they are at the same time gracious and generous people, and hungry for attention. That means, if you point a microphone at them and turn on a little red light, by-in-large, they start singing.

So it was when Curt and I started Acoustic Conversations a few years back. The first show was a convoluted mix of stunning flamenco riffs lovingly gifted to us by our good friend John Carlson and poorly mic’d wannabe talk radio. Still, that conversation sparked something cool, and posted a stitch in time that leads to today, the last show of our second season, and our newest addition to the family, James Jeffrey-West.

James is a stunningly warm person. I say that as a point of contrast, I think. He’s a contrast to jokers who try to own a room with ego and pomp; he’s a contrast to yahoos who enter a room with jokester hippery; he’s a contrast to crooners who slide into a room with sticky smug insincerity. When James came into the AC lounge, well, we wanted to give him a hug.

In his bio, James says he plays “good, honest acoustic” music. Insofar as we couldn’t see the allusion when we kicked off the interview, we were wrapped up in it by the end. His songs are gracefully simple packages, easy on the ear and difficult to shake. His song-writing is at once worldly and approachable; he weaves his broad life experience into tales that are most often too short to be completely satisfying.

We talked a lot in this show. So much, in fact, that we didn’t actually get to all the music that we’d intended. It’s a shame, too, because for my money, the best tracks of the evening were those recorded after the show had ended. Take a special listen to Sacramento International, a haunting lullaby to congested air travel; and Half a World Away, an anthem to bifurcated love in ticklish harmonics. You’ll find the show, as well as all six of the tracks we recorded with James available free in iTunes. Please subscribe to support the show.

I deeply hope you enjoy the music of James Jeffrey-West. He’s a new favorite of ours and we’re thrilled to bring him to the show. As ever, comments welcome, but mostly, just go buy his CD. It’s in iTunes, CDBaby, and just about everywhere else music is served.

Exclusive Acoustic Conversations with James Jeffrey-West tracks available for free to anyone who subscribes to the show in iTunes (Click here to visit the show in the iTunes Store), ore the AcConvo Newsletter:

1. Blessings
2. Last Bus from the Old Market Square
3. Ain’t No Good Gonna Come
4. People Get Ready (Otis Redding cover)
5. Sacramento International
6. Half a World Away

As usual, all tracks are 256k AAC MP4’s. We hope you enjoy them! You can learn more about James on his site, www.jamesjeffreywest.com.

Exclusive Acoustic Conversations with Lisa Forkish tracks available for free to anyone who subscribes to the show in iTunes (Click here to visit the show in the iTunes Store), ore the AcConvo Newsletter:

1. Yesterday’s Leaves
2. Oblivion
3. Waiting
4. Don’t Explain (Billie Holiday cover)
5. The Same Moon
6. Iceland Sky

As usual, all tracks are 256k AAC MP4’s. We hope you enjoy them!

Exclusive Acoustic Conversations with Justin Jude tracks available for free to anyone who subscribes to the show in iTunes (Click here to visit the show in the iTunes Store), or the AcConvo Newsletter:

1. Bad News
2. Out of State
3. Eat Sleep Dream
4. Complain Lane
5. I Won’t Save Your Life
6. Running to Stand Still (U2)

As usual, all tracks are 256k AAC MP4’s. We hope you enjoy them!

Exclusive Acoustic Conversations with Dustin Pattison tracks available for free to anyone who subscribes to the show in iTunes (Click here to visit the show in the iTunes Store):

1. Peace With God
2. No It Don’t
3. In The Flames
4. Give Us Peace
5. Irish Lullaby
6. The Ballad of the Carpenter (Ewan MacColl, 1954)
7. One By One By One

As usual, all tracks are 256k AAC MP4’s. We hope you enjoy them!

There’s a new release of the show, I believe celebrating the final Broadway performance. It’s a taping of the current Broadway cast, on stage, doing their thing. You can rent it in iTunes now, and I just can’t recommend it highly enough. The current cast is absolutely stunning, and the show continues to inspire today.

As I was saying, San Jose. Yeah, this lame travel schedule has thrown my posting schedule a scooch, but there IS news here, so better late than never.

Acoustic Conversations with Matt Vrba live in the feed

The first time I caught Matt Vrba was some two years ago, singing in a parking lot next to an RV that was pumping out baked beans and burgers. It was a company picnic. A company picnic.

[Chinese monks are walking through the airport right now. In my head they are Shaolin and could kill me by looking at me. In reality, they cannot find their way out of the airport. Attempting to do a good deed by showing them out.]

So, two years ago, Matt Vrba was ingratiating himself by playing solo for the ungrateful unwashed at a company picnic. Now, two years later, he’s relocated to Nashville and we get to catch him on a tour of the Pac Northwest, witnessing him ingratiating himself on our show.

A lot can change in two years.

And yet, the music that originally stuck with me is here and better than ever. This guy has a fantastic story to tell, and he completely kicks it with the live tracks we’re giving away right now. So go, now, open iTunes and update your feed for the show. Watch those tracks trickle onto your computer. Drop them on your iPods and Sansas and … whatevers … and kick it with Matt Vrba.

Want more of Matt? Visit his site at MattVrba.com.

What’s more important than that? Buying music!

If you like Matt, or the other artists we’ve profiled, remember this: A GREAT way to support the show is to click right over on the “Store” link in the top-right corner of the site and buy their music! That’s right, live and in color, straight to you courtesy of Amazon.com, you can buy music, AND fund the show, AND support the artists all at the same time! So help us out, us creative types battling a flagging economy, and buy some great tunes. You won’t regret it. Neither will we.

As ever, thanks for your support, and stay tuned for more great musicians coming this month!

1. Forever Bound
2. Best Thing
3. The Bridge
4. Day I Died
5. Ramblin Man (The Allman Brothers Cover)
6. The Trucker Song

As usual, all tracks are 256k AAC MP4s. We hope you enjoy them!

1. Room With Walls
2. Gail
3. That’s What Angels Can Do (Wood Brothers Cover)
4. Things I did in June
5. New Look Lovers
6. Kings & Queens

As usual, all tracks are 256k AAC MP4s. We hope you enjoy them!

See, there’s this thing about recording. When you have a mixer, and a microphone, and a computer, the tracks have to line up. For example, my mic, plugged into input 1, should be set to record on the computer at input 1. See how that works? Well, in this case, we messed that up. The result? Tyler sounds awesome. Fantastic. Out of this world. I sound pretty good. Curt sounds like he may — though is probably not — in the room at all. 

Bottom line, sorry to make you struggle through listening to a few bits of the mix. Totally our bad. Rather than just cut out the lousy stuff, we left it all in thinking you’d rather actually hear the questions at least a little bit over not at all. 

In other news, in honor of our second season, I’m pulling all the old tracks from last year out of mothballs and posting them in the feed once again. If you missed them, make sure to subscribe in iTunes and download them. Tonight, I posted all five of the original Bart Ferguson Band tracks from last year, all in 256k AAC MP4, as usual. Those will be available in the feed for 30 days, then gone forever. … 

Next up, we’ve got a solid handful of tracks and show with Sam Wegman, a student at PSU with some bona fide hits on his hands if you’re into something of a cross between Elliott Smith and John Mayer. I’ll throw up a vid soon to give you a taste. Seriously — the guy’s got chops. Can’t wait to show you.

Remember to check out the store if you like any of the music you find on the show. While the tracks we record are exclusive, our store will point you to Amazon where you can buy CDs and MP3s from all our artists. Buy through us and support the site, and the show, so we can keep recording. 

Very, very special thanks to Josh Olswanger at Session One Audio for picking up our Logic file and working magic to fix our trip to amateur hour. The guy’s a hero in our books.

What have we been up to? Oh, not much. Redid the site. That’s something. Why? Oh, you know… old sweaters and whatnot. The new site is back on Wordpress with a site design from Brian Gardner. That guy’s got chops.

More importantly, we’re full-on into mastering season 2 of Acoustic Conversations. We’re just starting to leak a few recordings and behind the scenes videos from the sessions, so be sure to check back regularly for more goodies. And if you haven’t subscribed to the podcast itself, we don’t hold it against you. Yet. But save yourselves the humiliation and subscribe now. Today. What do you get? Good question!

1. Adoration
2. Sweet thanksgiving
3. Satisfaction in a job-well-done
4. EXCLUSIVE pre-release tracks
5. EXCLUSIVE editions of GREAT MUSIC
6. EXCLUSIVE interviews with GREAT ARTISTS
7. MORE EXCLUSIVE behind-the-scenes STUFF
8. CHANCE to FREE the ELVES and ALLOW the MONKEYS their DUE

Even more? SURE THERE IS! We’ve added an aStore from Amazon so you can not only enjoy the great EXCLUSIVE editions of tracks we’re giving away for FREE, but you can buy the music of your new favorite artists right here on AcousticConversations.com. Just click on “Store” and start shopping. Do we need to tell you twice? Seriously? Just click on “Store” and start shopping. There.

Welcome to 2009, everybody. We’re glad your here. Come back more. And more. We’ve got a great line-up of awesome artists on deck for this season. We promise. Because we don’t do the bad ones. It’s our way.

1. You Already Know
2. Radiate
3. Better Be Us All
4. Wyoming
5. The Road
6. Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen cover)
7. Push That River
8. Explode

As usual, all tracks are 256k AAC MP4s. We hope you enjoy them!

They did their best to mask their nerves about the whole ordeal, unconvincingly as the night wore on, yet they still managed to turn out six tight living room tracks for A/C. These are jam tunes, rhythm and flow, that smack of Sublime, Blues Traveller, a hint of Jamiroquai, and more than healthy dash of Marley and Judge Roughneck. Beware of these tracks, people. There are bona fide hits hanging out in this show, ear-worms that’ll have you singing the outPost brand of reggae for days on end.

BUT — NO!!!

Alas, the tracks are gone. They’re not available. They have vanished. They are … no… more. 

The free tracks from A/C artists are available for 30 days after the show in the show feed in iTunes. If you haven’t subscribed, you’re missing out on some great music. Go ahead — crack open iTunes and get busy downloading the new stuff!

BUT — NO!!!

Alas, the tracks are gone. They’re not available. They have vanished. They are … no… more.

The free tracks from A/C artists are available for 30 days after the show in the show feed in iTunes. If you haven’t subscribed, you’re missing out on some great music. Go ahead — crack open iTunes and get busy downloading the new stuff!

BUT — NO!!!

Alas, the tracks are gone. They’re not available. They have vanished. They are … no… more. 

The free tracks from A/C artists are available for 30 days after the show in the show feed in iTunes. If you haven’t subscribed, you’re missing out on some great music. Go ahead — crack open iTunes and get busy downloading the new stuff!

The show is gone. It’ll be back. Hang tight. And more importantly, check the podcast feed, subscribe, and then call your mother and pet your dog. They both miss you terribly.