Hi and welcome to the working songwriter, the show where today's best songwriters come to Talk Shop.

I'm your host, Joe Pug. Each episode here,

we host a distinguished guest, and we ask them to go deep, on their inspiration, on their process,

on the general ups and downs of making a life in music. So, whether you're a grizzled veteran who can now only listen to a rare French drone

music on a Pono system, or else a scrappy upstart, mixing your latest album on a pair of

$10 earbuds you bought from a gas station, this is your show, because ultimately it is what every

writer seeks most, an ironclad excuse to put off actually writing.

Hey everybody, thanks for joining us this month, and already I know what you're thinking.

I'm late.

I'm about a week late delivering today's episode.

Usually we publish on the last Friday of every month, and our podcast feed has been

conspicuously silent for the last few days.

But I got a good excuse. As I mentioned to you in our last few episodes, I was invited to

tape a live version of this show at the Newport Folk Festival. Well, that was last weekend,

and I decided to wait for that opportunity before publishing our next episode.

And to make up for the tardiness in the coming weeks, I'm going to deliver not just this episode, but two more, which were taped at the festival.

So that's a square deal, right? Keep your eyes peeled for those. I want to thank

everyone who came out and supported the live show. And of course, I want to thank Newport Folk,

Jay Sweet, Chris Capps, Britt Ryan, and everyone in the Folk family for making it possible. There is a reason the festival sells out every year before the lineup is even announced.

And that reason is that they've cultivated a trust with their audience.

They've established a curatorship that people can rely on, and they run a smooth, no-drama operation every year.

I would compare it to, like, when your basketball team has really good ownership, like the San Antonio Spurs or the Celtics,

...