Brian Cullman, Veteran NY Music Scenester/Journalist/Producer, Shares His Tunes and Musings About Death: Nakedly Examined Music Podcast #137

Bri­an start­ed as a teen music enthu­si­ast and jour­nal­ist as ear­ly as 1970, run­ning into folks like Jim Mor­ri­son and Nico and mak­ing con­nec­tions with every musi­cian he could lay eyes on. He lever­aged this effort into find­ing vehi­cles for his songs, first with OK Savant (ca. 1990), a band that fre­quent­ed CBG­Bs and then broke up right as it was signed to a major label. After some false starts and life changes, he like­wise used his net­work to sup­port his cre­ation of three and half solo albums start­ing in 2008. He has also been an active pro­duc­er and col­lab­o­ra­tor for artists like Olla­belle, Lucin­da Williams & Taj Mahal, and sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al musi­cians.

Each episode of the Naked­ly Exam­ined Music pod­cast involves pick­ing three record­ings from an artist’s cat­a­log to play in full and dis­cuss in detail. Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er here engages Bri­an about “Killing The Dead” (and we lis­ten to “Wrong Birth­day” at the end; see the video below) from Win­ter Clothes (2020, writ­ten with now-deceased Olla­belle gui­tarist Jimi Zhiva­go), “And She Said” from The Oppo­site of Time (2016), and “The Promise” from All Fires The Fire (2008). Intro: “The Book of Sleep” by OK Savant, record­ed live at CBG­Bs in 1990. For more, see briancullman.com.

Watch Bri­an live (with Jimi Zhiva­go and oth­ers) in 2016. Anoth­er new, col­or­ful­ly ani­mat­ed video is for the bluesy “Walk the Dog Before I Sleep.” One from his pre­vi­ous album is “Every­thing That Ris­es.” Hear the full, remas­tered record­ing of “The Book of Sleep.” Hear the song he wrong for Nick Drake (whom he opened for in 1970). Hear one of the tunes he did for Rua Das Pre­tas.

The bass play­er on Bri­an’s albums is Byron Isaacs (also of Olla­belle), whom Naked­ly Exam­ined Music inter­viewed for episode #82.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion and anoth­er song, avail­able to Naked­ly Exam­ined Music Patre­on sup­port­ers.

Pho­to by Bill Flick­er.

Naked­ly Exam­ined Music is a pod­cast host­ed by Mark Lin­sen­may­er, who also hosts The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast and Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast. He releas­es music under the name Mark Lint.