Show notes
On this episode of Vinyl Community Podcasts, host Sam St. John (Americana Sam) sits down with Nashville multi-instrumentalist Matt Glassmeyer for a fascinating conversation about improvisation, analog recording, musical creativity, and his new supergroup Slow Accordion.
Featuring Glassmeyer alongside Oliver Wood of The Wood Brothers, bassist Ted Pecchio, and drummer Mark Rautabaugh, Slow Accordion brings four distinctive musical personalities together for an exploratory instrumental project built around improvisation. Matt takes Sam inside the formation of the group, explaining how four musicians who had crossed paths in different ways entered the studio without a rigid roadmap and discovered their sound by simply listening and reacting to one another.
The conversation also dives deep into the making of Slow Accordion’s self-titled debut, released by Royal Potato Family Records. Recorded in Glassmeyer’s home studio using just four microphones and a four-track tape machine, the album embraces a raw, lo-fi analog approach where limitations become part of the creative process. Matt discusses why watching the tape physically roll while recording changes the way musicians perform, why fewer options can actually produce better results, and what modern recording may have lost in the age of unlimited digital takes.
From there, Sam and Matt explore the larger history and philosophy of musical improvisation—from jazz and blues to fusion, jam bands, Americana, old-time music, and experimental sounds. They discuss everyone from Cecil Taylor and Keith Jarrett to Chick Corea, Weather Report, Frank Zappa, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan, while questioning how useful genre labels really are when artists refuse to stay inside clearly defined musical boundaries.
They also look ahead to Slow Accordion’s live performances, where the group is learning how to recreate the spontaneity and space of its studio sessions in front of an audience.
And then there’s the description that may capture Slow Accordion better than any genre ever could: “the anti-AI summer soundtrack we all need.” In a world increasingly dominated by computers, algorithms, and artificial intelligence, Slow Accordion represents four musicians in a room, playing together in real time, recording to tape, making mistakes, reacting to each other, and trying to create something that exists only in that particular moment.
It’s an insightful conversation about improvisation, analog recording, vinyl, technology, artistic expression, and the very human act of making music.
For fans of vinyl records, jazz, Americana, experimental music, The Wood Brothers, analog recording, improvisational music, or discovering artists outside the mainstream, this is an episode you won’t want to miss!
Vinyl Community Podcasts — podcasts for, by, and about members of the Vinyl Community.
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For more information on guest Matt Glassmeyer:
Website: www.mattglassmeyer.com
Purchase the Record: https://royalpotatofamily.com/product...
For more information on host Americana Sam:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Americanasam1994
IG: @americanasam94
For more information on Vinyl Community Podcasts:
https://vinylcommunitypodcasts.com
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