John Faye

Alyssa Garcia and I met when she was a student and I was a songwriting professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Before she ever took my songwriting class, she was one of a handful of private-lesson students I taught each term in a dusty and desolate 4th floor practice room in the campus "Main Building".. the room had a piano and one working power outlet from the early 20th century. During that 10-week term, I got to see Alyssa's talent as a musician and songwriter close-up. One of the songs she wrote during that time became her course project, which we recorded together in GarageBand and it ended up on one of her EPs. You can check out "Apart" on Spotify HERE.

Even before she attended Drexel, Alyssa was already a seasoned musician with a lot of career accolades, including sync placements for her song “Loved Actually” which landed on several episodes of The Young and the Restless and in the Netflix original movie The Starling. In 2015, she won the Philadelphia Songwriters Project annual contest AND if I’m not mistaken, her 2018 Hometown Heroes Homey Award for Best Pop Song made her the youngest ever recipient of that award.

As a female Filipino-American musician, she has faced a number of challenges head on, taking inspiration from Grammy winning Filipino artists like Steve Lacey and Beabadoobee, and showcasing her talent on several instruments and in high profile settings, like Music Fest in Bethlehem, PA. Her stated credo that "Music Is The Cure" resonates loud and clear with her supports and with me!

I hope you enjoy this great conversation!

~JKF ❤

I am so excited about this episode with my friend Jamie Salvatore - the man who puts the "Jamie" in Jamie and the Guarded Heart. JatGH is honestly the type of band you can’t help but root for. Their name is fitting yet a little deceptive, because so many of Jamie’s anthemic songs wear their rock 'n' roll heart right on their sleeve for all to see. 

I appreciate Jamie doing this episode of the pod with me because when we got together at Andy's Diner & Pub in Conshohocken, PA (Conshy to the folks from the area), the band had just endured a heartbreaking gut punch. They had just sold out an upcoming theater show - weeks in advance, I might add - only to have the venue pull out of the event the following day, leaving several months of work, preparation, and promotion in a rubble pile, which - yes contained some valuable lessons - but also left the band wondering how to recover and ultimately bounce back. 

So much of what working musicians go through involves such tests of resilience in the face of these types of horror stories but not everyone is willing to talk about it so candidly, because we’re conditioned to think that we have to present our lives and careers as perpetually sunny-side-up all day, every day, and that is just not how it goes. So let's get real 

I hope you enjoy this great conversation!

~ JKF ❤

I got a chance to sit down with my dear friend Jason Miraglia (the 'G' is silent, as you'll hear ;) at Olga's Diner in Marlton, NJ. When I first met Jay, he was the drummer in one of the most popular Philly bands of the 2000's - Fat City Reprise. He would later sit behind the kit in the last lineup of IKE and also play drums on all of records I did with John & Brittany. He currently still played with our pal Brett Talley in their cover band Bangarang and on Brett's prolific solo catalog.

Our convo at Olga's runs the gamut from some of my other, dare I say, more niche podcast ideas, to our embrace of awkwardness, to an overview of his journey as a musician. Lately, he been reconnecting with his former Fat City bandmates Mike Vivas and Nick Anastasi in a new project called Honey Butter (although, as you'll hear, Vivas has been coyly non-committal ;) I had an absolute blast talking with Jaybles and hope you enjoy listening in!!

Well, my friends, it was bound to happen. This is officially the first episode of this podcast where my guest got a flat tire on the way to the diner. Melissa Menago hit a gigantic pothole on Rt. 476, barely making it off the highway to the relative safety of a parking lot next to a hair salon. Luckily, Melissa was no worse for the wear after she Uber’d over to the Springfield Diner, in the heart of Delco. 

Melissa and I go way back. We met roughly 15 years ago when she was a music industry student at Drexel University and I was her song writing teacher. Even then, her songwriting and vocal talent was impressive - so much so, that when I left academia in 2020, the first person I thought of to recommend for the job was Melissa.. and guess who the current songwriting professor at Drexel University is! 

In the 2010s Melissa formed June Divided, a killer rock band that played all over the country on the Warped Tour, and had turned out to be an enduring collective of musicians that she still fronts today. 

Melissa is also a great solo artist, and she has a brand new record coming out in 2023 that leans more “sad girl” (as she puts it). It’s that more introspective sound that informs a very special holiday duet she wrote just a few weeks ago, called 
“I Never Liked The Holidays (Before I Met You)" 

All I know is.. I never met a parenthetical title I didn’t like, so I felt super-fortunate that Melissa thought of me to sing this song with her. Check it out on all streaming platforms now! 

In this conversation over mushroom omelettes and pancakes, we talk about our struggles as music "lifers" (both with Delaware roots and a vocal coach in common), who still sometimes have to answer the age-old question: 
You still doing the music thing? 

Which begs the question: Do we really have a choice? 

I hope you enjoy this wonderful conversation! 
JKF ❤

In the early 2000's (aka the aughts), Derek Fuhrmann's band Omnisoul and my band IKE were very simpático.. we played many shows together and eventually had the same management. Derek actually interned for IKE when he first started working with our manager Jim Johnson and he also played the lead role (of a cocky young rock star) in our music video for our song "Deathbed (Na, Na, Na)" which was an extremely ambitious homage to Citizen Kane.  

Within a couple of years of rising up the ranks of the music scene, Ominsoul changed their name to the Crash Motive, signed a deal with Wind Up Records, and hit the road, but fronting the Crash Motive was not to be the path to Derek Furhmann’s success, although it would be a very key starting point.  

The band’s A&R guy, Greg Wattenberg (producer of Train and many other big names) saw something in Derek that kept them in touch well beyond his time on  Wind Up and eventually Derek became a songwriter and producer under Wattenberg’s Arcade Songs publishing company, Since the 2010’s, Derek has written and / or produced songs with artists like the Goo Goo Dolls, Phillip Phillips, James Bay, Andrew McMahon In the Wilderness, Rascal Flats, and many, many more. He also just signed a new record deal with a subsidiary of Universal Music group with an animated project called MASCOT, which puts him back in his old role of using his killer voice as a lead vocalist again. 

 I’m excited to share our conversation from the ORIGINAL Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank, CA on this episode of TatD!! 

~ JKF ❤

I have known Nicole Zell for a little over a decade. Over those years I have watched her come into her own as an artist with some pretty unusual twists and turns along the way. She has toured as the guitarist for alt-rock band American Wolves and fronted the synth-pop band THRILLCHASER, and although I would consider her a seasoned musician and songwriter, she is, at 27, just about to release her debut record as a solo artist.  

At seven tracks, Asleep To My Own Magic is somewhere in between an EP and an LP, and yet it feels like a complete journey, the kind of record self-reflective songwriters feel compelled to make. During our conversation at Minella‘s Diner in Wayne, PA, Nicole and I hit on all kinds of topics from religion, to the perils of the music business, to keeping one’s inner child alive.  

I really enjoyed connecting with Nikki and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did! 

JKF ❤

After just celebrating the 20th anniversary of a band he was reluctant to name after himself, Anthony Renzulli has earned the right to say he’s in it for all the right reasons. You have to be when you decide to put our a solo record in 2022 that sounds like it could have been made in 1932. Anthony has played just about every sub-genre of rock in his career, starting out as a drummer in metal and rap rock, then shifting to being a band leader on the instrument that was always within arm’s reach since before he could even play it - the guitar. He came into the blues through the portal of 60’s rock - Cream, Zepplin, Hendrix - and found his way back to the Delta Blues from the early 20th century, devouring music from artists like Robert Johnson and Elmore James. 

Anthony recently finished a full-length blues record, aptly titled Mad, Mad Blues and I was lucky to be able to preview a vinyl test pressing, which honestly transported me to a place I don't usually visit in a musical sense.  

Anthony and I met up at Meadows Diner in Blackwood, NJ and we talked about his long strange journey to get back to right where he started from. As with several of the conversations I've been having lately on TatD, this one could have easily made two episodes, but I think I got the essence of who Anthony Renzulli is as an artist, and a truly good dude who has dedicated his life to his love of music. Enjoy!!

Maggie Poulos is a fascinating example of a talented musician, who is also deeply embedded in the business side of the music world. She’s fronted numerous bands such as the all-female NYC trio The Crushes. And as the founder of Mixtape Media, Maggie has done PR for such high-profile clients as Robert Plant and Allison Krauss, Cake, Fitz and the Tantrums, and Duncan Sheik. Since moving from New York back home to the Philadelphia suburbs, she has become the go-to publicist of the Philly indie rock scene, working with Mo Louda and the Humble, Don McCloskey, and some band known as the Caulfields.. Most recently she landed some amazing press for a 1-woman theatrical production called “Queen of Fishtown.” She’s a great conversationalist with strongly held beliefs and a passion for that thing called rock ’n’ roll, simultaneously nostalgic for the MTV-era musical icons she grew up loving, yet constantly on the lookout for great new artists and ways to help them succeed in the musical landscape that we’re all facing today. During our extended lunch at Nudy's Cafe in Paoli, PA (where we were kicked out, having lost track of time for close to hour after the place was technically closed), we chatted about songwriting, politics, and presidential assassination attempts, among other things. ❤

Underestimate Annalise Curtin at your own peril! She may be diminutive in size but so many things about this dynamo of a human are BIG.... big personality, big smile, big laugh, big talent (I am in perpetual awe of her finger picking abilities on guitar), and big, BIG voice.  

I met Annalise back in 2011 at an open mic (the weekly "Late Night Series" at Drexel University in Philadelphia, where I was the songwriting prof at the time). She's come (and gone) a long way since then, having lived and immersed herself in several different music scenes (Cleveland, Milwaukee, Seattle) over the span of several years, while always keeping her connections to Philly strong. Even when she lived in different parts of the country, she always made a point to hit me up when she came back east to visit, and we've shared many a laugh at many diners since she's been back living in Philly the past few years.  

After a long hiatus releasing recorded music, Annalise took the 2020 lockdown as an opportunity to get back in the game, releasing a string of killer singles and collaborating with artists across genres (and geographical borders), expanding her musical horizons and putting her name in the conversation of Philly artists to watch.  

She and I have been doing more shows together and we have our first collab single ("Ghost Writer") in the pipeline to be recorded later this year!

Joe Trainor first landed on my radar as the front man of the aptly named Joe Trainor Trio, known to us super fans as JT3.. his Ben Folds-y piano rock was a first-state staple for a full decade in the earlier part of the 2000’s but then he moved into a different musical space entirely, forming The Rock Orchestra, an entity that features multiple large lineups of various musicians playing the music of the classic bands that inform Joe’s musical sensibilities. On top of all that, he’s also a key member of the team over at Gable Music Ventures, the promotional juggernaut responsible for all kinds of events, like the beloved Ladybug Festival. 

Joe and I met up at the Marsh Road Diner in Wilmington and among other things, one of my favorite parts of this conversation has to do with both of us sharing what it’s like to feel the inevitable pull of aging as a rock musician and what our own strategies might be as we show no signs of stopping. We also do an unexpectedly deep dive into Styx.. the band, not the river. This podcast could have been twice the length it is now, but rest in the knowledge that you're getting the absolute crème de la crème of our conversation!