Music stories with the polish left off.
Performance Anxiety gives musicians room to trace the messy route from first songs to records, tours, bands, scenes, and stalled projects. Mark keeps the pace informal, letting guests wander through memory until the useful detail appears.
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Performance Anxiety is a long-running music interview show about the human trail behind songs, bands, albums, and scenes. It is loose, curious, and built for stories that need more than a press-cycle answer. Mark usually starts near the beginning. Guests talk about first songs heard, first instruments, early bands, family influence, and the strange turns that made their work possible. The rhythm is informal, with sponsor breaks and quick affirmations folded into the experience. That roughness suits the show. It makes the conversations feel closer to a backstage catch-up than a polished profile. The George Usher episode lingers on an ambitious visual and musical idea that changed shape as vinyl faded, money failed to appear, and the project slipped into decades of dormancy. The Truly episode has a bigger scene-history charge, with Robert Roth and Hiro Yamamoto looking back at Seattle in 1989, Sub Pop delays, Lollapalooza, the Singles soundtrack, Capitol Records, Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mark Pickerel. Other episodes pull the lens wider. Scott Shea and Jordon Zadorozny talk Genesis through auditions, drumming, Peter Gabriel's family home, and the discipline of a band that served the song more than the solo. Robert Diebel's appearance turns inward, following piano memory, singing, drumming, restraint, literary folk-pop, Victoria Williams, and The Space Between Us. Erika Switchblade brings the more volatile side of the show, with stories about southern Italy, getting kicked out of bands, forming The Devils with Johnny Blackula, and the pull of blues and soul covers. Smitti Supab's episode shifts toward travel, New Orleans, China, Thailand, reggae gigs, Treme, and a search for soul. The family bands conversation with Louis Michaud and Corey Ledet finds both pride and pressure in musical inheritance, touring with relatives, zydeco, live records, and old family roots. The Problem With Kids Today episode catches a punk band in a more chaotic pre-show mode. Across these conversations, the show keeps returning to process, memory, persistence, and the weird economics of keeping music alive. It respects musicians without treating them like museum pieces. It also leaves room for goofy band names, missed chances, long shelves of unreleased work, and the kind of detail only artists remember. Performance Anxiety suits listeners who want the story between the discography entries. It is music history told at conversational distance.
Made for: For listeners who follow artists past the single, into band history, scene memory, recording detours, touring strain, and the decisions behind a life in music.
What sets it apart: Performance Anxiety stands out by letting interviews breathe past promotion into chronology, influence, and unfinished business. Its strength is the patient follow-up that turns a casual anecdote into a working musician's map of survival.
Have you ever wanted to sit down with your favorite artists and talk about what happens behind the scenes? Have you wanted to hear the crazy stories about recording, touring, and creating art that we all know exist? Performance Anxiety gets those stories for you.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Performance Anxiety turns musician interviews into detailed accounts of how bands, records, and careers survive uncertainty.
Performance Anxiety gives musicians room to reconstruct careers from the inside, with Mark guiding conversations toward the decisions, accidents, and relationships behind the records.
Phil Collins listens to rival drummers from a pool; your liner notes could never.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
George Usher revisits the long afterlife of Stevensonville, from visual-music ambition to power pop and collaboration.
George Usher's New York music story gives the episode a patient arc: Beatles-fueled beginnings in Cleveland, a move made without contacts, a long wait, then appearances at CBGB's and Mac's.
A candid, lightly wandering account of Truly's Seattle roots, delayed releases, hard turns, and renewed momentum.
Performance Anxiety brings Robert Roth and Hiro Yamamoto into a clear, reflective look at Truly's long path, from Seattle's 1989 state of flux to the delays, shifting plans, and label moves that kept shaping the band.
A Genesis audition story where Phil Collins wins by listening first and showing off second.
Genesis enters through the audition room, with Phil Collins waiting behind a run of other drummers before skipping the warm-up and moving straight into songs from Trespass.
A musician's search for more soul leads this conversation toward New Orleans, Treme, and the life around the music.
This Performance Anxiety conversation follows a musician trying to find a life with more soul. He remembers being told that serious players should spend time in New Orleans, then traces the path that took him through Thailand, reggae gigs, and the realization that music was not…
A warm, candid conversation about inherited music, family touring, and Corey’s live album from Alaska.
Family music is treated as a lived arrangement here, not a slogan: touring with relatives can deepen a band’s bond, but it can also make every small irritation harder to escape.
Shane Alexander traces a self-built musical life from difficult beginnings and late-80s metal to early tours with Dutch label Lucky Dice.
Performance Anxiety's conversation with Shane Alexander is strongest when it stays with the practical work of making a musical life sustainable.
A loose, personable punk-band conversation about shaping a sound during COVID and preparing to play live.
Performance Anxiety centers on a punk band that came together during COVID, when live shows were off the table and practice could become writing and recording time.
Joe Wong interviews drummers and musicians about craft, history, and the working musician's life.
Songs explained from the inside out.
Mark frames the episode around Tate, Silas, and Rena of The Problem with Kids Today just before they hit the stage.
Shane Alexander reveals how a chaotic childhood and a misplaced calendar interview led to his musical journey.
Host Mark interviews musician Dave Trumfio about his band Pulsars, their history, and the reissue of their debut album.
Host Mark interviews guitarist Arad Evans about his career playing experimental music with Glenn Branca and his new band The Whimbrels.
Wesley Stace, who recorded 17 albums as John Wesley Harding, talks with host Mark about his new jazz-leaning album One Last Heist.
["Performance Anxiety talks with George Usher about Stevensonville, a project he says took about 30 years to finish.", "Usher says his mother was a church organist, the family sang around a piano in Cleveland, and he heard \"Please, Please Me\" in the fall of 1963.", "He says he started the Spiders, learned songwriting by stealing Beatles and Hollies songs, and moved to New York in 1977 without knowing anybody.", "The record finally came together after a friend funded it, Tony Shanahan produced it, and players like Andy York, Brian Griffin, Andy Burton, David Mansfield, and Mark Sidgwick joined in."]
Robert Roth and Hiro Yamamoto talk with Mark Shea on Performance Anxiety about Truly's March 2026 tour, new music, and the Seattle path that brought them together.
Mark hosts Scott Shea and Jordan Zadorozny on Performance Anxiety to trace Genesis from Charterhouse and Jonathan King to the lineup that led into Trespass and Nursery Cryme.
Interview with singer-songwriter Robert Deeble about his latest album 'The Space Between Us' and his musical journey.
Mark interviews Erika Switchblade from The Devils about her musical journey, the band's formation, and their album of blues and soul covers.
Smitty Supab says his bass career began in Guangzhou almost by accident, after a job teaching English in China put him in expat bands.
Corey Ledet says his live album came from the Anchorage Folk Festival and may be a first for Alaska.
Host Mark interviews the band The Problem With Kids Today about their music, name, and new album 'Take It'.
Kevin Shields discusses his punk band Detention, the Central Jersey scene, and his journey from the Coast Guard to punk rock.
Host Mark discusses the challenges and experiences of making sophomore albums with musicians Vashti Bunyan and Lucy Kruger.