Written by: Tina Houser
Some bands grow out of movements. Others quietly shape them from the outside. The Chameleons have always belonged to the second category—and that’s exactly......
1 day ago
Written by Tina Houser
Before the stories about record deals, before the stadium-caliber hooks of Double Eclipse, before “Hot Cherie” became the kind of song that follows you through decades whether you want it to or not, Johnny Gioeli was already working harder than most adults while still technically a kid. He wasn’t waiting to be discovered—he was already acting Off-Broadway, fronting bands up and down the East Coast, and fielding phone calls from people like Paul Stanley while his high school principal was still trying to figure out why he kept missing class on Mondays. For Gioeli, rock wasn’t a phase. It was the only plan that ever made sense.
By the......
Written by Tina Houser
There’s something disarmingly honest about talking with Alien Ant Farm frontman Dryden Mitchell. Maybe it’s the way he laughs at his own mythology. Maybe it’s the way he talks about songs like old friends rather than trophies. Or maybe it’s because—25 years after Anthology—he still sounds like someone who never set out to be a rock star in the first place.
On Press Play Radio Conversations, Dryden joins Don and Tina not as a nostalgia act, but as a working artist still chasing the emotional thread that made Alien Ant Farm resonate in the first place. The conversation moves effortlessly from the resurgence of “Movies”......
Written by Tina Houser
On Press Play Radio Conversations, McCoy sat down with Don and Tina not as a nostalgia act from the early-2000s alt-rock surge, but as a working artist still writing, still questioning, still carrying notebooks full of unfinished songs like a man who never stopped believing the next one might matter just as much as the last. Because for him, it always does.
That’s been true since the moment “The Way I Feel” quietly reshaped the trajectory of 12 Stones back in 2002. It wasn’t just a breakout track—it was the reason the band existed at all. McCoy still plays it every night, still believes in it, still hears the echo of the decision that......
Written by Tina Houser
Long before the arena lights, the cinematic soundtracks, and the mythic reputation of one of rock’s most unmistakable voices, Miljenko Matijević knew exactly who he was going to be. Not someday. Not maybe. Immediately. He remembers standing on a chair in his grandmother’s kitchen in Croatia at just three years old, singing to the radio like it was already a stage. For some artists, music is a choice. For Matijević, it was a calling he recognized before he even understood what a career was.
His earliest influences weren’t the screaming heights of arena rock. They were country records—Johnny Cash, John Denver, the voices drifting through the......
Written by Tina Houser
There’s a moment early in the conversation when the old argument surfaces again — the one that keeps getting resurrected like a zombie headline every few years: rock is dead. But then Sass Jordan laughs. Brian Tichy shrugs. And somewhere between the riffs, the memories of Santa Clarita living-room drum takes, and the stubborn refusal to polish away the grit, the myth quietly collapses under its own weight.
Because when you hear what they built together as Something Unto Nothing, you don’t hear nostalgia. You hear combustion.
The project didn’t start as a band. It didn’t even start as a plan. It started the way most great rock records......
Allie Colleen Is the Real Deal: Heartbreak, Horror Movies, and the Kind of Country That Leaves a Mark
Written by Tina Houser
Allie Colleen doesn’t just sing songs. She opens a trap door under the room and lets everybody fall straight into whatever feeling they’ve been trying not to touch. On Press Play Radio Conversations with The Don and Tina, she came in funny, sharp, wildly relatable, and completely unfiltered — the kind of artist who can pivot from Bath & Body Works heartbreak to Michael Jackson devotion to a full-on rant about AI butchering tattoos, all without losing the thread of who she is. And that thread is rare: she’s real, she’s witty,......
Written by Tina Houser
Jet Jurgensmeyer has already lived two careers before most artists finish figuring out their first chorus. Long before he was writing reflective country songs about sunsets, identity, and what it actually means to grow up in America, audiences knew him as Spanky in The Little Rascals (2014) and spotted him across television and film in projects like American Sniper, Adventures in Babysitting, and Last Man Standing. But if there’s one thing that becomes obvious within minutes of hearing him speak on Press Play Radio Conversations with Don and Tina, it’s that acting didn’t shape his voice nearly as much as Nashville did—and maybe even more than......
Written by Tina Houser
There’s something quietly powerful about hearing a familiar news voice step into a different kind of spotlight. For more than three decades, Dan Ashley has delivered the evening news to the San Francisco Bay Area with steady authority. But on Press Play Conversations, Ashley revealed another side of himself — not just as a musician, but as a storyteller shaped by memory, optimism, and a lifelong connection to the emotional pull of great songs.
Ashley’s songwriting lives exactly where you’d expect it to for someone who’s spent a career telling real stories. When the conversation turned to his song “Outside Looking In,”......
Written by Tina Houser
There’s a certain kind of country voice that doesn’t just carry melody—it carries memory. The kind that feels like it already knows your story before the chorus even arrives. When Buddy Jewell sat down with The Don and Tina on Press Play Conversations, what unfolded wasn’t just another career retrospective—it was a reminder of what authenticity sounds like when it refuses to age out of relevance.
Long before reality television turned into a fast-moving conveyor belt of overnight fame, Jewell stepped onto the stage of Nashville Star and didn’t just win—it overwhelmed the moment. He arrived there after a decade of......
