Some records become classics. Others disappear into the cracks of music history, waiting for someone to rediscover them.

Welcome to The Sharp Notes Podcast. I'm Evan Toth.

Back in 1996, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Matt Devine released Reseda Spleen under the name Ventilator. Recorded largely at home on a secondhand Tascam tape machine, it was a wonderfully idiosyncratic collection of power pop, alternative rock, and homemade sonic experimentation. It arrived on CD, earned a modest following, and then quietly slipped out of circulation.

Thirty years later, Bar/None Records has finally brought Reseda Spleen to vinyl for the very first time, giving this overlooked album a second opportunity to find its audience.

But this is more than a story about a reissue. It's about the strange paths records take, the creative freedom of recording at home, and what happens when music made for one moment finds new meaning in another.

Today, Matt Devine joins me to revisit the making of Reseda Spleen, the circumstances that shaped it, and the unlikely pleasure of seeing his bedroom recordings become a vinyl LP three decades later.

Here's my conversation with Matt Devine, on The Sharp Notes Podcast.

Drew Ryder Smith has been around music for a long time, even if you’re only hearing his name now.

He grew up between Middle Tennessee and Muscle Shoals, got into radio while he was still a kid, worked for Sam Phillips, became a professional songwriter in Nashville, and eventually had one of his songs recorded by Merle Haggard. Along the way, he spent years writing and producing for other people, learning the strange little machinery of how songs move through the music business and, every so often, into history.

His new album, The Deep End, brings the focus back to Smith himself.

It’s a record about family, memory, old habits, disappearing places, and the things we inherit whether we ask for them or not. It’s also the sound of a songwriter who has spent years helping other people say what they mean finally deciding to do a little more of that for himself.

Smith stopped by The Sharp Notes in Paramus, New Jersey, and we talked about where he comes from, the records that shaped him, Sam Phillips, Merle Haggard, Steve Earle, the peculiar business of writing songs for other people, physical media, and a trip to Abbey Road that, shall we say, produced more than a few stories.

One of them involves a Beatle.

We’ll leave it there.

Benny Sings has spent more than two decades refining one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary pop music. The Dutch singer, songwriter, and producer has a knack for creating songs that feel immediately familiar—warm keyboards, melodies in soft-focus, touches of soul, jazz, R&B, and 1970s singer-songwriter pop—while often hiding something far more complicated beneath the surface.

That tension is at the heart of his latest album, 22 Durnham Dew. Written during a period of significant change in his life, the record follows a move away from central Amsterdam and toward a quieter, more domestic existence with his family. It’s an album about home, parenthood, transition, and the weird way that everyday life can seep its way into pop music.

Our conversation travels back even further: to his parents’ record collection, his fascination with American pop culture, Sesame Street, Chet Baker, Judee Sill, Rupert Holmes, the Carpenters, and the enduring appeal of music that sounds light even when its emotional center is anything but.

We also talk about vinyl, working alone versus collaborating, why his daughter helped rescue a song he wasn’t sure about, and why—after years of touring, producing, collaborating, and making records—Benny Sings may now be increasingly interested in something much less glamorous: routine, simplicity, and what he jokingly calls “ambitionless music.”