December 29, 2025

For the last Breaking The Tethers program for 2026, I decided to go with one. One long, long track played over the better part of 60 minutes. And who better to go with for this than the great John Coltrane. In 1966, he was playing, far out tunes, taking a big dip into the sonic bath. His Live in Japan album, recorded in 1966, features six pieces on four CDs - do the math! The song I selected was "Crescent", originally released on the album of the same title in 1964 (the band also plays a bit of "Leo" at the end of the performance). I've played this before, when I had a multi-hour show, but as it's about 55 minutes long, it still fits nicely into the one hour I have for BTT these days. You can listen to the whole shebang here.

BTT show number one of 2026 will take place on Monday, January 5, 2026, starting at 10 am MT, at 90.9 FM or cjsw.com. I will play more than just one track on this show - maybe four or five! 😁

Also this coming week, I'll be appearing on Alternative To What, filling in for Kerry, on Thursday, January 8, starting at 4 pm MT, again on CJSW, 90.9 FM or cjsw.com. I'm not sure what'll be on the bill for ATW but, at the least, I'll be doing my usual trip all over that musical map.

Thanks.

Andrew

December 22, 2025

This was the closest Breaking The Tethers show to December 25 so I made it the Christmas edition of BTT. In past years, I've mixed up the usual BTT jazz fare, some of it with a Christmas or holiday theme, with a few non-jazz tracks of a more crazy but seasonal nature. This year, I just went for the latter. No "normal" jazz just Christmas, crazy Christmas. There were 12 songs, some played in previous years, some new to BTT. Here's a sampling of what we had:

Christmas death metal: "Greensleeves" by J.J. Hrubovcak

Daniel Johnston: "Christmas in the looney bin"

Chapman Stick Christmas: "Skating" by Brian Baggett

Experimental Christmas: "Holy night" by Eigenradio

Jimi Hendrix Christmas: "Little drummer boy/Silent night/Auld lang syne"

Sound collages: "Merry fucking Christmas" by Alias Frequencies and "Xmas (excerpt)" by Wayne Butane

Soul Christmas: "I want to come home for Christmas" by Marvin Gaye

Folky Christmas: "Cutty wren" by Richard Thompson, and "The cherry tree carol" by Pentangle

And more! 

The place to go to listen to this fine mess is here. Do it!

Thanks.

Andrew

December 15, 2025

The December 15 show... Christmas is a-comin' and the music is getting weirder... Not that that's a bad thing at all! My fave two tracks this week were probably "Idiom I" by Anna Webber and "As though they knew" by Valley Voice (both Canadian!) but, really, I quite liked all the tracks. I think you will too! You can listen to this show here.

Thanks.

Andrew

December 8, 2025

On the page for this show on the CJSW site (which also includes a link to the recording of the program), my comment on this BTT episode was "Just a bit of this, a bit of that...", which pretty much well describes the proceedings. And I started with a Tony Williams track, which is never a bad thing. Anyway, I invite you to give it a listen.

Thanks.

Andrew