Jonathan Wilson goes against the grain on 'Eat The Worm'

XPN | By Raina Douris,

Kimberly Junod

Published October 23, 2023 at 11:45 AM EDT

Jonathan Wilson's new album, Eat The Worm, is hard to describe. It's the sound of an artist letting himself be totally free; a producer using every tool at his disposal; and a musician who isn't shy about his influences while remaining entirely original.

You may also know Jonathan Wilson as a producer for other artists, like Father John Misty, Dawes and Margo Price. In this session, Wilson talks about how working with other artists was part of the inspiration for this new solo album. It's fascinating because when you listen to Wilson's music, there are production elements you might recognize from his work on other artists' albums, but then he branches off into weird, unpredictable territory.

We dig into the album, and you'll also get to hear Wilson's take on AI technology in both audio and visual art.

Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, is the host and writer of NPR's daily nationally-syndicated music interview and discovery program World Cafe. She has interviewed artists like Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, Questlove and Brandi Carlile, and was a 2022 keynote lecturer on the topic of Folk Music and music discovery at the Chautauqua Institution.

Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).