Learn more about Buddy here:
https://mosaic.pressplay.me/profiles/buddy-jewell

Send Buddy a note here:
https://pressplay.me/artist-letter/buddy-jewell

To learn more about Morgan: https://mosaic.pressplay.me/profiles/morgan-myles 

To write Morgan a letter: https://pressplay.me/artist-letter/morgan-myles

Raw, hypnotic, emotional, and electric, Bec Lauder and The Noise are tapping into something bigger than a moment — and this conversation proves she’s only getting started.

Learn more about Bec Lauder and The Noise here:
https://mosaic.pressplay.me/profiles/bec-lauder

Send Bec a letter here:
https://pressplay.me/artist-letter/bec-lauder-and-the-noise

Autumn Academy isn’t here to play the algorithm — they’re here to feel something.

From raw songwriting and standout tracks to an unfiltered conversation about AI in music, this Press Play Conversation dives into what it actually means to create in 2026.

No shortcuts. No fake polish. Just a band chasing something honest.

Watch the full conversation and experience Autumn Academy for yourself.

Learn more: https://mosaic.pressplay.me/profiles/autumn-academy
Write them a letter: https://pressplay.me/artist-letter/autumn-academy

Learn more about Sweet’s music, tour dates, and more — at: https://mosaic.pressplay.me/profiles/the-sweet
Listen for “Little Miracle” now spinning on Press Play Radio.

Write a letter to The Sweet:  https://pressplay.me/artist-letter/the-sweet

Written by Tina Houser

Steven Rosen didn’t become a music journalist chasing fame. He chased the room — that charged, quiet space where music stops being sound and becomes a person sitting across from you. On Press Play Radio Conversations, Rosen joins Don “The Don” Thatcher, SiriusXM veteran Dean Baldwin, and Press Play CEO Tina Houser for a sprawling, candid reflection on rock journalism, creative intimacy, and what we lost when everything became available all the time.

Rosen has written more than 700 articles for publications like Rolling Stone, Guitar Player, and Guitar World, and is the author of Tone Chaser, his deeply personal account of friendship and fracture with Edward Van Halen. But Rosen doesn’t talk like a man cataloging a résumé. He talks like someone still slightly stunned he was allowed inside the story at all.

The interview that lit the fuse

Rosen knew what he wanted to do the first time he ever interviewed an artist — Joe Cocker, in 1972. He was hitchhiking across the UK, calling publicists from London phone booths with nothing but nerve and curiosity. He admits he wasn’t ready. He admits the interview wasn’t great. But sitting across from Cocker — a man already etched into history by Woodstock — changed something.

“I knew I needed more of this,” Rosen says. Not success. Not status. The moment.

That instinct — chasing connection rather than proximity — is what carried Rosen forward.

Jeff Beck and the mercy that made a career

Every journalist has a nightmare. Rosen lived his early.

Interviewing Jeff Beck for Guitar Player, Rosen realized — after the conversation — that he’d never hit record. Thirty minutes gone. Career over, he thought.

Beck didn’t explode. He didn’t dismiss him. He told Rosen to come back the next day and do it again.

That second interview became Rosen’s first cover story.

It’s a small moment with a big echo: greatness doesn’t always need to flex. Sometimes it just opens the door again.

Journalism as a “filter,” not a transcript

Dean Baldwin frames one of the night’s most important ideas: great music writing isn’t transcription — it’s filtration. Anyone can publish words now. What matters is perspective, the subtle shaping that lets readers feel the artist rather than just read them.

Rosen agrees. That “filter” became critical when writing Tone Chaser. Writing about Eddie Van Halen wasn’t just documenting a legend — it meant navigating friendship, decline, addiction, resentment, and love without turning vulnerability into spectacle.

Rosen waited 17 years after his relationship with Eddie ended before writing the book. The delay wasn’t caution. It was respect.

“The only way to understand Edward,” Rosen says, “was to include the fragile moments.”

When the pedestal cracks

Asked whether knowing artists personally ever kills the magic, Rosen doesn’t hedge.

“Yes,” he says.

By the early ’90s, Rosen felt Eddie change — becoming colder, harder, less kind. The reverence Rosen once carried faded into hurt and resentment. It wasn’t betrayal in the tabloid sense. It was something quieter and more painful: watching someone you loved become someone you no longer recognized.

Baldwin relates from the modern side — how befriending artists you once idolized alters the fan experience. You gain access. You lose mystery.

Rosen calls it “the great conundrum.” Journalism gives you backstage passes and free records — and quietly takes away the ritual that made them sacred.

Van Halen, heartbreak, and the path of least resistance

Rosen’s insights into Van Halen avoid the usual camps. David Lee Roth didn’t leave as a villain. Eddie didn’t rage as a cartoon tyrant. What Rosen heard was hurt — especially after 1984, when the band was at its commercial peak.

Eddie recognized Roth’s importance. He recognized Roth’s talent. And when Roth left, Eddie felt disrespected more than defeated.

One of the most revealing moments Rosen shares: Eddie asking him, seriously, to “go find me a singer.” Rosen thought it was a joke. It wasn’t.

Rosen believes Eddie later returned to Roth and Sammy Hagar not out of nostalgia, but necessity. Fans would accept only those two. Eddie, often overwhelmed by the machinery around him, chose the path of least resistance — even when it wasn’t artistically clean.

The internet flattened the gods

When the conversation turns to modern media, Rosen is blunt. Journalism has been democratized — and homogenized. Where magazines once needed writers and stories felt rare, now everything is available instantly, endlessly.

Mystique didn’t survive abundance.

“You can find eight million stories about Edward Van Halen online,” Rosen says. “And the more you know, the less legendary it feels.”

Back then, one great magazine piece mattered because it had to. Today, even Rolling Stone struggles to mean what it once did.

AI, imitation, and the missing human

Rosen doesn’t rail against technology — but AI crosses a line. He tells a story about hearing AI-generated theme music that sounded good enough to pass.

“That’s what scared me,” he says.

AI can mimic style. It cannot replicate experience. It wasn’t there. It didn’t live it.

As Don Thatcher puts it: standing in front of the Eiffel Tower is different than faking it with a green screen. Once you know it’s fake, the meaning disappears.

Why stories still matter

Late in the conversation, Baldwin invites Rosen to preserve his stories inside Mosaic, Press Play’s storytelling platform. Rosen’s response is quiet, grateful — not performative.

At this stage of life, Rosen isn’t chasing relevance. His bills are paid. His book is written. His archive exists — including an audiobook version of Tone Chaser that features Eddie Van Halen’s actual voice from rare interviews, letting listeners hear the difference between Interview Eddie and Conversation Eddie.

That distinction may be Rosen’s true legacy.

In a world drowning in content, Steven Rosen reminds us why rock music mattered in the first place:
Someone was there.
It really happened.
And the story still has a pulse.

Learn more about Steve Rosen by visiting his Mosaic Page: https://mosaic.pressplay.me/profiles/steve-rosen 

Some conversations don’t end — they fade out, like the last sustained chord of a song that hangs in the air just long enough to remind you why you were listening in the first place.

That’s the energy Jeremy Calloway brings to Press Play Radio Conversations. No overstatement. No forced mythology. Just a musician who knows who he is, where he’s been, and how to show up when the red light turns on.

As the episode winds down, Don — The Don — does what he does best: keeps it loose, keeps it human. There’s no grand goodbye, just gratitude and an open invitation. We’ll have you back. And you believe it. Because Calloway fits here — in a space built for artists who still respect the craft and the connection.

Tina, Press Play’s CEO and steady center, slips in with the kind of casual affirmation that says everything without saying too much. No polish needed. No performance required. This is what real conversations sound like when the walls come down and the music does the heavy lifting.

Then Jeremy steps to the mic.

Simple. Clean. Confident.

“Hey everybody, my name is Jeremy Calloway and you’re listening to Press Play Radio.”

And again — this time for Press Play Conversations — the delivery lands just as effortlessly. No hype. No strain. Just a voice that sounds like it belongs exactly where it is.

It’s a small moment, technically — a sign-off, a recording cue, a quiet perfect from Tina before the stop button is hit. But that’s where the truth lives. In the in-between. In the unscripted seconds where artists reveal themselves without realizing it.

Jeremy Calloway doesn’t chase the spotlight. He doesn’t need to. He shows up, says what matters, and lets the rest resonate.

And that’s what Press Play Conversations is really about — creating space for musicians to be heard, not marketed. To be present, not packaged.

The tape stops. The moment lingers.

And somewhere between “be safe out there” and “we’ll be back,” you’re already waiting for the next track to drop.

To learn more about Jeremy: https://mosaic.pressplay.me/profiles/jeremy-calloway

To write Jeremey a Letter:  https://pressplay.me/artist-letter/jeremy-calloway 

Written by Tina Houser with a little help from AI

Los Angeles has always been a city of fragments—scenes stacked on scenes, sounds bleeding through alleyways, clubs, living rooms, and late-night conversations. Los Frankies don’t try to unify that chaos. They live inside it. The duo—Frankie Clark and Frankie Salazar—operate with the kind of effortless chemistry that only comes from years of shared stages, shared instincts, and shared survival. They aren’t chasing a revival or polishing a throwback. They’re documenting a life lived loud, close to the edge, and unapologetically honest.

You hear it immediately. There’s fuzz in the guitars, but it’s controlled. There’s punk energy, but it’s sharpened by restraint. The comparisons will come—The White Stripes, Chrissie Hynde, Jack White, Johnny Thunders—but Los Frankies never feel like a cosplay version of rock history. Instead, they sound like two people who understand exactly where they come from and don’t feel the need to explain it. Their music carries the confidence of artists who trust that the best idea wins, ego be damned.

Los Angeles looms large in their story, not as a fantasy but as a proving ground. It’s a “dog eat dog city,” as they put it—a place where ambition and isolation coexist, where freedom often looks like being a stray. That tension runs straight through “Dog City,” a track that kicks the door down with raw momentum and refuses to apologize for it. It’s a song that understands LA not as a dream factory, but as a place that chews you up unless you learn how to move fast, stay sharp, and protect your own.

The band itself was inevitable. Salazar was already building the project when Clark—producer, guitarist, frontwoman, and creative force in her own right—was pulled into the orbit. What started as background vocals and studio collaboration quickly turned into something more permanent. Clark, who began her musical life as a guitarist before stepping into the spotlight, found herself returning to her roots, while Salazar found a partner who could challenge, refine, and elevate the songs without diluting their bite. Together, they operate on a simple rule: serve the song first.

Influences are worn proudly, not hidden. Clark’s musical DNA runs through David Bowie’s theatrical fearlessness, the Ramones’ blunt-force minimalism, and the emotional clarity of Paramore—particularly Hayley Williams, whose evolution Clark feels she grew up alongside. Salazar’s compass points toward Bob Dylan’s songwriting arc, Lou Reed’s unsparing realism, and the angular cool of Julian Casablancas and The Strokes. None of it sounds academic. It sounds lived-in.

That lived-in quality shows up everywhere—especially in the stories behind the songs. “I’m On Drugs” isn’t a gimmick or a punchline; it’s a snapshot. A night in San Francisco. Old friends. Post Street and Polk. Chaos without mythology. Despite the title, it’s rooted more in observation than indulgence, proof that sometimes the best songs about excess are written by people standing just outside of it, watching closely.

What ties Los Frankies together most powerfully isn’t just sound—it’s experience. Vans. Floors. Half a couch in an overpriced LA living room. Long drives, borrowed spaces, and the kind of touring that teaches you how to really play, not just perform. They believe in the road, in earning it, in the slow burn of becoming a band that people don’t just listen to, but show up for. That belief feels increasingly rare in an era obsessed with overnight virality.

Ask them what success looks like and the answers are telling. It’s not charts or algorithms. It’s connection. It’s people in the crowd singing the words back—sometimes better than the band remembers them. It’s songs that become timestamps in someone else’s life. That’s the currency Los Frankies care about, and it’s one they’re quietly accumulating.

Their debut album arrives March 6, with another single just dropping February 6, and it promises range rather than repetition—ten tracks, one cover, moments of raw punch alongside longer, more expansive rock songs. Eclectic, unforced, and deeply personal, it sounds like the natural result of two artists who stopped worrying about whether something was derivative and started focusing on whether it felt true.

Los Frankies aren’t hiding who they are, onstage or off. They’re a band, they’re collaborators, they’re partners in life, and they’re very much of this moment—standing at the intersection of punk spirit, classic rock lineage, and modern disillusionment. In a music landscape crowded with noise, they’re choosing honesty, volume, and connection. And that choice feels radical again.

To learn more about Los Frankies, visit their Mosaic page at:
https://mosaic.pressplay.me/profiles/los-frankies

Write the Los Frankies a Letter!

https://pressplay.me/artist-letter/los-frankies 

To learn more about Bill Leverty and Firehouse, visit:

https://mosaic.pressplay.me/profiles/firehouse

Write Bill a Letter:

https://pressplay.me/artist-letter/bill-leverty-of-firehouse