The Working Songwriter

Our guest this week is Cody Diekhoff, better known as Chicago Farmer.
He grew up in the small farming community of Delavan, Illinois, before moving to Chicago in 2003. Over the past two decades, he has built a devoted following through relentless touring, first as a solo performer and more recently with his band, the Fieldnotes.
Along the way, he has shared stages with Robert Earl Keen, Todd Snider, Greg Brown, the Wood Brothers, Elizabeth Cook, Wayne Hancock, Greensky Bluegrass, Del McCoury and Gene Ween.
His album Flyover Country was recorded with members of the Band of Heathens. and 2026’s Homeaid, his first full-length release in six years. Flyover Country 
Elmore Magazine says he has “the novelist’s gift of building a suspenseful story to a surprising conclusion.”
No Depression declared: “If the Midwest is looking for a voice, the search is over.”
And the Chicago Tribune praised him for “some of the better roots songwriting in Chicago today.”
Cody is a very very old friend of mine. We were both coming up in the Chicago folk music scene 20 years ago. He’s one of my favorite modern artists. And he should have been on this podcast many years ago by now. I got a chance to catch up with him on the phone a few weeks ago to hear about his journey so far.

This episode originally aired on November 5th, 2021.
John Flansburgh, one of the founding members of this groundbreaking indie-rock institution, stops by the show to talk about his creative process and how his band has navigated the music business for the last four decades.

Our guests this week are Gabe Dixon and Mike Mattison of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, the Grammy-winning roots ensemble led by Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks.
Formed in 2010, their debut album, Revelator, won the Grammy Award for Best Blues Album, and the group has since become one of the country’s premier live bands, selling out Madison Square Garden and playing more than twenty shows at Red Rocks.
Mike Mattison has been working with Derek Trucks for more than two decades. He joined the Derek Trucks Band as lead vocalist in the early 2000s and became a founding member of the Tedeschi Trucks Band. He is also one of the group’s principal lyricists and co-wrote one of its best-known songs, “Midnight in Harlem.”
Keyboardist, singer and songwriter Gabe Dixon joined the Tedeschi Trucks Band in 2019. Before that, he led the Gabe Dixon Band and built a solo career of his own. Within Tedeschi Trucks Band, Dixon has become a key songwriter, vocalist and instrumentalist.
The band has appeared on Austin City Limits, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel Live
NPR called the band “a deeply skilled and spirited ensemble,” while Rolling Stone has praised its “freewheeling, soulful sound.”
I got a chance to catch up with Gabe and Mike to hear about their musical journeys so far.

This episode was originally published on March 5th, 2021.
The renowned troubadour from Louisiana found his commercial success in music later in life; he reflects on the journey that brought him to that peak.
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This week on The Working Songwriter, we're thrilled to step out of our normal comfort zone by welcoming one of the country's most acclaimed young novelists. Originally from Mount Vernon, Ohio, author Stephen Markley now makes his home in Los Angeles. He attended Miami University (of Ohio) for his undergraduate degree before being accepted into the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop. 
Simon & Schuster published his debut novel, 'Ohio,' in 2018. The book was widely praised for its unflinching portrait of post-9/11 rust-belt America. Then, in 2023, he returned with the massively popular novel, 'The Deluge,' a work of ficiton about climate change that 'The New York Times' named as one of its notable books. 'The NYT Book Review' also said that, "'The Deluge 'shows the range of its author's gifts: polyphonic narration, silken sentences and elaborate world-building."
Of the same book none other than Stephen King said, "[It is] simply put a modern classic. If you read it you'll never forget it." He also named it as the favorite book he had read the year that he read it.
Markley also works as a screenwriter in LA as a member of the writers room for the Hulu comedy series 'Only Murders in the Building,' which stars Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Selena Gomez. 
What a thrill it is to welcome onto the show such a profoundly talented artist who falls outside our normal realm of expertise... I think there's a lot for songwriters to learn on this cross-discipline episode of the podcast.
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