Tones of Vinyl

Aaron Draplin: Field Notes, Vinyl Walls, and the Art of Making Things That Last

Joshua Morrison — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 15:10:46 GMT

Aaron Draplin is the founder of Draplin Design Co. and co-founder of Field Notes. He's designed for Nike, Patagonia, Ford, Esquire, Burton Snowboards, and the Obama administration. He designed a US postage stamp. He's done concert posters for Chris Stapleton and Jason Isbell. He wrote a book called Pretty Much Everything that's in its thirteenth printing. And he runs his entire operation out of a backyard shop in Portland, Oregon.

In this episode we start with vinyl — Aaron has a few thousand records on the wall — and end up somewhere much deeper. We talk about creativity, collecting, letting go, and the kind of work ethic that comes from watching your dad treat every single person in the room with respect. Aaron Draplin is the real deal. This one's worth your time.

John Simon: The Band, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen and the Songs He Wrote for Himself

Joshua Morrison — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 12:55:11 GMT

John Simon is one of the most important and least celebrated figures in rock and roll history. As a producer, arranger and musician he was in the room for some of the most legendary recordings ever made. Music From Big Pink and the self-titled second album by The Band, Cheap Thrills with Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen's debut, and Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends sessions. All of it in a handful of extraordinary years in the late 1960s.

But there's another side to John Simon that most people don't know. He's a songwriter. A serious one. In this conversation we start with his own music, his first two solo albums John Simon's Album and Journey, recorded live with no overdubs, no click tracks, just great musicians in a room. We work our way through what it means to write a song, how to produce one honestly, and what it felt like to be at the center of one of the most creative moments in American music history.

We talk about The Band, Music From Big Pink, recording at Sammy Davis Jr.'s pool house, Musical Directing The Last Waltz, and what Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel were really like in the studio.

John Simon is 84 years old, still playing piano weekly, still writing, and still thinking harder about music than most people half his age.

From Tech Hustle to Grammy Glory: Souvik Dutta on Shakti, John McLaughlin, and Abstract Logix

Joshua Morrison — Fri, 22 May 2026 01:38:18 GMT

Discover how a tech professional turned a bedroom music blog into a Grammy-winning independent record label. In this premiere episode of the Tones of Vinyl podcast, we sit down with Souvik Dutta, founder of Abstract Logix.

Souvik is one of those rare humans who truly lives and breathes music every single second of the day. We dive deep into his incredible journey from Calcutta to building one of the most respected indie labels on the planet.

Inside this episode, we discuss:

The Tech-to-Music Hustle: The relentless transition from a standard tech career to launching a record label.
Working with Living Legends: What it’s really like to collaborate side-by-side with master musicians like John McLaughlin, Jimmy Herring, Zakir Hussain, and Colonel Bruce Hampton.
The Return of Shakti: The inside story of reviving the iconic 1970s cross-cultural supergroup and taking home a Grammy Award for their massive comeback album, This Moment.

Whether you're an avid vinyl collector, a high-fidelity audiophile, or just obsessed with the magic of deep musical history, this conversation is for you.

Let's dive in.