Fresh off the release of a new record and suddenly unable to tour, Joan Osborne got the work. The musician dug through the closets in her Brooklyn home, pulling together live recordings from across her 30-year career. The resulting compilation, Radio Waves, paints the picture of an evolving artist often paying homage to the decades’ most influential artists, from Sky and the Family Stone to Bob Dylan. It’s a nice reminder of precisely how electric and essential live performances are, in an era when everything ground to a complete halt. Back on the road, Osborne took a moment to discuss her work from her early days as a NYU film student with a penchant for nightclub singing to 2020’s Trouble and Strife, a biting repudiation of American political collapse.
