Big Ears Festival 2026: the Echoes Interview with Ashley Capps
Today it’s our annual interview with Ashley Capps, the founder of Big Ears Festival. He also created Bonaroo and resurrected Moogfest. We cover Big Ears because they often have a lot of Echoes artists and they are just the best, most civilized and most surprising festival in America.
Ashley: what we’re trying to avoid is the bland and the innocuous, know, are just things that, know, you know, just nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, you know. That doesn’t really interest me.
Big Ears is anything but bland. It will take place in Knoxville, TN March 26-29, 2026. There will be over 200 acts including Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, SUSS, Pat Metheny, multiples of John Zorn, Hania Rani, Nik Bartsch’s Ronin and Nels Cline. The first hour of Echoes will be all music from the forthcoming Big Ears Festival 2026 and our interview with Ashley Capps who talks about putting the festival together. Ears are wide open on Echoes. 
| Tuesday, November 25, 2025 Echoes Program 2547B | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| First Half Hour | |||
| 0:01:00 | Pat Metheny Group | Opening | The Way Up |
| 0:06:00 | Mary Lattimore | Wind Carries Seed (Bonus Track) | Hundreds of Days |
| 0:09:29 | Chuck Johnson | Teleos | Sun Glories |
| 0:16:23 | Laurie Anderson | Tightrope | Bright Red |
| 0:22:03 | SUSS and Six Missing | Old Mission | Across the Horizon Singles Series (v/a) |
| Second Half Hour | |||
| 0:30:00 | Interview: Ashley Capps – Big Ears Festival 2026 | ||
| 0:44:58 | Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin | Modul 42: Wien | Live |
| 0:52:20 | Hania Rani | It Comes In Waves (Studio 1 Warsaw) | Nostalgia |
| 0:59:00 | Deepspace | High Precision Hydrocleansing-Protocols (excerpt) | Water Planets |
| Third Half Hour | |||
| 1:01:00 | All India Radio | Wisteria | The Unified Field |
| 1:06:00 | Cigarettes After Sex | The Crystal Ship | Anna Kernia Single |
| 1:09:14 | Khruangbin | Two Fish and an Elephant II | The Universe Smiles Upon You II |
| 1:16:28 | frostlake | Now and Then | Shattered Stone |
| 1:20:40 | Aukai | Vulture | Chambers |
| 1:23:46 | Azam Ali | In Valleys Green | Synesthesia |
| 1:29:30 | Jim Kimo West and Michael Whalen | Malibu Breeze (excerpt) | Two Shores |
| Fourth Half Hour | |||
| 1:30:00 | Colin Rayment | Speeding Transition Of An Angle | Optical Perceptions |
| 1:38:46 | Paul Oakenfold | Hypnotised | Bunkka (Remastered) |
| 1:45:17 | Nicholas Gunn | About a Love (with Richard Durand and Alina Renae) | 30 |
| 1:49:20 | break | ||
| 1:50:13 | The American Dollar | Starscapes (Aero Rework) | XX: Greatest Hits Reimagined |
| 1:53:30 | Robert Rich and Markus Reuter | Clay Between Fingers | Incubation |
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