About Crucial Tracks

About Crucial Tracks
Sleater-Kinney at Artpark in Lewiston, NY

There are points in your life that are defined by music. Whether it’s a song that introduced you to a genre of music that changed the direction of your tastes and style, or a lyric that made you think about the world in a different way. Songs represent relationships. Songs trigger memories. These are all crucial tracks.

This newsletter will dig into those tracks through interviews with people of all walks of life. Learn about the songs that made them who they are today and then listen along to playlists published on Spotify and Apple Music.

Subscribe today and get full access to the newsletter and all of our posts. Never miss an update. Never miss a crucial track.

How to Support Crucial Tracks

Become a paying supporter and get our unwavering thanks and appreciation. Since you are helping us pay the bills, we will send our yearly subscribers a free record to add to their collection.

We also do an end of year record giveaway featuring our favorite records of the year, as well as a selection of featured albums from the year's crucial tracks interviews. Free subscribers get one entry and our paying subscribers get three entries into the drawing.

Our regular content will always be free and accessible on the web and through RSS, but subscribing gets you our posts directly in your inbox, as well as access to any special interviews we do with VIP guests, podcast episodes, and much more!

Meet the Team

Chris Fritton, is a working artist & author based in Buffalo, NY, that specializes in letterpress printing. Chris recently wrapped up a ten-year-long traveling project called The Itinerant Printer, where he criss-crossed North America visiting print shops, then wrote a book about it, then traversed the continent all over again touring the book. During that time, he spent countless hours on the road listening to music, listening to podcasts about music, and watching live music in dozens of cities, as well as making gig posters for the bands that he loves.

Jason Dettbarn is a UX/UI designer based in Buffalo, NY. His life with music involves attending hundreds of concerts, taking photos of bands for over 30 years, and putting on basement and club shows during his college years. During the early pandemic he wrote a series called One Last Wish, where he wrote about an impactful album from every year of his life from elementary school through high school – that series inspired this very site. He also publishes a song-a-day playlist on Apple Music that acts as an amazing musical diary, as well as an annual round up of his favorite albums. (202120222023)