Episode 4

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Published on:

7th May 2026

Uriel Lopez Rodriguez: Bringing the Love to Music Performance

Today, on Taste the Music, on 89.9 WORT FM Madison and TasteTheMusic.org, Madison band Automatic Lover’s front man Uriel Lopéz Rodriguez takes us on a ride through his musical history, from a kid who couldn’t stop dancing to a short political career in Mexico, to Arizona, Colorado and finally back to Wisconsin, when a week visiting friends led him back to the music scene he couldn’t avoid.

It seemed like wherever I went last summer, Automatic Lover was there, a rhythm section, horns, keys, stalwarts in their craft of groove. And up front on vocals, Uriel Lopéz-Rodriguez, clapping his hands, urging the crowds, electrifying the audience with each beat. The music, a sound that’s somehow a fusion of latin funk, Reggae, hip hop, and groove rock. An amalgam, a reflection of what a diverse music town is on its best days.

Lopéz Rodriguez talks about forming Automatic Lover, why he’s committed to it, and the idea that maybe a vocation isn’t singular. Maybe it’s a patchwork of creation, iteration and praxis, incubating a social movement of love that’s a lot more complex than it looks on paper.

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About the Podcast

Taste the Music: Conversations about creating.
Interviews, stories, and talks about why artists create.
Taste the Music is a show where the artist tells their story about what drives creation. Here we’re going to figure out the reasons we’re driven to make music, and how that vocation ends up forming in some people, or maybe in all of us.

Each week we’ll hear an account of the path to creation by artists, and we’ll try to get at a few questions: why do this? Why write a song, paint a painting, recite a poem, tell a joke, or craft a beer?

And we’ll also seek to answer another question, something that we hope gets at a cultural truth about who we are as a people: why do we choose to sometimes not do these things?

About your host

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Mark Griffin

Mark is a science and culture writer based in Madison. He's written about groundbreaking cancer treatments, advancements in renewable energy, and trying to figure out how to find a mushroom in the woods. He currently resides in Madison, WI.