THE THIRD STORY features long-form interviews with creative people of all types, hosted by musician Leo Sidran. Their stories of discovery, loss, ambition, identity, risk, and reward are deeply moving and compelling for all of us as we embark on our own creative journeys.
The podcast The Third Story with Leo Sidran is created by Leo Sidran. The podcast and the artwork on this page are embedded on this page using the public podcast feed (RSS).
In 2013, after having posted a series of videos recorded in his family home in North London of himself singing a cappella arrangements of classic - yet sometimes obscure - songs on YouTube, a critical mass began to form around Jacob Collier.
His videos of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” and “Don’t You Worry Bout A Thing” were passed around by musicians and music enthusiasts and by 2014 he was being managed by Quincy Jones and traveling around the world.
He was one of the first career artists to emerge on YouTube. Jacob’s journey since then has been nothing short of extraordinary. Today, at 30 years old, with six Grammys, millions of fans, and collaborations ranging from Herbie Hancock to Chris Martin, his influence spans generations. His Djesse project—four albums in six years, exploring 50 songs and countless collaborations —represents not just his creativity but his ability to bring others into his world. From arenas to intimate collaborations, Jacob Collier is now a fact of musical life.
Yet, he remains tied to his roots: the small room in his mother’s house where it all began. His first album, In My Room, was both a tribute to that space and a manifesto for his artistic philosophy.
Before his star had really begun to rise, I met with Collier in late 2014. He invited me to his family home in North London, where his mother greeted me with tea and cookies while he returned from university. When we finally sat down in his music room to talk, his brilliance was immediately apparent. He spoke about sound with sensitivity and clarity, blending perfect pitch, synesthesia, and a boundless curiosity. He was still a kid, but one with an expansive vision.
That conversation remains a revelation. It captured a young artist at the cusp of greatness. It is also the first interview of its kind that exists with the extraordinary artist .
Ten years after that first interview, I’m reminded why I started this podcast: to capture history as it’s being made. Jacob Collier’s story is one of boundless curiosity and connection—a message in a bottle that changed the tide.
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Pianists Aaron Parks and Marta Sanchez on how music has helped them navigate life's complexities. Aaron talks about his move to Portugal, the release of his latest album Little Big III, and how addressing mental health shaped his journey. Marta reflects on leaving Madrid for New York and the deeply personal inspiration behind her album Perpetual Void.
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Composer, pianist, vocalist, and multidisciplinary artist Samora Pinderhughes and drummer/producer Jack DeBoe on their long standing collaborative relationship, what happens when art confronts life’s heaviest themes, but the creators meet it with laughter, lightness, and trust.
Captured at Winter Jazzfest in early 2024, Samora and Jack talk about the album Venus Smiles Not in the House of Tears, the transformative Healing Project, mental health, and how laughter becomes a tool of resilience in the face of struggle. It’s serious, it’s playful, and it’s deeply human.
Allan Tannenbaum's career reads like a tapestry woven with history, art, and an extraordinary eye for the moment. From his serendipitous epiphany outside a post office in 1964 to becoming one of the most iconic photographers of his time.
Starting with a handful of frames of Jimi Hendrix in the late 60s, Allan went on to chronicle the cultural pulse of 1970s New York as chief photographer for the SoHo Weekly News. He captured unforgettable images—Sid Vicious in handcuffs, Andy Warhol at Studio 54, Patti Smith, the Rolling Stones, John and Yoko, and many more.
In the 80s and 90s, he expanded his lens to the world stage, documenting moments of historical significance: the fall of the Berlin Wall, Operation Desert Storm, the Rwandan refugee crisis, and eventually the devastation of 9/11 just blocks from his Tribeca home.
Here he talks about his life behind the lens, the philosophy that guided him, and what it means to let "the work show you the way."
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Grammy-winning composer and NEA Jazz Master Maria Schneider on 30 years of the Maria Schneider Orchestra, her life and career, from her small-town Minnesota roots to her groundbreaking collaboration with David Bowie and her fight for artists’ rights.
Here she talks about how her music channels the wonder, mystery, and tension of her life experiences, her poetic creative process, her acclaimed album Data Lords, and her reflections on what’s next as she looks back on a remarkable journey.
Just like we did after the 2016 and 2020 elections, I spoke with my dad Ben Sidran this week about the latest presidential election.
True to form, it is a conversation that appears to be about one thing but is in fact about many things. What begins as a somber acknowledgement of the election results turns quickly to a sprawling discussion of everything from Will and Ariel Durant’s massive 11-volume work, The Story of Civilization, Seinfeld, The First Council of Nicaea, Irving Berlin, Jack Kerouac, what separates humankind from the rest of the animal kingdom, bottle service at "the party club", the importance of beauty, and what it means to “chop your wood and carry water.”
Andrew Bird has been on a quest for meaning in sound since childhood, starting with the violin at age four and earning a degree in violin performance from Northwestern University. His journey has taken him from classical and folk roots to the vibrant Chicago swing scene, to creative isolation in a barn in Western Illinois, and eventually to become a genre defying artist and composer with a unique voice.
Andrew’s lyrics are both confessional and impressionist, often leading listeners on a journey through evocative imagery. With just a looping pedal, he reinvented his sound, blending classical, folk, and indie rock and crafted a distinct sonic landscape that defines his music today.
After nearly three decades and 20 albums, Andrew continues to evolve. His latest release, Sunday Morning Put On, pays tribute to jazz standards while maintaining his signature sound. He describes it as a “sabbatical” project, giving him space to reflect and create without pressure.
Just recently, he released Cunningham Bird, a tribute to the classic Buckingham Nicks album. Here he shares insights about his early days, the isolation that shaped him, songwriting as a form of “speaking in tongues”and the lessons learned from performing standards.
Here he talks about his early days in Chicago, the journey that led him into isolation, discovering his sound, songwriting as a form of “speaking in tongues”, what it means to be living his life in song form, and what he learned from singing standards.
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Pianist Aaron Goldberg on 20 years of organizing jazz fundraisers for presidential campaigns (this year's was Jazz for Kamala), how he thinks about the potential of music to provoke personal transformation and political action, his own relationship with activism and progressive politics, concert curation, Israel and Gaza.
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Family music artist Lucy Kalantari on the power of intention, why gardening is her favorite metaphor for living a creative life, staying curious, parenthood, her new record, and the Grammys.
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Riley Mulherkar grew up in Seattle, the Pacific Northwest enclave that has been home to so many musical innovators over the years. He went to Garfield High School, a school that has fostered countless talents going all the way back to Quincy Jones who was himself a young trumpet player at the school in the 1940s. Riley was just eight years-old when he began seeing the legendary Garfield High School big-band play free gigs in his Seattle neighborhood; it’s one of the reasons he picked up the trumpet. He was clearly meant to play the instrument.
By the time he got to Juilliard in New York, Riley had shown up on the radar of Wynton Marsalis, who became a mentor. If this story is sounding familiar, it’s because it resembles the experience of so many musicians of his generation who have similar origin stories.
On a deeper level, it’s a story that echoes through the history of jazz - young musicians who are compelled to move to New York after only a small handful of interactions with their heroes.
Riley Mulherkar is very much a man of his moment, and also mindful of those echoes from the past. His new album - his first under his own name and called, simply, Riley is awash in the echoes of history but also boldly embraces contemporary sounds and textures, it reframes classic material that was influential to him and positions his original compositions in that continuum.
The album was a long time in the making. It’s the result of years of experimentation and reflection, and that patience is palpable in the music. Above all, the feeling of the record is totally compelling. And feeling was at the heart of the project all along. He says he was not interested in making something that sounded like an old record, but rather that felt the way he feels when he listens to his heroes, something he describes as “hyperrealism”.
We spoke earlier this year about how the Riley album came together - he worked closely with pianist Chris Pattishall and guitarist/producer Rafiq Bhatia - his diverse career as a collaborator, music presenter, composer, and now solo artist, and how thinking of jazz as a family tree helped him to find his place in the music.
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Jesse Harris belongs to a generation of New York singer songwriters who came of age in the late nineties. He has made over 20 solo albums that walk the line between folk, jazz, pop, Brazilian and art rock. He’s also a much sought after co writer and collaborator who has written songs for and or with many others like Madeleine Peyroux, Melody Gardot, Lana del Rey, and most famously Norah Jones.
Jesse was already well into his career when he met a young Norah Jones on a road trip through Texas and played his songs for her. He had already been signed and dropped from a major label with his band Once Blue (a project he started with Rebecca Martin, and which also featured musicians Ben Street, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Kenny Wollesen), and had already been exploring a space in his songwriting that played in between jazz and pop.
But that chance encounter with Jones, who was still a student at the University of North Texas at the time, was the one that would change the course of Jesse’s career. They stayed in touch and began working together when Jones eventually moved to New York.
Her debut album, 2002’s Come Away With Me contained five of his songs including the now ubiquitous standard “Don’t Know Why”. He also played guitar on the record. Their partnership has endured over the years - Jones and Harris have written together on and off ever since then - but it was that first record that arguably redirected the sound of certain strains of popular music and jazz for a generation.
The success of Come Away With Me also opened new doors for Harris as a solo artist and a composer. Ultimately he started a label (Secret Sun, named after a solo album of the same name) to put out the projects that he produced for himself and others, and recently has been dividing his time between New York and Paris. Jesse is a relentlessly prolific songwriter, someone for whom songs are like air and water; they are simply a fact of life.
Here he talks about Paper Flower, his most recent album recorded in Paris with American and French musicians, his approach to songwriting (“writer's block is a choice”) and production, taking things as they come, confession versus craft, venturing into the unconscious, and whether it is his fate to work with female artists.
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Ella Rae Feingold is a guitar player, composer, orchestrator, educator and content creator. She has spent three decades devoted to the soulful side of the electric guitar, and has worked with an impressive list of artists, including Bruno Mars, Erykah Badu and Common, The Roots, Jay-Z, Janet Jackson, Alicia Keys, Jill Scott, Queen Latifah and many more. On her Instagram and TikTok she is a rhythm ambassador, focussing on the importance of groove, pocket and feel in her playing and demonstrating various techniques and traditions in rhythm guitar. Hearing Ella play and talk about music, it’s clear that she has thought deeply about her craft for a long time. Guitarist Charlie Hunter recently referred to her as “one of the baddest, greasiest guitar players on the planet.” (Of course in this context “bad” and “greasy” are two of the highest compliments one can pay.) And yet she is also very much a new arrival. Feingold has been hiding in plain sight for years - both figuratively and literally - standing in the shadow of giants, just out of the spotlight and not attracting too much attention. This may have been partly a musical disposition, but it was also a function of feeling that she was simply in the wrong body. Ella is transgender, and after transitioning several years ago, she began to share more of herself online including regular musical dispatches which have exposed her to a steadily growing audience of students, fans, followers and collaborators. She describes the process of transitioning as less an act of creation and more one of excavation. We spoke recently about her personal and musical rebirth, the importance of rhythm - she tells me “I don’t want to impress anyone I just want to make people feel good,” discovering inverted tuning, orchestration, transfobia, and why she hopes to be the Mister Rogers of funk guitar.
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Paula Cole on her early success, dreaming big, her life and career, the power of “the beginner’s mind”, the distinction between being an artist and an entertainer, the feeling of being pregnant with song, speaking for those who cannot speak, navigating a life in the music business, learning from young people, and her new album, Lo.
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In a career spanning over fifty years and thirty five records, Ben Sidran has established himself as a philosopher poet. Equally celebrated for his precise, probing writing style as he is for his improvised spoken word jazz raps, he has carved out a truly unique space for himself. The Times of London aptly described Ben as “the world’s first existential jazz rapper,” and The Chicago Sun Times once referred to him as “a renaissance man cast adrift in the modern world.” He is one of a kind. And he is, of course, also my dad.
There is no one else like Ben so it’s not uncommon for his fans and followers to search his songs for meaning in times of trouble. When the world is uncertain, many find comfort in the wisdom of his words (myself included!). Some of those songs have become classics among his elite tribe of hipster devotees, like “Life’s A Lesson,” “Face Your Fears,” and “Don’t Cry For No Hipster”.
So it was curious when, during the Covid pandemic, Ben chose to make his first ever fully instrumental record in 2022, Swing State. It was as if he had finally run out of words, at least for that moment, and he chose to let his piano tell the story that he was unable to sing about.
But those who know Ben well understand that he’s never really out of words, so it was just a matter of time before he began to write again. And last summer he found himself back in a Parisian studio joined by a group of American and French musicians to make what would become his latest record, Rainmaker.
In many ways Rainmaker is just another in a long line of Ben’s records - a new collection of songs written in his particular style of hipster philosophy set against a backdrop of easily digestible grooves. On the other hand, he describes the process of making it as “wrestling with the devil.” The accumulation of political, environmental and personal conditions made this particular project resonate differently for him.
We spoke recently about the process of making Rainmaker, the stories behind the songs, his belief in the power of humor to help survive adverse situations, how Philip Roth’s retirement from writing affected him, whether or not he thinks retirement is truly possible for an artist, if this is in fact his last record, and what French rapper MC Solaar has to do with any of it.
Ben has been featured on this podcast many times, most recently on his 80th birthday last August. On each of his birthdays going back a handful of years we have talked, as well as on various other episodes. If you have heard any of them, then you know that it is always a huge treat to have him, and in fact the episodes with him are among the most listened to and shared on the podcast.
Singer Jose James on his new record 1978, his professional and personal journey, the unique demands of being a jazz singer today, why he believes good art should be transformative, how he stays healthy, the creative challenges brought on by happiness and whether or not one needs to suffer in order to make good art.
This episode is dedicated to the late saxophonist and vocoder master Casey Benjamin who passed away on March 30th at the age of 45. Casey, a brilliant and influential musician, spent much of his career at the crossroads of jazz and hip hop. I never knew him but I was always very aware of him and a big admirer of his playing.
During this conversation with Jose James, Casey’s name came up several times. Given the context of his recent passing, what was originally a set of casual commentaries about Benjamin’s dedication to music and community was transformed into a tribute to him and I am heartened by how much admiration Jose and Taali had for their friend.
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säje, the vocal group made up of singers Sara Gazarek, Amanda Taylor, Johnaye Kendrick, and Erin Bentlage won their first Grammy on Sunday for their arrangement of “In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning”.
They recorded it with one of the most admired musical minds today, Jacob Collier. And like much of what has happened with so far, that recording was both unintended and totally right, somewhere between the reward for the hard work of talented artists, and magic.
The story plays like a dream. One day Jacob Collier stopped by the LA recording studio (Lucy’s Meat Market), where was working on their debut album. One thing led to another and he ended up playing a few free form takes of “In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning.” There’s footage of it online and you can see him improvising his arrangement. You can also see his childlike enthusiasm, his playful energy, his request to do just one more take, because he was having so much fun.
After Jacob left, the singers in säje built their vocal arrangement around what he had played. It’s a beautiful marriage of improvisation and arrangement, and the result ends up sounding completely inevitable. They contextualized Collier’s spontaneous approach, brought it fully into their world, built a frame for his impressionistic gestures, and then filled in the landscape.
This was not their first experience with serendipity. Before was , back when it was just an idea floated by Sara Gazarek in 2018 to put some kind of vocal group together, the four women gathered at a rental house in Palm Springs, California to get to know one another and discuss the possibility of doing something together. They came out of that weekend with a song “Desert Song”, a sound, and the makings of a story.
The members of don’t live in the same place (Sara and Erin live in Los Angeles, Johnaye and Amanda live in Seattle), but they started to work as a group, and eventually recorded “Desert Song”. They submitted the song to the Grammy’s - their first song! - and it was nominated in 2020.
Eventually released their debut album in 2023. It featured guest appearances by Ambrose Akinmusire, Michael Mayo, Terri Lynn Carrington, and of course Jacob Collier, among others. But at the core of the album was the signature silky sound which is a little hard to define, but very easy to identify. It’s technically challenging to execute - suspended chords and interweaving lines - and very satisfying to experience. They like to say that they ascend beyond their training, and into artistry.
We met at a photo studio in Gowanus, Brooklyn late last year and had a beautiful talk about their formation, their journey - from that first weekend retreat in Palm Springs to the release of their first full length album and its subsequent Grammy nomination for Best Arrangement Instruments and Vocals with Jacob Collier for “In The Wee Small Hour of the Morning”, collective lyric writing, managing logistics and juggling four schedules, the emotional space that feminine energy allows, and discovering who they are in public.
Ten years ago, on a bit of a whim, I invited bassist Will Lee to come over to my home studio in Brooklyn to do an interview with me for a new project I was starting: a podcast. A year or two earlier, my friend Michael Fusco-Straub had turned me on to Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, and I was totally hooked on the concept of casual long form interviews among peers. At the time Maron spoke almost exclusively to comics, and I thought there might be a space for something similar but focused on music.
Although I didn’t have any real experience as a journalist or a broadcaster, I knew I could do it. In fact, maybe more than anything else I’ve ever done professionally, it was the most natural decision I can ever remember making.
But the format was a bit of a mystery. Who was I supposed to be? An expert on music? A friend of my guests? I thought maybe we would perform together. Or maybe they would demonstrate something. Or maybe it would be a document of the local scene in New York - in the early episodes I asked my guests “where are you coming from today” and “where are you going after this”.
Actually, those are pretty good questions. Maybe I should go back to asking them again.
I spent a month futzing with my Will Lee interview, carefully editing each pause and “um”, working and reworking the introduction. I designed a crude logo based on a Google Earth image of my house in Park Slope, and built a website on Squarespace.
I posted the episode and sent an email to my friends to explain the new project. I wrote:
Since moving to New York nine years ago, I have tossed around the idea of conducting informal interviews with musicians in my studio when they come in to record. Over the years so many great players and singers have shared tremendous insights and history with me, and it seemed like such a missed opportunity not to record it. Of course, everything changes when the “red light” is on, so the question for me became how to maintain that same level of spontaneity and candor in a somewhat more formal setting.
Then I sat nervously with a pit in my stomach, not knowing what I had just done. Would anyone like it? Would anyone care? Was I any good at it?
Ten years and 268 episodes later, I continue to refine, to tweak and futz, to agonize and scramble to the finish line every time. As I write these words it is 12:30am, and I sit in my darkened studio - essentially an extension of my bedroom - with my wife, Amanda asleep just a few feet away, and our daughter asleep in the next room. That is to say that The Third Story has become an extension not only of my life, but of my entire household. Fortunately the initial nausea has passed but it has been replaced by a constant sense of urgency to get the next episode finished.
I have also developed a style, an unstructured but intentional approach to talking to people, in search of a narrative thread in each journey, an attempt to get somewhere together. Sometimes it’s more technical, sometimes it’s more esoteric, sometimes it’s personal. There is no real theme to the show, and there is no real dogma. If it’s interesting to me, the hope is that it will be interesting to others too.
The good news about an ongoing show like this one is that there’s always another episode to make, so you can never get too precious about any of them because there will be more. The bad news is the same as the good news: no matter how much time you spend on one episode, or how good it was, you still have to make another one, and you’re probably already behind schedule.
The project has become a way of moving through both space and time for me. It provides a kind of structure when I travel - nearly everywhere I have gone over the last decade, I have returned home with at least one interview.
Whether talking to Gabriela Quintero in Mexico, Jorge Drexler in Spain, Madeleine Peyroux in Paris, Butch Vig in Los Angeles, Howard Levy in Chicago, David Garibaldi in Oakland, David Maraniss in Madison, or Jack Stratton in Cleveland, the interviews have provided purpose to my movement through the world.
I have traveled specifically to cover jazz festivals like Copenhagen, Newport, Montreal and Umbria, and chronicled my own tours too.
I have used the platform to mark the passage of time and significant events along the way. From The 2016 and 2020 Elections to the Covid outbreak, from my 45th birthday to my father’s 80th, from the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris to memorializing lost friends like Tommy LiPuma, Clyde Stubblefield, Tim Luntzel or Richie Cole.
I have captured both first and final conversations with some remarkable people. I did the first long form interview with Jacob Collier in his house in London in 2014, and the last long form interview with Creed Taylor in his New York apartment 2015. Interviews with Peter Straub, Howard Becker, Clifford Irving, George Wein and Al Schmitt now live on as part of their legacies.
While The Third Story has never become what you might call “popular” it has become kind of a cult show. I continue to be astounded when I meet someone who knows the show. It happens more often than I expect, and I have made more than a few real meaningful friendships that way too.
When several years ago I was invited to publish my episodes on All About Jazz, I knew I was making credible content. When in 2022 I was asked to partner with WBGO Studios, it was an acknowledgement that I was on the right path, and when we won a Signal Award in 2023 I was further encouraged.
By the way, my logo was eventually redesigned by a real graphic designer, Michael Fusco-Straub (the same guy who turned me on to Marc Maron to begin with).
Last month, on another whim, I called Will Lee again to see if he would like to meet up for a reunion and to help me celebrate my tenth anniversary. When I first talked to Will for episode one, he was still performing nightly on The Late Show with David Letterman and we talked about his career as one of the most recorded bassists in history, his early education, playing on Letterman, his solo projects… the kind of general overview conversation that has come to loosely define what I do here. This time was more casual and more conversational. We sat on the couch in his Manhattan apartment and traded quips, and I managed to gently extract some new information from him.
Then I asked my wife, Amanda, to join me to help process this anniversary in more domestic terms: how does it look and feel to live with someone who is constantly in the process of mining another life story for content and making podcast episodes? What are the similarities between her career as a yoga teacher and mine as a… whatever I am? What do raising a child and producing a podcast have in common? It was extremely entertaining, as is usually the case when Amanda joins me on the show.
At the risk of getting too sentimental, I will simply say that making The Third Story is one of the great privileges and joys of my life, I am grateful to all of the extraordinary people who have shared their stories with me, and I am even more grateful to you for listening to it.
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Trumpeter/composer Keyon Harrold was born and raised in Ferguson, MO to a musical family. He is the son of pastors and one of 16 children. As a boy, a trumpet was placed in his hands, and the rest is history.
He moved to New York to study at The New School in the 1990s and became part of a legendary generation of musicians associated with the neo soul movement, including Common, Bilal, Roy Hargrove, The Roots, and Robert Glasper.
Harrold is a reliable and sought after player among big acts, and he’s worked with Jay-Z, Beyonce, Rihanna, Eminem, Maxwell, Mac Miller and Snoop Dogg. At the same time he’s a seriously gifted jazz improviser and composer, who was mentored by trumpeter Charles Tolliver, and who was once referred to as “the future of the trumpet” by Wynton Marsalis.
He supplied all of the trumpet playing in Don Cheadle’s Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead, playing to match Cheadle’s on-screen performance as Miles. The soundtrack to the film won a Grammy.
But while Keyon has enjoyed what might appear to be a charmed career, he has also had a series of unexpected setbacks and heavy lived experiences that contribute to his musical journey.
His new album Foreverland is a celebration of his multidimensional career and his sensitivity as an artist, proving that Harrold is a master of channeling his lived experience through his horn.
The album features 10 original songs that explore themes of empowerment, positivity, love, loss, and vulnerability. And it’s a family affair — nearly every musician is a longtime friend, including Common, Robert Glasper, Laura Mvula, Chris Dave, Marcus Gilmore, Nir Felder, Randy Runyon, BIGYUKI, Burniss Travis and many others.
Here he talks about Foreverland, how a series of losses in his life ultimately led him to make “something beautiful, something positive, something inspiring,” and his reflections on the early days of his career as part of a community of like minded musicians who were “always open.”
Singer-songwriter Lau Noah grew up in the small Catalan city of Reus. She left Spain for America a decade ago, at age 19 and never really looked back. She makes celestial, dreamy music evocative of another era, yet influenced by her own very modern story.
Lau Noah is both a realist and a magical realist. She is an uncompromising and determined indie artist. She books her own shows, produces her own recordings, and advocates on her own behalf. She has a practical understanding of how to make compelling content, and how to communicate with her fans and her fellow artists. But she also appears to be searching the stars, deciphering her dreams, and following the river in her mind to the next location.
Listening to Lau’s music is like watching a river flow. It’s all right in front of you, passing with natural fluidity. But you can never quite locate it, and you can never fully predict how it will move. The best way to experience it is to simply accept that it is flowing and let it wash over you.
The river, in fact, is a familiar image in her songs. Lau seems to relate to the river, steady in its unyielding forward motion, unapologetic in its intransigent transience.
As a composer, her writing evokes a baroque classicism, her compositions are colored with counterpoint, and often sound like a conversation between Spanish guitar and voice. Sophisticated as she is, Lau is self taught, and actually lists Hannah Montana and Avril Lavigne as two of her primary influences.
Her new album A Dos ("for two") is a collection of duets with some of her most admired artist friends, and some of the friends who most admired her. These include Chris Thile, Cecile McLorin Salvant, Jorge Drexler, and Jacob Collier among others. Much of Lau’s access to these people came from posting videos online and letting the internet work its magic.
We spoke recently about her artful life, the journey that led her out of Spain and onto the world stage, how struggling with agoraphobia as a teenager helped her to become an artist, why adversity creates community, her adventures in babysitting, being comfortable as the odd one in any situation, and making A Dos.
Ani DiFranco began recording and self-releasing her music as a 20 year old in Buffalo, New York in 1990. 34 years later she is widely considered to be a feminist icon. But in many ways she emerged iconic, fully formed and fearless.
A facile lyricist with a biting honesty, she played guitar with a virtuosic, rhythmic style. And she was ahead of her time as an independent artist who owned all her own masters and controlled most of the major aspects of her career. She’s sometimes called the mother of the DIY movement.
DiFranco has released all of her albums (over twenty) on her Righteous Babe record label. The label has also put out projects for other distinguished singer songwriters including Andrew Bird, Utah Phillips, Arto Lindsay, and Anaïs Mitchell whose own Hadestown project was first released as an album on Righteous Babe before being transformed into the Broadway hit that it is today.
Ani Difranco’s most recent studio album Revolutionary Love came out in 2021. In 2022 she published a picture book for children called The Knowing which she described as “an Ani DiFranco-style lullaby, inviting young readers to ponder the distinction between outer forms of identity and the inner light of consciousness.” And she will join the cast of Hadestown on Broadway in February, playing the role of Persephone, a part she sang on Anais Mitchell’s original Righteous Babe recording in 2010. So it’s both her broadway debut and a fill circle moment.
In recent years Righteous Babe has released anniversary editions of Ani’s early recordings. In 2022 she revisited the 1998 album Little Plastic Castle, sharing anecdotes and memories of the making of it on social media, and playing some of the songs live. Her memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, was published in 2019.
Here she talks about how she sees her work today (“my job is connecting with people”), her early career (“it was relentless”), avoiding being labeled or boxed in (“I feel like a survivor of labels”), her idea of success (“successful artists are not necessarily the best selling”), raising children in an era of performative identity, practicing revolutionary love and why it’s easier to tell the truth than to hide yourself.
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0:00 Intro 12:00 Interview
brad allen williams is not only a great guitar player but also a serious recording engineer, and someone who understands both the technical and emotional sides to record making. Known for his work with Jose James, Nate Smith and Brittany Howard, he released his album œconomy on Pete Min’s Colorfield label earlier this year.
Like all Colorfield releases, œconomy was born from an improvisatory spirit that reflects the label’s mission. Artists show up to the recording sessions with nothing written. They create spontaneously in the studio and then edit, arrange, and develop those improvisations into their record. In the case of brad’s œconomy album, he added string arrangements to his free form compositions and a few virtuosic cameos by drummer Mark Guiliana.
This conversation is an exploration of that process and a master class in Memphis music history, a meditation on the merits of music with “layered emotions”, a conversation about the relationship between suffering and art, connecting the threads of noise rock and bebop, specialization vs broad knowledge, the value of vulnerability in music, why he doesn’t capitalize his name, and the journey that led him from Memphis to Los Angeles by way of Southern Mississippi, North Texas, New Jersey, New York, and the moon.
Pete Min is a recording engineer, producer and label owner based in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles. His label Colorfield Records features artful collaborative explorations with musicians in unlikely configurations.
Pete’s studio Lucy’s Meat Market has become one of the most in demand spots for recording among a subset of musical artists with LA ties ranging from Ben Wendel and Larry Goldings to Andrew Bird and Feist.
Min started Colorfield Records to pursue a less traditional approach to recording, one that he refers to as “sculpted chaos.”
He says, “I want what’s in the subconscious. I don’t want it ironed out. When people are just doing it and it’s coming out, that’s what I’m interested in.”
Since launching in 2021 the label has released records by Abe Rounds, Larry Goldings, Mark Guiliana, Sam Gendel, Anthony Wilson, Brad Allen Williams and others.
Here Pete Min talks about his early development on the east coast, how moving to Los Angeles gave him the space to reinvent himself musically, and what it means to make art music.
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Siblings Clyde and Gracie Lawrence have been making music together since they were little kids. They say there was never a moment when it switched from something they did for fun to something they did professionally. It has been a long, steady climb for them.
Along with the other members of their band, Lawrence, they have been diligently chipping away at a pop music career, growing more popular every year, making music that straddles the line between pop, R&B and soul, and doing it on their own terms.
Here they talk about the overnight success that was a decade in the making, running their band like a business, taking matters into their own hands, writing songs with “epic messaging and specificity”, and how their experience as an independent touring band led to real meaningful change in the music industry.
Listen to the first Third Story Podcast interview with Lawrence from 2020: https://www.third-story.com/listen/lawrence
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Born in Bali, Indonesia, Joey Alexander has been performing professionally since 2013 when he was invited by Wynton Marsalis to perform at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Gala. He was 10 years old.
Alexander subsequently moved to the United States with his family and has been touring and recording ever since. Today he is 20 years old and releasing his seventh solo album Continuance.
Here he talks about his journey out of Bali and onto the bandstand, what it was like for him to be thrust into the limelight at such a young age, what he hopes for the future, and his new record.
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Bassist and composer Todd Sickafoose shows up in a lot of places: on stage with singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco or drummer Allison Miller, behind the scenes as a record producer for artists like Noe Venable and Anais Mitchell, orchestrating the music for the Broadway musical Hadestown (which earned him both a Grammy for record production and a Tony for orchestration), and as a bandleader.
His new record Bear Proof is his first album of original music in nearly 15 years. He describes it as “62 minutes of music for eight musicians.” The sound is evocative, melodically rich, rhythmically intense, and features a unique instrumentation of violin, accordion, electric guitar, acoustic piano, clarinet, cornet, bass and drums.
Here he talks about his multifaceted career, Hadestown and the process of putting together a Broadway show, working with Ani DiFranco, Bear Proof, releasing music in today’s world, why bass players make good producers, and how a skin cancer diagnosis influenced his life personally and professionally.
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Alan Lightman is a physicist, writer (of novels, essays, memoir and science texts), and social entrepreneur. For this unusual episode, his interview served as inspiration for an original song. Made in collaboration with the Podsongs podcast, this conversation covers his career at the intersection of science and humanities, mortality, success, the cosmos, technology, consciousness, writing fiction, embracing ambiguity, out of body experiences, and the idea that there are no answers to profound questions.
Also thanks to everyone who voted for the Signal Awards! We received a Silver Signal award for Music podcast.
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Gregory "Hutch" Hutchinson is one of the most highly regarded and highly recorded jazz drummers on the planet. Part of what makes him so special is that he sits at the crossroads of the old school and the new school. He was mentored by old jazz masters like Red Rodney, Ray Brown and Betty Carter. He worked extensively with Joshua Redman and Roy Hargrove, among many other innovative jazz musicians of his generation. He has also collaborated with the likes of Common, Karriem Riggins and James Poyser, all practitioners of a new school rhythm approach, influenced by pioneering producer J Dilla. Hutch is able to summon the spirit authentically from both sides because both are part of his personal truth. But until now he has not been a recording artist. Now, at 53 years of age, after having played with everybody, he is releasing his debut solo record Da Bang, and it is not necessarily what one might have expected. Rooted in the jazz tradition, the album demonstrates Hutchinson's versatility, dynamism, and imagination. It may be unexpected, but as Hutch will tell you, it’s coming straight from the heart, and the songs are as much a reflection of the way he feels as they are of the way he plays. Here he talks about growing up in Brooklyn, playing drums as a boy, his mentors, the importance of personal style and of friendship among musicians, his next phase (“this is Hutch 3.0”) and his favorite drummers. He casually invokes so many names that talking to Hutch is like a master class in the music, and you can feel how important it is to him to recognize the contributions of those who came before him, and to place his own contribution within that context.
VOTE FOR THE THIRD STORY for the 2023 Signal Awards: https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2023/shows/general/music
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John “J.R.” Robinson is one of the most recorded drummers in history (some say he is the most recorded drummer) . He is the drummer on 20 number-one pop songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie and Steve Winwood, and has been the drummer on more than 100 Grammy-winning tracks. He was said to be Quincy Jones’ favorite recording drummer.
Here he talks about growing up in Iowa, falling in love with “groove music”, his incredible career, the stories behind some of his most celebrated recordings, what it means to have “contemporary time”, and his new band SRT.
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Writer Jake Lamar talks about growing up in the Bronx, his lifelong love affair with writing, moving to France in the 90s, his career as a novelist, playwright, and cultural critic in Paris, and his new book Viper’s Dream, a Jazz Noir crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem between 1936 and 1961. After graduating from Harvard University, Lamar spent six years writing for Time magazine. He has lived in Paris since 1993 and teaches creative writing at Sciences Po. At age 30, he published a memoir, Bourgeois Blues, in which he evoked his relationship with his father. With it, he won the Lyndhurst Prize. In 1993, inspired by the American writers F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin, he moved to Paris in the 18th arrondissement where he still resides. In 1996 he published The Last Integrationist, a novel of contemporary America, criticizing the pace of racial integration and the omnipresent television spectacle he sees as typical of the United States. He is the author of a memoir, seven novels, numerous essays, reviews and short stories, and a play.
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41 years ago this month, Bruce Springsteen released his sixth studio album, Nebraska. He recorded much of the album on one winter night, sitting on the edge of the bed in a rented house in New Jersey, playing acoustic guitar and singing, using a 4 track cassette recorder. The album would go on to have lasting influence, inspire other works of art including movies and books, and other records. And Springsteen would later muse that Nebraska may be his best album. Four decades later the story of Nebraska continues to be an object of fascination. Among those who obsessed over it was the musician and writer Warren Zanes. Zanes joined his brother Dan's band, The Del Fuegos, at age seventeen. The band toured with ZZ Top, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, INXS, and others during the time Warren was in the band, and also famously licensed one of their songs for a commercial which led to some serious criticism at the time. Warren then went on to build a career as an academic, a writer (including the best selling biography of Tom Petty, 2015’s Petty) an educator (he teaches at New York University) a Grammy-nominated documentary producer, and a musical artist who has released multiple albums under his own name, most recently The Collected Warren Zanes. Throughout it all, he held on to his fascination with Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. He recently published the book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. Warren and I spoke recently about his own personal journey, his thoughts on stardom, work, The Beach Boys, family, addiction, songwriting, betrayal, college towns, fatherhood, Taylor Swift, working with machines, The Kinks, drummers, Booker T. and the M.G.s, Garth Brooks, artificial intelligence, Joseph Campbell, and of course, Nebraska.
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When Prateek Kuhad moved from India to New York to study economics, there would have been almost no predicting that he would soon become one of the most popular singer songwriters in India.
Prateek grew up in Jaipur listening to Indian pop and Bollywood music, along with a handful of international records that his mother had in the house by artists like Harry Belafonte and Cliff Richards. But it was his experience in America, listening to singer songwriters, Americana and new folk artists like Elliott Smith, Fleet Foxes and Laura Marling that influenced his style.
Today, Kuhad performs for tens of thousands in India, and his songs have tens of millions of streams - making him one of the most streamed domestic artists in India.
His song “cold/mess” was featured on an episode of Ted Lasso, and was also included on Barack Obama’s favorite music of 2019 list, alongside Lizzo, Lil Nas X and Bruce Springsteen.
Kuhad's intimate heart-on-your-sleeve lyricism - in both English and Hindi - have come to define his style. He’s a specialist in earnest, direct and sweet love songs. For example, he released a new single earlier this summer called “Hopelessly In Love” which accompanied a deluxe version of his 2022 album 'The Way That Lovers Do' with eight new bonus tracks.
And while he may be India's most popular singer-songwriter (according to GQ magazine), he has been spending more time in New York where, like so many international celebrities before him, he is able to hide in plain sight.
He took the subway out to Brooklyn earlier this summer to talk with me about his journey from economics grad student to superstar songwriter, the differences between writing in English and Hindi, the universality of romance music, and how no one was more surprised by his success than him.
For the fifth consecutive year I interview my father on his birthday. This year he’s turning 80 and I surprise him with reflections and anecdotes by friends and colleagues from throughout his career, including Jeff Greenfield, Boz Scaggs, Jann Wenner, Michael Cuscuna, Phil Upchurch, Georgie Fame, Gil Goldstein, Janis Siegel, Jorge Drexler and many more!
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Singer, pianist and songwriter Laila Biali recently released Your Requests, built around a collection of songs from the Great American Songbook that were requested by her fans. After a string of projects of her original songs and more contemporary covers, the album was a departure for her. After spending years living in New York, Laila moved back to her native Canada to raise her son, along with her husband, drummer and producer Ben Wittman, who she met when the two were working with the singer-songwriter Paula Cole. Laila had established herself in New York as a reliable and sought after collaborator - she worked with Sting, Chris Botti and Suzanne Vega. After moving to Toronto she began focusing more on her solo career. It paid off. In 2019 she won a Juno Award for Vocal Jazz Album of the Year. And she hosts the popular radio show Saturday Night Jazz on CBC 2. Here she talks about her career, what it’s like being married to her closest collaborator, motherhood, loyalty, leaving New York to return to her native Canada, leaning into limitations, and how the pandemic led her to renew her “vows to music.”
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Conversations on community, artificial intelligence, identity, fan engagement, healthy living, life on the road and more, recorded at the 2023 Montreal International Jazz Festival. Featuring Michael League, Nate Smith, Carlos Homs, Julius Rodriguez, Benny Benack III, Emmet Cohen, Stacey Kent, and more.
When it comes to instruments that are not easily designed for improvising soloists, there is perhaps none more difficult to handle than the harp. And when it comes to contemporary jazz harpists, there is perhaps none more influential in this moment than Brandee Younger.
From the very beginning, as a young music student growing up on Long Island, Brandee Younger was toeing the line between her classical, orchestral musical education and the hiphop, soul and pop music that she grew up loving. She spent her early years musically code switching, trying to figure out how to make sense of her sensibilities.
But for those who listened closely to the samples on records by Jay Z, Pete Rock, The Pharcyde, J. Dilla, or Common it was clear that the sound of the harp had become part of the language of modern music.
Many of the harp samples heard on those in early hip hop records featured two African American women, who, like Brandee, learned to thrive beyond their perceived limitations: Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane. Eventually both Ashby and Coltrane would become two of her biggest influences.
Younger eventually made history as the first Black female solo artist to be nominated for a Grammy - for Best Instrumental Composition in 2021, for “Beautiful is Black” from her album Somewhere Different. She has also worked with the likes of Beyonce, John Legend, Drake & Lauryn Hill, as well as jazz artists including Christian McBride, Kat Edmonson, Marcus Strickland, Kassa Overall, Makaya Mccraven, and Ravi Coltrane.
On her recently released album Brand New Life she honors Dorothy Ashby and enlists icons of hip-hop and R&B, including Pete Rock, Mumu Fresh & Meshell Ndegeocello. The album was produced by Makaya Mccraven.
We spoke recently about her journey from orchestra girl to emerging icon, the challenges of playing the harp in a contemporary context, and why she’s done running from the harp police and the jazz police.
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Multi instrumentalist singer-songwriter Theo Katzman (known for his work with the funk band Vulfpeck) bought a van from a teenager in California and drove across the country, settling in the woods of Michigan where he set up a studio, started a label, and got down to the business of writing a new record.
Along the way, he discovered the Wim Hof breathing and ice bathing techniques and came out with a transformed idea of “the self” and his own motivations, and decided that he wanted to make records with as few technological interventions as possible.
The result of this journey is his latest record Be The Wheel which he released recently on his 10 Good Songs label. Here he talks about the process of making that record, as well as thoughts on artificial intelligence, psilocybin, social media, touring, and honesty in songwriting.
For saxophonist Ben Wendel, the pandemic provided the space for him to develop his latest solo record, All One (Edition Records), a project that is both very solitary and very collaborative. It features a woodwind choir of saxophones and bassoons performed entirely by Ben, and then joined by special guests like singers Cecile McLorin Salvant and Jose James, guitarist Bill Frisell, and trumpeter Terence Blanchard.
Wendel is no stranger to experimentation or to collaboration. As a member of the genre bending group Kneebody, he has always had one foot in contemporary music. And previous solo projects were motivated by his desire to collaborate, like The Seasons which found him composing 12 original pieces dedicated to 12 musicians he admired and then performed with those musicians.
Wendel performed at the Village Vanguard in New York earlier this spring. He was joined by his longtime friend and musical partner, drummer Nate Wood, Harish Raghavan on bass, Gilad Hekselman & Nir Felder on guitar (they split the week between them) and Larry Goldings on piano.
We spoke that week about playing in that sacred space, his desire to connect and to belong, his ongoing negotiation with technology, and how his personal experience during the pandemic influenced his music. Plus, learning the ineffable wisdom of his elders in the music.
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Beth Nielsen Chapman is a songwriter’s songwriter. She began writing before she had any idea that it could be a career; it was just something that came naturally to her. When she first started out, there was no way to possibly imagine just how important songs would become in her journey - both professionally and personally. Here she talks about that journey, which includes writing songs for Martina McBride, Willie Nelson, Tanya Tucker, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Crystal Gayle, Juice Newton, Bette Midler, and most famously co-writing Faith Hill’s hit song “This Kiss”. She has released sixteen albums as a solo artist as well. Along the way, she also talks about processing grief and loss through music (and making music through grief). We spoke only weeks after her second husband, Bob passed away. Her first husband, Ernest, died in 1994. She also tells the stories behind many of her hit songs, and lays out her philosophy of creativity and craft, including what it means to “write from the center of your truth,” channeling humanity’s “collective wisdom” and what it means to have “investment without attachment” in songwriting. Beth’s most recent album, Crazy Town came out in 2022.
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Pianist-composer Vijay Iyer has been described by The New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway.” He has been praised by Pitchfork as “one of the best in the world at what he does,” by the Los Angeles Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star,” and by Minnesota Public Radio as “an American treasure.”
He received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, the Alpert Award in the Arts, and two German “Echo” awards, and was voted Downbeat Magazine’s Jazz Artist of the Year four times in the last decade.
But beyond all that praise, he is at his core simply a seeker of genuine connection and community. Here he talks about growing up in Rochester, NY as one of a small handful of first generation Indian Americans (his parents immigrated), how he developed his musical identity alongside an academic career as a scientist (he did his undergraduate work in math and physics at Yale and holds a PHD from UC Berkeley in the cognitive science of music), creating work for an uncertain future, how to make music matter, and his most recent recordings.
He released Love In Exile - a collaborative album with Arooj Aftab and Shahzad Ismaily - last month on Verve Records.
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To say Christian McBride is prolific is both obvious and an understatement. The list of his projects is too long to fit neatly into any one container - he’s a musician, an educator, a composer, an artistic director, and a broadcaster. He’s an ambassador, a personality, an icon. And of course, he is a bass player.
One gets the sense that his days are simply fuller than most people’s days. He always seems to be coming from some other event, or heading out to another gig. Honestly it’s hard not to run into Christian McBride if you’re engaging with this music on any level.
At 50 years old, he has appeared on more than 300 recordings as a sideman, has made nearly 20 as a leader, and is an eight-time Grammy Award winner. There’s nothing trivial about his career. But as he picks up his bass to play, there is an almost mischievous gleam in his eye - a childlike excitement, and a clear sense of joy. He loves to play and it’s infectious - it’s hard not to feel good watching him do it.
Here he talks about his band New Jawn and their most recent release Prime, as well as his project The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons, which was released on vinyl recently, what makes a great music city, leading by example, what it means to live the life you believe in, and why he went “kicking and screaming” into playing the acoustic bass as a boy.
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Accepting her Grammy award for Best New Artist last month, Samara Joy looked out at a sea of faces that she had grown up admiring and said, “I’ve been watching y’all on TV for so long…I’m born and raised in the Bronx.”
It was almost as though she was reminding herself of just how far she had come, and just how quickly. That was a big moment for the 23 year old singer who was just a year and a half out of college. As she delivered her speech, the camera cut to Lizzo and Adelle, each with a hint of a tear in their eyes.
It was also a big moment for jazz at the Grammys and by extension in the larger popular consciousness (Samara was only the second jazz singer to win the award - Esperanza Spalding was the first). Samara also took home the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album that night for her record Linger Awhile.
In many ways, Samara Joy’s extremely rapid rise is like a fairy tale. On the other hand, it’s a reminder that sometimes artists arrive just at the right time and meet their moment head on. In this case, it seems that the world was waiting for Samara Joy.
What is like for the 23 year old to manage so much success so quickly? What must she be feeling right now?
Today Samara Joy will tell us in her own words about where she came from, how she got here, and where she thinks she might be going next. And - she does it all while sitting on the curb in the parking lot behind her hotel in Palm Springs, California, where we caught up last month, just a couple weeks after her Grammy success.
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This week on the Third Story Podcast I’m turning the tables on myself and sharing the stories and the creative process behind my new record What’s Trending. Featuring excerpts of past episodes with artists who collaborated on the record and inspired the songs, including Boz Scaggs, Louis Cato, Janis Siegel, Michael Leonhart, Peter Coyote and more.
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While almost everyone is sharing the most polished and curated versions of themselves, Braxton Cook is asking “Who Are You When No One Is Watching?”
Actually, as it turns out, it’s a question he’s asking of himself, and in a somewhat postmodern and ironic twist, he’s doing it quite publicly on his new record, called (surprise!) Who Are You When No One Is Watching? which comes out February 24 on Nettwerk Records.
Braxton Cook is an artist of his time - that is, he’s hard to define, hard to categorize, highly educated, determined to share his most authentic self and in a constant state of searching.
He’s a Juilliard trained jazz saxophone player who has worked with jazz artists Christian Scott, Christian McBride Big Band, Jon Batiste and Marquis Hill as well as more mainstream artists like Solange Knowles and Tom Misch.
He’s also a deeply sensitive solo artist, singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist who is committed to keeping the saxophone alive in soul music, speaking his own personal truth in his songs, and bridging the gap between jazz, soul, and alternative R&B. In other words, he’s a millennial jazz artist. No wonder he opened his 2017 album Somewhere In Between with the song “Millenial Music”.
We spoke recently about his trajectory, starting out on the local scene in Washington D.C. as a high school and college student (he spent two years at Georgetown University studying English with a concentration in African American Studies and playing gigs in town before transferring to Juilliard to pursue his jazz education), his evolution from soloist to singer, sideman to leader, and child to parent. We also talked about the value of nostalgia and deep emotional connection in his writing, intentionality in raising children, his determination to make “music with impact”, where he cut his teeth and if that has anything to do with his lifelong fascination with dentistry.
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Music is not only a form of expression, it’s also a way of traveling. It’s astounding how many people’s lives have been completely transformed by their relationship with music - and sometimes the simplest experiences we have as kids can profoundly alter the course of everything that follows.
A few seemingly unrelated events during Andy Narell’s early childhood in New York helped to lay out a path for him to follow, and he’s still following it today. They included Joseph McCarthy’s “Red Scare”, a rise in gang violence in Harlem in the 1960s, and the innovations of a musical instrument maker from Trinidad named Ellie Mannette.
Andy Narell is known as one of the most celebrated - if not the most celebrated steel - drummers in the world. Throughout a five plus decade career, he has contributed to both the development of steel drum music, and to the development of the drums themselves.
Andy has appeared on hundreds of records and film scores, he’s been the subject of two documentary films himself, made nearly 20 records as a leader or co-leader. He’s an educator, an advocate, and an ambassador for the music, culture and traditions of Trinidad where steel drums - or pans as they’re called - were born. If you’ve ever heard the sound of steel drums on a record or a movie, chances are you’ve heard Andy Narell.
His eventual partnership and friendship with Ellie Mannette, the so-called “father of the steel drum,” lasted until Mannette’s death in 2018.
Andy’s contribution to steel drums is immeasurable, his love of the music of Trinidad is deep, and his friendship with Ellie Mannette seems to have been one of the most important relationships of his life. But beyond all that, beyond all the technical, musical, or even historical details, Andy is an example of someone whose devotion and love for a thing took him around the world and the steel drum was his mode of transportation.
Here Andy shares his own personal story and also the story of the steel pan itself, the trajectory of calypso music from Trinidad to the UK and the US and then back to Trinidad. And he explains why he believes that “music is a powerful tool, and it’s revolutionary.”
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Page eventually went on to work at Spotify where he was the chief economist. Will’s work is regularly featured in Billboard, The Economist and the Financial Times. His book Tarzan Economics was published in paperback this month, and retitled Pivot: Eight Principles for Transforming your Business in a Time of disruption. Here he discusses “how music responds to suppression,” the need to “press pause on nostalgia,” what qualifies as “content,” and the idea that “the internet can scale just about everything but one thing it can’t scale is intimacy. [And jazz] is an intimate form.”
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Rachael & Vilray are a perfect example of the idea that sometimes what that once seemed old fashioned can actually resonate as new again. Their new record I Love A Love Song! comes out this week.
Rachael Price is best known as the singer in the band Lake Street Dive. She and Vilray met at college two decades ago. But it would take them years before they discovered their mutual love of the American songbook standards from the 1930s and 40s, and decided to create a project to showcase Vilray’s special gift of channeling classic songwriters in his original music.
We spoke recently about how this project came about, how they approach making original work in the mold of a musical tradition that is nearly a hundred years old,the art and craft of classic songwriting and getting the words right.
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A collection of Art of the Story pieces for WBGO News by Leo Sidran / The Third Story Podcast from 2022, including coverage of the Montreal and Umbria jazz festivals (featuring Dave King, Julian Lage, Samara Joy, Matt Pierson, Terence Higgins, Gregory Porter, Kurt Elling, Dave Koz and more) as well as short profiles on Lau Noah, Michael Thurber, Tomasz Stanko, Tyshawn Sorey, Jesse Harris, Jorge Drexler, Christian McBride and Larry Goldings.
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Every year, The Third Story collects more interviews and conversations than we are able to publish as full episodes, and 2022 was certainly no exception. Finally, we have found a solution: THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY, 2022 HOLIDAY EDITION. Conversations with saxophonist Bill McHenry, keyboard player/producer Didi Gutman, pianist Jon Dryden, pianist Dan Tepfer, trumpet player/graphic designer Jamie Breiwick, and pianist Randy Ingram with singer Aubrey Johnson, collected around the world this year.
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What's so funny about Larry Goldings?
He has been such a major musical force for so long, it’s hard to remember a time when he was not around. He’s one of the most accomplished, respected and admired hammond organ players alive and much of his career has been devoted to that instrument.
The trio he formed in the early 90s with guitarist Peter Bernstein and Bill Stewart has been one of the pillars of his musical life for over 30 years, and the three have remained United for decades. Their most recent record, Perpetual Pendulum, was released earlier this year. The recording session for the album marked the 30th anniversary of the release of their first record together - the 1991 album The Intimacy of the Blues.
Larry eventually moved to the West Coast and carved out a reputation as not only a jazz musician but also a highly sensitive session player, sideman, collaborator, songwriter, and film composer.
Goldings is also no stranger to social media: For years he has posted clips of himself - not only musical, but also what you might describe as schtick or comedy. His alter ego, Hans Groiner, for example, claims to be an Austrian accordion player, pianist, educator and Thelonious Monk specialist who has improved Monk's music by making it "more relaxing, and less offensive to the ear."
In recent years he’s also become a regular fixture with Scary Pockets, the LA based YouTube famous funk collective. Larry Goldings and Scary Pockets even have their own side project called Scary Goldings, they’ve recorded a bunch of albums and videos together, and over time have brought in Larry’s longtime friend John Scofield to join them, as well as other viral superstars like MonoNeon and Louis Cole.
In this conversation, originally recorded in 2016, Larry talks about his early development and influences, his ongoing relationship with Peter Bernstein and Bill Stewart, working with John Scofield, James Taylor, Maceo Parker, Jon Hendricks, the New York - LA thing, his approach to accompaniment, organ playing and telling jokes on the bandstand.
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Music in this episode:
John Scofield “Do Like Eddie”Goldings, Bernstein, Stewart “United”James Taylor “School Song”Johnny Bowtie Barstow “First Noel” Hans Groiner - YoutubeLarry Goldings “Ivermectin”Scary Goldings “Larry Pockets”Jon Hendricks “Freddie Freeloader”Christopher Hollyday “No Second Quarter”Larry Goldings Trio “The Intimacy of The Blues”Jaco Pastorious “Word Of Mouth”Dave McKenna “C Jam Blues”Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery “James and Wes”Peter Bernstein (feat. Larry Goldings) “While We’re Young”Chris Anderson “The Folks Who Live On The Hill”Jim Hall (feat. Larry Goldings) “Somewhere”Larry Young “Back Up”Billy Preston “Will It Go Round In Circles”Goldings, Bernstein, Stewart “Reflections In D”Weather Report “In A Silent Way”Jimmy Smith “The Sermon”Abdullah Ibrahim “Carnival”Maceo Parker “Shake Everything You Got”Maceo Parker “Pass The Peas”James Taylor “Country Road”
When drummer Antonio Sanchez released his album Bad Hombre back in 2017, he was responding to a few events that took place in his world at the same time.
On a political level, the music was a response to the racism of the Trump campaign against Mexicans. In fact the title of the record Bad Hombre seemed to be an answer to Trump’s assertion that a wall needed to be built at the US Mexican border in order to get the “bad hombres” out of the US.
An immigrant from Mexico himself, Sanchez reappropriated the phrase. Itseemed, in fact, to be a perfect fit for him because not only did it work as a form of resistance - by using the term he made his feelings clear without having to say too much about it - but it also borrowed from the jazz vernacular. You know, when musicians really respect someone, they will often refer to them as “bad”.
And in that context, Antonio Sanchez is definitely a bad hombre.
Sanchez moved to the US in his early 20s from his native Mexico to go to music school. One of his first teachers, the Panamanian born Danilo Perez, was a supporter, and their work together was one of the early launchpads for Antonio. While he was playing with Danilo, the guitarist Pat Metheny heard him, and that led to a musical relationship that has been at the center of his life for 20 years.
Sanchez went on to become one of the most sought-after drummers on the international jazz scene. Has won four Grammys, and has been named Modern Drummer’s "Jazz Drummer of the Year” three times, and appeared on the covers of all the big jazz magazines.
From early on he thought about drumming, and particularly soloing, as a form of storytelling. He says “I’m a sucker for a good story.” So it was only a matter of time before some great storyteller would find a way to use Antonio Sanchez’s drums to help tell a story. And that was exactly what happened when the Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu asked Antonio to do an all drum score for his film Birdman in 2014.
The film went on to win three academy awards and the score earned Antonio awards (including a Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media) and nominations at the Golden Globe and BAFTA Awards.
As significant as the awards and accolades were, maybe more significant was that the sound of Antonio’s drumming truly entered the zeitgeist after Birdman. And though he hadn’t planned for it to turn out that way, he realized that the level of expectation, curiosity, and even pressure on him to follow up that success with something equally resonant had risen.
So when in 2017 Antonio went into his newly built home studio to record Bad Hombre, he had a lot of psychic energy stored up and ready to use. He made an entirely instrumental solo record, he played all the instruments and did what has become his trademark production work of mixing drones, samples, programming and live drumming. In fact the only collaborator on the record was his nonagenarian grandfather, the Mexican actor Ignacio López Tarso who appears on the first track.
Five years, one pandemic, a few political cycles, and a handful of other projects later, he’s back this year with Shift: Bad Hombre Vol. II. This time the list of collaborators is a bit longer.
Somewhere in the dense fog of the pandemic, Sanchez decided to ask some of his favorite singers and songwriters — for material he could deconstruct and reimagine. The result sees Dave Matthews & Pat Metheny, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Meshell Ndegeocello, Lila Downs, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Kimbra, Ana Tijoux, Becca Stevens, Silvana Estrada, MARO, Thana Alexa (who is his wife) & SONICA sitting in on their own tunes — or ideas co written by Sánchez.
The idea of “shifting” might not only apply to the songs on Bad Hombre Vol. II, but also to a change in Antonio’s approach - In the first Bad Hombre release, he was extremely political. Over the years, his outrage and fury with Trump and the turmoil at the US–Mexican border muted – and Sánchez himself “shifted” how he thinks about what he does, and where he wants to go next.
We talked recently about that search, the same one that started back in Mexico when he was a competitive gymnast, classical pianist and aspiring rock drummer and brought him all the way to where he is today, the Bad Hombre.
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When Ibrahim Maalouf’s parents decided to move to Paris from Beirut in the early 1980s, it was meant to be temporary. The Lebanese civil war was raging and they chose to raise their family away from the violence. But the intention was always to return to Lebanon when the war ended. They did their best to educate their children in the traditional way, and because they were both musicians themselves, music was hugely important to them. They played arabic music in the house, and young Ibrahim studied classical arabic trumpet from the age of seven.
His father, trumpeter Nassim Maalouf had even invented a special microtonal trumpet or "quarter tone trumpet", which makes it possible to play Arabic maqams on the trumpet, and Ibrahim developed his sound and style using that unique instrument.
But as a young boy growing up in Paris in the 80s and 90s, he was also influenced by all the popular sounds around him - Michael Jackson, De La Soul, pop and soul music and dance. In the end, Maalouf's family stayed in Paris rather than returning to Lebanon, and Ibrahim has been processing that distance for much of his life.
Ibrahim’s career has been, in many ways, an exploration of his two worlds. He has released 17 albums and became the first trumpet player to headline France's biggest arena. He's collaborated with everyone from Sting to Wynton Marsalis, 6 million people tuned into his Bastille Day performance in France last year. He has also written scores for many films.
This year he released two albums. The first Queen of Sheba is a collaboration with Angelique Kidjo. The second Capacity to Love is a deep exploration of r&b and hip hop production for the first time in his career. It features De La Soul, D Smoke, Erick the Architect, plus jazz singer Gregory Porter, Tank and the Bangas and international stars from Europe, Africa and South America. The album opens with Charlie Chaplin's famous speech from The Dictator, and ends with a spoken word piece from Sharon Stone.
Here he talks about his childhood in France, developing his sound and concept, making elevated popular music, embracing the historical moment, refusing to be limited by labels or genres, and what it means when Quincy Jones orders sushi.
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Jorge Drexler started out as a doctor in Uruguay but eventually emigrated to Spain to try his luck in music. 30 years later, he is widely considered to be one of the most influential Spanish language songwriters alive. He has recorded 15 albums, received 31 Latin Grammy nominations (he won 7 so far and he’s nominated for 9 more this year) and an Oscar win for his song “Al otro lado del rio” in 2005.
He is currently on tour in the United States in support of his most recent album Tinta y Tiempo. Here we revisit two classic conversations with Drexler, recorded in 2016 and 2021.
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Multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator Tyshawn Sorey on his latest recordings (Mesmerism and The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism), his recent composition “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife)”, making work that defies category, growing up in Newark, comedy as a form of self care, the radical idea of blackness, exploring alternative musical models, his photographic memory, the interaction between improvisation and composition, processing ancestral trauma through music, and bad Italian food.
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As one of the most acclaimed and influential producers of the modern era, Daniel Lanois helmed iconic albums for everyone from Bob Dylan and Neil Young to U2 and Peter Gabriel. As a prolific and critically acclaimed songwriter, he’s composed scores for Oscar-winning films and blockbuster video games in addition to releasing more than a dozen genre-bending solo records. Rolling Stone declared that his “unmistakable fingerprints are all over an entire wing of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”. Daniel’s own personal point of view informed and influenced a generation of music that still continues to resonate deeply today.
Lanois is a searcher. He’s perpetually on the hunt for something else - trying to squeeze out another drop from the atmosphere. Which is how, this week, as he turns 71 years old, Daniel Lanois is releasing Player, Piano, his first project of instrumental piano music. The compositions are concise but highly textured - it’s a series of exotic instrumental performances and was recorded at Lanois’ studio in Toronto - a former Buddhist temple- with the help of his co-producer Dangerous Wayne Lorenz.
Daniel and I spoke recently about his early development in Canada and how it influenced his work, his ongoing creative relationship with Brian Eno, why he likes to travel for work, his attraction to melancholy, projects with U2, Peter Gabriel, Brian Blade, Brian Eno, Rick James (yes, Rick James), Neil Young, Terence Malick, when to use the word “we”, the importance of silence, reconnecting with innocence, his production technique of turning “garnishing into a devotion” and why “contemporary work has more to do with vision” than with technology.
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Peter Straub was the best selling author of novels, short stories, novellas and essays. He passed away earlier this month at the age of 79.
Peter started out with dreams of writing poetry and literary fiction. After publishing his first two novels, and two books of poetry, he finally asked himself the question that so many artists find themselves asking: how do I make a living at this? An agent suggested he try writing a “gothic novel”, advice that reoriented him for much of the rest of his career. His natural ability to write novels that, as he said, would be appealing to people who love Philip Roth and those who love Stephen King, connected with a huge audience that picked up what he was putting down over the course of many years.
But before he became a writer in earnest he was a jazz lover. He discovered jazz as a boy growing up in Milwaukee in the late 1950s. He gravitated toward Dave Brubeck & Paul Desmond, Clifford Brown, Bill Evans and Miles.
While the hip, swinging sounds of his favorite soloists followed him from stage to stage and page to page, there was something else that stayed with him as well: the darker moments of his childhood. A car accident that shaped his first years in school and left him alone and isolated in a body cast and a wheelchair, just as he was learning to read. He recovered, but it turned out to be a kind of catalyst for his career as a writer. And there was an even darker secret that he somehow managed to hide from even himself well into adulthood.
In our conversation, originally recorded in 2017, we explored all of this. The through line of jazz and fiction, improvisation and writing, how the past stays with us into the present, and how watching his Norwegian farmer relatives taught him to write diligently.
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Long before singer Cyrille Aimée spent any time on the road she was already a citizen of the world. She grew up in a small French town, Samois-sur-Seine, but says that she never felt fully French. She never felt fully any one thing. Her mother is Dominican, her father is French, and she says that “when you’re a mixed culture, you’re kind of your own thing.”
Samois-sur-Seine is very small but in the 1990s of Cyrille’s childhood it did have one claim to fame: it was the town where the legendary french gypsy jazz guitar player Django Reinhardt retired, and hosts an annual jazz festival in his honor. Musicians and fans alike descend on the town for the festival, and because of the ties to Django, some of them are Gypsies (Manouche in French).
Riding her bike through town one summer day, Cyrille had a chance encounter with some young Gypsy kids that would lead to a friendship that ultimately changed her life. The Manouche taught her to sing, taught her to perform, taught her to improvise and see improvisation as not only a musical pursuit but also a kind of life goal.
To watch Cyrille perform is to watch a kind of ecstatic manifestation. She’s very physically engaged, her whole body gets involved when she sings. She says that music was originally an extension of dance for her and that since her instrument is her body, dance is still a vital part of her singing. That physicality is part of her charm. She’s a natural performer.
But she’s also an accomplished singer, dance or no dance. She is naturally in tune with the language of jazz, bebop, funk, and soul. She’s a precise and fluent scat singer, technical and soulful at the same time.
Cyrille won awards and accolades along the way - she won the Montreux Jazz Festival Competition in 2007,was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2010, and she won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Competition in 2012. Her 2019 album Move On featured cover versions of songs by Stephen Sondheim. The album was praised by Sondheim himself and one of its songs, "Marry Me a Little", was nominated for a Grammy Award. And a live stream video of Cyrille on Emmet Cohen’s YouTube channel has racked up millions of views.
Aimée released two albums in 2021, Petit Fleur recorded with Adonis Rose and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, and I’ll Be Seeing You, a collection of duets with her long time friend the guitarist Michael Valeanu.
When she’s not on the road, Cyrille has been living between New Orleans and Costa Rica.
We spoke about growing up in Samois-sur-Seine, what she learned from the Gypsies, moving to America, how to learn new languages, the importance of confronting and overcoming fear for creativity, how to be honest with the audience, and where to find good cheese.
Creed Taylor was an inspiration to generations of music lovers. He was behind some of the greatest records ever made. He passed away on August 22 at the age of 93. For forty years, Creed Taylor was one of a small handful of jazz record producers and label managers who shaped and defined the sound of jazz recording. Through his work with the Bethlehem, ABC, Impulse!, Verve, and CTI labels, he produced classic albums for countless artists. He introduced us to "The Girl From Ipanema," "Mister Magic" and showed us "The Blues and the Abstract Truth." He produced both hits and critically acclaimed albums, and his sound defined an era. He made the history (for us to study), set the bar (for us to dance on), and paved the road (that many are still on). Needless to say, it was an honor to talk to him! We met at his apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan in the summer of 2015 and talked about some of his most memorable experiences.
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Earlier this month Stephen Colbert made an announcement about his band. Jon Batiste would be leaving and Louis Cato would be the new musical director.
For some, Louis Cato is not a familiar name. In fact he has been hiding in plain sight for years now, both as a member of Batiste’s Stay Human Late Show band and also as what he refers to as a super sideman.
Louis Cato is living proof that some people are simply given a gift. Born in Lisbon, Portugal and raised mostly in North Carolina, Louis began playing drums at age 2. By the time he started high school he was a credible drummer, bassist, guitarist, trombone and tuba player. He found his way deeper and deeper into music despite the fact that, as he says, he was “raised in a bubble”. Louis didn’t hear secular music until he was almost 18 years old, but the music he learned in church, and the music he played in the church with his mother gave him a deep foundation for a career in music.
When he did eventually hear the music and the musicians that would inform his professional journey, he quickly understood that he had a place in that world. Soon he was playing with the likes of Marcus Miller, John Scofield, Q-Tip, Snarky Puppy, Jon Batiste, and Bobby McFerrin among others.
He joined the Late Show band when Colbert took over the job as host, back in 2015 and has been a regular on the show ever since.
In this interview, done in 2018, Cato talked about the difference between making music in church and playing secular music, what it means to “learn what you already know” and how surviving a terrible tour-bus accident changed his outlook on life and music.
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For the fourth year in a row, I talked to my dad, musician/producer/journalist/philosopher Ben Sidran in honor of his birthday. This time he’s turning 79 and we consider the sociological implications of mowing the lawn, Donald Fagen’s solo recordings, the significance of the 1960s in popular culture today, Pharoah Sanders album Pharoah’s First, interviews he conducted in the 1980s with Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, the myth of Sisyphus, and his most recent album Swing State.
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For John Medeski, music has always been about healing. "Music just kind of sucked me up," he says. "For me having music was a great way to deal with the hard things in life.
"Best known as one-third of the avant-garde jazz / funk trio Medeski, Martin & Wood (aka MMW), Medeski began playing piano as a kid, growing up in Florida. By high school, he was sitting in with the likes of Jaco Pastorius and Mark Murphy.
He lived in Boston for college, and then in New York in his 20s. But Medeski was always drawn to nature. "I learn a lot by being around things humans couldn’t create," he says. "Like trees and mountains. I just don't think humans are that clever or that important."
Despite his love of the natural world, John is an innovative electronic (or at least electric) musician. He twists and squeezes the sound of his keyboards — distorting, filtering and processing the instruments to find unusual and sometimes otherworldly textures. Maybe that’s why he lists NASA’s recording of a black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster as one of his favorite recent musical discoveries.
Medeski is a highly collaborative musician: in addition to MMW, he has been a part of numerous musical collectives including The Word, Mad Skillet, Hudson, Saint Disruption, and multiple John Zorn projects.
We spoke recently about the healing power of music; what attracted him to music as a boy; his creative and professional development; and the moment in 1996 when MMW discovered their jam band audience.
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Israeli singer Noga Erez thinks about the fallacy of authenticity, the advantages of creative limitations, the way personal stories can be perceived as political, and what it means to make music with your heart instead of your head.
She started out as a jazz singer, performing and recording her original songs with a piano trio. Those recordings are long gone, lost in a pile of defective harddrives. But anyway, she decided that her original concept was too intellectual and that it was time to make something more intuitive. Encouraged by her musical (and personal) partner Ori Rousso, she wanted to make something that wasn’t so uncool.
So she began producing tracks that straddle hip hop, pop. electronic, inspired by Bjork, Kendrick Lamar and Flying Lotus. Her first record, Off The Radar, came out in 2017 and featured the song “Dance While You Shoot” that was featured in an Apple commercial. The more organic live versions of the songs were meant as a kind of creative exercise during 2020 when touring came to a halt, but I really loved them, and as Noga explains it, so did a lot of her fans.
We talked in the summer of 2020 about her career, starting as a jazz singer-songwriter and then transitioning to what she describes as “the music in my heart”, but also the curious relationship between Israel and the United States from the point of view of a contemporary Israeli pop act, what it means to be a political artist, whether or not music itself can really make a difference politically today, what it means to be “the offspring of limitation” and if the phrase “I don’t pop with that” actually exists or not. Also, an extensive tutorial on how to pronounce her name.
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Within about a week of home quarantine in March 2020, pianist Emmet Cohen started live-streaming shows every Monday night from his apartment in Harlem.
At first it was just Cohen and his bandmates, drummer Kyle Poole and bassist Russell Hall, set up in Cohen’s living room. Eventually they started inviting guests, and Emmet’s Place became one of the spots for live jazz in pandemic New York. Six months in, it had really caught on: the Emmet’s Place performance of “La Vie en Rose” featuring singer Cyrille Aimée has over 4 million views on Youtube.
Since then, Emmet’s Place has become a kind of jazz incubator in New York; featured guests have included legends like Houston Person, Victor Lewis, Joe Lovano, Sheila Jordan, Randy Brecker, Regina Carter, Christian McBride, Nicholas Payton, and dozens more.
Cohen has one foot planted in the future and the other in the past. Maybe that’s why he chose to call his most recent record Future Stride: as a nod to the stride piano that he loves and the modern world in which he lives.
That tension between these two impulses, the old school and the new, is at the heart of the Emmet Cohen phenomenon. He’s deeply rooted in the jazz tradition, and believes in the importance of oral history and intergenerational connection. When he was in his 20s (not so long ago!) he made a series of albums, live interviews, and performances featuring jazz masters Jimmy Cobb, Ron Carter, Benny Golson, Albert “Tootie” Heath, and George Coleman. He called it the Master Legacy Series.
Meanwhile, he’s an active digital citizen. He was quick to embrace streaming, NFTs, and direct-to-fan connection. (He offers a subscription service to his fans to support his work directly.) He’s a product of the 21st century and he understands how to thrive in both physical and virtual space.
We got together recently to talk about how he straddles the line between tradition and modernity, starting out as a prodigy in Miami, being a “repertory player,” his community in Harlem, “blues therapy” and the common lesson he learned from all his mentors.
The Third Story is made in partnership with WBGO Studios.
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Although the conditions that created jazz are distinctly American, without Europe it seems clear that it might not survive. Every summer hundreds of the greatest practitioners of the music and hundreds of thousands of fans gather across Europe at the major festivals to come together and celebrate it.
These gatherings provide a much needed opportunity for what the musicians refer to as “the hang”. Producer Matt Pierson explained it this way: “It is an American music and we love our homeland but in reality if you ignore the borders, the base of most jazz adjacent music is in Europe… You get to do a lot of hanging.”
I spent a day at Umbria, hanging and exploring. Conversations with Matt Pierson, artistic consultant Enzo Capua, drummer Terence Higgens, saxophonist Dave Koz, and singer Kurt Elling help to illuminate the situation.
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After a two-year slowdown due to COVID, the Montreal International Jazz Festival came back this year. I had been there a couple times, in and out, as a musician. I went this year to cover the festival's full return for WBGO and The Third Story.
When you’re a musician at a festival like MJF, the job is actually pretty clear. You get to the gig, play the gig, pack up and go to the next gig. But what does a member of the press do in this situation? I was given a credential badge to wear with the word JOURNALISTE written on it and an assignment to “find the story.”
Pretty quickly, a narrative started to reveal itself. Or rather, several narratives, all classics. The story of the young versus the old. The story about the past versus the present. And ultimately, the story of today’s community of musicians, what’s on their mind as they travel this Silk Road of Rhythm which is the summer jazz festival circuit —from Montreal to Marciac, from North Sea to Umbria and beyond.
Conversations with Dee Dee Bridgewater, Bill Charlap, Scott Colley, Aaron Goldberg, Samara Joy, Allison Miller, Gregory Porter, and various concert-goers, festival organizers and locals all helped to fill in the story.
Self-expression, politics, social media, technology, and conservationism were all part of the fabric, but the common thread between all of them was one of empathy and communion.
“This Music,” as so many of the musicians call it, represents human potential. And humans are complicated beings. But at our core, we are social beings and that is reflected in this Montreal Jazz Festival experience.
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When Julian Lage plays guitar, it’s hard not to get swept up in it. His relationship with the instrument is natural and contagious. Maybe that’s because it’s been with him for most of his life. When he was just 8 years old, Julian was the subject of an Academy Award nominated documentary film called Jules at Eight. Before he entered his teens, he had already performed with Carlos Santana and jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton. While still in highschool he was a faculty member of the Stanford Jazz Workshop.
Lage plays like someone in love. Despite his productive personal relationship with singer-songwriter Margret Glaspy - who produced his forthcoming album on Blue Note View with a Room - perhaps the deepest love affair of his life may in fact be with the guitar itself.
In this conversation from last year, we talked about his 2021 release Squint, which Glaspy produced with Armand Hirsch - his first on Blue Note, which he recorded with drummer Dave King and bassist Jorge Roeder. He told me how he traversed those murky waters of youthful exceptionalism and came out on the other side - with more sensitivity, to the music, to his audience, and to himself. During the course of the conversation, Julian also described the connection between the artist and the audience and how he thinks about notes as having the weight of speech. “I want it to feel like I’m talking to you when I play.”
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Singer Stacey Kent says she tends to be attracted to the “feeling of unrest,” and she thinks that her fans like to feel it too. Over the course of a 30 year career that has produced over 20 albums (including including the Grammy-nominated Breakfast On The Morning Tram), Stacey has mined that feeling again and again in different ways.
Maybe she understands how to express the complicated emotions around identity, romance, displacement and longing because she has lived them so fully herself. Raised in New Jersey, Stacey moved to England for graduate school. Almost immediately she met saxophonist Jim Tomlinson and the two set out together to build a life both personal and professional.
As Stacey describes it, meeting Jim was a major inflection point in her life and it’s clear that the relationship between the two is at the center of the story. Eventually, they befriended the Japanese born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, which has led to an ongoing creative partnership between Tomlinson and Ishiguro who compose original songs for Stacey’s repertoire.
In this conversation, recorded on location at Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London we talk about why she’s a fatalist, escaping from New Jersey and from the bounds of category, crossing borders (in many senses), and her latest release Songs From Other Places.
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Just when you think you know all there is to know about Donald Fagen, he surprises you. There are legendary stories, traded like playing cards in chat rooms, fanzines, and merch lines. Along with his musical partner, the late Walter Becker (who passed away in 2017), Fagen influenced countless musicians, producers and songwriters by setting the gold standard in record production and arrangement with his band Steely Dan. This is known. There are the solo records, including The Nightfly (released in 1982), which was nominated for seven Grammys and continues to serve as a reference for hi-fi aficionados around the world 30 years on. This is known.
Much is known about Donald Fagen and his work, it’s true. But much is still left to be revealed. Stage fright, a general aversion to appearing on television (he and Becker lacked the large heads and “swaths of cheek” that they felt necessary to really make it on the small screen), and nearly 20 years with no touring created a mystique that endures to this day, despite the fact that they’ve toured regularly since the mid 90s.
So Donald can surprise you. He does it not by telling you what happened, but rather what he thinks about it. Or more to the point, how he thinks about it. He tells you that Steely Dan has “more in common with punk than with the confessional California singer songwriters” that they were often compared to. He tells you why Stravinsky was a precursor to funk music. He tells you what’s postmodern about his music, why making his first solo record was so personally disruptive to him, how he falls asleep, when he decided to finally grow up, and who he never wants to see again.
This conversation was recorded in summer of 2019. This summer, Steely Dan is back out on the road playing to crowds of delighted fans around the country.
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His early work with Michael Bublé, John Legend, Vanessa Carlton and Ben Folds prepared him for a career as a session player, and his early solo records showcased his plain spoken, plaintive and soulful connection to the human condition.
Lerman met his Scary Pockets cofounder Jack Conte when the two were still in high school in Marin County, California. It’s a relationship that has informed and influenced him musically and professionally since then. He says that they “tend to be systems level thinkers” who “focus on the process instead of the outcome.”
That kind of process oriented approach has paid off: Scary Pockets and Lerman are extremely productive: they have released at least one new video each week since 2017, racked up millions of views and a loyal audience of funk enthusiasts around the world. They’ve recorded hundreds of songs featuring a continuously rotating line up of quality musicians and singers.
Collaborators have included many former guests of this podcast including Jacob Collier, Louis Cato, Louis Cole, Tyler Duncan, Joey Dosik, Larry Goldings, Caleb Hawley, Cory Henry, Theo Katzman, Lawrence, Adam Levy, Monica Martin, Jake Sherman, Antwaun Stanley, Jack Stratton, and Cory Wong.
Here he talks about his happy place (“in the middle of business thinking and artistry”), what he learned about leadership by working as a sideman, how tried to become a lawyer but ended up playing funk music instead, and what minor nine chords have to do with any of it.
When Lionel Loueke was coming of age as a young guitar player in his home country of Benin in West Africa, there were no music stores of any kind. He would have had to travel to Nigeria, the next country over, just to get his hands on some new strings. So he made due with what he had, cleaning and soaking, reusing his strings and even going so far as to tie knots in them when they broke.
Loueke’s story is the stuff of legend. After finally getting his hands on a guitar as a teenager, he put together enough technique and understanding to get himself to the Ivory Coast to attend music school, and then managed to get to Paris for further musical study. Eventually he went to Berklee College of Music in Boston, and then to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at UCLA in Los Angeles, now called the Herbie Hancock Institute, where he had the opportunity to study and work with luminaries like Hancock, Terence Blanchard and Wayne Shorter.
Soon he began to work with those same mentors, appearing on albums by Blanchard and Hancock. Since then, he has gone on to play with an incredible list of the most creative and influential players alive. Today he lives in Luxembourg, teaches at the Jazz Campus in Basel, Switzerland, and in non-COVID times, tours and records relentlessly.
A brief scan of his recent solo work tells the story: In 2019 he released an ambitious album aptly named The Journey — the title referring to his odyssey while also mirroring his musical development. He followed that up in 2020 with a much more intimate album called HH, featuring solo guitar performances, punctuated by vocals and vocal percussion, of Herbie Hancock compositions. And last year saw the widespread release of Close Your Eyes, originally issued only on vinyl several years ago; it’s a more loosely structured blowing record of classic repertoire, in musical conversation with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland.
Loueke tells me that after trying as hard as possible to remove the African influences from his playing and sound more like his jazz heroes, he ultimately realized that they were all compatible, and began to reintroduce more of the sounds of his childhood into his approach. The result is a very personal, musical, and emotional sound. I think maybe that’s what makes him such an appealing collaborator. His voice is so identifiable and personal, but you can feel the road that he has traveled in his playing.
In fact, he ends up telling me exactly that. “Our story is what we play,” he says, “the story of somebody from the beginning to the time they play; that’s what we are presenting.”
We spoke recently about growing up in Benin; discovering the guitar, and eventually jazz, by way of a George Benson record; making his way out of Africa, through France, to America; finding his voice and his style; how he sees his contribution as a teacher; and much more.
This is the final in a month of encore episodes as part of a new partnership between The Third Story and WBGO Studios. In June, new episodes will drop every other week.
We’re back with another classic episode from the archive in honor of the new partnership between this podcast and listener supported WBGO Studios. All month I’m revisiting some of my favorite episodes from over the years, and starting in June I’ll be back with all new fresh episodes.
You can find these at www.wbgo.org/studios where you will also discover their ever expanding selection of hipster content. And if you want to dig on the full Third Story archive, you can find that at www.third-story.com where we’ve always been.
Eric Harland thinks about time. He thinks about taking time, he thinks about giving time, and he thinks about sharing time.
He’ll tell you: “Time is a joint effort. It’s everybody at once. You want to talk about synergy, alliance, brotherhood and sisterhood? Just watch people getting together and having to play time. So much shows up in that. There’s so much judgment, so much blame. But then you get to these points of surrender and ecstasy. Something wonderful happens because you went on this journey together. It’s so revealing and it’s so fulfilling.”
Eric Harland is one of the most in demand jazz drummers of his generation. He has played with everybody. Betty Carter, McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Michael Brecker, Terrence Blanchard, Wayne Shorter, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Esperanza Spalding, Taylor Eigsti, Julian Lage, Robert Glasper, Joshua Redman, Dave Holland, Chris Potter, Charles Lloyd, John Mayer, and on and on and on. He has appeared on over 400 recordings, and continues to appear at the top of critics’ and readers’ polls. Plus he once played a solo so intense that it sent my wife to the hospital.
Here he shares his incredible story of growing up in Houston and how he came to weigh 400lbs by the time he was 16 (he eventually lost the weight in college), attending the Manhattan School of Music, becoming an ordained minister, living with singer Betty Carter (“not like that”), learning from legendary mentors, and exploring “time”.
He also shares his thoughts on practice, community, natural wine, and what you can learn about a person by how they drive.
The fact that he grew up in Toronto is not necessarily crucial to understanding guitarist Matthew Stevens point of view. He’s regarded to be one of "most exciting up-and-coming jazz guitarists" in his generation, in any part of the world. His songs and guitar playing are featured on albums by the likes of Christian Scott, Esperanza Spalding, Terri Lyne Carrington, Dave Douglas, Linda Oh, Harvey Mason.
He has worked as a guitarist with producers Quincy Jones, Glen Ballard and Tony Visconti. As a producer himself, he worked on Esperanza Spalding’s albums Exposure and the Grammy winning 12 Little Spells and on Terri Lyne Carrington’s Grammy nominated album Waiting Game.
In addition to his solo recordings, he has also made three albums with Walter Smith III who I spoke to recently: they call the project In Common, and on each record they call together a different collection of collaborators to round out the group. The most recent In Common project came out earlier this year on Whirlwind Recordings and features Dave Holland, Terri Lyne Carrington and Kris Davis.
Matthew gets around. I think it’s because he’s so open, and so collaborative. He brings his personality to all his projects, but he’s clearly also very sensitive and empathic. And maybe, just maybe, that has something to do with Canada.
Describing his own musical development, he speaks very affectionately and knowingly about a whole community of guitar players in and around Toronto - a school of playing that I admit, I didn’t know so much about before we talked. So many of the players he named share a kind of gentle, swinging sophistication, elegance but also a little bit of grit. I think Matt has applied some of that to his playing - he’s certainly not afraid of some distortion - his sound is often very gritty - but even when he rocks out, I hope he’ll forgive me for saying this - there’s still a kind of gentleness to it. He’s a nice guy, and it shows up in the music.
We spoke recently about Canada, how the business of jazz has evolved in his lifetime, how the pandemic reoriented him both personally and musically, gear, practice, teaching, the local scenes in Toronto and Pittsburgh, and one of my favorite topics: what is production?
What do A Tribe Called Quest, David Byrne, The Roots, D’Angelo, Pat Metheny, Erykah Badu, Jason Moran, Me’Shell N’degéocello, India.Arie, J Dilla, Run DMC, and Theo Croker have in common? They all benefited from the sound of Bob Power’s recording, mixing or production.
Bob has had a profound effect on the sound of Hip Hop and modern music in general. Despite the fact that he says “I learned early on from working in television that if someone notices your work, you’re probably screwed,” I did notice what he was doing and I think a lot of people did. He has degrees in classical composition and jazz performance, and spent his early professional years both gigging and composing music for television. He was 30 years old and living in San Francisco when he decided to move to where the action was in the music business at the time: New York.
An unexpected gig as a recording engineer for early rap sessions ended up re-orienting Bob’s career. He says he thinks he was one of the few people in the recording establishment who took the new music seriously and cared enough to make it as good as possible, even though it was being made in a different way (using samples, drum machines and intuition). He tells me, “Great music is made by people who either don’t care or don’t understand what is ‘normal’ so they do something extraordinary.” And he says, “In popular music, wrong has become right, and we love it.”
Talking to Bob, one gets the sense that his contribution has been multi-fold. Part of it is indeed the sound that he gets. It’s undeniable that his records have a sound: it’s in the depth of his mixes, the way they round and present, deep and forward at the same time. They have dimension. He tells me, “Just being able to hear everything in a mix is a lifetime of study.”
But the other part of what he offers in the room is his way. It’s his personality. Bob is happy to talk about his technical approach, the way he thinks about recording, mixing, and mastering. But he is equally happy - maybe even more so - to talk about pop sociology, Marshall McLuhan, Malcolm Gladwell, Timothy Leary and larger cultural trends of the the last 50 years. He says, “The state of the art in electronic media, the bar is very high. So making things fluid in the creative atmosphere is the thing.”
Bob teaches at NYU and it would seem that teaching and producing are related to him. He tells me, “I want my students to see that there’s all different flavors of good.” And he says, “A lot of artists want to show all the different things they can do. No! Show the one thing that you do that is totally yours and no one else can do, and then find every way in the world to exploit and enrich that.”
We got together in his studio back in February of 2020 to talk about history, technology, fat beats, staying in your lane, and keeping things fluid.
This is the third in a month of encore episodes as part of a new partnership between The Third Story and WBGO Studios. During the month of May, you’ll find another episode from The Third Story archive at wbgo.org/studios and then in June, new episodes will drop every other week.
Jason Moran is so prolific and multifaceted that any attempt to summarize his career poses a daunting challenge. Now think about what it’s like preparing for a conversation with him.
He’s a composer, conceptual artist, educator, and public intellectual with a critical disposition — critical in the sense of challenging the status quo, while still respecting the accomplishments of his mentors. First and foremost, he’s a piano player who straddles avant-garde jazz, the blues, classical music, stride piano, and hip-hop.
In other words, he’s just an incredibly thoughtful person.
Moran is interested in reframing and reassessing the relationship between music, history, and place. When we spoke for this episode of The Third Story, in the spring of 2020, he was in the midst of curating an exhibition at the Louis Armstrong House Museum. Given that fact and what was happening at the time, I was particularly interested to know how he was dealing with social distancing and isolation.
Our conversation is both a snapshot of that moment in time and a sweeping consideration of many of the larger themes in his work. Among other things, he talks here about coming up in Houston among a generation of jazz innovators; the idea of truth versus passion; promoting the “Freedom Principle”; America’s unfortunate way of forgetting the past; what it means for African American musicians to move freely “from the stage to the table”; the power dynamic within choosing repertoire; what Thelonious Monk and KRS-1 have in common; what we still have to learn from Louis Armstrong; and what it means to be the “personal embodiment of your history.”
This is the second in a month of encore episodes as part of a new partnership between The Third Story and WBGO Studios. During the month of May, you’ll find another episode from The Third Story archive at wbgo.org/studios and then in June, new episodes will drop every other week.
https://www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story www.third-story.com
Although it may appear Smith is a new voice on the scene, he is widely recognized as an adept performer, accomplished composer, and inspired educator. This spring, Smith welcomes his newest release, In Common III. The boundary pushing album features some of the most important and talked about musicians in the world - Matt Stevens, Kris Davis, Dave Holland and Terri Lyne Carrington.
Smith has developed under the wings of many of the music’s greats. Walter is/has been a member of several legendary groups (recording and/or touring) including the Roy Haynes Fountain of Youth Band, Terence Blanchard Quintet, Eric Harland's “Voyager”, Bill Stewart Trio, Jason Moran’s In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall, Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet, the Christian McBride “Situation”, Marquis Hill “New Gospel Revisited”, Gerald Clayton Quintet, Christian Scott group and the Sean Jones Quintet to name a few.
Smith has performed all over the world participating in virtually every international festival as well as famed venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Village Vanguard, and the Kennedy Center. In addition, he has shared the stage and/or appeared on recordings with many important artists including Mulgrew Miller, Billy Childs, Joe Lovano, Herbie Hancock, Maria Schneider, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Terri Lyne Carrington, Ralph Peterson, and a host of others. To date, Walter has appeared on over 100 recordings that are released worldwide.
Originally from Houston, TX, Smith now resides in Boston, MA and is Chair of Woodwinds at Berklee College of Music helping to prepare the next generation of young artists.
We spoke recently about his early development, the Houston sound, his thoughts on education, practice, improvisation, leadership, raising a family as a musician, meeting your heroes, and LA real estate.
Michelle Willis is either already one of your favorite singer-songwriters, or she’s about to be one.
If you haven’t already discovered her from her work with Snarky Puppy, Becca Stevens, or David Crosby, prepare to fall in love with her intelligent, soulful, emotive singing, writing and playing.
Her latest record, Just One Voice invites us into a world of doubt, anxiety, hope, balance and letting go—a process Michelle Willis skillfully guides us through with arresting arrangements that seem complex, but are deceptively simple—just like her subject matter. It features guest appearances by Michael McDonald, David Crosby, Gregoire Maret, Becca Stevens and Taylor Ashton, and was produced by Fab Dupont.
We spoke recently about growing up in Canada, how she thinks about her music and her career, how working extensively with David Crosby has affected her, teaching songwriting, imposter syndrome, getting the right “blend”, the job of the songwriter, reading poetry, and whether or not it’s okay to be comfortable.
Nate Craig is an internationally touring comedian. He plays "Phil" in the Netflix series "Maniac" and was a cast member on TruTV's "World's Dumbest". He was recently featured on Comedy Central's "Roast Battle" and AXS Gotham Comedy Live. Nate has appearances on Comedy Central's Tosh.0 and "Mash-up", which he also wrote for. He's written for 3 seasons of "Ridiculousness" on MTV.
Nate has been featured at the Bridgetown, RIOT LA, and HBO Las Vegas Comedy Festivals, and has headlined the "Laugh Your Asheville Off" and "San Francisco Comedy and Burrito Festivals". He's been on "You Made it Weird" with Pete Holmes, has written for "A Prairie Home Companion" with Garrison Keillor, and was featured on the "Best of the Bob & Tom Radio Show". He does theater tours with Bill Burr, headlines all over the country and has multiple full length comedy albums available.
We got together recently to talk about the parallels between music and comedy, what is the “job” of a comic, how “what’s funny” has changed over the last 25 years, the “contract” between audiences and comics, how he got started and what it means to be successful as a comic today.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.natecraig.com/
Vocalist Lauren Henderson is unusual in all the best ways. Described as "somewhere between a comforting whisper and a cogent declaration" by The New York Times, she sings with an intimate, sultry, haunting intensity. Her music might be mysterious, but she is an open book.
Raised in Marblehead, Massachusetts (birthplace of the American Navy and just down the road from Salem, MA) she attended some of the finest schools in New England. She was a varsity field hockey player at Wheaton College, and then went on to receive her MBA from Brown University. She spent much of her early life being one of the few people of color in a largely white environment.
She says her journey of discovering and celebrating her heritage has gone hand in hand with her music career. She describes it as uncovering “the layers of her diverse background in English and Spanish. Her compositions paint stories reflecting journeys imposed through the African Diaspora in connection to Henderson's Panamanian, Montserratian, and vast Caribbean roots as they interplay with her North American upbringing.”
Almost immediately after meeting her for the first time in 2017, I was inspired to write the song “From The Inside Out” for her to sing, and we ended up performing it as a duo on her 2019 release Alma Oscura.
Lauren Henderson is a kind of classic character wandering through the modern world. She is incredibly poised, elegant, and hip. She’s often dressed to the nines, full makeup and hair, ready for her closeup at any moment. She plays with some of the finest musicians today - notably she has worked for over a decade with pianist Sullivan Fortner.
Lauren is also a proudly independent, sharply focused business woman who produces her records, runs her own label and until recently has booked her own tours. Often I feel like she was sent here from another time - I just can’t decide if it’s the past or the future.
So today, we get the story. Lauren Henderson tells it to us, from the inside out.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.laurenhendersonmusic.com
Maybe you heard him playing with Meshell Ndegeocello, Andrew Bird, Emily King, Bilal, Nick Hakim, or Chance the Rapper.
Yes, all of this is true. But who is Jake Sherman really?
Born in Boston, Jake learned classical piano by listening to his father play Bach every morning. If not for an intervention - stumbling upon the catalog of Weird Al Yankovic at 11 years old - he would have followed in his father’s path or perhaps become a jazz purist. But Weird Al changed everything. Fast forward some years beyond his time studying at Berklee College of Music and it’s clear Jake has found a way to combine his appreciation of great songwriting with his piano/organ-playing prowess.
We spoke recently about his love of the hammond organ and Weird Al Yankovic, surrealist comedy, finding his lane, learning to sing, what he learned from Dr. Lonnie Smith, why LA is too sunny, making friends with social media, and why he keeps saying ladies’ names in his songs.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.thejakesherman.com/
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.melissaaldana.net
David might be confused for a rock and roll guy, but what he does defies genre. He’s a songwriter who is dedicated to writing authentic music and “carrying the torch” of those who came before. He tells me “the song doesn’t need to be true, it just needs to be honest.”
His plain spoken manner has a way of underselling the depth of his ideas. He tells me, for example, that “a culture that declares art to be disposable will get disposable art.” But he says it casually, with a smile on his face.
We spoke recently about his philosophy on songcraft, collaboration, art and commerce, New York in the 90s (he worked at CBGBs Gallery for years) and why his new motto is “don’t hate fun”.
www.third-story.comwww.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.davidpoe.com/
Amir ElSaffar has spent much of his life in search of the ecstatic moments that help connect to something bigger. In his case, he does this through his relationship with music and culture.
Trying to define or even explain what he does is not so simple, even for him. He leads five ensembles and has released seven albums over the past 16 years. His primary instrument is the trumpet, and he has devoted much of his career to expanding the vocabulary of the instrument. He also sings in the Arabic maqam idiom and plays the santur, the Iraqi hammered dulcimer.
As a composer and band leader, he’s devoted to what he calls “transcultural creation” in which he explores the space in between jazz, Iraqi Maqam music, and various other musical traditions from around the world, which have included Spanish flamenco, and Egyptian tarab.
In late 2021 he released The Other Shore with his Rivers of Sound ensemble.
We spoke recently about his ongoing search for the ecstatic by way of what he describes as the human “sea of connectivity”, how working with Vijay Iyer, Rudresh Mahanthappa and Cecil Taylor influenced him, the value of coming of age in Chicago, and how his Zen Buddhist practice has helped him to “lift the veil” between his sense of what’s outside of him and what’s inside.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.amirelsaffar.com/
Sometimes when a child of a musician shows an interest or an aptitude in playing music themselves, it’s called “the curse”. Sometimes the curse is revealed in mysterious ways, and the cursed child might not even realize that they have the curse until something clicks in them, a light goes off, a switch flips.
In the case of Adam O’Farrill, he says he discovered his curse when, at 8 years old, he went to his older brother’s Zach’s middle school band concert and saw the trumpet player. Looking back on it, he admits that part of it was simply the shine and brilliance of the instrument - he was called to it. He certainly wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last to react that way.
But for Adam, it was really just a matter of time. For the cursed child, there is no escape. He’s a quiet but intense observer, an omnivorous receiver of inputs and inspirations, from foreign films to video games, literature to cuisine. And he’s also what some people would call musical royalty - the grandson of Afro-Cuban-Irish composer and arranger Chico O'Farrill, the son of the cultural boundary-pushing composer and pianist Arturo O'Farrill, and pianist-educator Alison Deane.
Last year he was voted the No. 1 “rising star trumpeter” in the DownBeat magazine critics’ poll. He was 26 years old at the time. But of course age is really just a number, and Adam seemed to shoot out into the world fully formed, not only an accomplished player, but a developed artistic thinker. At an early age, he was putting in time with the likes of Rudresh Mahanthappa, Mary Halvorson, and his father’s Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra.
Adam’s family background is so diverse that refers to himself as “the United Nations in flesh”. That sense of inclusiveness is found in his music as well - freedom and control, tradition and exploration, intention and “tumult,” as he tells me.
Recently he released Visions of Your Other, the third statement by his group Stranger Days, which features his brother on drums as well as the bassist Walter Stinson and recently, saxophonist, Xavier Del Castillo.
Here he talks about belonging to that rich musical legacy, how video games, literature and most of all the films of PT Anderson have informed his work, the hazy lines around labels and categories, the importance of making space for other musicians to support one another, and how he strives to remove “the external” from his playing.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.adam-ofarrill.com/
Benny is a serious musician, a deep swinger, who clearly loves both the blues and a sweet melody. He loves to be on the scene; he leads a weekly jam session at Smalls, and when Covid shut down indoor gigs, he took it to the street, setting up outdoors and keeping the flame lit.
Somewhere along the line he started to take his singing more seriously too. He always sang - his mother is a singer, and he understood the value of being able to deliver a tune from early on. But more and more the signs were pointing him towards singing and playing - and towards the art of stagecraft, entertainment, and presentation. Today he says, only half joking, I think, that he is a song and dance man.
This turned out to be an incredibly interesting and provocative talk, and we covered an enormous amount of ground. Benny is extremely thoughtful, completely aware of where he fits in, where he’s coming from, and where he would like to be going. Along the way he talked about “the relentless commitment of playing trumpet”, the value of stagecraft, jam session etiquette, keeping old songs fresh, why he’s sometimes accused of being “too entertaining”, how come he takes his trumpet on dates, and what he calls “the elephant in the room.”
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.bennybenackjazz.com/
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.lionelloueke.com/
Before Tyler Duncan was a Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist producer/composer with credits including Carly Rae Jepsen, Vulfpeck, Lake Street Dive, Theo Katzman, Scary Pockets and Antwaun Stanley, he was just a kid from Michigan who was obsessed with bagpipes.
Tyler is still based in his hometown Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he makes artful, patient, beautifully crafted productions in his home studio.
We had a wide ranging conversation about “just how rich the world sounds”, how producing a project is like “being the surrogate parent” of the music, and how when it comes to making pop music, “You can’t mold yourself to a moving target.” Plus, more Vulfpeck origin stories.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.tylerduncan.work/about
Advice from friends and family ranging in age from 10 to 93 about how to stay young, what makes a meaningful life, ambition, desire, fear, success and music.
With
Sol Sidran, age 10Zelta Sils, age 10Zane Gruber Baruth, age 21Michael Thurber, age 34Michael Leonhart, age 47Jorge Drexler, age 57Daniel Levitin, age 63Gil Goldstein, age 71Ben Sidran, age 78Howard S. Becker, age 93
www.third-story.com
30 years ago Martin Sexton made a record called In The Journey. It wasn’t so much a record as it was a glorified demo tape that he sold while busking on the streets of Boston. He had moved there from his hometown of Syracuse, New York where he grew up in a large family (he was the 10th of 12 siblings).
From the very beginning, Sexton figured out how to marry dynamic, soulful live performances with plainspoken and thoughtful songwriting. He’s a songwriter’s songwriter, but he’s also a masterful guitar player and singer who knows how to give the people what they want.
Maybe that’s how he managed to sell 15,000 copies of that first self produced cassette back in the early 90s, back before the idea of “self released music” was in the mainstream. He says, “People connect to honesty.”
In many ways, Sexton’s own journey began with In The Journey and he’s still on it today: he has averaged a new record every two years since he started. He takes record making seriously, has worked with some of the greatest session players and producers alive, and has seen his music licensed in TV and movies for years. But he is perhaps at his finest when he’s alone on stage with a guitar and an audience. Martin Sexton can make more out of that simple recipe than most musicians could hope to achieve standing in front of an orchestra.
Earlier this year he released 2020 Vision, which is, for lack of a better term, his Covid EP, a tight collection of new songs about America, family and perseverance in these times of uncertainty.
Martin says, “I’ve always said that I love the idea of America, but I never loved the politics. I love the geography and the people.” He’s not political, but he is patriotic in his way. Or, more to the point, he’s dedicated to making music with a message. “No one can deny that what America has given to the world is great music,” he tells me.
We had a great talk about his new project, his origin story, the journey that he’s been in now for over 30 years, the tension between art at mortgage payments, The American Dream, and how songs, like produce, grow naturally, as he says it, “out of shit.”
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.martinsexton.com/
Mike Errico’s new book Music, Lyrics, and Life: A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter is about songwriting, and the life of the songwriter.
Errico teaches songwriting at NYU, Yale and Wesleyan. He’s a serious thinker, and a serious talker. But he’s also a musician - he came of age in a music business that no longer exists, where a young songwriter could get signed to a contract on the strength of a handful of acoustic songs that played well in downtown coffee shops and song circles at the Bitter End on Bleecker Street. And that’s what happened to him - he was signed, sealed and delivered, fed to the lions and spit back out, and along the way he made a whole bunch of records, wrote a whole bunch of songs, and developed his approach both to writing and to teaching song craft.
We spoke recently about his own personal story, as well as the book. In our talk we considered such questions as “what is a song?”, what is means to make something non trivial and undeniable, the important distinction between how things act versus what they are, the fallacy of Art, the search for timelessness, what is melodic math, and what do Ani DiFranco, The Beatles, Billie Eilish, or McDonalds have to do with any of it.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast http://errico.com/
Madison McFerrin says she’s “Shedding the narrative about what it means to be an artist in the music industry.” In fact, she says she’s had to learn to shed a lot of things. Like her “identity”.
She calls herself an independent singer-songwriter, which is both true and also not entirely the whole story. Questlove calls her a “soul-appella” singer because she first found a wide audience doing solo a cappella songs, just her and a looping pedal. In fact, from pretty much the start of her professional career, she was turning tastemaker heads.
That’s due in large part, I think, to the quiet determination and courage of her music: just getting out on stage alone with a looper pedal and her voice and creating lush arrangements from scratch every time. And while some of her songs deal with the personal, the sensual, the searching soul, others are more overtly political or topical. Like her songs “Can You See” and “Guilty” both of which address police brutality.
Madison McFerrin is also the daughter of Bobby McFerrin, probably the most famous and influential improvising singer alive today. She says that what she does really isn’t very related to what her father does, and she wears that legacy loosely and comfortably, drawing on his encouragement and advice but cautious not to seek comparisons.
One lesson she does borrow from him is in the way he avoids being placed in any one genre or style. She says, “my father calls himself a folk singer because he sings the music of the folk, and I consider myself to be a soul singer because I sing the music of the soul.”
Nonetheless, Madison McFerrin, like her father before her, finds herself skating (if not scatting) on the surface of jazz. On the one hand, as she says, “jazz is at the root of all popular music in America” so if she is a part of the contemporary jazz space, it’s because she’s a part of the world today. But on the other hand, she is contributing to the conversation whether she meant to or not.
This week, she’ll perform at the Bric Jazz Fest in Brooklyn. And in addition to playing, she also guest curated the lineup. She has a lot of thoughts about how to bring an audience that reflects her, both in terms of generation and identity, back to jazz. Or maybe, how to lead jazz back to people who reflect a different set of values.
She tells me, “I originally thought I was just going to be an artist who showed up… but if you don’t adjust now you’re going to fall behind. The music industry is changing more rapidly than pretty much any other industry.”
www.third-story.comwww.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.madisonmcferrin.com/www.bricartsmedia.org
In this bonus episode, actor, author, poet, director, screenwriter, narrator of films, and Zen Buddhist priest Peter Coyote talks about Buddhism, the "JewBu" phenomenon, the distinction between suffering and affliction, the limitations of language, the True Self, why it's so difficult to speak about attachment, the creative process, and his newfound passion for poetry.
This conversation was organized and underwritten by Rabbi Severine from Temple Sinai in Newport News, Virginia. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.petercoyote.com/Monica Martin was 18 years old, driving in the car with her friend Matt and singing along with the radio. She had always enjoyed “hamming it up” and singing along to music, but she had no intention of taking it seriously. But the universe had other plans for her. Her friend, who
Matt, who was a musician, coaxed her into performing; she started to sing in public and on friends’ records, which all led to her writing her own songs. She fronted experimental-folk-pop sextet, PHOX, formed in Madison, Wisconsin in 2012. PHOX released an eponymous album, played big festivals, national TV shows, and flew overseas to play shows far away from home. PHOX went on indefinite hiatus in 2017, and Monica moved to LA because “Wisconsin is cold as f*ck”.
She found herself a periwinkle casita and is feeling freer than ever in the city of misfits. She’s presently at work unpacking her mental confusions by cataloging/celebrating the “fuckery” of her ex-es (and herself) in lowkey pop songs with soul whispers, some golden-era hollywood dramatics, and psychedelic flickers courtesy of a theremin. Monica is still figuring out who she is, but quite happy to share her cautionary tales: “I made hundreds of mistakes so you don’t have to.”
She recently released her new single “Go Easy, Kid” and is featured on the James Blake song “Show Me” from Blake’s latest release.
Monica and I did an ill fated interview in 2015 which was never released. We were both back in Wisconsin over the summer and decided the time was right to get together for an interview redo. Here she talks about discovering her musical talent in her late teens, what it means to be “Wisconsin sober”, the complex and delicate dynamics of her first band Phox, her mental health struggles, why it’s so expensive to be poor, the many ways that she has had to integrate in her life, staying in bed all day, the influence of Fiona Apple and Billie Holiday on her music, working with James Blake, Vulfpeck, Scary Pockets and how being a hairdresser is similar to being a therapist (but much less well paid).
Drummer, composer and bandleader Nate Smith is known and celebrated in many circles. In recent years his drumming has become as influential as it has been ubiquitous. Transcription books of his playing have been written, and any drummer trying to play funk or pocket oriented music today will have to confront Nate’s playing one way or another. He has a very specific and personal way of drumming, both deeply reliable and rooted, and also very fluid and flexible.
Some know him from his early work with Dave Holland and Chris Potter. Some know him from his association with the Vulfpeck crew, and the Vulf adjacent project The Fearless Flyers. Some know him from his playing with southern rock singer songwriter and icon Brittany Howard. Some - many in fact - may have discovered him by way of the singer Jose James, and the viral videos that Jose made of Nate’s nightly solos back in 2016, which he tagged with the hashtag #thelegendarynatesmith. As Nate tells it, he was in his early 40s when he had his first viral video and it changed his life and career.
Some know him from his own compositions and solo records. He recently released Kinfolk 2: See The Birds, the second in a trilogy that seeks to tell Nate’s personal story through music. He says, “I’m interested in compositions that have a narrative and a concept. I think about ‘what’s the story’?”
One gets the sense that although Nate is an incredible drummer, the drums are not the end of the story for him, but rather, the means to an end. He’s so deeply funky and creative on the drums and also such an intensely sensitive and emotional composer - he even co-wrote and co-produced a track for Michael Jackson, back when he was still living in Richmond, Virginia, where he cut his teeth and earned his stripes.
We talked recently about the technical, emotional, strategic, mystical, unpredictable aspects to music and a life in music, how where you come from affects how you sound, the value and values of great leadership, the influence of other drummer-bandleaders on his conception, and what the internet taught him about his own playing.
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Family musicians Dan and Claudia Zanes had just moved to Baltimore from Brooklyn when Covid came on. In an effort to be useful, creative, and connected, they decided to record a video of a new song every day until it was over. They called it their “Social Isolation Song Series.” They imagined it would continue for a month or two. Two hundred musical days later we wrapped it up. As they tell it, something happened during that experience. Our thoughts about music became bigger and broader. We started to realize more clearly what folk singers have always known: songs are here to inspire and uplift but they’re also here to tell the stories and reflect the times.”
We spoke recently about their new record, and their new life in Baltimore, about their individual journeys that led them to this moment, about what they see as their responsibility as folk singers, artists and advocates, what they describe as the “racial pandemic in America”, how to practice productive antiracism, coming from “two different worlds”, the work-life balance in a creative partnership, and what artisanal soaps have to do with any of it.
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George Wein opened his first jazz club, Storyville, in the early 1950s when he was a young man. He then created the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954. The festival became an icon among music festivals and influenced the way music was presented around the world.
I spoke to George just before he turned 90, in 2015. At the time he was still vital and vibrant, working tirelessly to further the mission of his festival and his foundation (Newport Festivals Foundation). Although his festivals have been responsible for bringing jazz, folk and pop music to general awareness, he is unabashedly a jazzman. As he says, “you gotta stick with jazz.”
We talked about his past, present, and incredibly, his future. We started out with him asking me my age. It caught me off guard, but as he explained “when you know someone’s age, you know a little bit about where they’re coming from.”
George passed away this week. He was 95.
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Joe Alterman is a southern guy with a sunny disposition. He came from Atlanta, and despite having put in years in New York, he never managed to shake off the southern charm.
Joe is a piano player who wears his influences on his sleeve. While his contemporaries were deconstructing the music, Joe was drawn to the playing of more classic masters, like Ahmad Jamal, Ramsey Lewis and Les McCann. He loved the light touch of Red Garland and Hank Jones, but he also loved the blues and heft of Oscar Peterson, Monty Alexander, and Gene Harris. Early on, while he was learning to play the music by listening to those masters, he also began to establish personal relationships with many of his heroes.
Ramsey Lewis described his piano playing as ‘a joy to behold’, Les McCann states ‘As a man and musician he is already a giant’. Journalist Nat Hentoff championed three of Alterman’s albums, as well as his writing (Joe wrote liner notes to three Wynton Marsalis/JALC albums), calling one of Joe’s columns “one of the very best pieces on the essence of jazz, the spirit of jazz, that I’ve ever read, and I’m not exaggerating.”
Joe established relationships with his heroes naturally, instinctively, and soulfully. He was clearly searching for some deeper truth in both the music and the musicians themselves. Eventually, his friendships with the likes of Ahmad Jamal, Ramsey Lewis, Les McCann, Nat Hentoff, and Houston Person would begin to straddle the space between musical and spiritual.
He found himself turning to Ahmad Jamal for romantic advice, Sonny Rollins helped him with the adversity of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Les McCann illuminated the ties between the black community and the Jewish community.
Joe grew up going to Jewish day school, trying to find a way to feel as spiritually engaged by his rabbis and cantors as he did when he listened to his favorite records. He “found in Jazz and black music what [he] had tried to find in Synagogue.”
After putting in serious time in New York, he moved back to Atlanta and found himself running what was then called the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival (now called Neranenah) and exploring in earnest the question of just what exactly is Jewish music?
Subsequently, Joe has become one of the most creative voices in the conversion around contemporary Jewish culture and music today. While his own music may be steeped in tradition, his disposition as a presenter is wide open and radical in its way.
Joe recently released The Upside Of Down - recorded at Birdland in New York just before the Pandemic. He was finally able to do a record release gig to celebrate the project, back at Birdland, in late July. The record is one in a series of recordings that showcase his sweet, joyful, classic, swinging approach to the piano trio.
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By the time Antwaun Stanley entered the University of Michigan in the late aughts, he was already 15 years into what could be considered to be a successful singing career. He was signed as a contemporary gospel artist, had made the rounds on TV shows and singing contests, had been through a series of managers, producers and handlers who all recognized the immense electricity in his singing and his stage persona.
Meanwhile, he was also just a regular kid from Flint, Michigan, raised by a single mother and trying to walk the straight and narrow path. That dual identity was part of his journey almost from the very beginning - like a superhero. On Sunday mornings he was a star, but by the next day he was back to being a regular student. And when he got to college, he tried his best to blend in, joining an a cappella group and singing with student bands, while at the same time trying to manage his career as a budding gospel star.
Even today, he lives with that same duality. While his work with Vulfpeck and collaborations with Scary Pockets and Cory Wong have elevated his notoriety, he still chooses to stay close to home, splitting his time between Flint and Ann Arbor.
Antwaun recently released released a collaborative project with producer Tyler Duncan called Ascension, a high class dance pop project that gave each a chance to stretch out and do what they do best.
We talked recently about walking the line between spiritual and secular music, managing the responsibility to his fans and his own desire to explore, how he sees his career as “one giant experiment” and “a constant process of discovery”, and of course, his experience in Vulfpeck.
For the third year in a row, I talked to my dad, musician/producer/journalist/philosopher Ben Sidran in honor of his birthday. This time he’s turning 78, and we consider the “buddhist roots of jazz”, joy and pain, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, the final recordings of Lester Young, saxophonist Willis Jackson’s 1978 album Bar Wars, drummer Nate Smith’s latest record, how you know when you’re old, and the story of the Baal Shem Tov.
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Jon Lampley knows how to “get in where you fit in.” He’s been doing it since he was a boy in an Ohio suburb, spending his week as “the only black kid at school” and his Sundays at Apostolic church in Akron, learning to play gospel music and call the spirit down.
He also learned early on that commitment is crucial to what he does, commitment not only to the music he plays but also to the people he plays with, and to the audience too. You get the sense watching Jon that if he doesn’t feel it, he won’t do it.
Maybe that’s why he’s so in demand in so many projects right now. He’s a member of Jon Batiste and Stay Human (catch him regularly on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert), Huntertones (a band he joined in college at Ohio State and that led him to New York), and Cory and the Wongnotes. And works often with O.A.R. and Lawrence, among others.
Jon says, “I’ve just prioritized the people. I’ve identified the people that I want to associate with and what I need to do, how I need to better myself as a musician and as a human to get into that circle.”
Huntertones new record Time to Play, produced by Louis Cato and featuring guest collaborations with Cory Wong, Lionel Loueke and Cato, comes out this month. Jon and I spoke recently about growing up in two worlds, learning to play “unnecessarily soulful melodies” and call on the deep well of musical emotion that he learned in church, what he looks for in a collaborator and why he thinks he gets called so much, how he practices and prepares, and what he means when he says “music is the vehicle.”
If you’ve ever seen or heard Michael Bland play drums, you probably didn’t forget it. He was legendary practically from the moment he started playing professionally as a teenager in Minneapolis. Maybe you’ve heard him with Nick Jonas & the Administration, Cory Wong, Chaka Khan, Maxwell, Soul Asylum, Mandy Moore, Johnny Lang, David Crosby or Vulfpeck. Chances are, you definitely heard him playing with Prince - he was the drummer in The New Power Generation, and played on classic Prince records including Diamonds and Pearls, Chaos and Disorder, Emancipation, and more.
We talked recently about his early development in Minneapolis, the “guilt by association” of working with controversial artists, getting the gig, keeping the gig, losing the gig, recovering from the gig, confronting racial politics in Minneapolis, playing music with “endless potential”, his first time flying on an airplane, keeping the flame lit on local music, and much more.
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Philip Lassiter spent his early years in Mobile, Alabama. He was the son of a white pentecostal preacher. “They clapped on one and three in my father’s church,” he says. Moving to Peoria, Illinois as a teenager was a revelation for him. As he tells it, “They beat the racist out of me in Peoria.”
Lassiter’s story, both musical and personal, is a bit hard to unravel. He somehow managed to pay dues in multiple scenes seemingly at the same time. Philip’s has been a hero’s journey. Blink once and you’ll find him in the “Afrocentric” Dallas music scene running the band at a large church, mentoring a young Michael League during the inception of Snarky Puppy. Blink again, and you’ll find him doing the New York hustle. Turn around and he’s still there, this time living in Nashville. But what’s this? Then he’s an LA cat, writing arrangements for gospel and r&b records. Wait! Now he’s an expat, living in Holland and raising a family with his Dutch Caribbean wife (the talented singer Josje).
Phil is a trumpet player, arranger, band leader, teacher, songwriter, cat. His first major recording opportunities were on gospel records, and he has done arrangements for dozens of major praise and worship albums and artists. Eventually that work led him to do arrangements for pop, r&b and soul artists as well.
His sound is identifiable, punchy, funky, funny, narrative, empathetic - in fact, you’ve probably heard his sound so often that you take it for granted. It’s that sound; the sound of a horn section hooking up a record, elevating a production, bringing the project to life in such a natural way that you almost can’t imagine the song without it.
Philip wrote for and toured with Prince as his trumpet player and section leader, and he has worked with a full roster of other top notch musicians as well. Most notably Ariana Grande, Chris Cornell, Kirk Franklin, Timbaland, Roberta Flack, Jill Scott, Kelly Rowland, Fantasia, Anderson. Paak, Yelawolf, Queen Latifa, Al Jarreau, Fred Hammond, The Isley Brothers and Ledisi.
Why does he get called so much? “People ask me how did you get this gig or that gig. I always tell them, ‘I didn’t get the gig. The gig got me.’”
Lassiter recently released his fifth solo album, Live In Love, a collection of nasty grooves and thoughtful messages, a love letter to his former life in Los Angeles, a manifestation for a better America, and a gathering of collaborators from around the world.
When Julian Lage plays guitar, it’s hard not to get swept up in it. His relationship with the instrument is natural and contagious. Maybe that’s because it’s been with him for most of his life. When he was just 8 years old, Julian was the subject of an Academy Award nominated documentary film called Jules at Eight. Before he entered his teens, he had already performed with Carlos Santana and jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton. While still in highschool he was a faculty member of the Stanford Jazz Workshop. So he was undoubtedly a child prodigy.
Lage plays like someone in love. Despite his productive personal relationship with singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy (she co-produces his new record, Squint along with Armand Hirsch), perhaps the deepest love affair of his life may in fact be with the guitar itself.
We talked recently about his new record - his first on Blue Note, which he recorded with drummer Dave King and bassist Jorge Roeder. He told me his story, how he traversed those murky waters of youthful exceptionalism and came out on the other side with more sensitivity, to the music, to his audience, and to himself. During the course of the conversation, Julian also described the connection between the artist and the audience and how he thinks about notes as having the weight of speech. “I want it to feel like I’m talking to you when I play.”
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Michael Mayo is cautious when it comes to labels and categories. He prefers for the language he uses to be “descriptive rather than prescriptive.” It’s easy to understand why: because he defies category in many ways.
A singer and composer who draws equally from the deep well of jazz vocal language and from neo soul, he’s a modern classic.
Growing up in a musical family in LA (both of his parents are successful musicians) he was exposed to a life in music from the very start and had two supportive role models. He says that one of the things he most admired about watching his parents at work was the diversity of the projects they did - from gospel to country and everything in between.
Michael was drawn to jazz - he studied at the New England Conservatory and then the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz (now called the The Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz) - but always had a wide range of influences as well including everything from J Dilla to The Beach Boys.
But beyond that, he is also a gamer - he loves video games, posts regularly on Twitch and has a band called Shrek Is Love dedicated to the movie Shrek. So he’s open.
When it came to the more subtle and tender questions of sexual identity, especially in the black community, there were no role models who looked like him. In fact, it would be a long time before he felt that it would be possible to be out as a bisexual black singer and live safely. He tells me, “Traumatized people traumatize people.”
One gets the sense that through musical liberation, Michael found some personal peace as well. He says, “Just because something hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean that it can’t be done.” And he says, “I love living in multiple worlds.” After years of coming to terms with questions of identity both personally and musically, he made his stunning debut solo record Bones.
Here he talks about managing his relationship with social media, which he describes as finding the “balance between staying sane and being seen”, the subtle space between process and performance online, live looping, bi erasure, shedding “Giant Steps”, generational trauma, the “syllables discussion” in jazz singing, tokenism, discernment, and living a life authentically without labels.
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A story about stories.
How seven years and nearly 200 episodes of podcast interviews inspired the record The Art Of Conversation.
Excerpts of conversations with Amy Cervini, Andre De Shields, Jorge Drexler, Kat Edmonson, Kurt Elling, John Fields, Larry Goldings, Tatum Greenblatt, Ryan Keberle, Jo Lawry, Orlando le Fleming, Adam Levy, Howard Levy, Anya Marina, Matt Munisteri, Ricky Peterson, Becca Stevens, Doug Wamble.
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When singer/songwriter/educator Roxana Amed moved from her home in Argentina to the United States, she didn’t walk. But she might as well have. She describes her new record as being like “a bag full of songs and memories” that she collected on her way from one shore to another. She seems to stand with one foot wading in the waters of the Hudson River and the other in the Rio de la Plata.
When she left Buenos Aires, she was leaving with an already established career as both a singer and songwriter, having collaborated with many of Argentina’s most celebrated artists in both worlds. And when she arrived in America, she began to blow in the wind, like a tumbleweed. So it should come as no surprise that the first track on her new album Ontology is called ”Tumbleweed.”
When Roxana moved to America, she went to Miami, where one might think she fit in perfectly because of her Spanish speaking roots, but in fact in some ways she has felt like more of a stranger there than she would in New York, or Paris, or anywhere else for that matter.
Then again, maybe she would feel that way wherever she went, because she’s not really any one kind of artist, she’s not really sure where she or her music belong - maybe it’s somewhere along that long and winding road from Argentina to America. It’s that classic paradox when you belong to no-one, you’re available to all, when you belong nowhere, you’re always in the right place.
She is inclined to follow an arrangement of a Miles Davis song with something by Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, or to adapt a Piazzolla tango piece in a jazz quartet, but then sing Cindy Lauper as Argentine folk music.
Roxana Amed is an eternal student - she’s constantly thinking about her craft, working on it, contemplating it. Maybe that’s what makes her such a celebrated teacher.
We spoke recently about her new record, and about the ongoing relationship and conversation between artist and audience. She says, “Art is not there to make you comfortable. You have to be surprised. You have to be challenged.” We talked about surrendering yourself to your art, about how and why different languages swing, about authenticity and freedom in music, and how the soul of America is black, and we talked about Argentina, Argentine music and identity.
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For a farmer’s daughter from Western Kentucky like SG Goodman, a career as a singer-songwriter was not the obvious choice. Her family had farmed the same land for generations, and the path was laid out for her.
On the other hand, coming from a long line of “some of the best storytellers who ever lived” a life spent writing and singing songs made plenty of sense.
Pretty much everything out of her mouth sounds like a story to me. She says “I’ve done my best to get my heart broken during this period just to have something to write about.” She says “It’s not easy having the palate of a Manhattan millionaire in Western Kentucky but I do.” She says “I don’t like to say that music is divinely given, but I definitely didn’t ask for it.”
SG (née Shaina) released her debut record Old Time Feeling in 2020 after years of watching her college friends become professionals with postgraduate degrees while she continued quietly with “that music thing”. The album leans into a soulful southern tradition, but also upends it in a way, or at least updates it, as she seeks to debunk rural stereotypes, while exploring mental health, living with OCD and the notion that you can still love your family and community even though you may disagree with them. SG is also an openly gay Americana singer, hailing from a part of the world that she describes as being years behind in its thinking about so many issues.
She uses a classic frame to paint a picture of a progressive south and “to stand up to stereotypes that exist about the south, to spread the message that we should all care what our neighboring states are doing, especially politically.” That’s where she manages to subvert whatever straight and narrow expectations you might have about an Appalachian storyteller and turns left, in more ways than one.
She has that way - of conjuring a melody, a mood, and pulling you into her own space time vortex. Listening to her record is like some invisible pointer finger is reaching out through the darkness and signalling you to follow it.
We had a conversation that was absolutely of this moment, in which she laments having to use Instagram and livestreams to connect with her audience in spite of her desire to maintain some mystery in her art. We talked about how Covid disrupted her tour plans, how she discovered K Pop at a gas station in Alabama, and how she feels about high end coffee.
We also had a conversation that is of every moment. About how music in many ways saved her life and gave her a sense of solidarity with a new chosen family when she had to leave her farm life behind. It also gave her a way to honor her storytelling tradition. We talked about how one keeps spirituality in life after leaving the church, the intersectionality of living in the south, and how solitude influences creative work.
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There are some musicians who live in multiple universes at the same time. Clyde Stubblefield was one of those. From 1971 until his death in 2017, he lived and worked in Madison, Wisconsin. He was a local treasure, a celebrated adopted son of the midwest, and a legendary character. For those who had the chance to know him, to play with him and to see him in action, he was like a brother.
At the same time, he has come to take on a kind of mythological status among funk musicians and enthusiasts, DJs, producers and fans. His recordings from the late 1960s with James Brown are considered to be some of the standard-bearers for funk drumming, “Funky Drummer” which by many accounts is the most sampled beat of all time, which is why Clyde is often called the most sampled drummer of all time.
To me, he has always been both. I was born in Madison in the late 1970s and Clyde was a big part of the local scene, and someone who would regularly pass through my living room as well because he played often with my dad, Ben. He was my first drum teacher, and later on he would also be one of the first artists that I produced.
On the occasion of what would have been his 78th birthday, I reflect on Clyde’s life and legacy from a personal point of view, revisit recorded conversations that my dad and I had with him over the years, and consider a series of live gigs and records with him going back to the early 1970s.
A new sample collection of Clyde’s drumming, taken from his performances on the album Clyde Stubblefield: The Original was released this week by Yurt Rock. The tracks were originally recorded in 2001.
And a new documentary film about Clyde’s life and legacy is also in the works. www.givethedrummersomefilm.com
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This year musicians and creative people have had to confront themselves, their work, and their ambitions head on, and Bob Reynolds is no exception. But unlike so many of us, Bob already had some mechanisms in place to process that struggle in a creative way.
Bob Reynolds is a Grammy Award-winning saxophonist, composer, and educator known for his work with Snarky Puppy, John Mayer, and 12 solo albums. He is no stranger to large stages and tour busses. At the same time, much of his career has been a series of self generated projects.
On his YouTube channel, he shares tips, tricks, anecdotes and ideas, and he has coached thousands of students through his online Virtual Studio.
I found Bob at the crossroads of what’s happening and where am I going, and we had a beautiful talk about managing that existential crisis that so many of us are having. He talked about his influences, approach, playing with Snarky Puppy, John Mayer, the subtle but significant distinction between practice and the practice, what it means to make music with sincerity, and finding himself on tour in Spain and Italy last March just as Covid was descending on Europe.
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In March 2020, just as the world was closing under the advancing cloud of Covid 19, I spoke to a handful of musician friends from around the world to hear how they were doing and to explore some of the pressing questions around the shutdown and the arts.
One year later, I check in with (almost) all of them to hear what the last year has been like for them, what were the challenges and opportunities of the first Covid year, and how they see the future.
Italian singer Gege Telesforo, saxophonist John Ellis, bassist Joe Dart (sort of), guitarist Adam Levy, trombonist Ryan Keberle, artist manager Andrew Leib, singer songwriter Victoria Canal, artist and advocate Ari Herstand, guitarist Lage Lund, mud trudging songwriter Joy Dragland and funk magician Charlie Hunter (in his way) all weigh in.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon and following the podcast on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Before she became a journalist, writer, novelist, television show host, and the editor of Latin music coverage for Billboard magazine, Leila Cobo played the piano. She moved from her home in Colombia to New York to study classical piano at the Manhattan School of Music. Music was her mode of transportation.
Eventually she channeled her love of music and her understanding of Latin music and culture into writing, and today she’s one of the most important advocates for Latin music in America. Her new book Decoding Despacito features 19 oral histories about some of the biggest and most significant latin hits of the last 50 years.
With two acclaimed novels, two top-selling biographies and a landmark Latin music industry guide, Leila is one of the world's foremost experts in Latin music, as well as a prolific published author and speaker and the VP of Latin content for Billboard, widely recognized as the Bible of music worldwide.
We spoke recently about the book, her personal journey, and the nuances of Latin music within the context of American popular culture.
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Imogen Heap has to put her daughter to bed, then she can talk about what she’s been working on. She can tell you about her latest single, “Last Night Of An Empire” which she released on December 9th. Coincidentally, that’s also the day she launched The Creative Passport, a verified digital ID for Music Makers. In fact, December 9 has always been an auspicious day for her. It’s her birthday and “everything is just a little more special on that day”.
While her daughter sings herself to sleep in the next room, Imogen talks about creating the Mi.Mu Gloves that she invented for her own performances before developing them for commercial use. “They are the world's most advanced wearable musical instrument, for expressive creation, composition and performance.”
As the night unfolds, she’ll tell you about her app (ImogenHeap.app) where she connects regularly and directly with her fans (self proclaimed “Heapsters”), sharing song demos, weekly live stream concerts, works in progress, and casual conversations about herself and her life. She’ll explain that she’s building her own artificially intelligent bot called Augmented Imogen.
She’ll remind you that she also owns a recording and performance facility called The Hideway built in an 18th century house in East London, which you can visit any time via an Oculus compatible virtual reality tour. That sums her up: she’s a traditionalist in some ways, she plays instruments, writes melodies, and cares about the creative craft. But at the same time she’s a futurist, constantly looking for new areas of technology and distribution to explore.
Even though it’s now close to 11pm where she is in England, and you’ve been talking for nearly 2 hours, she’ll gladly relive some of the major moments in her storied career “I’ve just done so many random things,” she says. Like making her first record I Megaphone when she was a teenager; forming Frou Frou with Guy Sigsworth and their unlikely post-factum success; writing the song “Hide and Seek” and being a witness to its many lives; working with Taylor Swift and with Jeff Beck; and composing the music for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child which opened in the West End before moving to Broadway.
Imogen has the kind of dizzying energy that truly creative people possess. She’s ready to build the team, to engage with the crowd, to share the experience. But first she just has to put her daughter to sleep.
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Just hearing the name Boz Scaggs evokes a feeling. It’s a hip, laid back, soulful, approachable feeling. It’s a southern thing. But it’s a San Francisco thing too. He is, as his most recent record proclaims, Out Of the Blues. But he’s played his share of rock and roll, r&b, and even jazz too.
When Boz hit it big in the late 70s with his record Silk Degrees, he was already knee deep in the swamp, with a half-dozen solo records to his credit, and plenty of pavement behind him too. He says, “I woke up every day for 10 years with a list as long as my arm of things to take care of.” Until the success of that album, despite recording for the biggest labels in the world, he never had a manager. But he was determined, and with each new record he climbed just a little further up the mountain, searching for the next thing.
In fact he always thought of himself as more of a searcher or a traveler than he did a musician. “Music was my ticket,” he says. Maybe that’s why he has been known to take extended hiatuses from recording and touring. For example, he spent most of the 80s staying home in San Francisco, and avoiding the intensity of the road. (Although he did supplement a little by opening a club called Slims in San Francisco, where he has lived since the 70s.)
Still, he concedes that much of his life has been spent chasing that feeling that can only be found on stage. He tells me, “It’s the most wonderful sensation that there is. It’s magic what we do. It’s magic, what we feel. We are chosen, we get ahold of that live wire and we never want to let go.”
Here, he is in turns philosophical, rhapsodic, nostalgic, and matter of fact about the 1960s, his solo career, success, ambition, rhythm sections, songwriting, performing, getting older, and what he’s reading today.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.bozscaggs.com
Eric Harland thinks about time. He thinks about taking time, he thinks about giving time, and he thinks about sharing time.
He’ll tell you: “Time is a joint effort. It’s everybody at once. You want to talk about synergy, alliance, brotherhood and sisterhood? Just watch people getting together and having to play time. So much shows up in that. There’s so much judgement, so much blame. But then you get to these points of surrender and ecstasy. Something wonderful happens because you went on this journey together. It’s so revealing and it’s so fulfilling.”
Eric Harland is one of the most in demand jazz drummers of his generation. He has played with everybody. Betty Carter, McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Michael Brecker, Terrence Blanchard, Wayne Shorter, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Esperanza Spalding, Taylor Eigsti, Julian Lage, Robert Glasper, Joshua Redman, Dave Holland, Chris Potter, Charles Lloyd, John Mayer, and on and on and on. He has appeared on over 400 recordings, and continues to appear at the top of critics’ and readers’ polls. Plus he once played a solo so intense that it sent my wife to the hospital.
Here he shares his incredible story of growing up in Houston and how he came to weigh 400 LBS by the time he was 16 (he eventually lost the weight in college), attending the Manhattan School of Music, becoming an ordained minister, living with singer Betty Carter (“not like that”), learning from legendary mentors, and exploring “time”.
He also shares his thoughts on practice, community, natural wine, and what you can learn about a person by how they drive.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast
When record producer Rick Beato posted a video on YouTube of his 8 year old son in a dizzying demonstration of perfect pitch, complex harmonic understanding and a general fluency with the building blocks of composition, he had no idea just how big an impact it would have on his life. Already in his 50s, Rick had decades of experience invested in his career in the record business. Five years later he is a full time YouTuber - his channel “Everything Music” has over 2 million subscribers - and has made nearly 800 videos, on subjects including Ear Training, Music Production, Improvisation, Scales and Modes, Film Scoring, Music Theory and Composition, Perfect Pitch, and Guitars. For curious musicians, music students, and music appreciators in the YouTube generation, Rick’s channel is simply part of the furniture, something you probably have come across one way or another. But despite being a very public facing teacher and generator of ideas, there is not so much information about him. If you watch his videos then you know that he lives in Atlanta, but that he’s from the Northeast. He went first to Ithaca college, then to the New England Conservatory, and then in his early 20s he actually taught at Ithaca College, at first his students were only a few years younger than him. If you watch the videos, then you know his kids a little bit, you know his friends, you know his interests, you know his life. Still, he walks a fine line between a kind of exhibitionism - which is a necessary evil of being a public figure - and the arms length of a teacher. We talked recently about his personal journey, how he organizes his time, what motivates him and what inspires him, teaching “high information” music to children, making a living on YouTube, staying fresh, and walking the line between telling the story and being the story. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.rickbeato.com
Billy Martin (also known as illy B) is many things. He's a visual artist, a filmmaker, a teacher, a builder, a composer, a record producer... But if you know his name, chances are it's from his band Medeski, Martin and Wood, a project he’s had for 30 years now along with bassist Chris Wood and keyboardist John Medeski.
Billy refers to his artistic approach as playful and he is committed to the idea of play and experimentation in art. He is also totally serious about what he does, he’s a serious thinker, and he takes enormous care with what he does and how he does it. He might be playing, but he’s not messing around.
A lifelong student, his path has been somewhat self directed. He spent his formative musical years taking lessons at the Drummers Collective in New York, where he came in contact with a group of musicians who would shape his music and his career, and got what he calls “the inside stuff”. Notably, he refers to drummer and composer Bob Moses as one of his primary mentors.
He made a documentary film 10 years ago with another one of his early teachers, Allen Herman. That movie, Life On Drums, is a series of discussions between Billy and Allen intercut with solo drum performances by both of them.
We spoke recently about how field recordings influenced him, the power of sincerity in music and in life, the importance of staying curious and being playful, what he calls the “world music view”, how “when you’re experimenting there is no such thing as perfection,” the similarities between music and visual art, why Instagram is such a useful tool for self expression, and much more.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon and following the podcast on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
As Andres Levin will tell you, even he has trouble explaining his career and life in a succinct, organized, bite sized way. He’s a record producer, bandleader, filmmaker, composer, philanthropist, New Yorker, Venezuelan, Jew, funk practitioner, latin soul ambassador, big picture guy with a granular understanding of the mechanics of the business for over 30 years.
Andres grew up in Venezuela, a child of immigrants (an exile baby, he calls himself), Jewish, his father is an electronic musician. But in middle school he ended up spending time in North Carolina where he connected with black culture and music. After heading back to Venezuela for high school he ended up moving to Boston and then New York for two years of college. But quickly he left school and started assisting the legendary producer Nile Rogers. So before he was 25 he had worked on records for the B-52’s, Chic, Chaka Khan, CeCe Peniston, Tina Turner, even Eddie Murphy.
Then he started thinking about how to apply his already not insignificant experience to Latin music, and produced a series of groundbreaking and genre defying records that would impact modern Latin music (Los Amigos Invisibles, Aterciopelados, Ely Guerra, Marisa Monte, and his own band Yerba Buena to name a few). He has had some notably lengthy creative relationships with the likes of Arto Lindsay, David Byrne and the singer Cucu Diamantes.
For more than 15 years, he has spent at least half his time in Havana, and is deeply enmeshed in the Cuban scene, both as a musician and a culture broker - he organized the first TED conferences in Havana, and works as a liaison for foreign projects on the ground in Cuba.
He tells me that he spent much of 2020 quarantining in an apartment in Havana, operating his international business from an island that is notoriously disconnected from much of the rest of the world. That’s how he ended up, after three decades of being the guy behind the guy, writing and singing the song “Ode To Quarantine” and then filming a kind of retro futuristic post apocalyptic video for his love song dedicated to the virus.
We talked about where he is, how he got there, how long he plans on staying, and where he’s going next. Along the way we also talk about learning how to produce, being comfortable in any room, programing synthesizers, eating sushi all day, and when to turn up the kick drum.
Raised by a god-fearing mother and a Black Panther father in the mecca of progressive politics, singer, rapper and entrepreneur Rexx Life Raj's music perfectly articulates the beauty and struggle of being a young black adult in 2020.
His voice is soulful, buttery, sweet even. At the same time he’s very real, very honest and confessional, unpacking all of the tragedies and successes of his own life and those around him.
He’s sensitive in his approach musically and lyrically - his vibe is not aggressive even when the subject matter is uncomfortable. At the same time, he’s a big guy. He played Division 1 football at Boise State before committing to music full time.
Raj is prolific and seems to be constantly making videos and releasing singles. One recent single from earlier this year was called Tesla in a Pandemic about he got a new car this year. He uses that image to meditate on the world around him, friends who have not been so lucky or successful, his youth and his parents.
His new EP California Poppy 2 came out recently. Incidentally that is also the name of his new line of Cannabis products. We talked just after it was released about growing up in Berkeley, discovering the world from the back of his parents’ delivery van, managing success & guilt, diversification, finding the lane, building a brand, traveling around the world and giving back to his community.
Duncan Sheik’s career has not followed a straight line. After studying semiotics at Brown University, he emerged in the mid 1990s as a pop singer songwriter with his hit “Barely Breathing”, and quickly revealed himself to bend toward more literate adult oriented rock. He continued to make records and land himself on the charts but also began exploring composition for film and theater.
The success of 2006's Spring Awakening, a hit rock musical that featured Sheik’s score (and which won the Tony for Best Original Score as well as a Grammy for Best Musical Show Album) planted him firmly in the world of Broadway. He has continued to write for theater, often collaborating with poet and playwright Steven Sater.
Over the years he has explored electronic music, folk music, and enjoyed covering songs by his favorite writers, many of whom were influential to him as a boy.
His new record Live at the Cafe Carlyle, a small format live concert was recorded in the pre pandemic playground of the upper east side, back when people gathered together unmasked and unconcerned to experience something collectively.
The record in many ways is an encapsulation of his career - it includes some of the most famous songs from his artist and composer lives, as well as some of his favorite songs by other songwriters.
We talked recently about his career, his songwriting, technology in music, how becoming a father has influenced his work, his life in Covid and what it means to release music in these strange and trying times, and what exactly is semiotics anyway.
Johnny Brennan was a wise cracking kid from New York who had a natural gift for doing voices and making up characters. First, he did it to crack up his family. When he started recording the prank phone calls that he made to try out his characters in the real world, he made tapes for his brothers. At the time, he was “hanging off of buildings, doing construction.” His friend Kamal Ahmed got involved and the duo would eventually call themselves The Jerky Boys. Those original tapes started circulating, being passed around at college campuses and among musicians. The Jerky Boys became one of the most bootlegged acts in the world, before ultimately signing a proper record contract (their first record was on Atlantic Records) and going on to sell millions of copies of their prank call collections. They made a movie, did commercials, became famous, launched careers, and created classic characters.
Then the Jerky Boys stopped making new recordings and the two friends went their separate ways. Johnny became a voice actor, notably voicing characters on the animated comedy Family Guy (the creator of the show, Seth McFarlane, was a huge fan of the Jerky Boys). Now, after over 20 years without a new record, Johnny Brennan is back with a new Jerky Boys record. We talked recently about how he developed his characters, why his career was an unexpected success, the role of improvisation in his calls and how he knows when it’s a good one, what makes a classic skit (hint: it involves what he calls “catchphrases up the ass”), how the world has changed since he first started and why this was the perfect time to launch a comeback.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://thejerkyboys.com/
There are times when the right song reaches us at the right time. Sometimes it’s a brand new song. Sometimes it’s a classic. Sometimes it’s something you’ve heard a hundred times before but the stars align just right, and you hear it with fresh ears. Other times, it’s like a bolt of lightning out of nowhere. During these recent Covid months, the song “Things” by Louis Cole has been one of those for me that just makes sense.
Louis is a prolific multi instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, arranger, video maker, surrealist, funk monkey, producer and personality. Despite his extensive output as a solo artist, with his band Knower, and as a guest with others, he is slightly reclusive and still somewhat of a mystery.
After more than three years of attempting to set this up, Louis and I spoke recently to talk about where he came from, what he’s doing now, and where he hopes to go. Along the way he touched on writing “nostalgic music that feels almost like a memory of something that never happened”, overcoming fear, being a better person, staying up late into the weird part of the night, “insanity music”, money, honesty, humor, the problem with 100bpm, YouTubePoops, and what Nate Wood, David Binney, Bob Mintzer, and Jack Conte have to do with any of this.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://louiscole.bandcamp.com/
Whenever my dad and I get together to talk, there is no predicting where the conversation will lead. It always has a way of making some kind of sense, and tying together the strands of our diverse interests, from jazz to sociology, popular culture to politics.
Just as we did on the morning of the presidential election in 2016, here we discuss the results of the 2020 election and what it might say about all of the above. Somehow, along the way we touch on his thoughts on the beauty of old things, Tikun Olam (the Jewish concept of healing the world) as a response to a universal call from deep in the frontal cortex, “The cruelty of our own DNA”, Chaos theory, the future of small jazz clubs, and how “we are all survivors of chaos”.
Then we try to figure out what that has to do with Les McCann’s recording of the song “Maxie’s Changes” (with the largely unknown tenor saxophone player Frank Haynes).
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.bensidran.com
There is a video you can find on YouTube of Cory Henry at age four, playing Hammond organ in church, wearing a suit and tie. It’s very clear in the video that he was made to play music. So it should come as no surprise that over the last decade, Cory has become one of the most celebrated, influential, exciting keyboard players of his generation.
Cory was already building a name for himself in both the New York gospel and R&B communities before he joined the band Snarky Puppy, but by the time he left the band in 2015 to form his solo project The Funk Apostles, he had become a kind of phenomenon. During his time with Snarky Puppy he played on the Grammy winning song “Something” featuring Lalah Hathaway.
In recent years Cory has stretched out as a bandleader, songwriter and singer too. His new record Something To Say finds Cory writing and singing about “bigger things”. He says, “This is my opportunity to say what I want to say. Because my music is supposed to be in this time...I’ll get back to the party records later. Right now it’s important to be in the moment, in the time. I want when you hear the record to think ‘this is what’s happening now!’”
We got together on Zoom recently to talk about his early development playing music in church, learning to make music on Saturday night and on Sunday morning, how losing his parents at a young age affected his life and career, his experiences playing with saxophonist Kenny Garrett (Cory toured with Garrett at age 18), Snarky Puppy, and The Funk Apostles. Along the way he gives a master class on some of his favorite Gospel music, and an introspective explanation of much of the material on his new record.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://coryhenry.com/
Brian Krock is...
...a saxophone player. A self described “woodwind doubler” he has devoted much of his career to playing multiple wind instruments credibly. ...a bandleader and composer. His big band, Big Heart Machine is one of the most innovative and exciting large ensembles today, and his smaller band Liddle pushes the boundaries between composed and improvised music in new directions. ...a YouTuber. His Scorestudy video series unpacks the mechanisms and underlying processes informing his favorite composers, and explores ideas about composition, process, nature, technique, and history. ...a thoughtful guy. Here we consider the role of critical analysis in music, the “unintended consequences of the capitalist nature of music education,” what it means to improvise like a composer, how reading James Joyce influenced his relationship to listening to and writing music and led him to “create artwork that invites people to put forth some effort,” why he loves “to be actively involved in things that you're a beginner at,” his concerns about his “own memory and the world’s ability to focus,” and what happened to him after playing over 1000 performances of Dirty Dancing The Musical.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.briankrock.com
Alec Hanley Bemis, writer and manager of cultural projects, co-founded the Brassland record label in 2001 along with his friends Aaron and Bryce Dessner of the band The National. Over the years, the label has become home to a community of like minded creative musicians who defy category.
Last month Alec published a piece in Creative Independent called 19 things I’d tell people contemplating starting a record label (after running one for 19 years).
Here we discuss what happened in between.
Although this conversation was recorded in the before times of 2019, listening back I am struck by a few particularly interesting ideas that emerge in the talk: the distinction between culture and subculture; that we are now in an era of “constant content”; the shift over time from the taste maker as an institution to the taste maker as an individual personality; and what he describes as “the economy of cool”.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.brassland.org
In the late 1970s Jeff Cesario was positioned to be one of the most in demand wedding band conga players in Wisconsin and some parts of Minnesota too. So why did he trade all that in and move to LA to pursue a career in comedy? Here, he tells that story.
Since then, Jeff has been an actor, comedian, producer and writer, who has written and produced for Dennis Miller Live and The Larry Sanders Show. He has appeared on Adam Carolla, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Comedy Central Presents among other shows.
Cesario was a part of two Emmy wins with Dennis Miller Live. He’s a real comedy success story, in his longevity and in his ease both behind the camera and in front of it.
Jeff’s new standup album, What Was I Thinking, is out now and available in all the places you find albums. And his podcast Play With Pain with Chet Waterhouse is also available in all the podcast places.
We spoke recently about the “power of insulation” (working out your craft inside of a small scene), how he approaches his standup act like a big band chart, the double edged sword of having a lot of experience today, the intense value of commitment, and how his life in music helped prepare him for comedy.
www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.third-story.com https://www.jeffcesario.com/
Trumpeter Philip Dizack was once named by Downbeat Magazine as “[one of twenty-five] Trumpet Players for the Future”. That’s not to say that he isn’t for the present and with a deep respect for the tradition as well.
After nearly 20 years in New York, playing with a long list of notable musicians ranging from mentors like Brian Lynch, Eddie Palmieri, and Bobby Watson to members of his own cohort including Ben Wendel, Shai Maestro and Sullivan Fortner among many others, Philip moved to Denton, TX in 2019 to join the faculty at University of North Texas.
Earlier this year, we got on the phone to catch up, and that’s what this episode really is: Something between a more structured career retrospective interview and a temperature check in the time of Covid, a conversation about what and how he thinks about playing, teaching (“preparing for my teaching is the most helpful thing that I’ve ever done for myself”), practicing (“the more specific your questions are, the more specific your answers will become”), potential (“I know I’m developing a lot but I hear so far beyond what I’m capable of doing right now”), and perspective (“if our perspective is right then we’re always in complete humility”).
Despite the informal nature of the episode, it's incredibly enjoyable and poignant.
Don't forget to leave a review and subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.philipdizack.com/
Israeli singer Noga Erez thinks about the fallacy of authenticity, the advantages of creative limitations, the way personal stories can be perceived as political, and what it means to make music with your heart instead of your head.
She started out as a jazz singer, performing and recording her original songs with a piano trio. Those recordings are long gone, lost in a pile of defective hard drives. But anyway, she decided that her original concept was too intellectual and that it was time to make something more intuitive. Encouraged by her musical (and personal) partner Ori Rousso, she wanted to make something that wasn’t so uncool.
So she began producing tracks that straddle hip hop, pop. electronic, inspired by Bjork, Kendrick Lamar and Flying Lotus. Her first record, Off The Radar, came out in 2017 and included the song “Dance While You Shoot” that was featured in an Apple Music commercial. She toured in the states and Europe, and was positioned for a big year in 2020 as she prepared to release her new record. The more organic live versions of the songs were meant as a kind of creative exercise, but I really loved them, and as Noga explains it, so did a lot of her fans.
If you haven’t seen the video “VIEWS (Feat. Rousso) - [Live] Kids Against The Machine Vol. 1” by Noga Erez, it’s something you should absolutely do as soon as possible.
Noga’s latest single, “You So Done” came out last week. We talked a few days before it was released about her career, starting as a jazz singer-songwriter and then transitioning to what she describes as “the music in my heart”, but also the curious relationship between Israel and the United States from the point of view of a contemporary Israeli pop act, what it means to be a political artist, whether or not music itself can really make a difference politically today, what it means to be “the offspring of limitation” and if the phrase “I don’t pop with that” actually exists or not. Also, an extensive tutorial on how to pronounce her name.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.nogaerez.com
For the second year in a row, I talk to my dad, musician/producer/journalist/philosopher Ben Sidran in honor of his birthday. This time he’s turning 77, and we consider his recent projects, including the books The Ballad of Tommy LiPuma and There Was A Fire: Jews, Music and the American Dream, and his latest single “Who’s The Old Guy Now”.
Of course these are atypical times, and so this is an atypical episode, in which we discuss being alive on the planet in Covidtimes, watching livestream jazz, getting older, the difference between Troubadours, Shamans and Griots, going “underground”, why jazz is sometimes called “the sound of surprise”, whether or not the idea of “popular music” will endure into the 21st century, how a bill becomes a law, Miles Davis’ posture, and just what exactly “hay foot, straw foot” means.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.bensidran.com
Eric Krasno is in a lot more places than one might realize. Known for his work with the bands Soulive and Lettuce, he also works with all kinds of groups as a player - including the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Phil Lesh and Friends, Oteil Burbridge and Friends...it’s a lot of friends. Maybe that’s because he has one foot in the jam band world: the universe of extended grooves, risky riffing and close contact with a community of fans.
What surprised me about Eric is how much stuff he actually does - he’s part frontman, limelight guy, and part behind the scenes guy. For example, he also has another foot in the world of songwriting and production, and particularly in that space where soul and hip hop meet. He has produced and written songs for Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, Talib Kweli, Nigel Hall, The London Souls, Marcus King, 50 Cent, and Lawrence.
He also makes records as a solo artist. His most recent release Telescope came out last year, accompanied by a series of animated videos that hold together as a global narrative about the lives of a group of people who live in the same building in New York.
Telescope would also turn out to be a kind of farewell love letter to New York, where Krasno was based and where he made so much of his statement for over 20 years. In late 2019 he moved to LA, settled down, and started his next act. Although he planned to focus on production, he still had over 100 gigs scheduled this year. Then the hammer of history fell, and he found himself locked down in LA.
In Covidtimes, he’s been doing his own podcast called Eric Krasno Plus One.
We zoomed in recently to talk about what he’s doing during these strange and trying times, his experience as a podcaster, producer, and provider of deep and soulful grooves. Along the way we talked about the development of Soulive, Lettuce, Velour Recordings, the values and expectations of jam and jam band audiences, “the boom bap with interesting chord changes”, learning how to do less and better, and how many times one man can say the word “nugget” in an hourlong interview.
Drummer Jochen Rueckert has some things to get off his chest.
Born and raised outside of Cologne, Germany, Rueckert started coming to New York as soon as he possibly could. By the time he was in his early 20s, he was already well into paying his dues.
He can be heard on over 120 albums and worked or recorded with musicians and bands such as the Marc Copland Trio, the Kurt Rosenwinkel new quartet, the Mark Turner Band, the Melissa Aldana trio, the Sam Yahel trio, John Abercrombie, Pat Metheny (he tells that story here), Matt Penman, Kenny Werner, Bill McHenry, Seamus Blake, Guillermo Klein and Los Guachos as well as Madeleine Peyroux.
He also leads his own band, programs and releases electronic music under the moniker Wolff Parkinson White, and has written a series of ebooks chronicling every hotel room he's stayed at with a self-timer photograph and short stories about some of the more annoying aspects of life as a touring musician, called Read The Rueckert.
In this extensive and wide ranging conversation Rueckert meditates on his early years in Germany, why playing with great bass players is like eating great pasta, refusing to share hotel rooms, why he is a reluctant teacher, making electronic music, the rare innate heart condition he suffers from, how to groove with organ players, organizing tours, why one should never play with pop musicians, what it was like to play one gig with Pat Metheny, what he’s thinking about when he performs, drummer Bill Stewart’s time feel and volume level, Artificial Intelligence, the years he spent at Nublu in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and much, much more.
www.third-story.com www.leosidran.com www.jochenrueckert.net/
Rudresh Mahanthappa has the kind of biography that suggests he might be an intimidating and serious person to talk to. He’s the Director of Jazz at Princeton University where he teaches improvisation and directs small groups. He has been listed frequently in the Critics' Poll of Down Beat magazine. He studied music in India and brought that exploration into his own style of hybridized jazz (done in part for a Guggenheim Fellowship), an experience that he describes “as a way of getting to know what it means to be Indian American, it was a way of defining where I am as a person and it’s almost like the music was a byproduct.”
Mahanthappa started playing alto saxophone as a young boy, first drawn to the more contemporary sounds of David Sandborn, Grover Washington, Jr, Bob Mintzer and Michael Brecker. In fact, here he reminisces about hearing saxophone players in popular songs on the radio (Huey Lewis, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd) when he was growing up. Eventually he heard a Charlie Parker record, which reoriented his playing. Later, he integrated his Carnatic concept as well. All three of those streams - the early influence of newer players, the bebop influence from Bird, and the Indian influence - are still evident in his approach.
Rudresh has released more than 15 records as a solo recording artist, and another 30 albums as a sideman or collaborator. His new record, Hero Trio features bassist Francois Moutin and drummer Rudy Royston in a piano-less saxophone trio that leaves plenty of space for the unit to move together. While many of his projects have relied on original material, this record is made of interpretations, and he cast a wide net, recording material by Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Stevie Wonder, June Carter Cash, Keith Jarrett, Ornette Coleman and others.
So yes, he’s serious about what he does, what he thinks about and what he plays. But he’s also funny, and fun to talk to. Here we talk about his early development, the journey through music schools, cruise ships and merengue bands that ultimately led him to New York, exploring one’s personal identity through music, teaching jazz in a non conservatory environment, Sesame Street, and why “just because you’re improvising doesn’t mean you’re playing jazz”.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast
Brother and sister Clyde and Gracie Lawrence say that they’ve been professional musicians all their lives, they just weren’t always making money at it.
Raised around creative people (their mother is a dancer and their father a film director), Clyde and Gracie were encouraged to be creative from the very start. So it’s no real surprise that at a very young age, they began making hip, accessible, fun, and deeply satisfying music together that walks the line between soul, funk, pop, and “Seinfeld”.
Whatever you call it, their music has been the soundtrack to my quarantine, something I’ve shared with my daughter through these strange months of physical distancing.
Here Clyde and Gracie talk about bridging the gap between hip and pop, managing the creative process in a sibling band, making independent videos, defining success, creating space for young women in the world of funk music, working with producers and mentors (including Eric Krasno and Adam Schlesinger), and how to use their platform for good during these trying times.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.lawrencetheband.com
Singer-songwriter Louise Goffin says she is “uncomfortable with nostalgia”. Louise Goffin says that “in order to take care of the world, you have to take care of your inner soul.” Louise Goffin says “don’t believe everything you think.”
Her new record Two Different Movies was co-produced by Louise and Dave Way, and features a long list of incredible musicians and collaborators. Our conversation itself is kind of like two different movies. One of them deals with an independent songwriter, with a decades long career (she made her first record at 18). The other explores what it was like to grow up as the daughter of young, talented parents who just happened to be two of the most celebrated songwriters of their generation (Gerry Goffin and Carole King).
Songs have played an almost impossibly significant role in Louise’s life, so it’s no surprise that in addition to writing and recording, she also hosts the Song Chronicles podcast, where she talks to notable songwriters.
This is one of those conversations that operates on multiple levels. It’s both an insider’s conversation about craft and career, but also a very intimate conversation about her personal journey, and why at 60 she feels like she’s just getting started.
https://www.third-story.com https://www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://www.louisegoffin.com/
I can’t think of anyone I would rather talk to right now than Jason Moran. Here we consider so much about history, and so much about the present moment in our country. The conversation is as deep as it is wide, and along the way Jason considers truth versus passion, promoting the “Freedom Principle”, America’s unfortunate way of forgetting the past, what happens when innovation becomes rhetoric, what it means for African American musicians to move freely “from the stage to the table”, the power dynamic within choosing repertoire, how Thelonious Monk and KRS-1 are similar, coming up in Houston among a generation of jazz innovators, what we still have to learn from Louis Armstrong, and what it means to be the “personal embodiment of your history”.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast
Orlando le Fleming is the kind of bass player who possesses that mysterious element, that sound, that groove, that thing that you want to hook up with. Maybe that’s why some of the finest drummers in jazz have chosen Orlando to play in their groups - he logged serious miles playing with Jeff “Tain” Watts, Ari Hoenig, and Antonio Sanchez - three of the most influential drummers alive. And an early recording project with Jimmy Cobb helped to position Orlando as a bass player to know about.
He’s also a bass player that singers like to work with. He played with Jane Monheit for years, and spent much of the last few years on the road with Leslie Odom, Jr. (who is known for playing the role of Aaron Burr in Hamilton).
Orlando co-leads a drummerless group called Owl Trio with saxophonist Will Vinson and guitarist Lage Lund, and his solo project Romantic Funk features his groovy fusiony funky tunes played by a collection of New York jazzheads.
Orlando has taken his years of experience and strategies for getting it together and written a new book called Get It Together: Time and Sound Priorities for the Jazz Bass Player.
Despite his exotic name, Orlando explains that he is really just a “slow Englishman”. However, he does have a rather exciting secret in his past: before becoming a jazz bass player he was a professional cricketer in England.
We had this conversation in early January of this year. In our talk we look at his career in general terms, talk a lot about playing the bass, the role and function of the bass in ensemble playing, ideas about composition and groove. But what we really settle into is a conversation about New York.
In retrospect, the conversation is a kind of time capsule. It’s a look at the jazz experience in New York just before disaster struck. From where we’re sitting right now, it’s hard to imagine how and when the city will open up again, what that will mean, and if jazz clubs will ever recover as they were before. Seen through that lens, today’s episode is a window into a world that we can still remember but that we know is lost.
Here Orlando considers how to get a sound on the bass, why he puts “rhythm before notes”, what were the advantages to starting his career in England, when to leave New York, who were his mentors, the “jazz struggle” and why “groove comes from culture.”
Saxophonist Richie Cole died on May 2, 2020. He lived a jazz life all the way. His playing, his demeanor and his philosophy were all contained in his catchphrase / modus operandi: Alto Madness. “He was devoted to the bebop lifestyle,” says his old friend Janis Siegel. But he was also torn between impulses to be a serious musician operating on the highest level, and to be an entertainer and make people happy.
My dad interviewed Richie in 1985. I interviewed Richie in 2017. I interviewed my dad yesterday to bring it full circle.
In this episode we revisit all three of those conversations, as well as a recent chat with singer Janis Siegel about her friendship with Richie, and some newly unearthed live performance recordings of Richie with singer Eddie Jefferson, captured just days before Jefferson was shot and killed after a gig with Richie in Detroit.
In these strange times when it’s unclear what it means to have a “gig”, or when the world will open up again, Richie’s bebop life becomes especially resonant.
Plus: a classic jazz joke told by Jeff Cesario.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast
Becca Stevens is a singer, songwriter, teacher and genuinely lovely person, and also one of the few repeat offenders on the Third Story Podcast. I first talked to her in 2015 and I remember our conversation as being truly connected, candid and comfortable. We had never met before but I left the experience feeling that we were genuinely friends. She has that thing about her that makes you feel like you know her even when you only know her work.
Becca’s new record, Wonderbloom, came out last month just as the world began to shelter in place, and her tour, promotion schedule and general career came to a screeching halt, along with everything else. I thought of her almost immediately because I’ve been following the journey of this record on her social media, one that took her around the world, and led her to collaborate with 40+ musicians - some of whom are also former guests of this podcast, including Michael League, Cory Wong, Alan Hampton, and Jacob Collier. The record is varied and voluminous - it’s really not just one record. It’s like a compendium of Becca’s universe - sometimes funky and rollicking, other times soft spoken and introspective.
This project was a long time coming and so it was that much more of a blow when just as she was rolling it out, she had to pack it in. We had a lovely conversation last week in which she thoughtfully discussed “dancing with the critical voice”, looking for silver linings, “the whole money thing” and a newly born pack of baby ducks out her window.
Josh Norek is a difficult man to define. He is generally a behind the scenes kind of guy - president of Regalías Digitales (a firm that helps hundreds of Latin recording artists collect their music royalties and license their songs to film and television productions), co-founder of the Latin Alternative Music Conference (LAMC), co-host of the nationally syndicated public radio show ‘The Latin Alternative,’ former VP of Nacional Records, artist manager, music attorney.
Then again sometimes he’s an in-front of the scenes kind of guy, like with his group Hip Hop Hoodios, which he describes as “probably the world’s only Latino Jewish hip hop group out there”. As Josh tells it, “It’s a group that started as an inside joke” but that ultimately carved out an impressive space within the emerging Latin Alternative space of the early aughts.
Hip Hop Hoodios went on extended hiatus for over a decade, releasing the occasional single or remix but generally staying quiet, until late 2019 when they released “Knishin’ In The Mission” which was followed by last month’s “Turn Back The Clock” featuring Mexican Institute of Sound and Santi Mostaffa. The song and video have enjoyed surprising chart success in the Coronasphere.
In both contexts, Josh is an intensely curious and creative music business guy, with both a sense of humor and a sense of purpose. He’s an artist advocate who fights for artists to receive every penny that they deserve. He has served on the boards of advocacy organizations A2IM (American Association of Independent Musicians) and Voto Latino.
Here he talks about releasing new music during a pandemic, how he approaches his collaborations, and the secrets of securing Spotify playlist placements.
Ron Sexsmith likes to take walks. “I was a courier for a number of years and I wrote most of the songs on my first couple albums on the job,” he says “Whenever you’re doing something that’s kind of mindless, then your mind is free to roam. For me it’s a good way to zero in on what I’m trying to say.”
Very few songwriters develop the kind of skill and status that Ron Sexsmith has. He’s a songwriter’s songwriter. He writes the songs that the rest of us wish we were writing. He does it consistently, carefully, quietly. If you know who he is, then you know what a deceptively brilliant songwriter he is, and you recognize his singing (at times sweet, other times plaintive or plainspoken).
As Ron tells it, he’s a “cred-artist” - someone the labels keep around to make themselves look good, to keep the authenticity quotient high. He has released nearly 20 solo albums in 35 years, and his songs have been covered by a number of well-known musicians, including Elvis Costello, Feist, Rod Stewart, Emmylou Harris, and Michael Bublé.
Ron’s new album, Hermitage, was released last week. In a departure from his well worn habit of working in great studios with great studio bands, he made this one mainly in his house, and played most of the instruments himself. It’s an intimate record, and one that he thinks of as cheerier than usual. This is a collection of songs that Ron was inspired to write when he left Toronto - the city where he lived for years - and moved to a smaller town in Ontario. It’s a personal album about living a quiet, more insular life, but it also feels very connected to this moment.
Here he talks about his process, his career, and how he finally came to own a house.
Curtis Stigers got his big break as a young man in the early 90s, with a top ten pop hit (1991’s “Wonder Why”), followed by a series of soul-pop records. Around that time he also recorded a version of Nick Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” for The Bodyguard soundtrack, which sold in the 10s of millions of copies. That is to say, Curtis got his start in the deep of the pool, swimming with the sharks.
Stigers has a soulful voice, a direct approach to storytelling both as a songwriter and an interpreter, and he plays good saxophone too. He came out of Boise, Idaho, and was mentored somewhat incredibly by the gospel and jazz pianist Gene Harris. So maybe it was only a matter of time before he turned his heart back towards his first love, jazz. After living in New York and launching himself as a pop act, he made two somewhat improbable decisions in a row, first pivoting away from pop and towards making jazz records, and then moving home to his hometown in Idaho, from where he has operated since 2003.
His new album, Gentleman was designed to be a record of the moment. It features a collection of songs that speak to his own life and also the general conversation around what it means to be a sensitive, well mannered, responsible man in today’s world. It’s an important conversation, one that we’ll continue to have, but one that seems almost nostalgic compared to what we’re dealing with right now. At the last minute, Stigers added the song “Shut Ins” to the record. It’s a song that behaves both as a kind of undiscovered classic, and also as eerily right on time.
Here he talks about promoting new music in the midst of a pandemic, what it means to be a gentleman, how hanging out in a hotel lobby in Boise changed his life, which lessons he learned from Michael Brecker & Gene Harris, and the difference between a tie and a cravat.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.curtisstigers.com
What is needed in these adverse times? We turn to our spirit guides, our philosopher kings, our rabbis: the musicians. Because although this particular form of adversity is new, musicians have been choosing to feel good in spite of adverse conditions for a long time.
In this episode, we explore the nature of the musician joke, particularly the jazz musician joke. Jokes about gigs, drummers, singers, trombone players, viola players, junkies, 3 legged pigs, bagpipes, bar mitzvahs, African safaris, little old ladies, family therapy, tattoo parlors, monkeys, genies, it’s all here. In other words, the classics.
Featuring Steven Bernstein, Amy Cervini, Peter Coyote, Ethan Eubanks, Donald Fagen, James Farber, Steve Gadd, Hilary Gardner, Gil Goldstein, Steve Khan, Ashley Kahn, Tessa Lark, Will Lee, Phil Lyons, Les McCann, Adam Nussbaum, Ben Sidran, Janis Siegel, Larry Ratso Sloman, Dave Stoler, Jack Stratton, Neil Tesser, Michael Visceglia, Michael Winograd, and more.
Since the very beginning of this podcast, my father (Ben Sidran) and I have been having occasional, timely conversations to process our own shared experience and often the experience of the world around us. Here we are again, contemplating the future after Covid-19, considering the consequences, and wondering what jazz has to do with it (and what it has to do with jazz). www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.bensidran.com
A life in the theater must be a pretty serious thing, because in these conversations with members of the Broadway community, the conversations are brutally real, big picture, somewhat cosmic and profound. André De Shields, Dale Franzen, Michael Thurber, Schele Williams and Rob Jost all weigh in on the fate of the Great White Way. Meanwhile, original music for this episode is culled from Instagram and Facebook. Short (and unknowing) contributions from Cecile McLorin Salvant and Sullivan Fortner, Martin Leiton, Doug Wamble and Morgan James, Dan Zanes, Louis Cato, Pasquale Grasso, Victoria Canal, Trevor Exter, Ben Wendel, Michael League, Peter Himmelman, and the Please Stay Homeboys.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcastHow is the Coronavirus impacting the creative class? What happens when musicians lose their primary income overnight? What opportunities are there for creativity in this moment of social distancing? What is the conversation for performing musicians, online creators, and artists? How is it different in countries with a social safety net?
Victoria Canal, Jack Conte, Joe Dart, Joy Dragland, John Ellis, Ari Herstand, Ryan Keberle, Andrew Leib, Adam Levy, Lage Lund, and Gege Telesforo all weigh in. Original Music by Charlie Hunter (from his Instagram Livestream on March 13). www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcastMichael League is learning how to sleep. A friend sent him a book called Why We Sleep and reading it “rang a lot of bells”. Until recently, he says, “the majority of my rationale for not sleeping was about guilt. Saying it out loud I realize how ridiculous it is.”
Then again, he’s responsible for a lot of creative output, and he feels “a lot of pressure”. Michael is a composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. He is the founder and leader of the band Snarky Puppy, and the international music ensemble Bokanté. He’s also an owner and founder of the record label GroundUP Music.
Snarky Puppy has collaborated with a massive collection of international artists, helped to popularize a new wave of interest in both instrumental music, and in the visual aspect of record making, and represents a version of independent success and popularity in the new music business that most emerging artists covet. They have won 3 Grammys, and have toured constantly since their start as students at the University of North Texas in 2003.
As Michael tells it, the band spent over a decade in uncomfortable circumstances and near obscurity playing often for audiences that were smaller than the the band itself. Tour after tour, record after record, Snarky Puppy started a ball rolling and kept rolling it, gaining momentum, relocating from Texas to New York, and building towards what from today’s vantage point looks like the inevitable global success that they have become, but what at the time being probably looked a lot like magical thinking.
League says he thinks of himself primarily as a student. And talking to him it’s clear that he is constantly absorbing and synthesizing new information. He’s thirsty for more - to know more, to do more. He seems, to me, to be unrelenting, non stop, and full on.
This conversation is a long time coming. Here he talks about Snarky Puppy, the advantages to the American musical perspective (“we are light on our feet”), why “to create something authentic isn’t really possible to me”, how playing wedding and steak house gigs in Texas taught him about “humility and strengthening the muscles of versatility”, the importance of making everything as fun as possible on the road, why he sees himself primarily as a student, getting good sleep, and moving to Spain.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://groundupmusic.net/
What do A Tribe Called Quest, David Byrne, The Roots, D’Angelo, Pat Metheny, Erykah Badu, Jason Moran, Me’Shell N’degéocello, India.Arie, J Dilla, Run DMC, and Theo Croker have in common? They all benefited from the sound of Bob Powers’ recording, mixing or production.
Bob has had a profound effect on the sound of Hip Hop and modern music in general. Despite the fact that he says “I learned early on from working in television that if someone notices your work, you’re probably screwed,” I did notice what he was doing and I think a lot of people did. He has degrees in classical composition and jazz performance, and spent his early professional years both gigging and composing music for television. He was 30 years old and living in San Francisco when he decided to move to where the action was in the music business at the time: New York.
An unexpected gig as a recording engineer for early rap sessions ended up re-orienting Bob’s career. He says he thinks he was one of the few people in the recording establishment who took the new music seriously and cared enough to make it as good as possible, even though it was being made in a different way (using samples, drum machines and intuition). He tells me, “Great music is made by people who either don’t care or don’t understand what is ‘normal’ so they do something extraordinary.” And he says, “In popular music, wrong has become right, and we love it.”
Talking to Bob, one gets the sense that his contribution has been multi-fold. Part of it is indeed the sound that he gets. It’s undeniable that his records have a sound: it’s in the depth of his mixes, the way they round and present, deep and forward at the same time. They have dimension. He tells me, “Just being able to hear everything in a mix is a lifetime of study.”
But the other part of what he offers in the room is his way. It’s his personality. Bob is happy to talk about his technical approach, the way he thinks about recording, mixing, and mastering. But he is equally happy - maybe even more so - to talk about pop sociology, Marshall McLuhan, Malcolm Gladwell, Timothy Leary and larger cultural trends of the the last 50 years. He says, “The state of the art in electronic media, the bar is very high. So making things fluid in the creative atmosphere is the thing.”
Bob teaches at NYU and it would seem that teaching and producing are related to him. He tells me, “I want my students to see that there’s all different flavors of good.” And he says, “A lot of artists want to show all the different things they can do. No! Show the one thing that you do that is totally yours and no one else can do, and then find every way in the world to exploit and enrich that.”
We got together in his studio in the Flatiron to talk about history, technology, fat beats, staying in your lane, and keeping things fluid.
This conversation is both granular and global. There is quite a bit of tech talk but there’s also a lot of big picture thinking going on here.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast http://www.bobpower.com/
Victoria Canal is a 21-year old Spanish-American, LGBTQ, differently-abled, singer-songwriter with a massively powerful message of diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Everything about Victoria is completely exceptional - from her life experience to her demeanor and her talent - and at the same time maybe her greatest gift is her empathic, generous spirit. She’s just a good listener and incredibly seems to make people comfortable to be who they are.
She released an EP in 2016 called Into The Pull and a series of singles since then that have racked up millions of Spotify streams. She’s set to release her next EP later year but already has put out two singles from the project. The first, “Drama” came out late in 2019, and the second called “Second” came out last week. Her writing is direct, catchy and compelling.
Talking to Victoria, one gets the sense that she spent so much time as an outsider in her life - moving from country to country, school to school, with a different kind of childhood, and a different kind of body, and a different kind of talent - that the outside became a kind of inside for her. And she has a way of making you feel like an insider when you’re around her.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://www.victoriacanal.com/
Kat Edmonson will tell you that, “A lot of the time we don’t need permission to do great things.”
Kat Edmonson will say, “There are certain things we know about ourselves and we get in our own way assuming that there’s some gate we have to go through to be recognized to then finally say I’m allowed to do this now.”
Kat Edmonson will tell you that “There’s a quiet power in merely having a dream.”
Kat Edmonson knows of what she speaks. She is a dreamer, a romantic who knew she was destined to be a singer, songwriter and actress long before she knew how she would do any of it.
Her new record Dreamers Do explores concepts around dreaming, “all of the wonderful things and the fearful things, the things that keep us awake in the middle of the night.”
Here we talk about her journey out of the Lone Star State and into the Big Apple, her love of old well-made things, why “a tree is not scheming”, enjoying the moment, working with Woody Allen, loving “the limitations in a room”, acting vs singing, her new record, and not asking permission.
Video editor, bass player, recovering sketch comedy and improv player Mark Hervey on the journey that took him flying “too close to the sun”... twice. Along the way, he discusses why video editing is like playing bass (if it’s very noticeable, you’re probably doing too much), the alt comedy scene in New York in the 90s, what to do when the best work of your life goes uncredited, and how “death has no satisfactory resolution”. It's a real deep dive.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast
Mark Guiliana is having at this very moment a profound influence on the way the drums are played. There’s a conversation happening in his playing between organic, traditional sounds and electronic music. Part of his innovation is to get his acoustic drums sounding more electronic, and to approach the drums in some ways as though he were a dj or a programmer.
Mark was born and raised in New Jersey, and until six months ago he lived there. Now he lives in LA. But he was in New York for the Winter Jazzfest - he was the artist in residence this year, which meant that he was invited to put together a series of shows and events. Over the course of the week, he did a different show every day with a different group, different configurations, some completely free improvised, some very organized, as is the case with his project Beat Music, his most electronic band.
The sound of Mark’s drumming and drums are so identifiable, and here he tells me that he thinks “Sound is everything.” He says “If the sound can be right, then you can really play anything.”
We got together just before Mark left New York for the airport to fly to Europe, and spoke about Mark’s philosophy and approach. He explained his ideas of coincidental interaction, and proactive repetition (“Repetition is one of the most powerful tools that we have in music and in life,” he tells me), the importance of familial relationships with his musical partners, how “sound is everything” and why for him “the music does the talking”.
Gilles Peterson is one of the most influential DJs and music curators in the world. Whether as a broadcaster, live DJ, record producer, festival organizer, or music curator, Peterson has devoted his life to finding, contextualizing, and presenting music from around the world. He sees his job as “connecting the dots.” One of Peterson’s most recent discoveries, Kassa Overall is, in the words of Time Out New York, “a Renaissance man: part chopsy, super-funky jazz drummer, and part rising producer-MC.”
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast
Steven Bernstein, Peter Apfelbaum and Will Bernard are all innovative, creative and boundary pushing musicians who are equally at home in the avant garde as they are in the swamp. It comes as no surprise that they grew up together in Berkeley, California, exploring the edges of the music they loved, finding “controlled substances” in their parents’ freezers, and improvising freely.
We recorded this conversation at the Winter Jazzfest in New York. Here they talk about looking forward, looking back, the musical concept of opposition, defying category, broken mirrors, free improvisation, why coffee is so expensive and music is so cheap, the musical conversation between Berkeley and New York, spontaneous composition, rock and roll, Jewish weddings, Sly Stone, Bill Laswell, Trey Anastasio, and why “sex” is still a dirty word in jazz.
Here is what Caleb Hawley says about himself in his website biography: Caleb Hawley is a Harlem based, Minneapolis-raised singer, songwriter, and producer who has been shoveling Gobstoppers into ears for the past decade. Combining catchy melodies with dark and satirical lyrics, one has to be careful not to slip while dancing in a puddle of their own tears.
I don’t know about the Gobstoppers, but the rest of it feels pretty accurate to me.
In our conversation he tells his journey of self discovery, addiction, creativity, Tourette Syndrome, longing, how telling the truth is like a drug, and why it’s so hard to write a happy song.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon and following the podcast on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
When Ari Herstand first came on the Third Story Podcast in 2016, he was still in the process of becoming. He struggled with the what he saw as a “duality” between being a musician / performing artist and a business person. Would success in one realm undermine success in the other? “I got to the point where I have accepted that I am equally both,” he tells me now.
“Success is very personal and nobody can really define success for you,” he says. And Ari has spent much of the last decade examining many of the biggest successes in the independent music business, analyzing them, and then teaching them, first through is blog Ari’s Take, and then in his book How To Make It In The New Music Business. The Second Edition was published in November of 2019. It remains at the top of the Amazon charts and has been widely adopted by music business schools worldwide.
In fact, because of the success of both the book and the blog, he eventually started Ari’s Take Academy, an online music business school that he hopes will eventually compete as an alternative to “the traditional brick and mortar music colleges.”
“Collectively we are smarter and more active than any other group or even professional marketing person out there,” he says of his Academy. “Because we have so many people working on this stuff and sharing their results with one another.”
Ari lives in Los Angeles, but was in New York recently developing the “1973 immersive experience” around his band, “Brassroots District” with some of the team that developed the critically acclaimed immersive show “Sleep No More”.
To start out the new year, this conversation covers a lot of ground around the state of the independent music business today. “How can a project be bigger than just the music. What is the story? What is the difference between transparency and authenticity. How does one play to the strengths and limitations of social media platforms? Is the internet a real community? Spotify. Instagram. Tik Tok. It’s all here.
There was no way I was going to let Ari off the hook without having him give me a little free advice about my own career and social media game. Last time we talked, he hooked up my website - he pimped my page. And this time I was ready with a specific ask: is it time after five years of doing this podcast - to create Instagram and Twitter accounts for the Third Story. Ari told me unquestionably that it was time. So starting today, you can follow the Third Story Podcast on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, all of them @thirdstorypod.
http://www.third-story.com/ http://patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://ariherstand.com/ https://aristake.com/
Legendary recording engineer and producer Glyn Johns’ career and discography are so extensive that it’s very difficult to summarize quickly. The sound of his recordings has had an immeasurable influence on the way we listen to popular music, particularly Rock and Roll. The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Beatles, Eric Clapton... he worked with them all.
Here he talks about his philosophy of recording, producing, and managing a career in record making.
www.third-story.comwww.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.glynjohns.com
boice-Terrel Allen (better known simply as boice) is a podcast host, musician, and writer. His podcast, Talk Music Talk, started in 2014 and features long form conversations with musicians, authors, music psychotherapists and meditation teachers, DJs, musicologists, MacArthur Fellows, Grammy nominees and such from all musical genres.
In 2019 he started his second podcast, The Strandcast, a literary podcast from the Strand Bookstore featuring author interviews, reading recommendations and literary horoscopes.
To celebrate the 200th episode of Talk Music Talk, here the tables are turned and he lays out his personal and professional development, creativity, spirituality, Buddhism, depression, perseverance and love of Tina Turner. We also compare notes on podcast life, techniques, strategies, and ambitions.
www.third-story.comwww.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast http://www.talkmusictalk.com/
Zev Feldman is an independent record producer who got started in the jazz business as a young man (in his early 20s) and came up through the ranks of sales (“schlepping a bag of CDs”), merchandising, marketing, distribution - all of the pieces of the business as it existed at the end of the last century. Over time he came to settle comfortably in an area of the jazzosphere that focuses on locating, unearthing and releasing previously unknown recordings. Some people know him as “the jazz detective.” Variety magazine called him “possibly the most widely admired archival producer working in the jazz field today,” Downbeat refers to him as “The Jazz Sleuth” and perhaps most famously, Stereophile Magazine called him “the Indiana Jones of jazz.”
He works with almost every major jazz label and many small independent labels, but his primary professional residence is with Resonance Records. He has shepherded the release of previously unknown recordings by the likes of Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane, Joao Gilberto and many more (including my dad!).
In the conversation it’s clear that as big of a jazz fan as he is, he is also in love with the business of jazz records. He goes out of his way to remember and name all of the people in the business who helped him along the way.
Here he talks about becoming a producer (“it was like pouring gasoline on a fire”), the importance of “folklore and mythology” in the world of jazz collecting, why finding the right outlet for a recording is like finding shelter for an orphaned animal, and how he builds relationships.
www.third-story.com www.resonancerecords.org
Vulpeck keyboardist Woody Goss on his early days growing up in the suburbs of Chicago where he learned to elevate rhythm playing to high art, when he connected with the crew that would become his Vulf family at the University of Michigan, how talking about evolutionary psychology is emotional, why organized religion is dubious, where he likes to go bird watching, and who he really is when the spotlight is turned away. This conversation is surprisingly provocative, enlightening, and funny. Woody is not entirely as he appears to be. He is, in fact, much more.
www.third-story.com https://woodygoss.bandcamp.com/ https://www.veryvulfychristmas.com/
When ALA.NI was growing up in West London, she wanted to be a ballerina. Eventually she realized that there were almost no black ballerinas and the message that was sent to her quietly but consistently was that there would be no easy place for her in the world of ballet.
She started to sing. She loved musicals, especially The Sound Of Music, & Grease. Again and again, she was told that she didn’t sound “black enough” because she was so influenced by Julie Andrews and Judy Garland.
Too black to dance, not black enough to sing, she started to feel like there was no way forward for her in London.
Her father was a bass player, her great uncle had been a famous musician and singer from Grenada, Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson – one of the first musical success stories to emerge from the West Indies in post war England. She remembers spending her childhood tagging along with her father to pot-smoke filled rehearsal rooms and hearing the bands play.
Despite her family’s creative background, she says, “I love my family but I’m very much the black sheep.” So ALA.NI decided to leave London and follow the well worn path of black artists who have felt more at home with self imposed creative expatriation in Paris than in their home countries. “I feel free here as an artist here,” she explains. “I feel seen.”
Her haunting, elegant and somewhat otherworldly singing style has established her firmly as one of the most intriguing new musical artists in Paris today, and she has also started to work in America, (she has performed at Lincoln Center & on NPR’s Tiny Desk). While she remains a bit of a mystery, she is in many ways an open book. “The things that I can’t get away with socially, I can do on stage,” she says, adding, “If people want the truth, they know where to come to get it.”
ALA.NI’s upcoming sophomore album ACCA will be released on January 24th. So far the album has been celebrated by NPR Music, The FADER, and Vibe, who praised the first single, “Van P” for its “sparse, spacious soundbed that leaves space for ALA.NI's breathy vocals to shine.” She initially envisioned this album as a completely a capella project, and indeed ACCA is made up almost entirely of human voices (beatboxing serves as percussion, and she lowered her own vocals with an octavizer on several tracks to create the illusion of bass). Along with Lakeith Stanfield, Iggy Pop makes an appearance on the album, but ACCA is primarily solo ALA.NI. She wrote, produced, and arranged each song herself, layering up hundreds of vocal tracks in order to create an immersive, hypnotic world that blurs the lines between vibrating vocal cords, bowed strings, and blown reeds.
We got together recently in Paris to talk about the job of the artist (“to see the world through a different lens and then share that experience”), the nature of Grenadians (“uppity”), improvised circle singing (“When we enter back into the child and the imagination, there’s no rules!”) and the genetic memory of violence in the black experience. In other words, all of it.
This is one of those fly-on-the-wall conversations in which the microphone disappears into the furniture almost immediately and two people who have never met before slowly reveal themselves to one another.
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Singer-songwriter-guitarist Camila Meza on growing up in Chile, the nature of translation, improvisation, self observation, bootleg videotapes, identity, cruise ship living, synesthesia and distortion.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.camilameza.com
The world is full of talented people you’ve never heard of, and it’s quite possible that Ryan Scott is one of them. Around New York, if you know about Ryan Scott, then you know. “Ryan Scott?” Enough said. Funky? Oh yes. Soulful? Unquestionably. Prepared to surrender himself totally to the music and the moment at all times? Affirmative.
But if you don’t know, it can be difficult to catch up. Ryan Scott doesn’t make it too easy to find him. He claims it’s not intentional. “You just have to know the right people,” he tells me. Indeed.
Ryan spent years waiting for someone to throw him a bone before ultimately deciding that “there was no bone.” He worked as a sideman, session cat, songwriter for hire, wedding singer, “jazzy jazz jazz” player, and probably plenty more things that he still won’t mention. Eventually he decided to start saying no to the rent work and start saying yes to the muse. The good news is that he made a killer solo record, the bad news is that the rent might be late this month.
He released his latest project, A Freak Grows In Brooklyn earlier this year. He wrote, performed and recorded the project alone, almost entirely on an 8 track multitrack cassette recorder. He wanted to make an art project, a calling card, and a personal statement. He did all that, but he also made something very, very good. But, really, extremely good.
He says he spent years becoming a jazz musician so he could be free. Then he spent more years freeing himself from being a jazz musician.
I like Ryan Scott and I think you should too.
Here he talks about growing up the only child of a stock broker in northern California (“one of the least bluesy things”), crossing the “jazzy line”, “keeping things open”, moving to New York right out of high school and falling in with a crowd of itinerant musicians who taught him how to “roll cigarettes and drink beer”, and what it’s like inside his head.
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When Adam Sandler first sang his “Hannukah Song” on SNL in 1994, even he was surprised by the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response it received. He was singing something we all understood even if we didn’t know the details: The Jewish contribution to American comedy and entertainment is significant, undeniable, indelible. And the American contribution to global popular culture in the last century is equally palpable.
So… what? One question to ask is, is the Jewish comedy of today related in any way to the Jewish comedy of yesterday? And if so, how? Are there themes in Jewish comedy that go all the way back to the beginning of Jewish thought, and if so, what are they, how were they represented historically, and how do they show up in contemporary examples?
Wanna know? Jeremy Dauber wrote the book on the subject, Jewish Comedy: A Serious History.
We spoke recently in his office at Columbia University about how comedy evolves through context, the “complicated relationship of ownership and loss” among contemporary Jewish comedians in America, what’s so funny about fart jokes, and whether or not it’s possible to hide inside an apple pie. You’ll see.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
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Peter Himmelman had momentum. Before he had a decades long career, videos on MTV (back when there were videos on MTV), Grammy and Emmy nominations, Parents Choice Awards, critical acclaim, a family, TV and movie scores… before any of that, he had momentum. Peter came out swinging, with something prove and something to offer. He was motivated in part by what he describes here as a “reigning sense of isolation”.
He grew up in a Minneapolis suburb and came of age in the 70’s at a time when funk and punk were both beginning to flourish and “children were still allowed to be feral”. By the time he graduated from high school, there was no question to him or his family that he was going to be some kind of a musician. He started hanging out in the predominantly black North Side area of Minneapolis, tagging along with soul singer Alexander O’Neal, and doing his best imitation of blues musician Luther Allison. He tells me “maybe learning is not really possible without modeling - through that modeling you gain some mastery, and if you have courage to continue you might find something original.”
Peter started playing music with a group of friends in high school, some of whom he still plays with today. He convinced them not to go to college and instead to focus on their band Sussman Lawrence, a new wave band with an absurdist lyrical bent. He developed an outrageous stage persona that, as one former band mate described, “made Mick Jagger look like Pat Boone.” He was drawn to the stage, compelled to create, and naturally comfortable in the spotlight.
When his father died, Peter was only in his early 20s. That loss reoriented his life and his work. He became more observant in his Judaism, he got married (he and his wife, Maria Dylan - daughter of Bob Dylan - have been married for over 30 years), he started writing more emotionally honest songs. Today, some 40 years later, Peter Tells me his is “letting go of the need for the love of strangers.”
In our conversation, Peter tells me about finding “beauty in tragedy”, confronting “the harsh architecture of now”, and unpacks questions of ergonomics, economics, loss, discovery, desire, faith, fearlessness, impermanence, songwriting, real estate, college tuition, doing meaningful work, and performing naked… from the sacred to the profane, it’s all here.
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Richard J. Davidson had an intuition early on that the mind was fundamental to human experience. As a child of the 60s he believed early on that “if we wanted to promote a different way of seeing the world, we needed to change our minds.”
At the same time that he began to dabble in meditation and mind training, he also became a serious student and began a path that ultimately became his life’s work. He is the founder and chair of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. As Davidson explains it, the mission of the Center is to “cultivate well being and relieve suffering through a scientific understanding of the mind.”
Davidson has been a longtime friend of the Dalai Lama, and in fact it was the Dalai Lama himself who encouraged and even challenged him to find a way to bring together his two interests (meditation and science) and communicate his findings. Time Magazine named Davidson one of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2006.
We met up recently at the Center for Healthy Minds in Madison to talk about his personal journey and how it intersects with his work, why he sees this as a crucial moment for humanity and what mind training can do to help, why “reality is a movie”, his relationship with the Dalai Lama and how that has informed his choices, what it means to meditate with compassion, and what jazz bassist Charles Mingus has to do with any of this.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
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Chris Potter is an incredibly influential saxophone player. Downbeat Magazine has called him “one of the most studied (and copied) saxophonists on the planet”. In this introspective and philosophical conversation he talks about art, the search for something new, what motivates him today, what he sees as his role, responsibility and contribution to the history of jazz.
www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://www.chrispottermusic.com/
David Maraniss has a motto: go there. What he means is that when he’s researching one of his books, whether it’s a biography of a person or the history of a place and time, he believes that in order to fully understand the story, he has to go to the physical location. Not, like, just for a weekend. He really goes there. He moves in.
But there’s another meaning behind the phrase “go there”. He moves in, not only to the space, but also to the nuance, subtlety, complexity of a life, of a time, of the history, sociology, feeling of his subject. He gets totally obsessed. He says he can’t write a book about something if he’s not obsessed with it.
Fortunately, throughout his career, he has managed to get obsessed with plenty. He’s written many celebrated biographies including books about Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Vince Lombardi, and Roberto Clemente, and books about social, political and cultural importance (like Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed The World and They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America 1967 among others). Often his books appear on best seller lists.
David has been affiliated with the Washington Post for more than forty years as an editor and writer, and twice won Pulitzer Prizes at the newspaper.
His new book A Good American Family is both a continuation and a departure for him. It tells the story of his own family and is framed around an event that happened in 1952 when David’s father was called before HUAC (The House Un-American Activities Committee) and outed as a Communist during the Red Scare.
Those who were called to testify and didn’t cooperate by naming other Communists were blacklisted, and that’s exactly what happened to his father.
But the book also examines much larger issues around that event, including the ongoing question of what it means to be and who is American, the influence of extreme ideologies in the 20th century, and the ways in which mental health and personal tragedy are handled in families.
We talked about his general process & approach, the techniques he uses, and the values that inform his work. For example, he says at one point that he believes that “all creative arts are in some sense dependent on magic”. We also considered the role of the press in America, traditionally and how it’s being tested in today’s political climate.
Like much of David’s work, this episode is both timely and timeless. Who informed his values as a journalist? What does it mean to be a nonfiction story teller? Where does he feel most at home? When is it time to go swimming? Why is the lost art of letter writing so important to historians? Can we really ever really know what someone else is thinking? It’s all here.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Musician, singer, writer, producer, philosopher... Ben Sidran is a hard person to define. He belongs in multiple categories, or none at all. He says that his main focus throughout a career that began 50 years ago has been to document what he saw, felt, and heard, by way of various “idioms” (including performances, interviews, essays, recordings, etc.). That’s why he sees himself primarily as a journalist. Or at least, he sees what he does as a form of journalism.
I’ve been engaged in a series of conversations - one long conversation really - with Ben Sidran since before I could really talk. We often pick up where we left off days, weeks or even years earlier, on any number of topics. So to conduct a formal interview with him is almost impossible for me. There’s simply too much history between us, because I know him so well, because we’ve been over it a hundred times before, because he’s my dad.
We’re more comfortable co-hosting, discussing, debating, having more open ended conversations. In fact, he has even co-hosted some episodes of this podcast with me (Welcome To Copenhagen, Newport Jazz, The Election, What It Felt Like In Paris, and Remembering Tommy LiPuma). And we’ve worked together on musical projects since I was a boy. I’m proud to have produced his most recent records, toured and performed with him for over 20 years. We always just called it jamming. “Let’s jam,” we’d say.
On the occasion of his 76th birthday I decided to try for a more classic kind of long form interview. I wanted to know, how does it feel to be 76? Does it live up to his expectations? How has the world changed for him? How has he changed in the world? Of course, the conversation takes plenty of turns and twists, but we somehow managed to stay on task and the episode is a lot of fun.
Here he talks about falling in love with bebop as a young boy, counter culture in the 1960s, jazz as a form of journalism, how to get paid like a musician, his proudest moments, writing a misunderstood rock and roll anthem, getting to Carnegie hall, facing fears, and what he learned from his heroes (including Phil Woods, Art Blakey, and Mose Allison).
As a special birthday gift gift to him, I wrote this song and published the video this week as well. It's a song about continuity, about memory, about desire, about family. I think it’s the most personal song I have ever written.
https://youtu.be/FMwZ8zUgFy4
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
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No matter what Richard Julian is doing, he “just wants it to be awesome”. As a songwriter, he says he was arrogant before he probably deserved to be, and in fact that it “took years to get beaten into the submission of humility.” That may be so, but along the way he wrote some pretty fantastic songs. His album Slow New York (2006) helped to put him on the map and place him squarely in the center of the musical scene from which Norah Jones had emerged a few years earlier. In fact he and Jones still have a country band together, The Little Willies.
But, as he tells it, he was already 15 years into a music career by then, a veritable veteran of the New York songwriter scene, a practiced in the art of “making something out of nothing, taking blood from a stone”, which is how he describes songwriting.
So maybe it was just a matter of time before Julian decided he needed to step away from the city he sang about so often, and disappear into the Bywater in New Orleans. Pretty soon he was writing songs like “Die in Nola” about his newly adopted town, and how he had no plans to leave. But leave he did, heading back to New York. He landed in the Bed Stuy neighborhood in Brooklyn, bought a building (he says, “I’m the only guy who ever bought a building with no money”) with his friend Arthur Kell, and opened Bar Lunatico, a music venue, bar and restaurant.
In this textured, rollicking, mezcal fueled conversation recorded on a hot summer night in Brooklyn, Richard tells the story of how “a blue collar boy from Delaware” came to be one of the most celebrated songwriters of his generation in New York, watched some of his friends get famous and others get lost, and end up negotiating the ever shifting Brooklyn demographics as a club owner in Bed Stuy.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Just when you think you know all there is to know about Donald Fagen, he surprises you. There are legendary stories, traded like playing cards in chat rooms, fanzines, and merch lines. Along with his musical partner, the late Walter Becker (who passed away in 2017), Fagen has influenced countless musicians, producers and songwriters by setting the gold standard in record production and arrangement with his band Steely Dan. This is known. There are the solo records, including The Nightfly, which was nominated for seven Grammys and which continues to be one of the best sounding records ever made nearly 30 years on. This is known.
Much is known about Donald Fagen and his work, it’s true. But much is still left to be revealed. Stage fright, a general aversion to appearing on television (he and Becker lacked the "large heads" and “swaths of cheek” that they felt necessary to really make it on the small screen), and nearly 20 years with no touring created a mystique that endures to this day, despite the fact that they’ve toured regularly since the mid 90s.
So Donald can surprise you. He does it not by telling you what happened, but rather what he thinks about it. Or more to the point, how he thinks about it. He tells you that Steely Dan has “more in common with punk than with the confessional California singer songwriters” that they were often compared to. He tells you why Stravinsky was a precursor to funk music. He tells you what’s postmodern about his music, why making his first solo record was so personally disruptive to him, how he falls asleep, when he decided to finally grow up, and who he never wants to see again.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
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As a younger man Joey Dosik thought he might make a contribution on the saxophone. He loved playing basketball and playing piano too, and he had a sweet, soulful singing voice. But if you asked him he probably would have told you that he was going to be a jazz sax player. That’s what took him out of LA and to the University of Michigan.
Sometimes the stars align and the right people show up in the right place at just the right time. Later on we realize that something special was going on, but in the initial moment it’s just what’s happening. In Joey’s case, he ended up at Michigan with a cohort of other talented, multifaceted musicians (former Third Story guest Theo Katzman, for example). Somewhere along the line, he realized that he needed to sing!
Today Joey is best known for the soulful, romantic songs that he sings with the band Vulfpeck as well as on his solo recordings (he released both Game Winner and Inside Voice in 2018). His Game Winner project ended up merging his two great loves, music and basketball, into a conceptual collection of songs that are surprisingly compelling even for non sports lovers. Inside Voice also operates on two levels, as a classic sounding record that he describes as “deep, sexual, but also kind of silly”. In fact it’s the sense of humor in his writing that keeps his work fresh and modern. As Joey tells it, he’s interested in both honoring and transcending his references.
Here Joey talks about maintaining the balance between classic and modern, working with Vulfpeck (“we look up to one another”), the value of practical application, what’s so great about Italian vowels, why basketball is good practice for life, why he never throws away a creative idea, and how he keeps his saxophone chops up.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Singer, songwriter and pianist Ben Thornewill started his band, Jukebox The Ghost, with two friends in 2003 when he was in college at George Washington University. “From day one we were just kind of making it up,” he says. He adds “It’s the same three members from the very beginning and everything is a series of great compromises.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. He says, “It tends out to work out to something that defines who we are.” The power pop trio features piano, guitar, and drums. Their songs are clever, catchy, poppy, joyful, sometimes dramatic, and often tinged with elements of classical and even musical theater.
As he tells it, “We are the exception to the rule because we have all been making a living as a band for over a decade...there’s only three of so we don’t have to pay for a bass player. A bass player would have bankrupted us a long time ago.”
I met Ben earlier this year during the first of a series of solo shows he was doing, alone at the piano. He made a point from the stage of talking about how part of what he was doing was improvising but rather than doing it in a jazz or blues idiom, he was doing it using more classical cadences. The open and outward embrace of classical music into contemporary pop was intriguing to me.
We talked about what it means to be successful, maintaining a productive and creative life, the existential crisis of coming off the road, putting in the work, introducing classical elements into pop music, and the importance of Bourbon to Kentuckians.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
When the 73 year old performer Andre De Shields accepted his Tony award last night for his role as Hermes in the hit Broadway show Hadestown, he began with these words: “Baltimore, Maryland are you in the house? I hope you’re watching at home because I am making good on my promise that I would come to New York and become someone you’d be proud to call your native son.”
In this conversation, recorded in 2014, he tells the story in detail about growing up in Baltimore (he calls himself “lucky number nine”), a career spanning five decades “on the precipice of the abyss” (i.e. as a performer) and the secret to his longevity: “I exercise vigorously, I eat judiciously, and I pray constantly.”
The interview originally appeared as Episode 12. Visit http://www.third-story.com/episode-index to hear that and all the other episodes with members of the creative class.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Eli Reed took a trip. It started in a Boston suburb with a cheap suit and a paperboy cap. He took his suit, cap and guitar to Clarksdale, Mississippi. He stayed there just long enough to become a local musician. They called him “Paperboy” because of the cap. Then he headed up to Chicago and pretended to study sociology at the University of Chicago. While he was pretending to study, what he was really doing was looking for old records to play on his radio show, and becoming the minister of music at a church on the south side. After a while, he went back to Boston. Then he turned 21.
What was it like to be a Jewish suburban kid living in the deep south, playing in black church in Chicago, singing soul music? Eli tells me “The juke joints and the black church are the most accepting and welcoming places I’ve ever been. They loved having me there because I wanted to be there and I loved them.”
In his early 20s. Eli “Paperboy” Reed started making records that sounded like they could be from another era. He wrote soul music, sang with a sweet and powerful voice, and performed with a frenzied energy. He found an audience and had success, especially in Europe, and started to ride the “album cycle” life of writing, recording, touring, rinsing and repeating. His stylized, soulful songs were licensed (a lot) for use in TV and film, and he was on the way up.
Eli “Paperboy” Reed says that “authenticity is a trap.” But he also says, “If you’re not thinking critically about your work you’re not doing it right. And be adamant about what you like and don’t like.” And he clearly walks the talk. Eli is incredibly thoughtful and has clearly considered the choices and the work that he’s made. “Stand behind your choices,” he says. “Be present with it. Be interested.”
Before he was 30, he had become a record industry veteran, signed and dropped by both Capitol and Warner Bros., without a recording contract and and wondering what to do next and where to turn. In this episode, he tells the story of where he turned.
Along the way, he talks about surviving in the record business, standing behind your choices, grappling with ambition, whether or not an artist’s career fully belongs to them, and reaching the age where you’re not new anymore.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
If Melissa Clark is in your life already, then she needs little introduction. Maybe you have one of the 40+ cookbooks that she has authored. Maybe you’ve made one of the recipes from her New York Times column “A Good Appetite”, watched one of her cooking videos online, seen her on the Today Show, as a guest judge on Iron Chef America, or heard her as a guest host on The Splendid Table radio show. If you’re one of these people, then you may already consider Melissa Clark to be a kind of honorary member of your family already, someone who helps you decide what to eat (and when), how to prepare it, and why you should feel good about it..because you can do it.
Or maybe, like me, you don’t really cook very much. Maybe, like me, you only recently discovered the creativity, assurance and enthusiasm of Melissa Clark when your wife went to India for three weeks and left you in charge of feeding yourself and your child. Maybe you had a small breakthrough while watching Melissa demonstrate one of her recipes in an online video and it helped you understand that cooking is a true act of creation.
After having such a breakthrough maybe you, like me, started to think about how cooking is like making music. Rhythm & balance, tradition & innovation, style & concept, practice & intuition, intention, improvisation… it’s all there. A recipe is a kind of composition, and a meal is a kind of concert. And maybe, just maybe, in that small moment of catharsis, you reached out to Melissa Clark for an interview to explore this idea.
Whichever kind of person you are, Melissa Clark is there for you.
She started out hoping to be a writer of “early modern female focussed romance novels” but discovered that all of her best images were about food. She says, “Every story, every color, every simile was about food.” As she tells it, Melissa had the good fortune of starting out as a writer on the internet before anyone was actually reading on the internet. “There were no food writers when I started out. No one was talking about the experience of cooking.”
We got together to talk about managing the commercial realities of writing and marketing recipes (“I feel like I am constantly walking on that line”), making friends with your ingredients (“the anchovy is my bad boyfriend”), dealing with anxiety (“my way of coping with it is to be very very busy”), falling in love with your teachers, what makes food a way that we can change the social structure of the world, why deadlines are lifelines, how much of her personal experiences to reveal in her writing, and when to walk away from the cookie dough.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Anya Marina was the hottest DJ on the hottest radio station in San Diego. She had a natural, direct and conversational way of talking on the mic that made her a perfect fit for FM radio, she was a witty improviser, and she was fearless in the face of celebrity. Plus from an early age, she loved comedy and had even considered a career in comedic acting.
She could see her life laid out ahead of her. The only problem was, it wasn’t the life she wanted. So she walked away from her career in radio for the career she knew she needed: music, what else? She started releasing her songs independently before signing with Chop Shop, a label that specialized in finding high profile syncs for their artists in an era before “sync” was a word people in the business really thought about.
Her music, intelligent, infectious and hooky songwriting delivered with delicious restraint, found its way to popular TV shows and movies including Grey’s Anatomy, Twilight: New Moon, and Gossip Girl.
She moved. From San Diego to LA. Then she moved again. From LA to Portland. Then she moved again. From Portland to New York. She was busy, in writing sessions, pitching songs for her publisher, developing her career as both a singer and a co-writer.
She continued to release music. (I co-wrote and produced a song on her 2016 release Paper Plane). She could see her life laid out ahead of her. Again. And she thought: now’s the time to bring it all together.
Maybe she didn’t think that. How could I know what she thought? But whatever was going on in her head, she created a web series (Anya Marina: Indie-Pendent Woman) in which she stars as a singer songwriter in New York named Anya Marina. The series, a mockumentary style sendup of a self absorbed pop singer, gave Anya the chance to bring all her original loves together, music, acting, improvisational performance, and keeping company with the odd celeb.
So, is this the life Anya imagined for herself?
We got together recently to talk about how her Russian mother never taught her how to say the word “water” correctly, why she’s committed to “experiencing something together with my audience,” what makes her a good storyteller, and that “when a thought becomes an obsession, that’s when you know you’ll make a change”.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Sophie Auster grew up in a house of writers (her father is Paul Auster, and her mother is Siri Hustvedt, both acclaimed authors). For Sophie, the creative process always “was quite normal”. As she saw it, “artists are everywhere.” So it was somewhat inevitable that she began a creative career when she was a child, first as an actress, then as a singer and songwriter.
Her latest record, Next Time took her to Sweden to work with producer Tore Johansson. Sophie describes the songwriting on the project as an exercise in “archetypes of men and women depicted in the culture.”
We met recently to talk about what it was like to grow up in a literary household, starting her career at a young age, confronting and overcoming insecurity, holding herself to a high standard, and what it means to be a “jewegian”.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Kassa Overall will tell you, “I love being the first thing of a thing. It’s one of my favorite things.”
Kassa will also tell you that grew up in the cut. Between two kinds of music. Between two neighborhoods, in Seattle, that were “actually divided and separated”. He related more to the black neighborhood that he lived in, but he went to school mostly with white kids. “Looking back on it now I realize we’re all from the same stuff” but at the time it felt like he was in the middle of two worlds.
In fact, Kassa Overall will tell you a lot of things. That’s because Kassa Overall is a lot of things. Drummer. Rapper. Producer. Taker of cold showers.
As a drummer, he says “I had the old cat thing. Even though I was a young cat, I had something on drums that none of the other young cats had.” That’s how early on he caught the attention and found work performing with a formidable list of artists, including Christian McBride, Donald Byrd, Vijay Iyer, Wallace Roney, Ravi Coltrane, Gary Bartz, and many more. He also spent several years as a key member of pianist Geri Allen's Timeline band and works regularly with trumpeter Theo Croker's ensemble.
As a rapper and producer, Overall has collaborated with Brooklyn-based hip-hop outfit Das Racist, is a member of the duo Kool & Kass with former Das Racist member Kool A.D., and has DJ’ed with The Late Show with Stephen Colbert's house band, Jon Batiste & Stay Human.
And apparently Kassa is in the midst of a Wim Hof cycle of breathing and showering in cold water. That’s not really as important as the rest of the biographical story, but it does give you a sense that the guy is working on it at all times.
Overall kept his hip hop / electronic identity separate from his jazz-self for a long time, thinking that it would be a stretch to bring all of those influences into one project. “I limited myself,” he says. But ultimately he relented and made his latest solo album Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz, a startlingly cohesive array of compositions and production styles representing Kassa's diverse skillset.
In our conversation he talks about the intersection of jazz and hip-hop, the importance of getting “comfortable with being bored so you can get better at your instrument”, the relationship between great drumming and the sounds of nature, how growing up far away from the “scene” gave him a strong sense of personal identity, and what it takes to be a “cat who is going for it”.
Along the way, he discusses the influence of many of his collaborators and teachers including Vijay Iyer, Mike Ladd, Arto Lindsay, Roy Hargrove, Billy Hart, and Elvin Jones.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Guitarist Cory Wong wants you to know that “smooth-jazz” is not a dirty word. At least not as he sees it. That’s why he started referring to himself as the “millennial smooth jazz ambassador”.
Cory comes from Minneapolis and got his start working with many of the great Minneapolis funk musicians who worked with Prince; they showed him the ways of the funk. It’s a deep and very special legacy. Cory is an infectious performer, with incredible energy and positivity on stage.
One night a half dozen years ago, some young musicians from Michigan were on tour in Minneapolis and had a night off. Somebody told them to go check out a band called Doctor Mambo’s Combo (Cory happened to be subbing for the regular guitar player that night).
Something special happened that night. Maybe it was a full moon. Maybe it was destiny. Maybe it was beshert. By the time the concert was over, Cory had connected with a group of people who would have a big impact on his life and career: Jack Stratton, Theo Katzman, Joe Dart & Joey Dosik of Vulfpeck.
Today Cory is best known for his work with the band Vulfpeck. Their YouTube videos have made them into funk-celebrities, and now they sell out all over the world. It’s a completely independent, gorilla style operation, which is why it’s so extraordinary that in just a few short years Vulfpeck has built up enough of a following to be able to play for larger and larger audiences. (Later this year, for example, they’ll play Madison Square Garden in New York.)
In our conversation we tell the story of what happened when Cory met Vulf, how the first encounter went, and subsequently how Cory’s life and career were impacted. Cory explains how his concept of “letting rhythm be take the lead” developed after he connected with Jack Stratton of Vulfpeck.
We also get severely sidetracked talking about saxophonist Dave Koz, legendary Minneapolis drummer Michael Bland and bassist Sonny Thompson, Los Angeles phenomenon Louis Cole, mandolin master Chris Thile, playing with the Fearless Flyers.
Cory’s own solo project has grown recently as well. He has released a series of records and videos, and tours regularly with his band of Minneapolis groove assassins. In late January he played a sold out show at the Bowery Ballroom in New York.
The next night, we had this conversation, in which he talks about coming up in Minneapolis, playing with Vulfpeck, disrupting smooth jazz, commanding the grid, letting “rhythm take the lead”, the YouTube effect, the power of a good story, and Thai massage.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Jacques Schwarz-Bart says that he never fit neatly into any one category. He says, “I knew early on in my life that I could not go down a regular path. It would be hard for other human beings to totally accept me the way I am.” From the very start, Jacques’ life was unusual. Born in the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe to a pair of writers (his mother the Guadeloupean novelist Simone Schwarz-Bart and his father, the French-Jewish writer and intellectual André Schwarz-Bart.) The family traveled widely, living in Senegal, Switzerland, and Goyave, Guadeloupe. Young Jacques was an excellent student, and he was thought to be destined for greatness. In his universe, that meant a life in politics and, after studying at the prestigious Parisian school of Government, Sciences Po, he began a career as a Senator’s assistant in Paris. He was an inspiration: young, successful and smart - a beacon of hope and a shining representative of his multi cultural background in France. So when he walked away from all that at age 27, moved to Boston and pursued a career in jazz saxophone at the Berklee College of Music, it was not a surprise to him that his family and friends thought he had literally lost his mind. People started to talk, and to invent all kinds of reasons to explain the choice. He says, “I admired them for finding a rational reason for my decision. Nobody could come to terms with the fact that I loved something and I just decided to pursue it despite that fact that I was new and not very good at it.” It’s true, he was new. He had only picked up a saxophone for the first time a few years earlier. But as he tells it, there was an instant connection between the young Schwarz-Bart and the and horn. He was off and running. Much like everything else in his life, Jacques musical path has not followed a straight line. His work with Roy Hargrove led him to the world of neo soul, where he worked as a session player with the likes of D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, Eric Benet, and Meshell N’degeocello. But it was stints with Danilo Perez, Ari Hoenig, Bob Moses, and Giovanni Hidalgo that informed his search for authentic, coherent music that built bridges between his cultural and musical worlds. A series of exploratory projects ensued, including the Gwoka Jazz Project (exploring the music of Guadeloupe); Jazz Racine Haiti (bringing together Haitian Voodoo music and jazz); and most recently Hazzan, featuring his original arrangements of Jewish liturgical music. We got together on a cold January afternoon following his performance at the Winter Jazz Festival in New York to talk about identity, authenticity, and how “the artist is first and foremost someone who has the guts to be himself”. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
How does pianist Aaron Parks describe himself? “A bit odd. I play piano, write songs, and take pictures of doors with my phone.”
Raised on a small island near Seattle, Washington, Aaron found himself hungry for more creative and intellectual stimulation than his immediate surroundings could offer. He enrolled in college at the age of 14, studying music, math and computer science. It wasn’t long before he dropped the math and computer stuff and focused on music; he moved to New York at age 16 to study at the Manhattan School of Music, and by age 18 he was playing, recording and touring in Terence Blanchard’s band.
So, yeah, a bit odd.
Besides playing with Blanchard, Parks has performed with a variety of artists including trumpeter Christian Scott, drummer Kendrick Scott, vocalist Gretchen Parlato, and others. Parks has released several albums under his own name, including his 2008 Blue Note debut, Invisible Cinema and his latest project Little Big.
We met in Brooklyn on one of the coldest days of the year to talk about composition (“I love perfect asymmetry”), mathematics, thinking about touch, and no longer being the youngest person in the room.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Kenny Werner might try to talk you out of becoming a jazz musician. “Please don’t become a jazz musician just because you think you should. That’s like saying you think you should become a typewriter salesman. Nobody needs you. I would do everything I could to talk them out of it and if they couldn’t be talked out of it then I would say go for it. It’s got to be a thing of extreme love because it doesn’t make any sense otherwise.”
For Kenny, playing piano always came easily. Even as a young boy growing up on Long Island, he was an exceptional musician, first recording on television at the age of 11. Although he studied classical piano as a child, he enjoyed playing anything he heard on the radio.
He has dedicated his life to playing jazz. Over his extensive career, he’s worked with an exhaustive list of the greats, including long lasting creative relationships with Joe Lovano, Toots Thielemans, Betty Buckley and the Mel Lewis orchestra. Quincy Jones has said of Kenny, “Perfection, 360 degrees of soul and science in one human being. My kind of musician.” As Kenny says it, a driving force in his work is to make “a music conscious of its spiritual intent and essence.”
But despite all his natural talent for playing from a young age, the rest of the world was a bit of a mystery and a struggle. He didn’t like to do too much work. He didn’t like to exert too much effort, and he really didn’t like to practice the things that didn’t come easily to him. He liked to watch TV. (In fact, he told me, he still likes to watch TV.) However, he had a natural gift for explaining the kinds of hangups and challenges that many musicians and music students deal with in their own development, and through years of work on himself and as a teacher of others, he devised a technique to overcome those hangups. He says now that maybe this came easily to him precisely because he didn’t worry too much about what people thought of him as a teacher - he was still caught up in being a jazz musician.
In 1996 Kenny wrote Effortless Mastery, Liberating The Master Musician Within. The book influenced generations of jazz musicians and continues to be a seminal text in contemporary jazz and creative education. Werner has since created videos, lectured world-wide and authored many articles on how musicians, artists or even business people can allow their “master creator” within to lift their performance to its highest level, showing us how to be spontaneous, fearless, joyful and disciplined in our work and in our life.
Kenny says that since the book was published, he constantly hears people who tell him how the book changed their lives (myself included). Nonetheless, it took him years to come to terms with his path as an educator, and to accept the accolades, and feel good when he received praise for his book and the subsequent journey on which it led him. “Today I get a bigger kick from helping people with whatever wisdom I have than I do from playing. I finally accepted I have a wisdom that can really be useful. As musicians we’re not used to doing something that’s useful.”
We met in a midtown New York hotel in December to talk about his life and career, the Effortless Mastery phenomenon, coming to terms with his own wisdom, and his newest record The Space, a solo piano project informed by Werner’s own teachings.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Pianist, composer, educator and recording artist Fred Hersch has been proclaimed “the most arrestingly innovative pianist in jazz over the last decade” by Vanity Fair, “an elegant force of musical invention” by The L.A. Times, and “a living legend” by The New Yorker.
He tells me, “I’m 63. I’ve been playing 2, 5 and 1 for 45 years. I don’t know many people that can go to work after 45 years and say that they’re really looking forward to it. As long as I can keep my physical skills intact, I’m gonna keep going until I can’t go anymore.”
Keeping his physical skills intact has been a more challenging proposition for Fred than for most. He has been HIV positive since the 1980’s, and at times just staying alive has been a struggle. Nonetheless, his creative output is exhaustive. With more than three-dozen albums to his credit as a leader or co-leader, multiple collaborations with many of the finest jazz musicians in the world, Hersch consistently receives lavish critical praise and numerous international awards for each highly anticipated new release.
In Fred’s case, the intersectionality of life and work has been constant. For example, a decade ago he slipped into a pneumonia related coma for 2 months. When he emerged, after recuperating, he created “My Coma Dreams”, a long form song cycle presented in music, words and video projections about the strangeness of coma-state perceptions versus real events.
A documentary film, The Ballad of Fred Hersch (https://vimeo.com/ondemand/fredhersch) was made about that experience, and his memoir Good Things Happen Slowly was published in 2017. In the book, he describes the kind of double life he led as a gay jazz musician before coming out in the early 1990s and taking control of his own personal narrative. So it’s fair to say that both his work and his life have been well documented.
Ostensibly what brought us together was the latest document, the album Trio 97 @ the Village Vanguard, a previously unreleased live recording from the Village Vanguard made over 20 years ago. The record documents his first tenure as a band leader in the legendary New York jazz club that has become his home base (for more than two decades he has performed there for packed houses three times a year and has recorded some of his most acclaimed albums on its historic stage). In fact, he’s playing there this very weekend!
However we could easily have talked at any time because there’s always a “next project” with Fred . Even as we discussed Trio 97, he was eager to tell me about yet another record he made at the Vanguard in October, a duo recording with Esperanza Spalding, and an upcoming recording in Germany with Vince Mendoza. The week we spoke (last month), his 2018 release Fred Hersch Trio Live In Europe was nominated for a Grammy (his 13th nomination).
We met on a crisp December afternoon in the Soho apartment that has been his home for four decades and talked about how the scene has changed over the years (“people drink less now”), learning to be gracious (“the audience needs to have their experience independent of how you feel about it”), jazz education (“You can spend $200,000 on a jazz performance degree and not make that much money in the next 10 years”), songwriting (“I try to write tunes”), self reflection (““If I want to be the person I can be, I can’t worry about what people think”) and much more.
As he says, “Having a lot of information is like having a big vocabulary. That doesn’t mean you know how to tell a story. I’ve always been interested in story telling.”
Listen to hear what he means and hear Fred tell his story.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
As a boy in Detroit, Michigan, Rick Margitza’s mother asked him “do you want to hear a recording of your grandfather playing cello”? Then she put on the Charlie Parker with Strings album. After hearing Charlie Parker play, Rick knew that he wanted to be a jazz saxophone player.
Margitza’s paternal grandfather, a Hungarian Gypsy violinist, taught him to play the violin at the age of four. His father also played violin with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (and recorded on classic Motown sessions). So it was almost inevitable that Rick would be a musician, and he was drawn to jazz.
He loved the sound of what he calls “the white Jewish tenor player” school of playing: Michael Brecker, Steve Grossman, Dave Liebman, Bob Berg and (apparent honorary Jew) Jerry Bergonzi.
Rick bounced around from music school to music school in his 20s, and ended up in New Orleans playing on the local scene and finishing school. He was thinking about moving to New York and wondering if it was already too late for that. His childhood friend and future record producer Matt Pierson (see Episode 5) encouraged Rick to make a demo tape before making the move, Rick obliged.
That demo tape ended up moving a lot of history. Pierson played the tape for the president of Blue Note records, Bruce Lundvall, who signed Rick to a contract based on what he heard on the tape. Pierson also played the tape for Tommy LiPuma (see Episodes 33 and 69) who in turn played it for Miles Davis over the phone, and Miles hired Margitza on the spot based on what he heard on the tape.
What was on that tape?
Here Rick tells the story of what happened next, what it was like to be thrust into the jazz limelight overnight, working with Miles, moving to France, dividing the octave and choosing the right note.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Joe Dart was on his way to Boston. He had enrolled in the Berklee College of music - a somewhat inevitable step for the young, very talented bass player from rural Michigan who loved funk and soul music. Although he had already been performing regularly in and around his home of Harbor Spriannngs, Michigan, he knew he would have to get out of town to achieve his goal of being a touring and recording bass player. But he didn’t go. Something kept him in Michigan and at the last minute he changed his plans and decided to move to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan instead.
Any guesses what that one thing might have been?
You’re probably right.
Anyway, it didn’t take him long to meet the musicians who would change his life and trajectory. Within weeks of moving to Ann Arbor, a jam session with Jack Stratton reoriented both of them. Along with Theo Katzman, Woody Goss, and a continually expanding collection of regular players (including Cory Wong, Antwaun Stanley and Joey Dosik) and special guests (like drummers James Gadson, Bernard Purdie, Michael Bland, and Louis Cole) Joe Dart became both the backbone and the bottom end of Vulfpeck. Through their youtube videos, Vulfpeck has become the subject of enormous fanaticism and enthusiasm for a new generation of funk loving hipsters. And Joe Dart has inspired a special kind of fervor from fans, fed in part by the band’s own Jack Stratton who seems committed to making sure Joe Dart becomes a household name among the internet connected backbeat illuminati.
Joe and I got together last month in an Airbnb in Paris to talk about how “the way you groove has power”, why the magic of Vulfpeck is in the freshness of the music, what it means to “play every note like my life depends on it”, if his vigorous head bobbing influences his groove, and where he learned to play bass “like a drummer”.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
John Fields was a normal kid growing up in a normal family in the Boston suburbs, in prime position to take over his father’s hosiery business. Instead, he moved to Minneapolis straight after high school to hang out with his uncle Steve Greenberg, whose hit “Funkytown” had been a huge international success.
Fields quickly became his uncle’s right hand man, learning the ropes as an engineer, producer, and bass spanker. His band Greazy Meal was a mainstay on the Minneapolis scene in the 1990s, and his early record production work earned him a reputation as an enthusiastic, creative and very fast collaborator.
Eventually he moved to Los Angeles where he worked with some of the biggest names in pop, r&b and rock music, including Pink, Jonas Brothers, Switchfoot, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, Semisonic, Selena Gomez, and a whole lot more.
In 2016 he moved his operation back to Minneapolis and set up shop in the legendary Creation Audio studios building, where he had interned years earlier as a teenager. John continues to do work from the west coast, but more and more he’s celebrating and elevating the music from his adopted hometown. Lately, for example, he’s been working with Cory Wong, the guitarist for Vulfpeck.
We got together in his studio earlier this year to talk about working fast, the importance of the second verse, why the artist is often right, how he finds work, what it means to write pop music today, why he has such big downbeats and if the first thought really is the best thought.
John says, “I just try to be stoked.” As you will hear, he definitely succeeds.
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John Leventhal thinks his initial, preanalytical ideas are the good ones. John Leventhal realized that there “really is no daddy, there isn’t anybody who really has it all together, knows all the answers. You’re kind of in the wilderness. You have to take a chance to fail.” John Leventhal isn’t sure how to measure success. John Leventhal is a self invented guy.
Despite his five Grammys, his critically and commercially successful work as musician, producer, songwriter, and recording engineer who has produced albums for William Bell, Michelle Branch, Rosanne Cash, Marc Cohn, Shawn Colvin, Rodney Crowell, Joan Osborne, Loudon Wainwright III, and many others, he’s still wondering if he’s made it.
As a musician he has worked with these artists as well as Jackson Browne, Willie Nelson, Bruce Hornsby, Elvis Costello, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Haden, David Crosby, Levon Helm, Edie Brickell, Paul Simon, Patty Larkin, Susan Tedeschi, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Steve Forbert, Kelly Willis, Donald Fagen, and Johnny Cash.
As a songwriter he has had over 150 songs recorded by various artists, including Rosanne Cash, Shawn Colvin, Marc Cohn, Michelle Branch, The Tedeschi Trucks Band, Vince Gill, George Strait, Shelby Lynne, Patty Loveless, Joe Cocker and William Bell.
We met over the summer met in his Manhattan studio, which occupies one floor of the home he shares with his wife, singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash. We talked about his process in the studio, how he developed his own personal approach to making music, and why even the simplest questions can have complicated answers.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Mary Sweeney needs some air. “There has to be a flow of fast and slow, and a pause to allow the listener or the spectator to digest and to project their own thoughts.” She thinks I should leave more space in my podcasts, to let it breathe. She tells me this as we sit in the screened in porch behind her summer house in Madison, Wisconsin. As she tells me this, cicadas chirp loudly, as if to underscore her point: “Today’s episode will not be edited! You will not remove us from this moment!”
Mary Sweeney should know. She spent much of her career as a film editor, producer and writer collaborating with David Lynch. Beginning in 1985 with Blue Velvet, and continuing through the 2006 film Inland Empire, her editing credits include Blue Velvet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990), Twin Peaks (1991), Industrial Symphony (1991), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), On the Air (1992), Hotel Room(1993), Lost Highway (1996), The Straight Story (2000), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Baraboo (2009). The relationship with Lynch was productive, fruitful, and nuanced (the two were partners in work and in life for much of that time) and they have a son together.
She is currently working as a consulting producer and writer on Matthew Weiner’s series for Amazon, The Romanoffs, and is the Dino and Martha De Laurentiis Endowed Professor of film at USC, where she teaches Graduate Screenwriting Thesis and “Dreams, The Brain and Storytelling.”
Before we had this conversation, Mary cheekily emailed me a list of topics that she would be happy to discuss. They included editing, producing, screenwriting, parenting, Paris, Cairo, pie baking, and the Catholic Church. Guess what we talked about? All of it.
And we also talked at length about living and working in an intensely creative partnership with David Lynch for all those years (both personally and professionally), collaborating with one of the most innovative voices in film, and what’s so great about coming from a big family. Visit the Patreon Page for an extra 20 minutes of juicy conversation that didn’t make it into this edit.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
I first reached out to Nate Chinen to do an interview in 2015. At that time, I knew him as the jazz critic for the New York Times and a columnist for Jazz Times, and I also loved the book he wrote with George Wein Myself Among Others. (I interviewed George a few years ago as well.)
In the intervening years, Nate left the New York Times, became the Director of Editorial Content at WBGO (one of the most important jazz radio stations in the country) and wrote the book Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century, which was published last week.
Reading Playing Changes was a revelation for me. In it, Nate synthesizes many of the tendencies in and arguments around jazz over the last 20 years, and presents a case for contemporary jazz today. He also traces the narrative back to the 1970s, a time when jazz was in transition, and stitches together the disparate threads of the music that have emerged since then into a cohesive fabric.
Chinen is obviously a fan of the music, but it’s clear in his book that he’s also a fan of musicians as well.
I spent an afternoon with him in his home in Beacon, New York, talking about Playing Changes, jazz criticism, displaced backbeats, the importance of live music, and the trouble with trying to define what music should and shouldn’t be. This is a conversation I’ve waited a long time to have and it was absolutely worth the wait.
Visit the Patreon Page for an extra 20 minutes of juicy conversation that didn’t make it into this edit.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Sociologist and musician Howard S. Becker is 90 years old. While he is best known for his contributions to the sociology of deviance, sociology of art and sociology of music (his book Oustiders from 1963 was one of the first and most influential books on deviance), he also spent many of his early years playing piano in taverns, saloons and even strip clubs.
As a young man in Chicago, while attending the University of Chicago in the 1940s he also studied piano with the legendary jazz pianist and teacher Lennie Tristano, and performed with local players of the day including Lee Konitz and Bill Russo.
In 2009 Becker published “Do You Know…?” The Jazz Repertoire in Action, a book he co-wrote with his friend, colleague and fellow academic-musician Robert R. Faulkner. In it, the two discuss and describe how songs are passed on from person to person and how working musicians’ repertoire survives and evolves.
I spoke with Howard in his apartment in Paris (he spends part of every year in Europe, where he has become something of an academic celebrity in recent years) last November. We talked about how in his day live music was a function of geography, strong union leadership, and cheap beer, and why jazz is like philosophy (the only money is teaching).
This conversation is a companion to the Mobtown series of episodes from 2017, and it features an introductory conversation between my and my father, Ben.
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Madison, Wisconsin in the 1960s was one of the most radicalized university campuses in the country. It was a center for the kind of counter culture that has come to feel like a cliché today. There was plenty of sex, drugs, and rock & roll, sure. But there was also political activism, civil rights, environmentalism.
Because of the University of Wisconsin, thousands of young people move through Madison and take the values of the city with them when they leave.
Earlier this summer, The Madison Reunion brought over one thousand people with ties to Madison in the 60s back together for three days of meetings, discussions and panels, held at the University of Wisconsin's Memorial Union. The event was billed as “a party with a purpose” and had the feeling of both a nostalgic walk down memory lane and a reignition for a generation of activists who were referred to by journalist Jeff Greenfield as “the long ago young”.
Although I wasn’t in Madison in the 1960s, it is fair to say that I’m a byproduct of that time. My parents met there in the mid 60s and I grew up in Madison in the shadow of the revolution, part of a generation that was raised to feel that we had just missed something major.
So at the Madison Reunion, I moderated a panel of three other Madison natives, all of whom left Madison after high school, to talk about the impact of the city, the values and the Madison-state-of-mind on their lives, careers and overall point of view. Ben Wikler (Washington director of MoveOn.Org), Anat Shenker-Osorio (writer, researcher and communications specialist) and Dan Kaufman (musician and journalist) joined me in conversation.
While the panel began with a simple overview of what it meant to come up in the 80s and 90s in Madison, it quickly moved into more contemporary questions of working with the media today and what the legacy of the 60s might be in a modern context.
By the end of the conversation, I was slightly overwhelmed by how much work there is to do in order to stay ahead of (or just in touch with) the way political and cultural messaging is manipulated today. But I was also highly encouraged and inspired just hearing the three panelists talk. As long as Ben, Anat and Dan are out here fighting the good fight, making sure the right messages are being communicated, and telling the important stories, there is hope.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
What is there to say about guitarist Lage Lund that hasn’t already been said? Not much. And plenty.
Lage has been a fixture on the New York jazz scene since moving here in the early 2000s as a “skinny kid from Norway with dreads”. The dreads are long gone, and there is very little about him today to indicate that he grew up in a small Norwegian city (Skien) where he had to take a three hour train ride to Oslo to buy the latest jazz albums, and that before he was one of the most creative and virtuosic guitarists of his generation, he was a frustrated skateboarder with no place to skate “vert”.
A regular in the “Rising star – Guitar” category in the Downbeat Critic’s Poll, he has been hailed by Pat Metheny as a favorite young guitarist, and is “all music and all soul” according to Russell Malone - one of the judges who awarded Lund top prize in the 2005 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. Of Lund, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel once said, "Of the younger cats, Lage is THE one. He's a wonderful player. Scary actually!"
Acclaimed as one of the finest guitarists in jazz, Lund has performed and recorded with artists like Ron Carter, Mulgrew Miller, Wynton Marsalis, Maria Schneider, Carmen Lundy, David Sanchez, Seamus Blake and many others.
He is currently preparing three new projects: “Lage Lund Lonely Band” The upcoming release “Party Of One” has Lund covering all parts in each aspect of the process: writing, arranging, performing, recording, producing as well as directing music videos; a new Criss Cross release of all original material, written for and developed by his longstanding quartet consisting of Sullivan Fortner, Matt Brewer & Tyshawn Sorey. And a duo album with pianist Bryn Roberts.
Lage came over recently to talk about who influenced him, where he’s looking when he plays, when he discovered that guitar doesn’t suck, how musicians communicate, what happened to swing, and why jazz musicians drink natural wine.
This Episode also features an extensive introduction by my guest co-host for the week, singer/ songwriter Joy Dragland. Joy also happens to be married to Lage.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Talking to Brendan B. Brown about his life and music is like talking to a dozen guys at once. There’s the singer-songwriter - the guy who wrote the hit song “Teenage Dirtbag” and created the band Wheatus nearly 2 decades ago, and who has been riding that wave ever since. This is the guy who writes brilliant, provocative, genre bending pop songs, and who tours stadiums in the UK and Australia.
There’s the kid who grew up in a “lobster town in decline” on long island in the 80s and was sent to an all boys high school an hour away because his parents panicked after a satanic murder took place in the woods behind his house. This is the guy who ultimately ended up moving into the extra house on his parents property, building a work-live space and staying there well into adulthood.
There’s the gear geek - the one who wants to know about each microphone, guitar amp, drum head and compressor used on all the records he loves. This is the guy who remembers every piece of equipment he ever bought and can explain why he cares deeply for the kind of equipment that most people would find little value in.
There’s the punk from the east village - the guy who spent the 90s at the Mercury Lounge and the Luna Lounge, attacking New York city with a raw, DIY “anti” attitude that he continues to carry with him to this day.
There’s the music fan. (This is the episode in which more specific examples of music have been given than any other on the Third Story before.)
At the core, Brendan is a natural, self taught, self invented, homebody who seems to be firing on all cylinders at all times. He is intensely curious and passionate about what he does, what he thinks, what he thinks he does, and what he does about what he thinks.
I recently met with Brendan in his studio on Long Island - the same one where he has recorded almost all of his albums, and which happens to be on the property where he grew up. Here he talks about the power and responsibility of writing a hit song, what it’s like to have your dreams come true, and how to recover when they don't.
The episode features an introductory conversation with my old friend and musical collaborator Joy Dragland.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Joe Goodkin was a part time singer songwriter, part time paralegal with a penchant for classical Greece and a sensitive side. After years of playing in bands he realized that the big record contract was not coming anytime soon and taking a band on the road was economically impossible. But he knew there was a place for him as a musical storyteller. One day, he dusted off a project he had started when he was just out of college, a musical companion to Homer’s Odyssey, and started thinking about how to present it and himself in a new way.
For over a decade he’s been touring the country singing a one-man original 30 minute musical retelling of Homer's Odyssey for audiences at revered institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, and many others, over 200 performances in 33 states.
Based in Chicago, Joe continues to write his own brand of quirky, emotive and highly personal stories about his experiences. His career is completely unique, and speaks to the possibility of carving out a niche as a musician today. Rather than throwing a wide net, he chose to control his own narrative. As he tells it, “in trying to make music for everybody you wind up making it for nobody.”
Joe came to the Third Story headquarters recently to explain what it means to be a “modern bard”, how to keep material fresh after playing it hundreds of times, and why the personal really is universal.
This episode features another great introduction with me in conversation with my wife, Amanda.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoy it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon!
"If you're not sad you're not paying very much attention."
Donovan Woods has a talent for writing songs that feel like “real life”: Funny and sad at the same time, plain spoken and poetic in the same breath, nostalgic and hopeful at once. As he says, "Two opposing ideas can be true at the same time."
So it’s no surprise that he named his latest album Both Ways.
He says that when he thinks about it, there’s just “so much sadness”. He says that he loves to watch an audience turn to mush, to make them feel comfortable and then slowly deliver the tragic sense of life. He says he does it by using “tricks of language” that feel familiar and colloquial. He says he developed his confessional style of songwriting, which is generally considered to be country or folk, by listening to hip hop as a kid growing up in Sarnia, Ontario.
There’s a lot about Donovan Woods that makes him an outsider to the Nashville singer songwriter circles in which he often travels, but there’s plenty that puts him right at home there. Particularly, a devotion to highly personal, narrative writing.
Despite all the tragedy, I think he’s also one of the funniest writers around. Listening to his music, one is constantly toggling between tears of laughter and tears of sadness. At least I am. And talking to Donovan Woods is similar. He’s very a pleasant guy, easy going, down to earth and funny. Sad funny, sure. Bitter funny. Excruciating funny. But funny all the same.
Although his songs are custom made to be performed by him (“people say I sound like I’m singing right in their ear”) they have also been recorded by stars like Tim McGraw and Charles Kelley (of Lady Antebellum).
Donovan came to the Third Story headquarters recently during a run of shows and promotion for his new album. Here he talks about writing songs that feel like real life, the big scam of success (“by the time you get the thing you always wanted, you feel like you deserve it”), how to make it in Nashville, and why Wisconsin is the state most like Canada.
This episode features an introduction by me in conversation with my wife, Amanda.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoy it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon!
Nate Wood is a drummer, bassist, guitarist, singer-songwriter, mixing and mastering engineer. Raised and educated in Los Angeles, he joined the band Kneebody in 2001 (along with former Third Story guest Ben Wendel).
Eventually Nate moved to New York where he has been a fixture on the scene for years, working as both drummer and bassist for the likes of Donny McCaslin and Wayne Krantz. In fact, it was Nate’s love of the music Krantz was making that helped to motivate him to move east.
Nate is an extraordinarily gifted, natural musician. Although in recent years he has started to gain notoriety among musicians and hardcore fans, he’s still (in my opinion) greatly underappreciated, particularly as a drummer. But that’s starting to change now, in part due to his new project “Four” which features Nate playing drums, bass, keyboards and singing simultaneously.
Here he talks about why screwing around is so important to creativity, what’s so special about 83bpm as a tempo, what ever happened to swing, and that ongoing Third Story question: should I move to LA? Because he’s so multifaceted, this interview is filled with Nate saying “but that’s a whole other conversation….”
The episode features a short introduction from me and Nate’s old pal, pianist Randy Ingram. It’s a great one. Enjoy.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoy it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon!
Larry Klein started out as a musician’s musician before becoming a producer’s producer. At a young age he was playing bass with his heroes in the jazz world, including a long and creative stint with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The way he explains it, Klein became more drawn to the world of songs, singers and popular music, and put off by the jazz insiders’ insistence on what was and what wasn’t “the real s*#t”. As a session player he worked on some of the most classic LA record dates of the 80s and 90s (for the likes of Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman, Don Henley, Bob Dylan, Cher and Joni Mitchell) and seemed positioned for a life as a hired gun sideman.
But while married to his first wife, Joni Mitchell, Larry began producing records. Over the last 30 years he has become one of the most sophisticated, musical and thoughtful producers around, producing records for Mitchell, Madeleine Peyroux, Melody Gardot, Herbie Hancock, Luciana Souza (who he is married to now) and many, many more. Klein has won Grammys for his work on Mitchell's Turbulent Indigo and Both Sides Now; and Hancock's River: The Joni Letters.
I've been a huge admirer of his for a long time. I love how he manages to make timeless records that also feel contemporary. It’s a kind of magic trick that anyone who has ever tried to make confident, approachable music in the studio will recognize as much easier said than done.
I recently spent a morning with Larry at his home studio in Los Angeles. Considering how great his records sound, it should have come as no big surprise to me that underneath it all he’s still just a huge music fan. Here he talks about the art and craft of record production, what is and isn’t the real s*%t, why he often works with female artists, and the importance of good coffee. This one was a long time coming for me and I’m delighted to share it.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoy it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon!
Rapper, singer, spoken word artist, writer, and science nerd Dessa is an open book. As a young girl in Minneapolis, she dreamed of being a writer, and in high school she submitted essays unsolicited to the New Yorker. She refused to speak the Spanish own heritage (she’s half Puerto Rican) and instead insisted on learning French. She was, in her own mind, headed for a literary life on the Upper East side of Manhattan. “The third martini and witty repartee” she says.
Life seemed to have other plans for her. She ended up channeling her love of language into a different outlet: rap. Dessa has been a longtime member of Minneapolis based hip hop collective Doomtree. Her résumé as a musician includes performances at Lollapalooza and Glastonbury, co-compositions for 100-voice choir, performances with the Minnesota Orchestra, and a top-200 entry on the Billboard charts for her album Parts of Speech.
Eventually she was able to turn her success in music back towards her original passion: writing essays. She’s been published by The New York Times Magazine, broadcast by Minnesota Public Radio, published two literary collections of her own, and is set to release her first hardcover collection with Dutton Books in the fall of 2018.
Her most recent solo album, Chime, brought together her songwriting with her longtime love of science (one of her first jobs was as a medical technical writer). She turned her own personal experience of heartbreak into a kind of science experiment, and let the process inform her songs. The result is extremely compelling and also great pop music.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Lorrie Moore is the kind of writer that inspires real devotion from her readers. She’s best known as a writer of short stories, although she has also published novels and critical essays. See What Can Be Done, a collection of essays and reviews (many of which were originally published in the New York Review of Books) was published this month.
Lorrie is also a beloved creative writing teacher. She spent 30 years at the University of Wisconsin before moving to Nashville to teach at Vanderbilt University, where she still teaches.
I was eager to talk to Lorrie about a lifetime of writing, her process, how she thinks about teaching creative writing, and why music is so important to her. She’s spending the year in New York and we met recently at her apartment in Manhattan to debrief.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!
Four years and 100 episodes later, I’m still going. What a trip. This week, I take a moment to reflect with one of the most surprising and flattering guest hosts I’ve ever had: my wife, Amanda.
I write this in from pitch black hotel room in Palm Springs. Last night on the plane I made a list of all my guests so far (hopefully I haven’t overlooked anyone too serious), and organized them into category. The categories are a bit one dimensional, especially considering that my focus is often on the kinds of people who defy category. How does one place an incredible musician who is also an incredible composer, and a visionary producer? By what name do we call a polymath singer, arranger and multi instrumentalist? What about an actor turned Zen Buddhist priest turned blues musician? Or a bebop piano player who also runs two clubs?
So please forgive me if you disagree with where I’ve placed your favorite saxophone player or engineer. Overall when I look at this list, I think my taste is generally pretty clear. I’ve been so fortunate to talk with people who make things I love, some of whom have influenced me, some who I call friends, some who are both.
Moving forward what do I hope for? More. Much more. The rest of 2018 is shaping up to be an eclectic and very exciting batch of new conversations with musicians, writers, producers, and thinkers. And I look forward to continuing to push the edges of the format whenever I can.
But in the spirit of celebration, today is about looking back. Thank you for joining me on this journey.
Singers and songwriters: Nadia Ackerman Jonatha Brooke Alex Cuba Jorge Drexler Duchess Kurt Elling Falu Alan Hampton Jesse Harris Michael Hearst Jascha Hoffman Greg Holden Theo Katzman Jo Lawry Adam Levy Madeleine Peyroux Morgan James Janis Siegel Becca Stevens Sachal Vasandani Pat MAcDonald Noa Leah Siegel Adam Schatz / Landlady
Bass players: Alexis Cuadrado Adam Dorn Matt Geraghty Peter Giron Jeff Hamann Will Lee Billy Peterson Paul Peterson Michael Thurber
Drummers: Louis Cato Liberty Devitto Steve Gadd David Garibaldi Dave King Bill Stewart
Guitarists: Doug Wamble Steve Khan Charlie Hunter Jon Madof Gabriela Quintero
Keyboard Players: Jon Batiste George Colligan Mark Davis Larry Goldings Monte Moir Ricky Peterson
Various: Settling the Underscore - on music in advertising Should I move to Nashville What is music therapy
Arrangers: Jacob Collier Gil Goldstein Rob Mounsey
Producers: Michael Leonhart Tommy LiPuma Matt Pierson Jack Stratton Creed Taylor Butch Vig
Engineers: James Farber Ryan Hewitt Al Schmitt
Music Presenters: Michael Dorf Dave Jemilo George Wein Spike Wilner
Other Instrumentalists: John Ellis Tatum Greenblatt Ryan Keberle Ze Luis Howard Levy Bob Rockwell John Scrapper Sneider Ben Wendel Irv Williams
Entrepreneurs and technologists: Ryan Gruss Peter Koechley Benji Rogers Ralph Simon Gabriel Stulman
Writers, actors, directors, literary people: Peter Coyote Andre DeShields Michael Feldman Laura Garcia Lorca Ari Herstand Clifford Irving Daniel Levitin Ratso Sloman Emma Straub Peter Straub Marc Webb
With Ben Sidran: The election of 2016 The Mobtown Tour Remembering Tommy LiPuma Newport Jazz festival 2015 Welcome to Copenhagen What happened in Paris
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To call Larry “Ratso” Sloman a writer is not at all inaccurate - he is a writer. But he’s so much more. Sloman perfected the art of hanging out and he turned that art into a career. Here he talks about how studying sociology influenced his thinking and gave him a way to be inside the revolution and outside at the same time.
Allen Ginsberg, The Fugs, Abbie Hoffman, Al Goldstein (Screw Magazine), Kinky Friedman, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, John Cale, Rolling Stone Magazine, Howard Stern, Anthony Kiedis, High Times Magazine… they all make prominent appearances in our conversation.
On fashion: “Not to boast but I always had a good sense of unique fashion. I mean I was wearing rabbinical coats way before Gaultier was doing them.”
On writing: “It’s like building a house. You have to have a great foundation. Have a great beginning and great ending. You can get away with a lot of sh$t in the middle.”
On celebrity: “They don’t want someone to put them on a pedestal.”
Visit www.third-story.com or go to www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.
Singer Achinoam Nini (Noa) and guitarist Gil Dor on their nearly 30 year long creative partnership, how popular culture has developed in Israel, how they handle the responsibility of their success in such a politicized and charged atmosphere.
Noa and Gil shared their unique and provocative viewpoint on Israel, describing the “war between the Jewish people and the State of Israel” and explaining in beautiful terms why “language is the ultimate instrument of equal opportunity.”
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Louis Cato is living proof that some people are simply given a gift. Born in Lisbon, Portugal and raised mostly in North Carolina, Louis began playing drums at age 2. By the time he started high school he was a credible drummer, bassist, guitarist, trombone and tuba player. He found his way deeper and deeper into music despite the fact that, as he says, he was “raised in a bubble”. Louis didn’t hear secular music until he was almost 18 years old, but the music he learned in church, and the music he played in the church with his mother gave him a deep foundation for what would quickly become a career as a “super sideman”.
When he did eventually hear the music and the musicians that would inform his professional journey, he quickly understood that he had a place in that world. Soon he was playing with the likes of Marcus Miller, John Scofield, Q-Tip, Snarky Puppy, Jon Batiste, and Bobby McFerrin.
Here he talks about the difference between making music in church and playing secular music, what it means to “learn what you already know” and how surviving a terrible tour-bus accident changed his outlook on life and music.
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Liberty Devitto says he was lucky to be the right age when The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. He learned to play drums by listening to Ringo Starr’s parts and playing along to records. Why the drums? “Because they didn’t make Prozac back then.”
Still, Liberty says he “likes music better than drums”. Maybe that’s why he’s often called a song drummer. In the recording studio, he’s much more likely to be reading the lyrics than the sheet music. Devitto played with Billy Joel for nearly 30 years, played on all the big records and hits, and toured the world countless times. His sound, style and feel are iconic.
Then, at age 50, Liberty was faced with a new reality. Here we talk about the journey from restless funny kid to veteran hit maker, and what makes him a “New York style drummer”. And we tackle the important questions, like do we choose to be musicians because we’re nuts, or does becoming a musician makes us nuts?
The episode features an additional bonus intro conversation with Michael Sackler-Berner, who plays in The Slim Kings with Liberty, and who helped to arrange the interview.
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Guitarist, bandleader, and label owner Jon Madof talks about how music and spirituality are related, what it means to create your own kind of authenticity, the difference between a job and a mission, and whether or not an artist’s work can be separated from their personal behavior.
Jon’s band, Zion80 released their most recent album on Jon’s newly formed Chant Records label, which he launched in late 2017. What does it mean to create a record label in today’s musical universe?
Visit Third-story.com for everything you want to know about the podcast and then when you still need to know more, go to patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.
Singer, songwriter, and illustrator Nadia Ackerman’s journey started in Australia. But early on, she knew she was leaving, and she was pretty sure America was the destination. Although she was already a jazz singer by the age of 20, it wasn’t so much the scene in New York that called to her at first so much as it was the American TV shows she loved, like The Brady Bunch.
But after spending a summer in New York, she knew there was no going home. What she didn’t realize is that she had brought a dark part of her past with her on the journey, and it wasn’t until years later that she came to terms what had sent her running in the first place.
Here she shares her story, through music, becoming a songwriter, then an illustrator, a shop owner and brand developer, and ultimately confronting the abuse that she suffered as a child in Australia (and that she had completely blocked for most of her life, until it was impossible to avoid any longer).
Visit www.third-story.com for everything you want to know about the podcast and then when you still need to know more, go to patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.
In this, the second of a two part Best of 2017 series, fragments of various episodes are strung together in order to tease out the big ideas, the underlying themes, and the tiny obsessions that have been propelling the podcast all year.
Best of 2017 Part 1 looked at community and how community informs creative work. This second part looks at the more interior questions of process, identity and desire. And it explores the idea of the arts as political protest, and the potential disruptive power of creative expression.
Featuring interviews with Peter Straub, Theo Katzman, Jonatha Brooke, Leah Siegel, Ben Sidran & Tommy LiPuma, Laura Garcia Lorca, Alexis Cuadrado, Ryan Keberle, Duchess Trio, Morgan James, John “Scrapper” Sneider, and Ryan Hewitt.
As a special treat, former Third Story interviewee and guest host Michael Thurber joins as co-host.
I think we can all agree that 2017 was an unusual year. It was intense, confusing, emotional. A little less than a year ago, as I decided to resume another “season” of episodes, I was determined to focus on community and on positivity through art and creative expression.
At least, that’s what I told myself, and it’s also what I told you. In the introduction to the first episode of 2017, an interview with jazz club owner and musician Spike Wilner, I said “I want to look at the role of community in supporting individual voices and in contextualizing those voices.”
As the year quickly comes to an end, I decided to look back at a year’s worth of episodes to see if I delivered on that promise, and to figure out what were the big questions and the major themes that emerged. With the benefit of even just a little bit of hindsight, I can see that indeed the theme of community informed the whole journey.
Featuring Spike Wilner, Michael Dorf, Adam Schatz, Dave Jemilo, Ben Wendel, George Colligan, Irv Williams, Mark Davis, Jeff Hamann, Andrew Crocker, Peter Giron, Billy Peterson, Benji Rogers, Ralph Simon, Ryan Gruss, David Garibaldi, Jack Stratton.
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Clifford Irving was a great writer, and a great character. Although he published 20 novels, he was probably best known for a hoax "autobiography" allegedly written as told to Irving by billionaire recluse Howard Hughes. By the time I met Clifford, he was a gentle old man. We talked during the winter of 2016 about his life, his career, and his general world view. Clifford passed away on December 19. This episode was originally posted in 2016. www.third-story.com
Laura García Lorca grew up between two worlds. She spent her childhood in New York City, and to this day she considers herself to be a New Yorker. But America was always meant to be a temporary home for her parents, an exile from the Franco dictatorship that drove her family out of Spain. So when her family moved back to Madrid in 1967, the 13 year old Laura left her cosmopolitan New York life behind with a few LPs tucked in her suitcase and a lifelong identity crisis ahead.
As she says, over time “things become natural even though they aren’t”.
Laura has dedicated much of her adult life to preserving and honoring the legacy of her uncle, the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca. He was one of the first victims of the Spanish Civil War. In the mid 1990s Laura moved to Granada, Federico’s home town, to run La Huerta de San Vicente, a museum dedicated to Lorca’s work, located in his family home in the center of town.
I first met Laura shortly after she moved to Granada to set up the Huerta, and I’ve always found her to be extremely creative and open with her work. Here she talks about her ongoing negotiation between American and Spanish identities, the way exile operates in her life, and what it means to manage a legacy.
Visit Third-story.com for everything you want to know about the podcast and then when you still need to know more, go to patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.
The tradition of American expatriate jazz musicians in Europe goes back a hundred years. What leads musicians to move halfway across the world to a place where they don’t speak the language, hold no currency, and are strangers?
Love, what else?
Both of the guys I’m talking to today, bassist Peter Giron and trumpeter Andrew Crocker, went to France with little or no understanding of what they were getting themselves into other than the desire to be with a woman, and maybe a sense that they didn’t fully fit where they came from.
And both of them have become fully integrated into the French scene. Today they are not so much expatriates as they are immigrants. It’s a distinction that I was not really prepared for when I approached these interviews and it really got me thinking about what it means to be American, and what it means to be an immigrant.
Visit Third-story.com for everything you want to know about the podcast and then when you still need to know more, go to patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast and put your argent where your bouche is.
Ralph Simon is on a relentless quest. That much is certain. His travel itinerary could easily be used in an upper-level high school geography class. Just in the week leading up to our conversation in London, he had been in Amsterdam, Berlin, Vilnius, and New York.
What is he in search of? That's a bit harder to define. The next thing in technology and entertainment. He might say it's something like "the next undiscovered young virtuosic talent" or "the latest in mobile and device innovation". Over the last 20 years, Ralph has become a recognizable face in the tech space, seemingly obsessed with the way mobile technology and content influence popular culture. At his core, Ralph loves a good hit.
His ability to find a hit, to create opportunity and add value to the creative class started long before the word mobile was a noun. Ralph was raised in South Africa during the Apartheid years. As a young man, he was a piano player, a concert promoter, and eventually a manager. He began his career co-founding the Zomba Group of music companies (including record label Jive Records) in the 1970s, building it into the world’s leading independent music and music publishing company.
In the 1990s he started to pivot toward tech, creating the first commercial ringtone company in the Americas, Europe, UK, Australia and Africa, and spurred a new and international mobile entertainment industry. He is often called the father of the ringtone. Today, he has become one of the most influential voices in the global mobile conversation.
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"Art is a byproduct of a life led. Your beautiful, tragic, outrageous life."
Leah Siegel made a commitment to live an artful life, "to be creative, to live inspired." Early on, she found her voice. A powerful, soul-stirring, timeless singing voice that moved people and put her in touch with a "natural empathy". She began to feel that she could feel others' emotions and transmit them through music. And she began writing essays as well.
She moved to New York and quickly became part of the musical fabric of the city, fitting into a variety of musical scenes. Today she has three bands, Firehorse (a vehicle for her songwriting), Leisure Cruise (a pop collaboration with producer Dave Hodge), and Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout, a ferociously funky outfit that was started by the late, great bassist Tim Luntzel.
Tim passed away earlier this year from complications of ALS. He was 44 years old, and his death resonated throughout a large community of musicians and friends who loved him and continue to mourn his loss.
Here Leah tries to process the loss of her close friend, Tim, and explains the impact of his death on her life, and questions what it means to have a good death.
This is one of the most intimate, intense and heartfelt interviews I've ever done.
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Theo Katzman is many things. An only child. The youngest of four. An earnest singer songwriter with a deep love of classic rock and a great turn of phrase. A groove machine in one of the most talked about funk-soul bands around (Vulfpeck). A west coaster. A midwestern cheerleader. A long island native.
Most of his fans likely discovered him through his work with Vulfpeck, singing, playing drums and guitar. But in this conversation he's definitely got some surprises that you might not be expecting. Like his deep ties to a generation of jazz musicians who most of us can only hear about second or third hand.
Here he lays out both a deep and broad set of questions, ideas, experiences. Always with his heart on his sleeve and his mind actively searching. Plus he sings a ridiculously high note in the middle of the interview.
Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon!
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Jack Stratton has a 20th-century heart and a 21st-century mind. As the leader of the band Vulfpeck, he excites, incites and inspires the YouTube generation to get funky. His video channel is a view into his brain, featuring in studio recording sessions, instructional tutorials, mashups of his favorite musicians, and a series of fugue state hallucinations ranging from dancing in public to funky salad making. (#maindishnotasidedish)
In this rare extended conversation recorded in his childhood home in Cleveland, Ohio, Jack talks about growing up playing in a Klezmer band, creating Vulf, and why no one's looking up.
Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon!
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The fourth and final episode in the Settling the Underscore series, exploring music for advertising. Finally, after weeks of talking to composers, producers, and editors, we hear from the musicians who made the glory days of the jingle business what they were. Bassist Will Lee, keyboard player Rob Mounsey, and guitar player Steve Khan. All three were part of a generation of players on the New York session scene in the 1970s and 1980s, sometimes playing on multiple projects every day.
I’ve been eager to share these little mementos, because the deeper I got into the swamp of music for advertising, interviewing composers, music houses, editors, agency folks, the more the conversations centered around business. How is the business set up? How does one get paid? Is it fair?
But of course, we don’t become musicians, or composers, editors, or even advertising executives by aspiring to be in business. We do it because of a creative compulsion. And these musicians are perhaps the purest expression of that intention.
If you’re a very long time listener, you may recognize some of these moments. But some things just bear repeating. Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon!
Imagine walking into a restaurant, ordering a meal, eating the meal, giving the chef a hard time, giving the waiter a little bit of an attitude, and then deciding not to pay for the meal at the end of the night. In many ways, that's how the business of writing music for advertising is set up. Why is that? Who set it up that way? Is it possible the music creators, the composers, and music houses are responsible for giving away too much for too little?
In this third installment in a series of episodes about music in advertising former advertising executive Ken Yagoda, commercial music producer Mike Boris, and editor Maury Loeb layout the business from the advertising agency and editorial point of view, and explain who influences the music that gets chosen, how the business has changed and what the future holds.
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Part of the Settling the Underscore series of episodes that explores music for advertising, this interview with composer Alex Weinstein explores an alternate reality in which the composer works in a direct and collaborative way with the director and the client from the very start of the process!
My mind is blown. My heart is open. Whole world turned upside down. Hope restored.
This bonus episode is brought to you by the patronage of listeners like you. Patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast
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In this, the second of a series that explores music in commercials, we talk to three freelance commercial composers. These are the often invisible, uncredited creators of music for advertising. How does one enter the business of writing music for advertising? Who are the people who thrive in that world? What skills are required? What is the lifestyle of the creative composer? How much rejection can one person stand? What is it like to be a woman in a boys club?
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Behind every television commercial, there’s an entire economy dedicated to selecting, providing, creating and sourcing music. What was once considered the “jingle” business has now become one of the last sources of real income in recorded music. Today, publishers, bands, composers, production libraries, artists and labels are all vying for a piece of the pie.
In this first of a series of episodes dedicated to the world of commercial music, I talk to two composer / entrepreneurs who have each put in their time on both the creative and business end of things. John “Scrapper” Sneider of Storefront Music, and Wendell Hanes of “Volition Sound”.
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Jonatha Brooke has been one of my favorite singer songwriters since the first moment I heard her, 25 years ago. Her haunting, unique sound with the band The Story sent me reeling, and in many ways I’ve still never recovered. Since then, she’s recorded nearly a dozen albums under her own name. The most recent, “Midnight Hallelujah” came out earlier this year.
Can songwriting be taught? What is the future for independent songwriters? How do artists monetize access? How much personal information is too much to share on social media? How has her personal journey changed her sound throughout the years? Why is she so self critical? What is it like to write songs with Katy Perry? It’s all here and MORE!
And this week for the first time, you can support the podcast at www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast - get involved!
On this final installment of the Mob Town Tour series, we visit Detroit, Cleveland and Toledo.
In our first Mob Town episode we talked to Irv Williams, who at 98 years old, is still performing every week in his community. In our second, we talked to Dave Jemilo, the club owner from Chicago who has helped to shape the jazz scene in town. In our third chapter, we looked at jazz as regional music through the lens of Milwaukee. And today, we look at how the arts are the appetite for life, and how life on the road can change people.
From the art deco elegance of Detroit’s Cliff Bells club, to the neighborhood charm of Cleveland’s Nighttown, to the pop up art collective Collingwood Art Center in Toledo (a converted convent), each city has its own unique arts community.
Particularly in Detroit and Toledo, two cities that have been hit hard economically, the arts showed some of the first signs of renaissance. Music and art grow up through the cracks in the concrete, like wild flowers.
In Cleveland we connected with saxophonist Richie Cole, a lifelong road warrior, who at 70 years old is finally tired of traveling. “I’m the luckiest guy I know,” he says.
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On this third installment of the Mob Town Tour series of episodes, we explore the Milwaukee jazz scene. I’ve always been interested in the Milwaukee players and sound, going back to when I was a young musician coming up in Madison.
Here I talk to pianist David Hazeltine, bassist Jeff Hamann and pianist Mark Davis, and my father Ben, about the history of jazz in Milwaukee. We’re also exploring the idea of regional dialects when it comes to jazz, and music in general.
What does it mean to have a bunch of creative people leaning in the same direction, or speaking in the same accent, and what brings that on? Particularly today, is it still possible retain local flavor and speak a regional dialect in a global world? Today all musicians have access to the same information - and that’s all the information. But do they still have access to their scene?
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On week two of the Mob Town Tour series of podcasts, we explore the Green Mill in Chicago. One of the greatest jazz clubs in the world. It’s a kind of jazz unicorn. A joint that walks the line and manages to serve the community at large and the musicians too.
You’d think this would be normal, but it’s not. It’s very rareAnd that is due in no small part to the owner, Dave Jemilo.
In this episode we spend some time talking with musician Bob Rockwell (the saxophone player in the Ben Sidran Quartet) about the Chicago musical legacy, and we also check in with vocalist Kurt Elling and organist Chris Foreman about playing at the Green Mill.
But the real meat in this pod sandwich comes from Jemilo himself, perhaps the finest example of a real Chicagoan that you will ever meet.
Pull up a stool and make yourself comfortable because we’re going to do this one Chicago style. Deep dish, baby.
Third-story.com
The first in a series of road documentaries capturing our journey, some conversations about it and what it means. Notably it features an in depth conversation with Minneapolis based jazz saxophone player Irv Williams, the oldest working jazz musician alive.
Morgan has a soulful voice: big pipes, lots of power, a certain swagger, and incredible technique. But although she has a classic sound, fed by by the likes of Chaka Khan, Nina Simone and Eva Cassidy, she has a modern career.
Her path has been completely unexpected, unpredictable, and in some ways unbelievable.
Here, as she says, we “dig deep into the journey”.
Her new album, Reckless Abandon, came out last month.
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Author Peter Straub started out with dreams of writing poetry and literary fiction. After publishing his first two novels and two books of poetry, he asked himself the question that so many artists find themselves asking: how do I make a living at this? An agent suggested he try writing a “gothic novel”, advice that reoriented him for much of the rest of his career. His natural ability to write novels that as he says, would be appealing to people who love Philip Roth and those who love Stephen King, connected with a huge audience that picked up what he was putting down over the course of many years.
But before he became a writer in earnest, he was a jazz lover. He discovered jazz as a boy growing up in Milwaukee in the late 1950s. He gravitated toward Dave Brubeck & Paul Desmond, Clifford Brown, Bill Evans and Miles.
While the swinging sounds of his favorite soloists followed him from stage to stage and page to page, there was something else that stayed with him as well: the darker moments of his childhood. A car accident that shaped his first years in school and left him alone and isolated in a body cast and a wheelchair, just as he was learning to read. He recovered, but it turned out to be a kind of catalyst for his career as a writer. And there was an even darker secret that he somehow managed to hide from even himself well into adulthood.
In our conversation we explore all of this. The through line of jazz and fiction, improvisation and writing, how the past stays with us into the present, and how watching his Norwegian farmer relatives taught him how to write diligently.
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Trombonist, composer and educator Ryan Keberle has been active on the New York scene for nearly 20 years - which is really saying something considering he’s still a young man by many standards. He’s worked extensively with both the Maria Schneider orchestra and indie singer songwriter Sufjan Stevens, each of whom have influenced his own music enormously. Along the way, he’s worked as a sideman with the likes of Wynton Marsalis, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, and Alicia Keys, Ivan Lins and played in the house band on Saturday Night Live. Ryan’s project, a pianoless ensemble called Catharsis, started in 2004. The group has a new record coming out later this spring called “Find the Common, Shine a Light” which Ryan refers to as a “Response to Growing Political and Social Turmoil, An Urgent Call for Change”.
Here we talk about the legacy of trombone players and arrangers and how the instrument is undergoing a revolution today, what being a side man taught him about listening, and why all improvised music is a form of protest.
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David Garibaldi is one of the funkiest, most influential drummers of his generation.
Those who know, know. They know about his incredible feel, technique, books and instructional videos, interest in afro Caribbean music, and those iconic beats with Tower of Power, the group he joined for the first time nearly 50 years ago.
Those who have had the pleasure to meet him all talk about his positivity, his generosity, his curiosity, and his energy. The moment you meet him, it’s clear that he’s a cultivated person, in the sense that he’s precise, orderly, focussed, almost military in his presentation. But he’s also what musicians might call a good hang. He loves to swap stories, talk about his experience, and laugh.
Those who know, also know that earlier this year while walking to a gig on his home turf, at Yoshi’s in Oakland, California, David and another musician named Marc van Wageningen were actually hit by a train. It was slow moving, but no matter how you look at it, the two of them were hit by a train, and both men survived it.
Here he explains why Oakland is the funky side of the Bay, the work ethic of Tower of Power, the Garibaldi family recipe for happiness and longevity, and why the book is still being written when it comes to his legacy.
Pianist, drummer, trumpeter, educator, blogger, George Colligan stopped by recently when he was visiting Brooklyn. After living in New York for 15 years, he relocated to Portland, Oregon for a teaching position in 2011.
He touched on his long career as a sideman, his ideas about “creativity versus tradition”, jazz education, how standup comedy and jazz are similar, how playing changes and changing diapers are different, how 911 changed the scene in New York, kids these days, playing with Jack DeJohnette, why chops aren’t all that matter, and what flying business class does to improve performance.
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Drummer turned entrepreneur Ryan Gruss on building one of the most creative drum production libraries around (Loop Loft), developing the “Blue Note of drum loops” and the unusual journey to took to get there.
Recording and mix engineer Ryan Hewitt starting paying his dues in the business before he could even cash a check. He grew up surrounded by recording, assisting his father Dave Hewitt on mobile recordings, and eventually entering the business in earnest after college. He worked his way up in the old school way, assisting the best engineers of the day and working in the classic studios of New York.
His journey eventually led him to LA and then to Nashville, where we met to talk about his career, coming up in the tradition, forging new paths, working with new technology, developing his own sound, the value of producers, and when to take a steak of the grill.
Along the way we discuss working with Blink 182, Harry Connick Jr., Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Lumineers, The Avett Brothers, Rick Rubin, John Frusciante, Brad Mehldau, and many more.
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Ben and Leo Sidran remember record producer Tommy LiPuma and play some previously unheard interviews with him. These particular stories talk about a time in his life that hasn’t been talked about too much - his childhood in Cleveland, how the radio was his best friend, and how music saved his life, and how being a barber got him to LA.
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What is music therapy? How is it different from traditional talk therapy? Why is music so useful in accessing parts of the brain that we can’t get to in other ways? Is all music really a form of therapy? How important is it for creative arts therapists to confront their own relationship with the arts? What is the role of money in the client-therapist relationship? Why are we staying up late on a school night to talk about this? Dr. Brian T Harris Creative Arts Therapist, PHD, MT-BC, LCAT and Mechelle Chestnut, MA, MT-BC, LCAT discuss. www.third-story.com
Alexis Cuadrado is on a quest for the ecstatic truth. It either started in Spain when he was a young boy, or it started 20,000 years ago, depending on how you look at it.
The product of 1980s, post-Franco Spain, Alexis was drawn to a life in music despite his parents’ desire for him to do anything he wanted to do “that was normal and not music”. He paid his early dues as a bass player in the early 1990s Barcelona scene where American musicians mingled regularly with Spanish players, and a new form of modern folk music was developing called Nuevo Flamenco.
Eventually he felt the siren song of city and crossed over. He moved to New York nearly two decades ago and got to work. It was only after having logged nearly a dozen years in America that Alexis started thinking about the music he left behind. Through a process he refers to as “decoding and recoding” Flamenco, he sought to integrate the folk music of Spain and the jazz, chamber music, and world elements that he had been exploring.
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For a such busy guy, Adam Schatz manages to watch more television than you might imagine. At least, that’s what he says. Known to some as a music presenter, co-producer of the Winter Jazz Festival in New York (held every January in downtown Manhattan), saxophone player in an array of local bands ranging from free improvised ensembles to Afro Beat and dance music, and leader of the band Landlady. Apparently he also takes pictures.
We met recently just as he was setting off on a cross country tour with Landlady. Their most recent album had come out just as Winter Jazz Fest wrapped up, so he was in the zone and ready to talk about his thoughts on the scene in New York, his process for writing and producing music, and why it’s important to make your grandparents laugh. Along the way he explained to me why I need to leave my house more often.
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Duchess is a three part close harmony vocal group comprised of Amy Cervini, Hilary Gardner and Melissa Stylianou. All three are accomplished jazz singers in their own right, who came together for a one off gig at the 55 Bar in New York’s West Village several years ago, and realized that there was something there worth exploring.
“Three fine singers...join together in swinging harmony to whip up music that traffics in delight…this fresh-voiced triumvirate plays it straight from the heart, leaving any trace of camp or post-modern irony at the door.” — The New Yorker
This conversation explores how each singer’s individual background, how they came to form Duchess, and how they all think about career and craft.
www.third-story.com
Benji Rogers was an ex sound-man, bartender, and broke 34 year old musician who was sleeping on an air mattress in his mother’s spare room, when he had a vision. Eight years later, he’s one of the most innovative, outspoken leaders in the music business.
As he tells it, he has led a “very full life” and he always had an extremely active mind. That’s very clear in this conversation. In 2009 Benji launched Pledge Music, a website that connects artists to fans. What started as a small startup with a few ambitious and curious partners living on different sides of the Atlantic has become a major leader in crowd funding for music. 3,000,000 fans and over 50,000 artists have contributed to Pledge Music campaigns.
In recent years, the list of notable artists has swelled and many chart topping projects have been launched through Pledge.
Benji subsequently launched other businesses. His latest project is Dot Blockchain music.
How did Benji make this incredible transition into the world of music business technology, how does he think about his role in the business, and what lessons did he bring with him from his musical life into the world of startups? Also, what is EBITDA?
www.third-story.com
Saxophonist Ben Wendel grew up in a loud household and he had to fight to be heard. Maybe that’s why it’s so important to him to be heard clearly.
Born in Vancouver and raised in Los Angeles, by the time he left the west coast to attend Eastman School of Music, he had already been informed by a community of players and mentors, along with his cohorts in the Leimert Park scene. He carried the openness of that atmosphere with him to Eastman, then back to Los Angeles, and eventually to New York.
In college he connected with a group of like musicians and they formed Kneebody, a band that proudly defies category, but that lives in what Wendel refers to as “jazz adjacent” territory.
Ben works regularly as both a sideman and a leader. His 2015 video series “The Seasons” featured 12 original duets dedicated to (and featuring) 12 different musicians and released over the course of 12 months.
How does working in a visual medium change the way he thinks about making music? What’s happening in LA? What was it like to work with Snoop Dogg? Is it important to swing? How do you learn style and sound? Can it be taught?
www.third-story.com
When Michael Dorf was a teenager in Milwaukee, he told his parents he was going to Madison for the weekend to visit a camp counselor. Instead he snuck off to New York for a lost weekend with a long distance girlfriend. Although it was 35 years ago, he can recall every detail of the city he discovered on that trip and the music scene at the time.
Little did he know, he would soon become one of the most influential live music producers in New York, He opened the famed Knitting Factory which provided a home for the Downtown Scene in the 1990s, started a record label and production company, reshaped the way Jewish music is presented in the city, created a series annual tribute concerts at Carnegie Hall, and opened City Winery, a chain of restaurants with live music and wine.
How did this happen? To what extent did he mean for it to happen? How has New York changed around him, and how has he changed around the city?
Here Michael takes us through his journey, over a drink at the City Winery.
Pianist Spike Wilner belongs to the tradition of jazz musicians who also own and operate clubs. In his case it came by accident, or rather, a series of accidents.
Spike owns and operates Smalls and Mezzrow, two of the most vibrant, hip and important clubs on the jazz scene. Along with his partner Mitch Borden, Spike has cultivated and curated a community of musicians and fans whose influence reaches around the world. In 2007 they began live streaming concerts from Smalls, and since then they have built an archive of over 12,000 concerts (35 more are added each week) featuring 2000 musicians.
How does Spike book the club? How does one go about getting a gig at one of the most prestigious clubs in the world? How does success change the dynamic of the club? How does thinking of himself as an archivist affect his job? What is the future of the live jazz business? How does he balance a life of playing music with a life of managing it?
As Spike says, “The scene is alive. It’s like electricity. It’s out there. You just have to know how to capture it.”
I woke up on the road in Paris the morning after the American Presidential election and saw the results. Then my father and I had this brief conversation.
Nearly one year to the day after we lived through a terror attack in Paris, we found ourselves back in the same place. Only this time it was not our personal safety that had been placed at risk. It was something that felt somehow much larger. Last year we recorded a podcast conversation describing what it felt like in Paris on the night of November 13th.
At the heart of the conversation this time are the questions: is it immoral under certain conditions to choose to be happy? What is our responsibility as musicians in the face of serious adversity? What do we say to ourselves, the people we love, and the world around us now??
Singer Kurt Elling has been one of the most influential, respected and popular jazz singers on the scene for 2 decades. As the New York Times puts it, “Elling is the standout male vocalist of our time.” The Washington Post agrees: “Since the mid-1990s, no singer in jazz has been as daring, dynamic or interesting as Kurt Elling. With his soaring vocal flights, his edgy lyrics and sense of being on a musical mission, he has come to embody the creative spirit in jazz.”
Here he talks about his process, what motivates him, what Chicago offered him and why he moved to New York.
Singer, songwriter, actor, and independent music writer Ari Herstand on finding an audience.
Ari’s forthcoming book, How to make it in the new music business (coming this December), has the potential to serve as the definitive guide for independent musicians as they navigate the constantly shifting landscape of the business today. Here he discusses why he feels this is a great time in the music business, why labels aren’t the Holy Grail for artists today, the value of managers, and finding 1000 true fans.
He also outlines his personal career, developing his sound and image. And perhaps most interesting of all, he explains acting from the perspective of a musician.
For over 30 years, Michael Feldman hosted the nationally syndicated radio show “Whad’ya Know”. He built the show and his audience from his home base in Madison, Wisconsin.
He loved his audience, and he loved his show. When it was taken off the air earlier this year, he suffered it as a great loss. This week he launches WYK 2.0 – the radio show in podcast form.
Here he talks about a life in radio, why he thrives on performing in front of an audience, and why podcasts aren't radio.
Singer songwriter Pat MacDonald grew up in a working class family in Green Bay, Wisconsin with no thought of going to college, but he came of age just as the students were marching on campuses all across the country.
He was a gifted songwriter early on. By the time he showed up in the post 60s hippy haze of Madison as a 19 year old musician, he was writing world class songs. He refers to himself at that time as a street urchin. But he was street smart, with a sharp tongue and wit to match it.
When Pat, along with his then wife Barbara moved from Madison to Austin, Texas – basically the only place weirder that they could go - they renamed themselves Timbuk3 and put out “The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades”.
That song was one of those classic misunderstandings between an artist and his audience. The chorus implied optimism and hope for the future, but the verses revealed a darker truth.
In recent years he has become an activist and song-festival creator in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. He's also the owner of the Holiday Music Motel.
We spoke recently at his motel about inadvertently writing a hit song, the art of allowing circumstance to rule, the value of mishearing the world around you, the ideal hippy-to-punk balance, and the power of threes.
Engineer and producer Al Schmitt is the embodiment of recorded music in America. He started out as a recording engineer in New York in the late 1940s and has consistently delivered some of the finest music since then. He worked with some of the greatest artists ever to record –Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley – and he’s still making relevant records. He’s won 23 Grammys - the first one in 1962 for a Henry Mancini album and the most recent in 2012 with Paul McCartney.
Here he covers his career in personal, professional and technical terms. From recording big band music and race records in the 1950s to the roll of digital recording in the 21st century, the impact of drugs on the music business, the importance of good personal relationships, and what it feels like to capture magic on tape.
Guitarist Adam Levy is probably best known for his work with Norah Jones. He played with her for years, wrote songs for her, and really transformed from an instrumentalist to a songwriter through his tenure in her band.
But by the time he met Norah, he was already well into a career as a sideman and jazz player in San Francisco. Here he talks about his journey from coast to coast and back again, the process of becoming a songwriter, and how he developed his approach as a "content creator".
We also explored what he calls the benefits of the tyrannical record producer, the challenges of writing about loss and pain, and the importance of finding joy in music.
As Adam says it: "Don't sit around and wait for something to happen. Make something happen."
Writer Clifford Irving has lived a lot of life and had many loves, but he says his “one true love” was the Island of Ibiza, where he made his life for 20 years starting in the early 1950s.
I spent an afternoon with Irving in Mexico talking about his childhood in New York, traveling the world in the 1950s, becoming a writer, Ibiza in the 1960s, and the elaborate hoax (sometimes called the “Hughes Affair”) for which he is perhaps best known.
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Larry Goldings has been one of the most respected, versatile and working jazz pianists and organists around since he moved to New York in 1986 to attend the (then) brand new New School jazz program.
His career has been varied, working with his own trio with drummer Bill Stewart and guitarist Peter Bernstein (a project that started nearly 30 years ago), stints as a sideman with Jon Hendricks, Jim Hall, John Scofield, Maceo Parker, and more recently James Taylor, and session work in LA.
Since moving to California in the early aughts, he has worked as a session player with producers including Larry Klein, Tommy LiPuma and Steve Jordan, and artists including Madeleine Peyroux, John Mayer, and of course James Taylor.
Along the way he's recorded on over 100 albums as a sideman, released nearly 20 as a leader, and contributed to various film and TV projects.
Here he talks about the scene in New York in the 90s, developing his approach to the organ, the difference between New York and LA, and the importance of humor in his life.
www.third-story.com
With nearly 100 people moving to Nashville every day, it has become one of the hot hipster cities in America. Why is this? What does this mean? Does this mean that I should move there too?
On a recent weekend trip to Music City USA, I raised this question repeatedly and I got a variety of answers. Uber drivers, bartenders, music managers and restaurant patrons answer the question: should I move to Nashville.
www.third-story.com
How Minneapolis influenced Prince, and how Prince reframed Minneapolis. Paul Peterson (The Time, The Family), Ricky Peterson (Paisley Park producer) and Monte Moir (The Time) tell of their time in the Prince camp.
For this 50th Episode special, bassist and composer Michael Thurber turns the tables on Third Story host Leo Sidran. They explore Leo's musical career (which includes writing songs for the Steve Miller Band as a teenager, co-producing an Oscar winning song, and surviving in the jingle jungle of commercial music), the Third Story podcast, and finding his own path.
Before director Marc Webb was handed the keys to the Spider Man franchise (he directed both Amazing Spider Man movies), he made the 500 Days Of Summer – a film that wove music and image together in a deeply compelling way.
Before he made his first feature film, he directed nearly 150 music videos.
And before he did any of that, he went to high school with Third Story host Leo Sidran in Madison, Wisconsin. Here he tells the story of how a theater kid from the Midwest went on to make his mark on music videos, and then on the big screen, how he handles the expectations of the job, stays in touch with his creative instincts, and what makes a good director.
As a young girl living in Mexico City, Gabriela Quintero dreamed of living by the beach, playing guitar and taking responsibility for herself.
Many years, albums, concerts and collaborations have happened since then, and her band Rodrigo y Gabriela is one of the most highly regarded projects to emerge out of Mexico in the recent past. Her unique guitar technique has inspired guitarists around the world.
But for Gabriela the biggest success is the fact that she lived by the beach and plays guitar. Here she tells the story, explains the power of fearlessness and the importance of community.
Composer Maria Schneider, Arranger Rob Mounsey, Producer Michael Leonhart, Engineer Al Schmitt, Drummer Bill Stewart, Organist Larry Goldings, Engineer James Farber, and Singer Alex Cuba - all Grammy nominated in 2016 - on the intersection between music and life.
What did it feel like in Paris on the night of Friday, November 13th?
From my point of view, it started with a lot of positive energy. I walked into the Sunset jazz club in the Chatelet area, where I was performing with my dad’s quartet, and said hello to some friends who had come to see the show. It was a good crowd, a full house on a Friday night and people were out to have a good time.
We played the first set and took our first break. One audience member said something to me about an event that had happened in a soccer stadium in Paris. I didn’t think too much about it.
We played the second set. When we finished it was around 11:30pm. My cell phone was starting to fill up with text messages from abroad – something was happening in Paris. I looked at the audience and noticed that everyone was glued to their cell phones, following the news. We still had one more set of music to play.
Finally we saw a news alert that some shootings were happening not far from us. I felt an intense need to get out of there. I felt a strong awareness of my own mortality and a feeling of vulnerability that I don’t think I ever felt before.
Within a short time, we all came to the conclusion that it would be better to end early than to play the third set.
The streets of Paris had already started to clear out. An eerie stillness came over the city, and there was nothing but the sound of sirens in the distance, all night long.
This is my conversation with my father, Ben, about our impressions of that night.
Singer-songwriter Becca Stevens has been making music since she was a little girl, singing in her family band, the Tune Mammals. Since moving to New York city for college over a decade ago, she has been a fixture on the jazz and singer-songwriter scenes, working with her own band as well as with some of the most talented and exciting new jazz artists today, including Esperanza Spalding, Ambrose Akinmusire, Jose James, Billy Childs, Taylor Eigsti, Gretchen Parlato & Rebecca Martin. (Stevens, Parlato and Martin have a band together called Tillery.)
In 2015 Becca released her third solo album, “Perfect Animal”.
We spent a lovely evening at her kitchen table, sharing a bottle of wine and getting to know one another. We talked about how important it is to allow yourself to stay creatively vulnerable and take chances, how to overcome writers block, and the benefits of lack of time when it comes to creative process.
For forty years, Creed Taylor was one of a small handful of jazz record producers and label managers who shaped and defined the sound of jazz recording. Through his work with the Bethlehem, ABC, Impulse!, Verve, and CTI labels, he produced classic albums for countless artists. He introduced us to “The Girl From Ipanema”, “Mister Magic” and showed us “The Blues and the Abstract Truth”.
He produced both hits and critically acclaimed albums, and his sound defined an era. He made the history (for us to study), set the bar (for us to dance on), and paved the road (that many are still on). Needless to say, I was very excited to talk to him!
We met at his apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan and talked about some of his most memorable experiences. One idea that emerged from our conversation is that you can’t always tell who a person is from the music they make, and people are not always who we imagine them to be.
Howard Levy has one of the most inquisitive musical minds of anyone around. He’s an accomplished piano player, and a musical fixture on the Chicago music scene, but the thing that he’s most known for is his astounding harmonica playing and innovative technique.
Here he talks to Leo and Ben Sidran about his journey out of New York, to the city of wide shoulders and open spaces, and how living in Chicago influenced his development, gave him room to think and create, and eventually come to some very special conclusions about the nature of sound, light, rhythm, melody, and maybe even life itself.
Oh, and he also explains how the harmonica works and why the Germans accidentally invented the perfect blues instrument.
This week, Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” begins, replacing David Letterman and starting a new tradition for late night television. Colbert chose young powerhouse pianist Jon Batiste to lead his band, and Batiste in turn selectedMichael Thurber to play bass in the band.
I've talked with both Batiste and Thurber for this podcast in the past, discussing their early musical development and general outlook on music today. In celebration of The Late Show's kickoff, I compiled some highlights from our previous conversations, as well as a conversation I had with Will Lee, the veteran Late Show bassist from Letterman's band.
I also had a chance to catch up with both Will Lee and Michael Thurber this week to find out what they’re thinking about right now. For Will, after playing for over 30 years on the Letterman show, he feels a new sense of freedom in his schedule and career. For Thurber, there’s a sense of excitement and uncertainty about the next phase of his life and the evolution of the new show.
Individually, each conversation offers an enlightening look into the personal journeys all artists take, the difficult choices they must make, and the overall sense of wonder about life that they all share.
Taken as a whole, to me they paint an incredibly inspirational picture of how to approach life and art.
All three are extremely generous and open people, and their openness, candor and generosity point to a larger truth about success in the arts: when you work on your craft, you are really working on yourself. It’s not that art imitates life; art is life.
The Triangle Trade route connected the old world to the new world, sending slaves from west Africa to the Americas, and goods from the Americas back to Europe and even to Africa.
How did it profoundly influence the music and culture of each stop along the way?
Bassist Matt Geraghty and Saxophonist Ze Luis have been traveling to port cities (New Orleans, San Juan, Havana) to find out. It's part of their compelling video series, the 21 Trade Winds project. Both musicians have made names for themselves in the jazz and world music communities, Matt with his personal projects, and Ze as a sideman and producer for notable Brazilian artists like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.
I was struck by the intensity of the experience, and by the general positivity among musicians. I was particularly curious to talk about what effect the experience has had on Matt and Ze’s lives outside of the project.
Listen on and hear how, as Zé says, “It’s all about NOW and it’s all about US…and living in the present for long enough is like an addiction.”
Bassist, singer, songwriter Alan Hampton is often recognized for playing as a sideman with Robert Glasper, Gretchen Parlato, and Andrew Bird. He has released two albums of his own original songs; the most recent. "Origami for the Fire" came out in the fall of 2014. Here he talks about growing up in Texas, moving to New York, and making music that transcends genre.
Stream below or download from iTunes.
Indian vocalist Falu was born Falguni Shah in Mumbai. She was raised with a musical mother who she says started training her in Indian classical singing when she was barely three years old. By the time she graduated from college, she had spent the majority of her life literally living inside the music, and was determined to devote herself to singing.
She has lived in the united states since 2000. In January of this year, the Economic Times of India listed Falu among the 20 most influential Global Indian Women.
I loved this conversation, in part because it illuminated so many questions I have about India, and the relationship that Americans have with Indian music and culture, ranging from the importance of the Beatles in opening up the channel between western pop music and Indian classical music, to the connection between the escapism of Broadway musicals and Bollywood films.
Stream below or download from iTunes.
Singer - songwriter Alex Cuba was born Alexis Puentes in Artemisa, Cuba, but since 1999 he has lived in Canada. He has won two Juno Awards and two Latin Grammys, and his songs have been recorded by many other Latin pop artists.
Growing up, he was immersed in music at a very young age. His father was a respected guitarist and teacher named Valentin Puentes, and as a young boy Alex appeared in his dad’s guitar ensemble on Cuban national TV. He then went on to become an in demand bass player on the Cuban jazz.
He immigrated to Canada in 1999 after marrying a Canadian in Cuba. He and his twin brother Adonis first settled in Victoria, British Columbia, and worked as a duo, the Puentes Brothers, and received a Juno Award nomination. In 2003, Cuba moved to Smithers, British Columbia, the hometown of his wife, Sarah, whose father is a local politician.
I first met Alex nearly a decade ago, when his first solo record “Humo de Tabaco” had just been released. We stayed in touch over the years, and eventually in the fall of 2014, we worked together on the production for his fifth solo record, Healer. Recorded mostly in Brooklyn, the record will be released in the spring of 2015. This interview was recorded late in the evening following a long day of recording, and I think you can feel it in the candor and delirium of the conversation.
Alex is one of the most naturally gifted songwriters I’ve ever come across – his creative output is nonstop and intense. He has a deeply intuitive approach, but at the same time he has a deep formation in traditional Cuban music, and a wide-open pop sensibility.
But the thing that has intrigued me about Alex since I met him is how he reconciles his identity as a contemporary Latin singer songwriter with his adopted home in the wilds of British Columbia.
Stream it here or download it from the iTunes Music Store.
Doug Wamble is a very soulful musician and singer - the blues runs deep in his playing, and he has a direct, funky approach to songwriting and composing.
Doug grew up in the south – he was born in Clarksville, Tennessee and raised in Memphis. Although he grew up with music in his family, he only started to play music in his late teens. But when he decided to become a musician, dove in deep.
After finishing a graduate degree from Northwestern in Chicago, Doug moved to New York city to pursue his dream of becoming the next great jazz guitar player, and specifically, of playing with Wynton Marsalis. He says, “my practice for so long was geared towards how can I play in such a way that Wynton Marsalis will hire me.”
Apparently it worked, because soon after moving to New York, Doug recorded with Wynton, and also started working with Madeline Peyroux, Cassandra Wilson, and Steven Bernstein.
In our conversation, Doug talks about what happened next – he had the good fortune of achieving much of what he hoped to in New York very quickly, only to find that he was still scuffling to pay the rent, and still hustling for the next gig. That’s when his career really began to take shape.
This interview is an honest snapshot of an artist in mid career – Doug is very much in it right now, thinking about his current projects (last year he released two solo records and produced singer Morgan James’ EPIC records debut “Hunter”!) and what the next steps are. But he’s also 20 years into a career that has put him in a lot of rooms, making serious music with serious people, and thinking about the big questions of art, craft and commerce.
Doug says, “If I could pick one thing to inject into music it would be romance…You can’t get down to music that wins grants…I’d rather make a record that someone says, ‘you know I made my baby to that song.’”
www.dougwamble.com
Stream it here or download it from the iTunes Music Store.
Jascha Hoffman is a singer, songwriter, and journalist. He writes regularly for The New York Times (he has a monthly column called “The Scan” that covers science and culture). He’s also a regular contributor to the science journal Nature, and his work has appeared in Scientific American, The Boston Globe, and Business Week.
As a singer-songwriter Jascha has recorded three records. His most recent release, called “The Afterneath” was released independently in late 2014. Several years ago, he wrote a handful of obituaries for the New York Times, mostly of scientists, an experience that led him to compose a collection of songs inspired mostly by Times obituaries. He says “to my surprise the strongest character on the album has turned out to be the 20th century…you could say the album is a sort of technicolor obituary for an American era, one that is slowly fading.”
Here he talks about his writing process, success, failure, disappointment and delight.
Guitarist Steve Khan was born and raised in Los Angeles in a house of songs. His father, lyricist and songwriter Sammy Cahn, made countless contributions to the American songbook. As a young boy, Steve was surrounded by his father’s friends and collaborators; Dean Martin was a regular at the house. But as he describes it, his father’s world was not particularly attractive to him, and he felt a real distance between himself and his father’s world.
Coming of age in LA in the 60’s, Steve was drawn to music for somewhat more social reasons. His friends played in garage bands, and he wanted a piece of the action. His first instrument was the drums, while still in high school he ended up playing in a surf rock band called the Chantays, who had a hit called Pipeline. Oddly enough, it was the guys in the Chantays who turned Khan onto jazz, the music that truly inspired him.
At 19, Steve made the switch to guitar. In 1970 he relocated from the West Coast to New York. He quickly became an integral part of the studio recording and fusion scenes – in the 1970s he recorded on dozens of records, many of them important statements for artists ranging from the Brecker Brothers to Billy Joel, Kenny Loggins to Freddie Hubbard, Ashford and Simpson to Blood Sweat and Tears, Chaka Khan to Steely Dan. During the period when he was most active on the scene, Steve started recording as a solo artist for major labels. He has recorded over 25 albums as a soloist.
One particular project, called Eyewitness, was clearly a watershed moment for him. It featured Khan, bassist Anthony Jackson, drummer Steve Jordan and percussionist Manolo Badrena. This project seems to have opened a door for him creatively, and since the early 80s he has pursued his love of Latin music.
When I started this podcast, sometimes people would ask me what I’m interested in talking about. I would sometimes answer that I’m looking for the intersection between personal experience and art – where life meets craft. Of course, that’s not always what happens in these conversations, and it’s certainly not any kind of mandate. But it does feel appropriate to wrap up the first year of these conversations with Steve Khan, because not only is he a great storyteller full of anecdotes, but he also is deeply aware of how his life and his music overlap.
This was a long conversation and for the first time, I’m including some pieces that didn’t make the final cut available here. So if you’re interested and would like to hear more, specifically about some of the technical aspects of Steve’s playing, there’s another 20 minutes of the conversation available below.
Stream it here or download it from the iTunes Music Store.
Jacob Collier is a singer, multi-instrumentalist, arranger and youtube sensation. He’s primarily known for a series of music videos that he posts online, in which he creates ingenious arrangements of songs by composers ranging from Jerome Kern to Stevie Wonder.
In the videos, he records himself singing elaborate and ingenious harmonies, and films himself singing each of the parts, dressed in a slightly different shirt and hairstyle. There’s something very sweet and almost naïve about the visual presentation – it’s definitely homegrown and handmade, but the music is so sophisticated, so hip, so smart and at the same time, so beautiful, that the combination of the visual presentation and the music delivers a massive punch.
Our conversation feels like a document of a brilliant artist, still early in his development. At only 20 years old, he’s already beyond most musical minds I’ve come across. But he’s also still totally curious, filled with an enormous amount of wonder and enthusiasm for new ideas, musical or otherwise.
Here he talks about his personal approach to learning, music and harmony, what makes a groove work, the role of technology for him and his generation, and handling early cyber-fame.
http://www.jacobcollier.co.uk
Stream it here or download it from the iTunes Music Store.
Gil Goldstein is an arranger, composer, educator, pianist and accordionist. He has arranged projects for artists including Michael Brecker, Esperanza Spalding, Boz Scaggs, Michael Franks, Dave Sanborn, Chris Botti, The Manhattan Transfer, Paul Simon, and Pat Metheny, and produced projects for Bobby McFerrin, Jane Monheit, Mike Stern, Jim Hall and Randy Brecker…and more.
His book, The Jazz Composers Companion, is in its third edition.
Gil’s meeting and subsequent work with Gil Evans had a profound effect on his professional trajectory. Goldstein would become the piano player in Gil Evans band for the final years of Evans career, and when Gil Evans passed away, it was Gil Goldstein who kept the flame alive as the musical director of the band.
This is an extremely deep conversation. The first half is an overview of Gil’s early development and career, and the second half is a treasure trove of information for anyone interested in arranging. Gil explains how he thinks about arranging, specifically the importance of the overtone series, the fibonacci sequence, and ultimately the idea of the “universal musical mind”. He says, “You have an intimate relationship that is not coming from your brain – your choices are so organic that you almost don’t have a choice. Your soul tells you that this is the next phrase…as you do that you’re somehow tuning in to what nature tells us from the overtone series.”
Gil really delivered some of his knowledge, wisdom and musical world view in this conversation, and in sharing that, he shared some of the deeper truth about who is as well.
Stream it here or download it from the iTunes Music Store.
Jon Batiste is one of the most exciting young jazz performers around, so it was no surprise to see him on the Colbert Report earlier this year, leading his band (Stay Human) and the entire audience (including Colbert) in a parade out of the studio and into the streets of New York.
Born in Kenner, Louisiana into a musical family, Jon started performing as a young boy - singing and playing drums with his family band. He describes his childhood as a kind of duality between his normal suburban life, and the exposure to live music that he got with his family band. “It was like: You see the people out there. We’re doing a show so when it’s your turn I want you to give it all you’ve got.”
Jon’s solo project encapsulates his approach. After recording a couple of traditional piano jazz records in the mid 2000s – when he was still only in his late teens and early 20s – he started to look for new ways to reach his audience and connect with people. He says he wanted to put the music “in life” – so you have this experience with music that you’ll never forget.
He refers to this as “Social Music”. He says, “I think that Social Music isn’t a genre. It’s an approach and an evolution of music. This is where we are. It’s not something I constructed. I’m basically articulating what I think everybody feels already.”
This interview was very transformative for me personally. I like Jon Batiste so much, the way he plays, the way he carries himself, his sense of personal style and his overall conception. He’s still in his 20s but he’s so aware of the tradition and his place within it, and so optimistic about the power of music in the world. I just can’t stop thinking about our conversation.
Stream below or download from iTunes.
Adam Dorn, musician, producer and composer, got his start early. Encouraged by his father, legendary record producer Joel Dorn, Adam left his home in Philadelphia when he was still in high school to pursue a life in music. Over the years, he has worked as a session musician on countless records, and as a producer for other artists. His solo project, “Mocean Worker” came about almost by accident, the results of a series of half-serious recording sessions. Since the release of his first album, Home Movies from the Brain Forest, the style has varied from a drum 'n' bass sound to a jazz-oriented dance sound that some call Electro-Swing, incorporating elements of funk, big-band and swing.
Earlier this year, along with his partner Charlie Hunter, Dorn launched his own podcast called “Compared to What”, which features long form casual conversations with musicians and creative friends. Sound familiar?
I suspected we would have a lot in common, and I was eager to sit down with Adam to talk. We agreed to use the conversation as an episode for both podcasts, so in fact the Third Story is a guest on Compared to What, and vice versa. These are exciting times!
This was a truly free flowing conversation - at times it behaved like an interview, and at other times more like a chat over coffee…Strong coffee. We covered a lot of ground, including our personal experiences growing up in the shadow of music business fathers, learning how to play and produce, electronic music, music education, and generally “going after” what you love. It’s an honor and a pleasure to share this episode.
http://comparedtowhatpodcast.com
Stream it here or download it from the iTunes music store.
Janis Siegel was born in Brooklyn and fell in love with the pop music of her day – doo-wop, pop, girl groups and folk music. She began her professional singing career when she was 12 years old, and was already a seasoned professional by the time she finished high school. Her early career sounds like a movie script: singing back up on pop records when she was a teenager, hanging out on the West Village scene in the late 1960’s, dropping out of nursing school… A chance meeting with a singer / New York City taxi driver named Tim Hauser would lead her to join the vocal group The Manhattan Transfer. The group soon became enormously successful, and they still endure today. They’ve recorded over 20 records, won 10 Grammys, collaborated with some of the most exciting artists around, and influenced generations of new singers. Janis has also maintained a solo career since the early 1980’s. Her most recent solo record, “Night Songs” was released in 2013 on Palmetto Records. Here she talks about her career, the importance of following what you’re passionate about, and the mysterious qualities of four-part vocal harmony. www.janissiegel.com
Stream it here or download it from the iTunes music store.
Saxophonist John Eliis grew up in North Carolina, in a family that valued the arts and creativity, but also surrounded by what he refers to as “country people”. He attended high school and part of college at an arts academy in North Carolina before moving to New Orleans, and eventually settling in New York city, about 15 years ago.
He works regularly as a sideman with other jazz artists including Dr. Lonnie Smith, Miguel Zenon, and Darcie James-Argue. He’s the kind of musician who brings real energy and enthusiasm to a project, and also a real sense of his own personal identity
John has also recorded a number of albums under his own name, and with a project he has called “Double Wide”. His most recent solo project, called MOBRO, is a long form narrative collaboration with playwright Andy Bragen, was released earlier this year.
Ellis returns again and again to the importance of where he came from, and how the people he saw growing up influenced his values as an artists. He also discusses the advantage of being isolated when he was learning to play, and the importance self study in jazz. In many ways, it seems that being somewhat isolated and finding jazz very much on his own is what helped him to find his own sound and musical voice.
www.johnaxsonellis.com
Greg Holden is a Brooklyn based British singer-songwriter. He moved to New York in 2009 and quickly became part of the songwriter scene, appearing regularly at Rockwood Music Hall, and opening for larger artists including Ingrid Michaelson and A Great Big World.
Holden's song "Home" was recorded in 2012 by American Idol winner Phillip Phillips and became a huge hit, selling over five million copies and influencing many subsequent songs by other artists.
We talked just as Greg was finishing his new solo album, which is set to be released in March, 2015. Here he talks about growing up in England, working dead end jobs and dreaming of America, coming to New York, dealing with failure, confronting success, and ultimately moving forward again.
www.gregholdenonline.com
Stream it here or download it from the iTunes music store.
Michael Hearst is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and writer. He relocated to Brooklyn from Richmond, Virginia in 2001, and quickly became part of a burgeoning creative scene in Park Slope. Since then, Michael has developed a number of intriguing, inspired, curious, and collaborative projects, often with his band One Ring Zero, and more recently as solo endeavors. He often collaborates with unlikely partners, including novelists, chefs, and…ice cream trucks.
His most recent release, a book/CD combination called “Songs for Unusual Creatures” features music inspired by some of the world’s weirdest animals. Like many of his projects, “Creatures” engages a previous musical masterpiece in a dialogue. In this case he takes his cue from Camille Saint-Saëns’ 19th century musical suite “Carnival of the Animals”.
In our conversation, Hearst speaks candidly about his creative process, his personal path, and his childlike curiosity about almost everything.
Stream it here or download it from the iTunes music store.
André De Shields is an actor, dancer and singer with a career spanning over 40 years. He first came to national attention in 1975 when he was cast in the title roll of The Wiz on Broadway (a roll he helped to develop and create). Since then, he's been a mainstay on the Great White Way, as well as in television, film and regional theater.
Here, André talks about growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s, coming through the 1960s before settling in New York in the early 1970s. But along the way, he delivers an incredible amount of knowledge, wisdom, history and personal philosophy.
We begin the conversation by discussing André's appearance on the front page of the the New York Times Arts section, which happened to have been the day before we sat down to talk.
Stream below or download from iTunes.
James Farber is a Grammy Award winning recording and mixing engineer. He started his career in the mid 1970s working at the legendary Power Station studio in New York (now the site of Avatar Studios). After a stint working with Nile Rogers, he went out on his own as a freelance engineer in the 1980s. Since then, he's been one of the most highly respected and in demand engineers in New York, specializing in jazz and improvised music. Although he's made hundreds of records for notable jazz artists, some of longest standing relationships have been with Joe Lovano, Brad Mehldau, John Scofield, Dave Holland, Joshua Redman, and the late Michael Brecker.
Here he talks about getting started in the record business, the aesthetic and professional choices he makes, the evolution of recording technology, and much more.
Emma Straub is the author of the novels The Vacationers and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, and the short story collection Other People We Married.
Arranger, composer, keyboard player and producer Rob Mounsey has been a steady studio cat since the mid 70s when he was discovered playing in a Boston bar band and invited to move to New York. Since then, he's worked with many of the greatest artists of the time - the list is too long to place here, but suffice it to say that he's worked on a lot of records you've heard.
Here he talks about his personal discovery of music as a young man, his career path (or lack thereof) and his general outlook on music and life. He also considers the impact of Zen Buddhism on his process, as well as visual arts, food, and a general sense of compassion - both musical and personal. www.robmounsey.com
Jesse Harris is a singer, songwriter, guitar player and producer who has been walking the line between jazz and pop since he got started in the mid 90’s.
While he was on a road trip with a friend, he stopped in Denton, Texas to visit some other musician friends of his, and happened to meet Norah Jones, who was still a student. The two became friends and ended up starting a band together after Norah graduated and moved to New York. That single chance encounter in Texas would prove to be an incredibly important one for both Jones and Harris. Jesse contributed five songs to Norah’s debut album “Come Away With Me” and won a Grammy for his song “Don’t Know Why”.
Subsequently, he has released a dozen albums as a solo artist, and produced nearly the same again for other artists. Here he talks about his early musical development, his experience pre and post success, and the state of the business as he sees it today.
Jazz trumpeter Tatum Greenblatt knew what he wanted to do from the first moment he heard the sound of Freddie Hubbard playing on the “Ugetsu” album by Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, when he was just a boy. Here he talks about growing up in a jazz house, his early musical mentors, and his general philosophy about professionalism in music.
I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it a few more times: Tatum is one sharp dressed cat.
Jo Lawry grew up in Australia in a family that valued music and study, and she started playing music very early. By the age of 13 she had already appeared in Les Miserables and was embarking on a musical journey that would ultimately lead her to New York.Although she intended to have a career primarily as a jazz singer, one of the real turning points for her professionally came when she was called to audition for a tour with Sting. Since that call in 2009, she has toured and recorded extensively with him. Here she talks about that journey, how she came to sing with Sting, appear in the Oscar winning documentary “20 Feet From Stardom”, and embrace her own songwriting. There are some real pearls of wisdom in her story. Some of them deal with big picture questions regarding education, professionalism, and desire. And some of them are just simple truths, like the importance of checking your junk mail folder and buying a round of drinks.
Matt Pierson is a record producer, and for many years he was a record executive. He started at Blue Note records, and then was in charge of jazz at Warner Bros for over a decade. That tenure ended in the early 2000s, and subsequently he has emerged as one of the few successful independent jazz record producers around.
As the record business changed in the early 2000s, Matt left his job at a label and ultimately became an independent producer. I was particularly interested to talk with him about how he sees the roll of the producer in the new DIY universe of crowd funding and direct-to-fan marketing. Not surprisingly, he has a lot of ideas about the business today. His personal experience (starting out as a musician, working in record stores, moving to New York and working at Blue Note Records, eventually running Warner Bros jazz, leaving and starting over in a new way) also tells a larger story of what happened to the business of jazz, and in telling it, he delivered some real gems.
This week's episode features bassist, composer, performer, and all around feel good guy Michael Thurber. We had an extremely candid and relaxed conversation about his early musical education, his move to New York, a debilitating injury that forced him to drop out of Juilliard, and ultimately overcoming that obstacle.
Among many other things, Michael is one of the founders of CDZA, a collective that makes experimental music videos. You can see those videos here.
A modern version of Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" - for which Michael wrote the musical score - is currently being staged at The Public Theater in New York.
Daniel Levitin is a neuroscientist, musician and author. His books “This Is Your Brain On Music” and “The World In Six Songs” are both best sellers, and are both must reads for anyone interested in music and the brain. He teaches psychology and behavioral neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal. Dan stopped by on a recent evening to hang out, and ended up recording a spontaneous episode, in which he tells some anecdotes he has collected from his own personal research and musical journey.
Michael Leonhart is a multi instrumentalist, arranger, producer and composer. He's also from a musical family - both of his parents are jazz musicians, as is his sister. However, his interests and his music are diverse and eclectic. Here, he talks about growing up in New York, his early development as a trumpet player - including some of the physical limitations he dealt with along the way, and some of his most notable projects (like co-producing Donald Fagen's most recent album).
Will Lee might be best known as the bass player in the CBS Orchestra on the Late Show with David Letterman. Since moving to New York in the early 70's, Will has been a mainstay on the scene, playing on hundreds of records - many of them hits! Here he talks about growing up in a musical household, moving to New York in his late teens to join the band Dreams, his illustrious recording career, and his journey to overcome addiction.
Throughout it all, he says he "never paid one due" because he always loved the music. Will's latest record "Love, Gratitude and Other Distractions" was released in 2012.
Stream below or download from iTunes.
En liten tjänst av I'm With Friends. Finns även på engelska.