153: Michael League

Michael 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.

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