The Third Story with Leo Sidran

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. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.natesmithmusic.com/

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. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://www.danandclaudia.com/  

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. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

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. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.joealtermanmusic.com/  

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. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

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. www.third-story.com www.bensidran.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

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. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast  

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.