The Third Story with Leo Sidran

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

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