The Third Story with Leo Sidran

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

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/thirdstorypodcast

How 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/thirdstorypodcast

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. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://groundupmusic.net/