The Third Story with Leo Sidran

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

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

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

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

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! www.third-story.comwww.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://centerhealthyminds.org/

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/