The Third Story with Leo Sidran

Kenny Werner might try to talk you out of becoming a jazz musician. “Please don’t become a jazz musician just because you think you should. That’s like saying you think you should become a typewriter salesman. Nobody needs you. I would do everything I could to talk them out of it and if they couldn’t be talked out of it then I would say go for it. It’s got to be a thing of extreme love because it doesn’t make any sense otherwise.” For Kenny, playing piano always came easily. Even as a young boy growing up on Long Island, he was an exceptional musician, first recording on television at the age of 11. Although he studied classical piano as a child, he enjoyed playing anything he heard on the radio. He has dedicated his life to playing jazz. Over his extensive career, he’s worked with an exhaustive list of the greats, including long lasting creative relationships with Joe Lovano, Toots Thielemans, Betty Buckley and the Mel Lewis orchestra. Quincy Jones has said of Kenny, “Perfection, 360 degrees of soul and science in one human being. My kind of musician.” As Kenny says it, a driving force in his work is to make “a music conscious of its spiritual intent and essence.” But despite all his natural talent for playing from a young age, the rest of the world was a bit of a mystery and a struggle. He didn’t like to do too much work. He didn’t like to exert too much effort, and he really didn’t like to practice the things that didn’t come easily to him. He liked to watch TV. (In fact, he told me, he still likes to watch TV.) However, he had a natural gift for explaining the kinds of hangups and challenges that many musicians and music students deal with in their own development, and through years of work on himself and as a teacher of others, he devised a technique to overcome those hangups. He says now that maybe this came easily to him precisely because he didn’t worry too much about what people thought of him as a teacher - he was still caught up in being a jazz musician. In 1996 Kenny wrote Effortless Mastery, Liberating The Master Musician Within. The book influenced generations of jazz musicians and continues to be a seminal text in contemporary jazz and creative education. Werner has  since created videos, lectured world-wide and authored many articles on how musicians, artists or even business people can allow their “master creator” within to lift their performance to its highest level, showing us how to be spontaneous, fearless, joyful and disciplined in our work and in our life. Kenny says that since the book was published, he constantly hears people who tell him how the book changed their lives (myself included). Nonetheless, it took him years to come to terms with his path as an educator, and to accept the accolades, and feel good when he received praise for his book and the subsequent journey on which it led him. “Today I get a bigger kick from helping people with whatever wisdom I have than I do from playing. I finally accepted I have a wisdom that can really be useful. As musicians we’re not used to doing something that’s useful.” We met in a midtown New York hotel in December to talk about his life and career, the Effortless Mastery phenomenon, coming to terms with his own wisdom, and his newest record The Space, a solo piano project informed by Werner’s own teachings. 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!

Pianist, composer, educator and recording artist Fred Hersch has been proclaimed “the most arrestingly innovative pianist in jazz over the last decade” by Vanity Fair, “an elegant force of musical invention” by The L.A. Times, and “a living legend” by The New Yorker. He tells me, “I’m 63. I’ve been playing 2, 5 and 1 for 45 years. I don’t know many people that can go to work after 45 years and say that they’re really looking forward to it. As long as I can keep my physical skills intact, I’m gonna keep going until I can’t go anymore.” Keeping his physical skills intact has been a more challenging proposition for Fred than for most. He has been HIV positive since the 1980’s, and at times just staying alive has been a struggle. Nonetheless, his creative output is exhaustive. With more than three-dozen albums to his credit as a leader or co-leader, multiple collaborations with many of the finest jazz musicians in the world, Hersch consistently receives lavish critical praise and numerous international awards for each highly anticipated new release.  In Fred’s case, the intersectionality of life and work has been constant. For example, a decade ago he slipped into a pneumonia related coma for 2 months. When he emerged, after recuperating, he created “My Coma Dreams”, a long form song cycle presented in music, words and video projections about the strangeness of coma-state perceptions versus real events. A documentary film, The Ballad of Fred Hersch (https://vimeo.com/ondemand/fredhersch) was made about that experience, and his memoir Good Things Happen Slowly was published in 2017. In the book, he describes the kind of double life he led as a gay jazz musician before coming out in the early 1990s and taking control of his own personal narrative. So it’s fair to say that both his work and his life have been well documented.  Ostensibly what brought us together was the latest document, the album Trio 97 @ the Village Vanguard, a previously unreleased live recording from the Village Vanguard made over 20 years ago. The record documents his first tenure as a band leader in the legendary New York jazz club that has become his home base (for more than two decades he has performed there for packed houses three times a year and has recorded some of his most acclaimed albums on its historic stage). In fact, he’s playing there this very weekend! However we could easily have talked at any time because there’s always a “next project” with Fred . Even as we discussed Trio 97, he was eager to tell me about yet another record he made at the Vanguard in October, a duo recording with Esperanza Spalding, and an upcoming recording in Germany with Vince Mendoza. The week we spoke (last month), his 2018 release Fred Hersch Trio Live In Europe was nominated for a Grammy (his 13th nomination).  We met on a crisp December afternoon in the Soho apartment that has been his home for four decades and talked about how the scene has changed over the years (“people drink less now”), learning to be gracious (“the audience needs to have their experience independent of how you feel about it”), jazz education (“You can spend $200,000 on a jazz performance degree and not make that much money in the next 10 years”), songwriting (“I try to write tunes”), self reflection (““If I want to be the person I can be, I can’t worry about what people think”) and much more. As he says, “Having a lot of information is like having a big vocabulary. That doesn’t mean you know how to tell a story. I’ve always been interested in story telling.” Listen to hear what he means and hear Fred tell his story. 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!

As a boy in Detroit, Michigan, Rick Margitza’s mother asked him “do you want to hear a recording of your grandfather playing cello”? Then she put on the Charlie Parker with Strings album. After hearing Charlie Parker play, Rick knew that he wanted to be a jazz saxophone player. Margitza’s paternal grandfather, a Hungarian Gypsy violinist, taught him to play the violin at the age of four. His father also played violin with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (and recorded on classic Motown sessions). So it was almost inevitable that Rick would be a musician, and he was drawn to jazz. He loved the sound of what he calls “the white Jewish tenor player” school of playing: Michael Brecker, Steve Grossman, Dave Liebman, Bob Berg and (apparent honorary Jew) Jerry Bergonzi. Rick bounced around from music school to music school in his 20s, and ended up in New Orleans playing on the local scene and finishing school. He was thinking about moving to New York and wondering if it was already too late for that. His childhood friend and future record producer Matt Pierson (see Episode 5) encouraged Rick to make a demo tape before making the move, Rick obliged. That demo tape ended up moving a lot of history. Pierson played the tape for the president of Blue Note records, Bruce Lundvall, who signed Rick to a contract based on what he heard on the tape. Pierson also played the tape for Tommy LiPuma (see Episodes 33 and 69) who in turn played it for Miles Davis over the phone, and Miles hired Margitza on the spot based on what he heard on the tape. What was on that tape? Here Rick tells the story of what happened next, what it was like to be thrust into the jazz limelight overnight, working with Miles, moving to France, dividing the octave and choosing the right note. 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!

Joe Dart was on his way to Boston. He had enrolled in the Berklee College of music - a somewhat inevitable step for the young, very talented bass player from rural Michigan who loved funk and soul music. Although he had already been performing regularly in and around his home of Harbor Spriannngs, Michigan, he knew he would have to get out of town to achieve his goal of being a touring and recording bass player. But he didn’t go. Something kept him in Michigan and at the last minute he changed his plans and decided to move to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan instead. Any guesses what that one thing might have been? You’re probably right. Anyway, it didn’t take him long to meet the musicians who would change his life and trajectory. Within weeks of moving to Ann Arbor, a jam session with Jack Stratton reoriented both of them. Along with Theo Katzman, Woody Goss, and a continually expanding collection of regular players (including Cory Wong, Antwaun Stanley and Joey Dosik) and special guests (like drummers James Gadson, Bernard Purdie, Michael Bland, and Louis Cole) Joe Dart became both the backbone and the bottom end of Vulfpeck. Through their youtube videos, Vulfpeck has become the subject of enormous fanaticism and enthusiasm for a new generation of funk loving hipsters. And Joe Dart has inspired a special kind of fervor from fans, fed in part by the band’s own Jack Stratton who seems committed to making sure Joe Dart becomes a household name among the internet connected backbeat illuminati. Joe and I got together last month in an Airbnb in Paris to talk about how “the way you groove has power”, why the magic of Vulfpeck is in the freshness of the music, what it means to “play every note like my life depends on it”, if his vigorous head bobbing influences his groove, and where he learned to play bass “like a drummer”. 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!

John Fields was a normal kid growing up in a normal family in the Boston suburbs, in prime position to take over his father’s hosiery business. Instead, he moved to Minneapolis straight after high school to hang out with his uncle Steve Greenberg, whose hit “Funkytown” had been a huge international success. Fields quickly became his uncle’s right hand man, learning the ropes as an engineer, producer, and bass spanker. His band Greazy Meal was a mainstay on the Minneapolis scene in the 1990s, and his early record production work earned him a reputation as an enthusiastic, creative and very fast collaborator. Eventually he moved to Los Angeles where he worked with some of the biggest names in pop, r&b and rock music, including Pink, Jonas Brothers, Switchfoot, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, Semisonic, Selena Gomez, and a whole lot more. In 2016 he moved his operation back to Minneapolis and set up shop in the legendary Creation Audio studios building, where he had interned years earlier as a teenager. John continues to do work from the west coast, but more and more he’s celebrating and elevating the music from his adopted hometown. Lately, for example, he’s been working with Cory Wong, the guitarist for Vulfpeck. We got together in his studio earlier this year to talk about working fast, the importance of the second verse, why the artist is often right, how he finds work, what it means to write pop music today, why he has such big downbeats and if the first thought really is the best thought. John says, “I just try to be stoked.” As you will hear, he definitely succeeds. 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!

John Leventhal thinks his initial, preanalytical ideas are the good ones. John Leventhal realized that there “really is no daddy, there isn’t anybody who really has it all together, knows all the answers. You’re kind of in the wilderness. You have to take a chance to fail.” John Leventhal isn’t sure how to measure success. John Leventhal is a self invented guy. Despite his five Grammys, his critically and commercially successful work as musician, producer, songwriter, and recording engineer who has produced albums for William Bell, Michelle Branch, Rosanne Cash, Marc Cohn, Shawn Colvin, Rodney Crowell, Joan Osborne, Loudon Wainwright III, and many others, he’s still wondering if he’s made it. As a musician he has worked with these artists as well as Jackson Browne, Willie Nelson, Bruce Hornsby, Elvis Costello, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Haden, David Crosby, Levon Helm, Edie Brickell, Paul Simon, Patty Larkin, Susan Tedeschi, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Steve Forbert, Kelly Willis, Donald Fagen, and Johnny Cash. As a songwriter he has had over 150 songs recorded by various artists, including Rosanne Cash, Shawn Colvin, Marc Cohn, Michelle Branch, The Tedeschi Trucks Band, Vince Gill, George Strait, Shelby Lynne, Patty Loveless, Joe Cocker and William Bell. We met over the summer met in his Manhattan studio, which occupies one floor of the home he shares with his wife, singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash. We talked about his process in the studio, how he developed his own personal approach to making music, and why even the simplest questions can have complicated answers. 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!

Mary Sweeney needs some air. “There has to be a flow of fast and slow, and a pause to allow the listener or the spectator to digest and to project their own thoughts.” She thinks I should leave more space in my podcasts, to let it breathe. She tells me this as we sit in the screened in porch behind her summer house in Madison, Wisconsin. As she tells me this, cicadas chirp loudly, as if to underscore her point: “Today’s episode will not be edited! You will not remove us from this moment!”  Mary Sweeney should know. She spent much of her career as a film editor, producer and writer collaborating with David Lynch. Beginning in 1985 with Blue Velvet, and continuing through the 2006 film Inland Empire, her editing credits include Blue Velvet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990), Twin Peaks (1991), Industrial Symphony (1991), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), On the Air (1992), Hotel Room(1993), Lost Highway (1996), The Straight Story (2000), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Baraboo (2009). The relationship with Lynch was productive, fruitful, and nuanced (the two were partners in work and in life for much of that time) and they have a son together.  She is currently working as a consulting producer and writer on Matthew Weiner’s series for Amazon, The Romanoffs, and is the Dino and Martha De Laurentiis Endowed Professor of film at USC, where she teaches Graduate Screenwriting Thesis and “Dreams, The Brain and Storytelling.” Before we had this conversation, Mary cheekily emailed me a list of topics that she would be happy to discuss. They included editing, producing, screenwriting, parenting, Paris, Cairo, pie baking, and the Catholic Church. Guess what we talked about? All of it.  And we also talked at length about living and working in an intensely creative partnership with David Lynch for all those years (both personally and professionally), collaborating with one of the most innovative voices in film, and what’s so great about coming from a big family. Visit the Patreon Page for an extra 20 minutes of juicy conversation that didn’t make it into this edit. 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!

I first reached out to Nate Chinen to do an interview in 2015. At that time, I knew him as the jazz critic for the New York Times and a columnist for Jazz Times, and I also loved the book he wrote with George Wein Myself Among Others. (I interviewed George a few years ago as well.) In the intervening years, Nate left the New York Times, became the Director of Editorial Content at WBGO (one of the most important jazz radio stations in the country) and wrote the book Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century, which was published last week. Reading Playing Changes was a revelation for me. In it, Nate synthesizes many of the tendencies in and arguments around jazz over the last 20 years, and presents a case for contemporary jazz today. He also traces the narrative back to the 1970s, a time when jazz was in transition, and stitches together the disparate threads of the music that have emerged since then into a cohesive fabric. Chinen is obviously a fan of the music, but it’s clear in his book that he’s also a fan of musicians as well.  I spent an afternoon with him in his home in Beacon, New York, talking about Playing Changes, jazz criticism, displaced backbeats, the importance of live music, and the trouble with trying to define what music should and shouldn’t be. This is a conversation I’ve waited a long time to have and it was absolutely worth the wait. Visit the Patreon Page for an extra 20 minutes of juicy conversation that didn’t make it into this edit. 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!

Sociologist and musician Howard S. Becker is 90 years old. While he is best known for his contributions to the sociology of deviance, sociology of art and sociology of music (his book Oustiders from 1963 was one of the first and most influential books on deviance), he also spent many of his early years playing piano in taverns, saloons and even strip clubs. As a young man in Chicago, while attending the University of Chicago in the 1940s he also studied piano with the legendary jazz pianist and teacher Lennie Tristano, and performed with local players of the day including Lee Konitz and Bill Russo. In 2009 Becker published “Do You Know…?” The Jazz Repertoire in Action, a book he co-wrote with his friend, colleague and fellow academic-musician Robert R. Faulkner. In it, the two discuss and describe how songs are passed on from person to person and how working musicians’ repertoire survives and evolves. I spoke with Howard in his apartment in Paris (he spends part of every year in Europe, where he has become something of an academic celebrity in recent years) last November. We talked about how in his day live music was a function of geography, strong union leadership, and cheap beer, and why jazz is like philosophy (the only money is teaching). This conversation is a companion to the Mobtown series of episodes from 2017, and it features an introductory conversation between my and my father, Ben. 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!

Madison, Wisconsin in the 1960s was one of the most radicalized university campuses in the country. It was a center for the kind of counter culture that has come to feel like a cliché today. There was plenty of sex, drugs, and rock & roll, sure. But there was also political activism, civil rights, environmentalism. Because of the University of Wisconsin, thousands of young people move through Madison and take the values of the city with them when they leave. Earlier this summer, The Madison Reunion brought over one thousand people with ties to Madison in the 60s back together for three days of meetings, discussions and panels, held at the University of Wisconsin's Memorial Union. The event was billed as “a party with a purpose” and had the feeling of both a nostalgic walk down memory lane and a reignition for a generation of activists who were referred to by journalist Jeff Greenfield as “the long ago young”. Although I wasn’t in Madison in the 1960s, it is fair to say that I’m a byproduct of that time. My parents met there in the mid 60s and I grew up in Madison in the shadow of the revolution, part of a generation that was raised to feel that we had just missed something major. So at the Madison Reunion, I moderated a panel of three other Madison natives, all of whom left Madison after high school, to talk about the impact of the city, the values and the Madison-state-of-mind on their lives, careers and overall point of view. Ben Wikler (Washington director of MoveOn.Org), Anat Shenker-Osorio (writer, researcher and communications specialist) and Dan Kaufman (musician and journalist) joined me in conversation. While the panel began with a simple overview of what it meant to come up in the 80s and 90s in Madison, it quickly moved into more contemporary questions of working with the media today and what the legacy of the 60s might be in a modern context. By the end of the conversation, I was slightly overwhelmed by how much work there is to do in order to stay ahead of (or just in touch with) the way political and cultural messaging is manipulated today. But I was also highly encouraged and inspired just hearing the three panelists talk. As long as Ben, Anat and Dan are out here fighting the good fight, making sure the right messages are being communicated, and telling the important stories, there is hope. 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!