The Third Story with Leo Sidran

Singer Achinoam Nini (Noa) and guitarist Gil Dor on their nearly 30 year long creative partnership, how popular culture has developed in Israel, how they handle the responsibility of their success in such a politicized and charged atmosphere. Noa and Gil shared their unique and provocative viewpoint on Israel, describing the “war between the Jewish people and the State of Israel” and explaining in beautiful terms why “language is the ultimate instrument of equal opportunity.” Visit www.third-story.com or go to www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.

Louis Cato is living proof that some people are simply given a gift. Born in Lisbon, Portugal and raised mostly in North Carolina, Louis began playing drums at age 2. By the time he started high school he was a credible drummer, bassist, guitarist, trombone and tuba player. He found his way deeper and deeper into music despite the fact that, as he says, he was “raised in a bubble”. Louis didn’t hear secular music until he was almost 18 years old, but the music he learned in church, and the music he played in the church with his mother gave him a deep foundation for what would quickly become a career as a “super sideman”. When he did eventually hear the music and the musicians that would inform his professional journey, he quickly understood that he had a place in that world. Soon he was playing with the likes of Marcus Miller, John Scofield, Q-Tip, Snarky Puppy, Jon Batiste, and Bobby McFerrin. Here he talks about the difference between making music in church and playing secular music, what it means to “learn what you already know” and how surviving a terrible tour-bus accident changed his outlook on life and music. Visit www.third-story.com or go to www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.

Liberty Devitto says he was lucky to be the right age when The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. He learned to play drums by listening to Ringo Starr’s parts and playing along to records. Why the drums? “Because they didn’t make Prozac back then.” Still, Liberty says he “likes music better than drums”. Maybe that’s why he’s often called a song drummer. In the recording studio, he’s much more likely to be reading the lyrics than the sheet music. Devitto played with Billy Joel for nearly 30 years, played on all the big records and hits, and toured the world countless times. His sound, style and feel are iconic. Then, at age 50, Liberty was faced with a new reality. Here we talk about the journey from restless funny kid to veteran hit maker, and what makes him a “New York style drummer”. And we tackle the important questions, like do we choose to be musicians because we’re nuts, or does becoming a musician makes us nuts? The episode features an additional bonus intro conversation with Michael Sackler-Berner, who plays in The Slim Kings with Liberty, and who helped to arrange the interview. Visit www.third-story.com or go to www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.

Guitarist, bandleader, and label owner Jon Madof talks about how music and spirituality are related, what it means to create your own kind of authenticity, the difference between a job and a mission, and whether or not an artist’s work can be separated from their personal behavior. Jon’s band, Zion80 released their most recent album on Jon’s newly formed Chant Records label, which he launched in late 2017. What does it mean to create a record label in today’s musical universe? Visit Third-story.com for everything you want to know about the podcast and then when you still need to know more, go to patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.

Singer, songwriter, and illustrator Nadia Ackerman’s journey started in Australia. But early on, she knew she was leaving, and she was pretty sure America was the destination. Although she was already a jazz singer by the age of 20, it wasn’t so much the scene in New York that called to her at first so much as it was the American TV shows she loved, like The Brady Bunch. But after spending a summer in New York, she knew there was no going home. What she didn’t realize is that she had brought a dark part of her past with her on the journey, and it wasn’t until years later that she came to terms what had sent her running in the first place. Here she shares her story, through music, becoming a songwriter, then an illustrator, a shop owner and brand developer, and ultimately confronting the abuse that she suffered as a child in Australia (and that she had completely blocked for most of her life, until it was impossible to avoid any longer). Visit www.third-story.com for everything you want to know about the podcast and then when you still need to know more, go to patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.

In this, the second of a two part Best of 2017 series, fragments of various episodes are strung together in order to tease out the big ideas, the underlying themes, and the tiny obsessions that have been propelling the podcast all year. Best of 2017 Part 1 looked at community and how community informs creative work. This second part looks at the more interior questions of process, identity and desire. And it explores the idea of the arts as political protest, and the potential disruptive power of creative expression. Featuring interviews with Peter Straub, Theo Katzman, Jonatha Brooke, Leah Siegel, Ben Sidran & Tommy LiPuma, Laura Garcia Lorca, Alexis Cuadrado, Ryan Keberle, Duchess Trio, Morgan James, John “Scrapper” Sneider, and Ryan Hewitt. As a special treat, former Third Story interviewee and guest host Michael Thurber joins as co-host. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

I think we can all agree that 2017 was an unusual year. It was intense, confusing, emotional. A little less than a year ago, as I decided to resume another “season” of episodes, I was determined to focus on community and on positivity through art and creative expression. At least, that’s what I told myself, and it’s also what I told you. In the introduction to the first episode of 2017, an interview with jazz club owner and musician Spike Wilner, I said  “I want to look at the role of community in supporting individual voices and in contextualizing those voices.” As the year quickly comes to an end, I decided to look back at a year’s worth of episodes to see if I delivered on that promise, and to figure out what were the big questions and the major themes that emerged. With the benefit of even just a little bit of hindsight, I can see that indeed the theme of community informed the whole journey. Featuring Spike Wilner, Michael Dorf, Adam Schatz, Dave Jemilo, Ben Wendel, George Colligan, Irv Williams, Mark Davis, Jeff Hamann, Andrew Crocker, Peter Giron, Billy Peterson, Benji Rogers, Ralph Simon, Ryan Gruss, David Garibaldi, Jack Stratton.  www.third-story.com

Clifford Irving was a great writer, and a great character. Although he published 20 novels, he was probably best known for a hoax "autobiography" allegedly written as told to Irving by billionaire recluse Howard Hughes. By the time I met Clifford, he was a gentle old man. We talked during the winter of 2016 about his life, his career, and his general world view. Clifford passed away on December 19. This episode was originally posted in 2016.  www.third-story.com

Laura García Lorca grew up between two worlds. She spent her childhood in New York City, and to this day she considers herself to be a New Yorker. But America was always meant to be a temporary home for her parents, an exile from the Franco dictatorship that drove her family out of Spain. So when her family moved back to Madrid in 1967, the 13 year old Laura left her cosmopolitan New York life behind with a few LPs tucked in her suitcase and a lifelong identity crisis ahead. As she says, over time “things become natural even though they aren’t”. Laura has dedicated much of her adult life to preserving and honoring the legacy of her uncle, the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca. He was one of the first victims of the Spanish Civil War. In the mid 1990s Laura moved to Granada, Federico’s home town, to run La Huerta de San Vicente, a museum dedicated to Lorca’s work, located in his family home in the center of town. I first met Laura shortly after she moved to Granada to set up the Huerta, and I’ve always found her to be extremely creative and open with her work. Here she talks about her ongoing negotiation between American and Spanish identities, the way exile operates in her life, and what it means to manage a legacy. Visit Third-story.com for everything you want to know about the podcast and then when you still need to know more, go to patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.

The tradition of American expatriate jazz musicians in Europe goes back a hundred years. What leads musicians to move halfway across the world to a place where they don’t speak the language, hold no currency, and are strangers? Love, what else? Both of the guys I’m talking to today, bassist Peter Giron and trumpeter Andrew Crocker, went to France with little or no understanding of what they were getting themselves into other than the desire to be with a woman, and maybe a sense that they didn’t fully fit where they came from. And both of them have become fully integrated into the French scene. Today they are not so much expatriates as they are immigrants. It’s a distinction that I was not really prepared for when I approached these interviews and it really got me thinking about what it means to be American, and what it means to be an immigrant.   Visit Third-story.com for everything you want to know about the podcast and then when you still need to know more, go to patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast and put your argent where your bouche is.