The Third Story with Leo Sidran

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.

Ralph Simon is on a relentless quest. That much is certain. His travel itinerary could easily be used in an upper-level high school geography class. Just in the week leading up to our conversation in London, he had been in Amsterdam, Berlin, Vilnius, and New York. What is he in search of? That's a bit harder to define. The next thing in technology and entertainment. He might say it's something like "the next undiscovered young virtuosic talent" or "the latest in mobile and device innovation". Over the last 20 years, Ralph has become a recognizable face in the tech space, seemingly obsessed with the way mobile technology and content influence popular culture. At his core, Ralph loves a good hit. His ability to find a hit, to create opportunity and add value to the creative class started long before the word mobile was a noun. Ralph was raised in South Africa during the Apartheid years. As a young man, he was a piano player, a concert promoter, and eventually a manager. He began his career co-founding the Zomba Group of music companies (including record label Jive Records) in the 1970s, building it into the world's leading independent music and music publishing company. In the 1990s he started to pivot toward tech, creating the first commercial ringtone company in the Americas, Europe, UK, Australia and Africa, and spurred a new and international mobile entertainment industry. He is often called the father of the ringtone. Today, he has become one of the most influential voices in the global mobile conversation. www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.third-story.com

"Art is a byproduct of a life led. Your beautiful, tragic, outrageous life." Leah Siegel made a commitment to live an artful life, "to be creative, to live inspired." Early on, she found her voice. A powerful, soul-stirring, timeless singing voice that moved people and put her in touch with a "natural empathy". She began to feel that she could feel others' emotions and transmit them through music. And she began writing essays as well. She moved to New York and quickly became part of the musical fabric of the city, fitting into a variety of musical scenes. Today she has three bands, Firehorse (a vehicle for her songwriting), Leisure Cruise (a pop collaboration with producer Dave Hodge), and Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout, a ferociously funky outfit that was started by the late, great bassist Tim Luntzel. Tim passed away earlier this year from complications of ALS. He was 44 years old, and his death resonated throughout a large community of musicians and friends who loved him and continue to mourn his loss. Here Leah tries to process the loss of her close friend, Tim, and explains the impact of his death on her life, and questions what it means to have a good death. This is one of the most intimate, intense and heartfelt interviews I've ever done. www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.third-story.com

Theo Katzman is many things. An only child. The youngest of four. An earnest singer songwriter with a deep love of classic rock and a great turn of phrase. A groove machine in one of the most talked about funk-soul bands around (Vulfpeck). A west coaster. A midwestern cheerleader. A long island native. Most of his fans likely discovered him through his work with Vulfpeck, singing, playing drums and guitar. But in this conversation he's definitely got some surprises that you might not be expecting. Like his deep ties to a generation of jazz musicians who most of us can only hear about second or third hand. Here he lays out both a deep and broad set of questions, ideas, experiences. Always with his heart on his sleeve and his mind actively searching. Plus he sings a ridiculously high note in the middle of the interview. Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.third-story.com

Jack Stratton has a 20th-century heart and a 21st-century mind. As the leader of the band Vulfpeck, he excites, incites and inspires the YouTube generation to get funky. His video channel is a view into his brain, featuring in studio recording sessions, instructional tutorials, mashups of his favorite musicians, and a series of fugue state hallucinations ranging from dancing in public to funky salad making. (#maindishnotasidedish) In this rare extended conversation recorded in his childhood home in Cleveland, Ohio, Jack talks about growing up playing in a Klezmer band, creating Vulf, and why no one's looking up. Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.third-story.com

The fourth and final episode in the Settling the Underscore series, exploring music for advertising. Finally, after weeks of talking to composers, producers, and editors, we hear from the musicians who made the glory days of the jingle business what they were. Bassist Will Lee, keyboard player Rob Mounsey, and guitar player Steve Khan. All three were part of a generation of players on the New York session scene in the 1970s and 1980s, sometimes playing on multiple projects every day. I've been eager to share these little mementos, because the deeper I got into the swamp of music for advertising, interviewing composers, music houses, editors, agency folks, the more the conversations centered around business. How is the business set up? How does one get paid? Is it fair? But of course, we don't become musicians, or composers, editors, or even advertising executives by aspiring to be in business. We do it because of a creative compulsion. And these musicians are perhaps the purest expression of that intention. If you're a very long time listener, you may recognize some of these moments. But some things just bear repeating. Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.third-story.com