The Third Story with Leo Sidran

Pete Min is a recording engineer, producer and label owner based in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles. His label Colorfield Records features artful collaborative explorations with musicians in unlikely configurations.  Pete’s studio Lucy’s Meat Market has become one of the most in demand spots for recording among a subset of musical artists with LA ties ranging from Ben Wendel and Larry Goldings to Andrew Bird and Feist.  Min started Colorfield Records to pursue a less traditional approach to recording, one that he refers to as “sculpted chaos.” He says, “I want what’s in the subconscious. I don’t want it ironed out. When people are just doing it and it’s coming out, that’s what I’m interested in.” Since launching in 2021 the label has released records by Abe Rounds, Larry Goldings, Mark Guiliana, Sam Gendel, Anthony Wilson, Brad Allen Williams and others.  Here Pete Min talks about his early development on the east coast, how moving to Los Angeles gave him the space to reinvent himself musically, and what it means to make art music. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/studios

Siblings Clyde and Gracie Lawrence have been making music together since they were little kids. They say there was never a moment when it switched from something they did for fun to something they did professionally. It has been a long, steady climb for them. Along with the other members of their band, Lawrence, they have been diligently chipping away at a pop music career, growing more popular every year, making music that straddles the line between pop, R&B and soul, and doing it on their own terms.  Here they talk about the overnight success that was a decade in the making, running their band like a business, taking matters into their own hands, writing songs with “epic messaging and specificity”, and how their experience as an independent touring band led to real meaningful change in the music industry. Listen to the first Third Story Podcast interview with Lawrence from 2020: https://www.third-story.com/listen/lawrence www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story

Born in Bali, Indonesia, Joey Alexander has been performing professionally since 2013 when he was invited by Wynton Marsalis to perform at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Gala. He was 10 years old.   Alexander subsequently moved to the United States with his family and has been touring and recording ever since. Today he is 20 years old and releasing his seventh solo album Continuance.  Here he talks about his journey out of Bali and onto the bandstand, what it was like for him to be thrust into the limelight at such a young age, what he hopes for the future, and his new record. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/studios

Bassist and composer Todd Sickafoose shows up in a lot of places: on stage with singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco or drummer Allison Miller, behind the scenes as a record producer for artists like Noe Venable and Anais Mitchell, orchestrating the music for the Broadway musical Hadestown (which earned him both a Grammy for record production and a Tony for orchestration), and as a bandleader.  His new record Bear Proof is his first album of original music in nearly 15 years. He describes it as “62 minutes of music for eight musicians.” The sound is evocative, melodically rich, rhythmically intense, and features a unique instrumentation of violin, accordion, electric guitar, acoustic piano, clarinet, cornet, bass and drums.  Here he talks about his multifaceted career, Hadestown and the process of putting together a Broadway show, working with Ani DiFranco, Bear Proof, releasing music in today’s world, why bass players make good producers, and how a skin cancer diagnosis influenced his life personally and professionally. www.third-story.com www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

Alan Lightman is a physicist, writer (of novels, essays, memoir and science texts), and social entrepreneur. For this unusual episode, his interview served as inspiration for an original song. Made in collaboration with the Podsongs podcast, this conversation covers his career at the intersection of science and humanities, mortality, success, the cosmos, technology, consciousness, writing fiction, embracing ambiguity, out of body experiences, and the idea that there are no answers to profound questions. Also thanks to everyone who voted for the Signal Awards! We received a Silver Signal award for Music podcast.  www.third-story.comwww.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/studios www.podsongs.com    

Gregory "Hutch" Hutchinson is one of the most highly regarded and highly recorded jazz drummers on the planet. Part of what makes him so special is that he sits at the crossroads of the old school and the new school. He was mentored by old jazz masters like Red Rodney, Ray Brown and Betty Carter. He worked extensively with Joshua Redman and Roy Hargrove, among many other innovative jazz musicians of his generation. He has also collaborated with the likes of Common, Karriem Riggins and James Poyser, all practitioners of a new school rhythm approach, influenced by pioneering producer J Dilla.  Hutch is able to summon the spirit authentically from both sides because both are part of his personal truth. But until now he has not been a recording artist. Now, at 53 years of age, after having played with everybody, he is releasing his debut solo record Da Bang, and it is not necessarily what one might have expected. Rooted in the jazz tradition, the album demonstrates Hutchinson's versatility, dynamism, and imagination. It may be unexpected, but as Hutch will tell you, it’s coming straight from the heart, and the songs are as much a reflection of the way he feels as they are of the way he plays. Here he talks about growing up in Brooklyn, playing drums as a boy, his mentors, the importance of personal style and of friendship among musicians, his next phase (“this is Hutch 3.0”) and his favorite drummers. He casually invokes so many names that talking to Hutch is like a master class in the music, and you can feel how important it is to him to recognize the contributions of those who came before him, and to place his own contribution within that context. VOTE FOR THE THIRD STORY for the 2023 Signal Awards: https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2023/shows/general/music www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story  

John “J.R.” Robinson is one of the most recorded drummers in history (some say he is the most recorded drummer) . He is the drummer on 20 number-one pop songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie and Steve Winwood, and has been the drummer on more than 100 Grammy-winning tracks. He was said to be Quincy Jones’ favorite recording drummer. Here he talks about growing up in Iowa, falling in love with “groove music”, his incredible career, the stories behind some of his most celebrated recordings, what it means to have “contemporary time”, and his new band SRT. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast  

Writer Jake Lamar talks about growing up in the Bronx, his lifelong love affair with writing, moving to France in the 90s, his career as a novelist, playwright, and cultural critic in Paris, and his new book Viper’s Dream, a Jazz Noir crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem between 1936 and 1961. After graduating from Harvard University, Lamar spent six years writing for Time magazine. He has lived in Paris since 1993 and teaches creative writing at Sciences Po.  At age 30, he published a memoir, Bourgeois Blues, in which he evoked his relationship with his father. With it, he won the Lyndhurst Prize. In 1993, inspired by the American writers F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin, he moved to Paris in the 18th arrondissement where he still resides. In 1996 he published The Last Integrationist, a novel of contemporary America, criticizing the pace of racial integration and the omnipresent television spectacle he sees as typical of the United States. He is the author of a memoir, seven novels, numerous essays, reviews and short stories, and a play.  www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/studios

41 years ago this month, Bruce Springsteen released his sixth studio album, Nebraska. He recorded much of the album on one winter night, sitting on the edge of the bed in a rented house in New Jersey, playing acoustic guitar and singing, using a 4 track cassette recorder. The album would go on to have lasting influence, inspire other works of art including movies and books, and other records. And Springsteen would later muse that Nebraska may be his best album. Four decades later the story of Nebraska continues to be an object of fascination. Among those who obsessed over it was the musician and writer Warren Zanes. Zanes joined his brother Dan's band, The Del Fuegos, at age seventeen. The band toured with ZZ Top, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, INXS, and others during the time Warren was in the band, and also famously licensed one of their songs for a commercial which led to some serious criticism at the time. Warren then went on to build a career as an academic, a writer (including the best selling biography of Tom Petty, 2015’s Petty) an educator (he teaches at New York University) a Grammy-nominated documentary producer, and a musical artist who has released multiple albums under his own name, most recently The Collected Warren Zanes. Throughout it all, he held on to his fascination with Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. He recently published the book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. Warren and I spoke recently about his own personal journey, his thoughts on stardom, work, The Beach Boys, family, addiction, songwriting, betrayal, college towns, fatherhood, Taylor Swift, working with machines, The Kinks, drummers, Booker T. and the M.G.s, Garth Brooks, artificial intelligence, Joseph Campbell, and of course, Nebraska. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story

When Prateek Kuhad moved from India to New York to study economics, there would have been almost no predicting that he would soon become one of the most popular singer songwriters in India.  Prateek grew up in Jaipur listening to Indian pop and Bollywood music, along with a handful of international records that his mother had in the house by artists like Harry Belafonte and Cliff Richards. But it was his experience in America, listening to singer songwriters, Americana and new folk artists like Elliott Smith, Fleet Foxes and Laura Marling that influenced his style. Today, Kuhad performs for tens of thousands in India, and his songs have tens of millions of streams - making him one of the most streamed domestic artists in India.  His song “cold/mess” was featured on an episode of Ted Lasso, and was also included on Barack Obama’s favorite music of 2019 list, alongside Lizzo, Lil Nas X and Bruce Springsteen.  Kuhad's intimate heart-on-your-sleeve lyricism - in both English and Hindi - have come to define his style. He’s a specialist in earnest, direct and sweet love songs. For example, he released a new single earlier this summer called “Hopelessly In Love” which accompanied a deluxe version of his 2022 album 'The Way That Lovers Do' with eight new bonus tracks. And while he may be India's most popular singer-songwriter (according to GQ magazine), he has been spending more time in New York where, like so many international celebrities before him, he is able to hide in plain sight. He took the subway out to Brooklyn earlier this summer to talk with me about his journey from economics grad student to superstar songwriter, the differences between writing in English and Hindi, the universality of romance music, and how no one was more surprised by his success than him.