The Third Story with Leo Sidran

This week on the Third Story Podcast I’m turning the tables on myself and sharing the stories and the creative process behind my new record What’s Trending. Featuring excerpts of past episodes with artists who collaborated on the record and inspired the songs, including Boz Scaggs, Louis Cato, Janis Siegel, Michael Leonhart, Peter Coyote and more. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/studios www.leosidran.com

While almost everyone is sharing the most polished and curated versions of themselves, Braxton Cook is asking “Who Are You When No One Is Watching?” Actually, as it turns out, it’s a question he’s asking of himself, and in a somewhat postmodern and ironic twist, he’s doing it quite publicly on his new record, called (surprise!) Who Are You When No One Is Watching? which comes out February 24 on Nettwerk Records. Braxton Cook is an artist of his time - that is, he’s hard to define, hard to categorize, highly educated, determined to share his most authentic self and in a constant state of searching.  He’s a Juilliard trained jazz saxophone player who has worked with jazz artists Christian Scott, Christian McBride Big Band, Jon Batiste and Marquis Hill as well as more mainstream artists like Solange Knowles and Tom Misch. He’s also a deeply sensitive solo artist, singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist who is committed to keeping the saxophone alive in soul music, speaking his own personal truth in his songs, and bridging the gap between jazz, soul, and alternative R&B. In other words, he’s a millennial jazz artist. No wonder he opened his 2017 album Somewhere In Between with the song “Millenial Music”. We spoke recently about his trajectory, starting out on the local scene in Washington D.C. as a high school and college student (he spent two years at Georgetown University studying English with a concentration in African American Studies and playing gigs in town before transferring to Juilliard to pursue his jazz education), his evolution from soloist to singer, sideman to leader, and child to parent. We also talked about the value of nostalgia and deep emotional connection in his writing, intentionality in raising children, his determination to make “music with impact”, where he cut his teeth and if that has anything to do with his lifelong fascination with dentistry. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/studios www.braxtoncook.com  

Music is not only a form of expression, it’s also a way of traveling. It’s astounding how many people’s lives have been completely transformed by their relationship with music - and sometimes the simplest experiences we have as kids can profoundly alter the course of everything that follows.  A few seemingly unrelated events during Andy Narell’s early childhood in New York helped to lay out a path for him to follow, and he’s still following it today. They included Joseph McCarthy’s “Red Scare”, a rise in gang violence in Harlem in the 1960s, and the innovations of a musical instrument maker from Trinidad named Ellie Mannette. Andy Narell is known as one of the most celebrated - if not the most celebrated steel - drummers in the world. Throughout a five plus decade career, he has contributed to both the development of steel drum music, and to the development of the drums themselves.  Andy has appeared on hundreds of records and film scores, he’s been the subject of two documentary films himself, made nearly 20 records as a leader or co-leader. He’s an educator, an advocate, and an ambassador for the music, culture and traditions of Trinidad where steel drums - or pans as they’re called - were born. If you’ve ever heard the sound of steel drums on a record or a movie, chances are you’ve heard Andy Narell.  His eventual partnership and friendship with Ellie Mannette, the so-called “father of the steel drum,” lasted until Mannette’s death in 2018.  Andy’s contribution to steel drums is immeasurable, his love of the music of Trinidad is deep, and his friendship with Ellie Mannette seems to have been one of the most important relationships of his life. But beyond all that, beyond all the technical, musical, or even historical details, Andy is an example of someone whose devotion and love for a thing took him around the world and the steel drum was his mode of transportation.  Here Andy shares his own personal story and also the story of the steel pan itself, the trajectory of calypso music from Trinidad to the UK and the US and then back to Trinidad. And he explains why he believes that “music is a powerful tool, and it’s revolutionary.” www.third-story.com www.wbgo.org/studios www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.andynarell.com

Will Page was working for the UK Government Economic Service in the income tax division, and moonlighting as a music writer for Straight No Chaser magazine when his life changed almost overnight. Pretty soon he was living in London, and helping to shape the new music business and the economics of music streaming.   Page eventually went on to work at Spotify where he was the chief economist. Will’s work is regularly featured in Billboard, The Economist and the Financial Times. His book Tarzan Economics was published in paperback this month, and retitled Pivot: Eight Principles for Transforming your Business in a Time of disruption. Here he discusses “how music responds to suppression,” the need to “press pause on nostalgia,” what qualifies as “content,” and the idea that “the internet can scale just about everything but one thing it can’t scale is intimacy. [And jazz] is an intimate form.” www.third-story.com www.wbgo.org/studios www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.tarzaneconomics.com  

Rachael & Vilray are a perfect example of the idea that sometimes what that once seemed old fashioned can actually resonate as new again. Their new record I Love A Love Song! comes out this week.  Rachael Price is best known as the singer in the band Lake Street Dive. She and Vilray met at college two decades ago. But it would take them years before they discovered their mutual love of the American songbook standards from the 1930s and 40s, and decided to create a project to showcase Vilray’s special gift of channeling classic songwriters in his original music.  We spoke recently about how this project came about, how they approach making original work in the mold of a musical tradition that is nearly a hundred years old,the art and craft of classic songwriting and getting the words right. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story

A collection of Art of the Story pieces for WBGO News by Leo Sidran / The Third Story Podcast from 2022, including coverage of the Montreal and Umbria jazz festivals (featuring Dave King, Julian Lage, Samara Joy, Matt Pierson, Terence Higgins, Gregory Porter, Kurt Elling, Dave Koz and more) as well as short profiles on Lau Noah, Michael Thurber, Tomasz Stanko, Tyshawn Sorey, Jesse Harris, Jorge Drexler, Christian McBride and Larry Goldings.  www.third-story.comwww.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story

Every year, The Third Story collects more interviews and conversations than we are able to publish as full episodes, and 2022 was certainly no exception.  Finally, we have found a solution: THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY, 2022 HOLIDAY EDITION. Conversations with saxophonist Bill McHenry, keyboard player/producer Didi Gutman, pianist Jon Dryden, pianist Dan Tepfer, trumpet player/graphic designer Jamie Breiwick, and pianist Randy Ingram with singer Aubrey Johnson, collected around the world this year. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story  

What's so funny about Larry Goldings?  He has been such a major musical force for so long, it’s hard to remember a time when he was not around. He’s one of the most accomplished, respected and admired hammond organ players alive and much of his career has been devoted to that instrument.  The trio he formed in the early 90s with guitarist Peter Bernstein and Bill Stewart has been one of the pillars of his musical life for over 30 years, and the three have remained United for decades. Their most recent record, Perpetual Pendulum, was released earlier this year. The recording session for the album marked the 30th anniversary of the release of their first record together - the 1991 album The Intimacy of the Blues. Larry eventually moved to the West Coast and carved out a reputation as not only a jazz musician but also a highly sensitive session player, sideman, collaborator, songwriter, and film composer.  Goldings is also no stranger to social media: For years he has posted clips of himself - not only musical, but also what you might describe as schtick or comedy. His alter ego, Hans Groiner, for example, claims to be an Austrian accordion player, pianist, educator and Thelonious Monk specialist who has  improved Monk's music by making it "more relaxing, and less offensive to the ear." In recent years he’s also become a regular fixture with Scary Pockets, the LA based YouTube famous funk collective. Larry Goldings and Scary Pockets even have their own side project called Scary Goldings, they’ve recorded a bunch of albums and videos together, and over time have brought in Larry’s longtime friend John Scofield to join them, as well as other viral superstars like MonoNeon and Louis Cole.  In this conversation, originally recorded in 2016, Larry talks about his early development and influences, his ongoing relationship with Peter Bernstein and Bill Stewart, working with John Scofield, James Taylor, Maceo Parker, Jon Hendricks, the New York - LA thing, his approach to accompaniment, organ playing and telling jokes on the bandstand.  www.third-story.comwww.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story Music in this episode:  John Scofield “Do Like Eddie”Goldings, Bernstein, Stewart “United”James Taylor “School Song”Johnny Bowtie Barstow “First Noel” Hans Groiner - YoutubeLarry Goldings “Ivermectin”Scary Goldings “Larry Pockets”Jon Hendricks “Freddie Freeloader”Christopher Hollyday “No Second Quarter”Larry Goldings Trio “The Intimacy of The Blues”Jaco Pastorious “Word Of Mouth”Dave McKenna “C Jam Blues”Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery “James and Wes”Peter Bernstein (feat. Larry Goldings) “While We’re Young”Chris Anderson “The Folks Who Live On The Hill”Jim Hall (feat. Larry Goldings) “Somewhere”Larry Young “Back Up”Billy Preston “Will It Go Round In Circles”Goldings, Bernstein, Stewart “Reflections In D”Weather Report “In A Silent Way”Jimmy Smith “The Sermon”Abdullah Ibrahim “Carnival”Maceo Parker “Shake Everything You Got”Maceo Parker “Pass The Peas”James Taylor “Country Road”  

When drummer Antonio Sanchez released his album Bad Hombre back in 2017, he was responding to a few events that took place in his world at the same time.  On a political level, the music was a response to the racism of the Trump campaign against Mexicans. In fact the title of the record Bad Hombre seemed to be an answer to Trump’s assertion that a wall needed to be built at the US Mexican border in order to get the “bad hombres” out of the US.  An immigrant from Mexico himself, Sanchez reappropriated the phrase. Itseemed, in fact, to be a perfect fit for him because not only did it work as a form of resistance - by using the term he made his feelings clear without having to say too much about it - but it also borrowed from the jazz vernacular. You know, when musicians really respect someone, they will often refer to them as “bad”. And in that context, Antonio Sanchez is definitely a bad hombre. Sanchez moved to the US in his early 20s from his native Mexico to go to music school. One of his first teachers, the Panamanian born Danilo Perez, was a supporter, and their work together was one of the early launchpads for Antonio.  While he was playing with Danilo, the guitarist Pat Metheny heard him, and that led to a musical relationship that has been at the center of his life for 20 years. Sanchez went on to become one of the most sought-after drummers on the international jazz scene. Has won four Grammys, and has been named Modern Drummer’s "Jazz Drummer of the Year” three times, and appeared on the covers of all the big jazz magazines.  From early on he thought about drumming, and particularly soloing, as a form of storytelling. He says “I’m a sucker for a good story.” So it was only a matter of time before some great storyteller would find a way to use Antonio Sanchez’s drums to help tell a story. And that was exactly what happened when the Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu asked Antonio to do an all drum score for his film Birdman in 2014.  The film went on to win three academy awards and the score earned Antonio awards (including a Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media) and nominations at the Golden Globe and BAFTA Awards. As significant as the awards and accolades were, maybe more significant was that the sound of Antonio’s drumming truly entered the zeitgeist after Birdman. And though he hadn’t planned for it to turn out that way, he realized that the level of expectation, curiosity, and even pressure on him to follow up that success with something equally resonant had risen.  So when in 2017 Antonio went into his newly built home studio to record Bad Hombre, he had a lot of psychic energy stored up and ready to use. He made an entirely instrumental solo record, he played all the instruments and did what has become his trademark production work of mixing drones, samples, programming and live drumming. In fact the only collaborator on the record was his nonagenarian grandfather, the Mexican actor Ignacio López Tarso who appears on the first track.  Five years, one pandemic, a few political cycles, and a handful of other projects later, he’s back this year with Shift: Bad Hombre Vol. II. This time the list of collaborators is a bit longer.  Somewhere in the dense fog of the pandemic, Sanchez decided to ask some of his favorite singers and songwriters — for material he could deconstruct and reimagine. The result sees Dave Matthews & Pat Metheny, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Meshell Ndegeocello, Lila Downs, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Kimbra, Ana Tijoux, Becca Stevens, Silvana Estrada, MARO, Thana Alexa (who is his wife)  & SONICA sitting in on their own tunes — or ideas co written by Sánchez. The idea of “shifting” might not only apply to the songs on Bad Hombre Vol. II, but also to a change in Antonio’s approach - In the first Bad Hombre release, he was extremely political. Over the years, his outrage and fury with Trump and the turmoil at the US–Mexican border muted – and Sánchez himself “shifted” how he thinks about what he does, and where he wants to go next.  We talked recently about that search, the same one that started back in Mexico when he was a competitive gymnast, classical pianist and aspiring rock drummer and brought him all the way to where he is today, the Bad Hombre. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story

When Ibrahim Maalouf’s parents decided to move to Paris from Beirut in the early 1980s, it was meant to be temporary. The Lebanese civil war was raging and they chose to raise their family away from the violence. But the intention was always to return to Lebanon when the war ended. They did their best to educate their children in the traditional way, and because they were both musicians themselves, music was hugely important to them. They played arabic music in the house, and young Ibrahim studied classical arabic trumpet from the age of seven. His father, trumpeter Nassim Maalouf had even invented a special microtonal trumpet or "quarter tone trumpet", which makes it possible to play Arabic maqams on the trumpet, and Ibrahim developed his sound and style using that unique instrument. But as a young boy growing up in Paris in the 80s and 90s, he was also influenced by all the popular sounds around him - Michael Jackson, De La Soul, pop and soul music and dance. In the end, Maalouf's family stayed in Paris rather than returning to Lebanon, and Ibrahim has been processing that distance for much of his life.  Ibrahim’s career has been, in many ways, an exploration of his two worlds. He has released 17 albums and became the first trumpet player to headline France's biggest arena. He's collaborated with everyone from Sting to Wynton Marsalis, 6 million people tuned into his Bastille Day performance in France last year. He has also written scores for many films. This year he released two albums. The first Queen of Sheba is a collaboration with Angelique Kidjo. The second Capacity to Love is a deep exploration of r&b and hip hop production for the first time in his career. It features De La Soul, D Smoke, Erick the Architect, plus jazz singer Gregory Porter, Tank and the Bangas and international stars from Europe, Africa and South America. The album opens with Charlie Chaplin's famous speech from The Dictator, and ends with a spoken word piece from Sharon Stone. Here he talks about his childhood in France, developing his sound and concept, making elevated popular music, embracing the historical moment, refusing to be limited by labels or genres, and what it means when Quincy Jones orders sushi. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast wbgo.org/studios