Conversations on community, artificial intelligence, identity, fan engagement, healthy living, life on the road and more, recorded at the 2023 Montreal International Jazz Festival. Featuring Michael League, Nate Smith, Carlos Homs, Julius Rodriguez, Benny Benack III, Emmet Cohen, Stacey Kent, AI Herbie Hancock and others.
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Multi instrumentalist singer-songwriter Theo Katzman (known for his work with the funk band Vulfpeck) bought a van from a teenager in California and drove across the country, settling in the woods of Michigan where he set up a studio, started a label, and got down to the business of writing a new record.
Along the way, he discovered the Wim Hof breathing and ice bathing techniques and came out with a transformed idea of “the self” and his own motivations, and decided that he wanted to make records with as few technological interventions as possible.
The result of this journey is his latest record Be The Wheel which he released recently on his 10 Good Songs label. Here he talks about the process of making that record, as well as thoughts on artificial intelligence, psilocybin, social media, touring, and honesty in songwriting.
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Singer-songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman on a life in songs, processing grief and loss through music (and making music through grief), the stories behind many of her hit songs, and her philosophy of creativity and craft, including what it means to “write from the center of your truth,” channeling humanity’s “collective wisdom” and what it means to have “investment without attachment” in songwriting.
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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.
Read MoreWill Page (former chief economist at Spotify) on “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.”
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Producer Daniel Lanois on his early development in Canada and how it influenced his work, his ongoing creative relationship with Brian Eno, why he likes to travel for work, his attraction to melancholy, projects with U2, Peter Gabriel, Brian Blade, Brian Eno, Rick James (yes, Rick James), Neil Young, Terence Malick, when to use the word “we”, the importance of silence, reconnecting with innocence, his production technique of turning “garnishing into a devotion” and why “contemporary work has more to do with vision” than with technology.
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For the fourth year in a row, I talked to my dad, musician/producer/journalist/philosopher Ben Sidran in honor of his birthday. This time he’s turning 79 and we consider the sociological implications of mowing the lawn, Donald Fagen’s solo recordings, the significance of the 1960s in popular culture today, Pharoah Sanders album Pharoah’s First, interviews he conducted in the 1980s with Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, the myth of Sisyphus, and his most recent album Swing State.
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Ryan Lerman has a few tricks up his sleeve. Best known as the cofounder of Scary Pockets, a dynamic funk band from LA who came to prominence on YouTube, Ryan is also an accomplished singer songwriter, bassist, arranger and producer. Here he talks about his happy place (“in the middle of business thinking and artistry”), what he learned about leadership by working as a sideman, how tried to become a lawyer but ended up playing funk music instead, and what minor nine chords have to do with any of it.
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Guitarist Matthew Stevens on growing up in Canada, how the business of jazz has evolved in his lifetime, how the pandemic reoriented him both personally and musically, gear, practice, teaching, the local scenes in Toronto and Pittsburgh, and the universal question: what is production?
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Singer songwriter Michelle Willis on how she thinks about her music and her career, how working extensively with David Crosby has affected her, how collaborating with Becca Stevens, Mike League, Louis Cato have informed her journey, what the process of working with producer Fab Dupont was like, her childhood in Canada, her songwriting process, imposter syndrome, getting the right “blend”, the job of the songwriter, reading poetry, and whether or not it’s okay to be comfortable.
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Keyboardist/singer/producer Jake Sherman on his love of the hammond organ and Weird Al Yankovic, surrealist comedy, finding his lane, learning to sing, what he learned from Dr. Lonnie Smith, why LA is too sunny, making friends with social media, and why he keeps saying ladies’ names in his songs.
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Singer-songwriter David Poe is a kind of Zelig-like figure who appears where you least expect him, and somehow manages to fit right in wherever he shows up. Talking to Poe, one is reminded that at their best, songwriters are popular philosophers. Rather than creating a diversion from everyday life, they illuminate the human struggle, and elevate the human experience. Here he talks about his philosophy on song-craft, collaboration, art and commerce, New York in the 90s (he worked at CBGBs Gallery for years) and why his new motto is “don’t hate fun”.
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Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist producer/composer Tyler Duncan on “just how rich the world sounds”, how producing a project is like “being the surrogate parent” of the music, and how when it comes to making pop music, “You can’t mold yourself to a moving target.” Plus, more Vulfpeck origin stories.
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Martin Sexton on his new release (2020 Vision), his origin story, the musical journey that he’s been on now for over 30 years, the tension between art and mortgage payments, how "people connect to honesty", The American Dream, and how songs, like produce, grow naturally, as he says it, “out of shit.”
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Mike Errico on his personal story, as well as his new book, Music, Lyrics, and Life: A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter. In our talk we considered such questions as “what is a song?”, what is means to make something non trivial and undeniable, the important distinction between how things act versus what they are, the fallacy of Art, the search for timelessness, what is melodic math, and what do Ani DiFranco, The Beatles, Billie Eilish, or McDonalds have to do with any of it.
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Madison McFerrin calls herself a soul singer because she sings the music of the soul. She says “I originally thought I was just going to be an artist who showed up… but if you don’t adjust now you’re going to fall behind. The music industry is changing more rapidly than pretty much any other industry.”
Singer songwriter hairdresser amateur photographer schtick enthusiast Monica Martin talks about discovering her musical talent in her late teens, what it means to be “Wisconsin sober”, the complex and delicate dynamics of her first band Phox, her mental health struggles, why it’s so expensive to be poor, the many ways that she has had to integrate in her life, staying in bed all day, the influence of Fiona Apple and Billie Holiday on her music, working with James Blake, Vulfpeck, Scary Pockets and how being a hairdresser is similar to being a therapist (but much less well paid).
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“Legendary” drummer Nate Smith on the technical, emotional, strategic, mystical, unpredictable aspects to music and a life in music, how where you come from affects how you sound, the value and values of great leadership, the influence of other drummer-bandleaders on his conception, what he learned from working with Dave Holland, Chris Potter, Brittany Howard, Fearless Flyers, Betty Carter and Jose James, and what the internet taught him about his own playing.
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Singer Antwaun Stanley on walking the line between spiritual and secular music, managing the responsibility to his fans and his own desire to explore, how he sees his career as “one giant experiment” and “a constant process of discovery”, his new EP Ascension, and his experiences singing in Vulfpeck.
Jon Lampley knows how to “get in where you fit in.” He’s been doing it since he was a boy in an Ohio suburb, spending his week as “the only black kid at school” and his Sundays at Apostolic church in Akron, learning to play gospel music and call the spirit down. We spoke recently about growing up in two worlds, learning to play “unnecessarily soulful melodies” and call on the deep well of musical emotion that he learned in church, what he looks for in a collaborator and why he thinks he gets called so much, how he practices and prepares, and why “music is the vehicle.”
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