Speaker 1: Course Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Musician John
Speaker 1: Batiste joins Team Supreme to rehash his journey from smalltown
Speaker 1: Louisiana to musical director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Speaker 1: Originally released March fourteenth, twenty nineteen, Just follow On, You'll
Speaker 1: get it.
Speaker 2: Suprema Supremo, Roll Call, Suprema su su Supremo, Roll.
Speaker 3: Call, Suprema Supremo, Roll Call Supremo, Supremo, rolls all day Yeah,
Speaker 3: well winter spring and summer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, two band leaders of Late Night. Yeah, both started
Speaker 1: out as drummer Supremo Supremo roll God. Who's sma, uh
Speaker 1: Supremo roll You're both real talented?
Speaker 4: Yeah Yeah, and the best band leader is Doc Severn
Speaker 4: Suprema Supremo.
Speaker 1: Roll I fell in my second line after the show. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but have no fear.
Speaker 5: Yeah Supremo, roll Call, Supremo, Supremo.
Speaker 1: Roll.
Speaker 6: Her name is Boss Bill, Yeah, right, as a Halogen,
Speaker 6: Yeah Bill and a Steed and some Hollywood Africans roll Spremo,
Speaker 6: roll call, Suprema so Supremo, roll call.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and it's going down Yeah.
Speaker 1: Thomson yeah, all right, now.
Speaker 3: Supremo Supremo, role called Suprema Supremo.
Speaker 1: Roll it's John Battie. Yeah, and I'm in the house.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We about to get down. Yeah, that's what we about.
Speaker 5: Oh call Suprema su Supremo.
Speaker 2: Roll call Suprema Suck, Suck Supremo, Roll call Supremo Supremo,
Speaker 2: Roll call Supremo, Sun Supremo, roll call.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of course some
Speaker 1: Supreme Late Night the Late Night. Right.
Speaker 8: Wait, he's starting already, He's starting already. Mother is Jamaica.
Speaker 1: Shut. I knew I was going to have to play
Speaker 1: thank you so rand Love make I love that. I
Speaker 1: was going to say, I mean, I was going to
Speaker 1: introduce our guests, but no, let's introd all right, well
Speaker 1: let's let's just let's just keep it tradition, so we don't,
Speaker 1: you know, scare off our viewers. Our guest today actually
Speaker 1: needs no introduction, ladies and gentlemen. And there's not Late
Speaker 1: Night Wars happening in this building yet. No. Our guest
Speaker 1: today is I will say he's band leader supreme. Uh,
Speaker 1: he is multi instrumentalist. You are a Juilliard graduate, And
Speaker 1: I'll say that most of America currently now knows you
Speaker 1: as the band leader for the number one show in
Speaker 1: late night. Okay, no, no fake news, fake news no, no,
Speaker 1: no snort nothing, h of course it's uh late Wait,
Speaker 1: technically what is the show called. It's late Night with
Speaker 1: Stephen Corbert Late show, the late show. There's like late
Speaker 1: night late show later tonight. Yes, the show with Stephen Colbert.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to Quest of Supreme the
Speaker 1: one and only John Patize. That's all man, So Bill
Speaker 1: going on, Bill, I'm having to see I have not
Speaker 1: seen since uh the salon, the foods a lot of
Speaker 1: your house. That was like, have you ever had him
Speaker 1: on Sesame Street? I just asked him.
Speaker 7: He got very upset because I grilled him about hasn't
Speaker 7: he been on street?
Speaker 9: He's like tailor, Man, I know this. I have talked
Speaker 9: to him about this, and I'm working on it. Everybody
Speaker 9: simmered down. I haven't been here in a long time.
Speaker 9: Everybody's for question. I've been here for a ten minutes.
Speaker 1: Just check it. Wait, can I ask you something? John?
Speaker 7: This is the one.
Speaker 1: This is the question I always wanted to know. Are
Speaker 1: you silently because I know you have history way before
Speaker 1: I knew of you, Like Lenny Kravis put me on
Speaker 1: to you long ago, and you you You've actually inspired
Speaker 1: some ideas I've had about how to put show presentations
Speaker 1: on and everything. So I've known about you way before Colbert.
Speaker 1: I mean you got hired by Colbert because of the
Speaker 1: reputation that you were building. Yes, are you? Do you
Speaker 1: get slightly annoyed when people come up to you and
Speaker 1: just like, hey, Stephen, Colbert's guy, like without knowing the history,
Speaker 1: like you just came out of nowhere to Yes, that
Speaker 1: happened to you a.
Speaker 10: Lot, it does, you know, Like I'll be going somewhere
Speaker 10: and I'll run into somebody and they'll be like, hey,
Speaker 10: you're the guy from Colbert. What's your name? And then
Speaker 10: after a while they were like, oh, yeah, that's John Bettiste.
Speaker 10: But it's still from from the Lake Show.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean you could be from Colbert technically, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're from it, but it's almost like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: Jimmy Fallon's drummer. Yes, and you.
Speaker 7: Don't have the same issue too sometimes Yeah.
Speaker 1: Because that's why.
Speaker 10: It's it's cool to and as as you do when
Speaker 10: you have other things that you do that kind of
Speaker 10: paints a full picture.
Speaker 1: I actually, all right, now that we're saying this, I
Speaker 1: believe that's probably the real reason I stick to nineteen jobs,
Speaker 1: because it's almost like, Hey, what am I my chef,
Speaker 1: my cook guy today and my you know, music teacher
Speaker 1: today and my like I always wanted to know. Is
Speaker 1: that slightly irksome when people don't do the research and know, yeah,
Speaker 1: your history.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's it's something that I think over time, people
Speaker 10: and people still have been digging back into the catalog
Speaker 10: of seeing things that we're done. But I think over time,
Speaker 10: the more you do and the more you just keep
Speaker 10: doing your thing and not letting any one thing define you,
Speaker 10: the more that you can continue to kind of bring
Speaker 10: people into what you do with your art or your creativity.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: But what about the flip side?
Speaker 9: Whereas what I was gonna say on the other side
Speaker 9: was give you the megaphones that neither of you had
Speaker 9: ever had PCT Right, I'm.
Speaker 1: Gonna go out.
Speaker 11: When I saw the last episode of Corbert Report, when
Speaker 11: you guys did the line, yeah, that was the first
Speaker 11: time I ever saw you, and I was like, oh shit.
Speaker 11: And then I just did the research and I was like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 11: it's a way to bring new people in.
Speaker 10: Absolutely it's amazing. I mean, oh good, just being on
Speaker 10: a show that's kind of like this is fraternity and
Speaker 10: it's hard to have any sort of malice or disrespect
Speaker 10: to it, even if people just know you for that
Speaker 10: right now. But I feel like I've always just been
Speaker 10: somebody who likes to create and explore different things and
Speaker 10: evolve and grow, and I'm always pushing myself to try
Speaker 10: to find something else that's going to challenge me. So
Speaker 10: the consistency of the show is one thing, but I
Speaker 10: have to balance it out even just for me, not
Speaker 10: even for the sake of people knowing that there's more
Speaker 10: that I have to offer, but just for my own
Speaker 10: well being as an artist. I got to keep pushing
Speaker 10: and creating. So it gives me a chance to share
Speaker 10: it with a lot more people.
Speaker 1: How easy is it to do? Because I know that
Speaker 1: there's many sides to John Fatiz as far as like
Speaker 1: your like, you'll do traditional jazz records stuff with State Human,
Speaker 1: You'll do different projects. What I primarily knew you for
Speaker 1: were these sort of kind of musicals speak easy so
Speaker 1: to sea where I'll say, you know, years before he
Speaker 1: was on the show. He would word would get around
Speaker 1: that there's gonna be a secret John Patisse show at
Speaker 1: some nondescript random warehouse in Harlem or in Brooklyn or
Speaker 1: in the Bronx somewhere, And it's almost like it's the
Speaker 1: musical version of Well, only New Yorkers will get this
Speaker 1: reference of like Sleep No More. Sleep No More is
Speaker 1: kind of like a play where the fourth wall is
Speaker 1: sort of exposed and you're part of the play. You
Speaker 1: as the spectator. So you go to this like big
Speaker 1: wide open space and then John and State Human basically perform.
Speaker 1: There's no traditional stage, so there's almost like four setups
Speaker 1: they you know, they'll they'll pick one side of the
Speaker 1: corner where their music's set up, and then they'll march
Speaker 1: to the other side of the room where there's other
Speaker 1: music instruments set up. Like everyone gets a chance to
Speaker 1: be the front row seat, and it's and it's immersive,
Speaker 1: and they have like stuff hanging around you could play
Speaker 1: instruments and all that other stuff and enjoining. It's like
Speaker 1: I never seen a show in which the artists that
Speaker 1: the audience is actually immersed in with the show. Are
Speaker 1: you able to still do those secret Smurf shows at all?
Speaker 6: Is it like.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's hard. I mean, I'm sure, as you know.
Speaker 10: The to keep the energy level up after doing the show,
Speaker 10: I had to take the first six months when I
Speaker 10: started doing Colbert just to figure out how to do
Speaker 10: it and and figuring out how to balance everything else
Speaker 10: that I have been doing with now my job on
Speaker 10: the show. But then after I figured that out, I
Speaker 10: started to focus more on recording things and be in
Speaker 10: the studio because I was mostly playing live during that
Speaker 10: time and exploring how to really present a real immersive
Speaker 10: experience that brought people together so it work.
Speaker 7: I saw it live in Philly when you did it. Oh,
Speaker 7: you're in the lobby of the Kimmel Center. Yeah, that show.
Speaker 7: It was an amazing show that was fun for free.
Speaker 6: I was like.
Speaker 7: This and the lily jumped in the crowd went around.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was wondering, like, how do y'all get paid, because.
Speaker 10: Well, sometimes, like when we go on the road, we'd
Speaker 10: do them after the show, so it would be we
Speaker 10: would take the guarantee from the show and use that.
Speaker 1: So you do a regular show, right, and then that's
Speaker 1: like your Prince after party. Yeah, I never knew that.
Speaker 1: I thought that was your bread and butter.
Speaker 10: Well, at one point it was when we were in
Speaker 10: New York. Right then we started to get known for that,
Speaker 10: and then we got an agent, and then we went
Speaker 10: on the road. And then we went on the road.
Speaker 10: We didn't want to stop doing that because every venue
Speaker 10: doesn't accommodate, right that that kind of performance. So it
Speaker 10: was kind of like, okay, well we can just do
Speaker 10: two shows right right. It's cool. It's cool to see
Speaker 10: how people react to the music when you put when
Speaker 10: you put it in a different context, because like you
Speaker 10: if we play jazz, for instance, and it's in a
Speaker 10: jazz club, it's much different than if like somebody sitting
Speaker 10: next to you on the piano or somebody sitting behind
Speaker 10: the drums and they can really see the interaction with
Speaker 10: the rhythm section and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Does that does a plan sometimes backfire? Because you do
Speaker 1: present this whole speak easy thing like it's it's like
Speaker 1: you know, like sometimes it's almost like you're you're walking
Speaker 1: into a set of an old like fifties burlesque, right,
Speaker 1: So whoever like designs the stuff, and you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: I'll see like people trying to sit on your piano
Speaker 1: bench with you as your drink. Like, so, how you
Speaker 1: know some drunk guy suddenly wants to sit in on
Speaker 1: drums or know, Like, how do you guys control that situation?
Speaker 10: It's it's it's a casualty of the situation, Like you
Speaker 10: got to go into it expecting some people to get
Speaker 10: super free. That's the way we're like, Oh, this cat's
Speaker 10: about to get super free. And then when that happens,
Speaker 10: you almost plan the show, Like the set morphs from
Speaker 10: whatever it was gonna be to accommodate whatever happens. So
Speaker 10: if that guy comes in grabs drumsticks or something, then okay,
Speaker 10: well let's go into the drum circle that we had
Speaker 10: planned for the next three songs down and put that right.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 11: There's a question because I haven't I haven't seen one
Speaker 11: of these, but they sound amazing, and I'm wondering, have
Speaker 11: you ever done these at the schools?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, not in New York actually, but we've done
Speaker 10: them in schools we went to in Amsterdam, we actually
Speaker 10: we did we did a show at the concert Gibaut,
Speaker 10: which is like a concert hall there, and that was
Speaker 10: just like a a traditional show. And then we went
Speaker 10: into school and did basically kind of like this kind
Speaker 10: of curated thing but in their auditorium. But that was
Speaker 10: one thing we didn't. We also went into one of
Speaker 10: the their equivalent of like the hood, and I got
Speaker 10: I got them to put a piano in the middle
Speaker 10: of the street, which I always loved that visual, just
Speaker 10: having like instruments on the block, which I mean, I
Speaker 10: know you you played. And that's kind of how we
Speaker 10: started this whole kind of concept of immersion, which is
Speaker 10: when we started playing on the streets and we play
Speaker 10: in the subways in New York and we'll see how
Speaker 10: people react when you see see the band come into
Speaker 10: a cart and just set up for like thirty minutes
Speaker 10: and play. It's like, Wow, these y'all not asking for money,
Speaker 10: y'all not buss right because.
Speaker 7: At the end you get to the next car cident
Speaker 7: on ass That's how you get to be.
Speaker 11: Honest, it's always it's always with the wary look when
Speaker 11: somebody sets up on the trains.
Speaker 1: It's like, wait, I know exactly, like the first five
Speaker 1: minutes on the Hardest have you do that? Have you
Speaker 1: done New York trains yet? Oh? Yeah, yeah, really I
Speaker 1: always wanted to do that everyone, Yeah, we should do
Speaker 1: that one day. Yeah yeah, if a train and just
Speaker 1: I guess nothing shocking in New York City? Who was
Speaker 1: It was like who are those two guys pen Station
Speaker 1: or something like that, and like nobody knew, like nobody
Speaker 1: noticed it that they were there.
Speaker 7: Did it once?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I saw just like shredding the violin
Speaker 1: and like Bleaker Street and people are like, actually, come
Speaker 1: to think of it. So I tried to once get
Speaker 1: jay Z to come to one of your events. Has
Speaker 1: he seen it yet? Not that not the he saw
Speaker 1: traditional one damn because the thing was, uh, I got
Speaker 1: him the halfway agreed to it. I had seen the
Speaker 1: first time I saw you, was I guessed, or the
Speaker 1: time in which uh jay was doing something at Carnegie Hall.
Speaker 1: I'm still a bad beating. So I said, okay, this
Speaker 1: is what I want to do. I said, what I
Speaker 1: want to do? This actually after reasonable doubt slightly, this
Speaker 1: is like when American Gangster was out. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: told him, I said, this is what we're going to do.
Speaker 1: You're going to do someone on stage right, and then
Speaker 1: we're going to march into the the four air the
Speaker 1: p and then when you're done, you and just Blaze
Speaker 1: are going to do the Encore and the Nose Bleeds.
Speaker 1: And he looked at me like, I'm not doing that shit,
Speaker 1: but he I convinced him at least to do. He
Speaker 1: did his Encore and the Nose Bleed. And unfortunately, what
Speaker 1: I didn't realize with with Carnegie Hall was that the
Speaker 1: way that the balconies are built, if you're like under,
Speaker 1: if you're sitting on the floor row, you can't see
Speaker 1: what's happening right there. So and of course they're like, no,
Speaker 1: you got you can't stand and you know, like it
Speaker 1: stands at Carnegie Hall. It was rather frustrating for the
Speaker 1: people on the who weren't in the news right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bet they have a close up view for once
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. I was like, no, just give it, give
Speaker 1: them to there. It's good.
Speaker 10: So we're amazing.
Speaker 1: I want to know your story, like where were you
Speaker 1: born and how was music brought to your life?
Speaker 10: Oh wow, So I was born in actually Metoie, Louisiana,
Speaker 10: and I was raised in Kenner, Louisiana, between Kenner and
Speaker 10: New Orleans.
Speaker 1: I was like, there are other places besides me. These
Speaker 1: are like.
Speaker 10: Literally ten minutes outside of New Orleans. They're like suburbs
Speaker 10: of New Orleans. But basically even though the airport is
Speaker 10: in Kenner, it's called New Orleans International, Oh okay, so
Speaker 10: it's like the New Orleans area. And my dad he's
Speaker 10: a great bassist. My mother's not a musician, but she
Speaker 10: has a really good ear. And my dad had six
Speaker 10: brothers and they all played in the band together. And
Speaker 10: from the six brothers, they're like thirty cousins. And at
Speaker 10: the time when I was growing up, I was the
Speaker 10: youngest of the cousins. Of all that Brude, Yeah, of
Speaker 10: all of them when I was growing up, I was
Speaker 10: the youngest, and there were two that were closer to
Speaker 10: my age, and we started the junior band together. And
Speaker 10: the three of us were drummers when we started the band.
Speaker 10: But you can't have three drummers in the band. And
Speaker 10: I'm the youngest, so obviously I'm gonna be the one
Speaker 10: that switches instrument and the second youngest. He had to
Speaker 10: switch the instrument because everybody wanted to play the drums,
Speaker 10: so I switched to piano. Then it's around the time
Speaker 10: it was like ten or eleven.
Speaker 1: Adjustment.
Speaker 10: It was I was already kind of like we would
Speaker 10: pick out songs from video games, and all of us
Speaker 10: would Mario when Sega came out. Sonic Oh, Sonic soundtrack
Speaker 10: is amazing, maybe.
Speaker 1: Or maybe not created by Michael Jackson, by the way,
Speaker 1: I know, maybe or maybe not, we don't know.
Speaker 10: Soundtrack is incredible, and street Fighter soundtracks from Street Fighter too,
Speaker 10: all the way street Fighter Alpha, Final Fantasy seven like
Speaker 10: we would play. We would legit transcribe the soundtrack and
Speaker 10: play it on piano. So I kind of had a
Speaker 10: little bit of piano chops. And then I was also
Speaker 10: kind of, uh, you know, taking classical piano lessons but
Speaker 10: not really taking them seriously. So I had a little
Speaker 10: bit of a foundation, but when I switched to a piano,
Speaker 10: I didn't really get serious about it until I was
Speaker 10: like thirteen.
Speaker 7: Did y'all play for other kids? Because it seems like
Speaker 7: that would have been dope for other kids to like
Speaker 7: enter the world of as instrumentation and stuff.
Speaker 10: It was cool when we did a gig every year
Speaker 10: at the Children's Museum. That was our first regular gig.
Speaker 10: The band's called the Baptist Kids, and we printed these shirts,
Speaker 10: uh it said purple and white shirts Baptist Kids, and
Speaker 10: it had us on the shirt cartoon versions I remember
Speaker 10: and we'll play. Our only gig for a while was
Speaker 10: the Children's Museum in New Orleans every year, and we
Speaker 10: played for kids at the museum game play the video
Speaker 10: game Songs, and we played Marti Gross songs, Saints Go
Speaker 10: Watch and then you know how uh, I.
Speaker 1: Won't even say how important, but how And I know
Speaker 1: that you're from Louisiana, so you gotta tread like how
Speaker 1: burdensome is the idea of the tradition of New Orleans music.
Speaker 1: Like I almost feel like if you come out the womb,
Speaker 1: it's like you have to know every solo from Satimo.
Speaker 1: You have to know it's true and is it right? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean the thing is that you're I mean, I've
Speaker 1: I've grew up in I mean, I've seen jazz nazis
Speaker 1: all my life and.
Speaker 9: That's a technical term, jazz nazis.
Speaker 1: That's a real But I just really Steve is looking
Speaker 1: at me right now. I asked the question, will you child?
Speaker 1: But I mean there's I mean, the reputation of New Orleans.
Speaker 1: I had to deal with Ellis Marcella's who I was
Speaker 1: a kid. He told me give up, like you know,
Speaker 1: he he just straight up told me to give up.
Speaker 1: Like and I think that's what really pushed me to
Speaker 1: not following because I went to school with Christian McBride,
Speaker 1: Joey de Francesco, all these guys. So I was striving
Speaker 1: to be a young lion. Yeah. Yeah, And I did
Speaker 1: this masterclass with Ellis and he just like it was
Speaker 1: past embarrassment and humiliation, like and you know, I was good,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, But it was just like,
Speaker 1: you know, he like the tone of it. He like
Speaker 1: the shirt I was wearing, like you're not a real
Speaker 1: jazz cat, And like I just I gave up. I
Speaker 1: didn't give up. I just like, well, you're right, go
Speaker 1: let me go to what I really love, which which
Speaker 1: is hip hop.
Speaker 7: Did he have a circle back? I just I just
Speaker 7: need to know.
Speaker 1: Branford and I laugh at her all the time, don't
Speaker 1: mind dad. So, but I'm asking you, uh, was your
Speaker 1: being the youngest of it? Where you're was your family
Speaker 1: the same way where it was just like you don't
Speaker 1: get any respect from us until you learn like everything
Speaker 1: from Maple leave Rat to all these old scrolls of
Speaker 1: ye it was it was like.
Speaker 10: It was it was an interesting mix of different flavors
Speaker 10: of that. So, like, my family was coming from the
Speaker 10: the Meters and it's like the funk tradition. So my
Speaker 10: uncle was was one of the first keyboarders in the
Speaker 10: Meters uh, and then my cousin Russell, he took over
Speaker 10: in the Meters after Ziggaboo whose original drama Yeah so
Speaker 10: zig that that was like my immediate family, and that's
Speaker 10: kind of like what that's what I got from from
Speaker 10: being around them, was kind of that tradition and just
Speaker 10: almost vicariously because it was never like John play this,
Speaker 10: this is how this beat goes, uh, the how these calls.
Speaker 10: I would just be on stage as a kid, and
Speaker 10: I'd be watching and kind of absorbing that. And that
Speaker 10: was fun because that kind of influenced a lot of
Speaker 10: how I look at performing for people in stage presence
Speaker 10: and also just the communal aspect of music because they
Speaker 10: would be playing and sometimes you know, you'd have musicians
Speaker 10: just coming up on stage unannounced, and you know, it
Speaker 10: would turn into this massive tribal groove and that was
Speaker 10: one side of it. And then as I got older
Speaker 10: and started getting into jazz, around thirteen and fourteen, there
Speaker 10: was a camp that we all went to called the
Speaker 10: Lewis Satchmo Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp. And that's when I
Speaker 10: started getting exposed to what you're talking about. And I
Speaker 10: was lucky because there were a few of the I
Speaker 10: call them like the village Elders that were just like
Speaker 10: so open minded. But they also came from the generation
Speaker 10: where it was like, you know, people were hard on them,
Speaker 10: but they were so open minded with us, Like Alvin Battist,
Speaker 10: he would just he would teach us how to play
Speaker 10: stuff that was way beyond our level, but he would
Speaker 10: do it in these little baby increments, Like we'd be
Speaker 10: playing Giant Steps, and he would teach us like two
Speaker 10: notes at a time, and then after we got the melody,
Speaker 10: he would just show us the harmony. And then after
Speaker 10: it would take like a month, but then after a
Speaker 10: month we'd be like twelve thirteen playing Giant Steps, but
Speaker 10: we wouldn't know that we were playing Giant Steps right,
Speaker 10: and that if I didn't have him and a few
Speaker 10: others who were kind of more just like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 10: not gonna come at it from a critical place. I'm
Speaker 10: gonna come at it from a place of okay, everybody
Speaker 10: has a voice. Learned this and then once we got older,
Speaker 10: I played in his band, the Jastronauts, and that was
Speaker 10: a band where it was like, if it's not different
Speaker 10: and weird, then it's not right. He'd always say it's
Speaker 10: you can be correct, but that don't make it right.
Speaker 1: And I actually believe that he would say, because I
Speaker 1: like unorthodox.
Speaker 10: Oh yeah, it's the best. I mean, he had a
Speaker 10: sitar player on one of the gigs when we're playing
Speaker 10: a jazz club, and I was fifteen at the time.
Speaker 10: I was like, wow, you can do that.
Speaker 1: It just opened.
Speaker 10: So because of people like him, I kind of lucked out.
Speaker 10: I didn't get caught in the dogma that can kind
Speaker 10: of grapple you.
Speaker 1: Who were your uh your age peers at the time
Speaker 1: that are notable now like who oh who is in
Speaker 1: your circle?
Speaker 10: So at the camp we were both we started a
Speaker 10: band together and that became the band that's still his
Speaker 10: band now, same members eighty percent of the band trombone
Speaker 10: shorty Okay. So Troy and I were like, he's a
Speaker 10: little older, but we were basically came at the same time.
Speaker 10: Christian Scott he was also at the camp and also
Speaker 10: we went to high school together. They're just It's a
Speaker 10: real interesting I think because we had the same teachers,
Speaker 10: but we all came out in different routes. It's a
Speaker 10: whole nother you know, each person doing their own thing.
Speaker 1: How important is as far as uh New Orleans as
Speaker 1: a city, Well not how important is it, but how
Speaker 1: uh explain to us or our viewers or listeners. Sorry
Speaker 1: you're not on TV right now.
Speaker 7: I know.
Speaker 1: I'm so used to explain to our listeners the frequency
Speaker 1: of of Well it's odd now to have music in nightclubs,
Speaker 1: and when you're in New Orleans, every block still has
Speaker 1: bands in it. Oh yeah, we were moving to North
Speaker 1: We cop two houses in all get July two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, July two thousand and five, and then Katrina
Speaker 1: happened and then that was out the window. Like we
Speaker 1: were going to go down and record game theory wow
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, because the thing is New Orleans has
Speaker 1: they still They're the last city left with like three
Speaker 1: very distinctive jazz traditional jazz. Uh you know the zydog.
Speaker 1: You have to explain zydogo music to me and how
Speaker 1: that separates and then bounce music. Oh you know. So
Speaker 1: they we were like, okay, this is this is a
Speaker 1: city with three very distinctive styles to it, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna move down there and figure our way into this
Speaker 1: mess and then boom like it got ruined. But do
Speaker 1: you guys even mix with each other? Like, first of all,
Speaker 1: we're even allowed to listen to pop music as a kid?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it wasn't frowned upon.
Speaker 10: No, no. I was always listening to cash Money, right,
Speaker 10: I mean there was a point where when you're walking
Speaker 10: down the street, out of every car you will hearing
Speaker 10: either cash Money or No Limit, like bumping.
Speaker 7: That's the fourth that's the fourth element of New Orleans
Speaker 7: that people forget about musically.
Speaker 1: Right, well, bounce music?
Speaker 10: Yeah, is that really?
Speaker 7: Is that bounce?
Speaker 10: It's in the same strain, the the the drake.
Speaker 1: In my feelings, bet is New Orleans? Yeah, first of all,
Speaker 1: is cash money and no Limit? Is that sort of
Speaker 1: like the are you the one side or the other?
Speaker 1: Is that like the Beatles and Rolling Stones.
Speaker 10: At the time At the time, not anymore, but at
Speaker 10: the time it was like, oh yeah, you got choose side.
Speaker 7: You choose what side, you know, and cash money was
Speaker 7: a little younger, right, So yeah, I.
Speaker 10: Mean I always because I'm looking at it from a
Speaker 10: musical perspective, I was wanted them to make something together.
Speaker 10: I thought it would be crazy if they came together.
Speaker 1: It never did.
Speaker 10: I thought it it just would be so powerful because
Speaker 10: it was just such an embodiment of music in the
Speaker 10: city up until that point. There's so much in the
Speaker 10: sound that came from all of the different elements, even
Speaker 10: like the the zartacle and the second line tradition. You
Speaker 10: could hear it in the rhythm of what they were doing.
Speaker 1: So can you break down for us the difference between
Speaker 1: the various music styles in New Orleans as far as.
Speaker 10: Oh, yeah, yeah, So this is what we call the
Speaker 10: second line, which comes basically from marching traditions. So you
Speaker 10: have like the marching band tradition, which was a big
Speaker 10: thing in early American culture, and then in New Orleans
Speaker 10: that tradition was changed because you had the influence of
Speaker 10: the African rhythmic culture and Congo Square was doing slavery,
Speaker 10: which on Sunday. All of the different front rhythms and
Speaker 10: traditions that they did in Africa they would carry on
Speaker 10: in New Orleans and that was the only place in
Speaker 10: America where that was continued. So then that rhythmic culture
Speaker 10: seeped its way into the marching tradition and that became
Speaker 10: second Line. So the base rhythm of second Line is
Speaker 10: the it's like a bamboola rhythm. And that rhythm you
Speaker 10: can hear it in zydaical music. You can hear it
Speaker 10: and you hearing Cash Money's music. Even if you think
Speaker 10: of of mm hmmm mm hmmm, hmm mm hmmm mm
Speaker 10: hmmmmm mm hm, you find I mean that rhythm I
Speaker 10: feel like is the thing that ties all of the
Speaker 10: styles together.
Speaker 1: Wait now I'm thinking about it. What we what rockers
Speaker 1: would traditionally called the Bodley rhythm. So that's basically, yes,
Speaker 1: that's where the basis of that rhythm comes from.
Speaker 7: Louisiana.
Speaker 10: No, but Bo Diddley that the the that's the same.
Speaker 10: And and to me, when you start hearing that, that's
Speaker 10: how you can tell, Oh, that's kind of like a
Speaker 10: New Orleans influenced music. But the things that change it
Speaker 10: are the instrumentation and the different different ways that people
Speaker 10: sing or like the instrumentation issarticle with the accordion versus
Speaker 10: like second line is with tuba and marching instrumentation. And
Speaker 10: then you have bounced music, which is made actually you
Speaker 10: could do it on NPC. So it's it's a range
Speaker 10: of different songs that you can get but the same DNA.
Speaker 7: But what's the first line?
Speaker 10: The first line is the church. So second line is
Speaker 10: basically in the funeral some people call jazz funeral. The
Speaker 10: first line of the family that goes into the church,
Speaker 10: and that's a slow, mournful song. And the the second
Speaker 10: line is when you're coming out leave and you leave,
Speaker 10: and it's a celebration.
Speaker 7: Thank you John, like the whole world.
Speaker 1: Didn't ye straight up, I never knew why I was
Speaker 1: second line. I don't know. I didn't know that. I'm
Speaker 1: telling you. I've seen a few, uh second line marches
Speaker 1: for funerals. Yeah, and those are some extravagant productions, like
Speaker 1: I've seen them. Damn. Are like hip it parade, throw
Speaker 1: the casket in the air or whatever. Yeah, like they'll
Speaker 1: take the casket and start our listeners can see what
Speaker 1: I'm doing.
Speaker 9: Yeah, fist pumpings.
Speaker 1: They will fist pump it up. You know, like when
Speaker 1: you get married and you sit in the chair and
Speaker 1: they toss you up in the air like a pizza. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about. Damn, Steve, you sleeping you.
Speaker 1: You let me build the first time a minute. I'm
Speaker 1: letting them, let me get some juice space. I appreciate something.
Speaker 7: No, I.
Speaker 1: Never knew how easy is it. I found out that
Speaker 1: anybody can get a permit to have a parade in
Speaker 1: New Orleans.
Speaker 7: Like any launch for her wedding to anybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't know it was that easy. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's city.
Speaker 9: Hall and just you can hire a band for three
Speaker 9: hundred bucks. You ever heard Hannibal Bursus thing when he
Speaker 9: went to New Orleans. He's like he bought a band
Speaker 9: for three They followed him around all night. Really, yeah,
Speaker 9: So can I ask a real I'm saying.
Speaker 7: Real, I'm not leaving New Orleans question then, because I'm
Speaker 7: just gonna ask him since we didn't know what the
Speaker 7: line was, what is my gros really about?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 10: My goodness. So that that's a little more complex.
Speaker 1: Not not getting drunk, I'm know.
Speaker 7: Whe it's a historical component. Yeah, people in some traditional
Speaker 7: dress and you know and stuff. So I was always wondering.
Speaker 10: See the thing is Marti Grass goes into the Trinidad
Speaker 10: tradition and Brazilian traditions like an Afro Caribbean tradition and
Speaker 10: people think it's just oh, we go to Bourbon Street
Speaker 10: and we just get drunk, and yeah, exactly, I'm sorry,
Speaker 10: but no, no, it's it's it's a very beautiful tradition
Speaker 10: that's about people coming together and family and and keeping
Speaker 10: traditions that have been centuries old alive. And that's just
Speaker 10: the party is something that has it's morphed into and
Speaker 10: you know, it's fine the party, but it's not only
Speaker 10: just a party.
Speaker 7: It's nice to know where it comes from.
Speaker 10: That's yeah.
Speaker 12: So how much Caribbean influences in all the types of
Speaker 12: music that you just.
Speaker 1: Told us about.
Speaker 10: Oh, it's like a like a line. You come from
Speaker 10: West Africa, go through the Caribbean. New Orleans almost like
Speaker 10: the northern tip of the Caribbean. To me, in my mind,
Speaker 10: I think of it as the same. So that rhythm
Speaker 10: and even even the stories that you hear about reggae
Speaker 10: and how they would be listening to New Orleans music
Speaker 10: and it be a bootleg signal and they couldn't hear
Speaker 10: all of the full uh rhythm and they took certain
Speaker 10: parts of it thinking that that was the rhythm, and
Speaker 10: that influenced the reggae, and then it's kind of it's
Speaker 10: like a feedback loop.
Speaker 1: Wow, I never saw. Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 12: I mean, so New Orleans music influenced reggae, not the
Speaker 12: other way around.
Speaker 10: Or no, it's it influences each other because because the
Speaker 10: New Orleans music came from that line of the culture
Speaker 10: moving across and basically sitting in New Orleans and Congo
Speaker 10: Squad being the hub where it kind of was fermenting.
Speaker 10: And then you know, at the end of Flavor, when
Speaker 10: you kind of have this release, it's okay to have
Speaker 10: people making their music and sharing it with the world.
Speaker 10: You get people like Louis Armstrong who come out, Buddy Bold,
Speaker 10: all these geniuses. It's like you let the lid off.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which I just recently discovered, our listeners owe
Speaker 1: it to themselves to discover the music of Lord Kitchener
Speaker 1: who he's he's he's king of sort of trinid Daddy.
Speaker 1: He's part if any Lord Kitchener. I would say that
Speaker 1: maybe the origins of disco isn't the music because with
Speaker 1: the sock symbol, like it's it's traditional Trinidaddy music, which
Speaker 1: is more like so it's part New Orleans rhythm and
Speaker 1: the sock symbol thing with it, but lyrically. And now
Speaker 1: his music's coming from the forties and fifties, So he's
Speaker 1: in the tradition of uh kind of uh, who's the
Speaker 1: humorous forties jazz guy lou Louis. He's in the tradition
Speaker 1: of Louis Jordan or almost like the beginning of what
Speaker 1: Luke and Two Live Crew were about. Like his songs
Speaker 1: are quasi risk and wait can I can I play
Speaker 1: one song of Yes? Okay, it's this is Lord Kitchener's
Speaker 1: Kitchener maybe like Kitchener. Yeah, it's a mirror talking, so
Speaker 1: possibly I could be saying, okay, wait, rural jury, Yes
Speaker 1: there is another rural Yes, I have a questioned.
Speaker 9: Yes, he's told you because in my head you're like
Speaker 9: Yoda and you're like ninety five years old, because you
Speaker 9: have that vibe.
Speaker 1: But I don't think of that.
Speaker 10: Old Oh no, thirty one?
Speaker 7: No, what still really? See?
Speaker 1: I thought that was a worthy question. He's an old
Speaker 1: soul man, it's different.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you must have a It must be a lot
Speaker 7: of ageism for you, because I know them jazz cats
Speaker 7: be like, man, you don't know nothing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean so I would think, I mean, you
Speaker 1: you speak wise so and you seem.
Speaker 7: To know you're the number is the number though, right,
Speaker 7: Like sometimes they just like puts your thirty one now?
Speaker 9: But could you know nothing but a number?
Speaker 10: It ain't nothing, But I don't know number?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, you got two choices. My favorite is
Speaker 1: My Wife's ninety, in which a yeah, in which he
Speaker 1: kind of invertently gets with her girlfriend who steals his
Speaker 1: wife's clothes. Or Muriel in The Bug, which is story
Speaker 1: about a bedbug that happens to make its home in
Speaker 1: the most unsavory place of this woman. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like the choice has been made. Yes, I'm putting both
Speaker 1: of those in the quest of Mixed Supreme with this.
Speaker 9: I love it when you intro to and give like
Speaker 9: the lyrical.
Speaker 1: Which one is this bedbugs?
Speaker 9: Now?
Speaker 1: I might have to do both because this is less
Speaker 1: New Orleans tradition than the other song. But what screen?
Speaker 1: First of all, that was an amazing ryan. Secondly, where'd
Speaker 1: you find this?
Speaker 7: Yeah? How old is this?
Speaker 9: Who's like the person that hips you to this? That
Speaker 9: says a lot about them?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like, uh oh, I was looking at
Speaker 1: Calypso because I knew there was more than Harry Belafontie.
Speaker 1: So that figure history. The beautiful thing about streaming is
Speaker 1: that's one of the best. He has a traditional Well
Speaker 1: I didn't know if he had albums out with lyrics.
Speaker 7: Or he just he got one coming out with Kenny Gamble.
Speaker 10: Oh snap, really, it's been working on it, Kenny.
Speaker 1: Going out anyway, I got play what's my wife's This
Speaker 1: one is murial in the bedbug? No, what's the next one?
Speaker 1: My wife's ninety? Oh yeah, because I might have to
Speaker 1: charge you with loss in me. All right. He's known
Speaker 1: as the King of calypso this is nice, but the
Speaker 1: lyrics are funny. She came for one night with kitchen.
Speaker 1: She seems of a decent character. But when I woke
Speaker 1: up in the morning, my wife, pretty ninety, was missing.
Speaker 7: Come back with why.
Speaker 1: Why this feels like a late night? I know, I know,
Speaker 1: I know. So basically Kitch Kitsch's wife is away and
Speaker 1: he's laying her girlfriend spend the night on the couch.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: By the way, here's my wife's night clothes the house. Well,
Speaker 1: he also sexes her down on the third and fourth
Speaker 1: and fifth verse. I was like seven verses. Wow, I
Speaker 1: am an immense fan of of of of kitchen. Well
Speaker 1: that's yeah, Lord kitchen.
Speaker 11: I'm wondering what the song negro by Injection is about.
Speaker 1: Dog. It's exactly what you think. He goes there. I mean,
Speaker 1: Jack's a lot of humor in politics. Yeah, yeah, that's sexy.
Speaker 1: But yeah, a lot of you know, coming from uh Trinidad.
Speaker 1: A lot of his music, the clips of music I
Speaker 1: can hear sort of origins of New Orleans music and
Speaker 1: in there and disco and other things like this was
Speaker 1: in the fifties, so yeah, for listening get Boston. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: Lord around there right, no, right, in nineties.
Speaker 7: Because all the ladies know they don't need to fear.
Speaker 7: They really don't go past your knees. The bed bugs,
Speaker 7: so I don't really really yeah yeah, record I had
Speaker 7: bed bugs ones. It was awful. They go to your elbow,
Speaker 7: to your knees, all the things.
Speaker 9: Wow.
Speaker 1: So your bad books weren't that clever to find that area?
Speaker 1: Treasure treasure, treasure.
Speaker 10: Wow, that was a great lyrical choice.
Speaker 1: That was a great lyrical choice.
Speaker 9: And lost and ninety are really rhyming today.
Speaker 1: No, it's he's the best man it at that.
Speaker 10: Lewis Jordan energy too.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, with the humor and all that stuff. You
Speaker 1: recorded your first album when you were seventeen, correct, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: what did you know? How much information did you gather
Speaker 1: in those five years that you learned traditional jazz to
Speaker 1: make a record? Like did you know what you wanted?
Speaker 1: And how did it come to be?
Speaker 10: I had been playing at a club in New Orleans
Speaker 10: called the Snug Harbor, which is like our jazz club.
Speaker 10: It's like you had the balcony where you can look
Speaker 10: down at the bandstand, and then you had the bottom level,
Speaker 10: which is like forty people down there. And I've been
Speaker 10: leading bands there from the time I was fifteen, and
Speaker 10: I kind of figured out what I wanted in the sound,
Speaker 10: and I was composing music and things like that. So
Speaker 10: by the time I was seventeen, I wanted to document
Speaker 10: the stuff I had figured out by playing at Snug
Speaker 10: Okay and also just document the different musicians that I've
Speaker 10: been playing with at that time. So that was really
Speaker 10: for me, a documentation of something that I wanted to
Speaker 10: look back on because I was about to move to
Speaker 10: New York. I moved to New York when I was
Speaker 10: seventeen in two thousand and four, and that's when the
Speaker 10: record was finished.
Speaker 7: You moved to New York when you was seventeen, Yes,
Speaker 7: for Julia, yeah wow, and your parents never got to
Speaker 7: do Man, what was that like for you today? Was
Speaker 7: that the first time you've been to New York when
Speaker 7: you were seventeen?
Speaker 10: Well, I was listening to Yeah, Well, I've been to
Speaker 10: New York one time before. Then in two thousand and two,
Speaker 10: we played Summer Stage with Troy and I tromon short
Speaker 10: and we played the Apollo.
Speaker 7: You weren't seventeen, you was like fifteen fourteen, and when.
Speaker 10: We did that, that was the something yep and and
Speaker 10: we played Summer Stage and we played the Apollo, and
Speaker 10: that was the first time I ever been in New York.
Speaker 10: And then a couple of years after that, I moved
Speaker 10: to New York. But I had been listening to Actually,
Speaker 10: I've been listening to a lot of records that you made,
Speaker 10: and that was one of the reasons I wanted to
Speaker 10: go to New York because I was I went off
Speaker 10: for sure.
Speaker 1: I went to to say this lead.
Speaker 10: I went to Berkeley the summer after I've been to
Speaker 10: New York for it's like a summer that summer program yeah,
Speaker 10: it's like a five week thing.
Speaker 1: I got rejected.
Speaker 9: Because Ellis Marsalis was on the community that.
Speaker 1: I didn't make it to the summer program Juilliard. I
Speaker 1: couldn't afford to go. What year did you go to
Speaker 1: the summer program? That was three? Okay, I'm older than here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh wow, that's cool. You went to you it's like
Speaker 1: years before that. Yeah, oh you went there. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: didn't go to Berkeley, but to that you actually had
Speaker 1: a childhood and then a teenage and I also played music.
Speaker 9: I like my science teacher. I like your science teacher.
Speaker 9: Most of the time, I'm like your CPA. Now I'm
Speaker 9: like your but I forgot Wait the joke John every
Speaker 9: time he sees me if I comb my hair, he
Speaker 9: never recognizes me. Listen, So like this is true on
Speaker 9: three or four occasions.
Speaker 5: This is wrong, you're doing it wrong.
Speaker 1: But this is this is wrong. Listen every time. Listen.
Speaker 1: He and I really meant when we worked on Hamilton. Okay,
Speaker 1: so during the Hamilton mixing process and the recording process,
Speaker 1: he had like long ass hippie hair. He was like, uh,
Speaker 1: what's his name? With the latter the comedian not thinking
Speaker 1: me the actor. We were he's supposed to do this show.
Speaker 1: Seth rog why am I paying twenty five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: pyramid right now? Seth brow his hair, He had a
Speaker 1: Seth Brogan vibe about him. And then and then when
Speaker 1: Hamilton was finally finished and we all took like the
Speaker 1: master photo together, like my accountant came out. He had
Speaker 1: this nice haircut and a suit and I shook his hand, O,
Speaker 1: nice to meet you. A mirror and he looked at
Speaker 1: me like, motherfuck it's me. So that's funny. But that
Speaker 1: was like two and a half years ago. Months ago.
Speaker 1: I was at six months ago. Six months.
Speaker 9: I've been doing this for years, Like we've been to Minneapolis,
Speaker 9: were all these places together he's been on. Yeah, So
Speaker 9: six months ago at a wedding, I was wearing glasses
Speaker 9: like that like makes me a whole different person. I
Speaker 9: was wearing a suit and glass. I walked up to him.
Speaker 9: I was like, yo, and he was like a mirror.
Speaker 10: I like.
Speaker 7: It actually made sense in the conversation.
Speaker 1: She wasn't here for that show. I haven't been here
Speaker 1: for six months.
Speaker 7: A black woman or an Indian American woman, like.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 1: Jamaica. His mom's black, not by By Black, but the
Speaker 1: step brother was like black Black, Yeah you can write
Speaker 1: some peace.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I gotta get something. Can I love cooking? A
Speaker 10: few things you can make really red beans and rice,
Speaker 10: yes with Don Dows, sauce without part, yeah something.
Speaker 1: Are you going to the house right now? She's herself.
Speaker 7: Can you pronounce that word again? Because nobody does that right.
Speaker 10: I'm doy like you knew how to say that.
Speaker 1: Sausage first line and sausage and yeah wait, I was
Speaker 1: gonna say uh. And lo was my man that always
Speaker 1: cooks outside of his gigs.
Speaker 10: All Carmen Ruffings and the barbecue Swingers.
Speaker 7: Where they do shows.
Speaker 1: Kermit En he plays.
Speaker 10: He did a thing at a club called Vaughn's and
Speaker 10: he'd have every Monday night in the in the in
Speaker 10: the gig a big old pot of red beans and
Speaker 10: rice sitting there and you just go self served.
Speaker 1: Dude. I love Kermit Ruffins music, but I really love
Speaker 1: Kermit Ruffings cooking.
Speaker 10: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's yeah when like I he and he cooks out front, yeah,
Speaker 1: like not even in the back where it's just like
Speaker 1: for the musicians. He cooks the food in the front,
Speaker 1: in the front. I'll be back sir, this pot while
Speaker 1: I go play the solo real quick. My good fellas like,
Speaker 1: I want to go yes week New Orleans.
Speaker 10: Yes, yes, Kermit Roffins rebirth alone. So okay, why did
Speaker 10: you choose Julliart? So I was I wanted to come
Speaker 10: to New York. I went to Berkeley before, and I
Speaker 10: had gotten the scholarship to go there, and I thought
Speaker 10: I was gonna go. Okay, I got that out the way.
Speaker 10: I got one more year high school. Then I figured
Speaker 10: out what I want to do. I wasn't even sure
Speaker 10: if I wanted to go to college, but I was like,
Speaker 10: if I can get to New York. Because actually I
Speaker 10: was listening to those records that you made, and I
Speaker 10: was reading the line of notes.
Speaker 1: What I used to do.
Speaker 10: I used to go to Blockbuster Video. In Blockbuster they
Speaker 10: had a used c D ben and I used to
Speaker 10: get sorry sorry, I used to get all of the
Speaker 10: U c ds and and listen to them down whatever
Speaker 10: it was, just to get some different sounds happening.
Speaker 7: Damn John tell him, wasn't that wasn't.
Speaker 10: The ones the ones that I bought some of them.
Speaker 10: I bought a Tower record, So actually.
Speaker 1: No, it was a U c d MG Music Club.
Speaker 1: And I didn't pay for that one, so.
Speaker 9: Anyone else want to Yeah, mine came from my roommate
Speaker 9: record I haven't.
Speaker 1: I worked that game. Theory came outside and paid for
Speaker 1: that one.
Speaker 10: Either things fall apart. I bought, uh, like water for
Speaker 10: chocolate is the one that I was. So I bought
Speaker 10: Dangerous Michael Jackson and like water for chocolate at the
Speaker 10: same time.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's random.
Speaker 10: It was a range of stuff that was it was
Speaker 10: happening to the bend. Is just it's the gift that
Speaker 10: keeps on giving.
Speaker 1: I see, well, most most people I know. I know
Speaker 1: that Christian McBride chose Juilliard because Miles Davis went to Juilliard.
Speaker 1: So usually like jazz cats that go to Juilliard, which
Speaker 1: is it's not weird of itself because in education is
Speaker 1: in education. But I do know that Miles Davis is
Speaker 1: going to Juilliard is a big reason why most jazz
Speaker 1: cats mess with Juilliard because otherwise they will all just
Speaker 1: go to the New school. But a vibe, right, It's
Speaker 1: like it's one of the music schools.
Speaker 10: It's a classical, right, I mean, it comes from that tradition,
Speaker 10: so it has that like Lincoln Senna like, yeah, you know, did.
Speaker 1: You enjoy it? You got your masters from that, that
Speaker 1: means you'd served six years there.
Speaker 10: Yes, sir, I was doing stuff that I wasn't supposed
Speaker 10: to do, which made me take time off in the middle.
Speaker 10: But then I went back basically because my mom was like,
Speaker 10: you have one year left at the time, finish the degree.
Speaker 10: Just go and finish it. But I was doing all
Speaker 10: types of touring, and basically I kind of developed my
Speaker 10: work ethic by going to Julliard and then playing all night,
Speaker 10: and then touring on the weekends, and then coming back
Speaker 10: and then on the breaks doing all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 10: putting it together. So it was a really great experience
Speaker 10: to kind of figure out how to do a bunch
Speaker 10: of stuff at the same time.
Speaker 1: And pretty much you when did you finally get your degree?
Speaker 10: It was twenty eleven, so I started in two thousand
Speaker 10: and four.
Speaker 7: So did you slide in some acting glasses while you
Speaker 7: were there?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 10: I loved that school because there's so much that you
Speaker 10: can do to kind of cross pollinate acting and dancing.
Speaker 10: There's an orchestra, there's the drama division that you can
Speaker 10: kind of put these all these different things together that
Speaker 10: I was always interested in that. That's one of the
Speaker 10: reasons that why I went. I read Miles autobiole truth right,
Speaker 10: It's just something about Juilliard and also being in New
Speaker 10: York and and checking out a lot of the people
Speaker 10: who are online of knows that I liked the music,
Speaker 10: lived in New York at the time, or played in
Speaker 10: New York a lot. It just all seemed to make sense.
Speaker 10: Just all Arrow's pointed, Well, go to Juilliard. If you
Speaker 10: make it through school, that's great. If not, you'll be
Speaker 10: in New York where everything that you like is happening.
Speaker 1: So can I naturally assume that perhaps Juilliard's where you
Speaker 1: met the other band members of Stay Human? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I figured as much. So, Okay, how did you guys.
Speaker 10: For well, the the drummer and bassist Joe Selle, Yeah, Cowboy, Yeah,
Speaker 10: Joe with the hat. We we met in high school.
Speaker 10: He was visiting, uh, he's visiting New Orleans at the
Speaker 10: jazz Fest actually, and I was cutting my theory class,
Speaker 10: I think it was, and I was walking around town
Speaker 10: in the French Quarter because our school was in Noka,
Speaker 10: was near the French Quarter, and he was walking around
Speaker 10: and he had a stick bag, and he recognized me
Speaker 10: and came up and said, hey, man, do you want
Speaker 10: to play? And I was like, yeah, let's go.
Speaker 1: So, hey, how you doing? How you doing? Let's play?
Speaker 10: Almost no words. We walked and didn't really speak after that,
Speaker 10: and we walked to my class that I was cutting
Speaker 10: and I was like, hey, I have a guest, and
Speaker 10: we played a song for the class. And then the
Speaker 10: next year he moved to New York to go to
Speaker 10: the Manhattan School of Music. I moved to go to Juilliard,
Speaker 10: and that's when the band came together.
Speaker 1: That's one experience that I regret really never having. I've
Speaker 1: never been like a jammy guy.
Speaker 10: You don't like the jam What do you mean called
Speaker 10: the roots?
Speaker 7: Damn?
Speaker 1: You used to? I avoid them ships.
Speaker 7: Now it's work, I got it.
Speaker 1: No, it's like it's it's expected, you know, because my
Speaker 1: legacy's on jamming.
Speaker 7: But I don't know, like you created albums off of that,
Speaker 7: like phrenology.
Speaker 1: It's just like, well for me, I don't like jam
Speaker 1: sessions because someone has to be the.
Speaker 7: Bad guy say it's time for you to go all right,
Speaker 7: that's you or no you can't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there's again, I have two microphones, so I'm
Speaker 1: the guy that's like, you know, trying to tell the
Speaker 1: saxophone player, don't solo over Tarik, like play a riff,
Speaker 1: play like it's it's it's it becomes like you think
Speaker 1: I'm a pain in the ass here. Imagine me on
Speaker 1: a job that I'm you.
Speaker 7: Know, like sometimes we see you back then.
Speaker 1: Exactly. So maybe it's like I have to be the
Speaker 1: bad guy. But more than that, it's just like I
Speaker 1: like Kirk does that easily. Like Kirk goes up to
Speaker 1: the whoever the guest band is on the show and
Speaker 1: they talk about their their guitars and is this a
Speaker 1: you know, sixty three Stratt and da da da da,
Speaker 1: and then they start doing you know, riffs together and
Speaker 1: I don't know, I never like and sometimes that happens,
Speaker 1: like I feel, oh god, I feel horrible because Chris
Speaker 1: Dave has been calling me like all week he's been
Speaker 1: doing this presidency Robert Glaser. No, well, technically I was
Speaker 1: out of town, so no disrespect Chris, of course, But
Speaker 1: I just I don't know why I don't have musicians.
Speaker 7: If you've ever jammed without being the boss, maybe that's
Speaker 7: the problem.
Speaker 10: Huh.
Speaker 7: Let somebody else.
Speaker 1: John, Like I think if it comes to like music collectors,
Speaker 1: like record collectors, beeper, like that's my zone. But I've
Speaker 1: never been the like I the thing is one I
Speaker 1: don't I'm not one of those like do you know
Speaker 1: like the oh this this Steinway was nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know what my drums are, like yeah,
Speaker 1: oh this is made of wood or mahogany wood or yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that's not me. I don't know how you're not
Speaker 1: a gear head. No, I don't think it's either you
Speaker 1: know what else. I'm really not a vinyl head, even
Speaker 1: though I have all those records. Yes I'm not.
Speaker 7: No, he means like the material, the vinyl, and then no, no,
Speaker 7: I just meant like, you know.
Speaker 1: You're not like Steve. Yeah, like Steves everyone thinks like
Speaker 1: it sounds better.
Speaker 7: Oh oh you're not one of those. Good for you,
Speaker 7: Amir for coming out, because you know people will be scared.
Speaker 1: To say that I love vinyl because that's the thing
Speaker 1: that me and my dad bonded on as when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, like going to the rest of us.
Speaker 1: I like record shopping, but I was never like I
Speaker 1: don't know which turn people around October November, like, do
Speaker 1: you recommend Christmas? Yeah? Can you recommend what turntable I
Speaker 1: should get? And I'm like an iPhone? So you guys
Speaker 1: just basically within five minutes you were like, hey you
Speaker 1: played did you do that earlier in the day, earlier
Speaker 1: in your life? Like you like the roots were more now, dude,
Speaker 1: I start. My dad threw me into his oldies act,
Speaker 1: like Tariq was the first person of my age that
Speaker 1: I played with it even then, like my parents looked
Speaker 1: at you know, he was you not you. Mom. Mom
Speaker 1: listens to the show and gets mad that I was
Speaker 1: throwing under the bus. Mom loved Tariq, Dad not so much.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I love it. It's just you know, I
Speaker 1: wish I could.
Speaker 7: Enjoy it. I don't know, Yeah, I guess I don't
Speaker 7: that press.
Speaker 11: But you say it's on like not having a roadmap, right,
Speaker 11: because we kind of went over this with Bobby McFerrin.
Speaker 1: Hey, I love having roadmaps. Oh yeah, I just.
Speaker 7: I'm McFerrin with the juliar John No, he's everything.
Speaker 9: But would you say that when when the music becomes
Speaker 9: a profession, the jamming aspect of it all to like
Speaker 9: hang out and jam with friends thing kind of comes down.
Speaker 9: I feel like that, like, yeah, I'm in music all
Speaker 9: day long. I like going and like playing for the
Speaker 9: sake of playing. Is a little different now than it
Speaker 9: was when I was twenty two.
Speaker 10: I feel like when you're younger and you're jamming is
Speaker 10: almost like practice, whereas at this point I feel like
Speaker 10: we have to have an objective exactly like roadmap or
Speaker 10: just a concept like we're jamming in order to figure
Speaker 10: out the purpose. Yeah this is the sound because I feel.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, but tell that to Prince who, yeah, like
Speaker 1: six hours you know, fuck the show, He'll give you
Speaker 1: six hour jam session, which is probably my only inspiration
Speaker 1: from he do it all right, I'll come that was
Speaker 1: for a reason they weren't doing that for the show,
Speaker 1: like figuring out the parts of the show and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. At least that's what Prince like really enjoys jam.
Speaker 1: He doesn't like talking to people, So you've rare the
Speaker 1: jam with Wow. I mean I don't like jamming or
Speaker 1: talking to people.
Speaker 10: It ben's on the people, right, because some people don't
Speaker 10: know how to jam.
Speaker 1: So do you what if you're in a situation and
Speaker 1: again you are you present a situation which people can
Speaker 1: randomly walk up and play you do you have to
Speaker 1: be the bad cops sometimes and like like no more
Speaker 1: cow bell, thank you.
Speaker 10: Sometimes there's been times where it just crosses the line
Speaker 10: and then you have to you have to shut it down.
Speaker 10: But I feel like a thing that I find joy
Speaker 10: and is taking something that's just like would otherwise be
Speaker 10: disastrous and making music out of it. Like, oh snap,
Speaker 10: this person is playing the piano. They're not trained. Well,
Speaker 10: let's make this into something.
Speaker 1: See that's what Bob mcpherrn said when I asked him
Speaker 1: about Heckler's He's like, the way that I extinguish it
Speaker 1: is just incorporating whatever they're doing. Yeah, ah see, I
Speaker 1: hate that. I'm a control freeing Oh wow, that's happening
Speaker 1: right now. Okay, let's see what we can do with that.
Speaker 1: Are these with random drunk audience people are like musicians.
Speaker 1: You might ass random drunk musicians or.
Speaker 10: Super free arrange it's arranged. It can be anything, because
Speaker 10: sometimes it can be you can you can have a
Speaker 10: great musician who is is technically there but doesn't understand
Speaker 10: the spirit of the moment or what's happening. Okay, and
Speaker 10: then that can change what's happening, and you have to
Speaker 10: go with that. Otherwise the band, the sounds this disconnected.
Speaker 1: So describe to me the day that you got the
Speaker 1: phone call that you're being considered for the night show.
Speaker 10: Oh yeah, late Night with.
Speaker 7: Late Night.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Steven, I love you man all right? So
Speaker 1: where were you? What was the day when you got
Speaker 1: the phone call for the Late Show with Stephen cober So.
Speaker 10: I was in the studio and I got a phone
Speaker 10: call from Stephen himself saying, I'm about to go on
Speaker 10: vacation for ten days and when I come back, I
Speaker 10: want to sit and have a conversation with you. And
Speaker 10: he didn't tell me what it was about, but I
Speaker 10: kind of figured what it was about.
Speaker 7: Y'all knew each other already at this point.
Speaker 10: I'd been on the Colbert Report a couple of times,
Speaker 10: and after the second time we kind of had become
Speaker 10: friends in a way where we could talk and I
Speaker 10: call him sometime.
Speaker 1: But he was not.
Speaker 10: He wasn't at any way at the Colbert Reports offering
Speaker 10: me the job. But I've been seeing in the news
Speaker 10: everything was leading to him taking over for Letterman, and
Speaker 10: I didn't hear there was a band yet. I figured, okay, well,
Speaker 10: if there's a band, we may have heard about it,
Speaker 10: or at least it's not solidified because they haven't announced it.
Speaker 10: So when he called me, I figured, okay, he wants
Speaker 10: to talk about that. So he goes off the grid
Speaker 10: for about ten days, no phone or anything, and I
Speaker 10: have thinking about it for ten days. Is this something
Speaker 10: that I think he called me because he knew, okay,
Speaker 10: think about this because when we come back, you're gonna
Speaker 10: probably have to make a decision quickly, which is what happened.
Speaker 10: We sat down and he talked to me about his
Speaker 10: vision for the show, and that was like a a
Speaker 10: pretty long conversation. Then I was introduced to the staff,
Speaker 10: which was gonna move from the Cobet Report to the
Speaker 10: late show, and I was, you know, walked around the
Speaker 10: office and met everybody, and then after about two or
Speaker 10: three hours, he's like, okay, so let me know something
Speaker 10: you want to do and we'll call you in a
Speaker 10: few next few days to you know, see where.
Speaker 1: You're at with it. Who else was in the running?
Speaker 1: Do you know? Well?
Speaker 10: He told me after this is like after we had
Speaker 10: done a few shows, a few test shows, came to
Speaker 10: the dressing room, and he says, I don't know if
Speaker 10: you knew this, but Alvis Costello was, Steve would have left.
Speaker 10: He's like, Alvis Costello was basically I'd given him the gig.
Speaker 10: But this is before I met you. Wait, Steve, did
Speaker 10: you know this?
Speaker 1: I was going to go work for them. I knew it.
Speaker 1: Steve reduced some Elvis records. Yeah, seriously, No, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't. I don't think.
Speaker 7: If you had to make the decision, Steve, yes.
Speaker 12: Oh that would be Yeah, that would be a tough decision.
Speaker 1: I would let Steve do it. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 10: Thank god, John, Wow, you would have had to split.
Speaker 1: I mean I would understand, I would, yeah, you know.
Speaker 10: Oh man, I'm sorry here.
Speaker 1: So he was he was up there.
Speaker 10: Like yeah, yeah, but with his band or I'm not sure,
Speaker 10: but apparently he flinched and Colbert had it in the
Speaker 10: back of his mind. After we ad met and that
Speaker 10: Colbert port Love Right performance, he was like, I'd be
Speaker 10: cool to spend some time on stage with this guy.
Speaker 10: He wasn't aware of it before then, but then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was about to say, did he go to
Speaker 1: any of the No.
Speaker 10: No, he's actually one of his producers went to one
Speaker 10: of those and what y'all doing we.
Speaker 1: Were talking about at the beginning, Yeah, right, But this
Speaker 1: also proves the point that there's Ronald McDonald's and then
Speaker 1: there's Ray Crocs. And for every figurehead that you think, like,
Speaker 1: did Steve Gobert go to these shows, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: because it only matters to the five people the Ray Crocs,
Speaker 1: the five people there in Steven's ear about this is cool.
Speaker 1: You should check it out right. It's never the person
Speaker 1: that the Kanye is that I have. The idea is
Speaker 1: it's the fifty people and Kanye's ear that he takes
Speaker 1: them from anyway, So go ahead.
Speaker 10: So that that that was when we've done some test shows,
Speaker 10: he said, you know, and and Elvis he flinched. He said,
Speaker 10: you know, I don't know if I want to have
Speaker 10: a boss. And then Stephen says, okay, well that's okay,
Speaker 10: hangs up, the phone, calls me and it's like, hey,
Speaker 10: do you do you want to have this conversation. Come
Speaker 10: back in ten days. We have the conversation. He calls me.
Speaker 1: The next day.
Speaker 10: After we have this conversation, I meet the staff and
Speaker 10: he says, you know, I want to you officially have
Speaker 10: been named the band leader of the Late Show. Congratulations,
Speaker 10: we start on this date, and you should start rehearsing
Speaker 10: your band.
Speaker 1: Did you human yet?
Speaker 10: So? Stay Human was basically for months and not only
Speaker 10: Stay he was a wild thing in the air where
Speaker 10: people were coming to me and telling me that I
Speaker 10: should call Steven, telling me you should be the band.
Speaker 10: The band was like, man, we had just finished like
Speaker 10: a nine month tour and they were like, we didn't
Speaker 10: have anything on the books. And the band was like, man,
Speaker 10: you should call Steven. You cool with Steven, right, you
Speaker 10: should call Steven. You should get that gig. Man, that
Speaker 10: would be great. We should lay that get He's so cool,
Speaker 10: it'd be so great. And I was just like, I
Speaker 10: don't know. I just don't know if that's something that
Speaker 10: I want to do. We just finished my first real
Speaker 10: tour and like we have some momentum. I feel like
Speaker 10: we could we have signed a label deal yet with
Speaker 10: just like all this stuff that and all this stuff was, yeah.
Speaker 7: I hadn't signed a label deal.
Speaker 10: No, I'm just putting out independent, just put it on
Speaker 10: the internet, no marketing know anything.
Speaker 1: Did you think?
Speaker 7: Let me just ask one question to the both of y'all,
Speaker 7: what's the difference you signed on to the the to
Speaker 7: Jimmy when how about how long have you been with him?
Speaker 1: We agreed in April of two thousand and eight. That's
Speaker 1: ten years, and it took about yeah, it took about
Speaker 1: seven months to really make it real.
Speaker 10: Steve, that's like three four three years. It's the fourth year.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 7: Did you ever think to maybe make a call, because
Speaker 7: I'm okay you made a call.
Speaker 10: In fact, I reached out, but we met before we
Speaker 10: could even connect on the phone. The first night of
Speaker 10: the show, Alex Soros had a birthday party, and you
Speaker 10: basically laid the He laid the whole science of the
Speaker 10: gig down at at this part at the Boom Boom Room.
Speaker 10: It was the second time that I talked to Abandon.
Speaker 10: The first person I talked to was was Schaeffer. Chevy
Speaker 10: Chase introduced me to Schaeffer and.
Speaker 1: Wait, you.
Speaker 10: I wasn't cool with Chevy really, but I had dinner
Speaker 10: with him a couple of times from a mutual friend
Speaker 10: and he was like, you should, and he plays piano,
Speaker 10: so we bonded over the piano.
Speaker 1: For a minute before they got the deal.
Speaker 13: Chevy Chase, Chevy Chase plays piano. This is why you're
Speaker 13: here because I never knew that Bill Evans this is
Speaker 13: his idol. Wow, wait Chevy Chase comedy.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, So did he introduced you to Paul?
Speaker 10: Yeah? Because I didn't know Paul, but obviously I wanted
Speaker 10: to talk to him when this was kind of in
Speaker 10: the running, and I went We went to p J.
Speaker 10: Clarks up in Lincoln Center and and he and he
Speaker 10: told me his experience. And then Mira we we met
Speaker 10: on the first night of the show at Sorols and
Speaker 10: he told us about how y'all do all of the
Speaker 10: stuff with the talk back mike and the leftop, and
Speaker 10: I mean, I kind of just I sought everybody out.
Speaker 10: I called Branford and we linked up when he was
Speaker 10: in town doing It's like a Bill Witherston at Carnegie.
Speaker 10: It was all like, right around the beginning of the season, Well,
Speaker 10: I'm having a.
Speaker 7: Brain fart, who's post Bradford from Philly And I.
Speaker 10: Went to see Kevin played with Dave Holland at the Vanguard, which, oh,
Speaker 10: we're playing the Vanguard next week, shout out. But uh
Speaker 10: so the Vanguard with Dave Holland.
Speaker 1: State human Uh yeah, hell yeah, I'm coming. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: might be sold.
Speaker 10: Out nor Riscal way back.
Speaker 1: I know, ye, she was with us first anywhere. I'm
Speaker 1: going to the winner circle.
Speaker 7: That's not true. You're a winner.
Speaker 1: I was playing. Go ahead, Elvis, just send me an email.
Speaker 1: I gotta okay. So you're basically saying that you went
Speaker 1: and sought out. Wow, you did it in ways that
Speaker 1: I didn't even think of. I think maybe I talked
Speaker 1: to Branford for like one second. Hit up.
Speaker 7: Do you know he's still around?
Speaker 10: Yeah? Doctors?
Speaker 1: Well he played with us, but I didn't. The thing was,
Speaker 1: it's like we literally we weren't going to take it,
Speaker 1: and I just doing those eight months from April to
Speaker 1: to what September? I just figured, Okay, I know we're
Speaker 1: not going to take this gig because the money was
Speaker 1: getting good.
Speaker 7: Leave it alone. It's just numbers.
Speaker 1: What your math?
Speaker 11: It's you said eight months April to September, that's like
Speaker 11: five Oh are you nerd.
Speaker 1: Any words? I mean I said September, but I guess
Speaker 1: we told him it's real maybe in November. So I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that. In my mind, I thought, Okay, you're
Speaker 1: gonna say no, but at least you're gonna have a
Speaker 1: friend in late night so that when the Roots released records,
Speaker 1: you could be the musical guess. And that's all we
Speaker 1: wanted because we were making good money at that point,
Speaker 1: and you know, I I guess he kind of didn't
Speaker 1: take no for an answer, But in my mind, I
Speaker 1: just thought by that point a lot of acts that
Speaker 1: we were opening for back in ninety four ninety five,
Speaker 1: like we're now they're now opening for us, like and
Speaker 1: no disrespect, I you know, I love but it I
Speaker 1: would hate when our management would let run DMC open
Speaker 1: for us, and I'm like, they're fucking run DMC like
Speaker 1: they need the headline, And even run DMC was like, nah, dog,
Speaker 1: we just do this hour, get our money be out,
Speaker 1: and you know, like they didn't care about like whatever
Speaker 1: romantic things I had in my head of us being legends.
Speaker 1: They just like give us the money stuff.
Speaker 7: Not for nothing, y'all, but like, for real, have you
Speaker 7: y'all too soaked up this moment where we just we
Speaker 7: just mentioned all these past band leaders and this is great,
Speaker 7: but this is the first time like the two brothers
Speaker 7: have really been helming the the band leader thing on
Speaker 7: the late night like the same time at the same time,
Speaker 7: at the same time, at the same time on the
Speaker 7: two competing shows, not on the late L L Late
Speaker 7: and the Late Ya want to say, well, let.
Speaker 1: Me finish my point. My point was. My point was basically,
Speaker 1: and I had Bill in mine when I did this,
Speaker 1: let me finish my point. My point was pretty much that, uh,
Speaker 1: I just I didn't want to be in that run
Speaker 1: dem see position. I just thought, like, Okay, it's two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, man, what if we're not a thing
Speaker 1: in two thousand and fifteen, we'll be running We'll be
Speaker 1: run DMC opening for Drake or like like we could
Speaker 1: ever do that anyway. I'm just saying that that was
Speaker 1: part of my Okay, let's let's just go here and
Speaker 1: get safe and we'll just go somewhere quietly to die.
Speaker 1: And that's what I thought. Well, I never I never
Speaker 1: once thought that it would be beneficial. So in your head,
Speaker 1: after you got all this information, what were the pros
Speaker 1: and what were the cons?
Speaker 10: Honestly, I was I was looking forward to touring more.
Speaker 10: But I really Steven actually kind of really convinced me
Speaker 10: because not by what he said. I just really liked
Speaker 10: him because I wasn't familiar with the Cobert Report before
Speaker 10: I was on the show, so I didn't know anything
Speaker 10: about him or his whole ethos, of the whole kind
Speaker 10: of sat tire that he came from in that tradition.
Speaker 10: But when I met him and talked to him, we
Speaker 10: just had a lot of things that I felt like
Speaker 10: were in common and his objectives for the show, what
Speaker 10: he wanted to do in the world in general, with
Speaker 10: everything that he had been doing. I was really compelled
Speaker 10: to do it because of that, and I also thought, well,
Speaker 10: at the time, I was only six, so I was like,
Speaker 10: why do you laugh every time?
Speaker 7: Because that's just amazing. It's like, what do you do
Speaker 7: after this?
Speaker 1: I remember where I was at twenty six, and it
Speaker 1: definitely was not on late night.
Speaker 7: Television paying leadal like He' not just playing I'm.
Speaker 10: Just I just an appointment, right, It was?
Speaker 7: It was, It was.
Speaker 10: It was such a a great vision that he showed us,
Speaker 10: and I mean, you know this is before Trump, but
Speaker 10: it was just the idea that was, let's make a
Speaker 10: show about people.
Speaker 12: So did you draw any parallels between his concept for
Speaker 12: a show and what you've been doing the music?
Speaker 10: Absolutely, I mean there's something we talked about in the
Speaker 10: first initial conversation about the show, calling the show the
Speaker 10: joy machine, I guess a machine that you get into
Speaker 10: and you basically create joy and you pump it out
Speaker 10: through the airwaves.
Speaker 1: My word is a joy machine.
Speaker 7: That's my word. I tell people all the time. Joy
Speaker 7: is the ultimate level. Like happiness is cool, joy is man,
Speaker 7: Wait one, how did you how did you do not
Speaker 7: know this?
Speaker 1: And Steve, how did you know this? I was just
Speaker 1: trying to insult her. I didn't know.
Speaker 12: It.
Speaker 7: Real thing, like me and my dad, we have a
Speaker 7: whole thing about joy And how really that didn't just happened.
Speaker 7: Happiness is fleeting, but joy is forever. Even when you're mad,
Speaker 7: it's still with this sense of this joy is.
Speaker 1: Just you're trying to be a dick. You're backfired on.
Speaker 9: That's actually actually.
Speaker 1: That was an introverted all.
Speaker 7: Wow, I would love to be that person. Se like
Speaker 7: to bring joys work.
Speaker 1: That's so good, that's so okay. I'm curious to know.
Speaker 1: I'm curious to know what your daily schedule is now,
Speaker 1: and I want to know if it's similar to mine.
Speaker 1: First of all, how often do you guys have to
Speaker 1: do you guys?
Speaker 10: Ever?
Speaker 1: Back up? Guests that come on the show.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, we back up guests sometimes fragmented parts of
Speaker 10: the band back up. I guess like the last thing
Speaker 10: we did I played not with the band with Nas
Speaker 10: mac Miller when he man, yeah.
Speaker 14: Wow, last performance on TV.
Speaker 1: Damn yeah yeah wow yeah man.
Speaker 10: Yeah, we we we do it a fair amount. In
Speaker 10: season one we did it a lot, okay, but and
Speaker 10: we also did a lot of sittings, and then after
Speaker 10: about a year and a half we kind of scaled
Speaker 10: back on that and now we're just.
Speaker 1: It's hard. I'll start first, well, okay, the thing is,
Speaker 1: it's because I always want my fantasy's like, YO want
Speaker 1: my idols to sit in with me. And the thing
Speaker 1: is is like my idolds are I'm being generous if
Speaker 1: I say sixty, they're more like sixty five, seventy seventy
Speaker 1: five and years old and setting their ways. And the
Speaker 1: thing is to be the position that we're in right now.
Speaker 1: Oh trust me, we're birds of effects. I believe that
Speaker 1: to be in the position that we're in right now
Speaker 1: is a bunch of fast thinking thinking, fast thinking fast
Speaker 1: man and someone that gets what man, So we want
Speaker 1: who's who's the cat that uh right? No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no class dead. So you know, wait, who's ill of
Speaker 1: the dead? I got a great example. I got a
Speaker 1: great example. There's two examples. Who's the guy who's the
Speaker 1: guy that sings the theme to mister Belvidere and the
Speaker 1: all the all detergent throwing to bro We can all utilize.
Speaker 7: I wanted to know mister Belvedere come ons a double
Speaker 7: like he.
Speaker 1: Leon Redbon, so Leon Redbone? He's about was he like
Speaker 1: seventy eight? Now how do you get the gig? Because Jimmy,
Speaker 1: that's the thing like oftentimes, like random ideas will come
Speaker 1: and then the unfortunate thing is like the perception of
Speaker 1: oh the roots can do anything. Is that hurts us
Speaker 1: so much because I'm a dog and smoking mirror a human? Yeah,
Speaker 1: with with with with smoking mirrors. I mean, anything can happen.
Speaker 1: But oftentimes we'll get thrown. Occasionally we'll get thrown a
Speaker 1: curveball where it's like, oh, I want you know, I
Speaker 1: want to hear the guy that's singing the all the
Speaker 1: commercials from the seventies and and the mister Belvedere theme.
Speaker 1: It's like, in theory, it's seems like a good idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's like I'm the one that has Usually these
Speaker 1: people are like seventy nine, eighty years old, right, so
Speaker 1: it's like he's sixty nine. How old is he sixty nine?
Speaker 1: Trust me, he's more like eighty nine. And it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: so at the counter of three, we're going to start dope,
Speaker 1: b bro, You're throwing to China, devote the vote rope
Speaker 1: whatever the lyrics are to mister velvit. And it's like
Speaker 1: they might not be that quick, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And oftentimes they'll be like what dude, and they'll just
Speaker 1: look at the camera like, oh man, who's the guitar player?
Speaker 1: And uh reitha Wranglin was singing respect to him and
Speaker 1: the Blues brothers. Uh oh oh, Mcutar Murphy, No, Mcott Murphy.
Speaker 1: One time, Mad Guitar Murphy. You remember how aunt esther
Speaker 1: and Friday when she was the Jove's witness, the way
Speaker 1: she said fuck you, Well, the funniest moment in our
Speaker 1: history of that show of sit ins. M Guitar Murphy
Speaker 1: again up there in age or whatever. Didn't want to
Speaker 1: wear in the ears or anything. So I'm like trying
Speaker 1: to tell him, okay, the next song yeah, and he
Speaker 1: just looked at me and he's just like fuck and
Speaker 1: he took his guitar and walked off to walk off
Speaker 1: over here over to you.
Speaker 9: Stories?
Speaker 1: What's your favorite? What stories are you allowed to tell?
Speaker 10: You can speaking in.
Speaker 14: We had jazz week that was yeah, we're talking about
Speaker 14: some good oldies.
Speaker 1: Wow that it's only like twelve seconds of Tod and
Speaker 1: Jimmy Heath.
Speaker 10: To the Heath Brothers Brothers. That week it was the
Speaker 10: Heath Brothers, Wayne Shorter, Wow. Roy, Roy haynes Man, Yeah,
Speaker 10: he can know.
Speaker 7: He's good. Roy is good.
Speaker 10: Roy played over Steven on a bumper.
Speaker 7: Yeah, eighty five, eighty five at least, right, he's ninety two.
Speaker 1: We get fired from music director job late.
Speaker 10: He played over the bumpers at last, you know, like
Speaker 10: twelve fifteen seconds coming in and then you stop and
Speaker 10: then the show goes on, propels you into the next
Speaker 10: act of the show. So Roy is playing and he's
Speaker 10: in the middle of just this fiery solo, and like
Speaker 10: all of us on stage are like, man, this is amazing.
Speaker 10: But I'm like, how do I get him to stop?
Speaker 1: And I'm like waving my hands, no, no, oh, you
Speaker 1: were coming in.
Speaker 10: How do I get him to stop, So what did
Speaker 10: you do?
Speaker 7: What did you do?
Speaker 10: So at one point he realized it, but it was
Speaker 10: about thirty seconds in and Stephen was like, did I
Speaker 10: just hallucinate? Did y'all just hear that? You know, he
Speaker 10: incorporated into the bit. But it's just the sittings are
Speaker 10: very difficult.
Speaker 1: How how distracting? Can I ask? How distracting is noodling? Oh,
Speaker 1: I hate to the show noodling? Okay, so it's guitar player.
Speaker 1: I'm not throwing Jimmy under the bus at all. Jimmy
Speaker 1: is very distracted by noodling.
Speaker 4: So just cooking noodles on the side of the stage.
Speaker 4: It's just like your guitar, but you're not playing the
Speaker 4: song even if the amp is off.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes guitar players will sit there and like
Speaker 1: practice a little bit, but Jimmy can still hear the
Speaker 1: So oftentimes I have to remind people like any tuning,
Speaker 1: any tuning, or you're basically supposed to be a frozen
Speaker 1: statue while the show's going on, and oftentimes one little
Speaker 1: like a or accidents happen, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But it has the potential to throw his concentration game off.
Speaker 1: It's like if you're shooting, uh a three point shot
Speaker 1: with five seconds left in the game and suddenly your
Speaker 1: mom's on the side, Hey, hey, hey, you know, distract
Speaker 1: and it can throw off the game. So I'm saying,
Speaker 1: how when mistakes like that happen, is there fear in
Speaker 1: your heart, like, oh God, this is the end of mine.
Speaker 10: It's we've gotten good at at at moving around because
Speaker 10: we still move around the theater and and and and basically,
Speaker 10: we'll be playing in the balcony one break, or we'll
Speaker 10: be playing and you know, we'll go to the there's
Speaker 10: a two tiers, so we'll go to the balcony on
Speaker 10: the stage side, or we'll go to the balcony on
Speaker 10: the audience side, or we'll go in the aisles or
Speaker 10: and and we have a lot of percussion instruments and
Speaker 10: tambourines make a lot of noise when you pick them up.
Speaker 10: So we've gotten good at it, so we don't have
Speaker 10: as many hiccups anymore. But we got a note early on,
Speaker 10: like in the first year, we got an email. I
Speaker 10: get the email and it's like, so during the show,
Speaker 10: would like it if the band area could be as
Speaker 10: quiet as possible and I was like, oh, okay, but
Speaker 10: the energy was like during the show, I knew it
Speaker 10: was coming because I think somebody dropped the tambourine and
Speaker 10: Steven looked over. He didn't say anything, but he looked
Speaker 10: over like he's like, hmm okay. And then next day, Oh,
Speaker 10: what what time do you have to be there? Normally, well,
Speaker 10: it's changed production.
Speaker 1: Meeting or it's Marissa the production meeting person. What time
Speaker 1: do you have to be there?
Speaker 14: In the more so, I technically don't work at the
Speaker 14: Late Show anymore. I worked just for John, but I
Speaker 14: worked there for three years. I actually worked the premiere
Speaker 14: of the Late Show and the premiere of the Tonight Show.
Speaker 7: Took the information, and.
Speaker 14: So this is like a colliding of two worlds right
Speaker 14: now a little a little bit. Yeah, but production meeting
Speaker 14: starts at ten thirty, So back when I was an
Speaker 14: employe at CBS had to be in around ten. John
Speaker 14: usually gets in around The schedule change is depending on
Speaker 14: how you feel with the band.
Speaker 1: How often you do live in Manhattan? Please tell me
Speaker 1: you do? I used to.
Speaker 10: I don't anymore.
Speaker 1: No, you Lioklyn, Brooklyn used to.
Speaker 14: Live two blocks away in Brooklyn.
Speaker 7: Look at him, Yeah, I belong in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: Yes, I still maintain they want me to live at
Speaker 1: thirty one Rock.
Speaker 10: Oh yeah, yeah, Oh for sure.
Speaker 14: John would roll out of bed and walk to work
Speaker 14: in probably fifteen seconds. That's how close here.
Speaker 1: Awesome.
Speaker 7: Now it's like an hour.
Speaker 10: I'll so I just wanted to get outside of it. Yeah.
Speaker 10: And also I want I want to put a studio
Speaker 10: because I have so many things that I want to record.
Speaker 10: I'm putting the studio at the bottom floor, so I
Speaker 10: can kind of just roll out of bit and go
Speaker 10: to the studio and then go to work.
Speaker 7: Can I ask you just to rate your millennialism? What
Speaker 7: part of Brooklyn do you live in?
Speaker 10: So it's like Clinton Hill, Fort Green Borders.
Speaker 7: What's what you think, Bill, that's like a little stage five?
Speaker 10: Great your millennium.
Speaker 11: He's living around the area where I used to live
Speaker 11: when I first moved to Brooklyn and got priced out.
Speaker 7: Oh you gentified? Can as you never read any of
Speaker 7: the the cons of because we all know that Steven
Speaker 7: is so involved in the politics side of things. Does
Speaker 7: that ever come at you in any type of way?
Speaker 10: You know it It doesn't, But it's definitely aligned to
Speaker 10: tread in the sense that you have your identity, but
Speaker 10: your identity is so closely related to the show and
Speaker 10: the content of the show.
Speaker 1: So people watching the show probably know what they're getting into.
Speaker 10: Yeah, but I don't know if you know.
Speaker 7: That's true. But I didn't know if you get those.
Speaker 7: I'm sure he still gets mean emails and hate stuff.
Speaker 7: I'm talking about Steven, not John saying. Yeah, people still
Speaker 7: don't like it. They know what he's saying. They don't
Speaker 7: like it.
Speaker 1: I love it myself, but I feel like, if you're
Speaker 1: watching Stephen Colbert, you know what you're getting.
Speaker 7: Oh you do?
Speaker 1: So anyway, what's the cafeteria like that?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, There's so many things I want to ask
Speaker 1: about this show. First of all, what what's the degree
Speaker 1: level of the of the theater? How cold is it?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 1: Man, damn me.
Speaker 14: It's like i'd say, probably fifty eight degrees.
Speaker 10: Yeah, you can see your breath still cold.
Speaker 14: Yeah, they've kept it cold. They say that they keep
Speaker 14: it cold to make people make people laugh, right, and
Speaker 14: back in the day they kept it cold because the
Speaker 14: lights were so hot. Now they're LEDs. They don't produce
Speaker 14: any They.
Speaker 7: Always got a reason, they say, to strip levels of
Speaker 7: the nipples hard. It's always exactly exactly.
Speaker 14: You got to wear a winter jacket when you're in there.
Speaker 1: We we should say that the CBS Theater letterman was
Speaker 1: there first. Yeah, and he started normally it should be
Speaker 1: sixty eight degrees, yes, and then when the lights come on,
Speaker 1: then it's hot. But as she said, now it's led.
Speaker 1: It doesn't there's no heat uh emanated from it. And
Speaker 1: now it's like fifty eight degrees.
Speaker 10: That's not that's ballpark.
Speaker 14: But I think around there the other.
Speaker 10: Day it was factually recorded at fifty eight because that
Speaker 10: was fake news. How big was the theater though there
Speaker 10: was a it's about a five hundred seater.
Speaker 14: Really tall ceilings. There's a big dome.
Speaker 7: It's five hundred seats, bigger than another woman. Yeah, the
Speaker 7: ceiling is that's what he has.
Speaker 1: No, No, because in my mind I thought you guys
Speaker 1: were playing for like ten thousand people. No, it seems large.
Speaker 10: As like a little like four ninety something looks big
Speaker 10: on cameracks.
Speaker 14: The dome is. The dome is pretty massive. But yeah,
Speaker 14: seat wise, it's I think it's under five hundred.
Speaker 1: Yeah, damn, okay, it's nice. You guys have to warm
Speaker 1: up at the beginning. Oh yeah, are you tired of
Speaker 1: marching out and doing It's like a it's it's good
Speaker 1: for the band if we keep it fresh. So if
Speaker 1: we we change it.
Speaker 10: Exactly, so you gotta you gotta come out and you
Speaker 10: have to do something that you don't even know how
Speaker 10: it's going to turn out. It's almost like a way
Speaker 10: for us to warm up ourselves, not even just the house.
Speaker 10: So we've recently been we've been doing sunny rollins Saint Thomas.
Speaker 10: Oh okay, yeah, but sometimes we used to go out
Speaker 10: and it would just be like, here's here's the groove,
Speaker 10: let's play sky in G and then we'll modulate on Q.
Speaker 1: To be flat. Right, So you guys have your your
Speaker 1: code speaker. Yeah, okay, since you're playing in close quarters.
Speaker 1: I will say that for the roots, at least these
Speaker 1: last nine years brought us so close together in a
Speaker 1: way that is scary, where we can now literally have
Speaker 1: conversations with each other musically, which I mean just our
Speaker 1: our our level of code speak, certain certain reference lines,
Speaker 1: and Mark plays something we know, you know, third row
Speaker 1: five seats in polka dot shirt.
Speaker 7: Not anymore because he's married.
Speaker 1: Exactly look.
Speaker 7: Touch he can't look they.
Speaker 1: Heard that my fault mark, But I mean it's hypothetical.
Speaker 1: But the point is that there's at least there's about
Speaker 1: thirty things we can communicate with each other without saying
Speaker 1: a word to each other. I could literally play something
Speaker 1: on the tambourine or or or the symbol or something
Speaker 1: if I want Kirk's attention, I know what riff to
Speaker 1: play if I want the horns, and there's something I
Speaker 1: do a rhythm on the fourth. So are you guys
Speaker 1: at that zen moment now where you guys know each
Speaker 1: other that?
Speaker 10: Well, yeah, it's it's some wild, just coldes that we
Speaker 10: got happening with, especially with the band who the guys
Speaker 10: who were part of the band before the show. We
Speaker 10: brought some of that in because we developed a lot
Speaker 10: of colds when we would play on the subways. Because
Speaker 10: when we play on the subways, you couldn't always say
Speaker 10: something to the cat, here comes thugs, let's go right, yeah,
Speaker 10: you know what I mean. So it's like taking that
Speaker 10: and then also playing together every days. It's been a
Speaker 10: lot of little things that when we play a venue
Speaker 10: now it just feels like, oh, we're running now. We
Speaker 10: took the weight to off our ankles. It's like, oh,
Speaker 10: this is like way easier than it used to be.
Speaker 1: All right. One of my final questions, are you tired
Speaker 1: of people asking you how long is this going to
Speaker 1: be for? Oh?
Speaker 7: My goodness, how long it is gonna be for?
Speaker 1: Well? I mean, I mean.
Speaker 10: Question, Hey, yeah, I gotta get.
Speaker 7: You got to ask every man, every thirty year old man,
Speaker 7: that question, how long you're gonna be here for? Because
Speaker 7: you know y'all like to.
Speaker 10: I mean, I tell you what. The the first part
Speaker 10: of the contract is five years. Okay, so I'm there,
Speaker 10: there you go, and the rest we'll see. I mean,
Speaker 10: I love doing it. I don't have plans to leave,
Speaker 10: and so it's just it's hard to know because we're
Speaker 10: actually doing the show almost every day. And it's like,
Speaker 10: you gotta be thinking about that.
Speaker 7: Because you can't now you can't do projects like you
Speaker 7: did the season of tre May and stuff like that.
Speaker 7: But you want to do you want to still do
Speaker 7: things like that.
Speaker 1: There's another question I asked, wait, digit can you does
Speaker 1: each band member, well, it's this as does each band
Speaker 1: member have their own backup sub just in case you
Speaker 1: get a call about blah blah blah being in the
Speaker 1: hospital or wow, someone's.
Speaker 10: I'm I'm never subbed.
Speaker 1: I'm just damn y'all love each other too.
Speaker 10: It was like, I'm just trying to think of what
Speaker 10: would happen if we needed.
Speaker 1: A sub So if somebody's sick, they just.
Speaker 7: Yeah, nobody been sick. What kind of what y'all doing?
Speaker 1: Kind of health regiment.
Speaker 10: I've been sick on stage before. Steven's also been sick
Speaker 10: on stage before.
Speaker 1: With y'all, it's kind of the show has to go on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I found I finally found a drummer that like, when
Speaker 1: I closed my eyes, I was like, holy shit, I'm
Speaker 1: playing drums? Who is that?
Speaker 7: Who?
Speaker 1: Did I just ask you about? Raised? Raised drumm? Willie
Speaker 1: Jones Jones? I want him to be. I want him
Speaker 1: to be. Do you just want vacation? No, well, I
Speaker 1: mean just in case you get a call or something like.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. It's it's things gonna happen. You know,
Speaker 1: when my father passed away and I had to rush
Speaker 1: to to take care of stuff and Philly, I need
Speaker 1: someone to send him for four days, and I had
Speaker 1: that person.
Speaker 12: But there's other things to your job besides drumming, like his.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but at the end of the day, it's it's
Speaker 1: still I know that there's a lot that revolves, but
Speaker 1: the way that the circle is now the way that
Speaker 1: I planned it. You know, I could as long as
Speaker 1: those twelve seconds are straight going in and going out.
Speaker 12: My point is that your guys jobs involved more than
Speaker 12: just musicianship.
Speaker 1: You have to be charismatic, you have to be funny.
Speaker 1: But there's Treek, see, there's.
Speaker 7: There's you got tore though, right, But John, Who's.
Speaker 1: Who's the second most charismatic person in the group? Just
Speaker 1: in case, what would you say would do that?
Speaker 14: That's not like John, you got energy this like could
Speaker 14: step in and be the front man.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 10: We I don't think we've ever.
Speaker 1: I don't mean forever.
Speaker 10: I just mean like a show school would do that because.
Speaker 7: Now I think we're messing them up because get sick,
Speaker 7: you know, I feel.
Speaker 1: Like we're getting energy has evil face.
Speaker 10: I was thinking, even even in situations where someone has
Speaker 10: missed shows, we don't get a sub We just played
Speaker 10: with with the band without like like like Lewis Cato
Speaker 10: plays the bass and then when he was out for
Speaker 10: a while, we just did shows where there was no base,
Speaker 10: with no drugs. We have Tuba as well.
Speaker 1: So, I mean.
Speaker 10: It would be interesting to do this.
Speaker 7: I don't I think this is dangerous. I don't know.
Speaker 7: But you should just play, you should plan for it.
Speaker 10: But yeah, I gotta think about that. It's almost seven
Speaker 10: hundred shows six What.
Speaker 1: Are you guys on, Alex We're on number No, we are,
Speaker 1: We're about we're coming up on two thousand. We're on
Speaker 1: eight hundred something right now?
Speaker 10: Right?
Speaker 1: Are we in the nine hundreds?
Speaker 12: Yeah, we're nine to fifty on the Tonight Show and
Speaker 12: we did like nine seventy on the first one.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, I forgot about. But who's late Night?
Speaker 7: John?
Speaker 10: Got about the first A John?
Speaker 7: What's a Hollywood African?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 10: My good?
Speaker 14: Nice segue?
Speaker 7: You like that?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 10: So in entertainment, Jean Michelle Boskia, who I've been researching
Speaker 10: for the last year because I'm doing a musical sinspired
Speaker 10: by his life for Broadway. I've been researching him and
Speaker 10: that's one of his paintings from eighty three.
Speaker 7: Is called fuck Why did not?
Speaker 10: Now?
Speaker 7: I feel ignorant?
Speaker 1: See? I thought she was trying to lead into something.
Speaker 1: I thought you knew that.
Speaker 10: Well that's the title, yeah, that title? But title the
Speaker 10: title of my album that when we just put an
Speaker 10: album out called Hollywood Africans. But the idol is a
Speaker 10: homage to Jean Michelle Bosquas nineteen eighty three painting where
Speaker 10: he's kind of it's an indictment of the entertainment industry
Speaker 10: and the way that there's a marginalization of African American
Speaker 10: entertainers and how they have to wear a mask while
Speaker 10: creating all these different things.
Speaker 1: Code speaking, Yeah, we talked about code speaking on the
Speaker 1: show last week. It was the funniest thing ever on
Speaker 1: y'all show because, uh, the actress that used to be
Speaker 1: in The Hungry Games and now in Amanda. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I forget it. Amanda. She was trying to explain what
Speaker 1: code speaking was at each other, like someone gets it? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, are there any other Have
Speaker 1: we covered everything?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: We don't everything. Is there something that you missed? Uh?
Speaker 12: No, it's just so ultra interesting, you know to hear about.
Speaker 1: Wow, Steve, what what was that way to wrap it up? Steve?
Speaker 7: Can I just ask I have to do this for
Speaker 7: just because I'm a female and somebody's going to want
Speaker 7: to know.
Speaker 10: You sing, Hey, I'm in a relationship, talk.
Speaker 7: About all right? I am your marriage dude, don't know
Speaker 7: you always do that beauty.
Speaker 1: People like people relationship.
Speaker 7: They hit you too when I ask you about your personal.
Speaker 1: When they when you when one one guest of ours
Speaker 1: was like, damn why she had to put me in
Speaker 1: the autar like that?
Speaker 7: Nobody heard that one. Wow, thank you taking congratulations.
Speaker 1: And thank you John for the the the Late Night
Speaker 1: Wars edition John, go ahead, Oh yeah, all we need
Speaker 1: is what's his name formerly of mactub Oh, I can't
Speaker 1: think of his name face but I can't uh Afro,
Speaker 1: He's a He's Reggie something.
Speaker 9: Reggie watch watch Oh yeah, another late night music director.
Speaker 1: Yes, we need to have the a late night symposium
Speaker 1: with all the Yeah. That would be so yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be dope. Love Fred Armison, right, yes, yes, another drummer.
Speaker 1: Or we like to thank you for being on the show.
Speaker 7: Than you.
Speaker 1: Shout out to you always come back to tonight show.
Speaker 1: Check out John's new album on streaming on Pandora right now.
Speaker 7: Yes, and then go look at the look at the painting.
Speaker 1: I do have a lot of and I do have
Speaker 1: a question of course. Go ahead, Steve.
Speaker 12: You guys have a rehearsal room there, like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 12: it are.
Speaker 14: Seen both so yeah, you know ours it is pretty
Speaker 14: much the same size. Yours is a little Yours is
Speaker 14: better because you have an actual mixing board in there
Speaker 14: and you can record straight into We don't have that
Speaker 14: to get hooked up.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, time out, I gotta extend this show
Speaker 1: for three minutes. Wait a minute. You guys do that
Speaker 1: show and don't document any ideas that you have during rehearsal.
Speaker 14: Oh yeah, we do voice memos on the iPhone, you know,
Speaker 14: wow with an organized dropbox system.
Speaker 1: Again technology killing. I'm saying, get a little recording system
Speaker 1: inside your rehearsal room. Yeah, and then you can document.
Speaker 10: See I thought you meant in the office, because I
Speaker 10: have that in the office.
Speaker 1: No, we are. Our dressing room is our studio. We
Speaker 1: made We made Elvis Costell's album inside of that dressing
Speaker 1: room like places in real studios.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and always kind of debunked the like it's also
Speaker 7: that's your just one dressing room. There's y'all got like five,
Speaker 7: like I just y'all have.
Speaker 9: It's you we got to It's like it's like a
Speaker 9: gym locker room there, I.
Speaker 10: Mean, because we have we have there's the two dressing rooms,
Speaker 10: and then one of them is the band one half
Speaker 10: of it is the band rehearsal room. And then I
Speaker 10: have the office, but that's on the other side of
Speaker 10: the building. So that's where like the drums and the
Speaker 10: recording equipment are, but in the band area. I never
Speaker 10: thought to put a recording situation.
Speaker 1: Yes, that way, and get you, get you a Steve,
Speaker 1: get you a Steve. And then when you and then
Speaker 1: have a computer on stage where everyone's in here, and
Speaker 1: then oh, yeah, you have.
Speaker 10: That, but we just played the voice memos through it.
Speaker 10: We record the voice and we play them that.
Speaker 1: You don't need an engineer.
Speaker 10: Just let's drop it.
Speaker 7: I'm sorry. Last random question, Can the Roots appear on
Speaker 7: that show? And if you if your album could appear
Speaker 7: on the other show, could you'll ever be on the
Speaker 7: same show?
Speaker 1: Sad we have uh Jon Batiste on the Tonight show.
Speaker 1: Whether there's no who's the new Less Moons of Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't hang out y'all, y'all y'all country without a president.
Speaker 10: Well you have the step in, but we don't have
Speaker 10: No one has been brought in.
Speaker 1: I definitely know that, uh the Roots aren't welcome to
Speaker 1: anything on CBS, including the Grammys during the Less Moons
Speaker 1: period because the the proximity of the Late Night Wars
Speaker 1: was like a thing.
Speaker 10: In his head.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, day, I want it, you want it, you
Speaker 1: want it. No, I'm just saying that I have zero qualms.
Speaker 1: And you know, Stephen and Jimmy have done that. They
Speaker 1: did want each other shows before. Oh okay, and to me,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest things, like I would love to
Speaker 1: do in April Fool's Day where it's like both those
Speaker 1: straight they're so stupid, but that would do. Would show
Speaker 1: Remember that Charlie Brown, I think Brown battle.
Speaker 14: That was so we weren't allowed to post that though,
Speaker 14: but maybe we'll take it out of the archives and
Speaker 14: on Instagram, the Late Night War situation.
Speaker 1: He don't like you. I'm sorry, I don't know it was.
Speaker 14: I'm wasn't us to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't, I don't.
Speaker 12: I'm not saying to look like I'm supposed to know
Speaker 12: what's going on on the Lord Michael's level.
Speaker 1: Again, this is what happens when executives and lawyers and
Speaker 1: red tapes get involved. Let's take it out of the cool.
Speaker 1: We had a we had a like Lucy Lionis.
Speaker 14: Via text message and it started out, how did it
Speaker 14: start off?
Speaker 1: I think the James or James James.
Speaker 14: So Megan Trainer was on the show promoting the Peanuts
Speaker 14: movie and uh, go.
Speaker 1: Back, wait to look on your face. That was like,
Speaker 1: I wish the audience could see your face right now,
Speaker 1: all of our viewers. Yeah, John's taking a picture.
Speaker 5: Stories like that's what.
Speaker 9: I don't remember can Train on the Peanuts movie.
Speaker 14: Soundtrack song song on it? But long story short, we
Speaker 14: go back and she texted me and she was like,
Speaker 14: I'm at tonight's show and I used to intern there
Speaker 14: back in two thousand and I don't know something something,
Speaker 14: So she recorded James. Uh or no, I recorded John
Speaker 14: playing the Peanuts theme song on the piano and texted
Speaker 14: over to her. Five minutes later, we get a text
Speaker 14: from James. He's playing it back.
Speaker 7: It looks like black Charlie Brown, a little bit of like.
Speaker 14: He was like, okay, let's go. So John's like, all right, well,
Speaker 14: we got to send one back. So we record John
Speaker 14: and he throws this like bluesy flavor and it's like
Speaker 14: I tried the level up. So then James sends back
Speaker 14: one again and his is even more insane. Than John's
Speaker 14: and we're like, all right, we're stepping it up.
Speaker 1: Let's go.
Speaker 14: So we go to the rehearsal room, like, tell the band,
Speaker 14: all right, guys, we're gonna send another video to them.
Speaker 14: We're gonna reveal you when the camera pans around. So
Speaker 14: I got my iPhone. John starts a little intro and
Speaker 14: then then we pan around. The band comes in and
Speaker 14: we're like, all right, we got them, we got them,
Speaker 14: send it back. We send it back, probably about like
Speaker 14: two hours past. We're like, all right, we won Like
Speaker 14: pretty much, they can't.
Speaker 7: They have nothing on us.
Speaker 14: Get a text message and it's a close up of
Speaker 14: a mirror and they're in the studio and they start
Speaker 14: playing the Peanuts theme song.
Speaker 7: I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 14: I'm pretty sure Keith.
Speaker 7: Filmed this or something.
Speaker 14: The phone pans back, the studio is full with the
Speaker 14: audience and they're all doing the Charlie Brown dance and
Speaker 14: this is probably this was about i'd say, two minutes
Speaker 14: before we were supposed to go.
Speaker 1: On stage, and.
Speaker 7: What are we gonna do?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 7: What are we gonna do?
Speaker 14: So we go on stage and you got I don't
Speaker 14: want to say who I thought one. I mean, you
Speaker 14: guys like went around the house and everyone was cheering
Speaker 14: going to.
Speaker 1: March to the audience. I don't know, I'm gonna.
Speaker 7: Say I think the Roots.
Speaker 14: The Roots kind of had it down though with the
Speaker 14: Charlie Brown dance in the audience that was that was tight.
Speaker 14: But so we brought it to Steven and we were like,
Speaker 14: we did this thing.
Speaker 7: It was so random.
Speaker 14: It's funny how it turned out, you know, like the
Speaker 14: late night bands are friends, and he was like, oh,
Speaker 14: this is a great idea. Do you know what we
Speaker 14: should do. We should get we should do ours over
Speaker 14: and get everyone to wear Charlie Brown T shirt and
Speaker 14: do something like crazy like that, but then have the
Speaker 14: to have John and the band march out of our
Speaker 14: theater and into the tonight show theater. I joined them
Speaker 14: on stage and make it like a charity thing around Christmas.
Speaker 14: So this is twenty fifteen and.
Speaker 1: Three years of fast.
Speaker 7: We might bring it back Dan, which is dead, which
Speaker 7: is big.
Speaker 10: He's done make it happen.
Speaker 1: We will make it happen. I never knew what happened
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 14: I thought, sitting on my computer, wait, but we didn't
Speaker 14: put it.
Speaker 1: On Twitter or Instagram or anything.
Speaker 14: They told us anything with it this Christmas, bring it back.
Speaker 1: All right, we shall bring it back. Continue, Let's do it.
Speaker 14: No, it's not late night friendship.
Speaker 1: That's the jokes. Continue always. Mister Rogers was still here.
Speaker 1: Second starter war between me and mister Rogers. Some bloods
Speaker 1: and crips between Street and mister Rogers. Johnny Costa, Yes,
Speaker 1: John Costa, Yeah, all right, well on behalf of our
Speaker 1: all questions. Thank you, all right, thank you, John, Patissa
Speaker 1: Amerson don't know this, y on, behalf of Sugar Steve
Speaker 1: and Boss Bill and and and and Boss Bill and
Speaker 1: unpaid Bill. I forgot unpaid bills like I wasn't even here.
Speaker 1: I know and Bill for this week. Yes you are
Speaker 1: overdue Bill. I'm what's Fontcolo? He's not here doing his
Speaker 1: basement or something. He's definitely like Matt finishing the stairway. Okay,
Speaker 1: well this is quest love of course, Love supreme, and
Speaker 1: we will see you on the next go round. And
Speaker 1: I'm with I was waiting for purchased all of Kyoto's
Speaker 1: all his scoring music. He it was like a Japanese
Speaker 1: with the roots. Yeah, he said with us, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: forgot that. Yeah, you win. And all we did was
Speaker 1: his songs. Wow, what drink I want to get?
Speaker 10: Yokoshima mourat Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, all right, we're out, We're out, We're out.
Speaker 10: John H.
Speaker 1: Course Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.