Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: from iHeart Radio. The sound you're hearing is the magic
Speaker 1: fingers of acclaimed jazz bassist, composer and arranger Christian McBride.
Speaker 1: That's him on Stick and Move with his band Inside,
Speaker 1: straight from Live at the Village Vanguard. The eight time
Speaker 1: Grammy winner is the leader of several bands of various
Speaker 1: sizes and configurations. He's collaborated with everyone from Herbie Hancock
Speaker 1: and Diana Crawl to Sting and Celine Dion. He also
Speaker 1: serves as the artistic director of both the Newport Jazz
Speaker 1: Festival and the educational organization Jazz House Kids. Growing up,
Speaker 1: McBride was known to many as a child prodigy. He
Speaker 1: attended the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts
Speaker 1: in the same class as Questlove and Boys to Men.
Speaker 1: He even performed on stage with both Wynton Marsalis and
Speaker 1: Miles Davis while still in high school. I wanted to
Speaker 1: know how a young talent like McBride found his entry
Speaker 1: point to a challenging genre like jazz.
Speaker 2: The music I grew up on was James Brown. James
Speaker 2: Brown has always been my number one musical hero our household,
Speaker 2: you know, like you said, you grew up on Cream
Speaker 2: and Hendrix and Zappa. My household was full of James Brown,
Speaker 2: the Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and the Pips, Al Green,
Speaker 2: Isaac Hayes. So I sort of backed my way into jazz,
Speaker 2: you did, Oh yeah, absolutely? And what was the.
Speaker 1: Beginning of that seduction? How did you decide? Because I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this to be kind. You seem like
Speaker 1: you could play any music you wanted to, well, thank you,
Speaker 1: and you'd have a seed in any band you wanted.
Speaker 2: Well, that was my ultimate goal. You know, my dad
Speaker 2: is also a professional bass player, and so while I'm
Speaker 2: growing up listening to all this R and B and
Speaker 2: soul music, my dad started playing with the great Cuban
Speaker 2: percussionist Mongo Santa Maria. And so I saw my dad
Speaker 2: play with Mongo a lot, and you know, I thought,
Speaker 2: I don't know much about Latin music, but this is killing,
Speaker 2: you know. And I was eight years old and I
Speaker 2: was watching dad play with Mongo and Dizzy Gillespie was
Speaker 2: the guest soloist with the band that night, and I
Speaker 2: knew who Dizzy was I wasn't familiar with his music,
Speaker 2: but I knew who he was, you know, who didn't
Speaker 2: know those cheeks, you know, And I had seen him
Speaker 2: on The Muppet Show and you know, so he was
Speaker 2: like the only jazz musician who I knew. And after
Speaker 2: the show was over, my dad took me backstage, and
Speaker 2: I remember Meltor May was also there that night, Ella
Speaker 2: Fitzgerald and Dizzy and you know, just being around all
Speaker 2: these legendary jazz musicians, I thought, man, he's these guys
Speaker 2: are cool, you know. But even still. It wasn't until
Speaker 2: I got to middle school and I started playing the
Speaker 2: upright bass. That's when the other bass player in my family,
Speaker 2: my great uncle, he plays bass also. He got so
Speaker 2: excited that I was playing upright bass. He said, come
Speaker 2: over to my house. I got something for you, and
Speaker 2: he had a stack of records waiting for me. He
Speaker 2: gave me a crash course in the history of jazz
Speaker 2: in like six hours, you know. He played my house
Speaker 2: Cold Traine, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong all the way up
Speaker 2: through Weather Report and Return It Forever, and things that
Speaker 2: were contemporary like Win Marcellus and Terrence Blanchard. So He
Speaker 2: really pulled me all the way in. And the reason
Speaker 2: why I fell in love with jazz was partly because
Speaker 2: of the music, but also because of the way my
Speaker 2: great uncle taught me, which I feel is probably the
Speaker 2: most important thing that I wish more instructors would learn.
Speaker 2: So most jazz teachers, I think most jazz fans tend
Speaker 2: to be a little dogmatic. You know, they teach you
Speaker 2: how great the music is by belittling what you already like.
Speaker 2: And my great uncle never did that. So what do
Speaker 2: you mean, the little one. It's like Prince Man, he
Speaker 2: don't need to listen to No, Prince that's garbage. See,
Speaker 2: you need to listen to you need to listen to
Speaker 2: cat Jazz is a higher place, right right. So my
Speaker 2: great uncle never did that. He knew how much I
Speaker 2: loved James Brown and Michael Jackson and Prince and Rick James,
Speaker 2: and he was like, oh, yeah, they're bad too, they're
Speaker 2: bad too, But listen to this, you know. And you
Speaker 2: know he would like a cigarette, and you know he was.
Speaker 2: He had a favorite rocking chair that he like a
Speaker 2: lounge chair he sat in when he listened to his records,
Speaker 2: and he would sit way down his back was almost
Speaker 2: on the bottom of the chair, and his knees would
Speaker 2: wiggle and he would talk to the record as it
Speaker 2: was playing. He'd be like, yeah, baby, who listen to that?
Speaker 2: You hear you here with Miles is putting down baby,
Speaker 2: you know. So he was always so comical. How could
Speaker 2: you turn down? You know what I'm saying. I said,
Speaker 2: if jazz makes him that cool, I want to be
Speaker 2: like him. So that's what got me in there. Now,
Speaker 2: where'd you grew up a part of the county? You
Speaker 2: were in Philly. You're in Philly, you know.
Speaker 1: For me, I grew up with that music, you know,
Speaker 1: British Invasion, all that stuff in the seventies and Pink
Speaker 1: Floyd whatever. And then, as I told people on this show,
Speaker 1: because I'm a big classical music junkie, I was in
Speaker 1: a car once in nineteen eighty six, I think it was,
Speaker 1: and I turned on the radio, and you know, all
Speaker 1: the popular music that was playing at that.
Speaker 2: Time ceased to speak to me.
Speaker 1: Right, So I turn on the radio and on comes
Speaker 1: SCHALTI conducted the Chicago that we were doing them all
Speaker 1: or ninth and I go down that rabbit hole of
Speaker 1: classical music forever and the same with jazz. When I
Speaker 1: saw Fosse's movie, I just was like, you know, the
Speaker 1: mathematics of jazz. Jazz to me is mathematical. Are jazz
Speaker 1: compositions written and scored like regular music, like any other music?
Speaker 2: Some of them are. You know, jazz is based on improvisation,
Speaker 2: but there is a there's very much a form to it.
Speaker 2: For example, most pop songs have a very strict structure,
Speaker 2: you know, verse, verse course, verse course, bridge, verse course.
Speaker 2: You know, whereas jazz, you get a melody with the
Speaker 2: set of chord changes. You play that melody with those
Speaker 2: chord changes. Now, once you do that, you have a
Speaker 2: conversation based on that melody and those chord changes. So
Speaker 2: it's kind of like giving someone a topic and say, okay,
Speaker 2: talk about this. I don't really know what I'm going
Speaker 2: to say, but you know enough about this subject that
Speaker 2: you can just have an open conversation about it. So
Speaker 2: that's what jazz is for me.
Speaker 1: When I listen to different types of jazz, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's jazz I find very soothing. Obviously piano. I'm a
Speaker 1: huge Oscar Peterson nut soundtracks of movies you mentioned cab
Speaker 1: Caliwaight Nose sequences and cotton Club. But then there's jazz
Speaker 1: that is like, you know, I got no idea.
Speaker 2: Where we goes that way. Yeah, it goes that way.
Speaker 2: What you said, It goes that way.
Speaker 1: And these guys are playing then you're going and you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like they're going to play until they just drop.
Speaker 1: There's no end to the song. I feel they're going
Speaker 1: to play until they just pass out. Is it always
Speaker 1: was twas?
Speaker 2: Ever?
Speaker 1: Thus was a jazz always like that? Or has it
Speaker 1: evolved over time which was much more freeform?
Speaker 2: Definitely evolved before. Actually before I answered that. Knowing that
Speaker 2: you're a big Oscar Peterson, you might want to know
Speaker 2: that my godfather was the late great Ray Brown. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I actually have one of his basses. Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so Ray lives with me every day, and
Speaker 2: therefore some of the's Oscar. But it has evolved big time.
Speaker 2: You know. One beautiful thing is a built in challenge
Speaker 2: with jazz because no one's ever played jazz to get
Speaker 2: rich or famous. We play it because we love it.
Speaker 2: It's the highest form of musical artistry, and that you
Speaker 2: get to bring all of these things in one place
Speaker 2: and interpret it through this lens. Of what we call jazz,
Speaker 2: you know, this this swing based blues idiom. You know.
Speaker 2: But in the sixties, when people like on that Coleman
Speaker 2: and Cecil Taylor and Coltrane left Miles Davis's band, he
Speaker 2: starts to evolve on his own. The music took this
Speaker 2: extremely cataclysmic explosion where like it was turned into free
Speaker 2: jazz or what some would call avant garde, meaning that
Speaker 2: you have a form, but you don't actually have to
Speaker 2: stick to that form anymore. You know, if the song
Speaker 2: is twelve bars, well, once we start improvising, let's making
Speaker 2: thirteen bars. Let's making fourteen bars. Now the challenge is
Speaker 2: that that's a lot of fun for the musicians, but
Speaker 2: sometimes the listener is going, what the hell are you
Speaker 2: people doing? Right?
Speaker 1: You guys have a lot of fun on glad, I'm
Speaker 1: glad you're enjoying this. And so who would you say
Speaker 1: were some of the pioneers there? Rather in terms of
Speaker 1: the changes, like who is a person that came along
Speaker 1: and click there's a change?
Speaker 2: Well, I think most people would say on that Coleman
Speaker 2: was sort of like the definition, like he was the
Speaker 2: demarcation point in you know what Miles Davis and Harras
Speaker 2: Silver and blaking the jazz messengers were doing up until
Speaker 2: the late fifties, and then Ornett came along and just
Speaker 2: kind of really shook the tree and like you know,
Speaker 2: he calls the stir when he came on the scene.
Speaker 2: So most would say Ornette Coleman was sort of like
Speaker 2: the godfather of free jazz.
Speaker 1: What I notice is that when I read about because
Speaker 1: you seem like a very robust, physically fit, healthy man,
Speaker 1: and I wonder, what is it about jazz that No
Speaker 1: more so than the rock and roll world, but for sure,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the people in that world were
Speaker 1: very troubled. People like Bill Evans is somebody that I
Speaker 1: was obsessed with, and I got all the Bill Evans
Speaker 1: records I could, and Evan singing with Tony Bennett.
Speaker 2: But I love Bill Evans, and I found.
Speaker 1: That that his life was horrible when he was like
Speaker 1: a huge he was a heroin Annet and all this
Speaker 1: other stuff, and Miles was all messed up.
Speaker 2: I mean not saying that the jazz plays.
Speaker 1: Into that or any more so than rock and roll, right,
Speaker 1: but to this day, do you find there's a spirit,
Speaker 1: there's a soul to the people that can play that music, well,
Speaker 1: that's a tormented soul.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's a myth or a fact,
Speaker 2: because just like you said, I mean, you can find
Speaker 2: just as many musicians in any other style of music
Speaker 2: that had a lot of personal problems, you know. But
Speaker 2: I feel like the way jazz has been probably inside
Speaker 2: the last half century, you find less of that now
Speaker 2: than ever now. On the other hand, one of the
Speaker 2: great legends who I played with early in my career
Speaker 2: was the late great trumper to Freddie Hubbard, and I
Speaker 2: remember Freddie. He told this to my friend Clark Gaton,
Speaker 2: great trumpbone player. He says, see, man, you know what's
Speaker 2: wrong with you young cats? Y'all. Don't drink y'all, don't
Speaker 2: smoke y'all, don't eat meat y'all, health conscience by nine o'clock. Man,
Speaker 2: what the hell is that? Man? You know what you
Speaker 2: sound like it?
Speaker 1: Harold Klerman spoke at this school when I went back
Speaker 1: to school, and he did this lecture there, the famous
Speaker 1: producer Harold Cleerman. And when it was over they someone
Speaker 1: said to me, what would you do differently? And by
Speaker 1: then he was in his eighties, what would I do differently?
Speaker 1: He said, I'd go to more parties, I'd stay out
Speaker 1: late at night, I'd have more alcohol.
Speaker 2: He just was like, so balls to the wall.
Speaker 1: Now, is it tough in the I mean people in
Speaker 1: the classical world, people in every corner of the music
Speaker 1: business are lamenting the difficulty with digital downloads?
Speaker 2: Is it? Is it tough in jazz as well? Obviously?
Speaker 2: Well it was so tough before then. I don't know
Speaker 2: if it really hasn't mattered that much. You know, because
Speaker 2: even before streaming came along, both jazz and classical musicians
Speaker 2: had the smallest piece of the pie. I think it
Speaker 2: was like one percent and three percent of the entire
Speaker 2: record buying market. So, you know, all of our money
Speaker 2: comes from playing live performances. When do you first go
Speaker 2: on the road. When are you in a club and
Speaker 2: you're getting paid?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: When did that happen? Nineteen eighty nine. I graduated from
Speaker 2: high school and by that time I had become good
Speaker 2: friends with when Marcellus, who was the hottest young name
Speaker 2: in jazz, and you met him where I met him
Speaker 2: in Philly. He came to do a masterclass and I
Speaker 2: attended this master class, and you know, I told him
Speaker 2: how much I admired his music, and I had all
Speaker 2: of his records and he kind of put me on
Speaker 2: the spot. He says, yeah, what do you play? I said,
Speaker 2: I played a bass. He said go get it, and
Speaker 2: so I ran and grabbed my bass and all the
Speaker 2: kids in the classroom were like, ooh, you know, what's
Speaker 2: he about to do? And so went and said let's
Speaker 2: play something and we played a little blues. And a
Speaker 2: couple of nights later he said, Hey, my band is
Speaker 2: playing at the Academy Music. I want you to come
Speaker 2: and sold fifteen yeah and playing with Wynton at the
Speaker 2: Academy of Music at fifteen yeah. Well he just invited
Speaker 2: me to the show. I didn't know he was going
Speaker 2: to actually invite me to come. He didn't tell you
Speaker 2: that you were going to play. No, he didn't come
Speaker 2: to see the show man. I'm sitting backstage with two
Speaker 2: of my friends, one of which was the late great
Speaker 2: Joey D. Francesco. And went and gets on a micro phone.
Speaker 2: I see his bass player is putting us bass down
Speaker 2: and my feet start getting like, where's he going? And
Speaker 2: went and gets on the microphone. He says, you know,
Speaker 2: ladies and John want to tell you about this kid
Speaker 2: I met at this masterclass a couple of days ago,
Speaker 2: like what and you know, two thousand people in the audience,
Speaker 2: you know, he said, I think you're going to be
Speaker 2: hearing a lot more about him. Please welcome Christian McBride
Speaker 2: to the stage. And I mean, like I had icicles
Speaker 2: coming off of my hands, like, oh my god. And
Speaker 2: we played what was the title track to his new
Speaker 2: album at that time. It's called Jay Mood. And from
Speaker 2: that point on he became a big brother, a mentor.
Speaker 2: He started telling people about me, say, hey, you got
Speaker 2: to look out for this kid in Philly. And so
Speaker 2: by the time I moved to New York to go
Speaker 2: to college, a few jazz musicians knew who I was.
Speaker 2: So the saxophonist Bobby Watson found out that I was
Speaker 2: going to Juilliard and he came and said, hey, I
Speaker 2: want you to make some gigs with me. I was like,
Speaker 2: what you know? So Bobby gave me my first gig
Speaker 2: in New York and I was in the fall of
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine at Birdland back when it was up
Speaker 2: on one hundred and fifth Street. So Bobby kind of
Speaker 2: he kicked me off my career in New York.
Speaker 1: Now when you talk about you guys don't pick it up.
Speaker 1: You don't see Freddie Hubart, Freddy Hubbert. So when you
Speaker 1: get Freddy Hubbard's admonition that you're not living the right life,
Speaker 1: what was it like for you to be that young around.
Speaker 2: These guys, Well, specific was your mother picking you up
Speaker 2: at the stage door at the end of the show.
Speaker 2: She was definitely worried, you know, because my mother saw
Speaker 2: all the musicians that my dad played with, and they
Speaker 2: come from their old school. So when I told my
Speaker 2: mom I wanted to be a professional jazz musician, She's like,
Speaker 2: oh god, you know, really you sure? You know? So Winton,
Speaker 2: because he was so well studied. He was sort of
Speaker 2: like the complete opposite of what the image of a
Speaker 2: jazz musician had been.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, he was clean, well studied,
Speaker 2: well read. He actually had a conversation with my mom said, listen,
Speaker 2: miss McBride, it's not like it used to be. You know,
Speaker 2: your son's going to be all right. You know, I'll
Speaker 2: look out for him. He's got a lot of big
Speaker 2: brothers who look out for him, you know. So he talked.
Speaker 2: He made it easier for my mom to let me
Speaker 2: move to New York. But when I started playing with
Speaker 2: Freddie actually a little bit of Bobby Watson too, there
Speaker 2: was still a lot of that old school element, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of tough love. You know. They didn't put
Speaker 2: their hand on your back and say, you know, next time,
Speaker 2: maybe you should do it like this. You know, they
Speaker 2: were like, hey, what the hell are you doing? Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know it's professional.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Jazz Babs, Christian McBride. If you enjoy conversations
Speaker 1: with preternaturally gifted musicians, check out my episode with Christian
Speaker 1: McBride's band and classmate Amir quest Love Thompson.
Speaker 4: We weren't even really going to accept the position, and
Speaker 4: then the funniest thing happened.
Speaker 2: We were on UCLA campus.
Speaker 4: I went to do a quick interview in my dressing room,
Speaker 4: and when it was over six minutes later, I opened
Speaker 4: the door and on the field, Grass, Jimmy and all
Speaker 4: eight members of the Roots were in the eight is
Speaker 4: Enough Human pyramid stands and I looked at my manager.
Speaker 4: We just looked at each other and we're like, we're
Speaker 4: not giving rim this guy, are we. What Jimmy managed
Speaker 4: to do was disarm us in less than ten minutes.
Speaker 4: He's that guy like when you watch the movie and
Speaker 4: the guys are trying to dissemble the bomb in like
Speaker 4: zero point three seconds. Yea, he knows exactly how to
Speaker 4: disarm you.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Questlove, go to
Speaker 1: Hear's Thething dot Org. After the break, Christian McBride talks
Speaker 1: about attending Juilliard and the challenging audition period he endured
Speaker 1: to get in. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing. This is eley Efe from The Philadelphia Experiment,
Speaker 1: a collaboration between Christian McBride, pianist Uri Kane and Questlove.
Speaker 1: As a jazz musician, Christian McBride natural spends a lot
Speaker 1: of time on the road. I wanted to know what
Speaker 1: life was like for someone that tours for a living. Man.
Speaker 2: I feel so fortunate that I get to do what
Speaker 2: I love for a living. You know why complain? Yeah,
Speaker 2: things get a little hard every now and then. You know,
Speaker 2: you travel, you're on the road all the time. You
Speaker 2: don't get to see your family. You're married. I've been
Speaker 2: married almost twenty years and you have how many kids?
Speaker 2: No kids? No kids, you're a genius. No kids.
Speaker 1: So the traveler is does your wife get to come
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 2: Sometimes when she sings in my big band? So when
Speaker 2: I play with my big band, she travels with me.
Speaker 2: But I mean she runs the foundation, so she's manning
Speaker 2: the fort at home. But you know, it's like going
Speaker 2: on the road seven days a week, probably forty to
Speaker 2: forty five weeks out of the year. That grinds on
Speaker 2: your health, you know. But the flip side of it
Speaker 2: is like, Okay, what else would you rather be doing?
Speaker 2: You know, I get to travel around the world and
Speaker 2: meet people and playing you know what I mean, It's like,
Speaker 2: there's nothing better than that. How many people in your band?
Speaker 2: So the band that I've been touring with the most
Speaker 2: for the last four years is called the New John.
Speaker 2: John is a slang terminology only used by Philadelphians in
Speaker 2: New York would be joint. So John is j A
Speaker 2: w N the New John joint yep exactly Philly term. Okay,
Speaker 2: And so that's just four of us trumpet, tenor saxophone, bass,
Speaker 2: and drums. Yeah. And I have another group called Inside Straight,
Speaker 2: which is a quintet. That band was named by a
Speaker 2: I had a fan contest I named the band contest,
Speaker 2: and a couple from Fort bradd, California submitted inside Straight,
Speaker 2: and I thought, hmm, you know, I actually do play poker,
Speaker 2: and inside Straight is the name of one of my
Speaker 2: favorite Cannibal Attley albums, so it made sense. And I
Speaker 2: have a new group. I had my big band, which
Speaker 2: is just the Christian McBride big band and comedy in
Speaker 2: that seventeen really yeah, how much did they get to travel?
Speaker 2: Not much? It's expensive. Yeah, yeah, we've gone to Asia.
Speaker 2: We went to China and Japan, but we we got
Speaker 2: a grant to go on that tour, and we did
Speaker 2: a two week European tour a few few years ago.
Speaker 2: So we don't get a chance to travel that often.
Speaker 2: But we get at least one gig every year here
Speaker 2: in New York or in Newark.
Speaker 1: It's funny how the bands are touring, and therefore I
Speaker 1: was more successful the less people are in the band.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, man, you gotta wat it down to a trio.
Speaker 2: You're gonna get rich. Listen here, man, you gotta balance
Speaker 2: their budget. Now.
Speaker 1: When you are in Philadelphia and Winton calls you up
Speaker 1: there at the Academy, when do you get to New
Speaker 1: York what year?
Speaker 2: So that was eighty seven when Winton called me up
Speaker 2: to sit in So two years later in eighty to
Speaker 2: go where the Juilliard. There was no jazz program at Juilliard.
Speaker 2: When I went there, went to study as a classical bassist.
Speaker 2: Because while I was in high school, I was also
Speaker 2: playing a lot of classical music. So I was playing
Speaker 2: in the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, Temple University Youth Chamber Orchestra.
Speaker 2: So I had like a little parallel thing going. And
Speaker 2: even though my heart was in jazz, I had gotten
Speaker 2: good enough at classical music where my base instructor said,
Speaker 2: you know, you should take the audition. You know, see
Speaker 2: what happens. I knew I wanted to be in New York. Again,
Speaker 2: this was this had nothing to do with classical music.
Speaker 2: I knew that I wanted to be in New York
Speaker 2: because I wanted to sort of go nag and stalk
Speaker 2: all my favorite jazz musicians. So I said, well, the
Speaker 2: only way for me to get to New York is
Speaker 2: to go to college. And so is that true, I thought, because.
Speaker 1: You're the kid who's fifteen who gets hand picked by
Speaker 1: Wynton to play I would.
Speaker 2: Have thought you would have gone to New York and
Speaker 2: you would have been walking through the doors and just
Speaker 2: playing well, you know, but my mom wasn't going to
Speaker 2: let that happen. So everybody agreed you should get an education, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: And so I only applied to three schools, the New Schoo, Juilliard,
Speaker 2: in the Manhattan School of Music exactly right, right, right.
Speaker 2: So I took an audition for Juilliard, and uh, much
Speaker 2: to my shock, I got in. You know, I think
Speaker 2: back to how traumatic that was. And one of these
Speaker 2: did that on purpose. Like one thing that they probably
Speaker 2: shouldn't have done is you could hear the other auditioners
Speaker 2: before you. Right, So I'm sitting outside of this audition
Speaker 2: room and I can hear the other bass players in there,
Speaker 2: and I mean they are awesome, you know. They're playing
Speaker 2: the Echo Sonata and the Dragon Eddie and the Kusovitski
Speaker 2: and I'm just sitting out there like, oh man, I
Speaker 2: might as well go home because I'm not playing that.
Speaker 2: You know. I went in with my little what did.
Speaker 2: I played the Vivaldi Sonata and I played a Benidento
Speaker 2: Marcello except from a sonata, and I just thought, just
Speaker 2: in terms of repertoire. I probably won't get in, you know.
Speaker 2: But I took this audition and uh, it went It
Speaker 2: was okay. I didn't think it was that great. But
Speaker 2: then two days later I auditioned for the Manhattan School
Speaker 2: of Music. The bass faculty was almost exactly the same
Speaker 2: faculty as the Juilliard, so they heard me again. And
Speaker 2: that audition at MSM went really well, And so I
Speaker 2: like to think that the bass faculty heard me and went, oh,
Speaker 2: that's what he really sounds like, you know.
Speaker 3: So there was no invitation to MSM. They got I
Speaker 3: got invited, Yeah, you got him both. Yeah, And I
Speaker 3: got into the new school. But I thought that if
Speaker 3: I want to continue studying classical base, I should.
Speaker 2: Go to Juilliard. Four years. I didn't make it, but
Speaker 2: I left. I started working. I started playing with Bobby
Speaker 2: Watson and my dear friend, the late Roy Hargrove had
Speaker 2: just moved to New York as well, and his career
Speaker 2: was about to explode. And Roy was like, hey, man,
Speaker 2: you're coming on the road with me. And so by
Speaker 2: the end of the school year I started working enough
Speaker 2: that only one year, right, Yeah, but that one years
Speaker 2: I learned so much and I met a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Audra McDonald was my classmate.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny that you say that about the
Speaker 1: blind audition or whatever and you hear the other guys
Speaker 1: in the room, because I remember in the early days
Speaker 1: when I was auditioning, it was the same. And that
Speaker 1: was you know, we'd come to a place, the old
Speaker 1: rehearsal spaces in Midtown where there were many of them,
Speaker 1: not as many now as there used to be, and
Speaker 1: we'd come to those spaces and when everybody would sit
Speaker 1: in a row of chairs, and every guy you were
Speaker 1: up against in that whole town was right right, there's
Speaker 1: Kevin Bacon, and there's that guy, and there's that guy,
Speaker 1: and they're all there and we all have the same thing,
Speaker 1: which was when you sat down and the door opened
Speaker 1: and out walked Kevin Bacon and you're sitting there and
Speaker 1: you know that something's going on in the room. Somebody's
Speaker 1: in there, and the door opens and it's Gabriel Burn.
Speaker 1: I mean, all used to lower our heads like, fuck, I.
Speaker 2: Get this job, right, did you guys, like when you're
Speaker 2: sitting there waiting to go in, are you guys speaking
Speaker 2: to each other? Was that sort of like minimally.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting to me is I understand the benefits
Speaker 1: of the digital audition online auditioning that people who can't
Speaker 1: afford to come to LA they can't afford to come
Speaker 1: to there. There's guys in Kansas City, and there's guys
Speaker 1: in Salt Lake City, and men and women across the
Speaker 1: country who were submitting, you know, digitally. But I said
Speaker 1: to somebody, I go, you know, the reality was you
Speaker 1: walked into a room and you do the audition, and
Speaker 1: the casting directors who were prominent casting directors typically for
Speaker 1: all these movies I was going up for back then,
Speaker 1: they were casting multiple projects and they'd say to you,
Speaker 1: would you wait outside please? And you learn later on
Speaker 1: that they said, he's not right for this movie, but
Speaker 1: he'd be great for what we were doing. And there
Speaker 1: was a chemistry in the room that there's just denied
Speaker 1: now that they've gotten rid of all the in person auditions, you.
Speaker 2: Know, with social media now, I mean, I realize this
Speaker 2: the way of the world now and it's not going
Speaker 2: to change. But I meet young musicians and mister McBride,
Speaker 2: you know, check me out, tell me what you think,
Speaker 2: and they give me like a YouTube link and I
Speaker 2: hear and see them on YouTube and it's fabulous, but
Speaker 2: you get no energy. You can't really tell what it's like,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, I got it exactly. You know.
Speaker 2: Tommy Lupuma used to make great producer, Tommy Lupuma who
Speaker 2: he produced Natalie Cole, George Benson, Algiou, Diana Crawl. He
Speaker 2: used to tell me all the time. He's like, you know,
Speaker 2: as a record producer, every day I'm getting thousands of
Speaker 2: cassette tapes. You know. I was like, oh man, that
Speaker 2: sounds horrible, you know, And he said, but I will
Speaker 2: not sign a singer unless I can experience him live,
Speaker 2: because I want to feel what they're doing. I don't
Speaker 2: want to hear what they're doing. Say, you know, anybody
Speaker 2: can get in the studio and doctor it up a
Speaker 2: little bit and sound good. I want to hear you live,
Speaker 2: you know. So yeah, the whole digital thing, it's it's deep.
Speaker 1: Now, Christian McBride. If you're enjoying this episode, don't keep
Speaker 1: it to yourself, Tell a friend and be sure to
Speaker 1: follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts when we return. Christian McBride
Speaker 1: shares the most challenging part of being a professional musician
Speaker 1: and bandleader. You can listen to all of the music
Speaker 1: from this episode and more in a curated playlist of
Speaker 1: my favorite pieces from Christian McBride. You'll find a link
Speaker 1: to the playlist in the show notes of this episode.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the thing. This
Speaker 1: is Christian McBride's new John. The track is Obsequious from
Speaker 1: the album Prime. Christian McBride studied at Juilliard for only
Speaker 1: one year before he left to play on the road
Speaker 1: with jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove. I wanted to know how
Speaker 1: his very first professional touring experience suited him.
Speaker 2: Oh man, We went to Europe and it was the
Speaker 2: summer of nineteen ninety. Now, I had gone to Europe
Speaker 2: the summer before with the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, but it's
Speaker 2: hard to count that as my first tour because you know,
Speaker 2: it was a bunch of other high school students and
Speaker 2: my mom was one of the chaperone. It was a
Speaker 2: school trailer. It was a school trailer. We used to
Speaker 2: say it right, right, But my first time actually getting
Speaker 2: a chance to see the world was with Roy Hargrove,
Speaker 2: how long were you over there that first tour? We did?
Speaker 2: You know, I played in this band for a year
Speaker 2: and a half and we did like we were in
Speaker 2: Europe all the time. We did one month long European tour,
Speaker 2: came home, did like six weeks of gigs in the US,
Speaker 2: and then we went back to Europe for another two weeks.
Speaker 2: So we were always on the road. When you're with a.
Speaker 1: Band and you're a musician in a band, and you
Speaker 1: say you went out with Roy Hargrove's band, so that
Speaker 1: means Hargrove's the decider. Yeah, what music is played, what
Speaker 1: the set list is, and for you it's the same thing.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: What's the toughest part about leading a band? What's the challenge?
Speaker 2: I think there's a balance in particularly in a medium
Speaker 2: like jazz. You hear a musician play and they do
Speaker 2: something that you like. There's a certain energy, there's a
Speaker 2: certain thing that they play that you like. You said,
Speaker 2: I want that in my band. But I know some
Speaker 2: band leaders that they like to rebuild a player. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure how wise that is, you know, because it's
Speaker 2: like I hear you you're great, and now let me
Speaker 2: change you, you know. So I think there's a balance
Speaker 2: in the van leader having a vision, having a certain
Speaker 2: sound in their mind, and then you bring somebody in
Speaker 2: to help you achieve that sound, but you like what
Speaker 2: they bring. So there's this give and take of like
Speaker 2: I like what you do, but I need you to
Speaker 2: do this, you know, and then that person says okay,
Speaker 2: and then there's like this give and take. I don't
Speaker 2: know if there's so much of a challenge anymore, because
Speaker 2: I tend to work with musicians who are really high
Speaker 2: level professionals. I haven't really had any rubs with too
Speaker 2: many musicians, but that's probably the biggest challenge pat Riley.
Speaker 1: I've mentioned this before another podcast. When pat Riley was
Speaker 1: coaching the Knicks, I went off to have lunch with
Speaker 1: him because we were going to do a movie this
Speaker 1: friend of mine and I about a professional basketball coach
Speaker 1: and the intensity of the NBA. And we went to
Speaker 1: lunch with Riley and we watched the next train up
Speaker 1: in was it New Paul's wherever they were up outside
Speaker 1: the city. That we ran up there and watched the
Speaker 1: next train, which was kind of amazing, and then we
Speaker 1: went to lunch with Riley and I said, what's the job?
Speaker 1: I said, what's the challenge? He said, These guys have
Speaker 1: been champions at every level of their life. They've been winners,
Speaker 1: they've been champions. He said, They've been champions since they
Speaker 1: were eight years old, high school, college, they get to
Speaker 1: the pros, He goes, how do I get them to
Speaker 1: care one more night?
Speaker 2: Right? See, that's the job.
Speaker 1: They've been playing at the highest level for fifteen years.
Speaker 1: Because now they're here, they getting millions of dollars, they're
Speaker 1: famous around the world. He goes, how do I get
Speaker 1: them to leave it all on the court and get
Speaker 1: out there and just blut and really work hard.
Speaker 2: I think that's a challenge for a musicians. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: you know, you travel all the time, and you go
Speaker 2: from club to club, stage to stage. At some point
Speaker 2: it might get a little blurry, you know, you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm tired, you know, and then you fall into that
Speaker 2: danger of phoning it in, you know. And I said,
Speaker 2: another challenge for me as a band leader, I need
Speaker 2: to keep my energy up because I always tell you
Speaker 2: younger musicians you need to follow the lead of the
Speaker 2: band leader. If the band leader is in a certain mode,
Speaker 2: you follow that you know what I mean. So like
Speaker 2: if I'm in somebody else's band and they're ready to go,
Speaker 2: and then I don't have the right to say, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm tired. I don't really feel like putting it all
Speaker 2: out there tonight. I look at somebody like Michael Jordan.
Speaker 2: I look at somebody like Freddie Hubbard. You know, like
Speaker 2: every time they gave it all every gig, whether there
Speaker 2: was thirty people in the audience, three hundred or three thousand,
Speaker 2: they played the same way every night.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Oscar Peterson was like that, you know, just give it
Speaker 2: all all the time.
Speaker 1: Now, do you write a lot of this? Do you
Speaker 1: write something? And have you ever because again, this connection
Speaker 1: between jazz and the movies, it creates the right it's
Speaker 1: the right texture. Do you write for TV or film?
Speaker 2: Ever? Do you ever do any saying? I did my
Speaker 2: first work on a major motion picture. Just recently. I
Speaker 2: wrote some of the big band music in the upcoming
Speaker 2: Color Purple doing a remake, Yeah, coming out on Christmas Day.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you, man, like being around all
Speaker 2: these great jazz legends and being like the young kid
Speaker 2: among all these giants. One of my all time favorite
Speaker 2: movies is Glengarry Glenn Ross and man, when I see
Speaker 2: you in that? And also the music for that film
Speaker 2: is one of the few film scores, if not the only,
Speaker 2: one that features the saxophone of Wayne Shorter. And so
Speaker 2: I remember, so I already liked the movie, but then
Speaker 2: I realized that was Wayne. So that's become like one
Speaker 2: of my all time favorites. Man, what was that like
Speaker 2: for you? Man?
Speaker 1: Well, it was tough because I had to piss in
Speaker 1: their face for three days. I mean, are all these
Speaker 1: legendary actors that I loved, right, And it was really tough,
Speaker 1: But I mean I had a job to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: My last question for you, and that is that you
Speaker 1: have a pre show routine, Like how do you get
Speaker 1: yourself clear? When I'm acting in the theater? I got
Speaker 1: to get clear. I get the theater at six.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you asked me that. What's your routine? See?
Speaker 2: One thing about the jazz communities as really small. We
Speaker 2: all know each other, you know. I always always joke,
Speaker 2: partially joking that jazz musicians probably know at least fifty
Speaker 2: percent audience personally, you know, And so everybody likes to
Speaker 2: hang out backstage, other musicians show up, fans show up,
Speaker 2: they all want to come backstage and hang. And I
Speaker 2: have now realized that I'm not good to speak to
Speaker 2: at least fifteen minutes before showtime, like leave me alone,
Speaker 2: do not talk to me, don't come backstage to get
Speaker 2: into it exactly. You know, I only want to be
Speaker 2: around the musicians who are in the band, you know.
Speaker 2: And the older I get, the more I realize how
Speaker 2: important it is just to have a little silence, you know.
Speaker 2: Just I don't want to do nothing, just I just
Speaker 2: need some peace and quiet around me. Fifteen minutes before showtime.
Speaker 1: You know, we wanted you to come on the show.
Speaker 1: And then I like when we do the research. I
Speaker 1: started to get more absorbed in the stuff. You are
Speaker 1: so damn talented. Oh man, you are so damn talent
Speaker 1: from you. I was watching that thing when you're talking
Speaker 1: about a fast, playing you little tips of a fast.
Speaker 1: I'm watching all these and as I'm watching you, and
Speaker 1: I start watching more and more of these clips, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: there's nothing you can't do musically, There's nothing you can't do.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thanks for coming, thanks for having me on,
Speaker 2: and honor.
Speaker 1: My thanks to Christian McBride be sure to check out
Speaker 1: Christian McBride live at the Newport Jazz Festival August fourth
Speaker 1: through sixth, and at the Montclair Jazz Festival Bloc Party
Speaker 1: on August twelfth. For more upcoming shows, go to Christian
Speaker 1: McBride dot com. I'll leave you with the Shade of
Speaker 1: the Cedar Tree from Live at the Village Vanguard. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio
Speaker 2: Int.