Speaker 1: With lockdowns in tense elections and seemingly bad news everywhere,
Speaker 1: we thought we'd lighten things up over here in the
Speaker 1: Broken Record universe and brings some Christmas cheer early with
Speaker 1: none other than Leslie Odom Junior, whose new release is
Speaker 1: the Christmas Album. This is actually Leslie's second Christmas album,
Speaker 1: plus He's released several vocal jazz albums over the last
Speaker 1: few years, but he's best known for his Grammy and
Speaker 1: Tony Award winning performance as Aaron Burr in Hamilton. Leslie
Speaker 1: spoke to Bruce Headlum about his career on stage and
Speaker 1: in music, about his all time favorite Christmas album, which
Speaker 1: is a touchstone of nineties R and B. He also
Speaker 1: talks about how playing a founding and father as a
Speaker 1: black man was an exercise in empathy, and he shares
Speaker 1: a lesson he learned thanks to the incomparable talents of
Speaker 1: Natkin Coole and Sammy Davis Jr. This is Broken Record
Speaker 1: liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mischian. Here's
Speaker 1: Bruce Dlam with Leslie Odom Junior. So you're in a
Speaker 1: strange point in your career because you've had a long career.
Speaker 1: People might know you from Rent. People might know you
Speaker 1: from television, but people really got to know you as
Speaker 1: Aaron Burr in Hamilton. Yeah, but now you have this
Speaker 1: music career. And I've had this twice recently where people said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm listening to this guy, Leslie Odom Junior,
Speaker 1: and did you know he was also in Hamilton. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're like you know when people used to say, you know,
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings, you know
Speaker 1: that's you now? Oh man, Thank goodness, no complaints. Because
Speaker 1: I came out to Los Angeles almost twenty years ago
Speaker 1: after graduating from college, and I was doing television and
Speaker 1: my goal really was simple. I I was trying to
Speaker 1: make a living as an artist, and that meant taking
Speaker 1: almost any job on television that people would offer me,
Speaker 1: which I was auditioning for lots and lots of very
Speaker 1: silly sitcoms, very you know, dubious dramas, and I could
Speaker 1: have gotten one of those. I didn't. I didn't get
Speaker 1: any of the one that I really really wanted. But
Speaker 1: I could have gotten one of those, and I could
Speaker 1: have been known for some ridiculous catchphrase or for you know,
Speaker 1: pulling some stupid face to make people laugh. But the
Speaker 1: worst of what I get having been a part of
Speaker 1: the original company of Hamilton is like people saying, pardon me,
Speaker 1: are you Aaron Burrser? You know so I'll take that,
Speaker 1: and I'll also yes, it is. It is my job,
Speaker 1: it is my mission now to continue to make sure
Speaker 1: that that is not the peak, that it's a peak
Speaker 1: in my career. But that but that, Yeah, we continue
Speaker 1: to I continue to push myself and surprise people, surprise
Speaker 1: myself and just keep digging. Will you actually turned down
Speaker 1: a TV show for Hamilton? I did. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think you'd signed the contract and you would right to
Speaker 1: the head of the network and say, please, please, I
Speaker 1: have to do this other thing. Yeah. And they were
Speaker 1: really nice about it. They were his name was his
Speaker 1: name out, I'll give him credit forever. His name is
Speaker 1: Bob Greenblatt. He runs HBO. Now, But I did. I
Speaker 1: went to Bob and I said, I know, thank you
Speaker 1: very much. You guys have given me a contract for
Speaker 1: guaranteed half a million dollars, and man, that's nice, but
Speaker 1: I really want to do this off Broadway show, this
Speaker 1: hip hop musical about the founding fathers. Will you let
Speaker 1: me out of this contract, and he looked at me
Speaker 1: like I was out of my mind, and he said, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll let you out of Are you that's what you
Speaker 1: want to do? Really? And I said yes, and he
Speaker 1: let me out. But it wasn't a point that you
Speaker 1: were feeling a little too comfortable doing TV. You felt
Speaker 1: it was it was safe and you wanted you wanted
Speaker 1: to take a risk. I did. While I didn't know
Speaker 1: what America would feel. I didn't know if the show
Speaker 1: would find an audio, but I knew what I felt
Speaker 1: about Hamilton. You know, it was it was undeniable to
Speaker 1: me how it was changing me from the inside because
Speaker 1: at that point I had been involved in development for
Speaker 1: a few years and this, this little show was not
Speaker 1: only making me a better actor and a better performer,
Speaker 1: you know, it was making me a better husband. It
Speaker 1: was making me a better friend. It was making me
Speaker 1: a better citizen, like you know, it was making me
Speaker 1: a better human being. And listen, the TV show was nice,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't doing that. You know, when I'm talking
Speaker 1: to young people, I say this, it's really important that
Speaker 1: you know what you're in it for. You really have
Speaker 1: to know what you're in it for. Whatever, whatever game
Speaker 1: you're playing, whether it's finance, so whether it's medicine or
Speaker 1: your nurse, whatever, whatever, you know, what are you in
Speaker 1: it for? Because when the thing shows up, you want
Speaker 1: to recognize it. Don't miss it when it comes, you know.
Speaker 1: And so if you're in it for the dough, if
Speaker 1: you're in it for the promotion, if you're in it
Speaker 1: for validation or chicks or a great car, whatever it
Speaker 1: is that you at the end of the day, like
Speaker 1: I got in it for this reason, know it so
Speaker 1: that you don't miss it when it comes. And Hamilton,
Speaker 1: you know, a piece of art like that, That is
Speaker 1: why I got in it. Rent was the show that
Speaker 1: brought me to the theater. And you know, my favorite
Speaker 1: quote about art and artists is that an artist spends
Speaker 1: their entire life trying to get back to the place
Speaker 1: where their heart was first opened up. And that's what
Speaker 1: Hamilton did for me. It made me feel like that
Speaker 1: thirteen year old kid again. That's what I was in
Speaker 1: it for. So it didn't matter if it was half
Speaker 1: a million dollars or a million dollars or eight million dollars.
Speaker 1: I was not walking away from the reason why I
Speaker 1: started on the path in the first place. Was there
Speaker 1: a moment with Hamilton where you thought, Okay, this actually
Speaker 1: is going to succeed. It is I don't mean artistically,
Speaker 1: that this is going to be bigger? Like, was there
Speaker 1: a point you're like, oh, this this is going to
Speaker 1: work now. I don't remember the exact day, but it
Speaker 1: was pretty soon after we opened on Broadway, and you know,
Speaker 1: we had the confirmation of those box office receipts, you know,
Speaker 1: you had you had the confirmation of the of the
Speaker 1: record breaking advanced sales. Because that that's what that's what
Speaker 1: matters in the commercial theater and the commercial theater, commercial
Speaker 1: success is what matters. And once we were confirmed that
Speaker 1: it was going going to be that, I had to
Speaker 1: wait until then because the business is littered with great
Speaker 1: art and artists that were not appreciated or celebrated in
Speaker 1: their time. You know, Stephen Sondheim is known, you know,
Speaker 1: um revered as one of the great may possibly the
Speaker 1: greatest songwriter for the American theater. You know, he's brilliant.
Speaker 1: And most to Sondheim shows, including shows like West Hide
Speaker 1: Story and these shows were not successful in their original run.
Speaker 1: They ran a year, a year and a half some
Speaker 1: of them, you know, a lot of them. They just
Speaker 1: people just didn't they weren't feeling them in their time.
Speaker 1: So I didn't know if Hamilton would fall into that
Speaker 1: category even once we went to Broadway, so I had
Speaker 1: to wait with my fingers crossed. Now, I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: heard this many times. I saw Hamilton's first at the Public,
Speaker 1: and then I saw it several times because Lynn Manuel
Speaker 1: Miranda actually wrote for me when I was at the
Speaker 1: New York Times. But I remember being there at the Public.
Speaker 1: You came out and there was a ripple in the
Speaker 1: audience and people said, oh my god, that guy is
Speaker 1: a star. I don't mean you're out shining the production,
Speaker 1: but there's just something about when you came out. I
Speaker 1: think people just kind of felt, I don't know, there's
Speaker 1: a kind of electricity that you don't often feel at
Speaker 1: the theater for you. Was there that kind of personal
Speaker 1: validation right away? Well, I mean, thank you for saying that.
Speaker 1: I think that as a young person, the only way
Speaker 1: you really build self esteem is you got to prove
Speaker 1: certain things to yourself. You know, we all have an
Speaker 1: idea about what we're capable of, what we might be
Speaker 1: capable of if someone just gave us the opportunity. If
Speaker 1: we just had the chance to show, to prove, I
Speaker 1: think I could be a contender, you know. And it's
Speaker 1: all theory until you make something, or until someone invites
Speaker 1: you to make something, you know, it's it's all conjecture.
Speaker 1: And what Lynn did for a room of people, for
Speaker 1: a room of mostly black and brown people, was he
Speaker 1: gave us the evidence of what was of what we
Speaker 1: suspected about ourselves. He let us prove it firstly to
Speaker 1: ourselves that we are capable of more than we are
Speaker 1: being asked to do most of the time. And yes,
Speaker 1: and then we got to stand on stage and show
Speaker 1: little black and brown children who looked like us, that
Speaker 1: same thing. And we got to show a little you know,
Speaker 1: not for nothing, we got to show little white kids too,
Speaker 1: what you know that that you know? I say, of course,
Speaker 1: I was very lucky to have the education that I
Speaker 1: had at Carnegie Mellon University, for instance, you know, where
Speaker 1: where the majority of my classmates were white. But you
Speaker 1: know who also benefited from my presence at Carnegie Mellon University.
Speaker 1: My white classmates also benefited from a diverse environment, from
Speaker 1: from sharing across you know, cultural boundaries, and having friends
Speaker 1: and collaborators that don't only look like them. So it
Speaker 1: was it's a really it's a gift that Lynn has
Speaker 1: given the world this show. So we want to talk
Speaker 1: about Christmas albums, let's do it. And I want to
Speaker 1: know first what Christmas music did you have growing up? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I grew up in the album era, so I remember
Speaker 1: the Christmas albums we had that got pulled to the
Speaker 1: front of the stack. What what was your Christmas music
Speaker 1: growing up? The one that left the biggest impression on me.
Speaker 1: I have to say, I hope your audience is aware
Speaker 1: of it because it's a it is a classic. I
Speaker 1: grew up in Philadelphia at the time where you know,
Speaker 1: in Philly you couldn't get bigger than Boys to Men.
Speaker 1: I went to the same high school as Boys to Men.
Speaker 1: They were older than me, but Boys to Men was huge.
Speaker 1: You know. They they dressed like us, they talked like us,
Speaker 1: They they wore us, you know, on the national stage.
Speaker 1: And at one of their peaks that you know, peak
Speaker 1: power for them, they put out this beautiful Christmas record.
Speaker 1: If you have not heard it, go listen to it.
Speaker 1: It is it is like it's a shining example of
Speaker 1: R and B. Yes, that's rhythm and blues, but there's
Speaker 1: that joke and dream Girls, you know, rough and black.
Speaker 1: I mean like it is, it is, you know, the
Speaker 1: black contribution. Part of our contribution to American culture in
Speaker 1: this and music is R and B. It's one of
Speaker 1: our contributions. And yeah, this is it's just a beautiful record, man.
Speaker 1: So the Boys to Men album was like the first
Speaker 1: Christmas album that was mine, that wasn't my parents, you know,
Speaker 1: because my parents were listening to the Jackson five and
Speaker 1: they were listening and that King Cole of course, and
Speaker 1: they were listening to you know, the classics in that way.
Speaker 1: But if you were coming of age at any point
Speaker 1: in the nineties, it's nostalgic too, and the same way
Speaker 1: that Mariah's is nostalgic. You know, it reminds you of
Speaker 1: a certain kind of pure R and B. You know,
Speaker 1: that was not over sexualized, and it's like there's like
Speaker 1: a wholesome quality to it. Who knew that the nineties
Speaker 1: had had a wholesome patina, but you listen to that,
Speaker 1: that album and you'll hear it. Well, I'm older than you,
Speaker 1: So for us, it was I think Ray Charles, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know his Christmas album, I don't
Speaker 1: know the Ray Charles Christmas album. Oh you gotta get
Speaker 1: the Ray Charles Christmas House is what is um? Baby
Speaker 1: It's cold outside? Is that? Or was that a single?
Speaker 1: That was a single? But usually when you buy it now,
Speaker 1: I think with Betty Carter, that's right. They tack it
Speaker 1: on the end, and that's a great version. It's the
Speaker 1: only version I know. Baby. It's people, you know, for
Speaker 1: good reason, they are trying to get that song canceled.
Speaker 1: But but you can't cancel Betty Carter and Ray Charles,
Speaker 1: give me a break. No. No. Part of the problem though,
Speaker 1: is these you know, you've done your own albums, You've
Speaker 1: written a lot of your own songs, you've taken on
Speaker 1: some classics. But when you do Christmas songs, they're so
Speaker 1: locked in people's memories. It's just so much attached to it.
Speaker 1: I just want to talk a bit about how do
Speaker 1: you sit down and say what am I going to
Speaker 1: bring to this that people are gonna remember? Are they
Speaker 1: just gonna have Andy Williams going through their head? How
Speaker 1: did you do that with both albums, but mainly this album, Well,
Speaker 1: we had the practice of having done it once before,
Speaker 1: and that that first Christmas album was very challenging number one,
Speaker 1: because we were so limited in our resources at that time.
Speaker 1: That was the first album I made post hand. So
Speaker 1: I made it I think the summer that I left
Speaker 1: Hamilton and me and my manager we just really didn't
Speaker 1: We didn't know anybody. We were not really in the
Speaker 1: music industry yet, you know, so we we were very
Speaker 1: limited in our budget and in our resources. And so
Speaker 1: when you're limited in that way, of course, parameters are
Speaker 1: always great for art. Intention is important. Intention becomes very important.
Speaker 1: And I was I was like, okay, well, what we
Speaker 1: don't have in bells and whistles, you know, we have
Speaker 1: to come from a sincere place, which is harder than
Speaker 1: it sounds, because you think, you know, I'll just I'll
Speaker 1: sing Silent Night and I'll sing these Oh Holy I'll
Speaker 1: sing these songs that I've known them my whole life.
Speaker 1: But you go, when I go to listen back, nobody's
Speaker 1: more critical on on my voice than I and it
Speaker 1: just didn't sound honest. It took it. I recorded that
Speaker 1: first album probably at least two full times, you know,
Speaker 1: just top to bottom, because it it I had to
Speaker 1: hear the sincerity, and when it goes Christmas, it can
Speaker 1: go Sacharin. It can go corny real quick. You know,
Speaker 1: there's something about I don't know, the lights and the
Speaker 1: trees and the presence that you know, we yeah, it
Speaker 1: just it just goes corny. And I just didn't want that.
Speaker 1: So anyway, we built on that with this record. Having
Speaker 1: recorded that album and then performing those songs live for
Speaker 1: a few years now, we didn't have that that same challenge.
Speaker 1: I can hear it right away, you know. When I
Speaker 1: go to start these songs. Always what I do when
Speaker 1: I'm covering any song, if it's a jazz song or
Speaker 1: a pop song, I started that original melody. I try
Speaker 1: not to start at one of the covers that I've heard.
Speaker 1: I try to find the original version and let me,
Speaker 1: let me learn that original melody, let me hear what
Speaker 1: those initial instincts were from the writer and from the composer,
Speaker 1: and then we take it from there. We you know, im,
Speaker 1: it's always a collaboration. I may have idea is but
Speaker 1: Tommy King as a brilliant pianist who was instrumental in
Speaker 1: that first album, that first album. People talk all the
Speaker 1: time about the piano solo on my favorite things. That's
Speaker 1: all Tommy King. That's just his beautiful mind and talent.
Speaker 1: But he we worked with Tommy again on this and
Speaker 1: then also we took the now, all these years later,
Speaker 1: the resources and the and the budget we've we've been
Speaker 1: able to wrestle from the record company, and we were
Speaker 1: able to make something that sounded a little fuller, a
Speaker 1: little more joy a lot more joyful. Actually, we took
Speaker 1: all the things we'd learned making mister m that that
Speaker 1: original album that I have outu and we you know
Speaker 1: call got the band back together as it were, and
Speaker 1: made this one on the new album you do uh
Speaker 1: it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and you
Speaker 1: do it in a very different way. Now people know
Speaker 1: that song from Bing Crosby, they know it from Perry
Speaker 1: Como I think did a big version of Michael Boublet
Speaker 1: of course. So yeah, so when you sat down to
Speaker 1: do it, what were you what were you thinking? Were
Speaker 1: you thinking I can't do it like them? Or just
Speaker 1: like get them out of my head? Somehow we went
Speaker 1: we went back to that original arrangement and we and
Speaker 1: we recorded it that way. And then this one I
Speaker 1: have to give you know, hats off to Joey. Joseph
Speaker 1: Abat my producer. He heard that bassa, he just heard it.
Speaker 1: He was like, Leslie, you know, can we try it
Speaker 1: in a bassa? And I'm sure you know, I'll try
Speaker 1: it anyway. And so the band we had a trio
Speaker 1: in the studio that day, all COVID safe, we'd all
Speaker 1: taken our taken our tests, and we were all you know,
Speaker 1: separated in the studio. We you know, we never got
Speaker 1: within six feet of one another. But something locked in
Speaker 1: with the bassa and we know enough now to trust
Speaker 1: those Quincy calls goose bumps. You know, God's lightning rod,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you know, when you when you
Speaker 1: get a little bit of that goes a long way. Man.
Speaker 1: If you get if you there's that's something to follow.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you when we when we recorded the
Speaker 1: Perry Como version, it wasn't no goosebumps. It sounded fine,
Speaker 1: it sounded nice, but yeah, you're like, uh, do we
Speaker 1: need another version? And it had we had Joseph not
Speaker 1: had the bossa idea, the song probably wouldn't have made
Speaker 1: the cut to the record. But once we locked into
Speaker 1: that bossa, you get the goosebumps, and you know, we
Speaker 1: found the right key, and you study, it's beginning to
Speaker 1: look a lot like Christmas and everywhere you go ain't
Speaker 1: gonna look at the five and ten listening once again,
Speaker 1: candy canes and silver lanes or glow. It's speaking and
Speaker 1: to look a lot, you know, like when once that
Speaker 1: bossa rhythm kicked in, and just different instincts. You know,
Speaker 1: I get different instincts as a singer, as an artist,
Speaker 1: and um, I don't judge those things, you know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't judge those I think art, when it's working,
Speaker 1: it exists on a conscious and a subconscious level. So
Speaker 1: there's things when when you're in flow, there's things you're doing.
Speaker 1: You're bringing up childhood stuff, your childhood inspirations and instincts.
Speaker 1: It's you know, we're made up of so much stuff.
Speaker 1: So it flows down in the bassa and we do it.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know not much. Three or four times,
Speaker 1: you know, with the musician's top to bottom it works,
Speaker 1: and then I do come back and record the vocal
Speaker 1: a few more time until I like it. And that
Speaker 1: once it went into the bassa field. The next thing
Speaker 1: was just to really figure out the phrasing of each
Speaker 1: one of it because it's the different time signature, So
Speaker 1: the phrasing has to change in a way that feels natural,
Speaker 1: in a way that doesn't ever take you out of it.
Speaker 1: Because people have a version of that tune that that
Speaker 1: that sits really well with them. If you're going to
Speaker 1: take them out of that groove, if you're going to
Speaker 1: take them out of that zone, you to make sure
Speaker 1: it goes down just as easy. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: Leslie right after this break. Here's more of Bruce Hedlum's
Speaker 1: conversation with Leslie Odom Jr. The other song I want
Speaker 1: to ask you about, and it was on your first
Speaker 1: Christmas album before we come back to your second one,
Speaker 1: was the Christmas Song because I can't think of a
Speaker 1: song that has a more authoritative version than the Nat
Speaker 1: King Cole. Yeah, and that's a high, high bar. How
Speaker 1: do you tackle something that Nat King cold it? Well,
Speaker 1: we when we went in to get our record deal
Speaker 1: and went into ask Curve to meet with Stephen Greenberg,
Speaker 1: we said we wanted to make the kind of music
Speaker 1: that Nat King Cole might make today, and we didn't
Speaker 1: we didn't really know what that meant. But we knew
Speaker 1: it sounded good and we knew you know, it got
Speaker 1: a to give you money. Yeah, that's all it needed
Speaker 1: to be. I think really we once we made mister,
Speaker 1: you know, that album of all original music, I looked
Speaker 1: at Joseph and I was like, we That's why intentions
Speaker 1: are important. The intention. That was our intention from the
Speaker 1: very beginning. Even we did, you know, we didn't know
Speaker 1: how we were going to get there. We didn't quite
Speaker 1: know what that meant. But that's what we've been after,
Speaker 1: and so I learned a lot. It was challenging, you know,
Speaker 1: but I've learned a lot trying to be Nat King Cole.
Speaker 1: Kind of the first thing you learned is that I'm
Speaker 1: never going to be Nat King Cole. You know, he
Speaker 1: was everything he was in He synthesized his time, everything
Speaker 1: about his time made him. Do you know? There was
Speaker 1: a something radical about Nat because to be that unflappable,
Speaker 1: to be that cool in the midst of the climate
Speaker 1: of this country, to come in that package beautiful yes,
Speaker 1: handsome yes, but a dark skin brother, you know, because
Speaker 1: there's racism and then there's colorism too in America that
Speaker 1: you know, even within the spectrum the evil spectrum of racism,
Speaker 1: that if you were light you were treated better than
Speaker 1: if you were dark. You know, that's that's sort of
Speaker 1: built into the horror show of our history. And for
Speaker 1: Nat to find his cool, to find his his footing
Speaker 1: and his confidence in the midst of all that, you
Speaker 1: know that that's radical. He was a unicorn, and he was,
Speaker 1: in his own way an iconoclassed, you know, an activist
Speaker 1: just by existing, you know, you let us know what
Speaker 1: was what was possible if you dared to be excellent anyway.
Speaker 1: So but for me, I live in a different time,
Speaker 1: a different country, has formed me, the same thing does
Speaker 1: not apply. I had a really astute coach tell me
Speaker 1: once about sort of my this cool affect that I
Speaker 1: was putting on at one point, because we try to
Speaker 1: later our heroes, you know, I was so I was
Speaker 1: trying to early on in my career, trying to be
Speaker 1: some version of Sammy Davis Junior Slash and at King
Speaker 1: Cole Slash, you know, these guys. And he said, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna work on you. He said, because it is
Speaker 1: very clear to me, it's very apparent to me that
Speaker 1: you've been loved your whole life, Your parents loved you,
Speaker 1: didn't they I said, yes they did. He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: it shows you got you gotta work harder, you have
Speaker 1: to pull from a different place. He said, what those
Speaker 1: guys were up against for them to find their cool
Speaker 1: was the tension. That was the tension you stepping on
Speaker 1: stage and showing me how easy it is for you.
Speaker 1: I'm bored, find something else, dig deeper, and it really
Speaker 1: it changed things for me. You know. Ron Coleman was
Speaker 1: his name, brilliant cat. How old were you when he
Speaker 1: gave you that speech? I was not. I want that young.
Speaker 1: I was in my mid twenties, you know, twenty five,
Speaker 1: twenty six. He was like, you know, cut the cool
Speaker 1: shit out, like it's not enough. How did you feel after?
Speaker 1: He I mean, in retrospective, of course it's brilliant, but
Speaker 1: at the time that had to be a little tough
Speaker 1: to hear. Oh, I've always loved that man. A great coach.
Speaker 1: Olympic athletes have coaches, the NBA All Stars have coaches.
Speaker 1: The best of us. You need somebody on the outside
Speaker 1: telling you what it looks like, telling you what they see,
Speaker 1: and telling you how to get better. If you have
Speaker 1: a desire to get better. I've always loved that tell
Speaker 1: me the truth. And here's the thing. A friend of
Speaker 1: mine says, her name is Lacy, Lacy C. Clark. The
Speaker 1: best thing she's ever told me, dear friends, she said,
Speaker 1: the truth without love is brutality. So there was so
Speaker 1: much love. And what he was telling me, he really
Speaker 1: cared about me when he was he was telling me
Speaker 1: the baseline truth. You know, he really wanted me to
Speaker 1: understand something. But there was so much love in it.
Speaker 1: He was not trying to to destroy me. He was
Speaker 1: not trying to kill me. He was trying to help me.
Speaker 1: And I could feel it, and it made me better.
Speaker 1: Effort effort he was. You know, you're you're living in
Speaker 1: a different time. You come from a different experience. Do
Speaker 1: not repeat those same moves. You can glean something from
Speaker 1: their lives, You can take something from what they built.
Speaker 1: You know, you are you can be a link in
Speaker 1: the chain, you know, but you must understand what you're
Speaker 1: here to say and how to say it for a
Speaker 1: new generation. Okay, I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about your background, because you're talking a lot about coaching
Speaker 1: and experiences you had. You grew up in Philly, you
Speaker 1: were born in New York. Your parents sounded strict but loving. Yeah, strict,
Speaker 1: strict but but indulgent. Yes, what was the music in
Speaker 1: your house growing up? My dad was a music is
Speaker 1: a music lover he had and he had an extensive
Speaker 1: record collection. You know. One of the things he on
Speaker 1: the low never forgave his mom for was he went
Speaker 1: away to college and she threw away his record collection.
Speaker 1: She just got rid of it. She was tired of
Speaker 1: like tripping over it in the house, and she threw
Speaker 1: away his record collection. So he never forgave her, but
Speaker 1: he did his best to like to get his records back,
Speaker 1: and they were probably ten literal crates, you know, just
Speaker 1: like plastic crates, some records in our basement. My dad
Speaker 1: had me very young, twenty three when he had me, so,
Speaker 1: you know, no judgment on the guy. But like weekends
Speaker 1: was when my dad would, you know, he'd get a
Speaker 1: little lite, you know what I mean, he'd have some
Speaker 1: beers and he put his records on, you know, and
Speaker 1: he'd be dancing with my mom and singing at the
Speaker 1: top of his lungs badly. What was the music he
Speaker 1: was listening to? It was soul. It was mostly soul
Speaker 1: and R and B music. It was like Marvin Gay,
Speaker 1: the Ohio Players, the tempt James Brown is my dad's
Speaker 1: all time favorite artists. Some Motown in there too, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the music of his He came of age
Speaker 1: in the in the seventies, so it was luck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was hearing lots of sixties and seventies and then eighties.
Speaker 1: They loved the modern stuff of the time too, which
Speaker 1: was what like Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson. Of course MJ
Speaker 1: was huge. Was there a song or an album or
Speaker 1: a moment where you thought, well, maybe I can do
Speaker 1: music too, Like I like this, I want this for myself.
Speaker 1: It was late when I when I'm talking the kids,
Speaker 1: I really try to keep it simple for them because
Speaker 1: it was simple for me. There was no grand ambition involved. Bruce,
Speaker 1: I have to be you know. I was not thinking
Speaker 1: that I was gonna be some you know, recording artists.
Speaker 1: I was just following my curiosity. I was doing what
Speaker 1: was fun. I was doing what I loved to do.
Speaker 1: So when I'm talking to them, I'm saying, love something,
Speaker 1: love it with your whole heart. I bet I want
Speaker 1: to know. You tell me too, if this is true,
Speaker 1: You tell me if it's good advice, because what I
Speaker 1: say is love is a verb. If there's something that
Speaker 1: you're interested in, read about it, talk about it, find
Speaker 1: other people that love it too, dream about it, write
Speaker 1: about it, and eventually you will find your way to
Speaker 1: the world that you love and it will love you back,
Speaker 1: not always in the way that you expect it to,
Speaker 1: but in the way that you need. Yeah. Absolutely. Now,
Speaker 1: you did see Rent when you were thirteen, and that
Speaker 1: left a big impression. It did. Rent brought a generation
Speaker 1: of people to the theater. Lyn Manuel included. Really, you know,
Speaker 1: Rent was like it was like the bat signal. It
Speaker 1: let us all know there's a place for you. It's
Speaker 1: sort of controversial for me to say, but Michael Jackson
Speaker 1: was big. It's complicated with these people as we learn
Speaker 1: more about them over time, and we have to sort
Speaker 1: of reckon with the art and the human you know,
Speaker 1: we have to reckon with the totality of who they were,
Speaker 1: and then we you know, we hold the art up
Speaker 1: and am I still allowed to love this? You know?
Speaker 1: But Michael had a big effect on me, and Michael
Speaker 1: Michael made worlds. You know, there was no art that
Speaker 1: had a bigger effect on me as a as a
Speaker 1: young person than Thriller. It was really it was that
Speaker 1: that movie, the John Landis short film that he made,
Speaker 1: and then the making of Thriller. That's short about the
Speaker 1: making of Thriller where where they let us in on process,
Speaker 1: where they let us in on the making of it.
Speaker 1: And I was like, and what a what a generous thing,
Speaker 1: what a fascinating thing to see them in rehearsal, to
Speaker 1: see Michael Peters teaching the dancers, and they're in there,
Speaker 1: you know, perfect their eighties get up, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, the crop tops and the headbands and the
Speaker 1: you know, and and they're laughing, and Michael and Ola
Speaker 1: Ray are finding their chemistry, you know, before they're in costume.
Speaker 1: You're just watching them sort of dance around each other
Speaker 1: and get to know each other. I mean, my god,
Speaker 1: I was more interest sit in that than I was
Speaker 1: in the Monster movie that they made, which I loved
Speaker 1: a lot. But the thing that I wanted to watch
Speaker 1: again and again was I wanted to watch Michael put
Speaker 1: the plaster on his face and then and put the
Speaker 1: teeth in and all that stuff. So when I got
Speaker 1: to Broadway, when Rent sort of was that bat signal
Speaker 1: that I talked about I was like, oh, man, they
Speaker 1: make worlds here. They build worlds here. When I got
Speaker 1: to the Nederlander Theater, I was seventeen years old when
Speaker 1: I went into rent On Broadway and I got there
Speaker 1: and they had the metal scaffolding and the and the
Speaker 1: fog machine was going before the audience walked in, and
Speaker 1: there's a there's just that that kind that certain perfect
Speaker 1: chill in the air in a New York Broadway the
Speaker 1: house that you feel it felt like as close to
Speaker 1: you know, I was going to be a part of
Speaker 1: thrillers as I could get before you made it to Broadway.
Speaker 1: You studied at Freedom Theater in Philadelphia, and also you
Speaker 1: studied dance in Philadelphia. Yeah. Um, they were both at
Speaker 1: black institutions. That's right. And I just think it's an
Speaker 1: interesting moment because particularly with Kamala Harris who went to
Speaker 1: Howard Tonahasi Coates, whom I know a little and admire
Speaker 1: a lot, went to Howard and really encourages a lot
Speaker 1: of people to go to historically black universities. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: he thinks it's you need a kind of safe place
Speaker 1: to find yourself. What was it like for you or
Speaker 1: what did I what do you think that brought you
Speaker 1: going to black institutions to study at that point rather
Speaker 1: than integrated institutions. Probably the same thing that you know,
Speaker 1: I have dear sweet friends out here in la that
Speaker 1: send their their children to Jewish day school, you know,
Speaker 1: or or the people that send their kids to to
Speaker 1: Christian academies and Christian schools. It's just like really making
Speaker 1: friends with your with your identity and with your you know,
Speaker 1: your your history, making friends with that and so so
Speaker 1: that no one so that no one can take that
Speaker 1: away from you or ever make you ashamed of it,
Speaker 1: or probably a little bit of that. And then I
Speaker 1: think cities have a character. I've learned now as I've
Speaker 1: traveled around post Hamilton with all these concerts and speaking
Speaker 1: engagements and stuff, the touring that I've that I've been
Speaker 1: able to do since leaving the show, you really get
Speaker 1: a sense of it's a it's a strange thing, or
Speaker 1: maybe maybe not so strange at all, but you know,
Speaker 1: you get to Boston and you're like, oh, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: these are the people that would take that tea and
Speaker 1: dump it into the harbor. The Boston's the place that
Speaker 1: would do that, you know what I mean. It's it's
Speaker 1: unlike any other places they've got They've got a character.
Speaker 1: There's a character to the people of that city and Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: It does not surprise me one bit that this election,
Speaker 1: you know that that Philadelphia has has, you know, played
Speaker 1: its role in earning this thing around for America. Whatever
Speaker 1: you believe, whatever side you were on, Philadelphia mattered, and Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a character to to my town. There
Speaker 1: was a wonderful thing training at that that those formative
Speaker 1: years of my life, I took it for granted. Every
Speaker 1: single one of my friends was young, gifted, and black,
Speaker 1: like I was not. I was not special. I was
Speaker 1: not the most talented person in any of those classes.
Speaker 1: I was far. I was not you know when I
Speaker 1: was in when I was in my dance classes, I
Speaker 1: was not the best student or the best speaker or
Speaker 1: any of that stuff. All of my friends were brilliant
Speaker 1: and we and that was like, that was the that
Speaker 1: was the minimum, like, you know, to hang in this set,
Speaker 1: you were supposed to be, you know, all of these things.
Speaker 1: And that's I think that that is what you hear
Speaker 1: Ton of high See talking about Howard, and you hear
Speaker 1: Kamala talking about her experience at Howard on our elementary
Speaker 1: school level. That's what I was experiencing, I think at
Speaker 1: Freedom Theater, at Philadenko and so Yes, I took. I
Speaker 1: carried that with me wherever I went, you know, in
Speaker 1: the rooms that followed. If you know, if you didn't
Speaker 1: think I was good enough, if you didn't think that
Speaker 1: I was worthy of the air in my lungs or
Speaker 1: the space that I was taking up, something was wrong
Speaker 1: with you. I never ever thought that it was something
Speaker 1: that I should fix about myself, you know, beyond beyond
Speaker 1: character flaw. You know, there's, of course that I've worked
Speaker 1: on myself as a human being. But you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like that there was that there was anything
Speaker 1: intrinsically wrong with me because of the color of my skin.
Speaker 1: I mean not in Philadelphia. No, you then went to
Speaker 1: Carnegie Mellon after you were in rent and Broadway, and
Speaker 1: then became a working actor in Los Angeles. But you
Speaker 1: gave up singing for a while. Yeah, had you not
Speaker 1: been encouraged as a singer before that, I just didn't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it was possible, And there were a
Speaker 1: lot of It's hard enough. It's like pick one, you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard enough trying to make it as one thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I just decided to focus on being an actor,
Speaker 1: and that that just took up all my energy, took
Speaker 1: up all my time. I was auditioning for shows and
Speaker 1: getting them sometimes, but I didn't know that, you know,
Speaker 1: that making records and stuff like that was possible. I met,
Speaker 1: you know, I met Joseph, this guy that I've take
Speaker 1: talked about several times. I didn't meet Joseph until you know,
Speaker 1: Leap of Faith on Broadway, and Joseph is the guy
Speaker 1: that turned it all around. Joseph was the guy that
Speaker 1: said I want to make records with you, and people
Speaker 1: had said that to me over the years, but nobody
Speaker 1: followed through. You know. Yeah, I don't understand how you
Speaker 1: needed to raise money for a record after you and Rent.
Speaker 1: I just assumed, like when you left the stage during Rent,
Speaker 1: somebody just just jumped a big bucket of money on
Speaker 1: your head and just sing into the mic and we'll
Speaker 1: make it a record. Where Wow about the music business,
Speaker 1: you know, greater identifying talent. You wrote a terrific book, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I've got little little kids, but both
Speaker 1: of them are going to read this book. They're all
Speaker 1: enough too. It's called Failing Up, and it is it's
Speaker 1: a short book, but it's just about your experiences and
Speaker 1: it's fantastic and it's full of great thoughts, but it's
Speaker 1: a very painful passage in which you are in a show,
Speaker 1: a TV show, and Vulture, which was from New York magazine,
Speaker 1: was doing recaps of the show and they referred to
Speaker 1: you only as token. Yeah, you talk about it in
Speaker 1: the book because he could you tell me about how
Speaker 1: that felt? It was not unlike Ron Coleman's advice to me.
Speaker 1: You know, it was sobering and you know, yeah, a little,
Speaker 1: a little hurtful or a little you know, a little
Speaker 1: not hurtful. What happens? What is the thing that happens
Speaker 1: when you hear a truth that you that that is
Speaker 1: hard to hear? And did you think there was truth?
Speaker 1: And absolutely there was truth in it because they were
Speaker 1: responding to how the show was treating me, and that
Speaker 1: show marginalized me at every turn. That's just the truth.
Speaker 1: I felt it when I was in it. That was
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that made that show so challenging
Speaker 1: to beyond one of the reasons. But yeah, I was
Speaker 1: I was I was a token and I knew it,
Speaker 1: and that that is reductive and painful, you know, to
Speaker 1: live through. And Vulture exposed it and exposed them and me.
Speaker 1: And the part that I guess, I guess the most
Speaker 1: hurtful part I've never really thought about this is like
Speaker 1: when Vulture put sit in the in a weekly column,
Speaker 1: I have to ask myself, well, what are you going
Speaker 1: to do about it? Now it's been called out, It's
Speaker 1: not it's not being hidden. You are a token. You're
Speaker 1: being treated like a token. You're allowing yourself to be
Speaker 1: treated like a token. What are you going to do
Speaker 1: about it? And I, yeah, I had to make somebody
Speaker 1: to make some changes turning that around. You then went
Speaker 1: to Broadway and you know, it was one of the
Speaker 1: great It was what felt so revolutionary about Hamilton was
Speaker 1: that these historical white characters were being played by African Americans,
Speaker 1: people of different races. What was that like. You'd had
Speaker 1: the security of going to sort of you know, you
Speaker 1: studied in an all black theater. You then did a
Speaker 1: lot of different work. What was it like to get
Speaker 1: up on stage and say, I'm a black guy, I'm
Speaker 1: playing a famous white guy, also a bad guy. But
Speaker 1: what was that like, Well, I think I actually, you know,
Speaker 1: I know, my degree says I got what I think?
Speaker 1: I get a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Carnegie Million University.
Speaker 1: You know, majored in drama. But I actually think, you know,
Speaker 1: you could also to synonym for empathy. I'm majored in empathy.
Speaker 1: And this was the greatest empathetic challenge that I've ever
Speaker 1: been given. I've been taught a lot about the Founding Fathers,
Speaker 1: we all have, but no one's ever ever before lin
Speaker 1: Manuel tried to get me to empathize with the Founding Fathers.
Speaker 1: And there's a curious thing that happens as a young
Speaker 1: thirty something year old black man when you try to
Speaker 1: empathize with you know, these men, these complicated these complicated men.
Speaker 1: There's there's parts of them that you understand, parts of
Speaker 1: them that you'll never understand, and that tension, that dissonance
Speaker 1: that it's actually the spaces in which it doesn't quite
Speaker 1: fit that is really interesting for an audience to watch.
Speaker 1: It's the places that it is incongruous, the places that
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense, that make us keep watching. When
Speaker 1: you watch Davi Digs at the top of Act two,
Speaker 1: step out on that stage as Thomas Jefferson. It is
Speaker 1: the weirdest and he's talking to his slaves, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't there's something, especially in a country with a history
Speaker 1: of black face in vaudeville. You know that is a
Speaker 1: part of us two that you know that as a
Speaker 1: part of our DNA too. And we've and you and
Speaker 1: I both we've we've both grown up. It was in
Speaker 1: our cartoons it was you know that that also is
Speaker 1: not and the hateful, mean, reductive caricature that is drawn
Speaker 1: from black face. We feel that too. We feel that
Speaker 1: an aunt Jemima and uncle Ben, we felt that you
Speaker 1: and I we grew up in this country. You know,
Speaker 1: they've changed these images slightly, of course to try to
Speaker 1: be more politically correct. But we know what they were
Speaker 1: when we were children, and my and my parents know
Speaker 1: what they or when they were children. So that's a
Speaker 1: part of us too. And so now to have men
Speaker 1: and women, so now it's going the other way right
Speaker 1: on some level, this is the this is the same thing,
Speaker 1: but we're not being It is with a with an
Speaker 1: entirely different spirit. It is with an entirely different spirit,
Speaker 1: an entirely different intention. There's reverence, there is judgment, there
Speaker 1: is a point of view. So anyway, it was just
Speaker 1: a powerful exercise, a powerful experience that made good on
Speaker 1: my training. You know, I went and got all these
Speaker 1: great tools at Carnegie Mellon University, and I come out
Speaker 1: of school and for the most part, I'm a part
Speaker 1: of shows that want me to be, you know, the
Speaker 1: best friend of the best friend of the best friend
Speaker 1: of the white lead. You know, and and continuously tell
Speaker 1: me and affirm for me. You're welcome here. But as
Speaker 1: long as you stay on the outskirts, as long as
Speaker 1: you stay on the margins, you are not the center.
Speaker 1: You're not You're not interesting enough, You're not worthy enough
Speaker 1: to be the center of a narrative. Your story isn't
Speaker 1: quite doesn't just doesn't quite matter as much. It's waited
Speaker 1: differently as this other story. You know. It was just
Speaker 1: a message that I was being told again and again,
Speaker 1: and Lynn decided to do something different, to do something radical,
Speaker 1: and I'm so glad that he did. You know, it
Speaker 1: makes me think for the first time that had you
Speaker 1: been the only black member of the cast and you'd
Speaker 1: been Aaron Byrd, the villain, how differently, Oh yeah, it
Speaker 1: would feel. That's what I was disarming, was was the
Speaker 1: whole cast. It makes me think of the old you know.
Speaker 1: They made a movie of Jesus Christ Superstars, right, and
Speaker 1: the only black performer played Judas, and that always upset me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you bring you bring him up. Carl Anderson is his name,
Speaker 1: and he is top five most influential performers for me.
Speaker 1: Top five Carl Anderson. Really, Oh are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's a strange thing that happens. I
Speaker 1: was listening to a podcast and it was even about
Speaker 1: Muslim Americans and how there are children that grew up,
Speaker 1: you know, identifying with and sort of sometimes rooting for
Speaker 1: the bad guy in the way stories were told because
Speaker 1: that was their only representation. It was the only time
Speaker 1: they were seeing themselves and so not that they're rooting for.
Speaker 1: But you know what I'm saying, like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: there I am, you know, And so later on you
Speaker 1: unpack that and you go, God, why did I only
Speaker 1: ever see myself as the represented as the bad guy,
Speaker 1: as the villain, So Carl, at the time that I
Speaker 1: was seeing Jesus Christ Superstar, all I saw was just this,
Speaker 1: Oh man, just if somebody put my Aaron Burr in
Speaker 1: the same cannons as Carl Anderson. Man, I'd be done.
Speaker 1: I just thought he the work is so nuanced and
Speaker 1: beautiful and human and gorgeous. My god, he's so good
Speaker 1: in that part. Yeah, I want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about you're singing, but I'm interested in because you're
Speaker 1: a jazz singer, or you're described as a jazz singer,
Speaker 1: you've done jazz albums, But I don't. It's a little
Speaker 1: hard for me to understand what the state of jazz
Speaker 1: singing is because I think it's something most people still
Speaker 1: associate with, you know, a previous you know, a previous
Speaker 1: generation at least you know they think of like the
Speaker 1: Yellow Fitzgerald songbooks. She also did a fabulous Christmas album
Speaker 1: by the way. Yeah, Or you know Peggy Lee, maybe
Speaker 1: Diane Reeves, you know the Seravan who's a big favorite
Speaker 1: of mine. You know, I could tell you what sort
Speaker 1: of modern jazz is for a saxophone player, for a
Speaker 1: piano player, what is it for a singer where How
Speaker 1: do you feel you fit in too? Sort of what
Speaker 1: jazz is today? Oh, I feel like I've fit in again.
Speaker 1: It is not unlike those rooms that I was training
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia. I am far from the best in any
Speaker 1: room of jazz singers that you'll meet. Yeah, jazz ain't
Speaker 1: going anywhere, you know, They jazz survives, and so I
Speaker 1: just I just think it. It looks a little different,
Speaker 1: but it's still out here. I'm in, I hope in
Speaker 1: the tradition of a Frank of a Gnat, of a
Speaker 1: Billy x Stein, even Chet, you know, once Chet started singing.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a certain kind of of jazz singer.
Speaker 1: But you know, when you really talk about the exceptional improvisers,
Speaker 1: and you know, the people that are out there pushing
Speaker 1: the form, synthesizing all that was and all that is
Speaker 1: and making a making a stab at what it's going
Speaker 1: to be in the future, those people are out there.
Speaker 1: Even you look at you listen to you listen to
Speaker 1: um Kendrick, Kendrick Lamars, Kendrick Lamars to Pimp a Butterfly
Speaker 1: or you know, Kendrick is is making jazz. Maybe not
Speaker 1: jazz albums, but they are. There is heavy jazz in
Speaker 1: fluences on these Kedrick Lamar records, Commons another one always
Speaker 1: jazz on a common record. So yeah, I just think
Speaker 1: it's you know, for its survival. It is finding pockets
Speaker 1: in the popular culture to exist and feed itself. But
Speaker 1: you seem to be in a different category. So for example,
Speaker 1: when you do you do a great version of you
Speaker 1: mentioned it favorite Things, Yeah on your previous album. Anybody
Speaker 1: who grew up in the twentieth century thinks of Julie Andrews.
Speaker 1: But you can't listen to years without thinking of like Coltrane. Hey,
Speaker 1: it's there, isn't it. Yeah? God, I hope so the
Speaker 1: or the inspiration anyway, Yeah, I hope. I'm in a
Speaker 1: laying on That's That's what you're trying to do, which
Speaker 1: is what any artist is trying to do. And it
Speaker 1: takes a while. Some people get it, get to it
Speaker 1: quicker than others. Look at Little Billie Eilish and you
Speaker 1: know Amy what Amy Winehouse was able to give us
Speaker 1: before she left us far too soon. Some some artists
Speaker 1: are able to get to it sooner. I can get
Speaker 1: to it. Until I got to you know, I was
Speaker 1: in my early thirties when I really started to come
Speaker 1: into my own thanks to Ron Coleman, thanks to Lynn
Speaker 1: Manuel and some other people who really helped me figure
Speaker 1: out what it is that I could offer that no
Speaker 1: one else was offering, because that's what you gotta do.
Speaker 1: You gotta figure out what are you gonna say that's
Speaker 1: not already being said better by someone else? You know
Speaker 1: what ground are you gonna hope? There is something? There's
Speaker 1: something you can offer, but it takes experimentation and a
Speaker 1: little bit of courage to find what that thing is.
Speaker 1: What are the albums I'm gonna make that nobody's already making.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with Leslie Odom Junior. We're back
Speaker 1: with the rest of Bruce Helem's conversation with Leslie Odom Junior.
Speaker 1: When did you start recording the This Christmas Album? June?
Speaker 1: So it was full pandemic when you were doing Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did it relatively quickly, it was, and it was
Speaker 1: a part of the pivot. COVID caught us all in
Speaker 1: the middle of something, right. Everybody ever, shit is never convenient.
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh, now is the perfect time for
Speaker 1: me to deal with a quarantine. Everybody was like, fuck man,
Speaker 1: I just got started on something. So two or three
Speaker 1: months into the pandemic, I think there was something about
Speaker 1: I was reminded of the holidays, because as Americans, the
Speaker 1: only time we really allow ourselves the time to push
Speaker 1: the pause button. Are those three weeks between Christmas and
Speaker 1: New Year's right? Every everything about it we are about
Speaker 1: the grind, the hustle, the like. We don't pause except
Speaker 1: for those And we were on pause. And so there
Speaker 1: was Almas like, this feels like I'm a weird it's
Speaker 1: a weird Christmas, but this feels this is the only
Speaker 1: time we do. This is Christmas time. So we took
Speaker 1: our COVID tests and you know, we got the band
Speaker 1: back together and tried to I tried to imagine what
Speaker 1: people might be in need of at the end of
Speaker 1: this really challenging year. You make some really interesting choices.
Speaker 1: You're talking your book about making always trying to make
Speaker 1: very informed, until actual choices. You know, in this case,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a great version of Little Drummer Boy
Speaker 1: with the South African choir. How did that come about?
Speaker 1: How Joseph did he came up with the arrangement idea?
Speaker 1: He did He wanted it to the drums of Little
Speaker 1: Drummer Boy to be set somewhere in Africa, you know,
Speaker 1: he didn't Is it gonna be West Africa? Is it
Speaker 1: gonna be South Africa. You know, we were gonna be
Speaker 1: specific about it, not just you know, generic Africa. But
Speaker 1: he that was his inspiration, that was his little idea.
Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, man, you know, try it, let
Speaker 1: me let me hear it when it's done. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he came up with the very the rudiments, you know,
Speaker 1: and I got in there and I recorded a version
Speaker 1: of it, and this, you know, the process was not
Speaker 1: unlike what I described to you. Kind of start just
Speaker 1: at that basic what are the what are the words?
Speaker 1: You know, what is the melody? And then we sent
Speaker 1: it to this this chorus, this youth chorus in South Africa,
Speaker 1: and they sent us back something that was so far
Speaker 1: beyond anything we antissipated. And so then we had to
Speaker 1: then make the arrangement match what they'd sent us back.
Speaker 1: I had to re record the vocal and Farren Nephew Feamster,
Speaker 1: who's my other major collaborator on this record, he just
Speaker 1: made the arrangement as big and as bright and beautiful
Speaker 1: as the vocals they sent us back. Was it tough
Speaker 1: for you to come in with a vocal that worked
Speaker 1: with what they were doing? No, they were so beautiful.
Speaker 1: I mean they God, I'm so I could cry, I'm
Speaker 1: so moved by people that you call them and you
Speaker 1: ask them if they want to collaborate, and you know,
Speaker 1: people give you the best of them. Know, when we
Speaker 1: sent them our version, they built their version around what
Speaker 1: we sent them, So it was always taking me into consideration.
Speaker 1: You know, they they they were building their thing around
Speaker 1: the little humble thing we sent them. It sounds a
Speaker 1: lot like Paul Simon's experience with grace Land, going and saying,
Speaker 1: here's a little idea, and then you know, the guitar
Speaker 1: player comes back with like a killer riff. And we
Speaker 1: thought a lot about Graceland when they sent it back
Speaker 1: to us. What was missing was what we realized is
Speaker 1: that the way we could serve them actually was to
Speaker 1: bring more America, was to bring more pop. That was
Speaker 1: what it was. Because we sent them, we sent them
Speaker 1: something pretty rock and stick. I mean it was like
Speaker 1: it was it was drum and bass maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: and we we thought we were it was going to
Speaker 1: be pretty acapella, like a pretty acapella arrangement. So so
Speaker 1: then they send us back that you know, they just
Speaker 1: they filled out the vocal spectrum and it was just
Speaker 1: this choir coming back and it was like, we're failing them.
Speaker 1: We have to match them, and what do we add
Speaker 1: in there? We add the cultural exchange is the mix
Speaker 1: of the two. So now let's what pop sounds. What
Speaker 1: what can we add to the spectrum that is, you know,
Speaker 1: the mel holding of our two cultures. You read it
Speaker 1: Winter song, Yeah, with your co star from Harriet. Yes,
Speaker 1: tell me how that came about. Cynthia did a big
Speaker 1: holiday concert at the Apollo a few years ago, her
Speaker 1: and Shoshana Bean and we sang this lot the only
Speaker 1: time we've ever sang it. We sang it live at
Speaker 1: this concert and it felt good. Man. It was just
Speaker 1: you know, it was like, oh, yeah, why wasn't this
Speaker 1: song a duet to begin with? Because yeah, that song
Speaker 1: started as a duets. It's an Ingrid Michaelson Sarah Barella's
Speaker 1: song that I turned into a solo version. Cynthia and
Speaker 1: I turned it back into a duet, and so I
Speaker 1: just I couldn't miss the opportunity to get that on record,
Speaker 1: and we should mention this is Cynthia a Rivo Arivo
Speaker 1: Academy Award nominees the Arivo who I think and I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier the People's initial reaction to seeing you in Hamilton.
Speaker 1: I think she's another one of those people. If you
Speaker 1: don't know her and you see her on TV or something,
Speaker 1: she comes out and starts singing, You're just like what
Speaker 1: she queened the world? How come I've never heard this before?
Speaker 1: This is so incredible. She's just that kind of talent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this thing was our labor of love. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, I hope we decorated the studio
Speaker 1: to feel like Christmas, you know, but there there's a
Speaker 1: there's a reverence and a somber quality to my first
Speaker 1: Christmas record that that just that's you know, that was
Speaker 1: honestly where I was for whatever the reasons were at
Speaker 1: that time, and I'm not in that same place even
Speaker 1: in the middle of everything we're going through. I'm generally,
Speaker 1: you know, I've gone on a search, a hunt for
Speaker 1: my joy the last couple of years, and I wanted
Speaker 1: that present on this record. So I remember I was
Speaker 1: jumping around the studio when Cynthia was in the booth
Speaker 1: recording her vocals, just jumping for joy because she sounded
Speaker 1: so good and it was happy. It was, you know,
Speaker 1: coming to life. And she just said on the mic
Speaker 1: She was like, you're really happy, aren't you, And I
Speaker 1: said I, but I loved that my friend could see it.
Speaker 1: Another song, I wanted to mention a duet with your wife.
Speaker 1: You do it in Hebrew. Yes, we had a We
Speaker 1: had a brilliant rabbi as our coach on that day
Speaker 1: because we wanted to. We wanted to our pronunciation to
Speaker 1: be accurate and respectful. Um so I'm gonna barely attempt
Speaker 1: to say it now, but it's my old seward. I
Speaker 1: think it's how you say it, but I need the
Speaker 1: rabbi here to coach me again. I was very keen
Speaker 1: on expanding that table, you know, expanding that the really
Speaker 1: I think of the holiday time, I said that that
Speaker 1: that three weeks between Christmas and New Year's that is
Speaker 1: that is America's high holy time. And some people are
Speaker 1: celebrating Hanaka, some people are celebrating Quanta, some people are
Speaker 1: celebrating Christmas. Some people are just celebrating family, and they're
Speaker 1: just celebrating rest. I want to celebrate it all, you know.
Speaker 1: I want to. I want to. I want people to
Speaker 1: feel seen, and let's make that holiday family portrait a
Speaker 1: little bigger. You know what I mean? When you told
Speaker 1: your wife you wanted to do a duet. Was she thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, baby, it's cold outside or something? You said, well, no,
Speaker 1: it's like that, except it's a thirteenth century Rabbinical song.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you you, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you does it. But my wife is half Jewish. I
Speaker 1: mean I didn't know that. Now. Yeah, technically she would
Speaker 1: be considered her mother is Jewish and her father's African American,
Speaker 1: and so mixed race, mixed faith upbringing. And so I've
Speaker 1: spent we've been together twelve years, and so I have
Speaker 1: spent twelve years observing, in addition to all my High
Speaker 1: Holy Days, observing the High Holy Days on the Jewish
Speaker 1: calendar as well. And it has just God has gotten
Speaker 1: larger for me. You know, I want to ask you
Speaker 1: just about one more song, because it probably hit me
Speaker 1: the hardest, maybe because it's the simplest. It's your version
Speaker 1: of old Langsyne. How did that come about? It's just
Speaker 1: you and a guitar. Yeah, it hits me too, that melody,
Speaker 1: that sentiment before we go into a new year, let's
Speaker 1: honor who isn't going with us? Should old acquaintance be forgot?
Speaker 1: And brought to mind, should old acquaintance be forgot and
Speaker 1: old landsign? It's just like I've been singing it for
Speaker 1: years now in my concerts. It always works. It always
Speaker 1: makes me feel something, And if it makes you feel something,
Speaker 1: chances are it's going to make somebody else feel something too.
Speaker 1: I think that's a perfect place to stop. But I
Speaker 1: have one favor. Could you sing the next two lines?
Speaker 1: Four Lansine, my dear for Lansine. We'll take a couple
Speaker 1: of kindness yet for Lansine. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: doing this. Thank you, guys, appreciate you. Thanks to Leslie
Speaker 1: Adam Junior for talking us through his beautiful new Christmas
Speaker 1: album and for lifting our spirits. You can hear Leslie's
Speaker 1: Christmas album, along with some of our other favorite Christmas
Speaker 1: songs at a playlist at broken record podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube
Speaker 1: dot com slash Broken record Podcast. There you can find
Speaker 1: extended cuts of new and old episodes. Broken Record is
Speaker 1: produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Martin Gonzalez,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, and his executive Produced by Miola Bell. Broken
Speaker 1: Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. And if you
Speaker 1: like Broken Record, please remember to share, rate, and review
Speaker 1: our show on your podcast appen our theme musics by
Speaker 1: Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond bass