Speaker 1: Pushkin. We occasionally feel the emails and dms from Broken
Speaker 1: Record listeners telling us who they'd like to hear on
Speaker 1: the program. The past handful of years, one name has
Speaker 1: come up more than others, Julian Lage. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: not part of the Converted, not a member of one
Speaker 1: of his devoted legions of fans, that may come as
Speaker 1: a surprise to you. But if you get the chance
Speaker 1: to spend some time with his music after listening to
Speaker 1: this episode, I have just one word for you, welcome.
Speaker 1: Julian's path and music has been as unique as his gifts.
Speaker 1: He picked up the guitar at five years old and
Speaker 1: quickly became obsessed with the instrument. That obsession and what
Speaker 1: must have been some level of innate abilities, led to
Speaker 1: his designation as a child prodigy, and as you'll hear,
Speaker 1: the opportunity to play live on stage with Carlos Santana
Speaker 1: at eight and live on a Grammy telecast at thirteen.
Speaker 1: But it's his development as an artist over the course
Speaker 1: of four albums and four years on Blue Note that's
Speaker 1: most impressive to me. His album Speak to Me came
Speaker 1: out earlier this year and is impressionistic in its beauty
Speaker 1: rather than prodigious, often quiet rather than flashy. For the
Speaker 1: last episode in our series celebrating the creative legacy of
Speaker 1: Blue Note Records over eighty five years, Don Was and
Speaker 1: I spoke with Julian Lage in front of a live
Speaker 1: audience at the Blue Note Club in New York. We
Speaker 1: talked about his upbringing as a prodigy, about writing and
Speaker 1: recording his new album, and about his unique approach to
Speaker 1: learning and playing guitar. Oh and he plays for us too.
Speaker 1: This is Broken Record Liner Notes for the digital Age.
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richman. Here's Don Was and myself in the
Speaker 1: Blue Note in New York with Julian Lage. See the
Speaker 1: full video version of this episode go to YouTube dot
Speaker 1: com slash Broken Record Podcast.
Speaker 2: How are you my friend?
Speaker 3: Good?
Speaker 1: So, thank you for doing this.
Speaker 2: I mam my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Oh Man, your new record is gorgeous record for gorgeous.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate that it really is.
Speaker 1: But I think Donn and I have talked about maybe
Speaker 1: starting a little further back.
Speaker 2: You say wherever you want, I'm all yours.
Speaker 3: I watched a little bit of Jewels at eight Did
Speaker 3: you really yea the whole the whole thing is not.
Speaker 2: No, I don't I don't even know how to find it.
Speaker 3: Their little little excerpts up there. Yeah, and you get
Speaker 3: such a such a unique blend of real sweetness and
Speaker 3: unbelievable talent. I don't know, have you. This is a
Speaker 3: movie that was made when he was.
Speaker 2: Years old old.
Speaker 3: Yeah, someone shot? Who shot? Who made it?
Speaker 2: It's a director named Mark Becker, and he was he
Speaker 2: was at Stanford as a film student, and he had this.
Speaker 2: It's kind of interesting because it wasn't it really wasn't
Speaker 2: about me. He just wanted a movie about a young
Speaker 2: musician or talented person who is straddling the worlds of
Speaker 2: childhood and some sort of skill. And so he called
Speaker 2: us to do it, and my parents and I said no,
Speaker 2: absolutely not, you know, because I really keep in mind,
Speaker 2: I'd only been playing guitar for two years. I wasn't
Speaker 2: like an established musician. But he heard of me through some
Speaker 2: channel who knows what, and came. He was very persistent,
Speaker 2: and eventually we said, well, hey, this is clearly more
Speaker 2: about you than about me, and that's kind of good
Speaker 2: in a way. So that's why we proceeded. But yes,
Speaker 2: there was this film made.
Speaker 3: You're clearly a child prodigy, and there must be an
Speaker 3: incredible set of expectations and pressures that go along with that.
Speaker 2: Sure, absolutely, How.
Speaker 3: Did you deal with that?
Speaker 2: Well, it's so cool that you frame it that way,
Speaker 2: because I think so often there's something blinding about really anybody,
Speaker 2: but especially young people when they exhibit any propensity. Is that, yeah, there,
Speaker 2: you get blinded by that. It's dazzling, and you don't
Speaker 2: It's easy to forget that there's emotional infrastructure that needs
Speaker 2: to be built and supported, and just to even understand
Speaker 2: your own progress and understand your worth is not maybe
Speaker 2: tied to your progress. And in some parts of life
Speaker 2: you might be really advanced, other parts of life, you're
Speaker 2: really at the beginning. All these considerations. I think they
Speaker 2: reveal themselves, but it's easier to see that when you
Speaker 2: have a supporting family or teachers or community. Now. At
Speaker 2: the time, I remember getting a lot of attention, but
Speaker 2: I never once felt overwhelmed by it, and I attribute
Speaker 2: that to my parents. They were when my father was
Speaker 2: a young boy, he was a bit of He was
Speaker 2: a child prodigy as a visual artist, and he had
Speaker 2: a one man show in southern California and we used
Speaker 2: to have letters from you know, he'd send a portrait
Speaker 2: to Jacqueline Kennedy and he'd get a letter back saying
Speaker 2: thank you, or Norman Rockwell, and so I think he
Speaker 2: saw and at certain points he got older, he decided
Speaker 2: not to pursue art because I think that part of
Speaker 2: it freaked him out, is what I imagine. So when
Speaker 2: it came to me, I think there was already a
Speaker 2: certain defensive barrier. No one could really get to me.
Speaker 2: As a kid, I practiced a lot. I did my thing.
Speaker 2: Every so often, I'd come up for air, but I
Speaker 2: didn't I was unbothered by it. Now, as I became
Speaker 2: more of an adult, I could see it in the
Speaker 2: rear view beer a little differently. And I think what
Speaker 2: helped me was that I didn't make a record under
Speaker 2: my own name until I was about twenty one twenty two.
Speaker 2: So from five until twenty two, I was just a
Speaker 2: guy practicing guitar, playing people's bands, and it was great.
Speaker 2: I think I needed that many years to just kind
Speaker 2: of develop, and then when I hit it, I really
Speaker 2: hit it strong. The last thing I'll say about that,
Speaker 2: I know I've said it before in other forums, but
Speaker 2: I'm of the generation right before the Internet being so
Speaker 2: prevalent in young people's lives. So there was a documentary
Speaker 2: made about me, but there was no YouTube, There was
Speaker 2: no clips of me anywhere, so I was a secret.
Speaker 2: What went out was very even in the documentary, I
Speaker 2: don't actually play guitar in it, which is interesting. I
Speaker 2: don't play. There's a moment where I play a scale,
Speaker 2: but that's kind of wild to think of that that
Speaker 2: I'm not playing, you know, I could that could be,
Speaker 2: it could be all bogus for all anyone knows. But
Speaker 2: thank god I didn't, you know, so I don't even
Speaker 2: know what I sounded like at that age.
Speaker 3: Really, you sounded awesome. You were playing.
Speaker 2: For a second, that's all I knew that that was
Speaker 2: the whole riff.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's one of one of the things
Speaker 3: about child prodigies is that I've seen a lot of that,
Speaker 3: you know, but very few make the transition into being
Speaker 3: adult artists. Yeah, and I think that, you know, they
Speaker 3: a lot of them can do an eagle soul perfectly,
Speaker 3: you know, and that's amazing to see a young kid
Speaker 3: do that. But I didn't sinse even when I heard
Speaker 3: you whatever you did in the It didn't sound like
Speaker 3: anybody else. You weren't copying Eric Clappin or anything. You had.
Speaker 3: You had a voice, and I think that's you. That's
Speaker 3: the rarest thing is development of your own voice.
Speaker 2: Right well, I do, I do believe that, especially from
Speaker 2: where I sit now. I was talking to my wife
Speaker 2: Margaret about this just was it last night. But my father,
Speaker 2: both my parents possessed this ability to be They're fans
Speaker 2: of art and music and life right this, and so
Speaker 2: they would talk about things I remember as a kid,
Speaker 2: and they would analyze people, Uh not in the way of, Okay,
Speaker 2: this person's great, you should be like them, but they
Speaker 2: would say, this artist must think this way about themselves
Speaker 2: in order to get this result that you're hearing, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. It's very new. As a kid,
Speaker 2: we would listen to Jim Hall or something just because
Speaker 2: it was in the house that those records. I just
Speaker 2: remember having those conversations with my father saying that, oh,
Speaker 2: he must have a an acceptance of his own sense
Speaker 2: of humor and phrasing, because that that's what I'm getting
Speaker 2: from this. And I took it for granted, but I
Speaker 2: realized it's really rare. Usually we kind of say, well,
Speaker 2: we people become icons, and then it's very it becomes
Speaker 2: almost impossible to develop a voice because you just aren't
Speaker 2: that person. Your body doesn't work that way, your brain
Speaker 2: doesn't work that way, your heart doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2: You didn't have those parents, you know. But I think
Speaker 2: everything was broken down is if you can understand your
Speaker 2: relationship to yourself, you'll be you'll have access to what
Speaker 2: you can offer most genuinely. And for that, I'm so
Speaker 2: grateful and I think that is the root of kind
Speaker 2: of developing a voice on an instrument. Also, I'm a
Speaker 2: terrible mimic. I couldn't sound like anyone if I tried,
Speaker 2: and I tried, I really remember no. I really my
Speaker 2: wife on that. She's a brilliant. She can hear something,
Speaker 2: repeat it, make it her own. I you know, I
Speaker 2: really can't. And it's good. It's a good handicapped.
Speaker 1: That tradition you're talking about though, of like there's icons
Speaker 1: and then that you kind of steep yourself in them
Speaker 1: and so to become like them and then maybe hopefully
Speaker 1: for lucky, find your voice after. That'sicularly strong tradition in guitar.
Speaker 1: Unless sure, young young people learning guitar and playing guitar.
Speaker 1: Oh my god? Yeah, did you have moments early on
Speaker 1: with that? I mean, were you did you have at
Speaker 1: any point, even if it was a traditional, traditional, more
Speaker 1: traditional trajectory of like I'm learning the blues now now transitioning.
Speaker 2: Well, well, I consider myself, it's a great question. I
Speaker 2: consider myself such a history nut, you know, or maybe
Speaker 2: more accurately, I believe I find great support in knowing
Speaker 2: that I'm far from the only person doing this. You know,
Speaker 2: it was here before me. I'll be here when I'm dead,
Speaker 2: So I'm just passing through, you know. So uh, yes,
Speaker 2: I think there were times where I would investigate history,
Speaker 2: you know. Okay, I really want to understand t Bone Walker,
Speaker 2: and I really want to understand Muddy Waters. And I'm
Speaker 2: not going to learn what they do, but I'm just gonna,
Speaker 2: I guess, cultivate a certain reverence through listening, playing along
Speaker 2: with records, same with jazz, same with different musicians. But
Speaker 2: I was always under the belief I remember so vividly
Speaker 2: thinking that here's my dream. I want us to be
Speaker 2: right where I am with you right now. This truly
Speaker 2: is my dream with all of you, and I want
Speaker 2: to be myself, being a part of a creative project.
Speaker 2: That's what I want, and I recognize that in order
Speaker 2: to do that and feel comfortable, I need to deal
Speaker 2: with a lot of things that are really no one
Speaker 2: else's business. And that's that's scales, that's theory, that's the
Speaker 2: understanding the guitar. I need to get this sort and
Speaker 2: so that our time isn't spent kind of being distracted
Speaker 2: by something I'm not I don't have together. That was
Speaker 2: always my view, So I remember practicing and acquiring information
Speaker 2: from that perspective. I got to acquire a lot so
Speaker 2: that I can just be available emotionally, because we all
Speaker 2: know that when you're just inundated with stuff you have
Speaker 2: to learn, and like you're saying these towering icons over us,
Speaker 2: you can't. You're fumbling to just get through. And that's
Speaker 2: that can really plummet your sense of self, you know,
Speaker 2: And I just I just need to nix that in
Speaker 2: the butt. There are things that are knowable on the guitar,
Speaker 2: and there's the good stuff is the unknowable stuff, but
Speaker 2: there are noble things. I know where the notes are,
Speaker 2: and I know how to hold a pick.
Speaker 1: And can you explain what the noble versus unknowable show.
Speaker 2: There's absolutely it's it's a little bit I feel silly
Speaker 2: doing in front of all you guys. But you know,
Speaker 2: even knowing where the pitches are on the instrument, I've
Speaker 2: always felt like that's massively overlooked. Okay, you have, you
Speaker 2: have all these seas there, and unless I change something
Speaker 2: about the tuning or take a string off, those notes
Speaker 2: will be there for me. Now what I've found, and
Speaker 2: that's true of every all twelve pitches. What I've found, though,
Speaker 2: is there are so many hurdles as guitar players we
Speaker 2: get into. I was there for a long time that
Speaker 2: are attributed to knowing thirty percent of the neck fifty.
Speaker 2: But I know where three of the seas are. I don't.
Speaker 2: I really shouldn't go up there, I should go over
Speaker 2: here instead. That's a very simple example of kind of
Speaker 2: doing your homework as far is just map it out,
Speaker 2: not with a system. It takes a week, you know it,
Speaker 2: it really does. Always I felt about it. Another example
Speaker 2: of it, I've had a fastening. You're really interested in this, Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: I I've been fascinated by this, this thing about mastery
Speaker 2: on the guitar, right because we're all interested all of
Speaker 2: the super you know, you see the people go wow,
Speaker 2: they seem really good. They know something I don't. And
Speaker 2: I feel that all the time with my heroes. However,
Speaker 2: there are things. There's when you're good at something, there's
Speaker 2: there's attributes that also kick in. Like if you're you
Speaker 2: can use a fork and have a conversation, that means
Speaker 2: you probably know how to use a fork. There are
Speaker 2: these like okay, there's a bandwidth for other things. So
Speaker 2: I remember, as a young person, younger person, I was
Speaker 2: really thinking about that on the guitar. What despite all
Speaker 2: the things I know, I don't know what's something I
Speaker 2: can do that I just feel I could do in
Speaker 2: my sleep. You can wake me up at three in
Speaker 2: the morning with a fire extinguishure in my face. They do,
Speaker 2: and I'd say, okay, I can do it. And a
Speaker 2: really good example would be probably playing a C major chord.
Speaker 2: You know the reason I say that, I probably learned
Speaker 2: it really early on. And when I do it, I
Speaker 2: can talk and do it. I can breathe and do it.
Speaker 2: I can I don't feel I'm not really I feel good.
Speaker 2: I feel good and I can do it. Now to me,
Speaker 2: that's somewhat of a litmus test. That's a metric for
Speaker 2: what it's like to have a mastery over a little
Speaker 2: domain on the instrument. Now, the next thing would be
Speaker 2: to tackle something that I have less of that experience with.
Speaker 2: So if I would do that and then i'd work
Speaker 2: on I don't know what, I'd work on something difficult,
Speaker 2: and immediately I would just say, what has left me?
Speaker 2: I can't really breathe when I'm doing it. I'm really anxious,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of fumbling my tone, okay, dipped, Okay, so
Speaker 2: let me go back to the reset. And I would
Speaker 2: be ridiculous if you saw me, But I would keep
Speaker 2: going back to that kind of touchstone. Wow, And if
Speaker 2: you do it enough, you know how to For me,
Speaker 2: at least, I felt like I was able to get
Speaker 2: those difficult things to feel good in a way that
Speaker 2: I had faith in. It's very hard to have faith
Speaker 2: in that you're good at something if you if you're
Speaker 2: not used to that good feeling. Do you know what
Speaker 2: I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of interesting. So it's it's you knew
Speaker 1: you had the hard thing when the hard thing kind of.
Speaker 2: Felt felt like the thing that I considered good not
Speaker 2: what someone else considered good feeling.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's funny to say that because I'm not
Speaker 2: terribly stubborn, So it's not like it's not a This
Speaker 2: isn't a protest, you know, I really don't have a
Speaker 2: dog in the race. It just made sense to me,
Speaker 2: and I think that's how my father looked at teaching
Speaker 2: me guitar when I when I started too. It's all
Speaker 2: from him, you know.
Speaker 1: That's an incredible way to That's a really sophisticated way
Speaker 1: of approaching guitar that my parents are deep.
Speaker 2: But it's it's beautiful because I have seen it pop
Speaker 2: up in others. You see this, you see that. It's
Speaker 2: the same with our health. You have to know when
Speaker 2: you felt good, to know when you don't feel good, right,
Speaker 2: you have to kind of you have to. It's a
Speaker 2: play of oppositions.
Speaker 1: With a touchstone champ. I mean, what, for instance, what
Speaker 1: always be the seed?
Speaker 2: It could be anything sometimes, but you have to go
Speaker 2: and go to something that you would It feels too
Speaker 2: simple to be legitimate. This is one of my favorites.
Speaker 2: You know, once it feels as once something difficult feels
Speaker 2: as comfortable as just strong me a guitar open with nothing.
Speaker 2: That's when we're kind of getting close to a sense
Speaker 2: of feeling masterful. It's it's certainly been working in a
Speaker 2: nice way, and I and maybe it'll change, you know.
Speaker 3: Do you have variations, you know on different days, like
Speaker 3: something seem harder.
Speaker 2: Oh, one hundred, that's such a good point. Yeah, there,
Speaker 2: there's I feel that in the realm of time, feel
Speaker 2: like I noticed it. Depending on the season, you know,
Speaker 2: a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, some things will just feel
Speaker 2: not accessible. I can't settle into this beat, or I can,
Speaker 2: but it's going to take me an hour and then
Speaker 2: I can feel it. Other days they'll okay, there's I
Speaker 2: can kind of access that physically too. I'm not a
Speaker 2: big believer at this point, least in warming up on
Speaker 2: the instrument, like it was a time where I did.
Speaker 2: Speaking just from my own experience, I think there's kind
Speaker 2: of a I like the way I sound when I'm
Speaker 2: not warmed up. Sometimes yeah, I trip over my hand,
Speaker 2: but I also have to deal with that like a
Speaker 2: human being rather than just oh this feels great, I
Speaker 2: can do anything I want. So I would say it
Speaker 2: does change as far as the physical time feel, I
Speaker 2: like a lot of playing, a lot of improvised music.
Speaker 2: So usually the cures just start playing. You and I
Speaker 2: have talked about this done before, about the kind of
Speaker 2: the just the virtuous world of playing longer. You know,
Speaker 2: if you're looking for I want to sit down, play
Speaker 2: for five minutes and be amazing, that's great. But what
Speaker 2: if you sit down for forty five minutes, an hour,
Speaker 2: two hours, three hours and you don't stop. You will
Speaker 2: hit walls and you also, my experience, resolve them musically
Speaker 2: rather than divorcing them from the act of playing. And
Speaker 2: so usually when something's off, I just play more.
Speaker 1: I've heard that you'll play like ninety minutes sometimes over
Speaker 1: just the same changes.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Oh you get so it's kind of yeah, sick
Speaker 2: of yourself, and then you get happy, and then you
Speaker 2: get it. It's a journey, you know. But long form
Speaker 2: playing has been become a big that's a big part
Speaker 2: of my life. And if I don't have the time
Speaker 2: for that lately, I'm okay, just not playing. Do something
Speaker 2: else long form, do you know, Just be alive long
Speaker 2: for you know, but just try not to break every
Speaker 2: part of life into these little kind of life hacker moments.
Speaker 3: There's a great line in Jewels that day where your
Speaker 3: dad's talking and he's talking about people saying, well, don't
Speaker 3: make him practice all the time. He said, no, I
Speaker 3: try to make him stop.
Speaker 2: It was true, like you have to really stop. It's
Speaker 2: been eight hours, you know. It's funny like that.
Speaker 3: Though.
Speaker 2: I feel lucky because I teach a lot, not much lately,
Speaker 2: but I've taught a lot culturally speak. There is so
Speaker 2: much pressure nowadays in the educational system that I remember
Speaker 2: even as a kid, it wasn't the same. And I
Speaker 2: really have looked back on it. Play all day because
Speaker 2: it's fun was kind of okay, but I've noticed that
Speaker 2: rhetoric is not the same. And if you see young, well,
Speaker 2: that's great that you can play, but you can't just play.
Speaker 2: You've got to be working on something and you have
Speaker 2: to that has to be something that you can show
Speaker 2: to other people, so we can tell you if you're
Speaker 2: getting better or not. I somehow avoided all of that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's good, So I feel lucky.
Speaker 3: After fare in school, you went to berkeleye age.
Speaker 2: I went to Berkeley College of Music. I loved it. Well,
Speaker 2: at first I didn't, and then I loved it. You know,
Speaker 2: as a teenager, I started playing with Gary Burton and.
Speaker 3: Before you were at before, yeah, before.
Speaker 2: I was there, so I but Gary used to be
Speaker 2: you know, the he ran that school for so many
Speaker 2: years and he's a part of it for fifty years.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't a big leap to say, well, when
Speaker 2: I get old enough, I want to go there. Gary's
Speaker 2: kind of my guy. So I went and I did
Speaker 2: the thing, Okay, go up to the class whatever, and
Speaker 2: I really didn't like it. I was kind of miserable
Speaker 2: for the first semester, and by no one's doing other
Speaker 2: than my own. I realized that I'd gone from being
Speaker 2: in this musical space to music school, which we all
Speaker 2: those who are familiar with any kind of art school,
Speaker 2: they kind of they have to make it such that
Speaker 2: you're that everyone has accessed information. So you go from
Speaker 2: being the special person in your community, you know, to
Speaker 2: being one of thousands. You go from being the person
Speaker 2: your bedroomho's learning songs because you're just fascinated too. I've
Speaker 2: got homework now and I haven't touched the guitar in
Speaker 2: a month. I thought something's off, you know, So I
Speaker 2: called the president of the school, Roger Brown, who I
Speaker 2: really adore, right to the top. I just said, look,
Speaker 2: I don't want always say anyone. Sime. You're so so
Speaker 2: gracious to let me be here, but I'm going to
Speaker 2: tell you this isn't for me, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: move on. And he he I left that at a voicemail.
Speaker 2: I realized now he called me back, a'mbout tim and
Speaker 2: to say he said, Julian Jillie, what is up? But
Speaker 2: I said, well, here's the deal. I know if I
Speaker 2: I can cultivate what I'm doing already, there's jazz guitar
Speaker 2: pass there's all I want to get my butt kicked
Speaker 2: with what I don't know? He said, what is it?
Speaker 2: I said, classical composition, classical piano, really deeply get into counterpoint,
Speaker 2: and study with Mick Goodrick, you know, the master. And
Speaker 2: he said, we will figure this out. And I ostensibly
Speaker 2: became wrapped up in something they were rebuilding, which is
Speaker 2: what they call an artist diploma program. Juilliard's got a
Speaker 2: lot of schools have them. It's kind of like a
Speaker 2: master's degree. And he said, we'll frame it academically so
Speaker 2: that your last, you know, ten years of touring with
Speaker 2: Gary Burton. We'll consider that like an undergrad now, but
Speaker 2: you have to tell us what you want to get
Speaker 2: out of this. And I said, I want to make
Speaker 2: my first record. That's my final and I need about
Speaker 2: three years to study before I want to make the record.
Speaker 2: And it's just, you know, it's all the stuff is low.
Speaker 2: It's not life or death. And they also had an
Speaker 2: open mind, but I took it very seriously. I studied
Speaker 2: with them. I did everything we said I would do,
Speaker 2: including making my first record sounding point Wow. And I
Speaker 2: loved it. And there were other students who I hipped
Speaker 2: to this program because they were coming in that and
Speaker 2: they needed something similar, so it was a good thing
Speaker 2: for all. I thought it was really cool, really cool.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from Don was and
Speaker 1: Me in conversation with Julian lash We're back with Julian Lage.
Speaker 1: How did you connect with Gary?
Speaker 2: He saw me on the Grammys. I was playing on
Speaker 2: this telecast back in two thousand and two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: and they had this moment took thirty seconds of kids
Speaker 2: playing jazz, you know, and I was one of the kids.
Speaker 2: Similar to the documentary we spoke of earlier. I was
Speaker 2: invited and said no because I had no interest in it,
Speaker 2: and they were really persistent, and I said, okay, okay,
Speaker 2: so do the thing. And I got a letter maybe
Speaker 2: a week after it was televised from Gary and he said,
Speaker 2: my name is Gary Burton. I was in the audience
Speaker 2: that night. I've got a gig at the TED conference
Speaker 2: in six months. And back in those days, it was
Speaker 2: always it was not what it's become. It was a
Speaker 2: little different. It was in Monterey, California, in this hotel
Speaker 2: and it was small and very still very exclusive, and
Speaker 2: they hired Gary to do a thing about intergenerational something
Speaker 2: or other and I was the younger generation, so he said,
Speaker 2: you want to be my younger generation for this. I
Speaker 2: was sure, you know, and it went so well that
Speaker 2: he asked me to then do a cruise on the
Speaker 2: Queen Elizabeth too, you know, the one from New York
Speaker 2: to London, which had it was great they would have
Speaker 2: I don't think. I don't know if they still do
Speaker 2: it with these jazz festivals. And it was Gary's band,
Speaker 2: Tommy Flanagan's trio, Bud Shank. It was fabulous. Terrible experience
Speaker 2: on the cruise because we hit a storm, but like
Speaker 2: fifty foot seas and a piano was rolling off the stage.
Speaker 2: I'm talking bad. We got through it. Here we are,
Speaker 2: but but it went so well that Gary Gary was
Speaker 2: basically laying out these CRUs you know, if this goes well,
Speaker 2: then I'll ask you to do this if this goes well.
Speaker 2: And then after that he basically we should make a record,
Speaker 2: and then that started the wow about a decade straight
Speaker 2: of working together. So you made a Gary's record, I
Speaker 2: mean Gary's record shortly after that, which was I forget
Speaker 2: the name of it, but it was with with Makoto
Speaker 2: Zone and James Genis and Clarence.
Speaker 3: Pan it was. It was great.
Speaker 2: And then he started some of this Generation's band, which
Speaker 2: is some other younger musicians, and then we did another
Speaker 2: few records. It was so impactful. I mean, Gary Burton
Speaker 2: is is the maestro.
Speaker 1: How surreal were these more? I mean not only like
Speaker 1: you know, doing a jazz festival and the Queen Elizabeth
Speaker 1: too joining Gary Burne's band, and but then you know,
Speaker 1: playing like you skipped over, but just being invited down
Speaker 1: to Grammy's telecast at that age must have been insane.
Speaker 1: And I saw an amazing clip of you at nine
Speaker 1: oh playing Maggot Brain with Carlo. It was wild that
Speaker 1: not only you're playing with Carlos Santana at that age,
Speaker 1: but then you're playing Maggot Brain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like amazing.
Speaker 1: They're not like, you know, you're kind, I appreciate corny,
Speaker 1: They're like good, You're like, whoa, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't I don't know the first
Speaker 2: I don't know how any of this. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I I I have to say I sound so.
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel silly saying this, but I'm saying
Speaker 2: unless I do believe those were different times, and I
Speaker 2: think there's a different version of it now. But the
Speaker 2: Santana thing, my father worked at Fog City Diner in
Speaker 2: San Francisco, and he had someone came in who is
Speaker 2: using friends with and he said, I know Santana and
Speaker 2: I heard your son's playing guitar. They're friends. My dad
Speaker 2: said yeah, and he said, well he's Santana's playing at
Speaker 2: the wherever in two weeks. You should just show up.
Speaker 2: You know, they usually usually they get there by two pm.
Speaker 2: That's all the information we had. So we got in
Speaker 2: the car and we drove there and showed up at
Speaker 2: two pm.
Speaker 1: Were you worried that you're gonna bell.
Speaker 2: The funny thing about it this is would have been
Speaker 2: when I was seven and we drove, we pull up,
Speaker 2: go back, stay okay. This is also before nine to
Speaker 2: eleven too. I mean there there's big cultural things. Were
Speaker 2: just a little no, you really go Okay, that's where's
Speaker 2: where's Carlos? He's in that room. Okay, So my parents
Speaker 2: I knock on the door and he said, oh, you're
Speaker 2: the kid I heard about. Come in and we sat
Speaker 2: and we played. And that night he that was the
Speaker 2: night where it was Jeff Beck and him, we're doing
Speaker 2: this tour, but check this out. The best part of
Speaker 2: that to me was he said, do you want to
Speaker 2: play tonight? And my parents and I just kind of
Speaker 2: intuitively you looked at each other. No, I didn't come
Speaker 2: to I didn't come to play in front of twenty
Speaker 2: thousand people. I came to meet the master. That that's
Speaker 2: that's the point. Yeah, And he said, well, no worries,
Speaker 2: we'll enjoy the show. And if you're we come here
Speaker 2: every year, so when we come back, you should just
Speaker 2: come again and bring guitar. So great. So, with no communication,
Speaker 2: a year later, almost to the date, we drove up,
Speaker 2: got there too, knocked on the door, you know, he said,
Speaker 2: oh you Pat, you came. Do you have a guitar
Speaker 2: this time?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, And then that's the video you saw.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: But so there and it was surreal. But also I
Speaker 2: don't think I was in an environment that hyped anything up.
Speaker 2: It also didn't push me down. And I've known people
Speaker 2: who have that figure in their life who says, you know,
Speaker 2: don't get too comfortable, kid, this is gonna you still
Speaker 2: got to prepare. There was none of that good cop,
Speaker 2: bad cop mind stuff. It was religious, just like I
Speaker 2: don't know, just respond, be present and music at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, as we all know, is a
Speaker 2: healing force of the universe. It's it's the sub what
Speaker 2: we're talking about is very generous, it's very loving, it's
Speaker 2: very supportive, and it protects us. I believe that to myself.
Speaker 2: But that's why I looked to I mean, these cats.
Speaker 2: And as a young person I was, I was around
Speaker 2: people who were talking about what was behind the door,
Speaker 2: you know, being around Higgins, being around Billy Hart, being
Speaker 2: around Charles Lloyd. I mean, it was I I knew
Speaker 2: that it wasn't just it wasn't your hands moving it's
Speaker 2: this other thing, and it's it's it's for for all
Speaker 2: of us. It's not just for the for few, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's here to make us happy and healthier.
Speaker 2: So I would say that's a backdrop that probably informs
Speaker 2: all of this. So the Grammys, it is what it was, wonderful,
Speaker 2: is fine. It got us here today, and that's kind
Speaker 2: of all I can say.
Speaker 3: If you do all that when you're younger, does it
Speaker 3: make you a little more fearless as an adult?
Speaker 2: I think it can. I think there's two ways you
Speaker 2: can go. In my case, I think it it let
Speaker 2: the air out of the tire in a good way
Speaker 2: to say, you know, you can. There's varying degrees of success.
Speaker 2: As you look at it, you see, you know, but
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, if you're in a
Speaker 2: room with people sharing in the same thing, you're all
Speaker 2: kind of equals in that moment. And I think it
Speaker 2: cut down on a lot of the intimidation of I
Speaker 2: should I can't do that, or I can't play that venue,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't be on the stage because I have no experience.
Speaker 2: So I do think there's been that's carried me through
Speaker 2: say you know, Hey, we're all. We're all just we're
Speaker 2: just all kind of circulating in the same world. Now
Speaker 2: I've seen it go the other way, where when you're
Speaker 2: around at a young age, you feel like if you
Speaker 2: do anything that's not the Grammys, that's not major, if
Speaker 2: it doesn't garner a ton of attention, then you failed.
Speaker 2: I don't believe that for myself, but I feel for
Speaker 2: those who do, because that's you must feel like, Hey,
Speaker 2: i was playing for twenty thousand people. Now I'm playing
Speaker 2: for one hundred peop trying to get my band off
Speaker 2: the ground, and no one cares because they don't know
Speaker 2: theyn't heard it yet. That's that's a that's unsettling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but worth it. You know.
Speaker 1: Another thing that strikes me is that guitar playing can
Speaker 1: be really solitary pursuit, so very solitary, to the point
Speaker 1: where you know it can be you cannot know how
Speaker 1: to play with other people? Yeah as well, yes, did
Speaker 1: were you playing with other people? Because I mean that's
Speaker 1: something you do also very well? It was it a
Speaker 1: thing of us keeping it to yourself and in your room,
Speaker 1: but play.
Speaker 2: With I would look for every drummer in my community
Speaker 2: who I knew was into jazz and play duets with them. Okay,
Speaker 2: then all the bass players won't play duets with them.
Speaker 2: Every gig I could get, playing restaurant gigs, play with
Speaker 2: my teacher. My teacher, Randy Vincent was hugely influential my playing.
Speaker 2: And Randy and I study with him from when I
Speaker 2: was about eight years old, so I was about twelve,
Speaker 2: so five years and I had two three hour lessons
Speaker 2: a week for five years, and so right that was
Speaker 2: just like sit down and a lot of that was
Speaker 2: just playing duets. And as we know, playing duets is
Speaker 2: it's the best training because it really is a conversation
Speaker 2: and it's about supporting the other person, and you know,
Speaker 2: can I can I be there for this person who
Speaker 2: I revere in respect? It's it's it's it's kind of
Speaker 2: terrifying but wonderful. So I do come from a tradition
Speaker 2: of learning, which is very experiential. You play with people,
Speaker 2: you find out what didn't work, you go home, you
Speaker 2: take your vitamins, and you come back. You know, that's
Speaker 2: kind of the deal. But I played so much with drummer.
Speaker 2: I was always looking for that, like I understood that
Speaker 2: I wanted to be a guitar player that was empathetic
Speaker 2: to other instruments because just because I can do it
Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's with the it's in the best interest
Speaker 2: of the band, right and everybody else has to deal
Speaker 2: with the same thing too. It's been somehow guitar education.
Speaker 2: You have to kind of be reminded.
Speaker 1: Extra the culture around it.
Speaker 2: There's a culture around it that is a little bit
Speaker 2: of this top dog. Everyone caters to that, and we
Speaker 2: all know that's not really the case, and the best
Speaker 2: players do it do it all. You know. We were
Speaker 2: talking about Richards earlier, and it's like Keith has that
Speaker 2: thing where there's nothing more compelling than watching him and
Speaker 2: hearing him play. And when you hear him play, everyone
Speaker 2: else sounds better while he's playing, and that that's the
Speaker 2: magic trick that I'm obsessed with. How do you lift
Speaker 2: the band? That's what Duke Ellington was doing, That's what
Speaker 2: count basically, that's what everyone's really doing to me.
Speaker 1: Well, and I feel like, so on your new record
Speaker 1: Speak to Me that I alluded to earlier, how great
Speaker 1: it was. There's songs on there like Omission, Much of Us,
Speaker 1: like Pure Groove. Yeah, it is almost Keith Richard's style,
Speaker 1: and yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm the rhythm guitar player for that track, and there's
Speaker 2: a melody embedded, but it's but it's subliminal. It's it's
Speaker 2: it's totally baked into the center. Yeah, that's a cool
Speaker 2: example of that.
Speaker 1: How does that?
Speaker 2: How did you let me see if I play that's? Uh,
Speaker 2: that's that's that's the sentiment, that's the whole tune. You know. Uh,
Speaker 2: it's cool, It's it's really cool.
Speaker 1: It's really so, it feels really good.
Speaker 2: It feels really good. So I have an you know
Speaker 2: that that I I humble pie on that one. I
Speaker 2: I that was the a section of a longer song
Speaker 2: and I'd written it in kind of a writing sprint.
Speaker 2: I was writing all these tunes and you know, like
Speaker 2: lots of dozens and dozens pencil and paper kind of SATs,
Speaker 2: write one throat and then I and I I threw
Speaker 2: it out because I it wasn't done. And then Joe Henry,
Speaker 2: who produced the record. This is on the last day
Speaker 2: of the recording, I was driving in the session with
Speaker 2: Margaret and I was saying, you know, there was that
Speaker 2: song that's not finished and it's probably a bad idea
Speaker 2: for me to try to finish this song right now,
Speaker 2: isn't it. And she was like, well, no, just you
Speaker 2: kind of have you have other things on your plate.
Speaker 2: You have to finish the record. I don't think you
Speaker 2: need more. But and so I showed Joe when we
Speaker 2: got there, and I said, well, here's the first part
Speaker 2: and it needs the next part. And as you know,
Speaker 2: from a place of such clarity and experienced, Joe said,
Speaker 2: how about you don't finish it and you just loop that?
Speaker 2: And I said, sure, you know, and and it was.
Speaker 2: It was beautiful because I realized that, Yeah, I think,
Speaker 2: at least to me, what I get excited about with
Speaker 2: that song is the real drama reveals itself. Once you've
Speaker 2: gone into this kind of tantric thing, it needs time
Speaker 2: to get you kind of worked up. And had I
Speaker 2: committed to my stipulation that no, I insist there's more
Speaker 2: to be written, it just would have been a different drama,
Speaker 2: you know, And I'm so glad it wasn't that. There's
Speaker 2: also something very kinesthetically physically pleasing about playing a song
Speaker 2: where you know, I'm not trying to play just a
Speaker 2: single note. I can kind of throw my weight into
Speaker 2: the rhythm yeah, and the strumming and the Richie Havens
Speaker 2: ode he had all all things are and so yeah,
Speaker 2: that but that that that's kind of song that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Jim Hall used to love Richie Havens. You would talk
Speaker 2: about him a lot, you know. Oh yeah, because Jim
Speaker 2: I can't do it, you know, Jim had the Yeah,
Speaker 2: this guy, I wish I could do it like him,
Speaker 2: and he'd do with a lighter pick and and uh,
Speaker 2: but I would ask him about it. He's, oh, Richie Havens,
Speaker 2: it's all it's all Richie, you know. Like of course, what.
Speaker 3: Was Richie Havens was like an open eto I think
Speaker 3: so it was.
Speaker 2: Some sort of open tuning that he could, you know,
Speaker 2: then access with his thumb right and and that. And
Speaker 2: I don't know if I got the sense he used Well,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't speculate. That's not my area. But I'm not
Speaker 2: sure how he held the pick. But he was lighter
Speaker 2: than this one, is my guess. But yeah, so that's
Speaker 2: part of the joy of it, I guess.
Speaker 1: Did you have a second section in mind for that song?
Speaker 2: I did. I don't remember it now, probably because it
Speaker 2: wasn't terribly I remember talking to John Zorn about that.
Speaker 2: I was I was working on something just like like that.
Speaker 2: I said, uh, well, he just I just I just
Speaker 2: can't seem to recall it because it's not coming together.
Speaker 2: And he was the one who gave me permission. He said,
Speaker 2: you can you can say it's not good and just
Speaker 2: drop it. You don't have to be a hero and
Speaker 2: like make it work. Yes, yeah, And I said, in
Speaker 2: a way that was so sweet, it wasn't you just
Speaker 2: kind of don't make it about you not being good.
Speaker 2: He's just I said, it's just not killing. Go do
Speaker 2: something killing. And then okay, you know, fine, yes, sir.
Speaker 2: Uh so yeah that but that song came out well
Speaker 2: and it was nice because it also parlayed into the
Speaker 2: band sounding great, amazing. He's so good and so anyway,
Speaker 2: that's right, that's what.
Speaker 3: We're going for. You hook up with hojge.
Speaker 2: That's a cool thing, very you know, happenstance. But it's
Speaker 2: at this point Jorge Rotter, who I just think is
Speaker 2: the greatest in the world. You know, we've been playing
Speaker 2: together sixteen years pretty consistently. And we met at Stanford
Speaker 2: Jazz Workshop and I was teaching and he was visiting
Speaker 2: a friend and we got put in a room a
Speaker 2: coke closet, basically because Peter Burnstein was there that day
Speaker 2: and we were all in a Peter you know, as
Speaker 2: I still am, and they said, get rhythm, get everyone,
Speaker 2: we're gonna play a session. And it was me and
Speaker 2: our friend Ben Roseth, Jorgey and Peter and we just
Speaker 2: hit it off. Played instead. That felt great, and uh
Speaker 2: so we would play duets. We started a band. Then
Speaker 2: Jorge joined Gary Burton's band, and then Jorge became part
Speaker 2: of my trio. He was he was always a part
Speaker 2: of it. He became part of this new configuration. And
Speaker 2: then he became a part of Nell's Klein's band that
Speaker 2: we did for Blueo that record do we record with Scott?
Speaker 2: But then we went on tour with you with me? Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I was with it. It was an Nels kind four
Speaker 2: and then Horre and I both kind of joined Zorn's
Speaker 2: Worlds and then we became a part of the new
Speaker 2: Masadic quartet. So and apart from us just being complete,
Speaker 2: you know, completely connected, we've shared a lot of our
Speaker 2: musical development together. There's no one else I've been through
Speaker 2: so many projects with by my side, and uh it's
Speaker 2: it's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 3: But you knew from the beginning. Then I knew from
Speaker 3: the beginning the time.
Speaker 2: Safe, you know, I think there's I think I think
Speaker 2: safety is a big thing where you feel like you
Speaker 2: can kind of go for something, you know that someone's
Speaker 2: got your back. But also I think another part of
Speaker 2: it with Hore is that we touched the string differently
Speaker 2: but kind of similarly. We obviously him with a double
Speaker 2: bass move the guitar, but there's a I do think
Speaker 2: we share a similar belief that we deal with obstacles
Speaker 2: kind of similarly. It's there there's kind of a the
Speaker 2: only and I don't know, I could be wrong, but
Speaker 2: I think we both see any kind of virtuosity as
Speaker 2: a means towards emotional expression. So you it's like what
Speaker 2: I'm saying about Boar, you developed these skills him on
Speaker 2: the basis is unbelievably great, and yet you're never hit
Speaker 2: with anything other than the emotional impact first and then
Speaker 2: as addressed and go oh my god, and how did
Speaker 2: he do that? But I think just that shared kind
Speaker 2: of esthetic has kind of carried you know, you can
Speaker 2: be daring, you can be amazing, can be virtuosis, you
Speaker 2: can be fast, you can be you know, you can
Speaker 2: be evil, and evil you can, but you always go
Speaker 2: I think I love most about it is that he
Speaker 2: will He'll always go for the attempt and he lands it,
Speaker 2: but he'll he that that exhilaration is so seductive and
Speaker 2: it's just and I'm not saying on fast music. It
Speaker 2: can be on a ballad, but there's the sense that
Speaker 2: we're gonna we're gonna jump off the cliff and I
Speaker 2: don't know if the parachute's gonna open, And so it's
Speaker 2: been nice to have that energy follows through all these pride.
Speaker 1: Do you ever write with him with him?
Speaker 2: Not really, it's kind of understood that that's not our domain,
Speaker 2: but I should say this, I do write with him
Speaker 2: in the sense that I will write thirty songs, forty songs,
Speaker 2: just a bunch of stuff, and then the first place
Speaker 2: I go is to his house and we play them
Speaker 2: all and we see how it hits us. And he's
Speaker 2: a massive part of the music you hear because of that.
Speaker 2: So he's a part of the editing, he's part of
Speaker 2: the sequence of the records, he's a part of everything.
Speaker 2: Jorge is integral and there are things we have definitely
Speaker 2: co written, but I think it's I mean, all fairness,
Speaker 2: anything we've ever recorded together in mine is the He
Speaker 2: deserves credit for it sounding the way it is on
Speaker 2: a compositional level, but it's usually not because we started together.
Speaker 1: One of the tunes on your new record that sounds
Speaker 1: like virtuosic, if that's a word, but again, kind of
Speaker 1: like Omissions has a great feel too. Is vanishing points?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's yeah, that's this one.
Speaker 2: Listen, I'll say a little bit and then the theme
Speaker 2: is fa that's the that's the architecture.
Speaker 1: After this last break. While the rest of Down was
Speaker 1: and me in conversation with Julian Lage, here's the rest
Speaker 1: of our conversation with Juliana.
Speaker 3: How do you even write something like that?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 3: I don't even.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm trying to remember that one. To me,
Speaker 2: that's such an ode to Carlo Blea. You know, it
Speaker 2: kind of feels like a liberation music orchestra song. There's
Speaker 2: something blunts about this parallel movement. It's almost it's like
Speaker 2: it's it's it's so, it's just it's just so, I
Speaker 2: don't know what it is normal in a way, it's not.
Speaker 2: It's not terribly clever. It's just this sounds cool. Bam
Speaker 2: bam bam bam bamp and and there's something about it
Speaker 2: where I think it's juxtaposed with this very elegant, almost
Speaker 2: kind of folklore sounding melody. And I think when I
Speaker 2: say folklore, I think I think of it even as
Speaker 2: reprids me certain Italian music's or in Jewish music's certain.
Speaker 2: There's just that's whatever. That's my projection, and a tune
Speaker 2: like that, it's very hard to stop writing, you know,
Speaker 2: because for me, it's like, well, it's not in time,
Speaker 2: there's not really a progression that we blow over. And
Speaker 2: so that's a tune that, you know, I kept putting
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the pile. I wouldn't really show
Speaker 2: it anyone because I don't do what you tell anyone
Speaker 2: to do on that, you know, I got, I seem
Speaker 2: to have it covered and it does this thing emotionally
Speaker 2: and I don't really have any more directive. So but
Speaker 2: as I showed it to Dave King and Joe wrote
Speaker 2: to my trio, they they were they they pointed out
Speaker 2: what what I think is. Obviously, of course there's something
Speaker 2: to do, you just I'm just not dictating their part
Speaker 2: it's a very inviting tune. And uh but that parallel
Speaker 2: motion fun. That's all that, you know. I just keep
Speaker 2: coming back to Stravinsky and know all these things in
Speaker 2: bar talk. There's these movements and how you use it
Speaker 2: as everything.
Speaker 3: But did that just burst out of you in one
Speaker 3: sitting or did you go a section at a time.
Speaker 2: I think I want to say that it was It
Speaker 2: was kind of a combination of both. It was an
Speaker 2: improvisation probably that I'm pretty fastidious about writing things on
Speaker 2: a big piece of manuscript paper. And when doing and
Speaker 2: doing that, you see these kind of the sections are
Speaker 2: just laid out like a storyboard. And so I remember
Speaker 2: with that one kind of moving them around a lot.
Speaker 2: You know, is this the begin or do we save that?
Speaker 2: Is this the first thing that happens? Is this the
Speaker 2: first thing? So I just remember toilet like kind of
Speaker 2: putting them in different orders until it got a trajectory.
Speaker 2: But I improvise a lot and record and then transcribe it.
Speaker 2: That's a big thing, you know, I will. And with
Speaker 2: this record, I was, you know what I was really
Speaker 2: on a side twombly kick. I was looking at a
Speaker 2: lot of side twombly art as one of my father's
Speaker 2: favorite artists, and I had this book of my father's
Speaker 2: I was looking at it, and so I would spend
Speaker 2: a lot of time looking at an image, improvising and
Speaker 2: recording it and then going back and kind of seeing
Speaker 2: if anything emerged that was There's a tune on the
Speaker 2: record called two and one, So yeah, uh, that's that's
Speaker 2: that's just that's an improvisation that I Okay, I write
Speaker 2: it down, and and it's what's interesting to me is
Speaker 2: that I don't think writing down makes it more significant.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: You can write down a piece of garbage, you know too,
Speaker 2: and you just go, oh, that was a lot of
Speaker 2: work for nothing. But there is something noticeable in that tune,
Speaker 2: and listening back with that, I that wouldn't have occurred
Speaker 2: to me to pay something that way if I was
Speaker 2: looking at a piece of paper, you know, and then
Speaker 2: you write it down and it looked to me. I
Speaker 2: looked at the chart the other day and it still
Speaker 2: looks like something I never would have written. And that's
Speaker 2: so cool, you know, But it takes time to say, no,
Speaker 2: I'm going to write everything, and kind of how.
Speaker 1: Long are you improvising before something like that comes out?
Speaker 2: Well, I suppose it depends that wasn't terribly long, you know,
Speaker 2: not long, probably as long as it took to just
Speaker 2: play and then stop, so a minute, you know, But
Speaker 2: I improvise in those chunks a lot for that reason.
Speaker 2: I believe that, you know. One of the great lessons
Speaker 2: I learned was from alouding Matthew w A Matthew wonderful
Speaker 2: composer who I studied with only once as a kid,
Speaker 2: and he wrote a bunch of very important books, the
Speaker 2: short version of stories that at an early age when
Speaker 2: I studied with him, he encouraged me to improvise one
Speaker 2: minute compositions a lot. Wow, and here's the quick version
Speaker 2: of it, because it's quite expansive. But he would I
Speaker 2: came to myself, I'm trying to develop my voice and
Speaker 2: understand how to be a composer. And he said, well,
Speaker 2: here's what you do, is you improvise a song. So
Speaker 2: we're not just saying you're not just playing around, you're
Speaker 2: trying to okay, at thirty seconds, you're at the middle
Speaker 2: at forty five seconds a year near the end, he said,
Speaker 2: I want you to do this with a timer and
Speaker 2: a recorder. That was before I phone side now he said,
Speaker 2: I want you to do ten of these a day
Speaker 2: for a week and don't listen to them until the
Speaker 2: week is up. And I sold anything else, he said, no,
Speaker 2: just try to create a narrative. Create a narrative, and
Speaker 2: do not listen to them. At the end of the week,
Speaker 2: you have seventy minutes. It's like a stop you know,
Speaker 2: it's like stop animation, or seventy minutes of you improvising compositionally.
Speaker 2: And he said, I want you to listen to that
Speaker 2: and basically make two lists. On one list, write down
Speaker 2: everything you notice about it, and on the other side
Speaker 2: of list everything you'd like to develop or further. And man,
Speaker 2: the first time I did this, I think I saved
Speaker 2: up twelve days worth or fourteen days. I had one
Speaker 2: hundred and forty minutes of me playing solo guitar, which
Speaker 2: was I never would have done at that time if
Speaker 2: I hadn't done it one minute a time. What I
Speaker 2: thought was cool about it was I heard trends, your
Speaker 2: trends in your music. I was playing all these D
Speaker 2: major chords and I playing all this country music. I
Speaker 2: would I thought I was a beboffer.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: I don't know what I played all these like languid mail.
Speaker 2: I mean, stuff that I didn't relate to, but it
Speaker 2: didn't lie. I had, you know, here here I was.
Speaker 2: And that that got me thinking that every time you improvise,
Speaker 2: you are kind of stating your language. It's not like
Speaker 2: I'm gonna wiggle around until something happens. You you you
Speaker 2: are you so just kind of s and that that
Speaker 2: I think that makes it so it's less of a
Speaker 2: you just be yourself on record.
Speaker 1: How did you respond to that information? Was it.
Speaker 3: Country?
Speaker 2: So that's that started all my That kind of pushed
Speaker 2: me into all the the stuff I was doing with
Speaker 2: in my own music that was probably more Americana leaning.
Speaker 2: I didn't feel as bad about using open strings. I
Speaker 2: didn't feel all those tropes. I was just like, holy cow,
Speaker 2: I'm this kid from California who grew up around this music.
Speaker 2: Of course, of course that's what comes out. I just
Speaker 2: was blind to. So I I endorsed it, you know,
Speaker 2: I reinforced it. I wrote that way, and I started
Speaker 2: a band around this old quintet. I started playing with
Speaker 2: Chris Eldridge, start playing with Christely, So it was it
Speaker 2: was good, you know, and that interesting. So anyways, so
Speaker 2: all to say when you're in front, I think you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's probably did you have did you walk away? With songs?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: So many songs, so many songs. It's just a matter
Speaker 2: of kind of picking him out. Well that's this thing,
Speaker 2: or a lot of that. And I did another big
Speaker 2: batch in that I did this for years, you know,
Speaker 2: five years of the straight led to a solo record
Speaker 2: I made called World's Fair and that was all improvisations
Speaker 2: basically that I just like took out and then put
Speaker 2: on wow, put up.
Speaker 1: Do you still do whatever?
Speaker 2: I do it a lot less less systematically.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I wasn't feeling well recently for a little while, and
Speaker 2: then I kind of got my strength back to play.
Speaker 2: And all I do is I just in my room
Speaker 2: and improvise these things. I record them and I just
Speaker 2: it's great. It's it's really healing to do it. And
Speaker 2: then I've and some songs are growing out of it already,
Speaker 2: so it's kind of cool. You know.
Speaker 3: Comedy one more time?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, ten, it's my favorite thing in the world.
Speaker 2: You're going to set a time or let's just say
Speaker 2: for ease, we'll say voice memo.
Speaker 1: You know app.
Speaker 2: You press start, you begin playing, and you begin playing
Speaker 2: as if it's a song that you know, but you're
Speaker 2: just playing it now, right, it's kind of make believe.
Speaker 2: You want to keep your eye on the clock because
Speaker 2: at about thirty seconds, this is your this is your
Speaker 2: last exit, you know before you're so if you want
Speaker 2: anything to change, you can do it there. At about
Speaker 2: forty five to fifty seconds, you want to cought be
Speaker 2: conscientiously trying to bring it in for landing. You don't
Speaker 2: want the buzzer to go off and be startled. And
Speaker 2: you would do this ten times a day, but not
Speaker 2: one after another. So maybe you do it and you
Speaker 2: go do something, come back to another, do it. You
Speaker 2: are actively trying to get a snapshot, getting like your
Speaker 2: blood work done. Musically, you're trying to get your labs done,
Speaker 2: and you do, but you just don't open it up
Speaker 2: till the end. And when you listen to it, you
Speaker 2: put it in iTunes or something so you can listen
Speaker 2: to it uninterrupted, and so you forget where the minutes
Speaker 2: started and where it ended, and you do it on
Speaker 2: shuffle things like that. Isn't that cool?
Speaker 3: If you pick up a different guitar there's a whole
Speaker 3: other thing.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, well, it's funny you say that. Don I feel
Speaker 2: like my brain is between the electric world and the
Speaker 2: acoustic world, and within that there's varieties. But the touch
Speaker 2: is it's different between the two instruments, and I feel,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm in I'm humbled that by the instrument.
Speaker 2: I need to just play what the guitar sounds good doing.
Speaker 2: Having said that, I tend to rotate only between a couple,
Speaker 2: you know, mostly guitars that are in tune, so that
Speaker 2: at least I have a pitch. You know, I don't
Speaker 2: use I don't play much with effects or anything, but
Speaker 2: I know that's another world that would probably be quite
Speaker 2: stimulating if I just wanted to explore it.
Speaker 1: When you're at home and you pick up a guitar,
Speaker 1: do you do you just pick one up instinctually, whether
Speaker 1: it's acoustic or electric or do you often purpose sweet.
Speaker 2: Whichever one I can reach from my chair kind of
Speaker 2: that's my instine. This one was out. This acoustic that
Speaker 2: I'm holding was out. So I've been playing more. But
Speaker 2: there there there was about a month where I was
Speaker 2: too lazy to get my main telecaster that I play
Speaker 2: all the time from the from the closet, and so
Speaker 2: I was playing this other one and it's set up
Speaker 2: very differently, and it was really inspiring to play that.
Speaker 2: You know, I really really believe that so much education
Speaker 2: about playing comes from the instrument. Not to say, just
Speaker 2: for clarity sake, that you need an expensive guitar to
Speaker 2: learn how to be a great player. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's not about me bringing my skills to an instrument.
Speaker 2: It's really about modifying them so that the instrument resonates.
Speaker 2: I picked up a guitar last night. I never really
Speaker 2: play lately. It was too far away from my reach,
Speaker 2: as I said before, and Margaret was working in the
Speaker 2: kitchen there and we were just thinking. I was so lovely,
Speaker 2: and I like, okay. I got out this old tweed
Speaker 2: champ I used to play religiously and now it just
Speaker 2: sits next to the tree in the corners. I'm gonna play.
Speaker 2: And I plugged it in and I sounded bad on it.
Speaker 2: I just couldn't get a sound. Everything I played sounded
Speaker 2: like I had, you know, boxing gloves on. I was
Speaker 2: just kind of and then but over the course of
Speaker 2: about thirty minutes it got bitter, and by the end
Speaker 2: I was playing. It was such it sounded so good.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you because I just chilled out. I touched
Speaker 2: it the way the guitar wanted to be played and
Speaker 2: not the way I wanted to play it, and I
Speaker 2: just said, like, think thinks that was what a lesson
Speaker 2: I put it down.
Speaker 1: And it's so interesting. That's the opposite sometimes, I mean,
Speaker 1: guess going back to uh sort of the the lineage
Speaker 1: you get into when you pick up a guitar, these
Speaker 1: icons as I mean, the stories you hear is like
Speaker 1: Hendrix getting beating the guitar and it's a submission, you know,
Speaker 1: I never use and it's to left hand. It's right handed,
Speaker 1: but he's left hand, and he's just gonna make it work,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's like, but it's but this is
Speaker 1: not wrong, it's just different. It's it's it's rather, it's
Speaker 1: just a submission. It's I'm gonna meet it where it's
Speaker 1: at that guitar.
Speaker 2: Well, I that just happens to be my interest. I
Speaker 2: don't think it's right for necessarily obviously I'm for everybody.
Speaker 2: But but but but there's I think also just a
Speaker 2: point of clarity too, because you make a great point.
Speaker 2: It's not to count, you know, to to take myself
Speaker 2: out of the equation and say, I'm just trying to
Speaker 2: make the guitar sound great. I'm a big part of it,
Speaker 2: but as far as the marriage of the two, so
Speaker 2: you're not doing it from a place of I'm no
Speaker 2: good And as long I just need to as long
Speaker 2: as the guitar sounds good, it's going to be good.
Speaker 2: I understand that it's just it's just a it's a
Speaker 2: dialogue between the forces, that's all. And I need to
Speaker 2: be present for what's coming back. And and uh, and
Speaker 2: it's funny because we're talking about uh, you know, drummers,
Speaker 2: bass players, piano players, so all these are instrumentalists who
Speaker 2: play instruments that aren't their own a lot. This is
Speaker 2: not a novel concept. You know that you that it's
Speaker 2: not the I remember I was. I was starting to
Speaker 2: do this on these some of these shows with Zorn
Speaker 2: where we fly into someplace for a day and then
Speaker 2: fly home and can't bring all the equipment, so I
Speaker 2: just use backline guitars, acoustic electric, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 2: And I remember doing it and it was so liberating
Speaker 2: because I started to notice that you don't need you
Speaker 2: don't need a great instrument to leave space, you don't,
Speaker 2: you know. And if my main contribution in these bands
Speaker 2: is what I don't play, and then it doesn't have
Speaker 2: to be my guitar. So all these things are. I
Speaker 2: just want to keep coming back to that just for myself,
Speaker 2: as it's always in service of what the musical act is,
Speaker 2: and it's it's really it doesn't none of it really matters.
Speaker 2: You just want to be present, but from a guitar
Speaker 2: playing point of view, from just being getting better at
Speaker 2: and I like rotating just so I don't get too comfortable.
Speaker 2: If I feel really good on one, I will pick
Speaker 2: up another to see if if my skills translate, you know,
Speaker 2: or if it was just because of that one that
Speaker 2: those strings are just perfectly dead and that's why it sounds.
Speaker 3: Good, you know. Will you switch positions from night to night? Yes,
Speaker 3: on the same song, Oh completely.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of into like any melody, I don't know
Speaker 2: how to exemplify it, but I'm a believer of If
Speaker 2: I seen my left hand down here a lot on
Speaker 2: this song one night, the next night, I want to
Speaker 2: see it up here more. And then I want to
Speaker 2: see it in the middle and just because you don't
Speaker 2: get me into more problems that I can get out
Speaker 2: of them. And there's a little bit of a masochistic element,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Don't be too comfortable when you were showing us all
Speaker 3: the different seeds. Oh yes, yeah, yeah, so on my
Speaker 3: bass anyway, they all have different personalities a.
Speaker 2: Thousand percent there they are, they are you, they're there,
Speaker 2: and then within that you have where you wear on
Speaker 2: the string. At least my keys on the right hand,
Speaker 2: I play it, you know, I notice a difference between
Speaker 2: and then if I move my hand towards the Fredbourg
Speaker 2: and then as volume goes down. That's my favorite is
Speaker 2: what happens when you get quiet enough is so in
Speaker 2: some way it got louder because we all listened, you know,
Speaker 2: but I played quieter, and to play quieter the big
Speaker 2: a big thing for me with shifting of tambers has
Speaker 2: a lot to do with velocity.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: If you want something louder, you play it you you
Speaker 2: move through the string faster. If you want to play
Speaker 2: it quieter, you move through slower. We're talking incrementally, but
Speaker 2: that modulation of playing a fast line but moving through
Speaker 2: the strings slowly, that's when you get these kind of
Speaker 2: things that are kind of ephemeral, and they just I'm
Speaker 2: that very different than I'm actually moving. Quite the temp
Speaker 2: of the lines the same, but I'm moving way faster
Speaker 2: through it, and I'm and so that those interplays I'm
Speaker 2: obsessed with with string instruments, and in the fact that, oh,
Speaker 2: this allows me to say by biggest pet peeve, which
Speaker 2: is that I feel like there's sometimes there's sometimes a belief,
Speaker 2: especially in guitar pedagogy, that the string should sound the same.
Speaker 2: They should you should have evenness.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There's a time my life where I hunted that down.
Speaker 2: I want everything to be even so you don't, and
Speaker 2: and I increasingly I just love that they are not
Speaker 2: the same. No two notes are the same. We were
Speaker 2: playing in but I loub Leana in Europe with John's
Speaker 2: Orange Band. This is like a month ago and like, okay,
Speaker 2: we have an hour and seventy five minutes set. First
Speaker 2: song by high e string just pops off, say okay, great,
Speaker 2: And I'm sitting there and I know no one else
Speaker 2: noticed it, and I know no one else really cares too,
Speaker 2: and it was so I'm going to play a five
Speaker 2: string set. This is great. I've always wanted to, you know.
Speaker 3: And it was so.
Speaker 2: Slamming because without this, the e the duplicate and now
Speaker 2: they're hardly duplicate since they're two actors apart. But it
Speaker 2: just was I just loved it, and it forced me
Speaker 2: in all these other areas and Tamberley, I didn't have
Speaker 2: access to that thing, that kind of crisp thing, so
Speaker 2: you're you know, and I just I don't know.
Speaker 1: So I didn't get in trouble at any point through
Speaker 1: the night or no, Nope, I was fine.
Speaker 2: I got out five. If you asked me to do
Speaker 2: it again, I would be screwed because I kind of
Speaker 2: figured out some ways and.
Speaker 3: Then I I just that was it.
Speaker 2: But but yeah, tambour on an instrument is beautiful on
Speaker 2: the guitar especially, and I think the bass too. That's
Speaker 2: something is very cognizan enough. He can deal with, especially
Speaker 2: with walking lines and different registers, and when the song
Speaker 2: needs it, he'll go, you know, things will get intense
Speaker 2: and he'll move higher, but on the low strings so
Speaker 2: that there's room for me to kind of thunder around
Speaker 2: in the basement so to speak, you know, and then
Speaker 2: we'll switch places. But what strings you play things on,
Speaker 2: that's everything. On the guitar for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we were talking before we started this, and then
Speaker 3: I cut it off because I wanted to talk about it.
Speaker 3: And it kind of ties in the same thing. We're
Speaker 3: talking about abandonment of set lists. Yes, let's talk about
Speaker 3: as a gig with Joey.
Speaker 2: Well, you did this, we were on This was not
Speaker 2: terribly long ago, three months ago, four months ago. The
Speaker 2: band was myself and Horaey wrote and Joey Barron, the greatest,
Speaker 2: you know drummer. We just I have such love and
Speaker 2: respect for Joey and I always have and so to
Speaker 2: play together is a real dream, you know. And so
Speaker 2: Jorge and I know our whole repertoire. We know all
Speaker 2: the songs, and we're cognizant that to bring Joey into
Speaker 2: the fold, we're not gonna send him a Okay, here's
Speaker 2: a binder, learn all this stuff and do what No, no, no,
Speaker 2: we'll come in to you. We'll meet in the middle.
Speaker 2: And so my first thought was, Okay, we'll play standards,
Speaker 2: we'll play blue well, things that he knows. But as
Speaker 2: we got to the sound check part of the day
Speaker 2: and we're playing, I'm realizing that Joey is so present
Speaker 2: and everything. Hoy and I start to play. I like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe we could show him this. Within ten seconds, he's
Speaker 2: playing what I would consider the perfect part to it,
Speaker 2: and he said, Joey, had you know to Dooley said,
Speaker 2: I don't, I'm just listening. I'm just listening to you.
Speaker 2: I thought, okay, we're in the deep end. We got
Speaker 2: to really savor this. So I said, well, okay, I'll
Speaker 2: write up a set list. And this is the only
Speaker 2: time the whole day. Joey says, well, can I can
Speaker 2: I just say something?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Of course, Joey, what do you He says, would you
Speaker 2: be a verse to no set list? And I said,
Speaker 2: well it's no, it would would no. I've always kind
Speaker 2: of wanted that to do that, but I'm afraid. And
Speaker 2: he said, well, just let's just see what happens. Right,
Speaker 2: So we go out on stage and I'm for the
Speaker 2: only time in reason so I remember shake being shaky,
Speaker 2: you know, I was like a backed room in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 2: and I was just like, oh no, and okay, I said,
Speaker 2: I would do it. I'm gonna do it. And so
Speaker 2: we go out and I I just really listened to
Speaker 2: the room. Okay, where are we And it kind of
Speaker 2: went against everything that I would typically do, but I said,
Speaker 2: we're gonna play You and the Night in the music
Speaker 2: kind of fast, which I would never go to that. Okay,
Speaker 2: we do Joey, I mean, okay, kill her next song.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna start this old one I haven't played in
Speaker 2: fifteen years. But I know Hojoor knows it bam cool.
Speaker 2: And though I was still scared the whole time, when
Speaker 2: it was all over, I felt this relief of I
Speaker 2: think that was one of the most honest things I
Speaker 2: could have offered and that we could have offered. And
Speaker 2: it also leveled the playing field in a way where
Speaker 2: it wasn't like we know my tunes, you're sitting it
Speaker 2: what it was. We have a life of music. We
Speaker 2: can respond. It's going to be cool. And I haven't
Speaker 2: looked back since every show did we just did a
Speaker 2: whole tour, whole European too, a different set every night,
Speaker 2: and with now with Dave and Horey don I love it.
Speaker 2: I love it. You just start playing, you just are
Speaker 2: playing it. Also, I think it also invites a real
Speaker 2: consideration of tempos, not like I said, I would play
Speaker 2: the song third, so I'm going to play it, but like,
Speaker 2: where's the room at? Where's my energy at with this?
Speaker 2: And I think that's a really important thing to consider
Speaker 2: because you have to occupy that space for the next five, ten, fifty,
Speaker 2: well whatever long your song is. I felt so much
Speaker 2: happier every night. I felt so much more ease, less strenuous.
Speaker 2: I wasn't trying to shove something into you know. So anyway,
Speaker 2: it got me thinking differently. But I think it holds
Speaker 2: hands with the music I like to play to begin with.
Speaker 3: Do you start thinking about what the next song will
Speaker 3: be before you and the other one?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: I think it does occur that hey, this is we're
Speaker 2: here and this something will pop into my mind, But
Speaker 2: I'm not I don't hold to it too tightly.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: There was a couple of times right yeah, middle of
Speaker 2: the song, Oh, I know exactly what's gonna come next,
Speaker 2: and then the song ends and you hear the plause
Speaker 2: and you look around and go, I was wrong, got it.
Speaker 1: That's one of my favorite things about seeing Neil Young
Speaker 1: is the same thing. No set list, and so I
Speaker 1: was like, what's the first song going to be? And
Speaker 1: sometimes it's like a twenty minute version of like an
Speaker 1: inca and like half the eye its disappears.
Speaker 2: That's where he's at. You know, we were done. I
Speaker 2: was speaking to that very point, like I would imagine
Speaker 2: Neil Young is Neil Young. You're going to get a
Speaker 2: hit of him on that day, and that's the that's
Speaker 2: the gift, that's a great gift. We were speaking earlier
Speaker 2: about this the time. I've been playing with Joe Lovano
Speaker 2: recently and we were talking a lot about I guess
Speaker 2: you would call har melodics is a way to say
Speaker 2: it from Ornette's world or at Coleman's world. But here's
Speaker 2: the distillation is that at any given moment as players,
Speaker 2: we have access to all tempos. You play faster, you
Speaker 2: play slower, you have access to all keys depends no
Speaker 2: matter what the key of the song is. But there
Speaker 2: there are these matrixes where you can I think all
Speaker 2: my favorite improvisers, someone like Paul Blay can kind of
Speaker 2: slip between these dimensions. You know, Keith can do that
Speaker 2: key chair obviously, Ornett, Don Cherry Charlie can do that.
Speaker 2: And I think I'm at a place in my own
Speaker 2: development where I'm just fascinated by what is actually the song. Okay,
Speaker 2: we're in the song, but within that I have freedom
Speaker 2: and I want to exhibit that and I want to
Speaker 2: challenge it and I don't and end it's I learn
Speaker 2: a lot doing that. So you can kind of start,
Speaker 2: you can kind of drop what you're saying before. We
Speaker 2: can drop the needle anywhere. But once you're in, you're
Speaker 2: in the good stuff. Don't worry. You know it's going
Speaker 2: to be you're, you're, you're, you're off. There's an offering
Speaker 2: at play. There's an offering at play always.
Speaker 1: If you're open to it. Would you pay something?
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this, Yeah, I'll play uh, I'll
Speaker 2: play you Northern Shuffle. It's gonna ask okay, all I
Speaker 2: can keep it short to I don't know how Okay,
Speaker 2: right here we go then.
Speaker 3: But the last three.
Speaker 2: But they be the mover, I don't.
Speaker 3: It's past and bird back.
Speaker 1: The h.
Speaker 3: Whoa.
Speaker 1: That's a real different version of that.
Speaker 2: It's different.
Speaker 1: What's amazing that that lick you do, that's like on
Speaker 1: the record, it sounds almost like a like a Markaball
Speaker 1: and t Rex.
Speaker 2: That's the choice.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know that anybody.
Speaker 2: Else but you would make.
Speaker 1: But it sounds so amazing.
Speaker 3: It's so you have such a distinctive character and personality.
Speaker 3: It's it's unmistakable, man, like you could hear in that
Speaker 3: this is as good as like a d N A test,
Speaker 3: And that's that's the highest praise I could offer somebody. Man,
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's unlike anybody else. I understand that
Speaker 3: you listen to stuff and understand the fundamentals of the instrument,
Speaker 3: but you take it someplace where no one else goes
Speaker 3: and and it's just it's thrilling. Man, it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: That means so much to me.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you both really sort of laughing listening
Speaker 1: to that too, because a couple of days before I
Speaker 1: came out here, I was listening to listening to you
Speaker 1: play solo acoustic on something and I usually play acoustic
Speaker 1: just in my office and myself, and it was I
Speaker 1: My kids popped and they're like, we thought you.
Speaker 3: One day.
Speaker 2: That's so cute.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Julian, Hey, thank you Hey.
Speaker 2: It's a pleasure to be thank you, thank.
Speaker 1: You, thank you, thank you label the club, Yeah, Don Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks to Julian Lodge for letting Don and I share
Speaker 1: the stage with him at the Blue Note in New
Speaker 1: York and while we're at it, thanks so much to
Speaker 1: the Blue Note for having us. You can hear Julian's
Speaker 1: new album and Speak to Me, along with our other
Speaker 1: favorite songs from Julian on a playlist at broken record
Speaker 1: podcast dot com or in this episode description. You can
Speaker 1: also watch the whole video of this interview and other
Speaker 1: recent episodes at YouTube dot com, slash Broken Record podcast,
Speaker 1: and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the
Speaker 1: Broken Record Pod. You can follow us on Twitter at
Speaker 1: broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose,
Speaker 1: with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our
Speaker 1: engineer is Ben Tolladay. Broken Record is a production of
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Speaker 1: Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.