Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today the saxophone is extraordinary, Dave, Cause wow,
Speaker 1: that introduction where do we go from? There? Where we
Speaker 1: go is actually back to a memorial day. The last
Speaker 1: time I saw you in person, you were presiding over
Speaker 1: Mindy a Bear's surprise wedding. How did that come together? Well,
Speaker 1: Mindy is a great friend of mine and a colleague,
Speaker 1: fantastic saxophone artists and great singer, and we've done a
Speaker 1: lot of touring together and made records together. And she um.
Speaker 1: It was actually a funny thing because when are We
Speaker 1: made this album called Summer Horns in two thousand and thirteen,
Speaker 1: and at the time I was working with this guy
Speaker 1: named Eric Querra on a wine project sort of like
Speaker 1: a side project for us that we do for charity.
Speaker 1: And over the years we've made a raised a lot
Speaker 1: of money for a charity called the Starlight Children's Foundation
Speaker 1: through the sale of Cause Wine, which is basically wine
Speaker 1: with my name on it. That's you can find it
Speaker 1: whole Foods and it raises money for charity. As I
Speaker 1: like to say, drink for the kids. But these are
Speaker 1: kids that are in the hospital for long periods of time,
Speaker 1: and this is one way just to kind of help them.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Eric guarra Um is a good friend of
Speaker 1: mine in the wine business, and he was helping me
Speaker 1: for a number of years make this wine and we
Speaker 1: were having wonderful success. And we just finished the Summer
Speaker 1: Horns record and I sent him the cover of the
Speaker 1: album as basically just because he's my friend, I said,
Speaker 1: here's our new album, and you know, I wanted to
Speaker 1: share this with you. And he wrote back immediately he said,
Speaker 1: who is that blonde? And is she's single? And I said, hey,
Speaker 1: slow your roll, brother, you know, let's let's go a
Speaker 1: little slower here. I thought I was gonna be your
Speaker 1: favorite saxophone player, and he said, You're always gonna be
Speaker 1: my favorite saxophone player. But who is that blonde? So
Speaker 1: I called Mindy and I said, this guy Eric is
Speaker 1: is kind of interested in meeting you. Are you interested
Speaker 1: in meeting him? And I showed her a picture of Eric. Now,
Speaker 1: since this is a non visual medium, bob um, let
Speaker 1: me just say he's kind of a He's he's a
Speaker 1: hot guy, right, He's got these like the total uh,
Speaker 1: you know, George Clooney with the gray hair and the
Speaker 1: just the tan and just you know, a very suave guy.
Speaker 1: So she's looked at him and she said, yes, I
Speaker 1: do want to meet him immediately. So they had their
Speaker 1: first date and I was not there, but evidently it
Speaker 1: went very very well, and um they started dating and
Speaker 1: then they got really involved and they've been involved ever since.
Speaker 1: You know. That was it. So Mindy and Eric came
Speaker 1: to me many years later and said, we're thinking about
Speaker 1: tying the knot. And it was in conjunction with Mindy's
Speaker 1: fiftieth birthday, which was Memorial Day weekend. And I came
Speaker 1: up with the idea because I presided over one like
Speaker 1: a gay wedding about five or six years ago. That
Speaker 1: was a total surprise as well, and it was so
Speaker 1: much fun because people came to a party not knowing
Speaker 1: that the they were gonna get married or they weren't
Speaker 1: witnessed a wedding, and it was so much fun. And
Speaker 1: so I suggested to them, I said, well, what about
Speaker 1: just having a fiftieth birthday party, but at the party,
Speaker 1: we just have a surprise wedding. And they loved it,
Speaker 1: and so that's that's how it all happened. Okay, how
Speaker 1: long before the party did you have this conversation? Say,
Speaker 1: it's probably three months a long time because she has
Speaker 1: a party every Memorial Day weekend. And I was sitting
Speaker 1: in the kitchen. It's mostly an outdoor party, and my
Speaker 1: friend Elbow b said he Eric came out in the
Speaker 1: suit and then all of said they're gonna get married.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm slow on the uptake. But then it
Speaker 1: could all put together. And that was before they entered
Speaker 1: the Uh. The outside where the suble multitude mostly was well,
Speaker 1: if you've never been to a surprise wedding, there's there's
Speaker 1: that moment exactly what you just described, Bob, where like
Speaker 1: the turn that the situation changes. You're coming to a
Speaker 1: party expecting one thing, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you start noticing cues that oh something is changing, and
Speaker 1: then there's this energy that just erupts and people are
Speaker 1: so excited. You know, So I think it's it's um,
Speaker 1: it's not for everybody's taste, but for if you kind
Speaker 1: of like that adventurous spirit. It worked for Indian era list.
Speaker 1: It was great. It's great vibe and everybody was there.
Speaker 1: But in addition, you performed the ceremony extremely Well, so
Speaker 1: is it your How did you come up with your
Speaker 1: lines and you felt comfortable because you're always on stage
Speaker 1: or what happened there, that's a different thing, that's right,
Speaker 1: That's why I'm asking. But it was very loose. But
Speaker 1: you said you felt so comfortable from the outside observer. Well,
Speaker 1: that's nice to you to say, and I'm glad it
Speaker 1: came off that way. I was rather nervous. I get
Speaker 1: pretty nervous for things like That's one thing to have
Speaker 1: a saxophone in my mouth on stage. It's another thing
Speaker 1: to be marrying, you know, two people you really really love.
Speaker 1: But I think it came from them. They were, uh,
Speaker 1: they said to me like, they didn't put any parameters
Speaker 1: on me. They just said, let's have something that's fun, reverent.
Speaker 1: We don't have to we're nonconformists, so let's just not
Speaker 1: have a We're having a surprise wedding, so it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to conform to anything that you would normally typically
Speaker 1: think a wedding should be. And so I just went
Speaker 1: with it. And I knew I knew that um that
Speaker 1: Mindy had worked a lot with Adam Sandler, and so
Speaker 1: I was doing some uh you know, just research before that,
Speaker 1: and I found a great Adam Sandler quote that really
Speaker 1: from the wedding singer that just was the perfect way
Speaker 1: to start, and it just basically diffused the energy and
Speaker 1: let everybody know that this was not going to be
Speaker 1: a typical wedding, and it just kind of remember remember
Speaker 1: the quote, I can't remember it right, right right? I
Speaker 1: should have knew that You've known you're gonna ask me
Speaker 1: that question. Okay, let's go back to the beginning. When's
Speaker 1: the first time you picked up a saxophone. I was
Speaker 1: thirteen years old, seventh grade, Portola Junior High School here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles and the Valley Tarzana, California, where I
Speaker 1: grew up, and that was the uh the for I
Speaker 1: played other instruments. Well, that's my question. Coming from a
Speaker 1: Jewish background like myself, we started taking piano lessons at
Speaker 1: age six, So did you have any of that experience
Speaker 1: or something in the school before this accident. We had
Speaker 1: the same piano teacher because did you play Hot Cross Buns?
Speaker 1: Probably so he hated piano. I mean, my mom forced
Speaker 1: my brother and sister and I to take it up
Speaker 1: when we were growing up and I just hated it,
Speaker 1: and so I rebelled when I was around ten and
Speaker 1: I took up the drum set because I thought I
Speaker 1: was gonna really show my parents whose boss. And this
Speaker 1: is a true story. There was a time when my
Speaker 1: dad came to pick me up from my drum lesson
Speaker 1: at Kay's music scene in uh In Mercida, and the
Speaker 1: drum teacher came to say hello to my dad, and
Speaker 1: I was right there so I could hear what he
Speaker 1: said to my dad, and he said, dr Cos you
Speaker 1: might want to think about sports for Dave, because it's
Speaker 1: just not gonna have I was crushed. This is two
Speaker 1: instruments now that I basically crashed and burn was terrible
Speaker 1: piano player, terrible drummer, and so I thought this was it.
Speaker 1: There's there's no music for me. Let's go back to
Speaker 1: your family said your father was a doctor. What kind
Speaker 1: of doctor was dermatologist? Dermatologist? So was that something he
Speaker 1: didn't discuss his work over the dinner table. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a healthy diet of zits and karatosis, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, my dad was a very Both my parents
Speaker 1: are passed, but my mom was a pharmacist too, So
Speaker 1: my my parents in addition to being you know, Jews,
Speaker 1: they were also medical Jews, so they had that kind
Speaker 1: of perspective. And all three kids, my older brother and
Speaker 1: sister and I all went into the music business, if
Speaker 1: you can believe that, and they were very supportive. Surprisingly
Speaker 1: and to their credit, they were incredibly supportive of of
Speaker 1: us following are okay, it's just staying on that topic.
Speaker 1: Your father is a dermatologist. Most teenagers get it. Did
Speaker 1: you then go to see your father? Of course there
Speaker 1: was no charge. Yeah, I guess that's the only thing.
Speaker 1: It wasn't weird because you didn't know something. Dermot Toms
Speaker 1: is always sort of weird when they're addressing yours. It's so,
Speaker 1: there are three kids in the family. Where are you
Speaker 1: in the hierarchy? I'm the youngest, you're the youngest, so
Speaker 1: you're the oldest. Is my brother Jeff? Okay, and how
Speaker 1: much older is he than you? Almost four years older
Speaker 1: than me? And then your sister is the middle kid, Roberta,
Speaker 1: and she's two years two years old and me? Okay,
Speaker 1: Like in my family, it's all two years. And then
Speaker 1: if you do the math, you realize this is nine
Speaker 1: months after the re anniversary, which is kind of creepy.
Speaker 1: I know, it's it's amazing that our parents kind of
Speaker 1: got to it exactly. I can't imagine it. They just
Speaker 1: like god to it and had and they basically spit
Speaker 1: out three kids within less than four years. And um,
Speaker 1: I marvel at my parents, my you know, somehow they
Speaker 1: were able to make it happen. And I never I
Speaker 1: grew up in a very you know, I grew up
Speaker 1: in Tarzana and and never really thought about anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: I had my own issues to deal with, which we're
Speaker 1: you know, kind of having to deal with them on
Speaker 1: my own. Like what kind of issues? Well, I grew
Speaker 1: up I'm gay? You know, Wait, just since you brought
Speaker 1: it up, at what point do you realize you're gay?
Speaker 1: I would say, like my earliest memories sitting on my
Speaker 1: parents bed, reading the Sunday newspaper and looking at some
Speaker 1: of those circulars were that show, you know, people in
Speaker 1: in bathing suits. And I think I was noticing guys
Speaker 1: way back when, even before there was any sort of
Speaker 1: understanding of what that meant. So were you in single digits,
Speaker 1: were already a teenager probably six seven something like that? Okay,
Speaker 1: need let's just say los Angeles is very liberal on this,
Speaker 1: so just like San Francisco. But to what degree did
Speaker 1: you try to repress those feelings, if at all, I
Speaker 1: completely tried to replace repress the I made have made
Speaker 1: a serious habit of repressing them for a long time,
Speaker 1: because it's just there was nothing. I didn't really know
Speaker 1: what to do with those feelings. And and and this is
Speaker 1: what and I don't mean to be over dramatic, be
Speaker 1: as dramatic, but um, when I discovered the saxophone finally
Speaker 1: at thirteen, this is the connection to your earlier question.
Speaker 1: Discovering the saxophone at thirteen when my body was exploding,
Speaker 1: you know, like all theteen year olds. Um, it was
Speaker 1: finally finding that best friend that I could talk to.
Speaker 1: And I've thought about this a lot, and I wonder
Speaker 1: why I have a career that I feel very blessed
Speaker 1: and fortunate that I'm still able to do this. I've
Speaker 1: been doing it for almost thirty years, making records and
Speaker 1: traveling around. What is why does somebody want to hear
Speaker 1: me play the saxophone? When I've said this before, there
Speaker 1: are people who can blow circles around me. There's something
Speaker 1: in the sound that I think was made like a
Speaker 1: blueprint of the sound was made when I first picked
Speaker 1: it up, because there was so much of that internal
Speaker 1: like emotion going into this sound, Like the saxophone was
Speaker 1: the one vehicle that I could express myself with, and
Speaker 1: I think because it was, it started out as this
Speaker 1: is that you know, there's a lot of real emotion
Speaker 1: and real pain that's in that sound. Even though ironically
Speaker 1: the music that I make is is very uplifting and
Speaker 1: I consider kind of kind of happy. It's not sad music,
Speaker 1: but they're inside of that sound, there is some sort
Speaker 1: of thing that I think people maybe on some level,
Speaker 1: uh connect to because we all go through that stuff
Speaker 1: no matter what we're dealing with. We can recognize that
Speaker 1: if there's something in a sound that that that connects
Speaker 1: with us on that level. So, uh well, let's stay
Speaker 1: let's go back to a little bit of fill in.
Speaker 1: So did you ever date girls? If I did, you did,
Speaker 1: and that was a good or bad experience. I think
Speaker 1: my my most successful relationship was with a woman to
Speaker 1: this day, to this day, Okay informed me of that.
Speaker 1: Lisa Rosendam. She was my high school girlfriend into college
Speaker 1: and we had a great We had a really great
Speaker 1: relationship I'm hoping that she's not upset for me outing
Speaker 1: her on your podcast. Um. She was so great because
Speaker 1: I was very honest with her. I told her what
Speaker 1: was going on with me, and I was committed to her,
Speaker 1: and I said, I really want to see this through.
Speaker 1: And then one day, about two years in, she came
Speaker 1: to me and she said, I just kind of need
Speaker 1: to know, like, do you think that we have a future?
Speaker 1: Are you gonna want a date? Guys? And I said, um,
Speaker 1: I think it was on a on a Friday, and
Speaker 1: I said, can I take the weekend? So on Monday,
Speaker 1: I said, I thought about this over the weekend and
Speaker 1: I definitely will want to explore this and I think
Speaker 1: it would be a mistake to not And she said
Speaker 1: totally cool, and we broke up and remained great friends.
Speaker 1: Very soon after she met her husband. There's a guy
Speaker 1: named Jeff and to this day it was a long
Speaker 1: time ago now and to this day, every time I
Speaker 1: see him, he thanks me well, as he should you.
Speaker 1: But you know, this is not an uncommon story. I
Speaker 1: have a friend who was married to someone and she said,
Speaker 1: right up front, you know, I'm into women as well
Speaker 1: as you, which maybe this is you know, bisexual as
Speaker 1: opposed to They were married very briefly. She came home
Speaker 1: and said, Hey, I want to date this woman. He
Speaker 1: divorced her. She's still with that woman decades later. So. Uh,
Speaker 1: but going back, you said, your sister and brother with
Speaker 1: the music business, what do they do. My brother is
Speaker 1: a incredibly talented um composer, plays guitar. Uh. There was
Speaker 1: a time in his life, in the early part of
Speaker 1: his life where he wanted to be a recording artist
Speaker 1: and really really went for it. But for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: you know, it just didn't happen in that way for him.
Speaker 1: So he retooled along the way and decided to do
Speaker 1: to get more behind the scenes, and he started a
Speaker 1: company that was doing mostly music for commercials and films
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and built a career uh for
Speaker 1: approximately thirty years that really was very successful until that
Speaker 1: business kind of started to change. My sister was an
Speaker 1: executive at MTV before it was called MTV, when it
Speaker 1: was owned by Warner American Express, and she was one
Speaker 1: of the on the business side, not in the music
Speaker 1: or programming side, but on the on the cable side.
Speaker 1: She was one of the early executives. She worked her
Speaker 1: way all the way up to running the whole West
Speaker 1: Coast office until she decided that she wanted to be
Speaker 1: more focused on her kids when she had kids, so
Speaker 1: she left that. And then, just as a like a
Speaker 1: little anti or addendum to that whole story, my brother
Speaker 1: and sister and the most unlikely marriage of all decided
Speaker 1: about two years ago to get into the marijuana business. So, well,
Speaker 1: let's I think we missed a chapter here. Your sister
Speaker 1: started making cookies. So how long ago did she start
Speaker 1: making cookies? Well, my mom was a baker, uh, And
Speaker 1: my mom dispensed these. She was a pharmacist, but she's
Speaker 1: dispensed these chocolate chip cookies and they were just amazing.
Speaker 1: She never sold them, but she brought them everywhere. And
Speaker 1: she my mom was a typical Jewish mom. She equated
Speaker 1: food with love, and if she loved you, she was
Speaker 1: going to feed you, whether you liked it or not.
Speaker 1: And so she had these cookies. And in the beginning
Speaker 1: part of my career, Bob it was it was funny
Speaker 1: because Capitol Records, I was signed to Capital for twenty years.
Speaker 1: Capital fell in love with my mom and her cookies
Speaker 1: so much that back in the day and the early
Speaker 1: part of my career. They would send her out, not me,
Speaker 1: her out on a promotional visits to warehouse records and liquor,
Speaker 1: spizza and sam goodies, and and she would get you know,
Speaker 1: she would get placement for me just by these cookies.
Speaker 1: Were that good. Well that's a great story, irrelevant of
Speaker 1: the cookie. So anyway, she was a great baker. How
Speaker 1: did it transition to your sister, Well, my mom passed
Speaker 1: in twenty oh five, and um, people would she was
Speaker 1: larger than life, you though she was only five ft tall.
Speaker 1: But my um, all of us just to stay here.
Speaker 1: So your mother and father were born in America. They
Speaker 1: were born in Canada, Canada, and then their parents immigrated
Speaker 1: from the Old Country as we say, yes, how did
Speaker 1: they get from Winnipeg to Los Angeles? I think in
Speaker 1: a covered wagon. I didn't know the room went in
Speaker 1: that direction. I thought it was just east to west. No,
Speaker 1: my parents got married and they were my dad hated
Speaker 1: the cold, and they grew up in Winnipeg, of all places,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty below zero. So when they got married,
Speaker 1: my dad was immediately, we're moving to California, and they did,
Speaker 1: and my mom went along with him. I don't think
Speaker 1: that she really wanted to go, but he really wanted
Speaker 1: to go, and so he developed. He was brought into
Speaker 1: a practice dermatology practice in in Encino, and my mom
Speaker 1: came along and that's where my brother and sister and
Speaker 1: I were all raised. That begs a question, do you
Speaker 1: have a lot of relatives in Canada? Yeah, all over Canada,
Speaker 1: but but especially in Winnipeg's and do you ever see them?
Speaker 1: I do, Yeah, I do a lot. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: go back to the cookies. How does your sister decide
Speaker 1: to make started making cookies? Well, when my mom passed,
Speaker 1: her name was Audrey. And when my mom passed, people
Speaker 1: always said, you know, we miss Audrey so much, but
Speaker 1: white cookies. So Roberta, my sister said enough already, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try and find the recipe. She, you know, went
Speaker 1: through my mom's things, found the recipe and she started
Speaker 1: making the cookies and everybody was very happy. And then
Speaker 1: she said, I think there's a business here, and she
Speaker 1: started doing it. She developed a company called Audrey's Cookies,
Speaker 1: and for a while she had a pretty good, you know,
Speaker 1: little company never made any money, you know, because because
Speaker 1: her competitors were Nabisco and it was very difficult, but
Speaker 1: she still got on the shelves and whole food. She
Speaker 1: got on the shelves in Costco and a test. She
Speaker 1: was in a bunch of different markets, and she would
Speaker 1: take two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward,
Speaker 1: two steps back. It never really took off. My brother
Speaker 1: when he saw the winds of change happening in the
Speaker 1: cannabis world in in um, you know, like two or
Speaker 1: three years ago here in the state of California, he
Speaker 1: suggested to my sister, we should turn Audrey's Cookies into
Speaker 1: an edibles company and incorporate marijuana, cannabis and um and
Speaker 1: then we can You know, most people uh honor their
Speaker 1: dead parents, especially with their Jewish dead parents with maybe
Speaker 1: a plant, a tree in Israel, maybe you put a
Speaker 1: plaque in the synagogue with their name on it. My family,
Speaker 1: we're just in the pot cookie business. So it's my
Speaker 1: mom's recipe and it's my dad's name. They're called doctor Norms,
Speaker 1: and you can find them pretty much at any dispensary
Speaker 1: up and down the state of California. Right now. I
Speaker 1: know it's their business, not yours, but I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people entered that business. Very competitive now at
Speaker 1: this point in time legally and commercially. How difficult has
Speaker 1: it been for them. I think it's been difficult because
Speaker 1: they started before it was legal in in the state
Speaker 1: of California, so there were much different rules. It was
Speaker 1: pretty much like the Wild Wild West when they first started,
Speaker 1: which is not even that long ago, it's only maybe
Speaker 1: two and a half years ago. But when it was
Speaker 1: the the the rule was passed in the state of
Speaker 1: California and the rules changed, and then the it's like
Speaker 1: the government wasn't prepared to figure out how to do
Speaker 1: all that at the same time, so it was just
Speaker 1: chaos for at least like six months. So they've been
Speaker 1: dealing with a lot of that stuff. But um, their
Speaker 1: sales are very strong. They were acquired by a big
Speaker 1: company and um so they're off to the races. So
Speaker 1: once they put in the annibis, it turned into a
Speaker 1: profitable business. And they're still very both very heavily involved.
Speaker 1: They're incredibly involved. Yeah, they have so pretty much. If
Speaker 1: I go to a dispensary, I asked for Audrey's cookies
Speaker 1: Dr Norms. Dr Norm's. The brand name changed. Dr Norms. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's go back to you. How do you end
Speaker 1: up picking up the saxophone at age thirteen? Well that
Speaker 1: was my brother. Um, god, this is turning into a
Speaker 1: really this is your life exactly. I hope it's interesting
Speaker 1: for your listenership. Did people already turn off? Okay? Okay,
Speaker 1: seven people listening now, most of them related to me.
Speaker 1: But that's besides the point. You have a lot of fans.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's your name comes up, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: spontaneous of my nutritionist. I have high cholesterol. Huge fan
Speaker 1: tells me she's going to your shows. You know, well yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: Well god, but you know you do these cruises. But
Speaker 1: let's start at the beginning. So your brother, My brother
Speaker 1: had a band when I was growing up with his
Speaker 1: friends that were they were doing weddings and bar mitzvah's
Speaker 1: fraternity parties. It's called Randy and Company. And uh, they
Speaker 1: did not have a saxophone player. I wanted to be
Speaker 1: in that band. When I was a kid, I saw
Speaker 1: him and his buddies. Everybody else had to get jobs,
Speaker 1: you know, working at Burger King or McDonald's or whatever,
Speaker 1: flipping burgers. These guys played music on the weekend. So
Speaker 1: I was thought, this is so cool. I want to
Speaker 1: be in the band. Of course, going back to what
Speaker 1: I was telling you before, I really had no uh like,
Speaker 1: there was no indication that I had any musical talent whatsoever.
Speaker 1: But my brother said in in passing one when one
Speaker 1: time he said, the only way that First of all,
Speaker 1: you're never getting in this band. Right. Of course he's
Speaker 1: four years older. That's what I think, total older brother
Speaker 1: never getting in this band. But the only way that
Speaker 1: you could get in this band, if possibly in a
Speaker 1: million years, could ever happen, is if you played the
Speaker 1: saxophone player saxophone, because we don't have a saxophone player.
Speaker 1: And it was the time when you know, this is
Speaker 1: like the late seventies early eighties when when every pop
Speaker 1: song had a saxolo. If you didn't have a sax
Speaker 1: player in your band for a wedding, I mean, you
Speaker 1: really were out of touch. So that's all I heard.
Speaker 1: And it was basically at the same exact time I
Speaker 1: was going into seventh grade, I could pick up an instrument,
Speaker 1: uh part of the curriculum, and so I picked up
Speaker 1: the saxophone. And then I just drove my brother crazy
Speaker 1: until he let me be in the band. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: go back one step. Were you a huge popular music
Speaker 1: fan yourself? For sure? Yeah. I was pretty much an
Speaker 1: amalgam of everything that was going on in my house. So, Uh,
Speaker 1: my parents were listening to the great singers, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it was Sara Van or Ella Fitzgerald of Frank Sinatra,
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Jr. My sister had Chicago Earth Wind and
Speaker 1: Fire and a lot of the you know, the horn bands,
Speaker 1: and and my brother was listening to more progressive rocks.
Speaker 1: So I was kind of like just listened to everything,
Speaker 1: and then um, when I picked up the saxophone, it
Speaker 1: really became about David Sanborn, Grover Washington, Junior, Um Wine Light. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean those like the real pop because I, in
Speaker 1: my in my core, I was never really a jazz musician.
Speaker 1: It was more of just a pop fan. Okay, But
Speaker 1: were you hearing that those songs on the radio where
Speaker 1: you're searching them out? Uh? Probably a combination of them
Speaker 1: and being turned on by uh. I mean you know
Speaker 1: this like there was that time period where you get
Speaker 1: turned onto music by people. There was in a maybe
Speaker 1: more so than it is now. Yeah, exactly what is
Speaker 1: somebody's house? You gotta hear this record? They put it on,
Speaker 1: or even just record shopping. Remember when you would go
Speaker 1: down the aisle and you'd talk to somebody and they
Speaker 1: would be saying, oh did you check this? I was
Speaker 1: a regular certain record store. They would hold record for me,
Speaker 1: they would tip me, oh yeah, that was part of
Speaker 1: the whole process. I love that time. What record store
Speaker 1: did you go to? Well, we had the Warehouse Records,
Speaker 1: which was right down the street in Tarzana. There was
Speaker 1: liquorice pizza. That's really going way back in Tarzana. Um
Speaker 1: those are the two main one and of course Tower
Speaker 1: Records on Sunset. But but that was like a special
Speaker 1: outing right right, that was a big trip. That was
Speaker 1: a very but going there was always the greatest. And
Speaker 1: I remember when my first record came out. Do you
Speaker 1: remember the big when they those oversized record covers on
Speaker 1: the side of the building. Well, for my first record
Speaker 1: they did that, and I I remember driving down Sunset
Speaker 1: Boulevard and so this was probably fall of when it
Speaker 1: first came out, and I I freaked, I mean literally
Speaker 1: freaked out because that's like a dream come true for
Speaker 1: for any music fan to see your well, to have
Speaker 1: a record come out, period, but then to see the
Speaker 1: cover on the side of Tower Records. That's also better
Speaker 1: than hearing it on the radio, for sure. But wait,
Speaker 1: we're driving down the street. I hate to bust into
Speaker 1: the story. Did you know what was gonna be there? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had told me that it was going. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you're taking lessons in school? Are you taking lessons outside
Speaker 1: of school? Um? Basically playing in school? I never really had. Um.
Speaker 1: I took saxophone lessons for a very short period of time.
Speaker 1: I studied improvisation when I was in high school quite uh.
Speaker 1: When you say it took lessons briefly, that was at
Speaker 1: the advent of your playing career or somewhere later. It
Speaker 1: was probably maybe a few years into it. So most
Speaker 1: of the learning that I did on the saxophone. The
Speaker 1: funny thing about the sacks, to Bob was that it
Speaker 1: was unlike the piano, drums or any other instrument. The
Speaker 1: minute it came into my hands, there was a kinship
Speaker 1: with the instrument, like it felt right. It was not
Speaker 1: a struggle. It was just it had a different texture.
Speaker 1: Like all of a sudden, I was okay at it,
Speaker 1: you know, and I got good quick. And then two
Speaker 1: years later, after playing for two years. I basically, you know,
Speaker 1: drove my brother so crazy that he let me be
Speaker 1: in the band. And then I was playing with people
Speaker 1: who were much better musicians than I was, so it
Speaker 1: allowed me. It's like the same thing when you want
Speaker 1: to take up a sport or play tennis. Something you
Speaker 1: play with people who are much better than you gets
Speaker 1: you better quicker. That was exactly the way it worked
Speaker 1: for me, because I got all these amazing musicians I
Speaker 1: get to play with. You know, the bar mits was
Speaker 1: every weekend. Okay, so that's the next question. How much
Speaker 1: did you work, um, at least a couple of times
Speaker 1: a week, and what kind of money were you ending
Speaker 1: up making. I made ten dollars on my first one,
Speaker 1: where everybody else played got a hunter bucks. Um, my
Speaker 1: brother paid me ten dollars and uh, I filed that
Speaker 1: away and uh later on down the road when my
Speaker 1: brother and I wrote some songs from my first album,
Speaker 1: I think he might have gotten paid ten dollars because
Speaker 1: paybacks a bit. Jeff. Although usually people who were successful musicians,
Speaker 1: wedding musicians, bar mitzva musicians in high school, they're making
Speaker 1: a good chunck of change. Honestly, I from the time
Speaker 1: that my first record came out at least six months.
Speaker 1: At least six months, I was still working every weekend
Speaker 1: doing weddings even though I was a recording artist now
Speaker 1: and getting played on the radio because the money was great.
Speaker 1: But when you were in high school, you were making
Speaker 1: a lot of money. What did you do with the money? Drugs?
Speaker 1: Not just kidding, um, I just I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think I what did I do with the money. I
Speaker 1: probably bought equipment, and I bought a car. That's why
Speaker 1: I was usually that that's what you did. What kind
Speaker 1: of car was it? My first car that I ever
Speaker 1: got was a Honda Accord hatchback copper color, and uh
Speaker 1: cost me. So you want a brand new I remember
Speaker 1: that model. That model would run forever if something. You
Speaker 1: didn't want a new car? Yeah, so I had it
Speaker 1: for a long time. Well let's stay on the car
Speaker 1: thing for one time. I remember, for ecological reasons, you
Speaker 1: switch from your Mercedes to your Prius. But you wanted
Speaker 1: something a little more luxurious. So what do you drive
Speaker 1: in now? I drive a Tesla, That's what I figured.
Speaker 1: And you drive I was gonna just say, so you
Speaker 1: drive a Tesla? S I drive a test last, So,
Speaker 1: uh do you use the automatic driving mode? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't have that on my on my car. You
Speaker 1: could update it because some are upgradable, some aren't. This
Speaker 1: one is not because I had I got my Tesla
Speaker 1: the second year that they came out, and so it's
Speaker 1: not it doesn't have the software capability of being U Okay,
Speaker 1: So your Tesla is like six years old exactly. Okay,
Speaker 1: how had any problems with It's been a great car.
Speaker 1: I mean you hear everybody who's got a Tesla doesn't
Speaker 1: stop raving, said they would only drive an electric car
Speaker 1: out what do you drive? I drive a SOB that's
Speaker 1: really a subru so the only thing I drove to
Speaker 1: BMW's before that, I wanted to get a Japanese car.
Speaker 1: And actually this guy, Jim Ron Denelly record producer, worked
Speaker 1: with Matthew sweet Wilko a million people. His father was
Speaker 1: in the car business, and he called me up so
Speaker 1: I ushould drive this car. You've got a special deal whatever,
Speaker 1: and I get a you know service at the super
Speaker 1: Group plate SOB. They didn't really know what they were doing.
Speaker 1: The only thing the car drives well, because after you
Speaker 1: have a BMW, you're into that driving ability. Okay, the
Speaker 1: only thing it does well is drive. Well. It's a
Speaker 1: turbo charge d engine that's got four wheel drive. But
Speaker 1: all the bells and whistles, the computerized stuff. No. I mean,
Speaker 1: I got a stereo better than you can buy in
Speaker 1: any car. But I was hoping to drive that car
Speaker 1: until we went to no one owning cars. I drove
Speaker 1: my first BMW for eleven years and my second BMW
Speaker 1: for twenty years. You know, it's like I was attached
Speaker 1: to them. This is before the days of leasing, and
Speaker 1: leasing is really just a way of burning money. And
Speaker 1: I take very good care of my stuff. And then
Speaker 1: you see, well what what a new car right cost?
Speaker 1: You don't want to get a new car. It's like
Speaker 1: they say the guy in the Wall Street Journal, the
Speaker 1: big he's a number one auto guys is don't buy
Speaker 1: a gas combunction combustion car internal combustion because it's gonna
Speaker 1: fall off a cliff in a matter of years. So
Speaker 1: my nephew is the number, depending on the month, the
Speaker 1: number two or three BMW salesman in America. This is
Speaker 1: an amazing story. My sister now lives in the valley,
Speaker 1: and uh, he didn't make it. In college and then
Speaker 1: he bounced around one story worse than another. He ended
Speaker 1: up working last job for his karate teacher didn't show
Speaker 1: up on time. He was down and out forget it,
Speaker 1: and people were stick of getting him jobs. He answered
Speaker 1: an ad to work in the Internet department in Keys
Speaker 1: Lexus on Wilshore Boulevard. First you're doing nothing. Then he
Speaker 1: found out he had a real flair for it, so
Speaker 1: he sold lex I for a while. He met his
Speaker 1: wife there, and he sells BMW. He sells so many cars.
Speaker 1: He told me. I saw him a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: He sold nine cars in a month. That's amazing. So
Speaker 1: I mean, if I want to BMW, it's not so
Speaker 1: much that it's a deal, but if you want to
Speaker 1: get a used one, he has all that you know,
Speaker 1: he knows which ones are good, etcetera. And my car
Speaker 1: was looked like it was on his last legs a
Speaker 1: year ago, and I was gonna get one, but I'm
Speaker 1: not into leasing. But then I say, if I buy
Speaker 1: one having owned BMW's incredible service, costs, unbelievable, great driving experience,
Speaker 1: but I said, I don't want to make a big
Speaker 1: investment and then find out it's worth nothing. And as
Speaker 1: far as a Tesla, especially with a Tesla three, that's
Speaker 1: very enticing. But you know my girlfriend well, and we
Speaker 1: lived together. She's got a one car garage and her
Speaker 1: car is in the garage and you have to charge it.
Speaker 1: So that's my car story. Note she has. It's interesting
Speaker 1: because this is how we all we know each other.
Speaker 1: But her sister has been leasing a car every three years. Okay,
Speaker 1: the irony is her car is up next month. That
Speaker 1: you think of not getting a car at all, which
Speaker 1: I know a number of people have done that, just
Speaker 1: take over. But because she doesn't drive that much, and
Speaker 1: if you're leasing, your really upside down. But what happened
Speaker 1: was they wanted to lease a new car and they
Speaker 1: had bought one car they leased and it was a
Speaker 1: fully I mean he had everything, the Macabici, stereo, the
Speaker 1: cool seats, whatever, lexus and she sold it to my girlfriend,
Speaker 1: her twin sister, four years ago with not even thirty
Speaker 1: thousand miles on it. So that's the car she drops.
Speaker 1: You know, uh uh suddenly I g S three. Do
Speaker 1: you think that cars will actually go the way of
Speaker 1: land lines? Absolutely? You know, I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people that do not have landline. I still have one.
Speaker 1: I kind of like it. Actually I still have one,
Speaker 1: and I and I have one because it's now baked
Speaker 1: into the triple plate with cable, okay, And everyone said, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not gonna be as good as landline,
Speaker 1: much better than dealing with GT which was and then Verizon.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, I find myself, you know, I
Speaker 1: do you keep on your phone to use the ICL
Speaker 1: calendar app to have all your appointments? Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: I find so addicted that. And then I I have people,
Speaker 1: you know, I used to always helps call my landline.
Speaker 1: Now there say call my cell phone, and unless I'm
Speaker 1: literally at home, I really don't use it. And the
Speaker 1: other thing I find is people now forget that people text.
Speaker 1: What astounds me is when I look, I still have
Speaker 1: an answering machine, very specifically because with voicemail, the landline
Speaker 1: you pick up to know how many calls. If you
Speaker 1: have an answering machine, you can hear and know whether
Speaker 1: to pick up, and other than junk calls, if anybody
Speaker 1: calls at all, they don't call my landline. You have
Speaker 1: an answering machine, like absolutely absolutely listen. It was hard
Speaker 1: to get one when the last one, where do you
Speaker 1: get it? Okay, well, you know you you'll find the
Speaker 1: cassette players. This is what I got on Amazon. But
Speaker 1: if you remember in your old enough to remember, the
Speaker 1: answering machines had a very brief lifespan, like two years,
Speaker 1: and then they switched to digital to s s D
Speaker 1: s uh you know, solid state storage and then but
Speaker 1: they only couldn't have a little things. So now the
Speaker 1: irony is I bought one which is nowhere near as
Speaker 1: good as the ones you used to be able to buy,
Speaker 1: but it's made for Mexico. Because this is a big surprise. Now,
Speaker 1: this is something I would have never expected to hear
Speaker 1: come out of your mouth. Let's let's say you're at
Speaker 1: home and you're working at the computer and I really
Speaker 1: can't be up to interrupted when I work, I get
Speaker 1: in the mood and the phone rings, and you see
Speaker 1: to yourself, hmm, I was expecting that important call. But
Speaker 1: if it's not the important call and I pick up
Speaker 1: the phone, it's gonna change my mood. It really can
Speaker 1: suck me up. But what about color I D like
Speaker 1: where you can see who's calling calor I D is
Speaker 1: a good point, but lot of people have their numbers blocked.
Speaker 1: So this way I used to turn let's forget really
Speaker 1: into it. I used to turn the machine off when
Speaker 1: it worked. When I work this machine. After once you
Speaker 1: get a call in them, you can't turn the voice
Speaker 1: coming in down completely. But I could be sitting there
Speaker 1: and I could hear if it's somebody important calling. Okay,
Speaker 1: as you know, let's go five steps further. We're not
Speaker 1: quite like the younger generation, but no one calls anymore anyway.
Speaker 1: It is true. My goal is to never talk on
Speaker 1: the phone, because what I find is people call you
Speaker 1: and they say, ay, how you doing, having a good summer?
Speaker 1: What have you seen? And then they get to the ask,
Speaker 1: which you don't want to provide no matter what. Uh.
Speaker 1: This guy Peter gross life, He was an agent at
Speaker 1: William Morris. He ran their department for a while. He
Speaker 1: got this very weird disease. He ultimately died of pancreatic cancer.
Speaker 1: But this is before that. They couldn't figure out what
Speaker 1: it was, and R. A. M Annual ultimately ran wm ME.
Speaker 1: When William Morris merged with Endeavor and his brother Rom
Speaker 1: was running was chief of staff for Obama and Peter
Speaker 1: wanted his disease whatever it was studied by the National
Speaker 1: Institute of Health, so rom Connect already connected it with ROM.
Speaker 1: He dialed ROM ROM picked up the phone. The first
Speaker 1: thing he says, what do you need? Just got right there, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And uh so, you know, I mean I just had
Speaker 1: some guy doing some work yesterday and the whole thing
Speaker 1: was done in texts. I mean, people bare leave an
Speaker 1: email anymore. It's crazy. Those are my justifications. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's possible that we could, as the world moves hurls
Speaker 1: forward through technological barriers that you and I never thought
Speaker 1: postule because of our age um, that there might be
Speaker 1: it seems plausible that there could be a faction of
Speaker 1: us that go back to the real old school voicemail
Speaker 1: or stuff. That it's kind of fun. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like a it's fun to think about going back in
Speaker 1: time like that. Well, and you're touching a little bit
Speaker 1: of a nerve for me. Yes, there's the steampunk movement,
Speaker 1: which is like that. But as a dedicated reader of
Speaker 1: like four newspapers a day and I read the New
Speaker 1: York Times cover to cover, they are so anti technology
Speaker 1: it blows my mind. It's uh Thompson. I think that's
Speaker 1: the name of the company is big student book company.
Speaker 1: They just went completely digital. But if you read in
Speaker 1: the New York Times, oh, physical books are where it's at.
Speaker 1: And then if you buy digital books, which I do,
Speaker 1: and I could sing the praises all day long, they've
Speaker 1: raised the prices so much that sometimes they're higher than
Speaker 1: the physical book. One thing we know for sure is
Speaker 1: digital books will come. Then you get someone who says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: i'm anti you know, you know this is BYS and
Speaker 1: you find they have an upgraded this is in the
Speaker 1: New York Time. They have an upgraded their operating system
Speaker 1: for three generations, if nothing else, for security reasons, they
Speaker 1: should then Chuck Schumer uses a flip phone, which I
Speaker 1: think is just insane. So I am a very nostalgic person.
Speaker 1: So as long we can be nostalgic, just as le
Speaker 1: long as we can't deny the future. It's like this
Speaker 1: whole Vinyl craze. If the album was cut analog and
Speaker 1: you want to make vinyl, fantastic, But if the album
Speaker 1: was cut totally digital and you're making vinyl, that's just insane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I get it, But let's go back to
Speaker 1: your tesla. So you essentially have had no problems. I've
Speaker 1: had no problems, and when you've had to have service,
Speaker 1: you haven't had to wait or anything. No. And actually
Speaker 1: the last time I had at service, they gave me
Speaker 1: a brand new Tesla and I was like, I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm not returning this. I was very happy
Speaker 1: with my loner. Uh No, they've been great. They really
Speaker 1: have been great. And I follow that, you know, the
Speaker 1: whole thing with Elon Muskin, who I think is a
Speaker 1: guy that is such a visionary, and I feel like
Speaker 1: we need to take care of these people. I couldn't
Speaker 1: agree more the true visionaries of our of our world,
Speaker 1: like he's he's one of them. That and almost and
Speaker 1: this is maybe an unfair thing to say, but I
Speaker 1: feel like we should, we should protect them in a way.
Speaker 1: Uh that they're not because he is soul like from
Speaker 1: every imaginable side there after, that guy, I just see
Speaker 1: it in his face. You know, it's like it's terrible.
Speaker 1: It's the internet error is bad enough where if you're
Speaker 1: playing online, do you get any hate email, hate tweets
Speaker 1: or anything. I don't really, I mean I'm sure that
Speaker 1: I do. Um, but I really, I mean, if if
Speaker 1: it happens, it's probably very small number. And I really don't.
Speaker 1: I try not to get to inside of it, especially
Speaker 1: on social media. My social media is is kind of
Speaker 1: one way. I don't really partake in it in an
Speaker 1: exchange because I feel like, you know, it's it's um
Speaker 1: First of all, it's an energy and time suck big time.
Speaker 1: I'm just like a full time job if you really
Speaker 1: they want it right, So, but I understand the necessary
Speaker 1: you know, it's a necessary thing too for promotion, and
Speaker 1: we're out on tour right now. We want people to
Speaker 1: know that we're coming to their city. So social media
Speaker 1: is an important thing. But to get involved in that
Speaker 1: kind of discourse with people can can be a slippery slope. Well,
Speaker 1: I find because I have a lot of incoming and
Speaker 1: I've learned through experience it's about you. Otherwise I could
Speaker 1: tell my own experiences specifically. But ten percent of the
Speaker 1: public is certifiably insane. Literally literally, I'm not a good
Speaker 1: joke because I have a bad experience. But you don't
Speaker 1: know which ten percent it is. That's funny. The person
Speaker 1: who seems so reasonable, all of a sudden you find
Speaker 1: they're the craziest. Just kind of like email. The people
Speaker 1: who send the longest email are bad person of person
Speaker 1: people send the briefest email, they're the ones you connect
Speaker 1: with offlat Okay, but let's get back. So when you're
Speaker 1: when you're playing the saxophone, you're playing in your brother's band.
Speaker 1: Are you also playing in school bands marching bands? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I was not coordinated enough to to march and play
Speaker 1: at the same time, so I kind of got excused
Speaker 1: from marching band. I had a band teacher named Mr
Speaker 1: camp Uh in at Taft High School in in Tarzana
Speaker 1: are in Woodland Hills, and he excused me from marching
Speaker 1: in the marching band. And I God, bless that guy.
Speaker 1: You know, she's so nice to me. But since you
Speaker 1: were playing in this band, did you get any recognition
Speaker 1: in your high school for that? Well? Mr camp was
Speaker 1: really there were two music teachers, Mrs Brown and Junior
Speaker 1: High school was my first real music teacher, and then
Speaker 1: Mr camp Uh And these are two people that that
Speaker 1: truly kind of saw something in me and and nurtured that.
Speaker 1: And then when I started to have more when I
Speaker 1: graduated from college and I met a couple of other
Speaker 1: people that were really, you know, those are the people.
Speaker 1: The best way that that I could describe them is
Speaker 1: when you go to a bowling alley when the kids
Speaker 1: playing uh bowling, you know, and then they now nowadays
Speaker 1: you can put those things in the in the gutters,
Speaker 1: so you don't ever have a gutter ball football. Those people.
Speaker 1: I've had some people that were like those kinds of
Speaker 1: things for me that kept my ball in play. If
Speaker 1: you're part of the expression um and and without whom
Speaker 1: I don't think that I would be sitting here talking
Speaker 1: to you. They saw something in me that I didn't
Speaker 1: know was there. And whether it was Mr Camp who
Speaker 1: kind of like the just and he was a real
Speaker 1: like salty character. This was the time. It was a
Speaker 1: chain smoker, bad attitude, just miserable guy. You know. This
Speaker 1: was a time when the he was he was a
Speaker 1: saxophone player himself and a music teacher and it was
Speaker 1: a time in public schools where the music classes were
Speaker 1: being shrunk and so he was having to teach more math,
Speaker 1: which he hated. So he was just a cranky old
Speaker 1: you know, sot and uh. But yet with me he
Speaker 1: was he showed a real soft side and real nurturing
Speaker 1: side and really gave me some of those those early
Speaker 1: moments where I saw a little glimmer of what could be.
Speaker 1: But I never ever thought that this would be my
Speaker 1: my living Let's go back to the beginning. As someone
Speaker 1: who's never put her my mouth to a read on
Speaker 1: a saxophone, you had a natural affinity. But it looks
Speaker 1: like something that would be hard to learn. How how
Speaker 1: long does it take for someone to actually be able
Speaker 1: to play the saxophone? When I picked up the instrument
Speaker 1: in the first uh, in the first few months, my mom,
Speaker 1: God bless her, she made me stuff a sock in
Speaker 1: the bell of my mom which only half masks the sound.
Speaker 1: But let me just say this, for that first year,
Speaker 1: you gotta have some really loving people around you, because
Speaker 1: otherwise you're going to drive people crazy because it's not
Speaker 1: a not a particularly nice sound. But my parents, this
Speaker 1: is the kind of people that they were. They turned
Speaker 1: their garage into a music room, a soundproof music room
Speaker 1: from my brother and I to be able to to
Speaker 1: to do what to our hearts content, what we wanted
Speaker 1: to do. So they were very I mean, I'm looking
Speaker 1: back at them and what they did for us. They
Speaker 1: were exceptional parents, very loving and very nurtural, which is
Speaker 1: not necessarily something that you'd see every day from you
Speaker 1: know the no believe me. No, I could go on,
Speaker 1: but as I say, this podcast is about you. So
Speaker 1: were you a good student and they're talking about academics.
Speaker 1: M you know, not bad okay, never never really loving school?
Speaker 1: But but did okay you know, B plus a minus.
Speaker 1: So you end up going to u c l A. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're living in tar Siana. Did you live in Westwood
Speaker 1: or did you commute? Know? The first year I lived
Speaker 1: in Sprawl Hall in the dorms at U c l A.
Speaker 1: And uh I was a communications major. I took one
Speaker 1: year off during the five years that I was in
Speaker 1: that time period, and I went to a music school
Speaker 1: called the Dick Grove School of Music, which sadly no
Speaker 1: longer exists, but at the time it was an amazing
Speaker 1: place to go where it was very international. A lot
Speaker 1: of other people came from from different countries to learn
Speaker 1: composing and arranging. It was not necessarily a music school
Speaker 1: about performing. I mean, they did have performance classes, but
Speaker 1: for me that the principal program was this thing called
Speaker 1: c A P Composing and Arranging programs where Dick Grove
Speaker 1: taught that, and every week you'd have to write a
Speaker 1: chart in a different format, a different genre. So you
Speaker 1: one week was country, the next few week was big band,
Speaker 1: the next week was Broadway, and you had to actually
Speaker 1: right and copy a whole chart for an orchestra every week.
Speaker 1: It was the hard I think it might have been
Speaker 1: the hardest thing I ever did musically. Um. But by
Speaker 1: the end of that year, you knew a lot about music,
Speaker 1: and you knew how to read and write at a
Speaker 1: level that many people do not, almost no popular musicians.
Speaker 1: So when was that in your college career? That was
Speaker 1: in my third oh, no second year, so I had
Speaker 1: a one year of college. It took one year off
Speaker 1: and then I've been went back to c l A. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what was the thought process going to Dick Grove? Um,
Speaker 1: It just seemed like, if I was ever going to
Speaker 1: do this, this was the time to do it. And
Speaker 1: I had the support of my parents and my brother
Speaker 1: who went through the the CAP program before. He said,
Speaker 1: this is something you really need to do, and so
Speaker 1: it just seemed like the right thing to do. But
Speaker 1: then I went back to U c l A and
Speaker 1: I graduated. Okay, you went back to U c l A.
Speaker 1: There was no thought of turning professional at that point. No, okay,
Speaker 1: so you go back to U c l A. And
Speaker 1: you end up majoring in communications and then you graduate.
Speaker 1: What year do you graduate? So six? The economy is
Speaker 1: relatively good. What are your thoughts for a career of
Speaker 1: any stripe? On my graduation day, my Jewish parents look
Speaker 1: at me with that look. You know you you're off
Speaker 1: the payroll. You better knew. I had no prospects of anything,
Speaker 1: and so I made a deal with them. I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try music for six months and if I
Speaker 1: can get something going with music, great, and if not,
Speaker 1: after six months, I will go and get some job.
Speaker 1: And I was fine with that. I was fine and
Speaker 1: making that deal. And two weeks after I graduated, I
Speaker 1: got a call from Bobby Calwell if you remember that,
Speaker 1: And of course, and Bobby was putting together a band,
Speaker 1: A new band can do some gigs in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and I auditioned for him and I got the gig,
Speaker 1: and um, a couple of weeks later, after rehearsal, we're
Speaker 1: at a place called at my place, remember that. So
Speaker 1: this was and everybody was there because Bobby called. This
Speaker 1: was his re emergence too, and um, it was very exciting.
Speaker 1: So it was a two show night True story. First
Speaker 1: show and every uh every song of Bobby's had a
Speaker 1: sack solo, so that's why I was there. So um
Speaker 1: and I noticed he would sing the song and then
Speaker 1: during the sex sol he would kind of move off
Speaker 1: from the side of the stage, but I didn't move.
Speaker 1: I stayed in my little spot because I was kind
Speaker 1: of shy. And uh. So the show ends and Bobby says,
Speaker 1: I need to talk to you, and I figured, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get fired my first freaking gig. So he
Speaker 1: he comes and he says, what are you doing? Man? Uh,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? He said, I'm trying to you know,
Speaker 1: during your sex sol, I'm giving you the space. You
Speaker 1: should go up there and take it over. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do. I'm trying to give you the spotlight.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay. Well he never needed to
Speaker 1: say anything again because the second show I just launched
Speaker 1: right into it. It It was the first time I remember
Speaker 1: that it was like that, the rush of being the
Speaker 1: focus of attention on on a bandstand, because up to
Speaker 1: that point I had never been the guy that people
Speaker 1: focus on and I was very comfortable being in the background.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that this was something that was
Speaker 1: inside of me. And Bobby was the first person to
Speaker 1: to nurture that and say to push me to the
Speaker 1: front of the stage. And then I really liked it
Speaker 1: a lot. Okay, for those who've seen you live, you're
Speaker 1: very active and to use the uh the phrase, everybody's
Speaker 1: very into it. Were you that active and into it
Speaker 1: from the beginning, I think I learned learned it and
Speaker 1: probably those early days I was trying to feel my
Speaker 1: way through it. Um. The second gig that I got,
Speaker 1: the big prominent gig was from Bobby. I met a
Speaker 1: guy named Jeff Lorver. I hear from Jeff lord an
Speaker 1: email all the time. Yeah. Now he's you know, he's
Speaker 1: very thoughtful and very interesting guys. He's brilliant. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's a genius. And so I just want to go
Speaker 1: back to the Bobby called gig very slowly. He was
Speaker 1: aware of you, or you were aware of him. How
Speaker 1: did you get the audition? There was a woman and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember her name, but she was a
Speaker 1: publisher who had seen me play with somebody else and
Speaker 1: back then like that was really the way it worked
Speaker 1: back then. Maybe it's still this, you know, for for
Speaker 1: new artists now it's like that word of mouth kind
Speaker 1: of thing. But somebody sees you and goes yeah, And
Speaker 1: then they talked to somebody else, and it was this
Speaker 1: publisher talking to another publisher who happened to be the
Speaker 1: publisher for Bobby Calwell, who told him about me, And
Speaker 1: the next thing I knew, I got this call from him. Okay,
Speaker 1: now trying to see how to think of how to
Speaker 1: verbalize this if you're a hot guitarist in that era.
Speaker 1: There are a million hot guitarists in Los Angeles, million
Speaker 1: people calls. Some might be a little bit better than
Speaker 1: others when you're getting this gig. How many exceptional saxophonists
Speaker 1: are there in Los Angeles? I think there's a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that there were a lot. There's
Speaker 1: always a lot of really wonderful musicians, especially in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: This is to me still to this day, Bob. I
Speaker 1: feel like I, you know, I've been here my whole
Speaker 1: life pretty much, and I feel like I know the
Speaker 1: community of musicians, and then all of a sudden I'll
Speaker 1: find this whole other vat of musicians that I didn't
Speaker 1: even know about. An incredible musicians. So it was that
Speaker 1: way back then. Maybe not as many as there are
Speaker 1: now today, but there's certainly no shortage of people that
Speaker 1: could do that gig, right, Okay, so then you get
Speaker 1: a gig with Jeff Lerber. Yeah, And so what happens
Speaker 1: then or thereafter? Well, the audition for Laudber took place
Speaker 1: at his house and Pacific Palisades, and it was because
Speaker 1: of the Bobby gig. And so I walked in and
Speaker 1: we played a blues I remember this, and and Lauder
Speaker 1: has talked about this too. We talked about that because
Speaker 1: he was a guest on our cruise, this last cruise
Speaker 1: in Australia, and we had a one arm one where
Speaker 1: we talked about that exact moment of walking into his studio.
Speaker 1: I was a nervous wreck. I'm like, this is a
Speaker 1: guy that I grew up listening to and idolizing, and
Speaker 1: now I mean his studio, keyboards plastered everywhere, and I'm
Speaker 1: auditioning to be in his band. And um, he says,
Speaker 1: why don't we just play like a B flat blues?
Speaker 1: And so we got one course through the blues and
Speaker 1: he stopped playing and I said, okay, well I didn't
Speaker 1: get this gig, and so he says, yeah, man, um
Speaker 1: let me. Uh, I'm gonna talk to my managers. We'll
Speaker 1: get your information and uh, the first gig is in
Speaker 1: like three weeks and here's what we're gonna be wearing.
Speaker 1: And I also want to talk to you about like,
Speaker 1: I think you should make your own records, dude, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, typical Larber, just just going for it. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, my jaw is on the floor. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what the hell are you talking about? What are you smoking? What? Really?
Speaker 1: And he was the first person that said on that day,
Speaker 1: on my audition day, that I should make my own records.
Speaker 1: And up to that point, I had never the thought
Speaker 1: had never even crossed my mind. So I am I
Speaker 1: worship the ground that that man walks on. And he said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make some demos and we're gonna get you signed.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what happened. Wow, So we have to
Speaker 1: credit Larber. Okay, so because Bobby, but I've tried to say,
Speaker 1: as far as the vision to be recording artists, So
Speaker 1: from that first date, how much longer period of time
Speaker 1: after that, do you make those demos we started right away.
Speaker 1: Really yeah. I think I got signed in by Bruce
Speaker 1: lan involved me. He rest in peace. I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: talked about Bruce on your show in years past. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was one of the greats of music. And he
Speaker 1: signed me. I think it was to Capitol Records and
Speaker 1: my first record came out in I remember really uh,
Speaker 1: um a great meeting with Lorber and myself and my
Speaker 1: manager at the time, who will remain nameless. I was
Speaker 1: gonna get there next but keep going. Um at at
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers Records with Tommy Lapuma and we played the
Speaker 1: demos for Tommy Lapuma and I could tell that Tommy
Speaker 1: liked it, but I think that he was not particularly
Speaker 1: excited about having an other artists with the manager at
Speaker 1: the time, and so he he said, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to sign you. And that's when we went to Bruce
Speaker 1: len Ball And it's like one of those things when
Speaker 1: you think about at the time, I was crushed because
Speaker 1: let's be on Warner Brothers, that amazing roster. Think about
Speaker 1: alg Ro, George Benson and all those incredible artists, Miles
Speaker 1: David So anyway, um, and then the next thing it was.
Speaker 1: It was Bruce ln Ball and there was a cassette.
Speaker 1: This was back in the time when the demo was
Speaker 1: on cassette. It wound up on Bruce Lamball's office, uh,
Speaker 1: in his desk in his office and um, I remember
Speaker 1: getting this this. Um there's no from him saying I
Speaker 1: really really love your love your music. I want to
Speaker 1: meet you. And that was the beginning. It was just
Speaker 1: unbelievable how that all. Because the thing is, that's it's
Speaker 1: funny if you if you have that dream from the
Speaker 1: start and then it happens, it's got that feeling to it.
Speaker 1: But if you don't, if it's not part of your dream,
Speaker 1: because it really wasn't. When it happens, it is like
Speaker 1: it's just a head scratcher, like how did how did
Speaker 1: I get here? And still to this day, so many
Speaker 1: years later, Bob, I'm still saying the same thing, like
Speaker 1: how did I get here? Why am I here? Like
Speaker 1: there are people showing up to hear me play saxophones,
Speaker 1: just like it's still and I don't mean to be
Speaker 1: you know, if it's sounds if it's coming off sounding
Speaker 1: uh not authentic. It really it's I understand what you're
Speaker 1: saying it's you're You're not just you know, being humble
Speaker 1: for for appearances. Do you ever go to therapy to
Speaker 1: discuss these issues. Not in therapy per se um. I
Speaker 1: have used therapy in years past, but I have There's
Speaker 1: some people that are in my life, teachers and and um,
Speaker 1: you know, spiritual people that I will talk to about
Speaker 1: these kinds of things to put in perspective and to
Speaker 1: understand what's going on. Um. It's been been an interesting
Speaker 1: thing because I just had This is a very timely
Speaker 1: thing because I had back surgery about seven weeks ago
Speaker 1: and now I'm starting on on this tour. We're on
Speaker 1: a Summer Horns tour this summer, and this is the
Speaker 1: first time ever where I've kind of in my whole
Speaker 1: life I really had to show up as being a
Speaker 1: bit needy. And it's a very awkward feeling for me.
Speaker 1: And so I'm staying on the because I can't really
Speaker 1: do of what I want to do on stage at
Speaker 1: this moment. I will come back to it eventually, but
Speaker 1: I'm probably about fifty of the antics. It's interesting too,
Speaker 1: because without having I can't actually do the physical things
Speaker 1: jumping around that I have done what people expect of me.
Speaker 1: But it's forcing me to be to really focus more
Speaker 1: on the music side of things. And these shows we
Speaker 1: just started, so it's just now three shows in. I
Speaker 1: could tell there's like a different texture to the music
Speaker 1: this time. So it's kind of an interesting thing to embrace.
Speaker 1: How long after you had pain, did you have surgery?
Speaker 1: I've been dealing with the uh. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: workplace stuff, so I've been because of my jumping around
Speaker 1: for the almost thirty years, I've had a lot of
Speaker 1: back problems and it just had to be addressed. So
Speaker 1: but it was really bad pain for about the last
Speaker 1: two years. And what was the diagnosis. I mean it
Speaker 1: was the most uh, like harsh sciatica, so herniated discs
Speaker 1: herniated disc. And then are you doing the physical therapy?
Speaker 1: Haven't started physical therapy because it's not quite ready yet. Okay,
Speaker 1: when it is ready, that's the most important thing. Let's
Speaker 1: go back. When did you get that first manager? The
Speaker 1: first manager was the same. You can probably put two
Speaker 1: and two together. One of my gigs right after Jeff
Speaker 1: Lorber was working with a guy named Richard Marks, and
Speaker 1: Richard Marks, the a songwriter and singer, UH was on
Speaker 1: Manhattan Records, also signed by Bruce Lunn Ball and we
Speaker 1: shared a manager at the time, and our manager, my
Speaker 1: manager and his manager said you should really go out
Speaker 1: and play uh this tour with Richard and he was
Speaker 1: a brand new artist and playing music that was not jazz. Obviously,
Speaker 1: he was playing more rock. Had a monster hit though
Speaker 1: you Ain't Seen Nothing or whatever it was called. Yea
Speaker 1: even play on it Haven't done Nothing good memory, but
Speaker 1: he had. I brought the record because the track was
Speaker 1: so good. He had a string of hits, right, but
Speaker 1: that was the first one. Then he came more Mellow.
Speaker 1: That was a real rocket track. Yeah, I mean he
Speaker 1: had had a bunch of hits up that first album.
Speaker 1: It was a really interesting thing to see because I
Speaker 1: remember the first shows that we did. Do you remember
Speaker 1: a club called Sash and it was in North Hollywood
Speaker 1: somewhere around there. That was his first gig, probably about
Speaker 1: a hundred people and most you're not talking about that
Speaker 1: long low club north of Ventura in between Laurel Canyon
Speaker 1: and UH Universe. Oh yeah, I was there. Had I
Speaker 1: had a process through from the eighties more than once.
Speaker 1: It was a dance club when it wasn't a live show. Right,
Speaker 1: that was his first show and there's probably a hundred
Speaker 1: people there. And on that same tour, that was the
Speaker 1: very first show. And on that same tour, which lasted
Speaker 1: almost um, about a year and a half, we were
Speaker 1: playing to ten thou people at night. And so part
Speaker 1: of that unit of watching an artist go, seeing the
Speaker 1: power of hit songs to propel an artist forward, it
Speaker 1: was an interesting thing to see. And UM, so that's
Speaker 1: how that's how that happened. So when did you switch managers? Um?
Speaker 1: It happened right around the time that my first record
Speaker 1: came out. And how did how did that happen? I'd
Speaker 1: you decided to break it off? I decided to get
Speaker 1: a new person. Well, UM, okay, I can tell this story.
Speaker 1: I mean this is a podcast, right, can you can
Speaker 1: I tell this story? Richard? Um? And Richard and I
Speaker 1: are great now. But um, at the time, UM, he
Speaker 1: when I didn't want to, Um, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: play in his band anymore. I wanted to focus on
Speaker 1: my solo stuff. He didn't really love that idea so much.
Speaker 1: And then UM, he made it kind of very clear
Speaker 1: to his manager, was my manager, that this was not appropriate.
Speaker 1: And so the manager said to me, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: can't manage you anymore. But I got this other person
Speaker 1: and it turned At the time I was devastated, it
Speaker 1: turned out to be the great thing. And so this
Speaker 1: woman who her name was Shelley Hebrew and she's out
Speaker 1: of the business now, but Shelley for seven years was
Speaker 1: my manager and she was great. You know, she really
Speaker 1: knew what to do and she and then that relationship
Speaker 1: sort of came to an end. And then uh, in
Speaker 1: the late nineties, I started working with Bill Leopold and
Speaker 1: Mark Graham, who have been my managers for all these
Speaker 1: twenty years, and we've developed an incredible relationship and and
Speaker 1: they've helped me. I can't even tell you how much
Speaker 1: they've helped me. So it's kind of a it takes
Speaker 1: a village, Okay, So ultimately you have a hit, right
Speaker 1: I do. So that was when their first or second album,
Speaker 1: well the first album was that came out on Capitol.
Speaker 1: I remember because the there was Bruce Lemon was so
Speaker 1: upset at the sales department for not taking it seriously.
Speaker 1: He was trying to make this a real priority, and
Speaker 1: the sales department said, well, it's a saxophone player. What
Speaker 1: we don't have to. How do you remember? Amazing? Okay,
Speaker 1: keep going so uh. I think at the they put
Speaker 1: something like eleventh thousand units out for the first week,
Speaker 1: which back then was a very low number, and um,
Speaker 1: but then it's it just started to sell. My record
Speaker 1: came out at the same time in the fall when
Speaker 1: there was an explosion of radio in the smooth jazz world,
Speaker 1: Like there were radio stations popping up in every city
Speaker 1: smooth jazz radio stations, and it just sort of like
Speaker 1: was sort of dovetailed at the same time that this
Speaker 1: radio format was burgeoning, and the music just fit right
Speaker 1: in and I started doing a lot of promotions with
Speaker 1: the radio stations and it just worked. And that first album,
Speaker 1: um became I think it's sold probably four thousand. It
Speaker 1: ended up selling something like four thousand, surprising everybody at Capital.
Speaker 1: And then my next record, which came out about three
Speaker 1: years later, put a lot of resources into it. It's
Speaker 1: called was called Lucky Man, and I think that's the
Speaker 1: song that you're talking about, A song called You Make
Speaker 1: Me Smile. It came out that really became not a
Speaker 1: real pop hit, but pretty close. I mean, for an
Speaker 1: instrumental came pretty close getting into the business side. You
Speaker 1: sold four hundred thousand records. Do you get a royalty check?
Speaker 1: After the second album? You get a royalty check. I've
Speaker 1: never received a royalty check. That's definitive. That's what I
Speaker 1: wanted to know. Okay, so you have a hit off
Speaker 1: the second album kind of walked me through when's when's
Speaker 1: the third album come out? The third album came out
Speaker 1: in six and that was my um Like all artists,
Speaker 1: most artists, I should say where they say, I've got
Speaker 1: another idea, and it was coming off a huge success.
Speaker 1: That second album went gold. I think it's sold maybe
Speaker 1: close to seven thousand. Can you imagine seven thousand copies
Speaker 1: of a SOX player's albums Cheez So? And then I
Speaker 1: came up with this ideas like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be boxed in by by um foreman, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be boxed in by the sound. I have this idea.
Speaker 1: I went up. I had this place up in northern
Speaker 1: California and Saucelito. I came up with this, this idea
Speaker 1: to combine the saxophone with instruments that you would normally
Speaker 1: not hear it, with mandolin and melotron and oregon and uh,
Speaker 1: steel string guitar and um, you know, I came up
Speaker 1: with this album called alf the Beaten Path, and it
Speaker 1: was the biggest dud ever. It came out with a thump,
Speaker 1: and I think it's still sold probably, you know, but
Speaker 1: it was not going to the right direction now and
Speaker 1: it was a huge disappointment, and I was crushed because
Speaker 1: I really put a lot of myself in retrospect. Do
Speaker 1: you still like it? I do, actually, And there are
Speaker 1: some fans. There's a group of fans that will still
Speaker 1: say that that is to them, that is their favorite
Speaker 1: album because it was very, very different. It was took
Speaker 1: a lot of chances. But because of that experience, uh,
Speaker 1: and I look at album making is sort of like
Speaker 1: stepping stones. I couldn't have made the next album, which
Speaker 1: was ended up being my most successful one, called The Dance.
Speaker 1: I couldn't have made The Dance had I not made
Speaker 1: Off the Beaten Path and and gone through that experience
Speaker 1: to make an album like The Dance, which was really
Speaker 1: like a return to the sound that that made me popular. Well,
Speaker 1: how self conscious were you when you before you made
Speaker 1: The Dance that I have to use this particular line. Um,
Speaker 1: it was not like somebody saying there was never any
Speaker 1: pressure from record company person or because I look at
Speaker 1: it my situation as a recording artist. Over the years
Speaker 1: that I've been doing this and I've had I've gotten
Speaker 1: a chance to work with people who are great that
Speaker 1: never stuffed things down my throat. If they made suggestions,
Speaker 1: they were suggestions, they were not you have to do this.
Speaker 1: And usually the advice and the people who came to
Speaker 1: came to me with with things to say, their advice
Speaker 1: was good and I would often listen to them and
Speaker 1: they would be right, you know. So it's it was
Speaker 1: kind of a collaborative process. Now, what point do you
Speaker 1: become a dj uh? That happened kind of probably around
Speaker 1: maybe in the mid nineties. How did that gig come about?
Speaker 1: We had the Wave which was like the first smooth
Speaker 1: jazz UH station of any note in America. They played
Speaker 1: your music. How did you end up becoming a DJ Well,
Speaker 1: it was a syndicated show first where this this Fellows
Speaker 1: program director came to me. He got a gig doing
Speaker 1: a network um show and he said, we wanted to
Speaker 1: our Our idea is to have recording artists most weekend
Speaker 1: shows on the radio, and we think that you could
Speaker 1: be you could have your own show. And I was like,
Speaker 1: really no experience whatsoever. And I remember those first demos
Speaker 1: of going into the studio and putting it together and
Speaker 1: I put on my radio voice and stop, stop it.
Speaker 1: Don't do that anymore. Just be yourself. There was a
Speaker 1: really good lesson to learn, and I started doing that
Speaker 1: in the early days. That was in How many stations
Speaker 1: did it ultimately get to we had on our syndicated
Speaker 1: show in the United States at the time we were
Speaker 1: the biggest was probably well over a hundred significant number,
Speaker 1: well over a hundred, and then there was the international
Speaker 1: side of things, and the show was how long. There's
Speaker 1: a two hour weekends show called The Dave CAUs Radio Show,
Speaker 1: which by the way, is still on the radio twenty over,
Speaker 1: twenty five years later. It's uninterrupted on the radio for
Speaker 1: twenty five years. Okay, you're making new shows. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you make a new show. Yeah, I'm sure you string
Speaker 1: them together, you do like three in a day, fortnity.
Speaker 1: And how often you have guests? We do guests every show.
Speaker 1: We have one featured artist every show. We have some
Speaker 1: other drops that we use with other artists. Okay, and
Speaker 1: then how do you get on the wave? The wave
Speaker 1: happened later on down the road where the program director,
Speaker 1: who's the same guy by the way that uh that
Speaker 1: I started the weekend show with, he said, UM, would
Speaker 1: you ever be interested in doing this in the morning,
Speaker 1: and we're thinking about doing an artist driven morning show.
Speaker 1: And so that's when Pat Prescott from New York, who's
Speaker 1: radio legend, she came out. She's one of my great friends.
Speaker 1: I went to New York and I said, if I'm
Speaker 1: going to do this, you have to do this with me,
Speaker 1: because I cannot do this alone. And we did that
Speaker 1: for six years on the radio every morning and uh,
Speaker 1: which for a musician is quite the feat. And I
Speaker 1: knew that I wouldn't be something that I would do forever,
Speaker 1: but I really enjoyed doing that for six years. And
Speaker 1: then we morphed into an afternoon syndicated show that was
Speaker 1: on a bunch of smooth jazz stations through a network
Speaker 1: for I think I did that for about maybe another
Speaker 1: three or four years, and then the smooth jazz as
Speaker 1: a format kind of started to really wane. A lot
Speaker 1: of these stations flip formats, and UM, about three years
Speaker 1: ago I started working with my friend Trinity Cologne at
Speaker 1: Sirius XM, and we developed something called the Dave Case
Speaker 1: Lounge that you can now hear on Sirius XM on
Speaker 1: the weekends and you can only hear that one is
Speaker 1: only okay, So, uh, how to what degreeed being on
Speaker 1: the radio every morning? We havoc with your musical career?
Speaker 1: It was not easy. Those those years were like trying
Speaker 1: to it was it was time well for the age
Speaker 1: that I was at. Because I was on the road.
Speaker 1: We had this apparatus that I would take with me
Speaker 1: that I could connect back into UH to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: It was really quite technologically impressive, especially for me who
Speaker 1: was an analog man in a in a digital world.
Speaker 1: But it really it was a very nice thing. And
Speaker 1: they the station and the producers really went above and
Speaker 1: beyond to make it work. And admittedly we did record
Speaker 1: some shows, not all shows, but some shows were recorded
Speaker 1: in advance UH and played the morning of when I
Speaker 1: couldn't actually be there. And it was how many hours?
Speaker 1: That was three hours? That's a lot of hours. So
Speaker 1: when you were on the wave, it was only heard
Speaker 1: on the wave. Yeah, that was was it lucrative? Very
Speaker 1: and did it pay dividends for your career. I think
Speaker 1: it did in that it was the first sort of
Speaker 1: lately now i've kind of I'm sort of looked at
Speaker 1: as somewhat of a host of bringing people together, uh collaborator,
Speaker 1: you know, or bringing artists together under a canopy. And
Speaker 1: that was kind of like the beginning of of that
Speaker 1: uh stage of my life where I got a chance
Speaker 1: to really interview a lot of artists and be a
Speaker 1: cheerleader for other artists. And that's something that I that
Speaker 1: comes very natural to me and something I love to
Speaker 1: do because I think especially when you talk about jazz
Speaker 1: music or instrumental music, which is a niche, it's sort
Speaker 1: of off to the side, but I think it's an
Speaker 1: important thing, you know, even for people who have taste
Speaker 1: in music that are completely different, that there's a time
Speaker 1: and a place for instrumental music for every music lover, uh,
Speaker 1: no matter what it is that they love most. And
Speaker 1: so I just love being a cheerleader, being able to
Speaker 1: stand up and and and and share this great music
Speaker 1: and the artists that are making it. And I think
Speaker 1: also what happened I've seen it a lot too, where
Speaker 1: if artists come on the show, if I'm talking to them,
Speaker 1: that there's a intimacy of an artist talking to another artist,
Speaker 1: that the communication can can be have a different texture.
Speaker 1: There was one time that where it was so apparent
Speaker 1: where I was interviewing. Because of our schedules, a lot
Speaker 1: of the interviews have to be on the phone. So
Speaker 1: I was interviewing George Benson on the phone and George
Speaker 1: was just I guess it was one of the one
Speaker 1: interview of a bunch for the whole day, and he
Speaker 1: was just giving me these one two word answers, and
Speaker 1: I was like, what am I gonna do to connect
Speaker 1: with this guy? It's just not happening. And so finally
Speaker 1: I said, George, oh no, he said, He said, is
Speaker 1: this the Dave cause that plays the Sacks Dave Come.
Speaker 1: I said, George, it's me. You know, we're friends, shared
Speaker 1: the stage together. I have a show, you know. And
Speaker 1: then I could not get the guy shut up. It's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. But it was a great illustration of
Speaker 1: what can happen when when artists are talking to other
Speaker 1: artists and feel that, you know, I mean, it's like,
Speaker 1: I know you're not a musician, but I feel so
Speaker 1: comfortable talking to you because I know that you love it.
Speaker 1: You love it and you understand it and you're inside
Speaker 1: of it. And so much of us artists, we we
Speaker 1: talked to people who just are not there. They're just
Speaker 1: answers or asking the questions that are on the piece
Speaker 1: of paper, and you feel it and you just don't know.
Speaker 1: It's not it's you don't want to open up. But
Speaker 1: when you feel somebody on the other end of the
Speaker 1: microphone that really is empathetic, that understands it, really gets
Speaker 1: inside of it, you want to talk forever. Okay, so
Speaker 1: the dances, Yes, when's the next album? The next album
Speaker 1: was uh something called uh I think now I'm losing
Speaker 1: track of number four. The reason I really ask I
Speaker 1: don't need the specifics is starting in the turn of
Speaker 1: the century, the whole music business goes with change as
Speaker 1: a result of napster, digitization, the Internet. Do you feel
Speaker 1: that on your end? Well, I did, eventually I made.
Speaker 1: I spent twenty years in Capital um seven presidents or
Speaker 1: not and um, I don't know if that's a Guinness
Speaker 1: Book of World Records feat But to survive, to actually
Speaker 1: survive as an artist on a label with seven different presidents,
Speaker 1: if they're not vested in you. It's very hard if
Speaker 1: they didn't sign you. I had a I had this
Speaker 1: like m O where I would just keep my head down.
Speaker 1: I would not really, you know, try and be noticed
Speaker 1: that much. Just turn in my records. They would release them,
Speaker 1: they would be they do fine. And that's how we
Speaker 1: made it happen. But eventually my contract, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: my contract actually expired after twenty years. It was renewed
Speaker 1: a couple of times and then it was done. And
Speaker 1: it was like, yeah, your contract is done. And they
Speaker 1: didn't renew it. And I didn't think that they would
Speaker 1: dream new it. And so that's when I think. I
Speaker 1: can't remember what year it was, but it was in
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's that I went over to to Concord,
Speaker 1: and um it was Hal Gaba and Norman Leard that
Speaker 1: that made it a very very comfortable home for me.
Speaker 1: And I got to work with my buddy John Burke
Speaker 1: on a bunch of albums, and um, that was a
Speaker 1: great relationship and still is. I don't I release some
Speaker 1: stuff on my own and if I want to, I
Speaker 1: think that the opportunity is there now. If I wanted
Speaker 1: to release an album on concorde. I think that the
Speaker 1: doors always open um. But to what degree is your
Speaker 1: career presently driven by recorded music? Interesting? I've gone through,
Speaker 1: admittedly kind of a bad attitude about recorded music over
Speaker 1: the last say, seven or eight years, because of the
Speaker 1: reasons you're talking about. You pour over these things, these
Speaker 1: are like children, these songs, and you spend the time
Speaker 1: and spend the money, and then there's no radio stations
Speaker 1: to play it, and then there's no record company or
Speaker 1: no record stores. And you know, what's the purpose? Why?
Speaker 1: I remember that only the beginning of my career, it
Speaker 1: was you you make a record, you go out on
Speaker 1: tour to support the record. The record is it? That's
Speaker 1: what you're doing? You know, it's all to sell the record.
Speaker 1: And now I mean I've gone through the last several
Speaker 1: years where I've made recordings to promote tours, right, just
Speaker 1: the reverse. Okay, So at this point from your perspective, interesting,
Speaker 1: because I certainly can see it on my level, used
Speaker 1: to be a cohesive business. Now really everybody is just
Speaker 1: their own business. Do you view it that way? I'm
Speaker 1: just in the Dave Cose business, and forget the numbers,
Speaker 1: the charts, etcetera. If it's working for me and it's
Speaker 1: what I want to do. I'm satisfied. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that that streaming has revolutionized and I don't need to
Speaker 1: tell you it's given a tremendous shot in the arm
Speaker 1: to our business. And I'm a fan like I think
Speaker 1: that Spotify is amazing where you can some song or
Speaker 1: artist hits your head and two seconds later you can
Speaker 1: be listening to that music right there. It's amazing. What
Speaker 1: that's what's what's possible nowadays. And I do think that
Speaker 1: it's it's forced us. The the technological um uh achievements
Speaker 1: of recently that have happened recently have forced musicians and
Speaker 1: artists to be to wear more hats. Like it used
Speaker 1: to be where you could just be an artist and
Speaker 1: where that hat, you'd have the manager, you'd have the
Speaker 1: record company, you'd have the promotion people blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and you could have the team of people that do
Speaker 1: all that work for you. But now most of the
Speaker 1: people that are in my world do it all themselves,
Speaker 1: you know. And I still have management, um but I
Speaker 1: now I'm starting to release to self release. We just
Speaker 1: came out with a live album from our cruise that
Speaker 1: we put out by ourselves because we can. It's so easy,
Speaker 1: you know, flick of a switch. It's available everywhere. And
Speaker 1: I think that now you whereas it used to be
Speaker 1: in the beginning of my career where we would try
Speaker 1: and hit big home runs or get as much you know,
Speaker 1: throw things out there and try and get as money
Speaker 1: many people as possible, now I look at it being
Speaker 1: more of a Instead of a horizontal picture, it's more
Speaker 1: of a vertical picture. So it's a small audience or
Speaker 1: smaller audience. Let's just say there's I'm gonna be super
Speaker 1: conservative and say say there's fifty thousand people on planet
Speaker 1: Earth that are really super interested in what I have
Speaker 1: to do or what I have to say, and so
Speaker 1: we we we really target those fifty thou people, and
Speaker 1: how can we capture them and keep them engaged with
Speaker 1: a variety of different things. On one level, there's the
Speaker 1: there might be an album that comes out, okay, On
Speaker 1: the very top level, there's a cruise. So if you're
Speaker 1: really a fan and you want to have that immersive experience,
Speaker 1: you're gonna come on the day of cons That's exactly
Speaker 1: where I was going. So when was the first cruise? Uh?
Speaker 1: It happened almost about fifteen years ago, and I did
Speaker 1: five for UH another producer and learned the business. And
Speaker 1: then after five years of of doing that, then we
Speaker 1: took it in house. And we've now produced about ten
Speaker 1: years of cruises on our own. And has it always
Speaker 1: been the whole ship or part of a ship, always
Speaker 1: a full ship charter and always seven days seven days? Okay,
Speaker 1: So how did you how did you first? How did
Speaker 1: the first one start? The producer came to you. The
Speaker 1: producer came to me as a guy named Michael Lazarov
Speaker 1: and who had done a UH. He had a company
Speaker 1: called Jazz Cruises, and he thought that there should be
Speaker 1: a Dave Coss cruise and he went to my managers
Speaker 1: and said, you know, and and my managers came to
Speaker 1: me with the offer. And I saw the word cruise
Speaker 1: and I said thank you no, because immediately I thought
Speaker 1: about the cruise that my family and I took to
Speaker 1: in Sonata, and I hear it that was the worst
Speaker 1: thing ever. I was like, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: at a cruise ship, no way. And then he kept
Speaker 1: coming back and eventually came back with an offer that
Speaker 1: could not say no too. So that was my first experience,
Speaker 1: and then I saw what could happen. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say this, Uh that now within our world, with how
Speaker 1: much negativity and how much the public discourses so so
Speaker 1: kind of filled with vitriol, that these cruises have become
Speaker 1: havens for people that just want to for one week.
Speaker 1: And I know that people get off the ship and
Speaker 1: they go back to their regular lives and you know,
Speaker 1: goes back to normal, but for one week you can
Speaker 1: have young and old, and Republican and Democrat and gain
Speaker 1: Straits and every race. I mean, it's really a melting
Speaker 1: pot on these ships. And when you step foot on
Speaker 1: the ship, you even if you know not one person,
Speaker 1: you're amongst friends because the power of music to to
Speaker 1: to get people there and to unite people, that's an
Speaker 1: amazing thing. You could have two people that completely disagree
Speaker 1: about everything, but you play one song that they both
Speaker 1: like and you've got an opening. And that's what these
Speaker 1: cruises have proven proven to me. They're they're they're less
Speaker 1: about music and more about proving to all of us
Speaker 1: what's possible. It's a reminder of what's possible. But there
Speaker 1: is a lot of music tons. Okay, so you know,
Speaker 1: I'm friendly with Kid Rock and his old manager, and
Speaker 1: they would say first, you know, Kid Rock would literally
Speaker 1: shake everybody's hands. He's like, he's up twenty four hours
Speaker 1: straight and he doesn't even do a whole week. What's
Speaker 1: it like being the epicenter of the cruise, Well, it's
Speaker 1: the it's the hardest work that that I do during
Speaker 1: the year. We do two back to back nowadays, uh
Speaker 1: they sell out about a year in advance, and uh
Speaker 1: so and and our mantra is seeing the world together
Speaker 1: through music, So every year we go to a different
Speaker 1: place on the planet. Our last one was Australia, and
Speaker 1: so you if you can imagine, uh we had just
Speaker 1: the shy of four thousand people for two weeks, and
Speaker 1: nine percent of them came from the United States. So
Speaker 1: they have to get to Australia just to take the cruise.
Speaker 1: That's a huge commitment. So when they get there, they're
Speaker 1: pretty darn excited, and all the artists and musicians are excited.
Speaker 1: And so it is something that is not just top
Speaker 1: of mind or in the back of my mind. It's
Speaker 1: completely I wake up and go to bed with the
Speaker 1: thought of these guests and how can I deliver to
Speaker 1: them an experience that is unforgettable because I I know
Speaker 1: that there. They're really one thing about the money because
Speaker 1: it's not cheap, but it's another thing like they're giving
Speaker 1: me a week of their life to entertain them. So
Speaker 1: it's a it's a huge undertaking, it's a huge responsibility.
Speaker 1: But the funny thing is in in the moment, Like
Speaker 1: when I'm on the ship. I don't know how it's
Speaker 1: it's possible. Maybe it's just adrenaline or fumes or whatever,
Speaker 1: but I have this incredible energy level and I think
Speaker 1: it's really comes from our guests. I'm just so amazing.
Speaker 1: So if I'm one of the four thousand, am I
Speaker 1: gonna get face time with you? If I want it? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: It sounds me one week is bad enough. You do
Speaker 1: them back to back just because economically it's better to
Speaker 1: do it that way. Well, if you've imagine taking our
Speaker 1: our whole entourage is about a hundred and twenty people,
Speaker 1: So we take a hundred and twenty people musicians, crew, staff.
Speaker 1: We have to fly them to to Sydney. So if
Speaker 1: we did a cruise and then took time off, it
Speaker 1: just would be It's just that would make financials okay.
Speaker 1: So you do it for two weeks, How long does
Speaker 1: it take you to recover? I try not to talk
Speaker 1: for at least a week after two weeks vig on
Speaker 1: the cruise. Uh. This last time, I went to a
Speaker 1: place called i uh songs Saw in Cambodia, which is
Speaker 1: a private island. It's one of those islands that's so
Speaker 1: small that the huts are actually on jetties stilts. It's
Speaker 1: one of those kind of places. And I went with
Speaker 1: one of my best friends after the two weeks and
Speaker 1: pretty much didn't speak for about four days and then emotionally, okay,
Speaker 1: you don't speak for four days? How long? Because I
Speaker 1: know people have been on the tour for two and
Speaker 1: a half years, literally took him a year to recover.
Speaker 1: So how long does it take before you work again? Uh?
Speaker 1: It was probably about a month and a half or so.
Speaker 1: I think it was maybe about a month. I went
Speaker 1: and did a tour of Japan about a month after
Speaker 1: that that cruise. Okay, so these are obviously very lucrative.
Speaker 1: What do you do with the money? Uh? I just
Speaker 1: redid my kitchen. Yeah, I don't know, it's funny, like
Speaker 1: I don't um. I feel very blessed to be able
Speaker 1: to make a living for music and for to have
Speaker 1: done this for a for a long time. And I can.
Speaker 1: I could cry my eyes out if I really let
Speaker 1: myself think about my life and how this has all
Speaker 1: happened for me and the fact that I can that
Speaker 1: I can do this and and still um, after all
Speaker 1: these years, that people are still interested and still you
Speaker 1: know that the money is is it's not about money,
Speaker 1: It's not I know it's not about but the money
Speaker 1: is sitting in the bank. Do you spend it on?
Speaker 1: I mean, and you travel for business, so it's not
Speaker 1: like you're dying to travel. And like Tom Styer says,
Speaker 1: you can only have so many cars. You're only one person.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm not thinking deep, I'm just wondering because
Speaker 1: that's always somewhat of a driver. If I said go
Speaker 1: do it for free, you wouldn't do it for free.
Speaker 1: This this is a good question. And and I don't
Speaker 1: know because I don't think that nothing changes my life.
Speaker 1: My life is great. And uh, it's not like I
Speaker 1: want for anything, although I will tell you one thing,
Speaker 1: but this is gonna this is gonna take a lot
Speaker 1: of cruises to get to this point. But when I
Speaker 1: did UM two years of touring with Barry Manilow as
Speaker 1: his opening act. And Barry is a good friend of mine,
Speaker 1: so he said to me, why don't you come travel
Speaker 1: with me in the private plane? Like, of course, I
Speaker 1: so two years and we traveled. We did that a
Speaker 1: worldwide tour and it was an amazing experience for me
Speaker 1: after because this is already twenty five years into my
Speaker 1: solo career of having to prove myself again as an
Speaker 1: opening act. That was really really good because that I
Speaker 1: hadn't gone into the tool shed to do that UM
Speaker 1: in a long time. Where you're now in front of
Speaker 1: ten thousand people that have no idea who I am.
Speaker 1: Maybe they've heard my name, but they haven't heard my music,
Speaker 1: and I've got twenty five minutes or thirty minutes to
Speaker 1: prove myself. That was an amazing experience. But the best
Speaker 1: part was just, you know, living this life of of
Speaker 1: complete luxury. As soon as Barry shows over which I
Speaker 1: did the encore with him, were in the car that's
Speaker 1: inside the arena, into the right to the tarmac onto
Speaker 1: the private plane. Oftentimes we would do a show in
Speaker 1: the East Coast and I would be asleep in my
Speaker 1: bed the same night in Los Angeles after the after
Speaker 1: that show. So that tour ends and now I'm back
Speaker 1: doing my own shows. You love on it. I'm sitting
Speaker 1: like kid, you not Bob. I'm in the middle seats
Speaker 1: on Southwest Airlines and I take a picture of myself
Speaker 1: and I send it to Barry and I said, Barry,
Speaker 1: who are these people on our plane? I mean that
Speaker 1: he ruined me. So I would say, if if there
Speaker 1: was one way to get to that level where I
Speaker 1: could travel privately, that would be like the biggest carrot
Speaker 1: in the world. But there I'm a long ways away
Speaker 1: from there. Okay, you paint a picture of your career
Speaker 1: always being on the ascension from your viewpoint where they're
Speaker 1: low moments, um, low moments. Well I have my I
Speaker 1: have the answer my question. If nothing immediately jumps to mind,
Speaker 1: there really weren't well, I mean there I told you
Speaker 1: about that the album that I made, that that was
Speaker 1: a big flop, um, But there hasn't been. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say that there are places were I really had to
Speaker 1: go back and and think about, well, total restructuring of
Speaker 1: who I am and what what I'm doing there. There
Speaker 1: hasn't been like that because I feel like in overall
Speaker 1: I'm a curious person and I love collaboration. I think
Speaker 1: if I was more of an artist that really uh
Speaker 1: had where where I did my own production and I
Speaker 1: wrote songs always by myself, I think that I would
Speaker 1: have probably gotten into some creative blocks. But because just
Speaker 1: by my nature, I love to collaborate, and collaboration allows
Speaker 1: you to constantly be expanding. Remever hit the point we say, God,
Speaker 1: my career might be over. I can't work your way.
Speaker 1: You knew you could work at some level? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so. And there's been a lot of diversification to
Speaker 1: you know, try and radio and cruises and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: There's I'm a naturally a person that that gets easily bored.
Speaker 1: So if I was doing one thing over and over,
Speaker 1: I'd probably myself. But there's always something, some new wrinkle
Speaker 1: that is somewhat related to the core business that keeps
Speaker 1: me motivating other than the cruises. How many dates do
Speaker 1: you do in a year? Uh? Probably about are okay
Speaker 1: at this age? Which just with this level of success,
Speaker 1: other than having your own plane or annett jetcount or something,
Speaker 1: what would you like to achieve? If anything? Wow, I
Speaker 1: already got on the Bob Left Sets podcast. So I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's a big one that you would invite
Speaker 1: me on your podcast. Okay, okay, but leaving me out
Speaker 1: of it. Uh, what would you like to achieve, whether
Speaker 1: it be personally, career wise, impact on society? I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like I've If it all ended tomorrow, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have any regrets. I mean I would just my
Speaker 1: two words would be thank Okay, I understand that. But
Speaker 1: you are an individual on the planet. You do have
Speaker 1: this career, You do have fans, which is not a
Speaker 1: usual experience that gives you some level of power and
Speaker 1: some levels satisfaction if it goes on the way it
Speaker 1: does until you choose not to do it. Is that
Speaker 1: enough or is there something else you need to do?
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I need to do anything else.
Speaker 1: The things that are the most motivating factors for me
Speaker 1: are things that are new, that are that are undiscovered
Speaker 1: areas like, for example, um working with this band called
Speaker 1: wolf Pack I don't know if you know about, of course,
Speaker 1: and getting a chance to to understand how that whole
Speaker 1: machine works, and being uh embraced by by these kids
Speaker 1: they're basically playing the music that we play, I mean,
Speaker 1: but they're playing it to kids, so getting a chance
Speaker 1: to work with with them. And this this guy, this
Speaker 1: young kid named Corey Wong, who plays in wolf Pack
Speaker 1: as a guitar player, who mounted this whole campaign last
Speaker 1: year to get what he called the cause nod because
Speaker 1: he wanted to get into the world of smooth jazz.
Speaker 1: And he's killing it over in the Wolfpeck world, right,
Speaker 1: but he wanted the smooth jazz world. So he mounted
Speaker 1: this this social media campaign to get my attention. And
Speaker 1: not only did you get mad Test, but we've written
Speaker 1: a bunch of songs together. I invited him on our
Speaker 1: cruise and he's incredible. He's like one of the new
Speaker 1: voices of instrumental music, whether it's wolf Peck or um.
Speaker 1: I hadn't gotten a chance to to sit in with
Speaker 1: the food Fighters on a bunch of shows over the
Speaker 1: last couple of years. I like showing up in places
Speaker 1: that are unexpected. So if there, if there was something
Speaker 1: more for me in music, I love to continue my
Speaker 1: my world and expand that horizon. But I really really
Speaker 1: loved the idea of being pulled into places where you
Speaker 1: would least expect to see me Dave, we could go
Speaker 1: on for hours. You really very equacious, very interesting. Uh,
Speaker 1: it really amazing you light right up. I don't know
Speaker 1: whether it's your personality or experience or both, but you've
Speaker 1: really been wonderful. Well, thank you, and it's a pleasure
Speaker 1: to talk with you. And I'm a fan for a
Speaker 1: long time, but you know that well. As I say,
Speaker 1: we're also personal friends. But as I say, it's it's
Speaker 1: funny certain people we don't talk every day, but you
Speaker 1: can sit down with them and just pick right up
Speaker 1: where there's so many people you can act for them
Speaker 1: for years and you can never connect. Well, I really
Speaker 1: appreciate this is a real dream come true to sit
Speaker 1: and talk with you for like Okay, once again, you've
Speaker 1: been listening to Day and Cause on the Bob Left
Speaker 1: Sets podcast. Sign up for the Cruise Beat Dave. Until
Speaker 1: next time,