Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is John Batiste. John, last night you
Speaker 1: played Redrocks. Tell me about that.
Speaker 2: Well, well, you know, riding along in my automobile, my
Speaker 2: baby besigned me after wheel Man.
Speaker 3: I sunk so hard I lost my voice to people
Speaker 3: were stomp It was two hours and forty one minutes
Speaker 3: of a performance.
Speaker 2: I don't even call it a performance.
Speaker 3: It's a spiritual practice, celebration of life, love, joy music.
Speaker 2: I mean we played.
Speaker 3: So much that I lost track of even where I
Speaker 3: was and what was going on.
Speaker 2: That it was a concert.
Speaker 3: The band was on just the band was on eleven,
Speaker 3: and we had Steve Jordan, Pedrito Martinez and a few
Speaker 3: other special guests, Nick Waterhouse Andrew Day. So it was
Speaker 3: it just felt like a true zenith moment. And this
Speaker 3: is just the beginning of the tour. So I'm very
Speaker 3: excited to continue.
Speaker 1: You say two hours and forty one minutes, so you time.
Speaker 2: It exactly, No, but someone on my team does.
Speaker 3: And it came to me afterwards, and you know, this
Speaker 3: is after showing me photographs of the security at Red
Speaker 3: Rocks who were becoming one with the audience and showing
Speaker 3: me photos of the staff and videos of the staff.
Speaker 3: Just celebrated and danced, and we jumped off the stage
Speaker 3: at one point, and we were in the audience for
Speaker 3: about thirty minutes playing. And then after that, when I
Speaker 3: kind of came down, my key hour comes to me.
Speaker 3: She says, do you know how long you played just now?
Speaker 3: And I was like, well, it felt like the normal
Speaker 3: set length, but how long was it? She said it
Speaker 3: was two hours and forty one minutes, and that's not
Speaker 3: counting the encore, so it just was. I mean, those
Speaker 3: are the kind of things that happened. You know, it's
Speaker 3: in the church.
Speaker 2: They say, we got to tarry here for a while.
Speaker 1: Had you played Red Rocks before?
Speaker 3: No, that was my first time playing, first time planing,
Speaker 3: and I just I've heard so many great stories. It's
Speaker 3: hard to describe what it's like on that stage until
Speaker 3: you're on the stage. So now I have this first
Speaker 3: hand experience that it's just it's really a sacred zone
Speaker 3: for music making. It's a cathedral and ancient cathedral of music,
Speaker 3: and you feel that sort of presence when you're there.
Speaker 3: There were moments where I would just play in the
Speaker 3: context which you wouldn't recital, you know, just solo piano
Speaker 3: and I would be playing, and you could just hear
Speaker 3: the resonance of the space, and you could feel the
Speaker 3: way that it all just works in the divine alignment,
Speaker 3: and there's nothing that beats God's design. There's just such
Speaker 3: a special resonance in the frequency. You know how they
Speaker 3: say that the overtone series, the harmonic series. If you
Speaker 3: listen to water, or if you listen to the lowest
Speaker 3: note on the piano, you can hear the entire infinite
Speaker 3: harmonic series that makes up the Western Canada music, well
Speaker 3: tempered music, and it's in nature. I really experienced that
Speaker 3: last night for maybe the first time in my life,
Speaker 3: playing a solo piano segment of the show, where you
Speaker 3: could hear the resonance of our well tempered system in
Speaker 3: action with nature ecologically.
Speaker 1: Okay, you played a million different venues. A lot of
Speaker 1: them are just true aditional concert halls. Are there other
Speaker 1: venues that have turned into transcendent experiences or somewhat different?
Speaker 3: Bob, That's what I'm in the business of, that matter
Speaker 3: what I'm playing, what I'm in the business is doing
Speaker 3: is creating an experience that transcends the space and the
Speaker 3: time in the moment that we're in, so that this
Speaker 3: music really is used for what.
Speaker 2: It's made for. It's more than entertainment. It's a spiritual practice.
Speaker 3: Music was a part of the fabric of everyday life
Speaker 3: for many communities at the beginning of time, since the
Speaker 3: first drum in Africa, the passing of the fiddle and Appalachia.
Speaker 3: I mean, just think about all of the different ways
Speaker 3: in New Orleans that music is still a.
Speaker 2: Part of the fabric of everyday life.
Speaker 3: Music for when people are born, music for when people
Speaker 3: pass away into the next round. There's just such a
Speaker 3: special power that music has, and I truly feel blessed
Speaker 3: to be a joy bringer in music, not just with
Speaker 3: skill and craft. Sense of craft is never lost in
Speaker 3: that experience. But you know, I mean, I just remember
Speaker 3: playing in all manner of venue and having this sort
Speaker 3: of transcendent experience bubble up from the beginning of the
Speaker 3: concert and by the end of it we're all family.
Speaker 1: Okay. You talk about a long history of music through
Speaker 1: the time of man. In your lifetime, have you seen
Speaker 1: a change in the perception of music, the kind of
Speaker 1: music or you just think the ball keeps rolling.
Speaker 2: Well I think that more and more the music industry
Speaker 2: is is with.
Speaker 3: And this is with many great exceptions. I don't say
Speaker 3: this as a blanket statement, but the music industry is
Speaker 3: more controlled and operated and even inhabited by folks who
Speaker 3: don't really care about music making. There are those who
Speaker 3: still care about music making and still care about the
Speaker 3: idea of what music is in the world philosophically, the
Speaker 3: history and the lineage of music and the traditions being
Speaker 3: carried forward and added to in the continuum of human creativity.
Speaker 3: There's a sense of devaluation of the music and there's
Speaker 3: a sense of creating this sort of pacified audience that
Speaker 3: I believe is a mark of a lot of the
Speaker 3: governmental peril that we see in this time and a
Speaker 3: mark of where we are in the world in terms
Speaker 3: of how opaying information has become and how there's a
Speaker 3: sense of not always knowing if someone has been compromised,
Speaker 3: when in most cases for generations, these are trusted so
Speaker 3: trusted voices and a lot of things have been compromised
Speaker 3: as of late, So we're in this age where there's
Speaker 3: a post truth resonance, and I believe that that directly
Speaker 3: is impacting the arts and the creative communities. And it's
Speaker 3: why the real musicians, the real artists, the ones who
Speaker 3: really understand the power of what we do, will rage
Speaker 3: against it. You saw a similar thing happen in the
Speaker 3: sixties and seventies, and hopefully there'll be a consensus amongst
Speaker 3: artists to continue to come together in this time in
Speaker 3: a similar way.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the sixties. In the sixties,
Speaker 1: it was really the youth versus the elders. We had
Speaker 1: the war in Vietnam and the draft, and we had
Speaker 1: ubiquitous top forty radio such as if you had a
Speaker 1: that said something, everyone heard it. Other than Trump, no
Speaker 1: one can reach everybody. So in addition, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are afraid of pissing off Trump. In the consequences,
Speaker 1: there are people who are afraid to speak up, take
Speaker 1: a stand, and then there are people who see themselves
Speaker 1: as brands and don't want to sacrifice a dollar. Now,
Speaker 1: there's certainly people like you, But this movement you taught me,
Speaker 1: you certainly set the landscape. Is it something you already
Speaker 1: see or is something going to change? What has to change?
Speaker 2: It's always people power, people power, is it? Man?
Speaker 3: I'm really someone who sees my artistry as of the
Speaker 3: people and photo people and with the people, And that's
Speaker 3: really a true statement of what this movement has to be.
Speaker 3: It can't be from the top down. It has to
Speaker 3: be from the dirt. And that means that you have
Speaker 3: to motivate people to understand that we are being duped
Speaker 3: and bamboozled. You have to get people to a place
Speaker 3: where they feel a motivation and a conviction too to
Speaker 3: use the powers that they have and the band together
Speaker 3: and use the voice of the collective community to say something.
Speaker 3: And that's something that's difficult to do in this time
Speaker 3: because again we're there's so many things that have segmented
Speaker 3: society and amplified a minority's voice as the majority.
Speaker 2: So when you have that happen, there's this sort of.
Speaker 3: That that there's a mirage of of of.
Speaker 2: Insight and and and and you can't really know what's real.
Speaker 3: So in the sixties, when you just just you just
Speaker 3: laid out the design of how the delivery systems of
Speaker 3: music and me right today you said that.
Speaker 2: Well, there's only Trump that can reach everybody.
Speaker 3: Now I'll add to that, there's also so many people
Speaker 3: who have a voice and have cultivated a community, whether
Speaker 3: it be the dark Web, whether it be all of
Speaker 3: these other toxic spaces that exist. And that's become something
Speaker 3: that the mainstream media has not only begin to address,
Speaker 3: but in some cases even adopt. And this has created
Speaker 3: this sort of narrative where it can only come from
Speaker 3: people face to face. It can only go back to
Speaker 3: the natural person to person communication, localized community activism and
Speaker 3: engagement artists making music and speaking to the things that
Speaker 3: are around them.
Speaker 2: Another things saying to church, take care.
Speaker 3: Of demons in your range, that people have to become
Speaker 3: become social again in the context of person to person
Speaker 3: communication outside of the bounds of the Internet and outside
Speaker 3: of the bounds of artificial intelligence. And nothing's wrong with
Speaker 3: those things, per se. But when we lose the ability
Speaker 3: to see each other and now we're only seeing groups
Speaker 3: and isms and categories, it leaves us in this state
Speaker 3: of disarray.
Speaker 1: Okay, what can a musician do to effect change, combat
Speaker 1: the past and move us to this place you said
Speaker 1: we should be in.
Speaker 3: Music is the most powerful force on God's green eer, Bob,
Speaker 3: let me tell you what music can do.
Speaker 2: Music.
Speaker 3: Last night we went in Red Rose, ten thousand people
Speaker 3: singing as to clapping against it. They don't know each other,
Speaker 3: they left as family. If artists make true music and
Speaker 3: speak from a place of authenticity and perform from a
Speaker 3: place of excellence, that is something that goes beyond technique,
Speaker 3: goes beyond study. It's just a place where it becomes
Speaker 3: a voice of the creator coming through the vessel of
Speaker 3: the musician. And that's what I believe musicians can do
Speaker 3: is be great, truly great, not great and branding not great,
Speaker 3: CEOs truly great because when people see that, and people
Speaker 3: experience that, something in their soul opens up, something in
Speaker 3: their heart becomes less hardened. There's an ability then for
Speaker 3: there to be a true dialogue that's rooted in humanity.
Speaker 3: My band for many years and still at times i'll
Speaker 3: play with this band, it's called Stay Human and my
Speaker 3: music for many years since I was in college, I
Speaker 3: started to call it social music for lack of figuring
Speaker 3: out there was a better genre title for it, and
Speaker 3: thinking about all that, I'm just seeing the power of
Speaker 3: music more and more, learning that we can speak to
Speaker 3: people on a real, authentic wavelength, and then that allows
Speaker 3: for us to have conversations about other things.
Speaker 2: But first it starts with us being great.
Speaker 3: You saw this in many, many times in history where artists,
Speaker 3: whether it's Bob Marley or Lewis Armstrong and Nina some
Speaker 3: own not just their voice and their perspective on things,
Speaker 3: but their excellence coupled with their perspective on things moved people,
Speaker 3: moved mountains. Maybe of Staples pop state of Staples singers.
Speaker 2: I mean, I could go on and on. Man.
Speaker 3: Even before that the way that we use, you know,
Speaker 3: I was I was able to have a relationship with
Speaker 3: Congressman John Lewis before he passed, and he talked about
Speaker 3: the times when they were marching and they would break
Speaker 3: into song and what the songs meant and what the
Speaker 3: act of singing together meant in those moments. And they
Speaker 3: weren't professional musicians striving for excellence in the craft. But
Speaker 3: this is what our musicians left us. They left us
Speaker 3: with these superpowers. They left us with all of these gifts,
Speaker 3: and we're not using them to the fullest of our ability.
Speaker 3: We're using them for scale in capitalism and to make
Speaker 3: money and to and to dupe our youth into this
Speaker 3: sort of full sexual revolution, full in the in in
Speaker 3: identity that this fake identity of this generation gap that's
Speaker 3: a perceived generation gap when we should actually be all
Speaker 3: connected across the generations. There's so many things that we've
Speaker 3: been duped to believe through music that's been engineered to
Speaker 3: bamboozle us and to confuse us. So I believe that
Speaker 3: if we just used music for what it actually is
Speaker 3: and for what it actually can do, and we did
Speaker 3: it at scale, in the same way we're doing this
Speaker 3: other stuff at scale, then.
Speaker 2: It would change so much of the ethos of our time.
Speaker 1: That's very interesting because then it becomes less about a
Speaker 1: specific song and more about the performance and outlook. But
Speaker 1: in any event, you're playing to this large audience of
Speaker 1: thousands last night. Who is John Batiste's audience.
Speaker 3: You know, my audience, which is an audience I'm very
Speaker 3: proud of, is made up of lots of families. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of people who I tell you one story,
Speaker 3: I was in Indiana. My first tour was last year,
Speaker 3: and this is my second tour. I've had a very
Speaker 3: unusual career path, if you want to call it a career,
Speaker 3: I don't really like that word. But just in general,
Speaker 3: you know, I feel like I'm humbled to serve people
Speaker 3: through my music. And I'm humbled to be born into
Speaker 3: this cultural inheritance of New Orleans music and New Orleans
Speaker 3: musical families, and I take it very seriously to carry
Speaker 3: on the tradition of that. So that are those who
Speaker 3: are into that and know that New Orleans lineage and
Speaker 3: have followed that that are in my audience.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people who, you know, I learned
Speaker 2: this in Indiana.
Speaker 3: There's a four generations of a family that came out
Speaker 3: and the eldest grandmother comes to me and says, I
Speaker 3: saw Elvis and you and Alvis are my favorite artists
Speaker 3: of all time.
Speaker 2: I've been waiting for you now.
Speaker 3: Usually people are looking for the coveted demographic of the
Speaker 3: eighteen to twenty five or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know that, and they are there too.
Speaker 3: But I'm great, full, for the grateful for the the
Speaker 3: folks who see me and it reminds them of a
Speaker 3: time or an artist or a meaningful cultural treasure, a
Speaker 3: meaningful era where we were creating at our highest and
Speaker 3: representing the best ideals of who we are in the arts.
Speaker 3: And then there's a lot of kids who were coming
Speaker 3: up musicians, A lot of young musicians in the audience
Speaker 3: who are you know, they're just starting their journey. There's
Speaker 3: so many kids that resonate with my music. Also, now
Speaker 3: that's the other side of the spectrum.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of aid and under.
Speaker 3: So there's families, there's a lot of older folks. There's
Speaker 3: people who love New Orleans music. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: people who are looking for an alternative to contemporary pop music,
Speaker 3: which I'm also proud to represent bringing a lot of
Speaker 3: sounds and music into the popular music space without being
Speaker 3: a pop artist. But then there are a lot of
Speaker 3: young musicians who are there and kids who are not musicians,
Speaker 3: but something in the music resonates with them, which I'm
Speaker 3: also very proud of. They're like, I don't know, there's
Speaker 3: something in the frequency of the sound that makes it
Speaker 3: feel like it's for them. And I've done things that
Speaker 3: are just for kids when I was doing the stuff
Speaker 3: I did with Pixar and things like that, but my
Speaker 3: albums in particular, I'm always grateful to see the folks
Speaker 3: reach out or the concert tickets go to kids, and
Speaker 3: people online sending videos of their kid dancing to the music.
Speaker 3: My kid decided he wanted to play piano because he
Speaker 3: saw your concert or a lot of first concert goers
Speaker 3: I get in the audience. So, yeah, that's a good blend.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of it's a lot of range. Man,
Speaker 3: I don't know what to say.
Speaker 1: Okay, And what about black, white, Latino, red blue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of people in the audience from
Speaker 3: all races, depending on where we go and where we play,
Speaker 3: you know. I love the fact that we'll play at
Speaker 3: Coachella and it'll be one audience, and it'll be predominantly
Speaker 3: younger people of people who are into the contemporary music scene.
Speaker 3: Then we played before Red Rocks, we played in Veil
Speaker 3: and it was upper middle class white folks wearing Patagonia.
Speaker 2: I like to call it Padagucci. All right, No, No, I'm.
Speaker 1: Just no, that's a good name. I know, zackly D.
Speaker 1: I just never heard Padagucci before. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, and then I'll play in the South, like when
Speaker 3: we played in Atlanta, or play in New Orleans, or
Speaker 3: I'll play I'll play places where and this isn't the norm,
Speaker 3: but if I go there, it's mostly black folks. And
Speaker 3: and I love the fact that my community supports me
Speaker 3: because I'm not a rapper and I'm not an R
Speaker 3: and B singer. And we don't have a a archetype
Speaker 3: in contemporary culture for the musician star.
Speaker 2: That's not something that exists anymore.
Speaker 3: The musician star and the band leader right absolutely most
Speaker 3: of the time. Because of the way that we've been
Speaker 3: they've tried to program us and to separate us. The
Speaker 3: way that capitalism has created these genre categories is so
Speaker 3: that it can be segregated. It started off based on
Speaker 3: race records. Chuck Berry, to me is one of my
Speaker 3: top five influence of all time, all of the race records.
Speaker 3: I won't go into that as the tangent. I'm liable
Speaker 3: to go on tangents, Bob.
Speaker 1: Now, No, the tangents are the best part. Digression is
Speaker 1: a spice of life. Go off, fund your tangent as
Speaker 1: much as you want.
Speaker 3: But I'm thinking about how you know, our contemporary black community.
Speaker 3: Our people are now programmed to think that music that's
Speaker 3: for them has to come from the voice of a
Speaker 3: rapper or an R and B singer in the contemporary
Speaker 3: milieu of R and B. And I'm very proud that
Speaker 3: over the years of building my audience, I've been able
Speaker 3: to cultivate, specifically in the South, in the Southeast, a
Speaker 3: community of people of color, Black, a black community, a
Speaker 3: black audience that is listening to music that sometimes we
Speaker 3: will play songs from the forties and fifties.
Speaker 2: On the show.
Speaker 3: We just last night did a Chuck Berry medley, as
Speaker 3: I was saying, Then we went to Fast Domino. Then
Speaker 3: we went into Duke Ellington and we played things ain't
Speaker 3: what they used to be. We played don't mean to
Speaker 3: think if it ain't got that swing into about one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty VP chopping wood swing that you would
Speaker 3: hit basic play right. So this is not what my
Speaker 3: community is acculturated into twenty six to listen to. Yet
Speaker 3: it's what we were the pioneers of. And this is
Speaker 3: the this is part of the mass deception that that's
Speaker 3: happened in the way that we've spoiled our music and
Speaker 3: thus the lineage of how we understand the music and
Speaker 3: what's for us versus what's not for us? And I
Speaker 3: say this to say everything is for everyone. Music is
Speaker 3: the universal language. It exists so that it can break
Speaker 3: down barriers. Yet because of this sort of this this
Speaker 3: this psychological warfare that we've been dealing with in a
Speaker 3: way that branding has overtaken actual craft and history and
Speaker 3: lineage and the idea of the thing has become greater
Speaker 3: than the thing itself.
Speaker 2: People believe that, oh, this is only for me, and
Speaker 2: I wouldn't even.
Speaker 3: Consider this over here, this whole world over here, because
Speaker 3: it hasn't been in my orbit. It hasn't been service
Speaker 3: to me. And I'm a proud disruptor of that. I
Speaker 3: rage against that, and I love when I can have
Speaker 3: in the audience.
Speaker 2: This sort of experience where.
Speaker 3: People now and this is taken close to twenty years.
Speaker 3: I started when I was fifteen, and I'll go out.
Speaker 3: We did a show in London and it was a
Speaker 3: Royal Festival Hall and you know, it's about three thousand,
Speaker 3: three to four thousand people you see in the audience,
Speaker 3: and it was all different demographics. And I love that
Speaker 3: because it was me solo piano in Europe, a black
Speaker 3: pianist playing in a classical music milieu in a concert
Speaker 3: hall for a wide range of an audience unheard of.
Speaker 3: I love that that happened. And the reason I bring
Speaker 3: it up is because the thing happened to the concerts.
Speaker 3: To illustrate that is, at one point, as an improptu movement,
Speaker 3: I played a version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, and then
Speaker 3: I melded that into Tupac's changes and you could hear
Speaker 3: the different parts of the audience reacting, and then you could.
Speaker 2: See from the response after the concert.
Speaker 3: The thought that those two things could be next to
Speaker 3: each other, and these two poets could speak to each
Speaker 3: other across time, and the relationship between that being displayed
Speaker 3: just in a bare form in this way, coming from
Speaker 3: the vessel of a guy who looks like me with dreads.
Speaker 3: It really struck a lot of people, and that was
Speaker 3: one of the highlights of that concert w when you
Speaker 3: can see the people were responding to afterwards, and it
Speaker 3: just struck me as, Oh, this is my role, this
Speaker 3: is what I do in culture, this is who I am.
Speaker 3: I'm here to kind of we finally this time, because
Speaker 3: of technology and internet, all of these different things, we
Speaker 3: can bring things together and synthesize things that have never
Speaker 3: been put together before. Nothing is new under the sun,
Speaker 3: but we can take elements and build something out of
Speaker 3: these elements that the pioneers have left us. And that's
Speaker 3: our form of being pioneers in this time, and to
Speaker 3: really use the power and not forget what we have inherited,
Speaker 3: So I'll say that to say my audience is diverse
Speaker 3: by design, but I'm still on the path of developing that,
Speaker 3: and it's been a very intentional, developmental process to focus
Speaker 3: on one element at a time. I was a jazz
Speaker 3: pianist for many years only, and I faced the world
Speaker 3: as that. Then I became sort of like a band
Speaker 3: leader for a while. Then I faced the world as that.
Speaker 3: I became an artist and even step my toe in
Speaker 3: pop music, and I face the world as that, and
Speaker 3: a film composer, and I face the world is that
Speaker 3: all as a way of trying to create a universal
Speaker 3: musical experience that is contemporary and that everybody who walks
Speaker 3: into that venue can have something that when they hear it,
Speaker 3: they see something that they didn't even know about the
Speaker 3: stuff they loved, and they develop a sense of what
Speaker 3: music can be and what it truly is meant to be.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about the evolution jazz, being leader, working
Speaker 1: with Pixar, etc. Are you just wandering through life and
Speaker 1: opportunities come, or do you have more of a plan
Speaker 1: or do you have a just an inner feeling like
Speaker 1: you know, I want more than this.
Speaker 3: I'm you asking some good questions, man, you know, and
Speaker 3: you're catching me at a very My voice is like
Speaker 3: an octave lower because I've been singing all week, and
Speaker 3: like I'm at a very vulnerable place.
Speaker 2: So you're getting some very real candid answers, Bob. But
Speaker 2: I tell you.
Speaker 3: I I want more, and I oftentimes struggle with and
Speaker 3: not because I'm not abundantly blessed and haven't had the
Speaker 3: opportunity to do stuff that even those in the lineage
Speaker 3: who I stand on the shoulders up didn't have a
Speaker 3: chance to do.
Speaker 2: And I understand that, and I'm grateful for that.
Speaker 3: But when I see what's happening to music, and when
Speaker 3: I see what's happening to culture and ultimately what's happening
Speaker 3: to people, I really want more. I want to do
Speaker 3: more to disrupt that, to shift it, to change it.
Speaker 3: And I feel like I'm just getting started. And i
Speaker 3: feel like I've never fit into the patterns of the industry,
Speaker 3: of labels, of any of that stuff. And I've constantly
Speaker 3: felt like I've had to find ways to be disrupted
Speaker 3: from the inside and to shift gears and to get
Speaker 3: into a position and then to figure out a way
Speaker 3: to bridge it to the thing that I know is
Speaker 3: the realest, most authentic way that you could have at
Speaker 3: least for me, that John Batist could impact that moment,
Speaker 3: in that situation, in that project, in that role. But
Speaker 3: I feel like I need to exist within a context
Speaker 3: of my own design, and I have to build something
Speaker 3: that allows for me to fully utilize all the capabilities
Speaker 3: that I've been given. And once I have that, whatever
Speaker 3: this apparatus is, whatever this thing is, then you'll really
Speaker 3: get to see the full color scheme and spectrum of
Speaker 3: what it is that I've been blessed to give to
Speaker 3: the world. And until then, I'm just fighting my way
Speaker 3: through and doing the best that i can with all
Speaker 3: the blessings that I've been given.
Speaker 1: Okay, now more than ever, their acts playing Madison Square
Speaker 1: Garden that most people have never heard of, their acts
Speaker 1: playing stadiums that are niche. There's a Queen song, I
Speaker 1: want it all, I want it all, I want it all,
Speaker 1: and I want it now. There are people with billions
Speaker 1: of streams on Spotify. You don't have billions? Are you
Speaker 1: happy growing your niche? Or really, I don't want to
Speaker 1: make it about ego career, you know, let's not even
Speaker 1: give that. But you have a message, you have a
Speaker 1: feeling inside, you have a burning desire to reach many
Speaker 1: more people.
Speaker 2: No, I have a burning desire to be great.
Speaker 3: When I listen to Ray Charles, who, by the way,
Speaker 3: doesn't have billions of streams. Ray Charles is truly great,
Speaker 3: full stop. Lewis Armstrong, Nina Simone truly great, truly great,
Speaker 3: Joni Mitchell, truly great. Some of my contemporaries who I
Speaker 3: know are truly great. You know, I'm talking about people
Speaker 3: who I don't know what their streams are or how
Speaker 3: many people they reach, but I do know what they
Speaker 3: make is one of one.
Speaker 1: Could you give me a couple examples.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about people like Sullivan Fortner, a pianist and
Speaker 3: vocalist who I grew up with, or Caroline Shaw, who's
Speaker 3: a contemporary composer of my late mental Kid Jordan, who
Speaker 3: was an avant garde composed I'm truly another thing that that,
Speaker 3: you know, my early tradition in New Orleans was actually
Speaker 3: something that is is you may not necessarily think is
Speaker 3: associated with New Orleans, But I grew up in a
Speaker 3: in a community where I was learning from avant garde
Speaker 3: contemporary classical musicians like Kid Jordan and Alvin Baptiste and
Speaker 3: jazz musicians who were also a part of that community,
Speaker 3: like Ellis Marsalis. So you know, I wasn't learning traditional
Speaker 3: New Orleans music first. I was learning the avant garde.
Speaker 3: So that's always like a foundational element of what it
Speaker 3: is that I'm doing contemporary classical music, which was a
Speaker 3: part of their their their pedagogy. So but it was
Speaker 3: very hood. It was like the hood version. Like it
Speaker 3: was like we would learn scores, sometimes without the music,
Speaker 3: and it would be twenty page long score. Your part
Speaker 3: would be twenty pages, and we would spend a week
Speaker 3: with him dictating it like a grio, like an oral tradition,
Speaker 3: your part on an instrument that's not your instrument, like
Speaker 3: Alvin would be playing the clarinet to.
Speaker 2: You, and it would be, oh, let me interpret.
Speaker 3: Oh that's the harmony he means, he outlined, he appregiated
Speaker 3: the harmony. Oh this is the melody that I need
Speaker 3: to play. Oh in my left hand. You want that
Speaker 3: left so he'll tell you. So then it would become
Speaker 3: such a part of your system, your bones, it'd be
Speaker 3: in you once you learned it. And those were my
Speaker 3: first experiences. I learned how to do that before I
Speaker 3: learned how to read music. I didn't even learn how
Speaker 3: to read music until I was I found a way
Speaker 3: to get into Julliard without knowing how to read music.
Speaker 3: They put the sheet music in front of me in
Speaker 3: the audition. Quick story, tangent. I'm sorry, I'm prone to
Speaker 3: do this, but they put the sheet music from me
Speaker 3: in the audition, and I just played and I was
Speaker 3: looking at it might have been upside down, who knows,
Speaker 3: but I just played improvised. And then after about a minute,
Speaker 3: I stopped and I look at the panel of the
Speaker 3: audition judges, like American Idol panel or something, and they're
Speaker 3: just looking in there.
Speaker 2: It's like a pregnant pause.
Speaker 3: And then after this pause, they say, mister Baptiste, if
Speaker 3: you got an opportunity that would take you out of school,
Speaker 3: would you take it or would you continue your studies?
Speaker 2: And I looked at.
Speaker 3: Him and I said, even sixteen years old, I started
Speaker 3: school when I was seventeen, at Juilliard, so I'm like
Speaker 3: already very aware of the politics of the situation.
Speaker 2: Even at seventeen.
Speaker 3: I say, well, if I could take the opportunity and
Speaker 3: continue my studies, then I would take the opportunity. And
Speaker 3: that was the last question of the audition, and I
Speaker 3: left and I got in the rest.
Speaker 2: Obviously it's history. I went to Julia. But I'm saying
Speaker 2: that to say.
Speaker 3: I have been fortunate to be around those who early
Speaker 3: on gave me a barometer of what true greatness is.
Speaker 3: What is truly great is not a matter of the
Speaker 3: taste of the trends of our time. And for me,
Speaker 3: I know that's truly great stands the test of time.
Speaker 3: So in terms of your audience question, it will reach
Speaker 3: people who who seek that out and it will sustain
Speaker 3: itself in the same way that Moza discovered the scores
Speaker 3: of Bach. Okay, Bach is not only truly great. Between
Speaker 3: Bac and Duke Ellington, you have two people who maybe
Speaker 3: are the greatest at a thing that anybody has ever
Speaker 3: been at, doing a thing outside of just music, full stop.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Now do people listen to that music every day? Is
Speaker 3: that filling concert halls or symphony orchestra struggling. Gustavo Dudamel
Speaker 3: is a friend of mine. He's one of the foremost
Speaker 3: the conductor's voices in classical music.
Speaker 2: We talk about this all the time.
Speaker 3: How do you program a concert in twenty twenty five
Speaker 3: of classical music.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm just saying this to say.
Speaker 3: The placebo of audience and taste is based on things
Speaker 3: that don't have much, in some cases, anything to do
Speaker 3: with actual music.
Speaker 2: It's more to do with community.
Speaker 3: It's more to do with the aspect of how you
Speaker 3: want to cultivate your lifestyle and what things you want
Speaker 3: to power that lifestyle within the ecosystem of your community.
Speaker 1: Okay, John, you talk about the next two to five
Speaker 1: years falling out, that's just a figurus speech. That's not
Speaker 1: the plan. I mean, what would have to happen for
Speaker 1: you to go in that direction for.
Speaker 2: That to happen.
Speaker 3: I mean it's a very likely possibility. That's not a
Speaker 3: figure of speech. Two to five years is not a
Speaker 3: figure of speech, man. It's the thing that keeps me
Speaker 3: doing It is experiences like what we had last night
Speaker 3: and things that happened when nobody is watching. Or it's
Speaker 3: not something you read about an award that I can
Speaker 3: win or something like that.
Speaker 2: It's the it's the people.
Speaker 3: Who share the meaning that this music has to them,
Speaker 3: and not just my music, but the music in the
Speaker 3: in the culture and the lineage of what I represent
Speaker 3: and what it means to have that be represented in
Speaker 3: the world, and have it represented in high places of
Speaker 3: the world, and have it be in a position to
Speaker 3: even have a conversation with the mainstream of what's going
Speaker 3: on that a lot of times is averse to it,
Speaker 3: and that feels like the motivation to stay in. But
Speaker 3: then I feel like the I can still impact that
Speaker 3: aspect of culture and exist in this in this way
Speaker 3: for those people and for those who don't even know
Speaker 3: that that's what they need. You know, as we proceed
Speaker 3: to give you just what you need. But I can
Speaker 3: do that and not I could retire, or maybe I'll
Speaker 3: take us to bath. Sometimes I think about starting a
Speaker 3: creative church or something.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I don't know, man, I just don't find it to
Speaker 3: be real enough. There's too much fake stuff. There's too
Speaker 3: much bs, there's too much stuff that isn't about.
Speaker 2: What I actually care about.
Speaker 3: Is a distraction from the sort of Mount Everest that
Speaker 3: you have to climb to actually be great and then
Speaker 3: to be able to do all of those things and
Speaker 3: exist within the mediums that are now present for artists
Speaker 3: to exist in and demands on artists for you to
Speaker 3: be active in all of these different ways, just because
Speaker 3: that's where the people are, and that's what the people
Speaker 3: have been accustomed to doing, and that's where you're going
Speaker 3: to have the most potential impact. Or figuring out some
Speaker 3: way to circumvent the systems as they exist to.
Speaker 2: Sort of create this sort of alternate reality.
Speaker 3: But that's still in response to the mammoth mechanics of
Speaker 3: the industry today. So then you're kind of still in
Speaker 3: relationship to it, you're tethered to it. You have to
Speaker 3: almost become like an alt media system within your own
Speaker 3: team and community.
Speaker 2: I just find all of that to be.
Speaker 3: Very very destructive and insidious, especially to those who actually
Speaker 3: are pursuing the things that we're pursuing. So yeah, nothing
Speaker 3: would have to change. It just have to continue to
Speaker 3: be what it is or get worse.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, let's break it down. Okay, you're someone who
Speaker 1: make it very simple. You make recordings, you go on
Speaker 1: the road, you do live appearances. Theoretically you could have
Speaker 1: a manager who insulates you. Now, just being a person
Speaker 1: on the planet, if you're online, you have people looking
Speaker 1: for you, people abusing you, people complimenting you. Twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven as you referenced earlier, there are certain places
Speaker 1: where the people are which to a great degree, as
Speaker 1: we speak, is TikTok. So the system is far from perfect.
Speaker 1: You've established that. But once we get above the system,
Speaker 1: what are the elements that are truly bothering you that
Speaker 1: would make you say, man, I'm done?
Speaker 2: What a system? For? One is.
Speaker 3: Immoral, and it exploits artists and it exploits people on
Speaker 3: both ends. And anytime that you have a system that's corrupt,
Speaker 3: it will just become more and more corrupt, and over
Speaker 3: time it will become something that eats itself and eats
Speaker 3: its own, which is what we're seeing. Music isn't meant
Speaker 3: to be as disposable as it's become. It's not meant
Speaker 3: to be as homogenized as it's become, not meant to
Speaker 3: be as difficult for people to I can go on
Speaker 3: and on. So it's immoral. So let's break it down
Speaker 3: and get simple. Just like you were just saying, let's
Speaker 3: make it very simple. It's immoral, and it's very very destructive,
Speaker 3: both to the purveyors of the music and the people
Speaker 3: who are out there receiving it. Even though it brings
Speaker 3: great joy and creates community and it's celebrating. It's hard
Speaker 3: to be the thing that you also decry. It's built
Speaker 3: on a faulty foundation. At this point, now, I'm not
Speaker 3: someone who just makes albums and tours. I'm involved in
Speaker 3: a lot of different things without a real understanding of
Speaker 3: how to bring them all together quite yet. And you know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of opportunities that I have to really
Speaker 3: impact humanity outside of just music or using music as
Speaker 3: the way in, but also figuring out how to have
Speaker 3: a seat at the table in many different philanthropic ways
Speaker 3: in different parts of the world, and existing in burgeoning
Speaker 3: fields that I think there needs to be an artist's
Speaker 3: voice at the table.
Speaker 2: I've had conversations with folks who are in the AI community.
Speaker 2: I've had conversations with folks who are in the tech community.
Speaker 2: I've been sort of.
Speaker 3: Courting a relationship with Bill Gates with taken trips to
Speaker 3: Africa together. I don't have a manager. I've been self
Speaker 3: managed for a while. I've had a manager before, but
Speaker 3: I think what it is that I do is a
Speaker 3: bit too demanding and too wide range for that to
Speaker 3: just be a traditional music manager. Some of the music
Speaker 3: managers that I've worked with, I work with still in
Speaker 3: some capacity, and some are friends. But in general, my
Speaker 3: experience is that I'm difficult to manage, and I want
Speaker 3: to do more than just tour and make records. This
Speaker 3: is only my second tour. I'm thirty eight years old.
Speaker 3: I've been in the industry since i was fifteen. So
Speaker 3: I don't think it's as simple as you making it out, Bob.
Speaker 2: But it's the.
Speaker 3: Big thing that's simple to me and clear to me
Speaker 3: is immoral and things are not built for the good
Speaker 3: of people. And I just want people to feel the
Speaker 3: true power of what music is. And I want the
Speaker 3: authentic experience that the music exists in, and the experience
Speaker 3: that my community thrives in to be one that's not
Speaker 3: trying to fleece them and exploit them.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's just go to the other side. You talked
Speaker 1: about two to five years. You could say, Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: packing it in. You also said the flip side is
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have number one records. So tell me what
Speaker 1: that vision is in your brain? How you achieve that?
Speaker 2: I just don't quit. You know.
Speaker 3: The other reason I would I would step out is
Speaker 3: not because I'm quitting. It's because there would be a
Speaker 3: better way to get to the people and give the
Speaker 3: people the thing that I'm here to give them. And
Speaker 3: it allows for me also to balance the things in
Speaker 3: my life, like taking care of my family and being
Speaker 3: with my family, my wife, spending time with my soulmate,
Speaker 3: being in a world where I can be a human being,
Speaker 3: so that the things that I deliver the people are
Speaker 3: coming from a real authentic place, coming from arrested spirit
Speaker 3: and a spirit that's overflowing with inspiration.
Speaker 2: Now, if I stay in it, all of those things
Speaker 2: will remain true. Bob. I'm gonna be inspired. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: be able to.
Speaker 3: Do the things I need to do with my family,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to figure out a way to do
Speaker 3: it within the system, which means you got to get
Speaker 3: to the top of the system, or you got to
Speaker 3: get to the top of your place in the system.
Speaker 2: I'm in an.
Speaker 3: Interesting place because in many ways I'm a new artist
Speaker 3: and many people are just discovering me. And in other ways,
Speaker 3: I've been doing it for a while. But as I
Speaker 3: said in earlier in our conversation, you know, it's been
Speaker 3: many different chapters, and each one of those chapters was
Speaker 3: a first for a lot of people, and a lot
Speaker 3: of those chapters in the world that I existed, they're
Speaker 3: separate from the world that I existed in. Subsequent to
Speaker 3: that chapter, just I moved to another world next that's
Speaker 3: completely severed from the world that I just was in.
Speaker 3: And you know, I remember having that experience when I
Speaker 3: was I had the honor of playing on a tour
Speaker 3: backing up Prints once and this was in the days
Speaker 3: when I was just known to the world as a
Speaker 3: jazz piano player and a jazz trio of my own,
Speaker 3: forming and playing with the greats of the jazz community
Speaker 3: like Abby Lincoln, Cassandra Wilson and Roy Hargrove and and
Speaker 3: and really have an opportunity to play with you know,
Speaker 3: Lewis Hayes who you know, and Curtis Fuller, played with
Speaker 3: John Coltrane, all the all of the great elders at
Speaker 3: that time that I got a chance to play with
Speaker 3: went Marsalis also another another Kenna City.
Speaker 2: Five O four baby.
Speaker 3: But uh, I just remember realizing at that moment when
Speaker 3: I stepped into that world and I played with Prince,
Speaker 3: and I was like, Oh, the world is there, and
Speaker 3: if you can deliver something of value to them, then
Speaker 3: you can create a community around this sort of transaction
Speaker 3: or this sort of exchange I like to call it. Now,
Speaker 3: if you can create these sort of exchange models, this
Speaker 3: sort of ratio of exchange with many different communities over
Speaker 3: time and establish a connection between these different communities, and
Speaker 3: then you can build it into something that represents a
Speaker 3: common good, a vision of our collective importance to each
Speaker 3: other and the essence of what we're all here to
Speaker 3: be and do on this earth and the time that
Speaker 3: we hear this limited generation of time. If you're able
Speaker 3: to do that over time, you'll win, because most people
Speaker 3: aren't doing that. Most people are trying to separate people
Speaker 3: and create a reality that's based around why you and
Speaker 3: your voice it's special and should be heard. And I
Speaker 3: think that's important too, But that's not my call. My
Speaker 3: call is to be the unifier. I'm the piper Bob.
Speaker 3: That's what I am. And once as soon as I
Speaker 3: accepted that, I realized, Okay, well, whatever it is that
Speaker 3: I do, it's going to bring people into a room
Speaker 3: that will never in a room together. It's going to
Speaker 3: make people a part of a community together that never
Speaker 3: would have thought that they would share a community with
Speaker 3: each other. And I know that, so that's what I do,
Speaker 3: and I have the ability to span genres as an
Speaker 3: allegory for that. It's not just an exercise in me
Speaker 3: showing musical snobbery and like, look how great i am.
Speaker 3: Most of the time, I'm reining in my musical technique
Speaker 3: in service of this. Most of the time, I don't
Speaker 3: even like people who play with their technique on this leave.
Speaker 2: Unless it's like Sullivan or you know, Jacob.
Speaker 3: Collier, who's another grade of this generation, who you know
Speaker 3: doing some very interesting things. But I don't, you know,
Speaker 3: I just my thing is is that, and I know
Speaker 3: that it's very unique in this.
Speaker 2: Time, and I know who I am in the world,
Speaker 2: and I.
Speaker 3: Know that if I were stayed in the space, inevitably
Speaker 3: it would reach the point where I'm playing for the
Speaker 3: whole world. And I'm already playing for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: So I don't make it sound like I'm I don't
Speaker 3: I'm going to sound like I'm slumming it all. I'm ungrateful.
Speaker 3: But just to answer your question, what I see for
Speaker 3: myself if I stay in the industry, it's to be
Speaker 3: the biggest in the world and to bring back the
Speaker 3: age of the musician, star, the band leader, the person
Speaker 3: who is bringing all forces together on the stage to
Speaker 3: show an allegory for humanity as one. And if that's
Speaker 3: what I decide to do, mark my words, I will
Speaker 3: do it. And anybody who knows me knows that what
Speaker 3: I'm saying is completely one percent serious. But if I
Speaker 3: stick out of it, you know, that's that's great too.
Speaker 3: I don't have a burning ambition to do that or
Speaker 3: to be number one in the world. I don't care.
Speaker 3: But if I stick in it, that's what I'm going
Speaker 3: to put myself to do, because that's just that's who
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 1: Let's go from the philosophical to the more practical, which
Speaker 1: will have philosophical elements. You have a new album, Big Money. Ay,
Speaker 1: Why did you decide to cut a record now? And
Speaker 1: what is the process of both thinking about what you're
Speaker 1: recording and actually recording it? And to what degree do
Speaker 1: you even consider perception or you're just gonna lay it
Speaker 1: down the way you want to.
Speaker 3: That's a great question, man. This is great to talk
Speaker 3: to you because a lot of times the stuff it's
Speaker 3: hard to present in an answer because the question doesn't
Speaker 3: give the dimension for me to say what the process is.
Speaker 2: So that's great. I love that. I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't think about reception of the music or the
Speaker 3: art that I'm making until after it's finished. So the
Speaker 3: process of making it is a very subconscious reality that's
Speaker 3: rooted in very concrete terms. I signed a record deal,
Speaker 3: I signed for a certain number of record I committed
Speaker 3: to that at a certain point, and I have to
Speaker 3: make a record, So that's a concrete reality. Now, what
Speaker 3: is the record going to be? That comes to me.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it comes to me literally in a dream, or
Speaker 3: I will feel a compulsion to make a certain statement
Speaker 3: and it won't even be clear to me what the
Speaker 3: statement is. Like the name big Money and the statement
Speaker 3: of big Money didn't come to me until after the
Speaker 3: album was finished, and there was a song that I
Speaker 3: wrote called big Money, and it became the title track
Speaker 3: of the album. It wasn't like it wasn't it was
Speaker 3: reverse engineered in that way. I don't think about perception
Speaker 3: of it until after it's done, because then once I
Speaker 3: have the art made on its own terms, and it's
Speaker 3: presented as true to what it's telling me it wants
Speaker 3: to be as I possibly can present it, then I
Speaker 3: think Okay, how do I give this to people in
Speaker 3: a way where they have the best opportunity of enjoying
Speaker 3: the party? How do I present this to the world
Speaker 3: in a way where they have the best understanding of
Speaker 3: exactly what this is and why this is? And then
Speaker 3: from there it's really up to the people and the
Speaker 3: systems as they are, and the delivery of the music
Speaker 3: and all of the ways that people respond to it,
Speaker 3: and all the context of what's happening in the world
Speaker 3: around it and things that I don't have control of,
Speaker 3: And you know, I don't. I don't beat myself up
Speaker 3: about the reception of a record, whether it's critical or
Speaker 3: commercial or things like that. Oftentimes people don't even have
Speaker 3: the perspective or have been following along in terms of
Speaker 3: my artistic statements and the messaging and the connective thread
Speaker 3: of all of them, going back to my roots and
Speaker 3: understanding what it is and who it is that I am,
Speaker 3: and what I'm saying and why I'm saying it. Most
Speaker 3: of the time, there's not even that sort.
Speaker 2: Of of of of pedigree to even assess fully what
Speaker 2: it is that I'm doing. And I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't say that in like a judgmental way or
Speaker 3: in a way that feels like I'm above everybody. I'm
Speaker 3: just saying that based upon the fact that what it
Speaker 3: is that I traffic in, and how specific it is,
Speaker 3: and how deep I am in it at this point,
Speaker 3: and how committed to it I've been from the beginning.
Speaker 3: If you haven't been with me, like they say, if
Speaker 3: you haven't been in the gym shooting those shots, then
Speaker 3: you're not gonna be able to assess it or talk
Speaker 3: about it in the same way. You're not gonna be
Speaker 3: able to play in the same sequence that I'm playing in.
Speaker 3: And I'm okay with that because that's kind of what
Speaker 3: I like. I kind of like I kind of like
Speaker 3: hiding in plain sight until I'm not. I kind of
Speaker 3: like being a dark horse. I kind of like doing
Speaker 3: what it is that I'm doing and doing it at
Speaker 3: the highest level I can possibly do it, And sometimes
Speaker 3: people catch it and it gets rewarded, and other times
Speaker 3: people completely miss it and misunderstand it and don't and
Speaker 3: they think that I'm doing something that I'm not. And
Speaker 3: other times it just is, you know, something that I
Speaker 3: did that we don't give a certain sense of promotion
Speaker 3: or a certain consideration of perception or how it's received.
Speaker 2: And I believe almost.
Speaker 3: That that stuff that I have done and that's been
Speaker 3: more of that than anything else, Bob, to be honest,
Speaker 3: more stuff that I've done that I've just put out
Speaker 3: there or have created or performed or have documented without
Speaker 3: even thinking about it being received and just putting it
Speaker 3: there because I believe that it will have this radar
Speaker 3: to catch people and they need to catch him, and
Speaker 3: it'll be something that is a document of history. And
Speaker 3: it's crazy because I'm not even like a big legacy guy,
Speaker 3: like I don't really care what people think of me
Speaker 3: after I'm gone, because it's like what Mike Tyson says,
Speaker 3: like what is a legacy? I'm dead, doesn't matter. I'm dead,
Speaker 3: Why you shouldn't be talking about me? Who cares? So
Speaker 3: I'm not like a big legacy guy. But I also
Speaker 3: have this wild instinct from my youth. It's just like
Speaker 3: I call it wild because it's not logical of thinking
Speaker 3: about what it is that I'm doing and how it's
Speaker 3: perceived throughout history and service of people who I've yet
Speaker 3: to meet. And I feel that strongly, and a lot
Speaker 3: of my work primarily is driven by that yes, I
Speaker 3: want to hit certain metrics and reach people and do that.
Speaker 3: But I've probably and many times people have told me this.
Speaker 3: It's like I told you that, I don't feel like
Speaker 3: I'm a manageable person. I'm not like a good client
Speaker 3: to be a not because I'm difficult or rude, but
Speaker 3: because there's a lot of things that I could be
Speaker 3: doing and could have done over the years to be
Speaker 3: much bigger, much more successful. Dah blah blah blah blah
Speaker 3: blah blah blah blah blah blah. I think about things
Speaker 3: primarily from the perspective of if I make this, I
Speaker 3: feel like it's either for today or it's for some
Speaker 3: people in the future. I don't know those people, and
Speaker 3: I just feel like this is for them and I
Speaker 3: have to do it because I'm the only one that
Speaker 3: can do it.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the beginning. We've talked about
Speaker 1: once the record is done, perception and reception. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about conception. You say oftentimes you have something in
Speaker 1: a dream. There are many Actually, when you're a musician
Speaker 1: working with other people, there are many steps from conception
Speaker 1: to completion. Okay, with some people, there's a demo wing process.
Speaker 1: But you can have an idea in your head and
Speaker 1: then there's so many chapters in getting it to the
Speaker 1: end that it loses its essence or it's not as magical,
Speaker 1: or sometimes a reverse. You're working on it and it
Speaker 1: becomes better. So how does it work with you?
Speaker 2: It is different every time. Every single time is different.
Speaker 3: And this year, for instance, I'm gonna show you a
Speaker 3: perfect example by looking at this and not nine months
Speaker 3: stretch of time. I put out this big money album
Speaker 3: which is recorded in a period of two weeks, the
Speaker 3: band in the same room, breathing the same a playing
Speaker 3: the music together, and going back to the sense of
Speaker 3: recorded music is what I really like to think about
Speaker 3: it as where you're just in a room making the
Speaker 3: music capture in the moment, and you're trying to capture
Speaker 3: this sort of lightning in a bottle, and it's like
Speaker 3: the Rolling Stones recorded that, Chuck Berry, all these people
Speaker 3: record that way, and then you know, within the same
Speaker 3: nine months, I did a classical piano album, Beethoven Blues.
Speaker 3: The conception of those albums, why I decided to those albums,
Speaker 3: how I recorded those albums, the approach to rehearsing or
Speaker 3: to writing or arranging.
Speaker 2: Is it just is completely different.
Speaker 3: And then before that, I made the World Music Radio Album,
Speaker 3: and the World Music Radio Album was literally an ambitious
Speaker 3: concept album that was presented and written as if I
Speaker 3: was writing a movie, and I was inspired by films.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm fat a lot by films. You know.
Speaker 3: I still watch Forrest Gump every year. It's probably my
Speaker 3: favorite film.
Speaker 2: You know. And then.
Speaker 3: I think about, you know, even the We Are album,
Speaker 3: how many years of different demos and ideas and things
Speaker 3: putting things together, and how that album is actually a
Speaker 3: natural outgrowth of the Social Music Album, which was an
Speaker 3: independent album that I made that was like, really that
Speaker 3: was like the manifesto of my concept and the vision
Speaker 3: of what it is that I want to do, and
Speaker 3: it's a record that probably no one has heard, but
Speaker 3: so so I just think about how some of the
Speaker 3: demos from that, which came out in twenty thirteen, became
Speaker 3: what the We Are album is, and that's a whole
Speaker 3: nother process. For big money. It was the opposite of that.
Speaker 3: It was, you know, me really driving around the country
Speaker 3: on tour. My first tour. We played at the Rhyme
Speaker 3: In one night, I was playing a lot of guitar
Speaker 3: on the tour. You know, obviously primarily a pianist, but
Speaker 3: I play a lot of instruments and the guitar. I
Speaker 3: was playing a lot of guitar, both on and off stage,
Speaker 3: in the tour bus, looking out the window in the backstage.
Speaker 3: Just all these things were processing in my mind, and
Speaker 3: I took the guitar and I almost became an unorthodox
Speaker 3: form of journaling where I wasn't even writing songs. I
Speaker 3: was just capturing melodies and chords and ideas and all
Speaker 3: these different people I was meeting. And I told you
Speaker 3: that story about the Indiana the four generations of family.
Speaker 3: I got a hundred different stories from people that I
Speaker 3: met across the country on that tour, and stories about
Speaker 3: how like I've been waiting seven years for you to tour,
Speaker 3: and like your music is needed now more than ever,
Speaker 3: the times of you know, all this stuff's happening around
Speaker 3: that time and still happening. It just was, you know,
Speaker 3: I was processing a lot, and the song Big Money
Speaker 3: came in a writing session post this show I played
Speaker 3: at the Ryman and I was playing the guitar, and
Speaker 3: that was sort of the conception of the album. Subconsciously
Speaker 3: the seed was planning after that show in that song
Speaker 3: of Oh, this is a guitar based statement on the
Speaker 3: times we're in maintaining faith these people, to look in
Speaker 3: these people's eyes, who I'm meeting, the generational tradition of
Speaker 3: what Americana is, how we can redefine and readdress that
Speaker 3: in the contemporary time. And then also there was this
Speaker 3: real convergence that happened between Dione and I no Id,
Speaker 3: who was like my co pilot with this record. So
Speaker 3: Dion and I have been talking for about five years
Speaker 3: about you know, life and all these different things about music,
Speaker 3: but not.
Speaker 2: About collaborating per se.
Speaker 3: And then we had the opportunity to collaborate and work
Speaker 3: on Beyonce's record, Cowboy Carter Record. When she was finishing
Speaker 3: that record, you know, we co wrote this song which
Speaker 3: I was writing on the guitar called American Requiem. It
Speaker 3: was the first track of the record. And then that
Speaker 3: was also like a convergence because I didn't know that
Speaker 3: she was working on that project obviously, but it's a
Speaker 3: similar not the same, because I'm not really into this
Speaker 3: sort of let's all make country music now, but just
Speaker 3: the idea of going back to the dirt, which is
Speaker 3: something I've been doing for many years and have always
Speaker 3: wanted to represent the contemporary space. But just having that
Speaker 3: be a collective consciousness of artists who are doing this
Speaker 3: sort of repatriation of music and of culture, particularly American music,
Speaker 3: but globally has been happening, and just to see that
Speaker 3: on the biggest level and to contribute to that and
Speaker 3: have the honor of being a part of that, and
Speaker 3: kind of one of the spearhead records of that led
Speaker 3: to Dianna and I collaborating, which we had already been doing.
Speaker 3: Is kind of where that kind of idea of American
Speaker 3: recue on part of American recorum came from. But then
Speaker 3: just going from that space of conversation with him, all
Speaker 3: these things sort of converged conception of all of this.
Speaker 3: This this stimulus led to a two week explosion, which
Speaker 3: is like, I'm a binge creative. A lot of times
Speaker 3: I'll say that, which is this idea that I'll sit
Speaker 3: and stuff will be incubating.
Speaker 2: I'm always creating.
Speaker 3: I'm always doing demos or writing or journaling or whatever
Speaker 3: it is that I'm doing in that period, you know,
Speaker 3: takes different forms and then there'll be a boot. It's
Speaker 3: like it's like lightning. It's like a lightning.
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. And you want
Speaker 1: to capture that emotion, that intensity before it goes away.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's what the record is. So you know
Speaker 2: that's it. You nailed it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna switch gears a little bit more. You had
Speaker 1: an album that won the Grammy Album of the Year.
Speaker 1: How did that change your life in both good and
Speaker 1: bad ways?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I didn't have a chance to really
Speaker 3: process to understand at the time because my wife, Sulaika,
Speaker 3: who is definitely among the most brilliant and special people
Speaker 3: on the planet Earth and my soulmate, was facing a
Speaker 3: life threatening diagnosis and we didn't know if she was
Speaker 3: gonna make it to even watch the Grammys. She wasn't
Speaker 3: damn person, but she was at home watching because she
Speaker 3: had just done a bone marrow transplant.
Speaker 2: And my life.
Speaker 3: It's not to say that everything that you've been working
Speaker 3: for up to that point is not appreciated, but it
Speaker 3: felt more like my life was falling apart than a
Speaker 3: celebration or sort of a shifting gears based on the Grammys.
Speaker 3: It was a shifting gears based on what we were
Speaker 3: going through at home, and the Grammys just happened to
Speaker 3: be concurrent with that. Now, in the midst of that
Speaker 3: just became such a difficult thing to fathom and even
Speaker 3: wrap your head around that. I'm still processing how it's
Speaker 3: changed me because I didn't stop.
Speaker 2: I couldn't stop.
Speaker 3: I was and I was on a plane the next day,
Speaker 3: and by the next night I was in the cancer
Speaker 3: War that Sloan kettering. So the juxtaposition between doing that
Speaker 3: and I was also working with my good friend, the
Speaker 3: great Stephen Copet on the show, being his musical director,
Speaker 3: and all this was happening right, and.
Speaker 2: There was no time to stop.
Speaker 3: There was no moment to say, wow, now let's go
Speaker 3: back into the studio and make.
Speaker 2: Another record, or let's go on the road.
Speaker 3: And less like, you know, what are we gonna do,
Speaker 3: How we're gonna how we're gonna market this, how we're
Speaker 3: gonna spend this, what.
Speaker 2: We we got to get another collaboration on the books?
Speaker 2: We gotta do.
Speaker 3: No, it was how can I not have a nervous breakdown?
Speaker 3: How can my wife live? How can I maintain a
Speaker 3: equilibrium at my uh, my day job, my my which
Speaker 3: which was a thing that actually changed my life more
Speaker 3: than the Grammys, being a kid just three years out
Speaker 3: of college and being the youngest band leader on television,
Speaker 3: late night TV at an institution that's now you know,
Speaker 3: in the state that it's in. But to just be
Speaker 3: in that position, you know, I'm forever grateful for that.
Speaker 3: And and to just have go from not having money
Speaker 3: to having money in the corner office on Broadway, you know,
Speaker 3: that's the thing that more changed my life. But so
Speaker 3: going back to to the moment, just how do I
Speaker 3: stay faithful to that? And you're six of that, you're
Speaker 3: five to six of that, And eventually what change was
Speaker 3: something had to give and I left the show. And
Speaker 3: I also, you know, just before this, my long term
Speaker 3: team and the folks who really have been taking care
Speaker 3: of me for that time, I just felt this inner
Speaker 3: yearning before this, without even knowing what was to come,
Speaker 3: that I needed to shift gears and to build this
Speaker 3: thing that we talked about, the sort of world of
Speaker 3: John Batista and what it is that I want to
Speaker 3: do in the world and it's not just music and
Speaker 3: music industry, and how can I build something that really
Speaker 3: facilitates that, And you know, so I had completely before
Speaker 3: this storm of life shut down my team.
Speaker 2: So I went into this.
Speaker 3: With no manager and no record deal, and I won
Speaker 3: the record that the Album of the Year Grammy and
Speaker 3: five Grammys that night, with no manager, no record deal,
Speaker 3: and a complete disarray.
Speaker 2: In my life and a.
Speaker 3: Job that was four or five days a week, two
Speaker 3: hundred and two shows a year on national television.
Speaker 2: And my position on that show was to bring joy.
Speaker 3: Okay, Okay, I just want you to put that into
Speaker 3: perspective because most people don't understand that when they asked
Speaker 3: me about, oh, how did the Graham you? How did
Speaker 3: that change your life? You were nominate eleven gram You know,
Speaker 3: I've always watched Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson one of my heroes, right,
Speaker 3: And it's like, people like you nominated for eleven Grams.
Speaker 2: The only person.
Speaker 3: Nominated more than that is Michael Jackson in a single year.
Speaker 3: And you think that I would be like, wow, I'm
Speaker 3: not even worthy. But I didn't even have chance to
Speaker 3: to even be be able to sit in that moment
Speaker 3: and process the magnitude of it.
Speaker 2: It was just like how do I stay alive? Uh?
Speaker 3: And and and then that record also what it meant,
Speaker 3: and what most of the stuff that I make is
Speaker 3: meant to do feel so far away from what usually
Speaker 3: gets recognized in that way. You know, my grandfather was
Speaker 3: on this record. He won a Grammy. He you know,
Speaker 3: at the time, he was ninety. He's passed away now,
Speaker 3: but you know, he's somebody who was an activist. He
Speaker 3: was the first hotel workers Union president, and and the
Speaker 3: and the and and the Postal Workers Union president and
Speaker 3: fought instead. You know, at the time of Martin Luther
Speaker 3: King Junior, the sanitation work strike, he was in support
Speaker 3: of that. And this guy is like an unsung American hero.
Speaker 3: So he's on the record and he's at the Grammys
Speaker 3: with me, and you understand, like the people on the
Speaker 3: record who won Grammys because of what that record was,
Speaker 3: it's just beyond like no one hare's still not been
Speaker 3: a critical a journalistic analysis of that and what that
Speaker 3: really actually meant.
Speaker 2: Besides, oh, John Baptiste won a Grammy. This is not
Speaker 2: I could just go on and on.
Speaker 3: About the significance of that, and we didn't even have
Speaker 3: a chance to get into that.
Speaker 1: You know, listen, I'm someone who congratulations for winning. I
Speaker 1: think there's an over emphasis on the Grammys. The reason
Speaker 1: I asked the question is, you know, once you have
Speaker 1: that level of visibility, a lot of people are looking
Speaker 1: for your time, a lot of people want things, and
Speaker 1: you know, you're just the same person, so it gives opportunities,
Speaker 1: but you're more exposed to bullshit too.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: You know, I've been exposed to bs for a long
Speaker 3: time and that didn't really change, you know, I'm I'm
Speaker 3: someone who has always had a lot of people that
Speaker 3: are competing to have FaceTime or to have some sort
Speaker 3: of time. And that's before I was known, That's before
Speaker 3: I was a Grammy winner. That's just something that I
Speaker 3: think certain people have a certain sort of position in
Speaker 3: life where you have to learn something from the way
Speaker 3: that God sets you up in the world.
Speaker 2: I'm an introvert.
Speaker 3: I don't like to be the center of attention and
Speaker 3: to socializing that way, and for whatever reason, for most
Speaker 3: of my young adult life, there's been a magnetism for
Speaker 3: people wanting me to do this or be a part
Speaker 3: of this, or be here or there. And it's really
Speaker 3: been something that you know, I've been in therapy for that.
Speaker 3: I figured out how to regulate, I figured out how
Speaker 3: to step outside of my comfort zone both on and
Speaker 3: off stage. I figured out how to verbally express my
Speaker 3: thoughts and feelings acutely. You know, for many years, up
Speaker 3: almost to the age of ten, I didn't speak. I
Speaker 3: was nonverbal, Like I'm not just saying I'm an introvert,
Speaker 3: I'm asked there this, It's beyond just I'm a quiet guy.
Speaker 2: So it there was not a shift.
Speaker 3: For me after the Grammy is It was just like
Speaker 3: there was almost this sense of knowing within the community
Speaker 3: the people that I was around that Okay, he has something,
Speaker 3: we got to get a piece of him, or let
Speaker 3: there's something there. And then the only difference after that
Speaker 3: was now there was more money involved. So but I
Speaker 3: don't think that people really understood how to leverage me
Speaker 3: per se in terms of the kind of stuff you're
Speaker 3: talking about, which I think happens to a lot of
Speaker 3: people after like a major moment. But again, how do
Speaker 3: you how would someone leverage what it is that I
Speaker 3: do in the context of what they do in a
Speaker 3: moment like that. It's difficult for people to figure that out.
Speaker 3: So I think in some regards that protected me from
Speaker 3: an onslaught of even more stuff. But yeah, saying that
Speaker 3: to say, we have so many things that happen every day.
Speaker 3: It's like hundreds of calls and requests. And it's been
Speaker 3: like that for me for twenty years. It's just like
Speaker 3: constant barrage of can you do this? Or can you
Speaker 3: be here? Can you So I feel like I kind
Speaker 3: of prepared for that in my life by just trying
Speaker 3: to figure out how to get over my introversion.
Speaker 1: I want to get back to the introversion. But before
Speaker 1: we do, what's the status of your wife's health today?
Speaker 3: We just did a tour together and that is a
Speaker 3: it's not just the success, but it's a life milestone
Speaker 3: because we didn't know if we would even be able
Speaker 3: to travel after the transplant. We just did a tour
Speaker 3: together for her book. She wrote a book and she's
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm man. We could do a whole interview
Speaker 3: about her Man's We talked about I want to use
Speaker 3: my music to reach people. She just wrote a book
Speaker 3: from her her experiences with journaling and her experiences going
Speaker 3: into the darkness. She's written a book that's a practice,
Speaker 3: a creative practice for folks who are going through similar things,
Speaker 3: even not going through theys, just want to process what's
Speaker 3: going on in the world, and she created this incredible
Speaker 3: tour where we were on stage together and she's able
Speaker 3: to tour and do things and write. She's been painting
Speaker 3: as well. She has an art exhibition that she just
Speaker 3: had and in our hometown where we live on the
Speaker 3: East Coast, and she's doing really well with treatment that's indefinite,
Speaker 3: which you know, is unfortunate. We have to deal with that,
Speaker 3: but we're grateful that she's here. And then she has
Speaker 3: treatment that we're going through every every month, and beyond that,
Speaker 3: we're just hoping that as things evolve that will have
Speaker 3: some better options as she continues to deal with all
Speaker 3: the treatments.
Speaker 1: How'd you meet her?
Speaker 2: We met We met in band camp, believe it or not.
Speaker 3: We were, you know, twelve and fourteen years old and
Speaker 3: we met in Sarah Toolda Springs, New York at Skidmore College.
Speaker 3: It was a I'm a music camp. There's an orchestra camp,
Speaker 3: a dance camp, in a jazz camp, and she was
Speaker 3: there as a classical double basis now mentioned you know,
Speaker 3: the fact she plays double bass. It's just it's like
Speaker 3: I love to brag on her because it's like she
Speaker 3: plays the double bass. She got into Juilliard, didn't decide
Speaker 3: to go to Juilliard. But that's when we reconnected. After
Speaker 3: the camp. I was at Juilliard and she was at
Speaker 3: the She was, well, we stop.
Speaker 1: For a second. Wait wait, you're at the camp. You
Speaker 1: meet her at the camp. Is there a romance at
Speaker 1: the camp?
Speaker 2: No? No, no, no, no. This which is you know
Speaker 2: with kids, it's not like that. It's more like.
Speaker 3: We we we're in the same circles and we have
Speaker 3: this real connection as friends. It's nothing that we would
Speaker 3: even think would ever be what it is today, but
Speaker 3: it just.
Speaker 2: Is a real Oh that's a that's a cool kid.
Speaker 2: I like.
Speaker 3: I like her, She's cool, and uh. From there we
Speaker 3: stay in touch a bit. But you know, it's more
Speaker 3: when we reconnect when she's you know, I'm starting my
Speaker 3: first year at Julia New York. I moved to New
Speaker 3: York now officially from Kena, Louisiana, you know, and and then.
Speaker 2: She's there and I'm like, oh, wow, look at that.
Speaker 3: You know, she's playing a double bass in the Juliard
Speaker 3: pre college program, and you know, I'm trying to figure
Speaker 3: out how did I even end up in school like this?
Speaker 3: And you know, we just like reconnect and from there,
Speaker 3: you know, there's so many things that happened. This this, uh,
Speaker 3: it's just a really epic journey we've been on together.
Speaker 1: Well, tell me a little bit. Was like an instant
Speaker 1: romance to that ups and downs, what was going on.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, she had a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: that was going on, and in a and and in
Speaker 3: many different ways. We were friends in a in a
Speaker 3: way that we supported each other. I would see her,
Speaker 3: she would come to concert to mine. We would hang
Speaker 3: out with a lot of the same people. We would
Speaker 3: sometimes talk. Her dad was is a huge jazz fan,
Speaker 3: and he would come to concerts sometimes when I was
Speaker 3: in the jazz days of the Jazz Trio, and she
Speaker 3: wouldn't even be there. So I got to know her
Speaker 3: family and that way. It was just very much a setup.
Speaker 3: But we always were with other people. And then at
Speaker 3: a certain point she got sick. And this is like
Speaker 3: twenty ten, twenty eleven, and this was the first time
Speaker 3: she got sick and she was in the hospital and
Speaker 3: I took my band to the hospital when I heard
Speaker 3: the news that she was sick, and we went to
Speaker 3: where she was and in her room in a hospital room,
Speaker 3: next to the hospital bed. We played a second line
Speaker 3: and he saw the nurses come out and they were
Speaker 3: dancing in the hallways. We were playing on when the
Speaker 3: Saints go marching in and you know, just kind of
Speaker 3: serenading her, giving her some oh yes as a friend,
Speaker 3: and you know, she she came through that. And once
Speaker 3: she came through that, it was a moment where we
Speaker 3: both saw something in each other that we hadn't seen before,
Speaker 3: and that became the a's the beginning of where we
Speaker 3: are now. So but there's just there's so many different phases,
Speaker 3: from the awkward kid phase to the phase of being
Speaker 3: go get us in New York coming from small towns.
Speaker 3: You know, she grew up between Tunisia and Switzerland and
Speaker 3: upstate New York, and now we're in Manhattan and we're
Speaker 3: trying to, you know, figure out the world. And then
Speaker 3: the phase of her getting sick and having this life interruption,
Speaker 3: and then and us getting closer than that time because
Speaker 3: a lot of people actually fell away from her when
Speaker 3: she got sick because they didn't know how to deal
Speaker 3: with the fact that someone twenty one years old and
Speaker 3: you know, everybody's trying to play beer pong at parties
Speaker 3: not visit you in the cancer ward and she lost
Speaker 3: a lot of friends and we got closer.
Speaker 2: In that time. So it was like another at phase.
Speaker 3: And then from the phase of her getting well again
Speaker 3: and that us developing a sort of romance, and then
Speaker 3: my career kind of taking off in a different way,
Speaker 3: in a way that.
Speaker 2: A career like it's a real career moment, like now
Speaker 2: he's on TV.
Speaker 3: Like we saw him playing in the subway and then
Speaker 3: like the Lower East Side in the village, and now
Speaker 3: he's on television every night. And in those early days
Speaker 3: when I was playing, she saw that transition. You know,
Speaker 3: there was like many years where I was playing around
Speaker 3: until your point about like people constantly want me to
Speaker 3: do stuff for bringing me into things.
Speaker 2: I felt like we.
Speaker 3: Had a really cool era where I was like your
Speaker 3: favorite band's favorite band, and like we would played these
Speaker 3: secret shows and lofts and uh and in basements in Harlem,
Speaker 3: and like one show Lenny Kravitz came and he played
Speaker 3: with us and he was playing the drums and like
Speaker 3: we were nobody. And then like questlove Emir, who I'm
Speaker 3: all forever grateful for shouting me out once and in
Speaker 3: this article he did, He's like, the three greatest shows
Speaker 3: that I've seen this year.
Speaker 2: It's a three way tie.
Speaker 3: So he said, I still have the article because I
Speaker 3: was such a big deal for us as a band.
Speaker 3: He's like, he was, like, it's Beyonce Prince and this
Speaker 3: kid John Baptiste googled him and thank me later, like
Speaker 3: we were your red hot Chili Peppers came to one
Speaker 3: of these basement shows I did in Harlem, and I
Speaker 3: ended up making a record with Chad Smith and Bill
Speaker 3: Laswell when I was in college that nobody has heard.
Speaker 3: But but like again, like there was a phase where
Speaker 3: I was everywhere but wasn't making any money and nobody
Speaker 3: knew who my.
Speaker 2: Name except for like people like that.
Speaker 3: But she saw all of that, and then it went
Speaker 3: from that to us being on television every night and
Speaker 3: and our lives. We just have been through so much together.
Speaker 3: A quick and fun fact side note. One thing that
Speaker 3: Lenny Uncle Lenny, when when we want Grammy for Album
Speaker 3: of the Year, he was the one who made the
Speaker 3: announcement and gave me the Grammy, and he whispers in
Speaker 3: my ear.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you could see it. You can't
Speaker 2: hear it on the air.
Speaker 3: I tried to hear it, but you can see him like, man,
Speaker 3: I'm so glad to be the one to give this
Speaker 3: to you, from the basement to the grammy, Like it
Speaker 3: was like a he was he saw you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying, just.
Speaker 2: Like the the range of what that was.
Speaker 3: But anyway, I I would not be who I am
Speaker 3: without my wife. And she's she's doing well, God willing,
Speaker 3: we continue to find advancements of how we can continue
Speaker 3: to make her be here for years and years to come.
Speaker 3: And she's such an incredible voice in culture with the
Speaker 3: work that she does. So you know, I don't mind
Speaker 3: talking about her. Ever, if you want to talk about
Speaker 3: her more, we can do that too. Yes, like us
Speaker 3: doing well, And that's a little bit about our story.
Speaker 1: Let's go back. You were talking about being an introvert
Speaker 1: and going to therapy. Is that why you went to therapy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've always had a lot of thoughts that they get.
Speaker 2: It's hard to describe it. It's like.
Speaker 3: It's like if you have a clog or a backlaw
Speaker 3: of stimulus and it's so rapid, the pace of it
Speaker 3: is so the pace of it is so rapid that
Speaker 3: you can't possibly formulate an understanding of it to verbalize
Speaker 3: it at scale, So you have to figure out what
Speaker 3: to do with it, because if it doesn't come out,
Speaker 3: you have to figure out what to do to regulate
Speaker 3: yourself as more more more compound on the thought to
Speaker 3: begin with, I didn't have a way to deal with that.
Speaker 3: And as a kid, you know, my mind, it just
Speaker 3: was it's like racing, like and I'm seeing things. It's
Speaker 3: like a lot of pattern recognition and a lot of
Speaker 3: just like it's hard to just put in the words
Speaker 3: like in just sometimes images or colors and just you're seeing.
Speaker 3: You're just seeing all of this stuff, and it's like
Speaker 3: some of it is a thought, some of it is
Speaker 3: a feeling, some of it is a color that's representative
Speaker 3: of an emotion or a sound. I don't know how
Speaker 3: to it's hard, even until today to describe it. But
Speaker 3: just figuring out how to put that into words was
Speaker 3: why I decided to start doing therapy. And how do
Speaker 3: I speak authentically and how do I how do I
Speaker 3: exist as as as who it is that I am.
Speaker 2: I'm meant to be out loud in the service.
Speaker 3: Of of of of being a good citizen and being useful,
Speaker 3: Like just how do I how do I deal.
Speaker 2: With all of that?
Speaker 3: And you know I needed to do that, and and
Speaker 3: sometimes I am. I still struggle with that, you know,
Speaker 3: I still That's one of the reasons why we when
Speaker 3: we talked about two to five years. That's a big
Speaker 3: part of it. What I'm what I what I do,
Speaker 3: what I'm fortunate to do. It also takes blood for
Speaker 3: me to do, like I don't like like, like Ruvenstein said,
Speaker 3: you haven't played a concert until you spill to drop
Speaker 3: of blood. Like like, I'm I can't. I can't help it.
Speaker 3: It's hard for me to I can't. I can't even
Speaker 3: go ninety nine percent. It's got to always be one
Speaker 3: hundred and ten. Like I can't halfway do it when
Speaker 3: I'm performing. And it's just it takes so much that
Speaker 3: it's like, I don't know, man, It's sometimes I'm like,
Speaker 3: I don't know if I can sustain this.
Speaker 1: Okay, I believe you're in Vegas, right, Yes, Okay, if
Speaker 1: you're in Vegas, we're talking one on one. It's gonna
Speaker 1: stop at some point. You don't have a gig tonight,
Speaker 1: what will you do tonight?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 3: You know, probably read YouTube. I'm a YouTube historian. I'll
Speaker 3: probably call some of my conversational sparring partners and try
Speaker 3: to talk about some sort of Who are.
Speaker 1: Your conversational sparring partners?
Speaker 2: You know, there's a few for different things. Nobody you
Speaker 2: would know. I don't think let me think about it.
Speaker 1: That's not important whether I know them. But you obviously
Speaker 1: have a curious mind, are well informed and are very philosophical.
Speaker 1: Most people not that way. Let's talk about the other side.
Speaker 1: You're on stage, the other side of stage business. It's
Speaker 1: a dumb business. It's not an intellectual business. So you're
Speaker 1: having intellectual conversations. You know, musicians are different. So a
Speaker 1: lot of musicians are quiet speak through their instrument But
Speaker 1: how hard is it for you to find sparring partners?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 3: Wow, you're really catching you catching the right questions. Man,
Speaker 3: that's good stuff.
Speaker 2: I like that. This is cool. No, man, it's not easy.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 3: But I really don't mean that in a way. What
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that there's like a people aren't interesting.
Speaker 3: I think everybody is endlessly interesting. That's what makes me
Speaker 3: so curious. I find that the way things work and
Speaker 3: how the world has become, what has become and how
Speaker 3: we can be a part in that, Like I was saying,
Speaker 3: people power and just the understanding of how the the
Speaker 3: that impacts what we do as musicians as artists, and
Speaker 3: then what people go through on a daily basis, and
Speaker 3: just thinking about how that postulating about where that will
Speaker 3: go and what It's amazing. But you know a lot
Speaker 3: of people that's hard to find. Folks like my longtime
Speaker 3: friend and drummer Joe Sailor, who you know, he's He's
Speaker 3: he's he's one of the folks that we talk a
Speaker 3: lot about that. And now we always had an incredible,
Speaker 3: uh musical connection is a great rhythmic hookup and just
Speaker 3: sort of like a esp on the bandstand, and you know,
Speaker 3: that was when we were teenagers, and and then as
Speaker 3: the years went on, I realized, oh, it's because we
Speaker 3: have a similar interest in these things as well. So
Speaker 3: there's like I find a lot of times that there's
Speaker 3: a musicians who have been with me for a while,
Speaker 3: we've developed the culture of that. And then there's other
Speaker 3: people who I talk to often who are not musicians
Speaker 3: at all, are not a part of the business at all,
Speaker 3: and it's really it's quite fascinating their perception of it
Speaker 3: from the outside.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's true. Within the industry, it's not.
Speaker 3: And that's another reason why I could see myself getting out.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: I feel like trying to conform to the ways of
Speaker 3: the industry and trying to service the needs of what
Speaker 3: in order to continue to scale and be quote unquote
Speaker 3: successful in this space means I have to sort of
Speaker 3: damping or flatten certain aspects of what actually drives me
Speaker 3: and what I want to give to the people and
Speaker 3: how I want to serve.
Speaker 1: Give me one example of something you might have to
Speaker 1: flatten or flattened.
Speaker 3: The narrative of big money as projected through social media TikTok, Instagram.
Speaker 3: It's not there's not enough nuance for me to express
Speaker 3: and for you to fully understand and what it is
Speaker 3: that I want to express and what I think is
Speaker 3: ultimately the true value of it.
Speaker 2: And an album cycle.
Speaker 3: And the way that those things work, and the way
Speaker 3: that promotion works, and the way that all the things
Speaker 3: are building a narrative and a headline and how that
Speaker 3: has to be something that or you got to go
Speaker 3: on the press and you got to say something outlandish
Speaker 3: or just like, none of that is for me that's
Speaker 3: all for the birds. That does not service and it
Speaker 3: doesn't serve the audience to really get the music and
Speaker 3: get the most out of the music. The way that
Speaker 3: it is that we make the music over here, the
Speaker 3: way that what we put into it, the way we
Speaker 3: cook the food over here, is you're not gonna enjoy
Speaker 3: it the most if you're trying to. You might get
Speaker 3: to it, but you might miss it because of the
Speaker 3: way of the delivery systems. So it just doesn't I think,
Speaker 3: you know, if I think about, like for the for
Speaker 3: the literary community, like some folks jumped on this thing
Speaker 3: called substack because they were like, man, the delivery systems
Speaker 3: aren't really I'm sure you know all about that, but
Speaker 3: you know, just I'm thinking about, like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: you see people trying to find alternatives, and the algorithm
Speaker 3: the algorithms, Man, the algorithms reward stuff that doesn't resonate
Speaker 3: at the frequency of what I do.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait, wait, I read something. I saved it. But
Speaker 1: ultimately three there's this woman who's like a big Mozart
Speaker 1: you might know Meetsuko Cheetah.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, of course, the greatest pianist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so she had a quote in Newsweek thirty
Speaker 1: years ago, she said, I tell all my students to
Speaker 1: practice really hard and try to do something great, because
Speaker 1: there's very little great out there. So, yes, you can
Speaker 1: talk about the algorithm. You can talk about this, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of like pourn with the Supreme Court. You
Speaker 1: know it when you see it, you know it when
Speaker 1: you hear it, and very few people can touch that.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: I think that's true, But I also feel like the
Speaker 3: difference with porn and why that's so dark is because
Speaker 3: it plays to the lowest to common denominate. It plays
Speaker 3: to the basest, darkest instincts of people. Greatness plays to
Speaker 3: our highest ideals.
Speaker 1: Not always wait wait, it may have that socially, but
Speaker 1: and people may have to come to that, but it.
Speaker 4: May happen, That's what I'm saying. Okay, but it may
Speaker 4: have an element that hooks them unknowingly and takes them
Speaker 4: on the journey to the destination.
Speaker 2: But you got to hook them first, I know.
Speaker 4: But people, Okay, go ahead ahead, No, I mean listen
Speaker 4: for a long time. In the Internet era, okay, first
Speaker 4: ten or fifteen years of this century, if you did
Speaker 4: something great, it would surface. Then you could do something great,
Speaker 4: and people couldn't hear it, they could be lost. I
Speaker 4: think we're switching back because there's such a plethora of stuff.
Speaker 4: We have a complete society that every day is looking
Speaker 4: for something that can tell somebody else about And you're right,
Speaker 4: a lot of it is lowest common denominator. And you're
Speaker 4: also right, many people are not playing on an artistic level.
Speaker 4: But when you plan it, you know, I'm not saying
Speaker 4: it's one hundred percent success rate, but when someone does
Speaker 4: something and does something different, that's what truly resonates, you know,
Speaker 4: timing and all kinds of things you can't control. The
Speaker 4: system is fucked, but the system is not completely exclusive.
Speaker 4: It doesn't completely rule out true artistry.
Speaker 2: No, there's exceptions.
Speaker 3: As I said earlier, it has exceptions, and I think
Speaker 3: there's a lot of exceptions. But that's my point. I
Speaker 3: think that it was somewhere in the middle. I don't
Speaker 3: think that it's at a point where everybody who is
Speaker 3: an exception to the rule is recognized.
Speaker 1: I agree there just stop on, just stop one point.
Speaker 1: Music drove the culture certainly in the sixties and seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties with MTV. If you want to know what
Speaker 1: was going on you listen to a record, Okay, you're
Speaker 1: talking about your jazz reference points. The reference point there's
Speaker 1: huge incomm inequality. Okay. So you have the lower classes
Speaker 1: having the low hanging fruit, and the year two thousand
Speaker 1: Survivor launched. After that, everybody thought they were celebrity. They
Speaker 1: were doing something. Then we had Jersey Shore. The people
Speaker 1: was I'm doing this now, and then I'm going back
Speaker 1: to Poughkeepsie. There's nothing here. Okay. So it used to
Speaker 1: be that artist and artist that was that was its
Speaker 1: own special thing. You went to school. I don't know
Speaker 1: what kind of school you went to. I went to
Speaker 1: public school. There were the art kids. They were different.
Speaker 1: They might be beautiful, they might be hit, but they
Speaker 1: were in their own world. Those were middle class people.
Speaker 1: Those were the artists. I always use the example, you know,
Speaker 1: Jefferson Airplane, where you like the music, they would they
Speaker 1: would say no or they say I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do that, whereas today the music is dominated by uneducated,
Speaker 1: lower class people who can be pushed by the system.
Speaker 1: You can't you have too much experience, intelligence, and they think,
Speaker 1: I don't want to make it about Mariah Carey. But
Speaker 1: if you're a younger persons out. That's your reference point.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a diva, etc. So a reference point.
Speaker 1: Let's even use jazz, Mahabish, new orchestra or whatever. That
Speaker 1: doesn't even come into the equation. So the system is
Speaker 1: not We're not in a good spot. So I agree
Speaker 1: with you there the crap is filling the channel. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean and listen.
Speaker 2: You know. I also think.
Speaker 3: That that music, whatever how you want to classify it,
Speaker 3: also has a place.
Speaker 2: There's a value to it for what it is.
Speaker 3: I don't consider anything that someone creates and builds community
Speaker 3: around unless they're doing some heinous acts or this sort
Speaker 3: of a form of destruction or assault and involved that
Speaker 3: beyond that community is a good thing, and I'm just
Speaker 3: talking about greatness in music is a different thing.
Speaker 2: Than building community with music as a part of it.
Speaker 3: And I think that this gotta we have to have
Speaker 3: different tiers in terms of music for the sake of culture,
Speaker 3: because music represents something much more than just a form
Speaker 3: of us making songs. It's music is a real part
Speaker 3: of who we are and how we continue to tell
Speaker 3: the stories of our mythologies generations and develop identity over
Speaker 3: time and remember who we are and cultivate where we.
Speaker 2: Want to go.
Speaker 3: So if we don't have the upper rung of culture,
Speaker 3: the upper rung of music, of great musicians, of great artists,
Speaker 3: great storytellers, in that way, you know, it's great to
Speaker 3: have all of the other stuff, but when you don't
Speaker 3: have that other level, we're in bad shape.
Speaker 2: And that's what I'm saying. We're in bad shape when
Speaker 2: we don't have that.
Speaker 1: The thing you said which stuck out to me was
Speaker 1: you talked about having people telling you to make compromises,
Speaker 1: and then you're saying, the audience knows. The audience knows authentic.
Speaker 1: So we live in a world where you say, get
Speaker 1: a code writer, get a remixer. You might have something
Speaker 1: financially successful, but that essence, I mean, I'll reference a
Speaker 1: classic rock era. The labels were totally hands off. We
Speaker 1: give you money, we have to put out the record,
Speaker 1: we don't know, just go do what you do, okay.
Speaker 1: Weren't the exact opposite thing. The suits say they know better,
Speaker 1: they never do okay, And they said, well they got
Speaker 1: to do it this way in that way, And you
Speaker 1: have a lot of people saying okay, I'll do that,
Speaker 1: and then you end up with compromise stuff.
Speaker 3: Well, I find that the artists can still figure out
Speaker 3: how to how to how to make something authentic. It's
Speaker 3: just the delivery systems of the challenge. If you if
Speaker 3: you gotta if you have to go through what you
Speaker 3: know you call the suits, right the labels or whatever
Speaker 3: it is, or you have to get on a playlist,
Speaker 3: so you have to you know, all the things you
Speaker 3: have to figure out how to do. You have to
Speaker 3: make something that is suited, no fun intended, you to
Speaker 3: make something that that's sympatical with that. Otherwise you'll get
Speaker 3: overlooked unless you figure out a way to kind of
Speaker 3: bypass the algorithm or create a new algorithm. Now that
Speaker 3: is rare, and that's what I'm saying, is a rare thing.
Speaker 3: Greatness isn't in the algorithm. Greatness is something that transcends
Speaker 3: the algorithm. It transcends where we are, and it reaches
Speaker 3: people because it's truly great. But sadly, and not even sadly,
Speaker 3: I think somebody doing something truly great, there's an intrinsic
Speaker 3: value to it that doesn't need recognition. But I'm just
Speaker 3: saying that most of the time, the things that are
Speaker 3: truly great don't necessarily get recognized because of the way
Speaker 3: that things are built. In the same way that you're
Speaker 3: saying that there's a sort of a gatekeeper that's happened
Speaker 3: in a different way that's impacting the processing of the
Speaker 3: art and the conception of the art, I'm saying that's
Speaker 3: also affecting why the algorithm doesn't bring greatness to as
Speaker 3: many people as it brings things that you know, have
Speaker 3: merit and are truly important to have in the spectrum
Speaker 3: of things, but aren't musically great.
Speaker 1: Okay, I just want to go back to the introversion thing.
Speaker 1: You've established two things, especially on television. You're doing two
Speaker 1: hundred shows a year. You got your phone whatever it is,
Speaker 1: email tech whatever, ringing all the time. You mentioned Bill Gates. Okay,
Speaker 1: Bill Gates is interesting because not only is he successful,
Speaker 1: he's mega successful, and he changed the culture with the technology. Okay,
Speaker 1: my point being, you're the introvert in this case. They're
Speaker 1: looking for you. Can you relate to these people?
Speaker 2: You know, I can relate to most people.
Speaker 3: I can relate to people who don't agree with ninety
Speaker 3: eight percent of what I believe or think or how
Speaker 3: I see the world. And again, that's part of what.
Speaker 2: Is you know, you talk about the introversion.
Speaker 3: I think that's part of why I'm able to relate
Speaker 3: to a lot of people. It is because many years
Speaker 3: of my life was spent observing people, and a lot
Speaker 3: of times I felt like I was trying to figure
Speaker 3: out how do I become a human? A normal human?
Speaker 3: Like how do I live in the world? And everybody
Speaker 3: seems to be able to express their thoughts and emotions
Speaker 3: to each other, why can't I? Well, maybe if I
Speaker 3: figure out how to understand where these feelings are coming
Speaker 3: from from all these different people, then I'll be able
Speaker 3: to do that. And empathy comes with that, and a
Speaker 3: sense of wanting to be able to give everybody credence
Speaker 3: and a benefit of a doubt and understand their perspective
Speaker 3: truly and thoroughly, and to to really have that sort
Speaker 3: of face time, that sort of really authentic connection with people.
Speaker 3: And then that consequentially it.
Speaker 2: It's spilled over into my approach to making music.
Speaker 3: So then it's like, Okay, well, if I can create
Speaker 3: these authentic exchanges and connect to people through this live
Speaker 3: musical experience and really make something that just feels like
Speaker 3: a revival or it's like something that just connects to
Speaker 3: the soul of people, no matter where you come from. Okay,
Speaker 3: now fast forward that approach to music and that approach
Speaker 3: to being in the world as a person has created
Speaker 3: an orbit where, you know, to talk about Joe Sale,
Speaker 3: we always talk about like how did we get here?
Speaker 2: We'll be you'll see in my orbit where.
Speaker 3: In the same room or in the same week the
Speaker 3: calendar of meetings or events would be. It's like if
Speaker 3: somebody took like if you took five different professions and
Speaker 3: you blended them together from five different worlds, and he
Speaker 3: just threw darts at the profession board and it just
Speaker 3: landed in all of these different spaces, and it's like
Speaker 3: what it's created a magnetism of a different kind. That's
Speaker 3: not necessarily about celebrity, but it's about the idea of
Speaker 3: how do you connect with people authentically and what can
Speaker 3: be done in that space of authentic connection? And that's
Speaker 3: the common thread. Now do I relate to the people
Speaker 3: who I'm I'm in this sort of courting or potential
Speaker 3: collaboration with and some of them even become friends, you know.
Speaker 2: But it's not really about that.
Speaker 3: It's about the idea of what can we do together
Speaker 3: that is meaningful, and how can we do it together
Speaker 3: in a way that is authentic to what.
Speaker 2: Both sides do best. And if we can figure that
Speaker 2: peace out For me, I'm all in. I think that that's.
Speaker 3: What we should be doing more of in government, in
Speaker 3: all sectors of life. Why are we separating? We need
Speaker 3: to figure out ways to be in concert with each
Speaker 3: other and my nature, I feel like I've trained in
Speaker 3: my life to be able to put a fence to
Speaker 3: the side in some cases even to sit and to
Speaker 3: try to figure out.
Speaker 2: Okay, I know there's a human in there.
Speaker 3: And I'm not talking about anybody in particular right now,
Speaker 3: just to be clear, I'm just saying in general, there's
Speaker 3: a human, there's a soul in there.
Speaker 2: I'm the soul doctor.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get you to tap into your soul power
Speaker 3: to James Brown said, and we're gonna we can uh
Speaker 3: then have a real exchange. And and I you know,
Speaker 3: anybody in the world I'm willing to have, not almost anybody,
Speaker 3: I'll say, I'm willing to have a a one to
Speaker 3: one to give an opportunity for us to have a.
Speaker 2: True, true, true dialogue.
Speaker 1: Okay, you've been expressing yourself here. This is about you.
Speaker 1: Forget musicians, which is your culture, and they're different from
Speaker 1: as a friend of mine would say, civilians. When you
Speaker 1: meet these other people and it's somewhat transactionally, you're saying,
Speaker 1: they know who you are, you know who they are.
Speaker 1: Let's see what we can accomplish forgetting the transaction, because
Speaker 1: usually there's a penumber. You gotta go to dinner with them,
Speaker 1: or you gotta go here or there, whatever. Can you
Speaker 1: find that you can really reveal yourself or do you
Speaker 1: feel like I'm talk about your inner thoughts, but you
Speaker 1: feel like these people are not going to really know
Speaker 1: where I'm coming from. I'm just going to service them.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to accomplish the goal and then
Speaker 1: go back to my room.
Speaker 2: I don't do all of that stuff.
Speaker 3: I exist fully as who I am, and that's my
Speaker 3: barometer for if something is going to work or not.
Speaker 2: I that's my way of I really should.
Speaker 3: Maybe be more strategic, Perhaps some would say, I don't
Speaker 3: think so.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: For me to exist, that's also my superpower. For me
Speaker 3: to exists authentically and truly be who I am in
Speaker 3: the world, it would dampen it if I was to
Speaker 3: try to figure out, Okay, how do I I don't know,
Speaker 3: how do I maneuver?
Speaker 2: I think that's what you're getting at, like this idea of.
Speaker 1: I'm actually being less calcululated, like that you're an observer
Speaker 1: of humanity. You know how to connect with people. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they know how to connect with you. So
Speaker 1: theoretically you could be a situation where they think you're
Speaker 1: the greatest friend they've ever had, but they really don't
Speaker 1: know who you are.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that, for one, there's a certain sense
Speaker 3: of connection that you have with each person who you
Speaker 3: are close with, who you've spent time with, that is
Speaker 3: unique to you, and no one can ever know what
Speaker 3: the vibration between you and that person is. That's something
Speaker 3: that it's like sometimes when people see a couple and
Speaker 3: they're like, why is she with him? And they're like,
Speaker 3: you know that vibe, but it's how did they get together?
Speaker 2: What is that?
Speaker 3: Well, it's not for you to know. Between those two
Speaker 3: there's a reality and for them it's.
Speaker 2: Real and.
Speaker 3: It may not be the same as it is between
Speaker 3: you and him or you and her. Are you know
Speaker 3: the kind of connection that you have varies between different people,
Speaker 3: and the depth of that connection varies. You can go
Speaker 3: deep with some people in a different way than you
Speaker 3: can with others, but then on some more basic levels,
Speaker 3: maybe there's not a resonance.
Speaker 2: And that's what I've learned about people.
Speaker 3: There's levels, and there's different It's like different kinds of songs.
Speaker 3: There's hymns, there's lullabies, there's concer thos, there's symphonies, there's
Speaker 3: instrumental vehicles for improvisation. And you go to this person
Speaker 3: when it's like we connect in this way when we
Speaker 3: want to play straight no chaser and take thirteen minute
Speaker 3: excurageon like and we connect in a very deep way
Speaker 3: in that regard. So for me, I've not limited the
Speaker 3: experience of relationship with people and the connectivity that can
Speaker 3: exist the cross the spectrum of humanity for me and
Speaker 3: for other people, just because maybe there's one aspect of
Speaker 3: my life or my identity that they don't have access to. Now,
Speaker 3: that doesn't mean that you have to also know how
Speaker 3: to protect yourself and your integrity and integraty the things
Speaker 3: you believe and to hold the line with that and
Speaker 3: certain things certain people shouldn't have actscess too, I'll say
Speaker 3: it like that, Okay, so that that's true as well.
Speaker 3: And you have to know what that is for you,
Speaker 3: and they have to know what that is for them,
Speaker 3: And that really doesn't have anything to do with you
Speaker 3: other than what it is, what's yours. You have to
Speaker 3: know how to My father's really my father and my
Speaker 3: mother in a different different ways of both you know,
Speaker 3: they really instilled that in me, in the sense of,
Speaker 3: you know, don't you're not trying to be liked by everybody.
Speaker 3: In fact, that's not even a consideration. Yes, you should
Speaker 3: give everybody a benefit of a doubt. You should try
Speaker 3: to be able to connect with people and look at
Speaker 3: them as a human being first, and that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: But that's not the same thing as trying to be
Speaker 3: liked by everybody or be accepted by everybody. My dad
Speaker 3: is probably the smartest person that I know, and my
Speaker 3: mom is the most principled and extremely where I get
Speaker 3: my curiosity from. She's still learning new skills now in retirement.
Speaker 3: And just the different ways that they embody that it's
Speaker 3: like you don't have to like me, and that also
Speaker 3: ends relationships or it deepens them. It becomes like well,
Speaker 3: if you don't value this, to value that, it's not
Speaker 3: a matter of me keeping it from you. Are you
Speaker 3: not you thinking you're my best friend and not really
Speaker 3: knowing me or not truly knowing the depth of where
Speaker 3: I stand or who I am. No, I don't hide that.
Speaker 3: It becomes a thing where it typically activates a different
Speaker 3: level of the connection.
Speaker 1: Okay, circling back and finishing up. What is your pre
Speaker 1: show routine? How do you get psyched up to the
Speaker 1: degree you do psych yourself up to go on stage?
Speaker 1: And how much is outlined? I mean, I've been to
Speaker 1: c household name acts on tour. We're literally the set
Speaker 1: list is on the lamited Okay, so you're out there.
Speaker 1: To what degree is what happens on stage is unexpected
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 3: It's different every night. Every time. I thrive on that.
Speaker 3: I thrive on shifting gears in the middle. I'll make
Speaker 3: a set list, I'll change it in the middle of
Speaker 3: the show. Sometimes I won't make a set list. Mostly
Speaker 3: I'll make set lists for the band. I don't really
Speaker 3: like set lists. I've never been a fan of in
Speaker 3: ear monitors. Sometimes the band will wear in ears, other
Speaker 3: times I'll wear them and enjoin them. But most of
Speaker 3: the time I'm not wearing in ears. I'm feeling the
Speaker 3: vibrations of the space and the musicians. Sometimes I wear
Speaker 3: one ear in and the other ear out, just you
Speaker 3: know that that's just an example of you know, one
Speaker 3: thing we did for the first few shows of this tool,
Speaker 3: we didn't have monitors or in ears. We just played
Speaker 3: with two side fills, two speakers on the stage pointing
Speaker 3: at the band, and we all shared one mix. And
Speaker 3: you know, that made it where we had to depend
Speaker 3: on each other and we had to follow each other
Speaker 3: in the moment and figure out what's the next thing
Speaker 3: we're gonna play, and how we're gonna play it, and
Speaker 3: where's it going.
Speaker 2: And I thrive on that. You know. I've also been
Speaker 2: one who has made shows where every second of the
Speaker 2: show is every segment is like a beat, and it's
Speaker 2: almost like paced to the second, to where if things
Speaker 2: happen any other way, the sequence of the show won't
Speaker 2: have the.
Speaker 3: Impact that I know it will have, just based on
Speaker 3: how I know people will respond. Now, there are segments
Speaker 3: in some of the shows where maybe like a fifteen
Speaker 3: or twenty minute segment in a two hour show that's
Speaker 3: like that, and I'll map it out and i'll think
Speaker 3: about it beforehand if I'm like on the plane, or
Speaker 3: I'll like map it out and i'll like feel it
Speaker 3: in my body. And then i'll teach it to the
Speaker 3: band and we'll learn it and we'll drill it, and
Speaker 3: then that segment of the show, I know is like
Speaker 3: that's ironclad, that's not going to change, and I know
Speaker 3: what the impact that it's probably gonna be before and
Speaker 3: after it, So then I'll like frame it with improvisation
Speaker 3: the whole time. Okay, So so there's like many different
Speaker 3: ways that I approach the performances.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I and I can do both. You know.
Speaker 3: One I guess you call it like more of a
Speaker 3: classical approach through composed and then the other is this
Speaker 3: sort of spiritualist like you almost like a shaman in
Speaker 3: the space or a great great pastor you know, like
Speaker 3: the greatest showman. I oftentimes think about the connection between
Speaker 3: the you know, the circus tent and the revival tent.
Speaker 3: You know, there's just kind of connectivity of that and
Speaker 3: tent culture and and and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I'm trying not to go on tangents so much.
Speaker 3: The thing about my therapy is now my thoughts to
Speaker 3: just spill out of my mouth, but.
Speaker 2: They're even going.
Speaker 3: There's more that are in my mind that I'm not
Speaker 3: I'm trying to like put it into nice answers bite
Speaker 3: size for the press.
Speaker 1: I will tell you this, You're much more organized than
Speaker 1: you think you are. You tend to circle back to
Speaker 1: the next point, and you're digressing less. I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on in your brain, but it does not
Speaker 1: perceive this scattershot on this end, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm grateful to hear that, you know, I'm just
Speaker 2: like it's it's.
Speaker 3: It's such a beautiful gift for for for for me
Speaker 3: to have the opportunity to to share music with people
Speaker 3: on stage and in a way that makes they were
Speaker 3: really value and it really makes their life a little
Speaker 3: bit better.
Speaker 2: And it also for me.
Speaker 3: The flip side of that is in the show, I
Speaker 3: can be so exhausted and nervous and overstimulated and just
Speaker 3: piled on, and in the show something will happen that
Speaker 3: can't be played. It's not in the set list. It's
Speaker 3: just the endless variety of the creator. And it will
Speaker 3: be this therapeutic expression for me that then reaches people
Speaker 3: on the deepest level in the show, and that is
Speaker 3: ultimately what I'm looking for in every show, even when
Speaker 3: I map out the beats and I make something that
Speaker 3: is like because I don't even like the idea of
Speaker 3: playing songs in the show. That's another reason why it's
Speaker 3: hard for me to really I've had to learn how
Speaker 3: to form my mind around the idea of a song
Speaker 3: and promoting songs and writing songs because I've always thought
Speaker 3: about music and live performance in particular, and being an
Speaker 3: artist in that regard and seeing myself as a front person,
Speaker 3: as someone who's creating moments with music. So that could
Speaker 3: mean there could be ten songs in the span of
Speaker 3: two minutes, or that could mean we could play one
Speaker 3: song for ten minutes, or that could mean we could
Speaker 3: deconstruct the song in a way that you know what
Speaker 3: is what I appreciate about bands like Fish, you know, like.
Speaker 2: The jam band World or whatever you want to call that.
Speaker 3: But like and my cousin, you know, Russell, my late cousin,
Speaker 3: Russell Baptiste Junor played in the Meters and played in
Speaker 3: that world. I would constantly beat under his drum throne
Speaker 3: watching him play in that kind of space, but just
Speaker 3: in generous idea of a song and a set list
Speaker 3: of songs and like, let me play my song. I
Speaker 3: understand the power of that, the value that that That's
Speaker 3: just never really been me. It's about how do I
Speaker 3: put and create a moment. And I use song to
Speaker 3: illustrate a message and create a moment and build an
Speaker 3: atmosphere that we can all step into. And then that
Speaker 3: moment is explosive in a way that I think a
Speaker 3: song would limit.
Speaker 2: A song capture you in a different way.
Speaker 3: That's like somebody speaking to your heart and you and
Speaker 3: you and artists, like a song is like a friend,
Speaker 3: whereas a moment is you're cultivating a space. It's like heaven. Uh,
Speaker 3: It's just it's so difficult for me to explain in
Speaker 3: music terms. But that's what I want to do in
Speaker 3: the live show and that's what we've been doing and
Speaker 3: hopefully we'll continue to do.
Speaker 1: Well. It's been heaven talking to you. I mean, I
Speaker 1: got a lot of conversations that are not stimulating for
Speaker 1: people who are very base, Dick, but you're a deep thinker.
Speaker 1: I love talking to you, and I know my audience
Speaker 1: will enjoy this. So thanks so much John.
Speaker 3: Oh Man, thank your so my voice is so low
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh thanks man.
Speaker 1: Okay, until next time. This is Bob left six