Speaker 1: Pushkin. Blue Note is one of the first and longest
Speaker 1: standing institutions of jazz music, and it's always been one
Speaker 1: of my favorite record labels. It started when my guitar
Speaker 1: teacher passed along Herbie Hancocks made in Voyage and the
Speaker 1: self titled album from Art Blaking and the Jazz Messengers,
Speaker 1: the one featuring Monin. It was the music, of course
Speaker 1: that made the most lasting impression, but there was the
Speaker 1: artwork also. No label had cooler branding than Blue Note.
Speaker 1: Later I'd find out that was thanks to people like
Speaker 1: Reed Miles, who was the label's art director, and Francis Woolf,
Speaker 1: who was a photographer that became an important executive at
Speaker 1: the label shortly after its founding in nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: And in those eighty five years, the labels put out
Speaker 1: albums by Robert glasper Lee Morgan, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter,
Speaker 1: Bobby McFerrin, Gregor Reporter, and so many more. To celebrate
Speaker 1: eighty five years of music from this iconic label, I
Speaker 1: thought I'd get together with Blue Notes's current president, Don
Speaker 1: Was to speak with the labels past president in future
Speaker 1: that's Ron Carter, Michelle and Digiocello. Charles Lloyd, Julian Lodge,
Speaker 1: and today Nora Jones. Nora's been with Blue Note Records
Speaker 1: her entire career, starting with her Juggernaut two thousand and
Speaker 1: two debut Come Away with Me, to her latest album,
Speaker 1: Visions that was put out just this year. Visions was
Speaker 1: created with New York's Leon Michelle's of El Michelle's Affair,
Speaker 1: and there are two distinctive sounds, Nora and Leon's blend beautifully.
Speaker 1: Nora was the first interview Don and I did in
Speaker 1: this series. It came together quickly and Hollywood Studio Sunset
Speaker 1: Sound was kind enough to accommodate us at the last minute,
Speaker 1: not only for a chat with Nora, but also a performance.
Speaker 1: And I should tell you before we begin that you
Speaker 1: can binge the entire Blue Note Anniversary series early in
Speaker 1: ad free by subscribing to Pushkin Plus on the Broken
Speaker 1: Record Show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot
Speaker 1: fm Slash plus. This is Broken Record Liner Notes for
Speaker 1: the digital age. I'm justin Mitchman. Here's Don Was and
Speaker 1: myself in conversation with Norah Jones. To see the full
Speaker 1: video version of this episode, go to YouTube dot com
Speaker 1: slash Broken Record Podcast Well I'm excited. This is the
Speaker 1: eighty fifth anniversary of Blue Note.
Speaker 2: That's wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the year twenty twenty four. We have Nora Jones here.
Speaker 1: We're going to celebrate the anniversary of Blue Note with
Speaker 1: the series of guests, our first being Nora Jones who's
Speaker 1: releasing her ninth album with Blue Note. The newest album
Speaker 1: is Visions. And also to celebrate, we have Don was
Speaker 1: president of Blue Note Records, and it's going to be
Speaker 1: a guest with us on these episodes.
Speaker 3: Lovely to be here. Thank you man.
Speaker 1: So excited to have the both of you here.
Speaker 2: Thanks and.
Speaker 1: Love the new album. I want to get to that,
Speaker 1: but first I want to ask Don your first recollections
Speaker 1: of Norah Jones as an artist.
Speaker 3: Sandra Bullock turned me on to you.
Speaker 2: In person or in the movie two weeks notice.
Speaker 3: I was going to work on that movie. Oh really,
Speaker 3: and she said, we want to have this artist. You
Speaker 3: got to hear this record, and it was I think
Speaker 3: before the album came out, but she had an advanced
Speaker 3: copy and she sent it to me. I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's incredible. And then I ended up not working on
Speaker 3: the movie. But yeah, but you.
Speaker 1: Were in it.
Speaker 2: I was in it.
Speaker 4: I was in a scene that Donald Trump was in also,
Speaker 4: which is so weird going back.
Speaker 2: Yeah it was, Yeah, it was cool though. She was
Speaker 2: really sweet. She loved me so sweet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she had how did she become aware of
Speaker 1: I don't know I had.
Speaker 3: An advance copy of the record, I didn't, And she
Speaker 3: was looking for music to put in her movie. I
Speaker 3: can't even remember the name of the movie.
Speaker 2: Two weeks notice Grant.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny. I didn't know she had an advanced happy.
Speaker 4: I think we shot it somewhere in November, and the
Speaker 4: album had come out in February, and it was kind
Speaker 4: of a slow, steady rise that year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's that kind of is the perfect illustration of
Speaker 1: how quickly you kind of went from somebody playing music
Speaker 1: for fun to getting signed to recording an album and
Speaker 1: the album just sort of becoming a phenomenon. The fact
Speaker 1: that not early in your recording career you were and
Speaker 1: a Sandra Bullet. I mean, that was a huge movie
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a big movie.
Speaker 3: Well, I want to get to that, but I'd kind
Speaker 3: of like to start at the beginning. Okay, I got
Speaker 3: this this image of grape fun Texas is then like
Speaker 3: the City and Last Picture Show like Tumbleweed. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: not right suburb of Dallas.
Speaker 4: It's a suburb of Dallas. When I was little was
Speaker 4: very small though. There was a McDonald's and nothing else.
Speaker 4: But it is now like one of the biggest I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just I think strip malls and chain restaurants, and
Speaker 4: it's got one of the biggest malls in Texas. It's
Speaker 4: quite the suburb.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it didn't have like a small town mentality
Speaker 3: to it.
Speaker 5: Maybe it did.
Speaker 2: I think it was kind of a small town when
Speaker 2: I was little.
Speaker 4: I really was only there until I was maybe I
Speaker 4: guess I was there till ninth grade. I kind of
Speaker 4: bounced around, though, and I bounced around schools a lot.
Speaker 4: And we moved to Alaska for six months. Then we
Speaker 4: came back and I went to the Junior High and
Speaker 4: then I went to Colleyville, which is the neighboring town,
Speaker 4: and then you know what I mean, I was kind
Speaker 4: of all.
Speaker 3: Over because it seems a little incongruous that the world's
Speaker 3: most successful jazz singer comes comes out of great time,
Speaker 3: but maybe not.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I was in marching band in ninth grade and they
Speaker 4: had a I had a saxophone teacher, John Rosina, and
Speaker 4: I had quit piano at that time because I didn't
Speaker 4: want to practice anymore, and he turned me onto this
Speaker 4: piano teacher named Julie Bank who lived in the area,
Speaker 4: who was a jazz pianist because Dallas, you know, and Denton,
Speaker 4: Texas is a big jazz college. So that kind of
Speaker 4: got me going on on the jazz tip. But I
Speaker 4: grew up singing in church choir at Grapevine Methodist Church.
Speaker 3: Yeah, did you listen? Like, I got a son who's
Speaker 3: he's a year or two older than you, but I
Speaker 3: remember what he was listening to, and you know, like
Speaker 3: Paul Abduel and Millie Vanilli and Bobby Brown.
Speaker 4: You were absolutely I loved Paul Abdul that album.
Speaker 2: That one album was just it was huge when straight Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's actually it was a great record.
Speaker 2: It was a great record. The songs are really good.
Speaker 4: I think I covered one on my during COVID because
Speaker 4: I was just like in a normal Yeah, I was
Speaker 4: into all that stuff growing up. I listened to case
Speaker 4: case them every weekend.
Speaker 3: Do you remember the first record you bought?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was digital underground. Wow, that's the Humpty Dances.
Speaker 2: The radio. And then my first concert was EMC Hammer.
Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah, were you a shy kid?
Speaker 4: I was kind of shy. I wasn't that shy until
Speaker 4: seventh grade. I think in sixth grade, I was like
Speaker 4: completely unaware of how I was perceived, and I was
Speaker 4: completely open and you know that time in your life
Speaker 4: where you don't care what people think.
Speaker 2: And then I remember.
Speaker 4: There were some girls at school who were kind of mean,
Speaker 4: and I think I realized. For the end of the year,
Speaker 4: I just got really self aware and self conscious and
Speaker 4: I kind of went inside.
Speaker 3: You know, did you kounter of racism.
Speaker 2: Towards me? Not that I was aware of. I never
Speaker 2: was aware.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm mixed as well. I'm black and white. My
Speaker 1: mom's white, my dad's black, and I feel like there
Speaker 1: was a time when it was less common to be mixed.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of like a weird experience not
Speaker 1: knowing many other people who were of two cultures. Did
Speaker 1: you feel of two cultures or did you feel well?
Speaker 2: I felt a lot of.
Speaker 4: I mean, I didn't see a ton of my dad.
Speaker 4: I grew up seeing my dad, but because I wasn't
Speaker 4: in his culture, so much. I didn't feel very of
Speaker 4: two cultures, but I did feel a little different, and
Speaker 4: people never really knew what I was, and they would
Speaker 4: always ask, but they always assumed I was Mexican. Especially Yeah,
Speaker 4: and then like they would speak Spanish to me, and
Speaker 4: then I wouldn't speak Spanish because I didn't know Spanish,
Speaker 4: and then.
Speaker 2: I felt bad, you know, like I'm so are you like?
Speaker 4: But then yeah, and then in high school some people
Speaker 4: thought I was half black and they just didn't know
Speaker 4: what to make of me. But I never encountered any
Speaker 4: negativity from it. Just nosiness, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what are you?
Speaker 4: That question was always funny, but I never got offended
Speaker 4: at it.
Speaker 3: So you fit in. I have this industry of being
Speaker 3: like like someone who was thirty years late for being
Speaker 3: a beatnik.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I think as a kid, I was
Speaker 4: just sort of like other kids, just weird.
Speaker 2: You know, all kids are kind of weird, I think.
Speaker 4: And then in junior I when kids were starting to
Speaker 4: get into football, especially in Texas, at cheerleading, I wanted
Speaker 4: to be a cheerleader and my mom wouldn't let me
Speaker 4: because it was.
Speaker 2: Too expensive, I think. And then.
Speaker 4: And then I got into band. So then I was
Speaker 4: with my people, the band nerds, you know. So I
Speaker 4: felt like you always kind of find your thing. And
Speaker 4: then in high school, I went to Performing Arts High
Speaker 4: School in Dallas, which was completely all all people of
Speaker 4: artistic you know interests, and.
Speaker 3: That's like I didn't like Roy Hargrove go to school
Speaker 3: and Erica Badri. Yeah. So it's a great school, great school,
Speaker 3: and there was an influence. There was an emphasis put
Speaker 3: on jazz.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I was a jazz piano major. But
Speaker 4: I still had to take a classical piano class, which
Speaker 4: I was horrible at, and I still had to take
Speaker 4: I took Actually it was kind of cool because they
Speaker 4: had a synthesis ensemble. Wow, And so I took a
Speaker 4: synthesis class with my heroes, some guys in my class.
Speaker 4: They were older and they really, I know, they were
Speaker 4: just really insanely amazing musicians.
Speaker 2: So that was really fun.
Speaker 4: We had like a d X seven and a Moog
Speaker 4: and we all the teacher encouraged us to al write
Speaker 4: songs and we actually put out.
Speaker 2: A cassette tape.
Speaker 1: It was pretty cool.
Speaker 4: I must somewhere my song I hated on it. I
Speaker 4: hated it so much because it had like synth strings
Speaker 4: on it, which wasn't really what I wanted.
Speaker 1: But that can be a rough sound.
Speaker 6: That's not what.
Speaker 4: I was going for, but that's what ended up happening,
Speaker 4: and it was fine, but it was just funny.
Speaker 3: You know, where did the where did the jazz come in?
Speaker 4: After I quit piano because I didn't want to practice,
Speaker 4: My mom said I had to take for five years
Speaker 4: and then I could quit it. So on five years
Speaker 4: on the dot, I quit, well, yeah, sixth grade, and
Speaker 4: then she took me to a big band concert at
Speaker 4: University of North Texas, which is funny.
Speaker 2: That's how I got into jazz.
Speaker 4: But I liked it, and so she found a saxophone
Speaker 4: teacher and that's when I joined the band, and then
Speaker 4: he found me the jazz piano teacher.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I never made my kids practice. They're all three
Speaker 3: of my sons are musicians, and I start making him
Speaker 3: practice was like the worst thing, supposed to be the
Speaker 3: thing from work too. Yeah, but you got the background
Speaker 3: so when you wanted to, when you finally felt compelled
Speaker 3: to play, you didn't have to start from scratch.
Speaker 2: She was right, I had the foundation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: It was good.
Speaker 3: So then you went to North Texas and then I ended.
Speaker 2: Up going to North Texas. Yeah, for two years.
Speaker 3: From that it was really a jazz program.
Speaker 2: It was very jazz.
Speaker 4: And in high school I was in the vocal ensemble too,
Speaker 4: even though piano was my major.
Speaker 2: And then college same thing. I started out.
Speaker 4: Just doing piano and then I joined the vocal ensemble too,
Speaker 4: like the jazz singers, and so I sang a little bit,
Speaker 4: but it wasn't my main focus for school.
Speaker 3: You know. The only time I ever saw Willie Nelson
Speaker 3: get mad was in a session that we did, and
Speaker 3: he came back in the room to listen to a playback,
Speaker 3: and the engineer had his guitar down, and he just
Speaker 3: couldn't understand why anyone would separate his singing from his guitar,
Speaker 3: why they wouldn't be at an equal level, because to him,
Speaker 3: it was one form, one solitary expression was coming from
Speaker 3: his vocal chords or his.
Speaker 2: Fingers, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Was there a point where the two became inextricable to
Speaker 3: you where you weren't like where it's just one expression.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think I realized it till the
Speaker 2: last ten years, but.
Speaker 4: I think in college because I sang and I played,
Speaker 4: but I didn't really do it together so much. I
Speaker 4: mean I tried, but I had a couple of demos
Speaker 4: where I did. But I got a gig at a
Speaker 4: restaurant in Dallas called Popolo's. It was an Italian restaurant,
Speaker 4: and somehow I got a gig playing every Friday and
Speaker 4: Saturday night and if I could sing too, because that
Speaker 4: wasn't really the gig, and they said sure, but not
Speaker 4: like every song, and so that was my paid practice
Speaker 4: and that's how they got sort of like the coordination factor.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know if people understand what a great
Speaker 3: pianist do. I hear it in your voicings are incredibly sophisticated.
Speaker 3: So you clearly study theory and you understand your scales
Speaker 3: and your modes and all that. And I just think
Speaker 3: you're such a great singer that it might get overlooked,
Speaker 3: but you're an incredible pianist.
Speaker 2: Thanks, don I mean, were you.
Speaker 3: In bands as just a keyboard player?
Speaker 2: No, I wasn't.
Speaker 4: I was still you know, as far as the piano
Speaker 4: players in college and high school, I mean everyone else
Speaker 4: could play circles around me. I never had a lot
Speaker 4: of chops. I still don't. I can't play very fast,
Speaker 4: but yeah, I have my own thing that has developed
Speaker 4: over the years. But I think just over the last
Speaker 4: ten years, even I've played so much more piano live,
Speaker 4: sort of stripping my band back into trio form at
Speaker 4: some point.
Speaker 2: That I've just I just have gotten.
Speaker 4: A lot better in the last ten years, and it's
Speaker 4: been really fun to play.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I feel more connected to it than I did even
Speaker 4: fifteen years ago.
Speaker 3: You know, is it hard now when you have to
Speaker 3: when you're in a situation where you have an accompanist.
Speaker 3: Does that ever come up where you just have to
Speaker 3: stand and sing?
Speaker 4: I'm not great at it. I'm much better if I
Speaker 4: accompany myself. Yeah, And like if there's a situation where
Speaker 4: there's a house band or a tribute show, I always
Speaker 4: try to play, you know, because I feel like I
Speaker 4: can do my thing a little easier. But it depends
Speaker 4: on the situation, of course. Yeah, sometimes it's fun to
Speaker 4: have an accompanist if it's the right person.
Speaker 1: But so there is a bit of a willy thing though.
Speaker 1: It does feel like these are these I do these
Speaker 1: things together, not so much apart.
Speaker 4: I do think that where I can do my thing,
Speaker 4: which is more special. It's when they're together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely gives you something to bounce off of.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Also, I'm really not great at standing and singing because
Speaker 4: I don't know what to do with my hands. So
Speaker 4: even in college, I was in a couple of bands
Speaker 4: where I just sang, and I think it was a
Speaker 4: good match musically, but I always just they're looking really awkward.
Speaker 3: That's the whole other thing, especially if you're used to it.
Speaker 3: But I think it's rhythmically too. He I was just
Speaker 3: I was talking to Lucinda Williams who's having trouble guitar,
Speaker 3: and she just what she's got no rhythmic point of reference.
Speaker 3: Bob Villains another person like that. His guitar playing was
Speaker 3: so essential to the way he sang that when he
Speaker 3: stopped being the primary source of accompaniment, his singing changed,
Speaker 3: and he's been looking for a band that would play
Speaker 3: the he plays.
Speaker 4: But it's not that it's that he's doing the thing
Speaker 4: and filling the space with part of him. Yeah, probably
Speaker 4: it's more that that you're not filling the space. And Yeah,
Speaker 4: I feel like when I record, I'm always getting a
Speaker 4: better vocal and piano take. If I am doing it
Speaker 4: at the same time live. If I overdubbed the piano
Speaker 4: or the vocal, it can be cool if it's the
Speaker 4: first or second take. But the more I the more
Speaker 4: takes I do, I get really busy, or like I
Speaker 4: overthink or I over sing or I overplay, and it's
Speaker 4: just not the same.
Speaker 3: All right. So when you when you finally go to
Speaker 3: New York City, you dropped out of college, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I did too. It's a good move.
Speaker 2: Well, I didn't want to.
Speaker 4: I didn't want to teach, so I didn't know that
Speaker 4: I needed a music degree. And I also failed my
Speaker 4: classical piano jury. That's I'm not proud of that, but
Speaker 4: I am not.
Speaker 2: Afraid to admit it.
Speaker 4: So I was also faced with like having to do
Speaker 4: six semesters of classical piano, and I had already failed
Speaker 4: the first one, which was pretty sad.
Speaker 3: So there was no alternatives.
Speaker 4: And it's really just because I didn't practice. It's not
Speaker 4: because I couldn't do it. It was because I didn't practice.
Speaker 1: Were you busy doing other things besides practicing?
Speaker 4: I mean I was practicing for other classes, I was
Speaker 4: playing in two bands, I was doing gigs, so I
Speaker 4: wasn't practicing my classical piano, got it or my arpeggios.
Speaker 1: It was back to the original. Yeah, quandary almost of
Speaker 1: your piano plan, being forced to do a site reading
Speaker 1: and classical and when you got in your own thing,
Speaker 1: fell back in love. But now you're kind of going
Speaker 1: back to this is not the stuff I like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't want to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 3: That's the same for me. I went to the University
Speaker 3: of Michigan, but this is in nineteen seventy and if
Speaker 3: you wanted to be in the music program, you were
Speaker 3: in the orchestra, or you weren't in the music program.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: It was a recording lab or electronic music lab or
Speaker 3: no jazz pro and nothing like that. Yeah, so I
Speaker 3: knew what I wanted to do. So when you got
Speaker 3: to New York, were you did you? Were you thinking
Speaker 3: that you'd be someone like Shirley Horn, you know, a
Speaker 3: jazz singer.
Speaker 4: I didn't really know, but at that point I was
Speaker 4: still way into jazz. And so I got a gig
Speaker 4: at an Italian restaurant, another Italian restaurant, but it paid
Speaker 4: way less than the Texas one, Did I tell you that?
Speaker 4: And I was just I was going to Smalls every
Speaker 4: night and watching people play and just so in love
Speaker 4: with going to hear music every night. I mean, I
Speaker 4: went out and I heard music every night of the week.
Speaker 4: And I would hear Brazilian bands, I would hear jazz
Speaker 4: I would go to you.
Speaker 2: Know, there were so many different jazz scenes too. In
Speaker 2: New York.
Speaker 4: There was there was the small scene, and then there
Speaker 4: was the tonic scene, which was kind of avant garde,
Speaker 4: and I knew some people in that scene, and I
Speaker 4: knew some people in that scene.
Speaker 2: So there was all these different scenes and talk as
Speaker 2: in it was a club, a club called.
Speaker 4: Yeah Yeah. And then I had friends who were songwriters
Speaker 4: and I would go see them play at the living room, right,
Speaker 4: And that was totally different for me because I had
Speaker 4: never thought about songwriting since my synthesizer class song that I.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think I wrote two songs for that class, which
Speaker 4: I still think is so cool that he encouraged us
Speaker 4: to write songs. But I think I was embarrassed by
Speaker 4: them because you know, it was an assignment, and so
Speaker 4: we had to show them and we had to and
Speaker 4: we recorded them and they didn't come out or I
Speaker 4: liked it, but I didn't like the way I sound it.
Speaker 4: You know how it is when you hear yourself for
Speaker 4: the first time. It takes a long time to do
Speaker 4: it in a way that you like it. And so
Speaker 4: I was a little put off by myself, and so
Speaker 4: I didn't write after that at all.
Speaker 1: Put you off to songwriting like that, Yeah, I was.
Speaker 4: Like, oh, I'm not going to I didn't even think
Speaker 4: of it as something that I should do. It was
Speaker 4: weird now thinking back that I didn't even like occur
Speaker 4: to me that I could get better at it or
Speaker 4: do it differently.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: And so then when I was seeing all my friends
Speaker 4: at the living room, I was I was getting inspired,
Speaker 4: and I didn't have a piano yet because I you know,
Speaker 4: I lived in a rental and I didn't have a
Speaker 4: keyboard or anything. And so my mom sent me this
Speaker 4: old guitar that I had in Texas that I knew
Speaker 4: two chords on, and I played like five chords. I
Speaker 4: learned five chords and I wrote come Away with Me
Speaker 4: one night, and then I started writing songs that's good. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And oh, I think because the guitar, I could play
Speaker 4: really simple chords on piano. I knew all these cool chords,
Speaker 4: but I didn't know how a song fit in, and
Speaker 4: they always sounded like a standard, and then it sounded not.
Speaker 4: I don't know the piano. I couldn't make sound how
Speaker 4: I wanted to write songs with at the time, I
Speaker 4: couldn't put that together yet.
Speaker 3: Just you know, and I know that you don't think
Speaker 3: about genre. I don't know any musician who sits and thinks, well,
Speaker 3: I think I'll phrase this next line like a jazz line,
Speaker 3: and then I'll throw in it. It doesn't work that
Speaker 3: way you but you was there a disparity between what
Speaker 3: you were hearing at Smalls and what you were hearing
Speaker 3: at the living room.
Speaker 4: It was just different. I mean, the people playing at
Speaker 4: Smalls were incredible musicians, and then the people playing at
Speaker 4: the living Room were playing really simple chords and writing
Speaker 4: really great songs.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 4: I did all these gigs, but I wasn't playing in
Speaker 4: clubs yet because I wasn't really there yet. I did
Speaker 4: a lot of restaurant gigs where nobody listened. And then
Speaker 4: my friend Jesse Harris, who's the songwriter, asked if I
Speaker 4: would do some demos for him. He had a Sony
Speaker 4: publishing deal, and so I sang a few of his
Speaker 4: songs for his demos and he loved the way I
Speaker 4: sang them, and he said, let's do a gig at
Speaker 4: the living room.
Speaker 2: Why not? It's just I mean, you don't get paid.
Speaker 2: It's not like that hard to get it. And he
Speaker 2: was already playing there.
Speaker 4: So I said, all right, sure, maybe we'll do come
Speaker 4: Away with Me this song I wrote, you know, And
Speaker 4: so we did his songs, we did like one or
Speaker 4: two of mine, and my bass player Lee Alexander started
Speaker 4: writing songs. We did a few of his, and that
Speaker 4: was sort of the beginning of the first album. And
Speaker 4: it was a really big moment because it was the
Speaker 4: first time I'd played in a place like that. And
Speaker 4: they passed a tip jar around and you couldn't you
Speaker 4: could hear a pin drop. Nobody was talking, everybody was listening,
Speaker 4: and I hadn't experienced that yet. Really yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Did it freak you out then? I mean, in the moment,
Speaker 1: it was nice.
Speaker 2: I mean I was nervous, but it was nice.
Speaker 4: You know, Wow, imagine that people listening.
Speaker 3: So is that around the same time that the woman
Speaker 3: from me and my publishing came I forgot.
Speaker 2: Her name, Shelle White.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she how did she end up coming to
Speaker 3: hear you play?
Speaker 2: Her husband?
Speaker 4: My bass player played with her husband, and I also
Speaker 4: did had done a gig or I ended up doing
Speaker 4: a gig with him, and so they were friends.
Speaker 2: He was a musician, Jace Hopkins.
Speaker 4: So they came. It was my twenty first birthday. We're
Speaker 4: playing at the garage on Seventh Avenue. We're playing jazz
Speaker 4: brunch trio and they came to hear us, and she's like, Hey,
Speaker 4: you know, I just was at a company picnic and
Speaker 4: I met Bruce Lenvall, the head of Blunot Records.
Speaker 2: I'm going to set up a meeting. How about that?
Speaker 2: I was like, O, guy, whatever, I didn't.
Speaker 3: Really did you aspire to get a record too?
Speaker 4: I was aspiring to pay my rent and to get
Speaker 4: a at a non brunch venue. My sites, we're not
Speaker 4: very far ahead of my next week. Yeah, get out
Speaker 4: of restaurants and into a club, like I was so
Speaker 4: not even there yet.
Speaker 3: But you were aware of the legacy of Blue Note Records.
Speaker 2: I knew Blueot Records, so I was not going to
Speaker 2: say no, did.
Speaker 3: You own some blue Oot Records?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 3: What were your favorites.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I always like that something else canniball outly record. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think I didn't even know which ones were Blue Oat,
Speaker 4: but I know I owned a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be back with more from Don was and
Speaker 1: myself in conversation with Norah Jones, We're back with more
Speaker 1: from Norah Jones.
Speaker 3: So there you are. You're in a meeting with the
Speaker 3: head of Blue Note, And how did that go?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 4: I didn't know if I was going to have to
Speaker 4: play like that's not really that feels so embarrassing to
Speaker 4: me to go into an office and audition for somebody
Speaker 4: like that, So I didn't know. I brought in a demo.
Speaker 4: I had a three song demo that I brought around
Speaker 4: to restaurants to get gigs. And on the demo I
Speaker 4: put a song from Maybe College that I had recorded
Speaker 4: a standard, and then a song I had recorded in
Speaker 4: New York with a friend, a standard with basin trumpet
Speaker 4: on it. And then I threw one of the Jesse
Speaker 4: Harris songs from the demos we made on there right,
Speaker 4: and so Bruce listened and he liked it. And then
Speaker 4: after the Jesse song came out here goes, well, what
Speaker 4: do you want to be a jazz singer a pop singer?
Speaker 4: I was like, jazz singer, I'm here in Bluna.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I also like, I don't I don't think
Speaker 2: I was thinking about that.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't think there's that big a difference. I've
Speaker 3: listened to all three of those. Yeah, and with the
Speaker 3: Jesse songs got like a is it a dobro?
Speaker 4: The Jesse song we had played him was it was
Speaker 4: just sort of six eight like country song.
Speaker 3: I mean, what instrument was there's something kind of picking
Speaker 3: on it?
Speaker 4: There was no This was just it's called World of Trouble.
Speaker 4: It was piano and guitar, yeah, and bass.
Speaker 3: So there was some textural differences, but you sang the
Speaker 3: way you approached the song and the voice he used.
Speaker 3: It wasn't like you sang, you know, Jesse song with
Speaker 3: like a twang. I thought you're incredibly consistent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I don't know when I made the disc.
Speaker 4: I mean I grew up mimicking my favorite singers. That's
Speaker 4: how you learn, right, who were there? I mean I
Speaker 4: tried say, I tried to mimic or Ethan all her
Speaker 4: background singing. You know, I was always doing the harmonies
Speaker 4: to Ain't no Way, but I mean Billie Holliday was
Speaker 4: a big one. I actually got a part as Billie Holiday.
Speaker 4: In the high school. They did a black history program
Speaker 4: every year and somehow I got to play Billie Holiday,
Speaker 4: which is crazy.
Speaker 2: It was just a program with.
Speaker 4: Lots of different stuff and I was like, I went
Speaker 4: into that was weird because I had to audition it.
Speaker 4: We auditioned in front of the whole group of students.
Speaker 2: It was like.
Speaker 4: And I sang I think I sang like fight and
Speaker 4: mellow or something. But the actual song for the performance
Speaker 4: was Strange Fruit, which was also crazy, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's heavy for for for high school and to
Speaker 1: not only have to sing it in front of people
Speaker 1: and find them heavy.
Speaker 2: Very heavy. And I'm also not black, so.
Speaker 8: You know, people people thought you were, but I think
Speaker 8: I think maybe they did, and I know I did
Speaker 8: definitely did not tell them I was, but I think
Speaker 8: maybe there was a little bit of a mystery surrounding
Speaker 8: my background.
Speaker 2: I'm not really sure. I'm actually not sure about that.
Speaker 1: Did you try it? Did you try to sing it
Speaker 1: like Billy or.
Speaker 4: Yes, Yeah, I definitely tried to out like Billy that
Speaker 4: was an amazing experience.
Speaker 2: The director Edra James. She was incredible. She really taught
Speaker 2: me a.
Speaker 4: Lot about embodying something, you know, because I wasn't into theater.
Speaker 4: I wasn't in the theater group, but she was like
Speaker 4: the theater director.
Speaker 2: And she.
Speaker 4: I don't know, the way she told me to do
Speaker 4: it was really it was very spiritual. She was talking
Speaker 4: about Billy in her life and everything, which, of course,
Speaker 4: you know, I didn't know that much about yet.
Speaker 2: I just knew I loved her her singing. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: Aretha Billy, Billy God, Judy Garland. You know.
Speaker 1: The other day that Judy Garland is one of the
Speaker 1: great I mean, at least twenty greatest singers ever.
Speaker 2: Oh you had to convince that.
Speaker 1: Well. I mean, I mean, I don't know. I guess
Speaker 1: people think maybe of her as hokey, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you think about the standards that have
Speaker 1: come from her, the definitive versions of.
Speaker 3: Certain phrasing, brilliant, man. Yeah, it's all for real.
Speaker 4: Yeah, an incredible. I love the Cardigi Hall Live album.
Speaker 4: It's really hard, a lot of heart. Yeah, And as
Speaker 4: I got older, I think I realized that that's all
Speaker 4: that matters really. And I remember in college once I
Speaker 4: was singing a stand. I was playing a demo for
Speaker 4: a friend of mine and he and it was a
Speaker 4: jazz standard and he's like, gosh, you really hear your
Speaker 4: Texas toang no matter what you do. And I was like, really,
Speaker 4: I didn't know that, and he's like, yes, it really cool.
Speaker 2: And I was like, that's cool, okay.
Speaker 4: And I think that was one of those moments where
Speaker 4: I sort of was like, Okay, I can kind of
Speaker 4: be myself and I don't have to imitate Ella, you know,
Speaker 4: or Seravon.
Speaker 2: I loved Saravon. I was obsessed with Serevon.
Speaker 4: But I mean, yeah, I mean some of my favorite
Speaker 4: voices are imperfect or weird or whatever they are, but
Speaker 4: they embody them themselves, you know, they're their own thing.
Speaker 3: So then then you get the chance to make a record.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I.
Speaker 3: Thought, like, call on Craig Street. There's a smart move.
Speaker 9: Well.
Speaker 2: I was obsessed with New Moon Daughter, the Cassandra Wilson album.
Speaker 3: Is that the one where she does I'm So Lonesome?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I love that album.
Speaker 3: That tied it all together.
Speaker 4: Well, I loved that album so much. It was so
Speaker 4: different from anything else I listened to. And I remember
Speaker 4: being in high school, and I mean, that album was
Speaker 4: really emotional for me because my aunt was dying of
Speaker 4: cancer and I was listening to it NonStop in Florida
Speaker 4: with my aunt. So it was very emotional for me
Speaker 4: for that reason. But also it was the first time
Speaker 4: I had an album of a singer where there's just guitar.
Speaker 4: It's all acoustic guitars on that album. There's no keys
Speaker 4: at all, and it just had such a different sound,
Speaker 4: you know, it was earthy and kind of it had
Speaker 4: like some twang on it, and she's Southern, so she
Speaker 4: has a little twang and she's incredible, And yeah, I
Speaker 4: was cool.
Speaker 3: It was great records, and so you called Craig and
Speaker 3: started to make it.
Speaker 4: I asked Bruce if I could use Craig, and He's like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: I'll call Craig.
Speaker 3: You discovered that it was probably a more function of
Speaker 3: mixing really than it's like you did achieve the thing
Speaker 3: you went into work with Craig for.
Speaker 5: We did.
Speaker 4: I mean, we made a twenty one We recorded twenty
Speaker 4: one songs in a week and mixed it immediately, and
Speaker 4: maybe it wasn't the smartest way to do it with.
Speaker 4: I think space is always the place when you're recording.
Speaker 4: And then we turned the record in and it got rejected,
Speaker 4: and I was kind of scared and sad, but also
Speaker 4: a little relieved because I didn't love I didn't feel
Speaker 4: like it came out exactly like it could have. But yeah,
Speaker 4: in hindsight, I think the mix says we're not right.
Speaker 4: And again I think Space would have been the place,
Speaker 4: and we would have used what was great, and we
Speaker 4: would have either redone or used some demos from something else,
Speaker 4: and then that ended up being what happened. We used
Speaker 4: three of the amazing takes from that that session on
Speaker 4: the record.
Speaker 3: Don't know why. It's the first take right from your demos, right.
Speaker 4: Don't know why was the first take of the demos
Speaker 4: we made because Blue Note gave me some money to
Speaker 4: make demos before they decided if they wanted to sign me.
Speaker 4: And then whenever Bruce heard the demos and he liked them,
Speaker 4: he called me and he was like, all right, this
Speaker 4: isn't jazz, this is country, some of it even, but
Speaker 4: I don't care.
Speaker 2: Let's do it. Let's make a record. That's kind of
Speaker 2: how he was.
Speaker 1: Funny review.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3: It's just the greatest, wasn't he his enthusiasm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Bruce was great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Bruce was so great. But he was also so
Speaker 4: into jazz. I mean, later on, after many, many years,
Speaker 4: I made records that I made The Fall, and then
Speaker 4: I made Little Broken Hearts with the injer Mass and
Speaker 4: we went to lunch one day and he's like, well,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna be honest with you. I didn't like those
Speaker 4: records when you turn them in. They're not really my thing.
Speaker 4: But I think now I like them, and I get it.
Speaker 4: Now I get it, and I thought that was cool.
Speaker 3: That's cool.
Speaker 2: He never kissed my butt.
Speaker 4: He never told me he liked him, so I never
Speaker 4: really thought about him not saying anything, but like it
Speaker 4: was fine.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I don't think you had a shift in sensibilities or
Speaker 3: a shift in your style of delivering the songs. You
Speaker 3: were always you, but the textures kind of changed dramatically,
Speaker 3: you know, which I think is a cool thing. That's
Speaker 3: what Miles did. You know, if you listen to Miles,
Speaker 3: whether it's with an electric band or whether it's I'm
Speaker 3: kind of Blue or in the Herbie Wayne Tony Ron band.
Speaker 3: He always sounded like Miles. He was always Miles, and yeah,
Speaker 3: he just kept it interesting for himself by changing the textures.
Speaker 3: After the success of Have Come Away with Me? Were
Speaker 3: you trying to avoid getting pigeonholed into piano trio?
Speaker 4: I was just excited to keep finding stuff and I
Speaker 4: was really getting into songwriting. I only wrote two or
Speaker 4: three songs on Come Away with Me, and the rest
Speaker 4: were Jesse songs, Lee songs and a few covers, and
Speaker 4: I loved doing them. But I was excited to write,
Speaker 4: and I was getting into like bluegrass that year, and
Speaker 4: so the second album was a little more country, but
Speaker 4: everyone in the band wrote for it, and so we
Speaker 4: did everyone in the band's songs, and I wrote a
Speaker 4: little more, but we had the same engineer and same
Speaker 4: producer of course, a Reef Martin.
Speaker 3: Let's talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got to talk about is you.
Speaker 3: Know, certainly one of my great heroes and a guy
Speaker 3: who I aspired to I want to emulate. I don't
Speaker 3: feel I ever hit it, but I try.
Speaker 9: No.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think you have the same spirit a
Speaker 4: Reef did, which is just very nice. He embodied like
Speaker 4: sweetness and goodness and you have that absolutely.
Speaker 3: That's very kind. Ye what bo was a like making
Speaker 3: records for him?
Speaker 4: It ended up being so fun And I never thought
Speaker 4: I would have this old man as a friend. You know,
Speaker 4: the same thing with Bruce. I always thought that was
Speaker 4: so funny. I could go to lunch with a Reef
Speaker 4: or Bruce and we could drink Martini's for hours and just.
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: Talk about relationships like I would talk about my boyfriend,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: What I mean, Like they were like my my friends.
Speaker 2: And I always thought that was funny.
Speaker 1: How did a reef like join the project?
Speaker 4: Actually, a Reef had just started either started or revamped
Speaker 4: I'm not sure. Maybe you know Manhattan Records, which was
Speaker 4: a sort of sister labeled to Blue Note that Bruce oversaw,
Speaker 4: which was either classical or musical theater kind of adult contemporary.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's adult contemporary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would have revaed because I think I started
Speaker 1: in the eighties. Maybe it started, probably was revamped.
Speaker 2: That's what it was.
Speaker 3: He left Atlantic and went to yeah do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So whenever the Craig Street version of the record got
Speaker 4: sort of rejected, Bruce said that he wanted me to
Speaker 4: go back in with a Reef Martin, and I was
Speaker 4: a little confused. I was like, well, you like the
Speaker 4: demos we did on our own, should we just do that?
Speaker 4: And of course I respected everything where Reef had done,
Speaker 4: but I was starting to get a little protective at
Speaker 4: this point and like stubborn, and I didn't know if
Speaker 4: he still you know, like I didn't know if it
Speaker 4: was going to be strings and stuff I didn't want.
Speaker 2: On there, you know, or or what.
Speaker 4: So I was a little hesitant, to be honest, even
Speaker 4: though he was a legend and I'm obsessed with all
Speaker 4: of the stuff he did with Donnie Hathaway and Retha.
Speaker 4: But then Bruce said, why don't we set up a meeting.
Speaker 4: We'll go into a rehearsal space. We went to this
Speaker 4: rehearsal space.
Speaker 2: It was so silly and like he came in and
Speaker 2: he's this sweet old man and he sits down and
Speaker 2: I play or something. I don't know. It was weird.
Speaker 4: And then Bruce said, well, you guys have a four
Speaker 4: days book.
Speaker 2: In the studio.
Speaker 4: He'll just come the first day and if it goes well,
Speaker 4: then he can come the rest of the days. I
Speaker 4: don't know if he ever told a reeffat but that's
Speaker 4: what was my understanding. And so because it was still
Speaker 4: just my band, he didn't hire the band. It was
Speaker 4: still in my band, and I hired the band and
Speaker 4: the engineer, and so that's what happened. He came in
Speaker 4: for the first day. He was super sweet, he had
Speaker 4: great like years, and he didn't try to impose anything
Speaker 4: on it, I think, which was my main thing. But
Speaker 4: he definitely helped guide us into the right directions every time,
Speaker 4: and all right, he can stay. It was like, kind
Speaker 4: of funny, but what would.
Speaker 3: He make suggestions about.
Speaker 4: Actually, When I did the Nearness of You, which is
Speaker 4: the old Hogey Carmichael ned Washington song and I play
Speaker 4: it solo, there's a part on it.
Speaker 2: The nearness of You, the nearness of You.
Speaker 4: Or whatever the melody is, I was kind of like,
Speaker 4: I think I had sung that song for a long
Speaker 4: time and I was kind of phrasing it a little loosely,
Speaker 4: and he said, no, I know, I like how you're
Speaker 4: phrasing it, but at least the first time, can you
Speaker 4: just hit the actual melody on the actual the nearness
Speaker 4: of because it's such a classic song, hit that melody
Speaker 4: every time I sing that song. Now I think about him.
Speaker 4: But yeah, stuff like that. Like he wasn't trying to
Speaker 4: put me in a box or change anything. It was
Speaker 4: just the stuff that makes the melodies, you know, the
Speaker 4: stuff that we needed to hear, picking a take, comping vocals.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: He had this crazy like contraption. He used to camp
Speaker 4: vocals from the seventies, remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so you could just compare different different takes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he would put it into this movie box. It
Speaker 2: was like very old school.
Speaker 4: He was just so cool and in the end, I
Speaker 4: just grew to love him so much. So I was
Speaker 4: just very I was just afraid in the beginning, you know,
Speaker 4: afraid of strings. And it's funny because he was a
Speaker 4: great string arranger and I almost never let him do
Speaker 4: an arrangement for me. Actually, for the Sondra Bullock movie,
Speaker 4: she wanted Nearness of You, but she wanted it with
Speaker 4: like strings or something. And that's when he finally got
Speaker 4: to do it. We took the album version and he
Speaker 4: just made a really nice string arrangement and then we
Speaker 4: used it and he was so excited.
Speaker 2: And I remember he came into the shoot.
Speaker 1: Would you mind showing demonstrating just the difference between how
Speaker 1: you were singing it versus how he wanted you to sing.
Speaker 2: On the piano piana.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's it's miked up and running fantastic mm hmm.
Speaker 5: H Vanana City.
Speaker 2: And he was like, no, go Vanana zoze.
Speaker 5: Is a vanas.
Speaker 9: It isn't your sweet conversation that brings this sensation.
Speaker 10: Oh oh, I think it's it's just the that's what
Speaker 10: it was.
Speaker 5: It's just the nanis.
Speaker 4: That's like I was doing something like that maybe, And
Speaker 4: he's like, it's just the naness of He's like, no,
Speaker 4: you gotta.
Speaker 9: Do hit that.
Speaker 5: It's just it's just the narness.
Speaker 3: Or yeah, that's good advice.
Speaker 5: I think it was good advice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, do the melody at least once before you start
Speaker 4: messing with it.
Speaker 1: That makes it sound sound advice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good advice.
Speaker 4: And then for the second record, he he was also
Speaker 4: he came with us, we just we all had fun.
Speaker 1: How did that did you? Just just because you just
Speaker 1: enjoyed his presence and so you asked him, I mean well,
Speaker 1: and because he was helpful and you brought him back.
Speaker 4: I think we were going to go into the studio
Speaker 4: and he called me. He's like, well, I mean I
Speaker 4: don't want to come in later again, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 4: let's do it. Like I wasn't even I feel like
Speaker 4: at that point, I was just trying to record and
Speaker 4: seeing what kind of songs I had, you know, So
Speaker 4: I wasn't even really making the second album until we
Speaker 4: were almost done, if that makes sense, which I like recording.
Speaker 1: Like that, were you getting you probably were getting a
Speaker 1: lot of people wanting to come in to make your
Speaker 1: second record with you too, I'd imagine, right.
Speaker 2: I don't remember that happening at all.
Speaker 4: Actually, I think we were pretty insular at that point,
Speaker 4: and I think Bruce really wanted a Reef to do it,
Speaker 4: and a Reef really wanted to do it, and we
Speaker 4: loved a Reef, so it just there was never any
Speaker 4: question of changing it up. I think it was more
Speaker 4: just like, let's just see what happens in the studio
Speaker 4: and not overthink it, because I didn't want to make
Speaker 4: it be a thing where we were thinking about it
Speaker 4: being a follow up in the studio, so and we
Speaker 4: kind of didn't. We went, Yeah, we went up to
Speaker 4: upstate to Alaer with a Reef for like a week
Speaker 4: or like maybe five days, and we had so much
Speaker 4: fun and oh the funny part was that when we
Speaker 4: recorded Come Away with Me, the one rule was that
Speaker 4: a reef leaves at six o'clock every night. And I
Speaker 4: remember at the time thinking that was ridiculous because we
Speaker 4: wanted to squeeze every second out of the studio and
Speaker 4: I was used to recording late and drinking and like, you.
Speaker 2: Know, seeing what happened. But we did it his way
Speaker 2: and it was kind of nice. Yeah, And then at
Speaker 2: a Laire.
Speaker 4: I didn't think he would go for it, because I
Speaker 4: know he liked to go home as he had a
Speaker 4: wonderful wife and dinner and you know, but he wanted
Speaker 4: to and he came up. We had so much fun
Speaker 4: drinking martini's. They called him the Martini. He used to
Speaker 4: make these very lethal martinis. And I remember him coming
Speaker 4: down in his pajamas one night we stayed up and
Speaker 4: he had gone to bed, and he came down in
Speaker 4: his pajamas with his Martini glass and to get some
Speaker 4: water from the.
Speaker 2: Cooler in his Martino and then I remember him and
Speaker 2: his like his robe going up the stairs. It was cute.
Speaker 2: It was like such a.
Speaker 3: Fun time so he could hang.
Speaker 2: Oh he hung Yeah, he he just didn't want to
Speaker 2: make the work late.
Speaker 3: You know, what do you think about that? The older
Speaker 3: I get, I start to think, you know, nothing good
Speaker 3: happens after eight hours.
Speaker 4: Oh that's how I work now. But I'm also on
Speaker 4: a different schedule. But yeah, absolutely, I just want to
Speaker 4: eat dinner and like turn my brain.
Speaker 2: Off after a five I don't want to. I don't
Speaker 2: want to.
Speaker 3: I've ruined records by staying up for thirty six hours.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, you know. I mean, thankfully you get
Speaker 3: some sleep and then you catch it the next day.
Speaker 3: I've ruined records. I would say, I've wasted a lot
Speaker 3: of time going down. Yeah, when pro tools first came out,
Speaker 3: all the plugins you can go down, the plug in the.
Speaker 2: Abyss and the.
Speaker 4: Tracks unlimited. It's not always a good thing. I did
Speaker 4: get some really good late night after a long dinner
Speaker 4: and a few drinks takes though, and sometimes that works out.
Speaker 4: But I never was somebody who did more than three
Speaker 4: or four takes of a song. Maybe there was an
Speaker 4: occasional like five or six takes, but but that was it.
Speaker 4: There was never we never beat anything into the ground.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 4: So that late night kind of thing works if you're
Speaker 4: just sort of having fun and playing music.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from nor Jones after
Speaker 1: the break, We're back with the rest of nord Jones's
Speaker 1: conversation with down was and me. Can I ask you
Speaker 1: about it? We're talking about the second record I don't
Speaker 1: miss you at all.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so interesting that that's you wrote the lyrics over.
Speaker 1: It's a Duke Ellington composition and you wrote the lyrics.
Speaker 1: Was that something that you'd done before and did did you?
Speaker 1: How did you find Melancholia by Duke Ellington?
Speaker 2: Oh? I think my boyfriend was playing it.
Speaker 4: It's such an amazing album, so beautiful, and that.
Speaker 2: Song is just I mean, it was just.
Speaker 4: So good that I think I was just like trying
Speaker 4: to learn it and I just started singing and it
Speaker 4: just kind of happened and by chance, and then I
Speaker 4: was like, maybe I'll try to record this, and then
Speaker 4: we did and it was so pretty and I was like,
Speaker 4: I don't know if we're going to get permission to
Speaker 4: do it like this, because I'm not trying to take
Speaker 4: advantage of this song or anything. I just really loved
Speaker 4: it and just it just, you know, happened, and luckily
Speaker 4: we got to do it.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful too.
Speaker 1: It's in the spirit of, you know, like how many
Speaker 1: great songs compositions, you know, did a songwriter come in
Speaker 1: later and write, you know, a beautiful set of lyrics
Speaker 1: to you know, And so it's totally not at all
Speaker 1: taking advantage and it's it's funny though. It's hard not
Speaker 1: to hear the duke, not to hear even just the
Speaker 1: way you play it now, you know it just it's
Speaker 1: kind of sounds like Anora Anora song.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a beautiful, beautiful melody.
Speaker 1: It's gorgeous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, did you start doing that second album before the Grammys? No?
Speaker 4: So this is all after No, we were just on
Speaker 4: tour for NonStop. We were, and then after the Grammys
Speaker 4: we did like a huge tour of bigger venues. Right,
Speaker 4: so we were on tour for at least two years.
Speaker 4: I feel like and doing promo and like I was exhausted.
Speaker 4: I was not having fun the whole time.
Speaker 3: It's a whole lot to deal with. Yeah, I went
Speaker 3: through it a little bit with Bonnie, but I wasn't
Speaker 3: the artist just to I went from like not, I
Speaker 3: went from being a pariah as a record producer to
Speaker 3: being in demand and I feel sort of like, even now,
Speaker 3: thirty five forty years later, I'm still kind of surfing
Speaker 3: that wave a little bit. It changed one one night,
Speaker 3: can like change your whole reality. But had you had
Speaker 3: a year? I had a year of incredible trajectory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then the Grammys just like was insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, and then the next day my picture was on
Speaker 4: the cover of the New York Post next to Saddam
Speaker 4: Hussein's picture. It said hunt and Destroy, and then it
Speaker 4: was like a split screen, you know, it was like
Speaker 4: me and Saddam, and then on on the Daily News,
Speaker 4: and then then the New York Post the next day
Speaker 4: had a picture of my apartment and it said how
Speaker 4: much rent I paid? And then I couldn't go home again,
Speaker 4: and it was just weird.
Speaker 3: How'd you deal with it?
Speaker 4: I drank a lot, yeah I did, But I also
Speaker 4: had I had my band. We were having fun.
Speaker 2: There was also a.
Speaker 4: Weird thing that was happening because my dad and I
Speaker 4: had been reunited when I was eighteen, and we started
Speaker 4: to really find our relationship and it was great and
Speaker 4: it was really nice to have that. And I got
Speaker 4: to know my sister finally, my half sister Anyushka Shankar
Speaker 4: and I did kind of finally get to know my
Speaker 4: Indian side a little bit, you know, which was a
Speaker 4: really beautiful new thing for me. And then all the
Speaker 4: stuff that happened with the record and the way they
Speaker 4: talked about my dad or it was never quite right
Speaker 4: and somebody was always.
Speaker 1: Mad, you know, like someone within your family.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like either my mom felt like it wasn't represented
Speaker 4: right or my dad did, or you know, like it
Speaker 4: was just kind of that was actually a really hard
Speaker 4: thing for me to be honest.
Speaker 3: You know, when people ask me about you, a lovely person,
Speaker 3: super talented, best singer in the world. But I also say,
Speaker 3: if they press for more details, I think you're the
Speaker 3: sanest artist I know because I don't think you're trying
Speaker 3: to fill some huge hole in your soul by in
Speaker 3: a quest for fame. I think you do music for
Speaker 3: all the right reasons, and if you can't do it
Speaker 3: for the right reasons, you'd walk away. I don't see
Speaker 3: you sitting up strategizing about marketing or the brand late
Speaker 3: at night or anything. Can you relate to that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think I think about it that way.
Speaker 4: But I think also because the first record was so bananas.
Speaker 4: I don't have to and I know that I don't
Speaker 4: quite want that. Again, I don't like this new record
Speaker 4: I'm so excited about and it's like, you know, I
Speaker 4: want people to hear it. I don't want it to
Speaker 4: just go unnoticed. But I don't think I would want
Speaker 4: it to be like my first record ever.
Speaker 2: Again, that was just too much. It was also really nice,
Speaker 2: but it was just like.
Speaker 4: H and with social media now, it's just like you
Speaker 4: don't want to you don't want to get all in that,
Speaker 4: you don't want to get too deep in.
Speaker 3: How long did it take to find a stable ground
Speaker 3: after all that, to think this is this is where
Speaker 3: I land, this is who I am, this is what
Speaker 3: I'm willing to do, this is what I'm not willing
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think I found it quickly in a lot of ways,
Speaker 4: and it took a long time in other ways. I
Speaker 4: think I was very stubborn, so I definitely got comfortable
Speaker 4: with saying no. But I also was excited to try everything,
Speaker 4: you know, like sample everything that was put in front
Speaker 4: of me.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 4: I got to play with all kinds of people, and
Speaker 4: you know, it was amazing.
Speaker 1: Was the stubbornness, you having boundaries and knowing your boundaries,
Speaker 1: or was your stubbornness was it more of a youthful both?
Speaker 2: Probably both.
Speaker 4: My mom is a very strong woman, and I learned
Speaker 4: a lot about that and how to be like that.
Speaker 2: In the best way. But I also think I was
Speaker 2: just young and extra.
Speaker 1: Mom was a concert promoter.
Speaker 4: That's how she met my dad. She wasn't when I
Speaker 4: was born. I don't think she was anymore.
Speaker 1: But I've been that at any point. To be a
Speaker 1: woman in that era doing any amount of concert promoting
Speaker 1: for endy amount of time, I imagine, Yeah, she learned
Speaker 1: how to throw a weight around, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, have you met my mom. Yeah, she's a
Speaker 2: strong woman. I mean she doesn't she You might be
Speaker 2: intimidated by her. And you're tall.
Speaker 4: She's tall, you know, Like I was just like a
Speaker 4: strong tall lady. So and I'm short, but I still
Speaker 4: have some of her spirit.
Speaker 2: I think I was.
Speaker 4: I think I was just very rigid in what I
Speaker 4: didn't want, you know. I remember early on the label
Speaker 4: wanted me to do a remix I don't know why,
Speaker 4: to get it to pop radio or something, and I
Speaker 4: was like, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: That's not a musical reason. And I didn't like the remix.
Speaker 4: That they gave me, and so I was like no,
Speaker 4: and guess what, it somehow made it on pop radio anyway.
Speaker 2: But like now I'm.
Speaker 4: Into that if it's for an artistic reason, it just wasn't.
Speaker 4: Then it was for the wrong reason.
Speaker 1: I want to go back real quick, because you mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier writing come Away with Me. It was like the
Speaker 1: first song.
Speaker 2: You wrote after the college day, no high school.
Speaker 1: High school. Right in high school, I forgot that it's
Speaker 1: amazing a synth or it's crazy. Do you do you
Speaker 1: remember writing it? You remember that night, remember what inspired
Speaker 1: and how you felt?
Speaker 4: And yeah, I came home from the living room seeing
Speaker 4: all my friends play, and I just sat in my
Speaker 4: tiny little bedroom and I played the five chords I
Speaker 4: knew and it came out really fast. And I didn't
Speaker 4: have a voice recorder or anything, and we didn't have
Speaker 4: cell phones yet, and so I wrote it in my
Speaker 4: notebook and I wrote the chord changes above it. And
Speaker 4: being the theory nerd I had, I had taken theory
Speaker 4: classes since I was in second grade for some reason.
Speaker 4: That's this kind of piano lessons I took, so I
Speaker 4: know how I knew how to notate like the numbers
Speaker 4: of the.
Speaker 2: The chord, you know.
Speaker 4: I was like one, two, three, one, six, five three, what,
Speaker 4: you know, Like I nerd it out. But I and
Speaker 4: I did that and I went to sleep, and then
Speaker 4: the next morning I was like, oh my god, I
Speaker 4: hope I remember that.
Speaker 2: What was that?
Speaker 11: Then?
Speaker 4: I just was together. Yeah, I think it's a little different.
Speaker 4: It was a little different than what I had originally
Speaker 4: come up with. And I will never know.
Speaker 2: Because I didn't record it. I don't remember.
Speaker 1: It's amazing.
Speaker 3: One time I saw Keith Richards. He was trying to
Speaker 3: do the same thing, but he didn't have the theory background. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so he was staying at the Sunset Marquee and had
Speaker 3: a piano in his room. Came to his room the
Speaker 3: next morning and he had taped put piece of masking
Speaker 3: tape down with numbers like the order that you play
Speaker 3: the notes in.
Speaker 2: That's so funny, brilliant. Yeah, whatever method works for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was able to pick it out.
Speaker 2: You can't forget it because you won't remember.
Speaker 1: That's a good segue too, to the new because I
Speaker 1: was thinking about McCartney writing yesterday in his sleep Keith
Speaker 1: Richards writing Satisfaction in his sleep and thinking about, you know,
Speaker 1: your new album. I don't know if it's written in
Speaker 1: your sleep, but you maybe it was. You did there
Speaker 1: are some the point between you said, dreaming and sleeping
Speaker 1: and being awake.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that that moment right when you're falling asleep. I
Speaker 4: had all these ideas, and I would just get up
Speaker 4: and like do a little quiet or try not to
Speaker 4: wake up my husband, or go to the bathroom and
Speaker 4: do a quiet little voice memo of it.
Speaker 1: Was that uncommon before this occurrence.
Speaker 4: Like that, It wasn't uncommon, but it wasn't as much.
Speaker 4: I think this was a lot. Maybe it was also
Speaker 4: kind of pandemic y times, and there was a lot
Speaker 4: of being awake in the middle of the night at
Speaker 4: that time and looking at the news and getting you know,
Speaker 4: feeling weird.
Speaker 3: And I don't know, yeah, that was like this new album.
Speaker 3: Did you feel it's time for me to make a
Speaker 3: new album? Because you didn't have songs? Really right?
Speaker 2: Not really?
Speaker 4: I think I think it really came from working with
Speaker 4: Leon Michaels. I did a song with him, Can you
Speaker 4: believe this song? Because we had worked together. He played horn,
Speaker 4: he played saxophone on a few of my albums, and
Speaker 4: then we did the song together because I knew he's
Speaker 4: a producer and I wanted to put out singles.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: That's like what I've been trying to do the last
Speaker 4: few years, just sort of not overthink things and try
Speaker 4: to work with people, low commitment, just one song, you know,
Speaker 4: And it was fun. And then we ended up making
Speaker 4: a Christmas album together and that was really fun.
Speaker 1: You did a lot of tracks from that too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And then when it was done, I said, I
Speaker 4: miss I miss working together. Should we try to make
Speaker 4: a real album where there's no like rules and no
Speaker 4: Christmas parameters? And so that's what we decided to do.
Speaker 4: We just got together whenever we could. This album was
Speaker 4: different for me and that it was sort of pieced
Speaker 4: together whenever we were around.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't like.
Speaker 4: When I made the album with Danger Mouse. I didn't
Speaker 4: have any material, but we went into the studio for
Speaker 4: two months together to do it and come up with it.
Speaker 4: This was just here and there and dribs and drabs
Speaker 4: and all always short days because our kids were in
Speaker 4: school and just you know, eleven to two and all right, cool,
Speaker 4: I'll try to come up with some lyrics for that,
Speaker 4: you know, And it was so fun. He would play
Speaker 4: drums and I would play piano and we would just
Speaker 4: play and it just felt so good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Reef might have thrived in this eleven to two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, talk about a work day.
Speaker 4: It was kind of great. I kind of loved it
Speaker 4: because he has his own studio. There was no like booking.
Speaker 4: It was just like, hey, what day next week works
Speaker 4: for you?
Speaker 2: Tuesday? Can we squeeze in two days Tuesday and Thursday? Okay? Cool?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's still fun to make records.
Speaker 4: It was so fun, and I think from the minute
Speaker 4: we played. I remember when we did Can you Believe?
Speaker 4: It was just one of the funnest times I've had
Speaker 4: playing because it was sort of that time after the
Speaker 4: pandemic where I hadn't played with anyone in a year
Speaker 4: and a half and I don't think he had either,
Speaker 4: And it was just like that feeling when you're playing
Speaker 4: something and then you stop me.
Speaker 2: He's like, oh, yes, that feels so good.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's just like it's like you're back in college or
Speaker 2: high school or something.
Speaker 3: So do you get that when you're playing live?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean you try to you don't always, but I
Speaker 4: think that's the goal, and I think playing with people
Speaker 4: who make you feel that way is the best way.
Speaker 4: I definitely feel like that when I play with Brian
Speaker 4: Blade on drums.
Speaker 3: Oh, let's talk about Brian.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, he was on those first sessions with Craig.
Speaker 2: And he is a blue note artist, and he's a blue.
Speaker 3: Note artist, and he's had a bunch of great blue
Speaker 3: note records too. He's on Charles Lloyd's new album. He
Speaker 3: did those records with Wayne. We've got another one coming
Speaker 3: this year.
Speaker 2: Nice. No one plays like him, no, nobody, But I've.
Speaker 3: Never played with him. What's that like?
Speaker 2: Heaven?
Speaker 4: He doesn't play anything just to play it. He's always listening,
Speaker 4: and he listens more than anyone I've ever played with.
Speaker 4: And he's a he's reacting in the moment to it
Speaker 4: in a way where you know, the music just feels
Speaker 4: so alive. But he's never reacting in a like a
Speaker 4: bullshit way. It's never wrong and it's never distracting or
Speaker 4: or or busy.
Speaker 1: So it's never to assert himself no I'm here.
Speaker 4: No, it's never for the wrong reasons. And his pocket
Speaker 4: is also super deep, like his groove.
Speaker 2: Is so good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and his dynamics.
Speaker 2: Really quiet yeah.
Speaker 3: And then explodes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's he's like a sound person's nightmare.
Speaker 4: But also it's a dream to watch him.
Speaker 3: So when I saw you play with Wayne and Brian
Speaker 3: and there's Patatucci and there's Jason Moran.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the Blue Note Anniversary, right.
Speaker 3: That was I was. I was sitting on the side
Speaker 3: of the stage and I just remembered like I felt
Speaker 3: like I was experiencing some kind of cosmic truth and
Speaker 3: I wasn't tripping. This is like I got a little
Speaker 3: scared because it was like hyper real the things you
Speaker 3: guys were doing, And how'd you feel about that?
Speaker 4: That was amazing. I also it was the first time
Speaker 4: I played with Brian in a long time. I hadn't
Speaker 4: actually seen him in a while. He played on my
Speaker 4: first two records, but we sort of drifted and he's
Speaker 4: hard to pin down. He's always so busy. I definitely
Speaker 4: hadn't talked to him, and I hadn't seen him in
Speaker 4: a long long time, like years, and I hadn't played
Speaker 4: with him, and so and to play with Wayne again.
Speaker 4: I think I had already played with Wayne and Herbie
Speaker 4: on a Jony thing, but to play with Wayne and
Speaker 4: Brian together and then Patatucci and then Jason Ran and
Speaker 4: Jason I think organized it.
Speaker 2: It was so fun.
Speaker 4: I did feel a little naked because I wasn't playing,
Speaker 4: but I also didn't feel like I could play with
Speaker 4: those guys like hang with them.
Speaker 3: It was just so fun, and you could because you
Speaker 3: did well certainly there.
Speaker 4: I have to credit Jason Moran for that. He emailed
Speaker 4: me after that, He's like, you know, you should make
Speaker 4: a record with Wayne, or you should like record with Wayne,
Speaker 4: And it was so like a little push that I needed.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't have probably asked Wayne to play on that
Speaker 4: record if Jason hadn't encouraged me. And then to have
Speaker 4: Brian and play with him again was so special, And yeah,
Speaker 4: it was sweet good night.
Speaker 1: What was recording with Wayne? Like?
Speaker 2: It was?
Speaker 4: My friend Sarah and I were talking about it the
Speaker 4: other day. Actually, I was so nervous for it and
Speaker 4: a little underprepared. I didn't have that many songs. We
Speaker 4: had two days in the studio, and I knew we
Speaker 4: weren't gonna like do something a million times with Wayne,
Speaker 4: but I wasn't really sure of what was going to happen.
Speaker 4: And we did we did a song. We did a
Speaker 4: Horrace Silver song that I've recorded before, but I just
Speaker 4: loved and I knew he played with Horace at some point,
Speaker 4: and yeah, the song piece, which is just such an
Speaker 4: heavy song, and I don't remember if it was the
Speaker 4: first one we did, but well, first I went to
Speaker 4: Wayne's house in La and I for an afternoon and
Speaker 4: he just played me a bunch of stuff and talked
Speaker 4: about his He showed me his comic books that he
Speaker 4: made when.
Speaker 2: He was a kid.
Speaker 4: Did you see those? Yeah, that was an incredible day. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2: He showed me the action figures, and he told me
Speaker 2: about watching Fox News and playing soprano sacks just angrily
Speaker 2: and like writing while he was watching Fox News, and like,
Speaker 2: I mean, that was crazy.
Speaker 4: It was an amazing afternoon. Yeah, he was really one
Speaker 4: of a kind. And so we had had that afternoon
Speaker 4: which was really nice. And they were playing this song
Speaker 4: piece and I play an intro and it's you know,
Speaker 4: patitude cham base, Brian on drums, Me and then Wayne
Speaker 4: and we're all in the same room playing the intro
Speaker 4: to piece and then I sang and he still hasn't
Speaker 4: come in.
Speaker 2: I'm like singing.
Speaker 4: I'm like, wow, he hasn't come in, but I'm just
Speaker 4: gonna I'm just gonna enjoy this verse and not worry
Speaker 4: about that. Come around in the second verse, he still
Speaker 4: didn't come in. I'm like, I wonder if he's enjoying this.
Speaker 4: But then, but I wasn't like over ruminating on it
Speaker 4: because it would have taken me out of it. And
Speaker 4: then as soon as we get to like the solo,
Speaker 4: I'm like, I guess maybe all solo I wasn't sure,
Speaker 4: and that he just burdered like he came in, and
Speaker 4: I think the thing I've learned, and I've noticed that
Speaker 4: Brian is like this as well. They don't really play
Speaker 4: until they have something to say. You know, there's times
Speaker 4: where Brian is sat out on half a tune. I'm like,
Speaker 4: I guess he's not gonna play, but then he comes
Speaker 4: in and it's like perfect interests, you know, It's like
Speaker 4: it's right.
Speaker 1: So this incredible thing about Wayne it's playing can be
Speaker 1: like I've been down we're talking about before. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize it took me a lot long time before I
Speaker 1: realized Wayne was playing on that rack. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew the sack sounded gorgeous, and then when you
Speaker 1: see the card like, oh fuck that make that makes
Speaker 1: that makes sense? It's Wayne, but you know, he doesn't.
Speaker 1: He doesn't impos It's not it's like a really it's
Speaker 1: gorgeous and it's amazing, but it's humble and it's there's
Speaker 1: no reason for it to be humble.
Speaker 2: It's just spiritual.
Speaker 4: I think it was just such a spiritual practice, probably
Speaker 4: to him. I mean that's how he can went about it.
Speaker 1: Spiritual is the right word for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not coming in in the intro just because
Speaker 2: he's supposed to. He was listening. He wasn't.
Speaker 4: I don't even think he wasn't coming in because he
Speaker 4: didn't like it. I think he was just listening to
Speaker 4: see what it was happening.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know. It's cool. That was one
Speaker 2: of the cooler things I've got to do.
Speaker 3: It's awesome and it's wonderful to really really holds up.
Speaker 1: Are you ever tempted to do a larger project that
Speaker 1: really like like that's more in the jazz idiom like
Speaker 1: more squarely and that like in your like jazz snob.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm not And I feel like that album
Speaker 4: sort of was that for me, but also it also
Speaker 4: wasn't completely all the way there either, but it was
Speaker 4: more than more than my first record. I'll say I
Speaker 4: still don't think my first record sounds like a jazz
Speaker 4: album to me completely, and so I think I think
Speaker 4: if I were bored and thinking about what can I do,
Speaker 4: maybe I would decide to do something like that. But
Speaker 4: I'm always finding other stuff that's inspiring, and if that's inspiring,
Speaker 4: it's because I'll find something that inspires it. I think,
Speaker 4: not not thinking let's do a jazz album, Let's do
Speaker 4: a country album, let's do you know. I just I
Speaker 4: guess I don't think that way.
Speaker 3: When you're touring, do you have room to approach a
Speaker 3: song with beginner's mind every night?
Speaker 4: Yeah, especially when I started without without the band and
Speaker 4: I'm just piano and entering it. I do, especially playing
Speaker 4: with Brian, because I know we'll just go to wherever
Speaker 4: it goes, and there's some arrangements we've found that way
Speaker 4: that we stick to a little more, and then some
Speaker 4: that are different. Sometimes a song is really dynamic in
Speaker 4: the set, and then I'll put it in the set
Speaker 4: the next night, thinking like, Okay, this is where the
Speaker 4: set will get big and it's like tiny, the song
Speaker 4: is tiny. I'm like, well that set was a little
Speaker 4: sleepy in that section.
Speaker 2: But I prefer it that way, not knowing.
Speaker 3: It's the I think it's the best thing. Man.
Speaker 2: I've so fun.
Speaker 4: Well, it's where it's where you get that feeling that
Speaker 4: from high school, where you're just like, oh my god, music.
Speaker 5: Is so fun.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Are you still finding new things, like just a different
Speaker 3: way to move your finger to a different angle or
Speaker 3: something that will open up a whole new universal notes.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Sometimes, and sometimes I'll use the whole piano, which I
Speaker 4: never used to do. I wouldn't think to go way
Speaker 4: low or way high. And I actually back to your
Speaker 4: question though, I would say about doing like a jazz am.
Speaker 4: I think even though I started out interpreting songs and
Speaker 4: I love doing it, and I think I've found a
Speaker 4: lot more inspiration from writing in the last few years,
Speaker 4: and so it's more based on what I'm writing and
Speaker 4: what's inspiring me in that way than trying to make
Speaker 4: something sound a certain way.
Speaker 1: I think did on your new album, which we were
Speaker 1: talking about before, I really love it and the joy
Speaker 1: you were you were explaining to making it. I feel
Speaker 1: like you can really hear it when you were writing
Speaker 1: the songs, thinking maybe like a staring at the at
Speaker 1: the wall or something, how it sounds on the record.
Speaker 1: Is that how you heard it writing it?
Speaker 4: That one in particular, was there's nothing to it. It's
Speaker 4: just him on drums and me on guitar, just like
Speaker 4: having the time of our lives, going as fast as
Speaker 4: we can. He's like, we need something fast, Let's try
Speaker 4: something fast. I was like, okay, and then I just
Speaker 4: started playing. He started playing, and we were just like
Speaker 4: going trying to keep up with it, and then it
Speaker 4: was so fun, and then we just added words and
Speaker 4: like harmonies and that was it.
Speaker 1: Sounds like nothing I've heard before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I like that one a lot. That's one of
Speaker 4: my favorites. And it's not like anything else on the record.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not like anything really at all.
Speaker 3: I don't know's that's a hard thing to achieve, you know,
Speaker 3: to do something that works on a basic level, that
Speaker 3: makes people respond emotionally, but doesn't sound like anything else.
Speaker 3: I think. I think that's the highest thing you can
Speaker 3: aspire to.
Speaker 1: Is there anything from the new album you could play? Sure?
Speaker 1: What do you want could you do paradise?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I could try that one. I mean, we'll
Speaker 4: miss the drums, but you can imagine a back there.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well.
Speaker 6: Take me back to paradise. I could make the sacrifice.
Speaker 12: Ama to say, what else is they left to learn?
Speaker 5: Watching all these fires balloon?
Speaker 12: I'm waiting, It's true. I'll watch your fall. I try
Speaker 12: to stop, wait, turn for the pain.
Speaker 2: To pluck, and know.
Speaker 6: I've got to let you go again.
Speaker 5: Over.
Speaker 10: I never wanted this too d and no, it's time
Speaker 10: to let you go.
Speaker 13: A lord, find a place to come you man, I'll
Speaker 13: take yours and you take mine.
Speaker 5: I'm well again. You paid.
Speaker 9: Conversations beading hearts to always beading.
Speaker 5: I'm there, man, I'll watch you fall.
Speaker 12: I try to stop, time for the pain to drop,
Speaker 12: and know.
Speaker 6: I've got to let you go again.
Speaker 9: All I never wanted this to end.
Speaker 7: I know.
Speaker 14: It's time to let you go.
Speaker 7: Hell maa lolla, Lola, Lola la, lola.
Speaker 6: I want you for.
Speaker 5: I try to stop, wait, turned for the pain.
Speaker 6: To drop, and no, I've got to let you go again.
Speaker 10: And never morning this to th and no, it's trying
Speaker 10: to let you go.
Speaker 5: So high it's great.
Speaker 2: I didn't imagine singing that high today.
Speaker 3: Wow, you sound cool, And it lends a whole new
Speaker 3: reference point for the song, a whole different.
Speaker 2: Like thanks. I didn't know how that was going to go.
Speaker 1: You're all over.
Speaker 2: That's a loud piano, yeah, but it's.
Speaker 3: Wild how it's a great example of how it's one
Speaker 3: connected to the piano plane.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I forgot there's some harmonies in there. I
Speaker 4: try to catch it with the piano, but I forgot
Speaker 4: some of them.
Speaker 2: But it was cool. Some of them worked out.
Speaker 3: It really reminds me of Aretha, you know, when when
Speaker 3: she played piano.
Speaker 4: Well, she's one of my favorite piano players. I think
Speaker 4: I didn't before I even knew that was on the
Speaker 4: piano and all those recordings. She's always been my favorite,
Speaker 4: you know, one of the best feels out there.
Speaker 3: We came this close to having her signed to Blue Note.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, And I went to Detroit a couple of
Speaker 3: times I'd known her, you know, and uh, and I said,
Speaker 3: she got to play piano. You We're just we're just
Speaker 3: going to do a thing like maybe you have Jerry
Speaker 3: Jamont playing bass and Narada playing drums, and maybe someone
Speaker 3: playing organ or guitarist, keeping a real basic and everything
Speaker 3: would stem from her piano playing. We're going to do
Speaker 3: it in Detroit, so she didn't have to travel, and
Speaker 3: she got sick.
Speaker 2: Ah, so she was into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's totally. I was texted. I still have my
Speaker 3: text change. I believe I was texting with Resa Franklin.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. I wish that could happened too.
Speaker 1: But I'm glad you at least try. I'm glad someone
Speaker 1: was thinking of that about that with her.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I find that, you know, some your favorite artists,
Speaker 4: you see them grow and do all these amazing things,
Speaker 4: and then as they get older, it gets there.
Speaker 2: It's like she didn't play piano and everything anymore, and
Speaker 2: you miss that that basic core of like what you loved.
Speaker 1: You know, her plane reminds me of like when I
Speaker 1: hear like I can always tell like Stevie on drum,
Speaker 1: When Stevie plays drums, it's so unique and it matches
Speaker 1: almost his voice, like the way he sings man, and
Speaker 1: to read the same, like the just the rhythm in
Speaker 1: her plane matches perfectly the way she sings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the pocket. You can't imitate that somebody.
Speaker 3: You can hear it's so it's so churchy and it's
Speaker 3: so so soulful. What do you think is the best
Speaker 3: written song that you've ever heard?
Speaker 2: I don't know a million of them?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean what what?
Speaker 1: What comes to mind?
Speaker 2: Like okay comes to mind?
Speaker 4: A song I always have loved is that song Heartache
Speaker 4: by Lowell George. And there's a version of it on
Speaker 4: Thanks I'll need to Hear, which is fine, but there's
Speaker 4: a version of it floating around there with Linda ron
Speaker 4: Sat like a demo of it. That is the version
Speaker 4: I'm thinking. And it's just a great song. And the
Speaker 4: way the chord structure is it kind of turns around
Speaker 4: and the key center changes and it's weird and it's
Speaker 4: just one of those songs.
Speaker 2: Let's see if I know it? Oh Frankie.
Speaker 9: Will oh No, I don't want to do that. Will
Speaker 9: am here love And I'm feeling no pain, but.
Speaker 5: I know you heartache.
Speaker 2: Stand in my way.
Speaker 9: There's no use inuition because I ain't satisfied.
Speaker 5: I'm fit to be missing with him you at my.
Speaker 9: Side, I find another place to be. I'm tired to
Speaker 9: being your best friend. Look too, another.
Speaker 2: For your companion, and when you.
Speaker 9: Do, my pain wail. But there's no way at all
Speaker 9: when I'm feeling no pain. My body ye sickly, my
Speaker 9: mind is insane. I call on you Hardy to come
Speaker 9: show me how because I can't get no lower.
Speaker 5: Than the whole man. I find another.
Speaker 6: Places to be.
Speaker 5: I'm tired.
Speaker 11: Would be.
Speaker 5: You besttray.
Speaker 9: The two another for your companion and when you.
Speaker 15: Do, my heart pain Willie.
Speaker 1: It's crazy.
Speaker 2: I usually played on guitar.
Speaker 3: Oh that's beautiful, that's really nice.
Speaker 4: It's a sweet one, right, But do you see how
Speaker 4: it changes keys?
Speaker 2: It's weird, like that's what's cool about it.
Speaker 1: It's not.
Speaker 11: It doesn't seem like something that was overthought, but it
Speaker 11: goes It starts there and then goes to the minor five,
Speaker 11: and then to the and then it kind of stays
Speaker 11: there and then that becomes the center, and then it
Speaker 11: goes back to the sort of bridgie chorus and it
Speaker 11: goes back to e flat. Anyway, Nerd, when did you
Speaker 11: discover that song, Nerd town I discovered it maybe probably
Speaker 11: around this time I was making my second record. I
Speaker 11: think Kevin Bright, who played on my guitar my first record,
Speaker 11: turned me on too Little George that album. Thanks I'll
Speaker 11: hate it here, and.
Speaker 4: Then somehow we found a bootleg of that Linda so
Speaker 4: in the in the demo that I love. It's low
Speaker 4: and Linda singing harmony on the whole chorus and it's
Speaker 4: just the.
Speaker 2: Prettiest thing ever Brook. Yeah, I just love Linda.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, thank you so much. That was a lot
Speaker 3: of time and you're very forthcoming. It was beautiful.
Speaker 1: Thanks Norah Jones for sharing her incredible story with us.
Speaker 1: You can hear her new album Visions, along with our
Speaker 1: other favorite Nora tracks on a playlist at Broken Record
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. I also want to thank Don Was
Speaker 1: for going on this excursion with me. We have four
Speaker 1: more episodes coming, so stay tuned for those. You can
Speaker 1: also watch the full video of this interview and other
Speaker 1: recent episodes at YouTube dot com, slash broken Record Podcast,
Speaker 1: and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the
Speaker 1: Broken Record Pod. You can follow us on Twitter at
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Speaker 1: podcast app. Our theme Music's back, any beats. I'm justin Richmond.