Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: What's Up. It's June and that means it's Black Music Month,
Speaker 2: and every year on Questlove Supreme and now The Quest
Speaker 2: Love Show, we honor it by bringing you an episode
Speaker 2: every day that celebrates black music.
Speaker 1: It's history and its impact.
Speaker 2: My team and I have selected episodes from our archive
Speaker 2: that we feel are specially relevant to the celebration, offering history,
Speaker 2: insight a little fun along the way. So be on
Speaker 2: the lookout for four brand new episodes throughout June, each
Speaker 2: connected to the past, president future of black music. We're
Speaker 2: going to highlight trailblazers, innovators, cultural conduits, and revolutionaries whose
Speaker 2: word continues to shape the world around us.
Speaker 1: Happy June, Happy Black Music Month.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Quest Love. We have Teams Supreme with
Speaker 2: us today. Uh, how are you good? I'm good.
Speaker 3: I'm excited about this episode.
Speaker 4: Good.
Speaker 1: I like to wait?
Speaker 2: Are these are the same glasses you always wear? I
Speaker 2: always feel like you have a new pair of glasses
Speaker 2: on every time I see you.
Speaker 5: No, I got like four of five different movies, you know.
Speaker 6: I feel Okay, I see where the money.
Speaker 7: Came through.
Speaker 3: I'm waiting for folks, wait for both.
Speaker 2: I see h Steve, what's up man?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 2: Nothing, that's great to know. I appreciate it. Uh on
Speaker 2: paid Bill Man, everything is good. You mentioned earlier that
Speaker 2: you are fasting.
Speaker 8: No, I'm not fasting. Thank you for pointing out my
Speaker 8: lack of religious fervor.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he's just not drinking.
Speaker 2: I'm just not drinking. So that's the same thing as
Speaker 2: sort of fast day today, fantolo.
Speaker 6: I'm chilling man. I'm chilling man. Been looking forward to
Speaker 6: this one. I'm a big terrorist Splancher fan. So yes,
Speaker 6: he's been waiting on this one.
Speaker 1: Man, for real.
Speaker 8: You just gave away here the guests.
Speaker 2: But well that's good. That makes my way, That makes
Speaker 2: me enter away shorter on the episode too. Our guest
Speaker 2: today is a renowned composer, musician, trumpeter, one time member
Speaker 2: of the Loneld Hampton Orchestra and the world famous art
Speaker 2: Blinky Jazz Messengers. Not to mention composer of too well
Speaker 2: received operas, but it's his near thirty year association with
Speaker 2: the great Oscar Winner. I'm sorry, I was like Spiker Winner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, with.
Speaker 2: Oscar winner Spike Lee. His association with him for the
Speaker 2: last thirty years is probably, in my opinion, probably one
Speaker 2: of the best combo of film scorer and director. Thank
Speaker 2: that I know for real in cinema history. And that's
Speaker 2: just not blowing smoke. He's up for his second Oscar
Speaker 2: nomination for scoring. Duh.
Speaker 1: Yes, five bloods.
Speaker 2: Duh. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 2: The Great Terrence Blanchard.
Speaker 7: How are you, yes, man, what's happening? How you guys
Speaker 7: doing doing?
Speaker 1: Good?
Speaker 2: Brother?
Speaker 1: Good to see you again. Man. We met like years
Speaker 1: ago at the Grammys. This is probably twenty ten. My
Speaker 1: group deported to change.
Speaker 6: Nominated and we met in like the Little Dinner or whatever,
Speaker 6: and oh you were still you were one of the
Speaker 6: coolest dudes there. Man, Like you were just super chill.
Speaker 6: And everyone else I remember a lot of those people
Speaker 6: they were kind of I don't know whatever, but you
Speaker 6: were just super down to earth, novel remember that very
Speaker 6: houghty tody.
Speaker 1: But you was folks. So I really appreciate that.
Speaker 7: Man.
Speaker 2: Wait, can I can I ask a question? Fronte was
Speaker 2: a h Wait the Grammys throws they threw dinners.
Speaker 1: Well it's after the joint.
Speaker 6: So like so at the time when I went, the
Speaker 6: one and only time I went, because I ain't I
Speaker 6: don't really need to do that ship no more so
Speaker 6: the time it was in the Staples Center, and like
Speaker 6: it was they have the pre tail a little dinner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, I was about I'm like, wait a minute, yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: the Governor's okay, that okay, that makes sense. I thought
Speaker 2: the nomination dinner thing that I never knew about.
Speaker 9: And I've been in this joint for twenty years, but
Speaker 9: they should make a documentary about the pre awards because
Speaker 9: in that room, it's like the guys, the people best
Speaker 9: liner notes, like yeah, like it's the fucking craziest room
Speaker 9: you've ever been in.
Speaker 8: I met Amy Mann in that room and she was
Speaker 8: just like chilling. She got an for Best liner Notes.
Speaker 8: We're like, what did you get on here for? She's
Speaker 8: like best liner Notes. I was like, that's not a thing.
Speaker 1: She was like, it is a thing.
Speaker 8: And that was the first time I met you. Because
Speaker 8: he had to be my Grammy best day ever.
Speaker 7: You know, you know what's funny, but saying that, man,
Speaker 7: I've been going to the Grammys a number of years,
Speaker 7: and I remember when the pre show was just that man,
Speaker 7: it was a pre show, not too many people. But
Speaker 7: now it's like the hang dude, yeah, and.
Speaker 8: Like people get fully dressed up, like and it's like
Speaker 8: two in the afternoon and you're like fully I was,
Speaker 8: the guys are like bright red, they're ready to go,
Speaker 8: like everybody's ready to.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, I was going to say, I was going
Speaker 2: to say that in my maybe six times that I've
Speaker 2: done that, I always wind up sitting uh in the
Speaker 2: Latin section, and that I was going to say that
Speaker 2: the snark and energy that that section has every time
Speaker 2: Jose Feliciano wednsday role. Now it's better now, but there
Speaker 2: was a point where, like I I by my fourth year,
Speaker 2: I was like I couldn't wait. I was looking forward
Speaker 2: to just sitting in the Latin section so I could
Speaker 2: hear them all get mad because you know sometimes when
Speaker 2: you well, the voting system is way different now, but
Speaker 2: there was a point where everyone had access to everyone's
Speaker 2: category and this like before twenty ten, and you just
Speaker 2: vote for the name, you know, so in the Latin section,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, I know Felice Navid, I know Jose Feliciano,
Speaker 2: So let me vote for him. And that's how he
Speaker 2: would like twenty years in a row, just win the category. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: like the most popular artist of that genre.
Speaker 1: Just like even though he.
Speaker 8: Put out a record that year, he just he had
Speaker 8: no idea.
Speaker 2: He just he definitely had no idea. He didn't. Where
Speaker 2: are you right now, Terrence.
Speaker 7: I'm in New Orleans, man. I mean I moved LA,
Speaker 7: you know, because I was teaching at duc LA. But
Speaker 7: you know, my home is not really ready yet and
Speaker 7: I needed to work and begin at the beginning of
Speaker 7: the pandemic. Man, I just came back home, and I
Speaker 7: came back. I've been here for a year. I'm going anywhere.
Speaker 2: Okay, Wait, I'm glad you mentioned New Orleans. So I
Speaker 2: will say that the last time that a musical giant
Speaker 2: from New Orleans was on our show, which was Branford Marcellus.
Speaker 2: If you know him, you already know what I'm about
Speaker 2: to say is true. No one loves to deflate the
Speaker 2: air out of any jazz urban legend balloons that I
Speaker 2: fantasize about more than Branford. So like every everything that
Speaker 2: you know, everything that I tried to romanticize over, like
Speaker 2: what I thought music and jazz and musicianship was like
Speaker 2: he was just gleefully deflate that. No, that wasn't you know, and.
Speaker 7: My boy, you know, and I think I always messed
Speaker 7: with him. I said, man, you must failed debate class
Speaker 7: in high school, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I was saying. But basically, the one
Speaker 2: thing that he totally deflated my balloon on was this
Speaker 2: notion that I was fed when I was a kid
Speaker 2: about obsessively practicing. And you know, I brought up a
Speaker 2: story about the time when his brother won a Grammy
Speaker 2: and thanked his dad for like making me practice and
Speaker 2: da da da da dah. So you know, I grew
Speaker 2: up with this thing where my dad was like, Yo,
Speaker 2: five to ten hours, da da practice practice practice, like
Speaker 2: you know, straight backstage dad stuff. And you know, for
Speaker 2: the record, I'll say that David Murray is probably the
Speaker 2: only jazz figure that I met that has lived up
Speaker 2: to that myth where he told me like he practices
Speaker 2: eight to ten hours a day with his acts.
Speaker 1: So I'm just this is my first question. I'm just
Speaker 1: asking for the gate.
Speaker 2: Is the notion of the obsessive musician waking up at
Speaker 2: five am and practicing the scales and exercise and going
Speaker 2: till nine pm like before gig. Is that just some
Speaker 2: myth that's been planned in my head that was never real,
Speaker 2: you know, just to keep me off the streets by
Speaker 2: my dad.
Speaker 7: Or but he's be single and don't have kids, you heard. Yeah, no, no, no, no, man.
Speaker 7: I look, I get up early, and I do get
Speaker 7: to work. I mean, I'll come in and I'll start
Speaker 7: working because my studio is kind of separate from the house,
Speaker 7: so I can make some noise and I disturb people.
Speaker 7: But it depends on it depends on what you're dealing
Speaker 7: with at the time.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 7: There are moments where I get up and I practice
Speaker 7: all day because I know that I'm trying to get
Speaker 7: in shape to do certain things, you know. And then
Speaker 7: with my career, since I'm composing a lot, man, there
Speaker 7: are moments when I'm just sitting in here writing, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean. I had to in some rewrites
Speaker 7: for the opera. I'm sitting here working on the television
Speaker 7: show right now, and I'm getting ready to start working
Speaker 7: on a film, and you know, so this is why
Speaker 7: I spend a lot of my time. I think the
Speaker 7: I think the most important thing about it all, bro,
Speaker 7: is just to figure out what's the best way for
Speaker 7: you to be effective. Because you can sit down in
Speaker 7: practice for five hours, bro, but if you ain't really
Speaker 7: focused and you're not.
Speaker 1: You know, and if you're not applying it the right way.
Speaker 7: No, thirty minutes to do you a lot better, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean? Thirty minutes like really focus, accomplish something,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 2: Yeah, someone told me to practice what I don't know which,
Speaker 2: Well there's a theory behind that. Yeah, but what about
Speaker 2: muscle memory? What about you know, whenever you see someone
Speaker 2: practicing in a movie or already hear the answer my
Speaker 2: head and it's real stupid, but whenever you see anyone
Speaker 2: like that, the myth of practicing is like they start
Speaker 2: their scales and see and then they go half note
Speaker 2: d D da da. But it is practicing muscle memory
Speaker 2: or is it strictly just exploring what you don't know?
Speaker 7: Is there's two forms. There is the muscle memory part,
Speaker 7: but the thing about it you try to build up
Speaker 7: that vocabulary to the point where you become flexible. So
Speaker 7: there are other aspects of practicing where it's all mental,
Speaker 7: where you try to send yourself in different directions and
Speaker 7: see if your body can respond. And if your body
Speaker 7: can't respond, that's when you go back to the muscle
Speaker 7: memory part to kind of really figure out what is
Speaker 7: it that I'm not doing. Oh, it's this interval that's
Speaker 7: hanging me up. So let me come back here and
Speaker 7: work on this interval, you know what I mean, until
Speaker 7: I get that muscle memory down in my brain, and
Speaker 7: then I could go back to doing the improvised stuff.
Speaker 7: Because the thing about it, Bro, I like it. This
Speaker 7: is what I tell my students.
Speaker 5: Bro.
Speaker 7: It's like being It's like being Kyrie Irving, Bro, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean. Of course he knows how to dribble,
Speaker 7: but man, does he really know what he's going to
Speaker 7: do when he's coming down on a fast break, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean, right in the heat of the moment.
Speaker 7: But he has to have the skills to like execute
Speaker 7: anything that happens in his brain within the split second,
Speaker 7: you know. So that's what you're trying to achieve by
Speaker 7: practicing and breaking it down into the various elements.
Speaker 2: Wow, Chris Branford to say that to.
Speaker 4: Me, it's about to be a good class.
Speaker 3: A good class.
Speaker 7: I'm always relating stuff to the sports. You know what
Speaker 7: I mean, Repelicans are playing the Lakers right now, but
Speaker 7: I'm not looking at the screen.
Speaker 2: We appreciate your tention to thinking. Well, okay, So I
Speaker 2: do have a trumpet question though, because the amount of
Speaker 2: times that I've played with serious trumpet players, and I
Speaker 2: always notice that usually I mean, if they're they're they're
Speaker 2: sort of going, you know, hard in the paint. If
Speaker 2: they'll usually tie out in forty minutes, like they'll start
Speaker 2: holding your lip, all right, So can you explain that
Speaker 2: whole thing like the UMBI sure, because someday.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, the armbature. Well, think about it like this.
Speaker 7: You know, you have a piece of metal that's pressed
Speaker 7: up against your lips other than like a reed instrument.
Speaker 7: Right now, I'm taking anything away from read instrument, just
Speaker 7: talking about brass, right, it's a very strenuous thing to
Speaker 7: have that thing up against your lips and use these
Speaker 7: muscles right on both sides of your umber shore. So look, man,
Speaker 7: that's why that's the only reason why you need to practice.
Speaker 7: You got to condition yourself. You have to get strong,
Speaker 7: you know, and it's there's no way around that. That's
Speaker 7: the thing I try to tell my students.
Speaker 5: Bro.
Speaker 7: Then Charlie Parker said, it ain't magic, it just seems
Speaker 7: like it is, you know what I mean. So I
Speaker 7: mean that part you have to just put in the
Speaker 7: time an effort to build up the muscles. And that's
Speaker 7: the thing, Like, that's like scaring me to death right now,
Speaker 7: because man, I've been in the pandemic. I've been sitting
Speaker 7: here chilling and right you know, I got some shows
Speaker 7: coming up, so I got to get back and you know,
Speaker 7: practice mode and set the build back up so I
Speaker 7: can be in condition to play for.
Speaker 6: A show that you do about how long would you
Speaker 6: say you played by yourself?
Speaker 1: What do you have to work up to? Oh?
Speaker 7: Man, I'm you know. The goal is always to try
Speaker 7: to build up to play two hours. Wow, that's impossible
Speaker 7: because you know you never really played two hours straight.
Speaker 7: But that's that's what you try to put in your mind.
Speaker 7: And then when it comes time to do the show. Listen, man,
Speaker 7: some of the old musicians, Brother used to always you know,
Speaker 7: pull my cold and stuff. You know, say, look, man,
Speaker 7: why you got to be the first cat to play
Speaker 7: the solo? Bro? Let them dudes jump out there. You
Speaker 7: just played the melody that's a very strenuous melody on
Speaker 7: your chops. You need to let them and you take
Speaker 7: a break, go on the side and look cool and
Speaker 7: just wait your time.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: It's little things like that brouh over the course of time.
Speaker 7: It really helps you to maintain because when you looked
Speaker 7: at Myles Man, you know, look, bro, Miles had it.
Speaker 7: You know. Miles used to would play some break, he
Speaker 7: would stop, he would take a break, you know. And
Speaker 7: when he would take that break, it was doing two things.
Speaker 7: It was doing something musically and it was also doing
Speaker 7: something physically. He was allowing himself to recover.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was a trumpet player.
Speaker 6: I played trumpet like in like middle school, high school
Speaker 6: and stuff. And so I would always go and watch,
Speaker 6: you know, I would just watch how they would keep
Speaker 6: that when you talk about the amateur and my band
Speaker 6: teacher would always say that it's like a muscle and
Speaker 6: you had to work it. And so a good friend
Speaker 6: of mine, Cy Smith, she's a singer and she's been
Speaker 6: touring before prior to COVID and everything, she had been
Speaker 6: touring with Chris Body and so and so I went
Speaker 6: and saw her at Body Show and Body he does
Speaker 6: exactly what you're saying, like he'll play a little bit
Speaker 6: and then you have a girl come out play the violin.
Speaker 6: They didn't play a little more than sousing. They didn't
Speaker 6: play a little bit, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 6: it's total like attack and release.
Speaker 2: So that's that's not just yeah selectively.
Speaker 5: Wow, that's exclusive. People don't think don't think that. They
Speaker 5: just think you're taking an artistic break.
Speaker 7: Well, it is both. I mean, it's both things. I
Speaker 7: mean because part of it is you know, it's it's
Speaker 7: ingrained in us because that's part of the orientation of
Speaker 7: what what you've heard on all of the records that
Speaker 7: you've studied, you know what I mean. It's like Miles
Speaker 7: always knew how to use space. So that's always a
Speaker 7: part of my thinking just musically. But but it serves
Speaker 7: two purposes, you know, it serves an autistic money and
Speaker 7: it also serves a physical mind.
Speaker 3: So that exercises that you guys.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, there are a lot of exercises. They are
Speaker 7: things that I do, you know, to sit down and
Speaker 7: just and it has nothing to do with music. It's
Speaker 7: just simply the strengthen these muscles.
Speaker 2: So okay, I was going to say, how damaging is
Speaker 2: it to reach that? Okay, let's let's take a cat
Speaker 2: like well, I was gonna say Minard Ferguson like Monard
Speaker 2: is uh you know, is the sample at the beginning
Speaker 2: of Lords to the Underground Funky Child, That's that's that's
Speaker 2: Monard on a soft day. That's that's like that's Monard
Speaker 2: playing Mary had a little lamb. So he's just you know,
Speaker 2: Minard is closer to like the Clayton Gunnals rubble without
Speaker 2: a pause, squeal t squeal, like he just plays in
Speaker 2: for the longest time. What what muscles or like what
Speaker 2: powers have to be activated in order to assisted or
Speaker 2: hit that out the part? Because even even when playing
Speaker 2: with Doc Severson, who's well within his eighties now, he
Speaker 2: he goes from zero.
Speaker 7: To that's one hundred crazy. That's crazy watching him play Bro.
Speaker 7: If I knew that Bro, I'd be doing it, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm glad.
Speaker 7: It's just a difference of muscle. The interesting thing that
Speaker 7: I was a guy like that, I think a lot
Speaker 7: of it has to do with the formulation here. I'm
Speaker 7: not this is just me speculated because when you watch
Speaker 7: guys who have that high high range. The lord register
Speaker 7: sounds a little different. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: And it's a it's a different and it's a different approach.
Speaker 7: So you know, for me, man, I've always been like
Speaker 7: Miles Davis, Clarck, Terry, Freddie Hubber, Woody Shaw type of
Speaker 7: du you know. I like those nice brown tones when
Speaker 7: you when you listen to Miles Davis playing that poor
Speaker 7: game best record bro, his tone is just immaculate and
Speaker 7: just I've been hooked since I was sixteen. You know,
Speaker 7: that's back in the days when we used to have
Speaker 7: the faux bar, you know in our house that had
Speaker 7: like the flickering lights when you had the record player
Speaker 7: under knee.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I have those. Oh god, I just myself.
Speaker 10: Yes, come on, it's so good and put on Miles man.
Speaker 7: And I was sitting down in my room in the
Speaker 7: front of the house and just listen to Miles Davis
Speaker 7: with those lights on all night long.
Speaker 2: Okay, So with okay, I'm glad you answered that question
Speaker 2: because sometimes I'll look at a at a musician and
Speaker 2: kind of side eye them because I didn't realize that,
Speaker 2: you know, you need a certain amount of tune or
Speaker 2: or lungs to hit certain things now.
Speaker 3: Form listen to this, be shocked that you didn't know that.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: I mean sometimes I just feel like in my head,
Speaker 2: my first thing is like, okay, are you just being
Speaker 2: psychosomatic right now? Like wow, just like I'm just thinking
Speaker 2: that there is.
Speaker 7: A part to that, you know what there is? I mean,
Speaker 7: there was a mental side. Tur It. Man, there's a
Speaker 7: great classical trumpet playing in Charlitie Shalutor who played in
Speaker 7: Boston Pops for years as a good friend of mine. Man,
Speaker 7: I was backstage before showing night and I was doing
Speaker 7: something and when I went up to hit this high
Speaker 7: seat I was playing for him, I missed it, and
Speaker 7: he goes, oh, man, stop thinking about it. You just
Speaker 7: work because I'm standing there. Just go ahead do the thing.
Speaker 7: And when I when he said that, you know, came
Speaker 7: out just as clear as a bell. So there is
Speaker 7: a part of the psychological part of it.
Speaker 6: I mean in terms of like dizzy, because he would
Speaker 6: always you know, like blow his cheeks out. And I
Speaker 6: remember as a as a kid, when I would play
Speaker 6: my bands, you should always say like you don't do.
Speaker 2: That, don't do that.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Well, he.
Speaker 6: Was like, nah, don't do that, Dan, That's gonna mess
Speaker 6: you up. So what is it about? What is it
Speaker 6: about that that makes for I guess for bad playing
Speaker 6: or improper form?
Speaker 7: Well, you know the thing about it, It was Disney
Speaker 7: was such a freaking menture man. Because when you play
Speaker 7: the trumpet, most people think you try to bring your
Speaker 7: lips backward. You don't want to do that because that
Speaker 7: creates a thin layer of skin, right, what you try
Speaker 7: to try to focus forward? Right, and we try to
Speaker 7: do what you try to create what we call a
Speaker 7: pucker right. Well, dizzey, he blew all of the blove
Speaker 7: of us in his cheeks, right yeah. Wow. And then
Speaker 7: after he did that, that's why his chiefs could expand.
Speaker 7: But when this could expand, what happened He created a perfect.
Speaker 1: Punker m.
Speaker 3: Because he had no choice.
Speaker 7: Wow, it worked for him. You know what I mean?
Speaker 7: I don't. I don't just that.
Speaker 1: I ain't trying to blow out the blood. This is
Speaker 1: my cheek. That don't sound fun.
Speaker 3: Nobody ever told us kids that we would have stopped.
Speaker 7: Oh man.
Speaker 2: So as a drummer, I know the texture and tone
Speaker 2: preferences that I have when I judge or do my whatever.
Speaker 2: Ten second judgment on Okay, they have a good sound,
Speaker 2: they have a good tone, but how is that how
Speaker 2: do you judge that for trumpet players? All right, so
Speaker 2: you mentioned Dizzy and I'll give you a weird R
Speaker 2: and B example. So you know eighty one when did
Speaker 2: original music Aquarium come out?
Speaker 1: Eighty one? All right?
Speaker 2: So I was ten years old when Stevie wonders do
Speaker 2: I do?
Speaker 1: Comes out?
Speaker 2: And of course you know, he does this big ass
Speaker 2: build up.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: And then Disney sort of in my mind, I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: damn with that sort of introduction, I would expect Dizzey
Speaker 2: to come out the gate like evil Knievel, like to.
Speaker 1: Live up to that thing.
Speaker 2: Instead, he held back and always wanted to, always wanted
Speaker 2: to know, and not like I know in my world,
Speaker 2: I've made a living out of less is more. As
Speaker 2: much as I could hold back, I've made and that
Speaker 2: takes a lot of faith to not want to show
Speaker 2: up and I'll do drummers and you know, let your
Speaker 2: egos start talking to you. But how do you so, okay,
Speaker 2: why would you in choosing poor game best? Like, what
Speaker 2: is it about that album that tells you like the
Speaker 2: tone is immaculate and I'm assuming that you're speaking from
Speaker 2: a A Jordan Game sixth level of perfection, like he's
Speaker 2: just hitting it out the park.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's a it's a well listen, it's a it's
Speaker 7: that perfect marriage between like tone and expression like it.
Speaker 7: For me, I prefer Miles because I love that tone,
Speaker 7: but I also loved Dizzy, and I also loved a
Speaker 7: lot of other guys that had like a more edgy
Speaker 7: or sharper tone.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: Uh. But the thing about Miles that got me bro was, man,
Speaker 7: the dude say boo and just you just got a
Speaker 7: whole bunch of information in those three notes, just the
Speaker 7: way he played it. And I think it's because he
Speaker 7: was so counter to everything else that was going on.
Speaker 7: Everybody else was trying to, like you said, prove how
Speaker 7: much they could play, and for him, it was really
Speaker 7: just about expressing, you know, the lyrics behind those those
Speaker 7: those those beautiful songs, you know, And it just took me.
Speaker 7: It just caught me, caught my attention from the time
Speaker 7: that I was like fifteen, sixteen years old, and I've
Speaker 7: just been hooked ever since. Now that's my first impression. Now,
Speaker 7: when you listen to Clifton Brown. Clifton Brown has a
Speaker 7: totally different type of sound. But man, there's a thing
Speaker 7: that's connected to the way he's phrasing the notes.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 7: This is just an honesty and purity about it.
Speaker 1: Bro.
Speaker 7: It just hits me right in my soul. And I
Speaker 7: got to say this brother, the same thing with you. Brother. Look, man,
Speaker 7: with that snare drum sound, bruh, Your snare drum sound bruh.
Speaker 7: Had me jacked up for a long time. Yeah. No, seriously, seriously, man,
Speaker 7: Yeah no, seriously.
Speaker 1: Bro.
Speaker 7: It's like you know then you said that you gotta
Speaker 7: do a movie and stuff you try to put cruise
Speaker 7: then said, damn, I get that that.
Speaker 8: You don't have pluggins that have like the quest love plugins, right,
Speaker 8: you know that those exist. I've heard, like if you
Speaker 8: want that's there, there's like a plug.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen I've seen it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, well track Masters knows about it very well.
Speaker 2: Oh Jesus Christ. Right, So okay, this this is the
Speaker 2: I guess, the perfect segue. Now, Okay, since you're talking
Speaker 2: about your fandom for Miles Davis in real time discovering
Speaker 2: at fourteen fifteen, First of all, how old were you
Speaker 2: when you got serious about the trumpet?
Speaker 7: When I was about that age. You know, I had
Speaker 7: a trumpet from the time I was in about fourth
Speaker 7: grade elementary school.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 7: But look, I thought I was going to be athlete.
Speaker 7: I thought I was going to play football. And you know,
Speaker 7: I went to one of those by U classics, bro,
Speaker 7: and I saw Grandma's team come off the bus. That
Speaker 7: was it for me. Bro. I was like, big guys
Speaker 7: following me around.
Speaker 1: What position did you play.
Speaker 7: When I was my litle league, man, I played lineback.
Speaker 7: And you know what.
Speaker 3: About high school? At least?
Speaker 7: No, no, no, no, no, no, no no no. By the
Speaker 7: time I got the high school, I already made that decision.
Speaker 7: I knew I was gonna be as big as those dudes.
Speaker 7: I just knew it wasn't gonna happen, you know what
Speaker 7: I'm saying. So wow, No it was. I was about
Speaker 7: fourteen fifteen round at the same time, and that was
Speaker 7: at the same time that I wound up going to
Speaker 7: the Archig School in New Orleans, New Orleans Center for
Speaker 7: the Creative Arts, And that's where my life changed, man,
Speaker 7: because they just introduced me to everything. You know, I
Speaker 7: just clutching brown on a cam and everything. I just
Speaker 7: I learned so much. That was the first time. Man,
Speaker 7: I remember wanting to go to school every day, you know.
Speaker 7: I remember I got sick one day and I had
Speaker 7: to catch myself. My mom was said, boy, you should
Speaker 7: stay home, and I was like, no, I got to
Speaker 7: go to school. Damn that. I really just said it, right,
Speaker 7: But it was like that because I was learning so much,
Speaker 7: you know, every day.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I have I have a Miles question for you. Now, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll compare it or or at least parallel with all Right,
Speaker 2: let me my north star is Prince. So I'll say that,
Speaker 2: and I irk Prince fans to this day because I
Speaker 2: will only hang on to seventy eight to eighty eight,
Speaker 2: and it'll irk them to death because it doesn't validate
Speaker 2: when they got hipped prop well he made Da Da
Speaker 2: Da in nineteen ninety four and whatever. And to me,
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, I mean, every everyone has a
Speaker 2: streak period. I mean you go look at Stevie Wonders
Speaker 2: discograph and say, okay, this was his streak period. So
Speaker 2: just now, because I'm more or less discovered Miles in
Speaker 2: my twenties and way after the fact, like it's it's
Speaker 2: different when on the Corner is introduced to you as
Speaker 2: a masterpiece as opposed to being around seventy three to hear. Right,
Speaker 2: So how we're two babies. Well you're a too too
Speaker 2: baby because your age are just every episode. So all right,
Speaker 2: yeah so you were baby? No, But I just mean, like,
Speaker 2: you know, were you able to discern the difference between
Speaker 2: like what were your thoughts on, Like, Okay, I always
Speaker 2: clown a song like I do I'm going to hell
Speaker 2: for this, a song like Jean Pierre, which I'm so not.
Speaker 2: I'm so not a fan of Jean Pierre. It's almost
Speaker 2: like Showgirls, Like I've made fun of that song so
Speaker 2: much that well, let me ask you this. You ever
Speaker 2: clown something so much that you like it like a
Speaker 2: Stockholm syndrome thing.
Speaker 7: Okay, but let me ask you this. Were you not
Speaker 7: a fan of it from the beginning or just because
Speaker 7: people you know ran it into the ground?
Speaker 2: Okay. So with with Miles's discography, I decided when I
Speaker 2: was going to get into him that I was going
Speaker 2: to go in chronological order, okay, And so you know,
Speaker 2: so I started when I was fourteen, so I didn't
Speaker 2: even get to like we want Miles and you're underrest
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. I didn't get to there until
Speaker 2: I was in my twenties, and by then I had,
Speaker 2: you know, I ingusted so much of classic Miles that
Speaker 2: and I haven't read the books or none of that stuff,
Speaker 2: so I didn't even know about like what he was
Speaker 2: going through in his life. But for me, I was
Speaker 2: just like, I guess this is okay, Like I mean,
Speaker 2: I just gave him cart blots for everything he does
Speaker 2: is magic and gold. But like, what were you? And
Speaker 2: I'm so glad I'm talking to someone not named Marcellus
Speaker 2: because you know, both of them, for many reasons, have
Speaker 2: have polar opposite opinions on him, especially but I just
Speaker 2: needed a third party to hit me to that time period.
Speaker 7: Well you know what it was. You know what it
Speaker 7: was for me, Mancy. I was always fascinated with Miles
Speaker 7: because Miles is always the underdog. A lot of people
Speaker 7: don't realize that, you know, Yeah, man and Billy X
Speaker 7: Sign's band, you had Dizzeygill eSPI and uh Fat Fast
Speaker 7: and Viral in the band, and he was like one
Speaker 7: of the third fourth trumpet players in the band. And
Speaker 7: it wasn't He wasn't one of the strongest guys, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean. Wow, So you know, he was
Speaker 7: always like the underdog. So that's why he went a
Speaker 7: totally different direction. So for me, I've always been fascinated
Speaker 7: with everything Miles did because I'm kind of like a
Speaker 7: historian when it comes to him. I guess, you know,
Speaker 7: I don't know if history is the right word, but
Speaker 7: you know, I'm always fascinated by the things that he
Speaker 7: wanted to do because he was so heavily affected by
Speaker 7: that earlier period of playing with Bird and playing with
Speaker 7: Benny x Stein in that band that it made him
Speaker 7: forced him to find this other approach that was totally
Speaker 7: different from the Royal Eldridge's and Disy Gillspies and all
Speaker 7: of those guys, right, and then finding that approach, he
Speaker 7: just all of a sudden blazed the whole new trail.
Speaker 7: And then you can see he just never looked back
Speaker 7: from that point. He just kept moving and kept moving forward,
Speaker 7: and that was his thing. So by the time he
Speaker 7: got to doing Jean Pierre, We Want Miles and all
Speaker 7: of those things, you know, I wasn't looking for and
Speaker 7: I know this made be sacles to say. But I
Speaker 7: wasn't looking for the next big musical breakthrough for Miles,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean. I was just fascinated by
Speaker 7: why he made those choices and just watching the journey. Yeah,
Speaker 7: they have they have to be a reason. You know,
Speaker 7: I didn't think that. You know, I got a chance
Speaker 7: to meet him around that period. You know, he saw
Speaker 7: me play and uh at this jazz festival in Florida.
Speaker 4: Men.
Speaker 7: And unbeknownst to me, when I was in Italy, he
Speaker 7: did an interview with some Italian journalists and he said
Speaker 7: they asked him, so, who do you like out of
Speaker 7: the young players? And he said, I like Terrence. But
Speaker 7: I didn't know he said this.
Speaker 4: So wow.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so all of these journalists. I come out of
Speaker 7: the hotel and Perugia and all of the journalists come
Speaker 7: running up to me, you know, and they said, well,
Speaker 7: what do you think about what Miles said about you?
Speaker 7: And I go, you know it's Miles, you go, so
Speaker 7: what are you?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 7: Right? This is direction. So after that, he had a
Speaker 7: show that night and al Foster was playing drums right
Speaker 7: and uh. I'll never forget it.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 7: When they came off the stage, they would always clear
Speaker 7: path for Miles, you know, always everybody had to step back,
Speaker 7: and I was standing there and Al could see, you know,
Speaker 7: me looking at Miles. And then he just knew I
Speaker 7: never met Miles, and he said, men, come on back
Speaker 7: and introduce you to Miles. And when I walked in,
Speaker 7: Miles was you know, I was like, he said, keep
Speaker 7: doing what you're doing, motherfucker, you know wow. And he
Speaker 7: was always cool with me, man, every time I was
Speaker 7: seeing him after that. So for me, I didn't look
Speaker 7: at him as a person, you know, I always still
Speaker 7: thought he was always making moves, strategic move You didn't
Speaker 7: have to aglieve with him. You didn't have to like him,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean. But he was making moves
Speaker 7: in his mind. So when I hear those records, that's
Speaker 7: what I hear. I love to too. I think I
Speaker 7: think those records are brilliant because you don't see anything
Speaker 7: like that. You haven't seen anything like that since that record,
Speaker 7: where you have somebody like of that caliber who's not
Speaker 7: taking that music lightly, you know what I mean, who's
Speaker 7: really coming at it from a place where he's trying
Speaker 7: to do something interesting and trying to contribute and.
Speaker 1: Not troduced by Marcus Miller, not.
Speaker 7: Trying to take advantage, you know what I mean. That's
Speaker 7: the thing that I really dug about that record. You know,
Speaker 7: I love that record, you know, it's one of my
Speaker 7: favorite favorite records. But that's I dig about Miles. I
Speaker 7: want my career to be like Miles. I don't want
Speaker 7: to sound the same if you pick up a record
Speaker 7: from now and then to pick up a record from
Speaker 7: from from me twenty years ago. You know what I
Speaker 7: mean to me that that's that's the tragedy, you know,
Speaker 7: because life, the life would be boring if you did
Speaker 7: the same ship all the time, you know.
Speaker 1: For real.
Speaker 6: Man, One question I had about Miles, and I've talked to.
Speaker 1: Being glassproow, Like we debated this before, would.
Speaker 6: You say that Miles, because in my mind, the way
Speaker 6: I came into him was he kind of the first
Speaker 6: guy to to create what we now know as smooth jazz,
Speaker 6: so to speak, Like, I know, it's kind of looked
Speaker 6: as a as a it's smooth jazz has looked at
Speaker 6: as kind of a pejorative now, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: But at the time when I got into jazz, I
Speaker 6: was a kid, and so you know, kind of blue.
Speaker 1: That was like homework music for me, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And I was like, okay, I can put
Speaker 1: this song. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: I'm like, yo, yeah, because I never thought about it.
Speaker 7: I never thought you would kind of blue and that
Speaker 7: and that. But I can see where you're going with that.
Speaker 7: I never thought about that with Mius. You know what
Speaker 7: I thought you were going to say, was was it
Speaker 7: true at Miles was the guy that created like the
Speaker 7: fusion thing? And I like, yeah, because those those guys
Speaker 7: were coming at it from all different angles, you.
Speaker 1: Know what I mean.
Speaker 7: But I'd have to put some thought into that about
Speaker 7: the smooth jazz thing because you know, even though, because
Speaker 7: you know it's funny before you said the kind of blue,
Speaker 7: I was going to say, because you know, you had like, uh,
Speaker 7: Lucky Thompson and all of those guys, they were one
Speaker 7: more of the R and B is kind of instrumental music.
Speaker 7: And then I kind of let in years later to
Speaker 7: like a Groover Washington.
Speaker 1: Kind David Sanborn and stuff like that.
Speaker 7: Yeah. So but when you threw you threw me for
Speaker 7: a loop with the cod.
Speaker 6: I mean that was just me as a gig, Like
Speaker 6: were talked about this kind of where you are when
Speaker 6: you come to the music, what your experience is with it,
Speaker 6: and so for me it would come on.
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is just chill ship. I do my
Speaker 1: homework too.
Speaker 2: But I think before smooth jazz, there was cool, and
Speaker 2: cool was you know, Bertha Cool, which is probably a
Speaker 2: better example of smooth jazz. You know. Actually, Steve, you
Speaker 2: are the Creed tailor uh expert here. Now I'm a
Speaker 2: Cretailor fan only because a lot of his stuff is
Speaker 2: so breakbeat oriented, you know, all that Bob James stuff,
Speaker 2: all the you know, all the all this stuff, even
Speaker 2: Krover like. But I know that jazz experts or the
Speaker 2: jazz police, will you know, give that a raspberry down
Speaker 2: in two seconds? But I don't know.
Speaker 7: I would think that won't worry from New Orleans.
Speaker 1: Listen you how did you escape the cult?
Speaker 7: Then here's here's the thing about we don't deal with
Speaker 7: the jazz poof you know what I mean, There's a
Speaker 7: there's a different between like upholding something right and moving
Speaker 7: something forward, you know what I mean? Like, well, I've
Speaker 7: been teaching I'm not teaching it now, but when I
Speaker 7: was working at the Monk Institute, man, I hung around
Speaker 7: Herbie and Wayne for over fifteen years, you know what
Speaker 7: I mean, And being around those dudes, they constantly make
Speaker 7: you think about things. And Wayne Charlotte used to say,
Speaker 7: jazz means I dare you.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 7: So that's the way that I look at it. Wow,
Speaker 7: I don't like. I don't like the divisions and music,
Speaker 7: you know, because we already have too many divisions in life,
Speaker 7: you know, we don't need divisions of music. As a
Speaker 7: matter of fact. I remember years ago when I was
Speaker 7: with all Blakey Man. We were in Paris, and I
Speaker 7: don't know if you know Marvel Miller was very jazz pianist.
Speaker 7: Would we would? I hate that meit this, But we
Speaker 7: was homesick, so we went to McDonald's and shit, be the.
Speaker 2: Only one that would go to in America that there.
Speaker 1: Are exactly.
Speaker 2: Ship.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 7: While we were sitting there, man, I remember we heard
Speaker 7: Nancy Wilson, we heard uh, we heard some R and B,
Speaker 7: we heard some classical music, and it was all being
Speaker 7: played from the same station.
Speaker 3: Oh Europe, Oh Europe, you know.
Speaker 7: And it was all African American artists. I'm assuming classical.
Speaker 7: I was assuming the classical person, and I was sitting
Speaker 7: there saying wow, and and it was deep because it
Speaker 7: took us a minute to realize it because when you,
Speaker 7: you know, you first sit down, you kind of think, oh,
Speaker 7: this is just gonna be like some R and B
Speaker 7: stuff that's playing. The next thing, you know, it's like
Speaker 7: Timmy finn, I got something that's playing, What what the hell?
Speaker 7: And then if something else playing, and I went, see, man,
Speaker 7: this is what's really cool because then we're starting to
Speaker 7: see the breath of who we are as a community bro,
Speaker 7: not this kind of localized yeah, you know, and it
Speaker 7: keeps people fearful, keeps people fearful of trynics experience something different,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Steve, I'm asking your question unless you're
Speaker 2: going to ask you right now.
Speaker 11: Well, I have a question, but I doubt you know
Speaker 11: what it is.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well then I'm taking your question.
Speaker 1: Okay, I can wait.
Speaker 2: All right, ask your question, Steve. No, I don't want
Speaker 2: to ruin I don't want to ruin your flow. I
Speaker 2: was going to ask what was the first album that you.
Speaker 11: Oh no, that's not my My question is where's your
Speaker 11: album collection right now? So we can pull up and
Speaker 11: you know that's the question.
Speaker 7: You know what, you know what's funny about that, bro? Man,
Speaker 7: My wife just has some cabinets built and we put
Speaker 7: all the records over over there, you know, and I
Speaker 7: got my turntable over there and everything.
Speaker 1: I've switched everything over the digital.
Speaker 3: Dude, Okay, you off the floor.
Speaker 2: Save space.
Speaker 7: No no, no, no, no, it's not you know, you know,
Speaker 7: you know, I get I know a lot of dudes
Speaker 7: like that.
Speaker 1: I get it. I get it. You know.
Speaker 7: It's it's interesting, man, because uh I felt bad one day, man,
Speaker 7: when my kids they were they were little. They're grown now,
Speaker 7: but when they were little, I felt bad.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 7: I pulled out the turntable and I gave him some records,
Speaker 7: and the watching them put the needle on the thing
Speaker 7: and with such amazement in their eyes, was.
Speaker 8: Like, I went, wow, Right, my daughter just found CDs yesterday.
Speaker 8: She's like, what are these? I was like, really, ship, Yeah,
Speaker 8: she took and then she took them. She took them
Speaker 8: and she used them to paint on they like to
Speaker 8: paint to make art out of because she didn't know
Speaker 8: what to do.
Speaker 1: With the season. It was a moment.
Speaker 7: A good friend of mine, a good friend of mine,
Speaker 7: he used to sell records here. He had a he
Speaker 7: had a store any walls ago, we're read just how
Speaker 7: was hanging out and my daughter Sidney, who was living
Speaker 7: in Brooklyn. Man, he knows she's a musician, she's a
Speaker 7: songwriter and everything. So he pulls out in one of
Speaker 7: the first Sony Walkman.
Speaker 1: The Yellow Ones, first one.
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, and he gave it to her.
Speaker 3: What's she doing with dad?
Speaker 7: She told, I said, I gave her this long, long
Speaker 7: lecture about you don't even know what you have. You
Speaker 7: need to respect what it is you have, blah blah blah,
Speaker 7: because it was in pristine condition, you know what I mean. Wowe,
Speaker 7: it's still worked. I mean you know she has it.
Speaker 7: She has it wrapped up in in uh in her room.
Speaker 1: Now. I didn't let her take her to Brooklyn like.
Speaker 5: You guys and bragging writs real quick about your kids though,
Speaker 5: because I didn't know about your daughter as a songwriter.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, yeah yeah. My son actually wrote some stuff
Speaker 7: from one of my albums.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 7: You know he's a great songwriter to Jay poetry, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: We're about to follow him Terrence with the name.
Speaker 7: Jay Ray Oliver, but the red spelled like r E.
Speaker 3: I okay, and then what's your daughter?
Speaker 7: My daughters like her name is Sydney, but she Tom.
Speaker 7: She's got like Tom girl or something that's I hamble on.
Speaker 1: I g you know, I can't.
Speaker 4: That's fine.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to know at least we can find myself.
Speaker 7: That's one of my first record with a band called
Speaker 7: about the releasing, you know, against Priest Nice.
Speaker 2: All right, yeah, but okay, So what was the first
Speaker 2: album that you purchased?
Speaker 7: Oh, man, okay, I have to class fighter. See it
Speaker 7: was funny because you were talking about me and Ferguson
Speaker 7: the other big Me and not Ferguson fan when I
Speaker 7: was a kid. So some of that stuff with some
Speaker 7: of the first stuff I bought. But when I really
Speaker 7: started to get serious about jazz, man, it was Miles
Speaker 7: David's Funny, My Funny, Valentine Live and Brown and Roach
Speaker 7: Max Roach and Clipping Brown.
Speaker 2: With Jackie on it.
Speaker 7: Yes, okay, I used to wear those records out.
Speaker 2: I've gotten to jazz early.
Speaker 7: Yeah, because you know, living in New Orleans, man, I mean,
Speaker 7: you know, you're just exposed to all of these great musicians.
Speaker 7: You hear guys playing instruments all the time. You know,
Speaker 7: so you just kind of is this in your system?
Speaker 1: Can I ask my question now?
Speaker 11: I mean, yes, it's not related to vinyl records or anything,
Speaker 11: but your your actual trumpet.
Speaker 2: Yes, for people who.
Speaker 11: Have seen you play live or on video, it looks
Speaker 11: different than normal trumpet. And I think me and our
Speaker 11: viewers might be curious, what's the difference between your trumpet
Speaker 11: and quote unquote normal trumpet, and like, does it have
Speaker 11: anything to do with the you know, the mouthpiece especially
Speaker 11: looks looks different. Does that have anything to do with
Speaker 11: what we were talking about earlier the physical aspect of
Speaker 11: having a.
Speaker 7: Little bit I mean it's maybe by a guy named
Speaker 7: David on that and the models Roger a I'm sorry,
Speaker 7: r a Ja. And what he does is when you
Speaker 7: see it, it has a lot of thick bracing on it,
Speaker 7: and the reason why the mouthpiece is there, and it's
Speaker 7: actually removable, but it takes a long long time to
Speaker 7: unscrew because what he's trying to do is to try
Speaker 7: to create a really tight fit, so nothing really vibrates
Speaker 7: in the metal. But when you get to the bell,
Speaker 7: he makes a really really large bell that's dense and
Speaker 7: when you pluck it, man, it rings right, So that's
Speaker 7: the only thing that resonates on the horn. And his
Speaker 7: theory is that by keeping everything else so rigid, the
Speaker 7: sound goes through the horn rather quickly and creates a
Speaker 7: broader tone coming at the bell.
Speaker 11: And what about the physical aspect of is it easier
Speaker 11: on your on your mouth?
Speaker 7: No, I mean it's the same. I mean, he would
Speaker 7: like to tell you it's easier because you know, it's
Speaker 7: slotted better, and blah blah blah. It's still a trumpet.
Speaker 7: It's still still a pH demanding thing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: That was a great trumpet player. Man, I was telling him.
Speaker 7: I said, Man, I'm trying to get to the point
Speaker 7: it doesn't hurt. He said, man, it hurts. Let it go.
Speaker 6: Man, what is the difference between I used to I
Speaker 6: mean playing I still never really knew trumpet, corn it,
Speaker 6: and flugel.
Speaker 7: Well, I mean both of all three of those. It's
Speaker 7: really about tone. I mean they're going to feel different
Speaker 7: just because of the tubing and everything is going to
Speaker 7: feel like really kind of open. It's you know, corn it.
Speaker 7: For me, it feels a little more restrictive, you know,
Speaker 7: But it's just about tone, you know. And and it's
Speaker 7: kind of interesting because I haven't played corner out of
Speaker 7: fluhorn a long, long long time.
Speaker 6: I guess the notes are still the same as the
Speaker 6: trumpet though it's the same finger and everything, gotcha, exactly
Speaker 6: the same, just different.
Speaker 11: Why did why did art Farmers stop playing trumpet and
Speaker 11: only play flug on exclusively?
Speaker 1: He did it? He plays a fluppet, Yeah, he can.
Speaker 7: He came up. Well, the same guy, the same guy
Speaker 7: that me and my horn made his horn, and he
Speaker 7: came in between a trumpet and a fluval horn and
Speaker 7: that they called it the flumpet, you know, and it
Speaker 7: was designed to kind of bring those physical sin ways
Speaker 7: together to create a tone that's kind of in between.
Speaker 7: But he had, he had, he had. That was something
Speaker 7: A lot of that is like in your in your head, man,
Speaker 7: what you're trying to hear, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: And that's the beauty of any artistry, you know. You know,
Speaker 7: That's what I try to teach my kids. It's like
Speaker 7: I can't tell you who you are. You know, I
Speaker 7: could just give you the twos to kind of help
Speaker 7: you to develop your ideas, but who you are is
Speaker 7: you're an individual. You have to do that investigation yourself.
Speaker 7: And the more you do that, the more you trust it,
Speaker 7: the more you start to see that maybe you're not
Speaker 7: like somebody else. Maybe you do like a different tone,
Speaker 7: maybe you do like a different set up on your
Speaker 7: drums than somebody else. And that's okay as long as
Speaker 7: you're expressing what it is you want to express.
Speaker 11: I was just wondering if you still play other types
Speaker 11: of if you play other brands or models of trumpet,
Speaker 11: or just exclusively the one that we see you with.
Speaker 7: Yeah, just the moment I'm you know, I haven't played
Speaker 7: a horn that plays as for me, at least plays
Speaker 7: as well as his for me, you know, And maybe
Speaker 7: it's just because I'm accustomed to him.
Speaker 1: But there's a certain.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 7: Maurice Andre was this great classical trumpet player from Paris,
Speaker 7: man and he made a comment one time and it
Speaker 7: stuck with me.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 7: He said there were moments in time that he would
Speaker 7: play that he would forget that he had a horn
Speaker 7: in his hand, you know, And sometimes you're playing them
Speaker 7: on thatt it's kind of like that, you know what
Speaker 7: I mean. It's like the trumpet is just what it is.
Speaker 7: It's an instrument.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 7: My trumpet teacher always used to say, you know, he
Speaker 7: would point to the trump and goes, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: What is that?
Speaker 7: And I'm always given this scientific answer, man, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 7: it's a two man. It's blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 7: He goes, no, man, it's a mirror of the mind.
Speaker 7: It's a mirror of.
Speaker 1: The mind, you know.
Speaker 7: And uh, that's the way that I kind of look
Speaker 7: at it. With his horns when I'm playing his horns,
Speaker 7: I don't I get to the point where I'm not
Speaker 7: thinking about playing the trumpet, you know, it's about trying
Speaker 7: to convey an idea to an audience. Growing up in
Speaker 7: New Orleans, especially at the age in your formative years,
Speaker 7: what was your relationship with pop or soul music at
Speaker 7: the time? Like cats I saw, you know cats that
Speaker 7: I grew up with in the seventies. You know, they
Speaker 7: they were you know, they were looking to like Pee
Speaker 7: Wee from the Ohio Players, or like William King from
Speaker 7: the Commondors.
Speaker 2: Like every high school wanted to play like love roller
Speaker 2: Coaster or that sort of thing. Like where what was
Speaker 2: your relationship with just modern music at the time?
Speaker 7: What it was Bernie well Wall, Yes, indeed, Bernie Paulamer, Funker, Bellis,
Speaker 7: earth Wind and Fire Cool in the Gang Mandrel, you know,
Speaker 7: all of those groups. Man, that was the stuff that
Speaker 7: I used to listen to. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 7: I used to play keyboard in the pop band when
Speaker 7: I was in high school and really dug it, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean, had a lot of fun doing it, man,
Speaker 7: and then continued to do it. You know, even when
Speaker 7: I got to college a little bit. We used to
Speaker 7: we used to do a lot of that stuff, playing
Speaker 7: those gigs, and I always had fun. Listen, man, I've
Speaker 7: always loved that music. You know. That's why I loved
Speaker 7: Prince so much, because Prince, to me, was like a throwback.
Speaker 7: You know. Obviously he come out of James Brown. You
Speaker 7: could hear all of that stuff. You could hear, you know,
Speaker 7: where he paid reverence a lot of people that had
Speaker 7: come performed. But the thing that I liked about Prince's
Speaker 7: kind of like Myles to me, and that you know,
Speaker 7: with all of those albums, bro, he was trying something
Speaker 7: different and he was always finding something new to express,
Speaker 7: you know, and uh he was unapologetic about it. I
Speaker 7: just listen, man, you know, he was the only artist
Speaker 7: that I saw at the time that could have like
Speaker 7: a like a heavy metal tune in a country tune
Speaker 7: on the same album, you know what I mean, right,
Speaker 7: and it'll still sound like him, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: It's like you had to tip your hat to that.
Speaker 2: So so funking soul wasn't a four letter word to
Speaker 2: you at the time.
Speaker 7: Never, never, ever.
Speaker 2: Okay, So now I'll go back to my original question,
Speaker 2: because I know that you've had associations with Ellis Marcellus
Speaker 2: and and his kids. Uh, how did you?
Speaker 1: How did you?
Speaker 2: How did you escape the at least in my personal,
Speaker 2: uh point of view, the this kind of get out
Speaker 2: cultish jazz cultish regime of Marcella's seriousness, which you know,
Speaker 2: depending on which morsels you talk to is either some
Speaker 2: of them are wide open or rebellious or some are
Speaker 2: very much like you must study the book of you know,
Speaker 2: chapter Jazz Verse Swing.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, how did you escape that?
Speaker 7: Well? I mean, listen, man, you know, at a certain
Speaker 7: point of your development, those things are really appropriate to
Speaker 7: help you to just decipher information, you know. So when
Speaker 7: I was a young kid, all of that stuff was
Speaker 7: was really it's really great to make me sit down
Speaker 7: and focus in practice, you know. But at the same time, bruh,
Speaker 7: I'm still a compassionate, feeling person. I'm not going to
Speaker 7: deny what it is that I feel in my soul,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean. I'm not going to turn
Speaker 7: I give you another example, you know, forget to mysels.
Speaker 7: I'll just go to the church. You know, I grew
Speaker 7: up in a congregational as church in New Orleans. Man
Speaker 7: Andrew Young was a member of my church.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he grew up in my church, you know. So
Speaker 7: it was it was interesting because as long as I
Speaker 7: play classical music, man, those people love me, you know
Speaker 7: what I mean. When I started to become a jazz musician,
Speaker 7: they used to say, well, you know that's that jazz
Speaker 7: is fine, but you keep keep up with your classics.
Speaker 5: You hear.
Speaker 7: And I'm like, you know, that would always bug me
Speaker 7: because I love music period. You know, there's things that
Speaker 7: I feel that I can't I will not ever deny,
Speaker 7: you know. So, so when I'm when I'm listening to
Speaker 7: you know, uh, when I'm listening to when I'm listening
Speaker 7: to jodasy Right and and and Jodaicy, some of that
Speaker 7: ship is like like really funky, you know, I still
Speaker 7: feel something just as much as when I'm listening to women.
Speaker 7: And I know people say that as a as a thing.
Speaker 7: You know, I don't. I'm not doing that, you know,
Speaker 7: I look at you know, this world is a vast world, man,
Speaker 7: and God has given all of us different talents to
Speaker 7: express things in various ways. So there shouldn't be one
Speaker 7: way to skin a cat, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: And as long as you're coming at it from a
Speaker 7: point of view of honesty and sincerity, who gives the
Speaker 7: ship what it is that you you know what I mean?
Speaker 7: It's like, that's my personal opinion for me. I think
Speaker 7: all of that divisive stuff is a way that has
Speaker 7: kept black people separated from each other in a way
Speaker 7: that's unnecessary, you know. And I think it's kind of
Speaker 7: hard for us to see that sometimes.
Speaker 5: And maybe it's funny because we interviewed him two May
Speaker 5: and I feel like in a way, he had to
Speaker 5: fight that fight, so maybe other people wouldn't, because he
Speaker 5: definitely was vocal about how people felt about him making
Speaker 5: that transition in the R and B and whatnot.
Speaker 7: Oh look, you know with my band The E Collective,
Speaker 7: I heard it. You know, I've been here. You know
Speaker 7: when we did that, man, it was funny. It was
Speaker 7: funny when we did our first tour of Europe. Dude,
Speaker 7: it was funny. Every time we got out in the
Speaker 7: audience and we saw great hair, we go, oh shit,
Speaker 7: you know, okay, it's gonna be one of them.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 7: But the funny part about it, man, you know when
Speaker 7: the band will start to play, and you know, Oscar
Speaker 7: Sene is the drummer, man, and he's got a strong
Speaker 7: pocket man, And when the band will start to play,
Speaker 7: people start tapping their feet and they will start grooving
Speaker 7: to the music, and we say, oh, okay, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker 7: So for me, man, music is music, dude, you know
Speaker 7: what I mean. It's it's uh, you know, it's I
Speaker 7: don't know. I hate the labeling of things because I've
Speaker 7: seen it just keep us apart rather than bring us
Speaker 7: together for too long. And I just wish we could
Speaker 7: just turn turn that around. We haven't learned from like Herbie.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying, Because Herbie was showing us
Speaker 7: this years.
Speaker 5: Ago, you know what I mean, right, y'all was still
Speaker 5: having a conversation and Mobeta Blues.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Oh listen, man, Man, you know what, we did
Speaker 7: more better blues. It was kind of fun because when
Speaker 7: when when the movie hit, we were like in the
Speaker 7: top ten on radio charts in d C or some SI.
Speaker 2: You're from DC to this episode Born and Raised Howard.
Speaker 1: This episode?
Speaker 2: Okay today youtu baby born in DC.
Speaker 1: I got you today's narrative.
Speaker 2: So with what would you say? Is your your Well,
Speaker 2: I know you played with Hampton? Uh, but what was
Speaker 2: your first professional I made it. I don't have to
Speaker 2: have a part time job. I'm officially gigging. Like, what
Speaker 2: was your first official moment playing with all Blake? Oh?
Speaker 1: So Messengers came first?
Speaker 7: Yeah, man, when I was about nineteen years old, I
Speaker 7: joined that band and I had to leave school. I
Speaker 7: was going to Rutgis University in New Jersey and with
Speaker 7: Regina bell Man.
Speaker 1: You know, okay, this is up. Yeah, all the school together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even though she went to us. That's dope.
Speaker 2: Ok yeah, I did not know. Yeah, so what was
Speaker 2: that old key? Tell us about the experience playing with
Speaker 2: our Oh man.
Speaker 7: Bruh here with that? Sorry?
Speaker 8: What year were in the Messengers?
Speaker 7: It was from eighty two to eighty six, And I
Speaker 7: tell people, man, I was there for four years. But
Speaker 7: our aged like about forty. I was a young little
Speaker 7: kid from New Orleans, fresh off the farm. Bro it was.
Speaker 7: And then my first tour with him was like ten
Speaker 7: weeks in Europe.
Speaker 2: Dude, Wow, tell us everything about it, man from New Orleans.
Speaker 7: Bro I spoke a little bit of Spanish, brou. It
Speaker 7: was a trip just trying to eat.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 7: And then we hit London the last two weeks of
Speaker 7: the tour. Bro I was so happy to hear English English. Man.
Speaker 7: It was crazy, bro it was. It was crazy. But
Speaker 7: you know, listen, man, I learned a lot about the world.
Speaker 7: And I came back and I remember I came back
Speaker 7: and I was telling my mom about my cousin and stuff.
Speaker 7: I said, you know, we need to figure out a
Speaker 7: way to get these kids to travel to see the world,
Speaker 7: because that's the education, you know. And I learned. I
Speaker 7: learned a great deal. And Art was the type of guy, man,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: He he had.
Speaker 7: An Art was an interesting personality, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: He he was the kind of guy he could bullshit
Speaker 7: you all day long. But then man, they'd be th
Speaker 7: those moments brou where you would sit down and have
Speaker 7: a conversation about him, a conversation with him and Bruh,
Speaker 7: it would be like life lessons, man, you know, And
Speaker 7: those were always the moments that I truly cherished having
Speaker 7: with him because you know, it would be like one
Speaker 7: on one in the dressing room and he would just
Speaker 7: start talking about some things, and he opened my eyes
Speaker 7: to a lot of stuff, Bro. And the way I
Speaker 7: run my band is still based on the way he
Speaker 7: ran his band by giving guys opportunities a lot, allowing
Speaker 7: him to contribute to the to to the the repertoire
Speaker 7: of the group, and to the concept of what's happening
Speaker 7: with the band. You know, I owe a huge that
Speaker 7: of gratitude to that man because he really turned me around.
Speaker 1: Bro.
Speaker 7: For four years, Dude, think about this.
Speaker 1: Four years.
Speaker 7: I met all of my jazz heroes playing with him.
Speaker 7: That's all. I met them all playing with.
Speaker 4: Him because Max Roach was around them too, right, Like, man.
Speaker 7: Max, Okay, we're playing this club in New York, fat Tuesdays.
Speaker 7: And then the table and it was a small little
Speaker 7: club and then the table right in front was Max Roach, Uh,
Speaker 7: Jack dsh and Net and I think Elvin Jones and
Speaker 7: the three of them were sitting there, you know, and
Speaker 7: I was like, Yez, you know, I'm fire. You know,
Speaker 7: I'm in my early twenties and I'm trying. I'm trying
Speaker 7: to play it off and be cool, but you know,
Speaker 7: on the inside, I was sweating bullets. Man, Remember And
Speaker 7: I remember walking by Max and Max was like, really
Speaker 7: strong man. He grabbed my calf. I don't know why
Speaker 7: he did it, but he grabbed my caf.
Speaker 1: You said, man, look at the calves.
Speaker 7: And I couldn't go nowhere. That was a funny part.
Speaker 7: I forgot to tell you that part.
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it.
Speaker 7: I was stuck.
Speaker 1: I was like, damn, you know.
Speaker 4: Like next generation sharecrop a.
Speaker 2: Talk wait Terrence. When you are when you're young and
Speaker 2: you're in this institution, Yeah, how do you not how
Speaker 2: do you resist the temptation to not flex?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, So like when I DJ.
Speaker 2: When I DJ, it's me and in the audience, but
Speaker 2: the second one of my peers comes in the DJ boost,
Speaker 2: then the temptation, then the temptation to like play that rare,
Speaker 2: obscure Japanese record that I brought that only we get
Speaker 2: like the temptation in the flex, and I normally lose
Speaker 2: my audience if I do it, and I might, you know,
Speaker 2: and sometimes I've gave it, given it and just let
Speaker 2: the audience, you know, uh, Prins fans. Everyone loved that ship,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, AnyWho you.
Speaker 7: Know, being with I get what you're saying. I understand
Speaker 7: because you know being with Art Man. Here's the thing
Speaker 7: you got to remember, that was a long lency a
Speaker 7: great musicians that came in up man before you, before
Speaker 7: any of us. Right, so you already humbled just by
Speaker 7: being in the band. And look at some of those
Speaker 7: dudes would come by and hang out.
Speaker 1: Man, you got back.
Speaker 7: Then you got to remember man, Woody Shaw would show up,
Speaker 7: Freddie Hubber would show up, and those dudes would just
Speaker 7: be sitting in the club hanging out. Damn okay, all right, man,
Speaker 7: he's here checking me out, all right. Adie Henderson was
Speaker 7: another one. And then the other part of it too
Speaker 7: is that you know, we really wanted to learn, you know,
Speaker 7: the our thing was, but I know my thing was
Speaker 7: I wanted to learn as much as I could about
Speaker 7: playing music because for some reason, even though I was young,
Speaker 7: I knew that that moment was something to cherish, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean. I didn't try to take it
Speaker 7: for granted. So every little thing that I could, I
Speaker 7: tried to milk as much out of it as I could,
Speaker 7: you know. So I was like a fly on the wall.
Speaker 1: Bro.
Speaker 7: Sometimes, Man, the guys would come by and they'd be
Speaker 7: hanging in the dress room bro, and I would just
Speaker 7: be sitting in a quiet as a church mouse, bro,
Speaker 7: not saying a word, just watching and listening to these
Speaker 7: conversations that's being had with Dexa Gordon or or or
Speaker 7: you know, Walter Davis or Herbie or Algiol came by
Speaker 7: side saying, well, one time Stanley Clark will come by
Speaker 7: and play with us, you know.
Speaker 2: But I've been more on stage, Like what because I
Speaker 2: know that if you're in that position like the Temptations
Speaker 2: has not to start showing off. We I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: not saying you could take extra bars or not without
Speaker 2: Art getting upset with you, but like what stops you
Speaker 2: from showing off or we can't do that? Because I
Speaker 2: could tell when like if cats knew it and I'm
Speaker 2: watching them and suddenly like they're doing extra ship that
Speaker 2: they don't need to be doing.
Speaker 7: I cure us of that because I.
Speaker 1: Mean, he says, stop playing for the musicians.
Speaker 5: God damn it, thank you because I paid for his ticket,
Speaker 5: and I would like to thank you because that did
Speaker 5: not pay.
Speaker 4: For that ticket. That you're impressing what.
Speaker 7: He said, they're going to ask you for a free ticket.
Speaker 7: And he said, you're gonna have to filing hands off
Speaker 7: of one goddamn beer because they're not gonna buy nothing.
Speaker 7: So stop paying.
Speaker 3: Get out the mirror.
Speaker 1: I love it, but I'll take that. I'll take that advice.
Speaker 7: Like if I'll tell you this, but I will tell
Speaker 7: you this, I will tell you this. Art was a
Speaker 7: type of dude if your job, your job was always
Speaker 7: in jeopardy, you know what I mean. So sometimes what
Speaker 7: he would do is, man, he bring a dude up
Speaker 7: on your instrument on the bandstand.
Speaker 1: Oh no, that was.
Speaker 7: When you had to show out, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: So because exactly, and I remember, I forgot who it was.
Speaker 7: I forgot who. I don't forgot who the trump player was.
Speaker 1: He said, y'all play a ballad together. I want.
Speaker 4: I don't know him.
Speaker 1: Wow, that was.
Speaker 7: Art man, you know. And then and then if there
Speaker 7: ever was an inkling that Art was unhappy with somebody,
Speaker 7: you kind of knew because there would be a whole
Speaker 7: bunch of dudes with that instrument showing up to the gig.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget one time.
Speaker 7: Man, there was a whole bunch of ixophone player showed
Speaker 7: up and they were just sitting on the side of
Speaker 7: the stage. Man, I was like, damn. And when it
Speaker 7: got time for Art to let him come up and play.
Speaker 7: He let him come up. It was about five or
Speaker 7: six of them. He let him come up and play,
Speaker 7: and then he called Smedie's St Marvers. Betty Smith was
Speaker 7: in the audience. He called him up to come play
Speaker 7: the drums. Then he went in the dressing room.
Speaker 1: He was chilling.
Speaker 2: He was like, yeah, yeah, wow, that's coow. So why
Speaker 2: why did you and uh Donald Harrison decided to leave
Speaker 2: uh in your fourth year with uh Bar Polikey.
Speaker 7: Well, we knew it was time, man and and and
Speaker 7: our band was the type of band where it was
Speaker 7: like a finishing school for young musicians, so we didn't
Speaker 7: want to occupy the space any longer. We knew other
Speaker 7: musicians should have gotten that experience, and they've gotten signed
Speaker 7: the Columbia Records. We had already made a record with
Speaker 7: George Wien's label on Concord Records, but Columbia. George Butler
Speaker 7: had signed us to Columbia and we.
Speaker 2: Were getting I was gonna say, can you can you
Speaker 2: describe what?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 2: I know many people that worked with George Butler, especially
Speaker 2: like during that period, what what was Butler like? As
Speaker 2: was he an a r of jazz at Columbia or
Speaker 2: was he.
Speaker 7: The vice president in our jast? He was, man, George
Speaker 7: was a cool dude with me. Man, you know, I
Speaker 7: know a lot of people had took issue with George.
Speaker 7: George was the type of guy you know he was.
Speaker 3: He was.
Speaker 7: How do I say it? He knew how to maneuver,
Speaker 7: you know, and in his maneuvering, you know, some people
Speaker 7: didn't like what it is that he would do. But
Speaker 7: he was good by us, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: And I remember even after me and Donald the band
Speaker 7: split up, he signed me on as a you know,
Speaker 7: as a solo artist there. And uh, we always had
Speaker 7: like a really great relationship. Man. You know, I had
Speaker 7: told him, I had told him this very vogue funny
Speaker 7: story one time, man, and you know it was funny
Speaker 7: because George was a real proper guy.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: But but we would hang out and uh, have some
Speaker 7: drinks and he'd be like with some friends, told tell
Speaker 7: them that story, tell him that story.
Speaker 1: He's a funny dude.
Speaker 2: I'm afraid to ask for that story now.
Speaker 4: No, not just because I'm here. You would do it,
Speaker 4: would you? You would do it if I want to
Speaker 4: hear because.
Speaker 5: I'm okay, Okay, that's fine, because I just want you
Speaker 5: to know I'm raunchy, So I could probably challenge you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe, yeah, probably Okay.
Speaker 2: Well, at the time, at the time when when you
Speaker 2: and Donald were heading up the band, how do you
Speaker 2: how are decisions made creatively as far as what direction
Speaker 2: to go or who gets what or who?
Speaker 7: Yeah, that was that was a tough one. I mean,
Speaker 7: you know, it was a tough thing. But that we
Speaker 7: looked at the band as like a workshop man, you know,
Speaker 7: so everybody was bringing the material and that's basically how
Speaker 7: we did it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 7: Uh, He'd write music, I'd write music. And then the
Speaker 7: interesting thing about it, like sometimes he would write music
Speaker 7: and I would be influenced by what he was writing.
Speaker 7: So that's why the band had a sound, you know
Speaker 7: what I mean? Because I think even though we were
Speaker 7: all writing different material, I think we were all kind
Speaker 7: of like on the same page music, you know. And
Speaker 7: then around that time, man having that band together. You
Speaker 7: know Ralph Peterson who we just lost, God rest his soul.
Speaker 7: He was like one of the one of the first,
Speaker 7: one of the drummers in the band, Marvin Smadie Smith
Speaker 7: was one of the drummers in the band. And then
Speaker 7: we had Carl Allen uh and you know, you know
Speaker 7: how it is, and there, you know, with a drummer
Speaker 7: concept the tone for any band, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: So that was also one of the things that kind
Speaker 7: of helped take the sound of the group when the
Speaker 7: drummers were changed.
Speaker 2: I can imagine that your kind of instant foray into
Speaker 2: the world of scoring for movies wasn't exactly like a
Speaker 2: goal or at least I assumed. So half the time
Speaker 2: you wind up in places that you didn't plan on.
Speaker 2: It just happens to you. So how did you even
Speaker 2: get involved in the world of scoring?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 7: You know, you know, I'm glad you asked that question, man,
Speaker 7: because I you know, I've been asked that question a
Speaker 7: lot of well, not that question, I've been asked what's
Speaker 7: you know, what would you tell young composers? And I'm
Speaker 7: always at a loss because I'm like, man, I wasn't
Speaker 7: looking for this and it just fell on my lap.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: We were doing the pre recorded music for more Better
Speaker 7: Blues for the actors to act to, you know, and
Speaker 7: I was getting ready to do my first record solo
Speaker 7: project I was just telling you about for George Butler
Speaker 7: Columbia Records. So I had written a song man for
Speaker 7: the Kids that were mastered in South Africa, and it
Speaker 7: was called Cinciuato. And we had taken a break in
Speaker 7: the studio and I was playing it on the piano
Speaker 7: and Spike walk by and he heard it and he said, man,
Speaker 7: what is that? And I said, oh, man, this is
Speaker 7: this thing called Sincuato. He goes, can I use it?
Speaker 7: I go, yeah, yeah, sure. And we just recorded it
Speaker 7: just as a solo trumpet piece back then, and and Denzel
Speaker 7: shot the scene and it's a scene when he's on
Speaker 7: the bridge playing right right, and then uh, they got
Speaker 7: to they got back to the editing room. Spike was
Speaker 7: trying to fill it in. He put training notises and
Speaker 7: it still wasn't really making what wasn't doing what he
Speaker 7: wanted to do. So then he came back to me
Speaker 7: and He said, hey, man, you think you could write
Speaker 7: a string arrangement for this?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 7: And I always tell my students that's the moment. Well
Speaker 7: you know you lie, you know, And I said, absolute, hell, yeah,
Speaker 7: I can write arrange before. You know what I mean. So,
Speaker 7: I mean what I did to calling my teacher, man,
Speaker 7: and you got to tell me what to do. Dude,
Speaker 7: you know you had.
Speaker 6: Never done it before. You had no clue of how
Speaker 6: to do it. Friday, No, man, Wow.
Speaker 7: I studied composition, you know what I mean. But but
Speaker 7: but I never had to do that. And as a
Speaker 7: matter of fact, that's what he told me, he said,
Speaker 7: trust the training. I was like, dude, that's not the
Speaker 7: I was looking for.
Speaker 2: Wait, so there's there's a musical motif of yours that
Speaker 2: I've heard and least three or four of Spikes films.
Speaker 1: I'm this could be it.
Speaker 2: I've been looking for it for starters, like I'm mad
Speaker 2: that with the exception of Malcolm X, like most of
Speaker 2: your Spike scores are not available. What is the name
Speaker 2: of the song that is do the Right Thing?
Speaker 1: It's in Mo Better.
Speaker 2: It's also in Malcolm X. But I can never find anywhere.
Speaker 2: But it's like, uh, It's like Spike has used this
Speaker 2: at least in ten music cues Malcolm X. But how
Speaker 2: come that is not it's not anywhere that's available.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but what you're probably singing is the jazz version.
Speaker 7: There's another, there's some other versions of it.
Speaker 2: And I've heard it as instrumental, I've heard as strings.
Speaker 1: I've heard it.
Speaker 7: As yeah, that stuff that You're right, that stuff listen
Speaker 7: that that's that's a big thing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: I've been you know, I was talking to a publisher
Speaker 7: about about that recently as a matter of fact, about
Speaker 7: trying to do something to you, because people have been
Speaker 7: asking me about that. You know, Yeah, when you start
Speaker 7: to think about your legacy for your kids and everything
Speaker 7: like that, and you know now that we've reached this
Speaker 7: benchmark working together for thirty years, which is something you
Speaker 7: didn't realize.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago.
Speaker 7: When we now, a journalist asked us a question, how
Speaker 7: does it feel to be working together for thirty years?
Speaker 2: We're like, thirty years?
Speaker 1: Has it? Has it been that long?
Speaker 7: But you know, I was thinking about exactly that, bro
Speaker 7: about trying to.
Speaker 2: I need I need a box set. I need a
Speaker 2: box set for real, your entire history, every music cue
Speaker 2: with with with Spike or at least just your your
Speaker 2: entire story, because even the non Spike stuff you've done.
Speaker 4: But can we can I.
Speaker 5: Ask you, though you and Spike, can you just tell
Speaker 5: us the quick quickness of that story and how y'all
Speaker 5: even connected?
Speaker 7: Because well, you know, we connected just because there was
Speaker 7: a musician named Harold vic jazz musician. He was friends
Speaker 7: with his father, and he wanted to put together a
Speaker 7: group of musicians that were young and old for these
Speaker 7: sessions to do the right thing in school days and
Speaker 7: all of that stuff. So I think it was school days.
Speaker 7: So he hired a bunch of us, you know, to
Speaker 7: play on it. And as a matter of fact, there's
Speaker 7: a video man that's floating around of one of the sessions.
Speaker 7: It's like who's who in jazz at the time in
Speaker 7: New York City. It's pretty crazy and I'll never forget it.
Speaker 4: Did who was there? Tell us about it?
Speaker 5: Was there?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 7: Just a lot of local guys, you know, you know,
Speaker 7: Branfa was there, John Faddis was there. You know, a
Speaker 7: bunch of folks. But I remember, man, I was a
Speaker 7: big Lakers fan, right, so, and man, it had just
Speaker 7: beat the Celtics burn. So I walk into the first session,
Speaker 7: but I got had, I got my teacher, I got
Speaker 7: my purple gold converse on, and I don't really know Spike,
Speaker 7: oh God at all, you know. So I walk in
Speaker 7: and he just looked me up and down and goes
Speaker 7: Vaker's fan.
Speaker 1: Huh uh boy.
Speaker 7: It's up man, you know, come on the next thing,
Speaker 7: you know, man, he had me how take him back?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 4: So how did how did that narrow down though, Terrence?
Speaker 5: Because you said it was a room full of musicians,
Speaker 5: dope musicians, local musicians, mister Lee, but somehow it narrowed
Speaker 5: down to just Spike in Terrence.
Speaker 7: Well, that happened when we started to do well was
Speaker 7: a couple of things that happened.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: Lenny White had he was he had this all girl band.
Speaker 7: I forgot the name of the group, and he wanted
Speaker 7: myles to play on this track. He couldn't get my house,
Speaker 7: so he asked me to play me the thing on it,
Speaker 7: and Spike used it in the in the song. So
Speaker 7: Spike found out that that was me that played the soul.
Speaker 7: So then we kind of connected on that. And then
Speaker 7: when it came time to do the right thing. We
Speaker 7: kind of just connected a little bit together, but it
Speaker 7: really happened on a moleit of blues when we were
Speaker 7: doing those pre records. You know, we started doing pre
Speaker 7: records and hearing me playing the piano, That's when everything
Speaker 7: started to turn around, you know. And it's been an
Speaker 7: interesting journey with my brother Man. You know he is.
Speaker 7: He's brilliant, man beyond belief. He's loyal beyond belief. And
Speaker 7: one of the things I got to tell you, guys, Man,
Speaker 7: a lot of people don't really notice Man, but fights
Speaker 7: for people. He fights for people, Man, and I've never
Speaker 7: seen him miss an opportunity to to to to fight
Speaker 7: for African American artists or like when we were in London, Man,
Speaker 7: you know, we were at the Baptist and I'm drawing
Speaker 7: a blank on my man's name.
Speaker 1: They did the movie.
Speaker 7: About the rock and roll singer. Yeah, what was the
Speaker 7: guy who played played the character?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 7: When Rommy won Best Actor at the Bafts, you would
Speaker 7: have thought Spike One. He jumped up and he was
Speaker 7: so happy for Rommi, you know what I mean, Because
Speaker 7: you know, we're just trying to break down these barriers, Man,
Speaker 7: and create equal opportunities for a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 7: we Man, We'd being interviews together and people would ask
Speaker 7: me a controversial question in l A and he would
Speaker 7: grab me and he goes, don't answer that. He said,
Speaker 7: let me answer that, because you got to work in
Speaker 7: this town. He's always doing stuff like that. A lot
Speaker 7: of people don't really realize that. And he's Listen. I've
Speaker 7: met people who have come to me and said, man,
Speaker 7: Spike is your biggest advocate. He's been fighting for you
Speaker 7: to get these nominations for me.
Speaker 1: So so dope, Man, Yeah, I voted for you.
Speaker 7: You do, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: I voted. Hey, I have two uh better questions for you.
Speaker 2: One were you Denzel's teacher as far as the fingering
Speaker 2: all that stuff? How how long did that take? What
Speaker 2: was the process like? And now fast man?
Speaker 7: You know, we had to learn because at first, I
Speaker 7: mean I had never done that before. So at first
Speaker 7: I started making like little videos for him and I
Speaker 7: would send him to him out of LA and that
Speaker 7: was kind of helpful. But we got him a teacher
Speaker 7: out in LA just to show him how to buzz.
Speaker 7: And then when we when he came to New York,
Speaker 7: New York, what I figured out was you know, hey, man,
Speaker 7: I need to write out the fingerings just on a
Speaker 7: piece of paper. So for all of the tunes, he
Speaker 7: had like sheets of paper with just the fingers. So
Speaker 7: between running how the buzz and the fingers, he actually
Speaker 7: kind of learned how to play all the melodies.
Speaker 1: You know. So really, what's buzzing just when you take
Speaker 1: the mouthpiece.
Speaker 7: Trying to get a sound on. That's how you get
Speaker 7: a sound out of producing.
Speaker 2: So is that him playing one again? Never?
Speaker 7: You know what that is?
Speaker 2: That's my worst nightmare.
Speaker 7: You know what that is?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 7: First of all, you had to be there. It was
Speaker 7: hilarious because we started when we started doing takes, Spike
Speaker 7: up saying it's not messed up enough, man, it's not
Speaker 7: right in front of me, man. And what I started
Speaker 7: to do was I started to move to trumpet off
Speaker 7: to the side of my left where I could never
Speaker 7: really play right, really tried to play right.
Speaker 1: So that's what you.
Speaker 2: Hear, man, I'm telling you. In the history of cinema,
Speaker 2: short of maybe like a Sault film or or any
Speaker 2: of those like extreme worry, violent like in the movie,
Speaker 2: that is my worst in.
Speaker 4: Your mouth with your own instrument, that's not.
Speaker 2: That that leads to it. I'm gonna get you at
Speaker 2: the drune that that leads to it. Yes, But my
Speaker 2: second question, my second.
Speaker 7: We need for that movie. What what the lobby spike
Speaker 7: because I know it's sitting around somewhere. We need to
Speaker 7: have him find the outtakes of Robin Hacke.
Speaker 6: Yes, I was gonna ask you, man, I was gonna
Speaker 6: ask you, did you have any interaction with Robin while
Speaker 6: you on the set?
Speaker 7: He was, He was a sweetheart, He was a nice guy.
Speaker 7: But let me just tell you this. Everybody would shoot
Speaker 7: that scenes and other dudes are being at trailers. Robin
Speaker 7: Hans would shoot his scene.
Speaker 1: Everybody.
Speaker 7: Everybody was on set. Everybody every single time was on set.
Speaker 5: Hurry up and ask you a question to me. I
Speaker 5: want to ask Hm about that after party scene. Come on,
Speaker 5: can we come on?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I have a question. I asked Brand for
Speaker 2: this on his episode, but his answer didn't satisfy me
Speaker 2: enough because I want to know the science of the scene.
Speaker 2: So at the very beginning, when they're doing say hey, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's there's a really genius point, you know, where shadows
Speaker 2: sort of interjects and and takes over. The song keeps
Speaker 2: or no, no, no, where Denzel's character prevents Wesley Snipe's
Speaker 2: character from hogging up the solo spot. And but to me,
Speaker 2: that moment of interruption was so authentic, and you guys
Speaker 2: kept it on the soundtrack sort of the messed up
Speaker 2: and that part where how how was that choreograph because
Speaker 2: it wasn't like they had to shoot that scene first
Speaker 2: and you guys are in post following them so like,
Speaker 2: but it's so spot on, imperfect.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 7: No, we just did it in the studio, man, I remember,
Speaker 7: you know, we did a couple of takes of it,
Speaker 7: you know where Brianford would just play then all of
Speaker 7: a sudden, I would just interrupted.
Speaker 2: And it's the idea was that to make sure that
Speaker 2: it happens on the soundtrack, of all things?
Speaker 7: Oh, on the soundtrack, you know what that's that's a
Speaker 7: good question. Yeah, well back then we were trying to
Speaker 7: just make sure that whatever we put on a soundtrack
Speaker 7: was kind of authentic and true to what people saw
Speaker 7: on the screen. I know a lot of times people
Speaker 7: take alternate takes and put on the soundtracks, but you know,
Speaker 7: Spike wanted people to experience to see.
Speaker 2: And I thought that was such a bold move because
Speaker 2: it's like, even without context, I always wondered like people
Speaker 2: for the few people that like just had the soundtrack
Speaker 2: or heard the soundtrack without knowing the context for which
Speaker 2: that occurred. But for me, hearing that mistake on there
Speaker 2: was definitely like one of the key moments where like,
Speaker 2: you know a lot of my my trademarks of what
Speaker 2: I do musically is quote sounding messed up.
Speaker 1: But for me, hearing that.
Speaker 2: Was just like such a come to Jesus moment, like,
Speaker 2: oh you can. You could purposely fuck up the record
Speaker 2: and it'd be.
Speaker 7: Cool, Like I don't you know what I break? You
Speaker 7: used to say, Man, I breaks to say. I try
Speaker 7: to make my drum sauce sound like I said of
Speaker 7: drums falling down the flight of stairs.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow Wow. So with ask your uh uh at
Speaker 2: the party because I want to ask another scoring.
Speaker 5: I just wanted to have how many moments you had
Speaker 5: where they were like so in the after party moment,
Speaker 5: one of the famous scenes about you know, get the
Speaker 5: people what they want.
Speaker 4: If you play to people like people to our people
Speaker 4: will come, The people will come. Who is who is
Speaker 4: Trece Blanchard in that conversation?
Speaker 7: Huh? That's interesting? Well, I'm I'm definitely not totally in
Speaker 7: that direction. But just one thing I will say, and
Speaker 7: I got this from all Blak, and he said, never
Speaker 7: play above your audience, never played beneath him, just play
Speaker 7: straight to him.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: And that's what I firmly believe. I think there has
Speaker 7: to be a combination of both things.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: I don't want to be that jazz musician who so
Speaker 7: aricant to always think that people have to come up
Speaker 7: to my level to experience what it.
Speaker 1: Is that I do. No, they want to need them
Speaker 1: where they are right.
Speaker 7: That makes no sense, you know. So for me, I
Speaker 7: try to create music that helps heal souls and helps
Speaker 7: to kind of change some hearts and minds about it's
Speaker 7: a ission. So if I got to come to you,
Speaker 7: that's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 4: And what's pop top forty fun to make?
Speaker 7: Oh it man, We've been We've We've done these shows
Speaker 7: around the world and a lot of different countries with orchestras,
Speaker 7: and the shows of the shows are the music of
Speaker 7: Spike me and we have visuals and we'll bring we'll
Speaker 7: bring vocalists out and sing all of the songs and stuff.
Speaker 4: And they're very hard to get into terrence.
Speaker 7: Yes, that's one of the hits people, booty booty, booty
Speaker 7: titty titty.
Speaker 2: But how sorry, how how when you're presented with uh,
Speaker 2: a new challenge, a new project, how how long does
Speaker 2: it take you to even begin to craft? What is
Speaker 2: it going to be? Or is it so shotgun where
Speaker 2: it's like a gun to your head. You're giving it
Speaker 2: daily and in three weeks you got to come up
Speaker 2: with something.
Speaker 7: You know, man, you know what it's brouh. It's gotten
Speaker 7: to the point now where I just tell myself just start,
Speaker 7: just start, you know what I mean? Because I used
Speaker 7: to freak out and try to overthink things a lot
Speaker 7: of times. Man, And when you sit down thinking too much,
Speaker 7: you're not really accomplishing anything. That's why when I'm not working,
Speaker 7: when i'm in between like projects, bruh, that's when I'm
Speaker 7: doing my homework on my plugins, on my sound design,
Speaker 7: on everything that I need to do. So when it's
Speaker 7: time for me to work, I could just go ahead
Speaker 7: and do certain things, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 7: for example, you know, I'm working on a project and
Speaker 7: I needed to craft a certain type of thing sound
Speaker 7: for the show, and the first start in my mind was, Oh,
Speaker 7: I need these types of drums. Let me get these
Speaker 7: drums up boom when we start play some rhythms, and
Speaker 7: once I start putting these rhythms in the next thing,
Speaker 7: you know, that's the sparkling idea of like, oh, I
Speaker 7: need to create this sequence baseline, so let me get
Speaker 7: in here and start messing around with the sequencer and
Speaker 7: the thing and put that together, and I need to
Speaker 7: have something in the middle. So it's almost like it's
Speaker 7: like putting together a puzzle, you know, but the puzzle
Speaker 7: is like specifically designed for whatever project that you're working
Speaker 7: on at the time. Because all of the inspirations and
Speaker 7: this is the thing, man, this is one of the
Speaker 7: things I always tell my kids. I said, look, man,
Speaker 7: look at your craft, because you never know where inspiration
Speaker 7: is gonna come from. Sometimes it's rhythm, sometimes it's a melody.
Speaker 7: Sometimes it's just a sound. Sometimes it's a group of harmony,
Speaker 7: harmonic progressions. It could be a lot of different things,
Speaker 7: you know, but if you have your tools together, whatever
Speaker 7: it is, you'll be able to take it further and
Speaker 7: find what's fine. You'll be able to flush the idea out.
Speaker 7: That's the thing that I always used to say. My
Speaker 7: my teacher used to tell me all the time, it's
Speaker 7: like whidbling, you know, just chipping away at it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Spike Aside and our audience should know that you've
Speaker 2: done many a classic film. You've done sugar Hill, the Ink,
Speaker 2: Well Eves by You, You've done Uh, you did you
Speaker 2: with uh what's your name?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Angelina?
Speaker 2: I remember I believe that you did Friday or Next
Speaker 2: Friday with you? What what non Spike associated project was
Speaker 2: enjoyable to you?
Speaker 7: All of them?
Speaker 1: Man? Are you kidding?
Speaker 7: All of them? The Friday series was hilarious, you know
Speaker 7: what I mean?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, watching Mike Man in those scenes
Speaker 7: that dude, it's funny.
Speaker 10: Bro.
Speaker 7: Those were fun.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: Working with George Lucas on Redtails was fun.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 7: I mean you know it's it's about working with Casey
Speaker 7: Lemons on Harriet. You know, we worked on some other
Speaker 7: things together, a bunch of movies together. The guy that
Speaker 7: I did Geo with is actually the guy that wrote
Speaker 7: the libretto for my first opera, Michael Christoffer. You know,
Speaker 7: doing Love and Basketball that was like really a lot
Speaker 7: of fun. I had a great time doing that because
Speaker 7: for me, man, It's like it goes back to the
Speaker 7: thing I was telling you about earlier. It's about learning
Speaker 7: and expanding. You know, all of those all of those
Speaker 7: projects helped me to grow in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 7: You know, I'm not the guy that ever think that
Speaker 7: I have it together. You know, I'm always trying to
Speaker 7: acquire knowledge and experiences, you know, and I look at
Speaker 7: all of those things. What was the TV show that
Speaker 7: I did with Halle Barry Their eyes were watching God?
Speaker 1: Oh wow?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Michael, yeah, yeah. You know, No, you don't do
Speaker 5: projects unless you really feel I'm on terrence.
Speaker 7: Just sense of doing it as a matter of fact.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: What's interesting about that, and it was when I first
Speaker 7: got in the business, man, I had to turn down
Speaker 7: eleven scripts, you know, and I hated doing it, but
Speaker 7: I had to do it for a reason because you know,
Speaker 7: all of the leven scripts were black films, you know,
Speaker 7: and one of the things that I tried to do
Speaker 7: was and they weren't you know, like Harriet Clublin or
Speaker 7: anything like that.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: One of the things that I was trying to make
Speaker 7: a point to my agent at the time. It's a
Speaker 7: different age. I have a different agent now, was I
Speaker 7: don't want you to see me that way. You know,
Speaker 7: I don't mind doing those films. I don't have a
Speaker 7: problem doing those pictures, but I'm turning them down because
Speaker 7: that's all you're bringing to me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: And you need to see me in such a way
Speaker 7: where anything should be on my table, not just that,
Speaker 7: you know. And I paid a price for it. I
Speaker 7: didn't work for for a long time, you know what
Speaker 7: I mean. But I just felt like if I didn't
Speaker 7: take a stand, they will just see me as one thing.
Speaker 1: They would typecast you.
Speaker 7: And I hated it because I wasn't trying to make
Speaker 7: an indictment on the films, you know, you see what
Speaker 7: I mean. It wasn't that I wasn't trying to make
Speaker 7: an indictment on the films. What I was saying about
Speaker 7: was to my agent, It's like, yo, dude, really, I mean,
Speaker 7: because I have a certain part. It became comical. I'm like,
Speaker 7: eleven scripts, dude, really really eleven.
Speaker 2: Any notable films that you had to turn down or
Speaker 2: that you've turned down that were like a damn. I
Speaker 2: didn't know that Avatar was going to be.
Speaker 1: I really wanted to do the Miles movie.
Speaker 2: You know, I was going to ask you you.
Speaker 4: Died you? No?
Speaker 5: You?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it was good to see.
Speaker 7: When they were talking about doing it. You know, Miles listen,
Speaker 7: that's my hero, so right, you know, I wanted to
Speaker 7: be a part of it.
Speaker 6: Although I did like i'd been like what Glasser did
Speaker 6: for I mean, I didn't have no problems with the
Speaker 6: music I thought the movie was in, but I really
Speaker 6: did like what glass did for that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so scoring I'm not. I'm not a full
Speaker 2: time scorer, so I'm not that deep in the poem,
Speaker 2: still in the shallow end of it. And shout out
Speaker 2: to Spike who got me my first scoring thing with
Speaker 2: the commercial. But what I what I do notice is
Speaker 2: that I'm used to it now. But in the very
Speaker 2: beginning I used to be frustrated because oftentimes you're having
Speaker 2: sort of creative direction conversations with people who aren't necessarily.
Speaker 1: They don't speak the language. It's very frustrating.
Speaker 2: So but the thing is is that how do you
Speaker 2: handle Like I learned early, and it's hard, especially hard
Speaker 2: for me because I learned early in scoring that drums
Speaker 2: get in the way. So I took drums. You know,
Speaker 2: if you're asking a drummer to score a film and
Speaker 2: then I take drums out of it. I've learned like
Speaker 2: to stay out of the dialogue's way and all those things.
Speaker 2: But now I kind of have a new system where,
Speaker 2: you know, I've dealt so much with with people with
Speaker 2: people like knowing what they don't want as opposed to
Speaker 2: what they do want, whereas I'll just ask them, Okay,
Speaker 2: you obviously have like something in your head five songs,
Speaker 2: Give me five songs in your head that you think
Speaker 2: fits the scene, and then I can craft around that
Speaker 2: and it makes it easy. But what's your what's your
Speaker 2: process in dealing with someone that doesn't speak the language
Speaker 2: and kind of makes you go back, like what was
Speaker 2: your hardest task as a filmmaker If you're not.
Speaker 7: Gonna, we're not gonna, We're not gonna go.
Speaker 2: There, you know, that's hold down to them.
Speaker 1: Where you have to go back and do something over
Speaker 1: again and over and over.
Speaker 7: No, No, I've never had to had had that. It's
Speaker 7: more along the lines of just trying to find a
Speaker 7: baseline of communication, you know what I mean. Miles, who
Speaker 7: was my mentor in this business. That was one thing
Speaker 7: that he told me. He said, that's what you're really
Speaker 7: being paid for. He said, listen, man, we all can
Speaker 7: write music for film.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 7: You know it's it's it's really about following the story
Speaker 7: and becoming a storyteller with your music.
Speaker 1: He said.
Speaker 7: The hard part is just trying to figure out which
Speaker 7: way to go with that because a lot of times
Speaker 7: there's so many ways to deal with it. You know,
Speaker 7: you have to find that common ground with the person
Speaker 7: who's producing the project. And that's where you know, a
Speaker 7: good friend of mine, Mike Post, you know, he's a
Speaker 7: great TV Yeah. Yeah, Mike told me one time he said, listen, man.
Speaker 7: He had a project and he said he was having
Speaker 7: an issue talking to a director, and I thought this
Speaker 7: was brilliant man. He said, man, why don't you come
Speaker 7: over to my studio. And Mike would just sit down
Speaker 7: and play a chord and say, all right, tell me
Speaker 7: what you feel, and then he would write it down
Speaker 7: other coordins, they tell me what you feel, And he
Speaker 7: created a baseline of communication. From that point of view,
Speaker 7: I try to do more of what you what you
Speaker 7: were just talking about. I mean, you know when I
Speaker 7: when I said, listen, tell me what it is, that
Speaker 7: you're hearing. If you have a playlist, send me the playlist.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 7: And and you're always trying to get at the core.
Speaker 7: But here's here's the here's the thing about it, though.
Speaker 7: You know, the people who are coming to you have
Speaker 7: to be open to stuff too.
Speaker 1: And they have to trust you.
Speaker 7: They have to trust you. And when and when and
Speaker 7: when there isn't that trust, it can be rough.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: Look but look, man, but sometimes as a musician, you
Speaker 7: gotta you gotta open up your eyes to listen. I
Speaker 7: just worked with Regina.
Speaker 1: King on Miami.
Speaker 7: In Miami, and you know, when we first started talking
Speaker 7: about the score, you know, I had pitched a lot
Speaker 7: of different ideas to and I sentiment she said, well no,
Speaker 7: I kept thinking, she said, I think it should be
Speaker 7: just like one instrument. I kept pitching these other ideas
Speaker 7: to her, and she and looked to her credit, she
Speaker 7: checked it all out, listened to everything, you know, and
Speaker 7: then she said, you know, because you know it was
Speaker 7: the first time doing it, you know, first time reco there.
Speaker 7: So she went through the process and she said, yeah,
Speaker 7: but I'm still feeling this other thing. So we went
Speaker 7: that direction and we just decided to just do piano,
Speaker 7: and it wound up being beautiful and wound up being
Speaker 7: a very unique thing. Everybody's talking about the music for
Speaker 7: the film, you know, and that's just where me as
Speaker 7: a film composer, you know, I came at it with
Speaker 7: a certain thing, but I had to sit back and go, Okay, I'll.
Speaker 1: See where she's coming from.
Speaker 7: I went to them, you know, with another director too,
Speaker 7: similar kind of situation, so both people have to be
Speaker 7: open on both sides. And when you run into that
Speaker 7: situation where you don't have that, it's just difficult. It's
Speaker 7: I mean, there's no other way around it, because the
Speaker 7: word is collaboration, you know, not the hattership, you know
Speaker 7: what I'm saying. So that's that's where for me, I've
Speaker 7: been blessed, you know, because most of the people that
Speaker 7: I've been working with are true collaborators.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: I've had people tell me sometimes, damn, bro, you gave
Speaker 7: me some insight into my film that I didn't see,
Speaker 7: which is a compliment. You know.
Speaker 1: Then I've had people, you know.
Speaker 7: Who expand my horizons by getting me to see a
Speaker 7: bigger picture about how to tell stories, you know. So
Speaker 7: it's the reason why I love doing this.
Speaker 6: Have you learned or have it hasn't been your experience
Speaker 6: that doing film composing for film and TV and stuff
Speaker 6: has been your experience that that has helped you in
Speaker 6: your regular quote unquote recording career, because you know, because
Speaker 6: for me, man like that, you know, as a young man,
Speaker 6: when I was younger, I would take rejection like really personally,
Speaker 6: like you know a lot of us do. But then
Speaker 6: when I started doing stuff for TV and music and
Speaker 6: you know, TV and movies whatever, it's just like, hey,
Speaker 6: if a song don't work, it just don't work.
Speaker 1: Just do another song.
Speaker 6: You don't think about it, you know, you don't take
Speaker 6: it personally. It's just like, don't mean all right, I'm
Speaker 6: the worst songwriting the words. It's like, Yo, this shit
Speaker 6: didn't work.
Speaker 7: Just do another one, right, and that's it. And that's
Speaker 7: you're out, man, Because then it's not an indictment.
Speaker 1: On you, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: That's the thing. When you realize that, it kind of
Speaker 7: frees you up from all of that other stuff that
Speaker 7: comes along with that. You know, when you realize, like, man,
Speaker 7: look it's still in you. Just go try something else,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean? And I go and listen.
Speaker 5: Bro.
Speaker 7: Sometimes I go through that before it gets to the director.
Speaker 7: I'm saying, I'll work on some stuff. And while I'm
Speaker 7: doing it, Bro, I'm sitting there going what it's missing something?
Speaker 7: It's missing something. Let me go ahead and work on that,
Speaker 7: boom and I'll do that for a day or two, bro,
Speaker 7: and then come back and I go, you know what
Speaker 7: is missing the real que? So let me this away
Speaker 7: and start over from scratch. How has that helped you
Speaker 7: in your hold the live performance?
Speaker 6: Yeah, just a live performance, and also when recording your records,
Speaker 6: house film composition helps you in that area.
Speaker 7: Oh man. Look, eventually it opened my eyes up to
Speaker 7: about using different colors on the band stand. Even when
Speaker 7: I had my jazz band, I was still putting using
Speaker 7: the pedals and stuff on my horn, you know, effects
Speaker 7: on my horn, and which eventually let me into the ecollective.
Speaker 7: You know what I mean, Because for me, like I
Speaker 7: told you earlier, it's about utilizing these tools to tell
Speaker 7: a story. Bro, you know what I mean. And it's
Speaker 7: kind of funny, you know, It's like everybody there was
Speaker 7: this great guitarist, man, I guess you got to know
Speaker 7: Leonella Wake and played with Herbie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask this man, I love him. Man,
Speaker 1: he's dope.
Speaker 7: So you know when Leone was in my band, Man,
Speaker 7: we do these shows and Leonete would be playing and
Speaker 7: have these loops going and all of this stuff going on,
Speaker 7: and everybody would always come up after the show and
Speaker 7: want to look at the pedals, you know, and they
Speaker 7: wanted to so it said, bro, Okay, he's got the pedals,
Speaker 7: but the pedals are tools. It really here, you know
Speaker 7: what I mean, It's not my mind. So that's the
Speaker 7: thing that film helped me to realize. It's like, you know,
Speaker 7: are you still trying to tell the story the same
Speaker 7: way that Miles told the story? And he's not even
Speaker 7: doing it that way anymore. So and look, I got
Speaker 7: to tell you this story. This was this was man,
Speaker 7: this was funny. Uh but it was a wake up
Speaker 7: call for me. So I'm on tour with Herbie Hancock.
Speaker 7: This was right before Barack Obama was elected the first time,
Speaker 7: and we were on tour in Europe and we were
Speaker 7: playing some some of the Herbie's classic tunes, but he
Speaker 7: had put these new arrangements on them, so we had
Speaker 7: to speak like a child, and he had put a
Speaker 7: lot meter in it and did some other stuff to it.
Speaker 7: And then one day at soundcheck, man he started playing
Speaker 7: a straight ahead version to speak like a child. So
Speaker 7: Kendrick Scott, the drummer, he dumped up and started playing,
Speaker 7: and James Jenis was playing base and he started walking
Speaker 7: and Herbie started playing and we were just sitting there going,
Speaker 7: that's killing, you know what I mean, And because they
Speaker 7: sounded like old Herbie from the Blue Note Manday, Yeah,
Speaker 7: that was killing and Herbie, you know, we were trying
Speaker 7: not to maken use because we didn't want Herbie to
Speaker 7: see how we were reacting to what he was doing. Man,
Speaker 7: Herbie stood up and he goes, that just sounds so
Speaker 7: old to me.
Speaker 1: Wow, And we were like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, trying to play it off.
Speaker 7: Yeah right, okay, all right, all right, yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 7: an ulster.
Speaker 2: How do you how do you stop from being in
Speaker 2: but how do you stop from being in your head?
Speaker 2: Because I think oftentimes, I know many are artists that
Speaker 2: will make all these new arrangements of their same songs
Speaker 2: because they think that the audience has been there at
Speaker 2: all nine thousand shows of their entire career. Yeah, and oftentimes, yes,
Speaker 2: the audience wants the meat and potatoes version of the
Speaker 2: song that would served to them as they were it
Speaker 2: because you're there to serve their memory, or at least
Speaker 2: the audience thinks that you're there to serve their memory.
Speaker 2: But how do you how do you stop from going
Speaker 2: down that that rabbit hole of reinvention to the point
Speaker 2: where you lose the original script.
Speaker 7: I just don't do the reinvention part, you know what
Speaker 7: I mean, because I know what you're talking about, because
Speaker 7: and I've seen it do exactly that. So I try
Speaker 7: to stay away from it a little bit. I mean,
Speaker 7: you know, every nine and then we might do something.
Speaker 7: But the stuff that happens with us, it happens naturally.
Speaker 7: It may just happen over the course of us playing
Speaker 7: every night. Guys may throw a little something in it
Speaker 7: all a sarther room. But I try to go that road,
Speaker 7: you know, because what we try to do is we
Speaker 7: try to just keep moving forward, you know, excuse me.
Speaker 7: So for us, you know, we have an object and
Speaker 7: that that's in can Now. I still have to to
Speaker 7: finish where we did the music of Wayne Shorter with
Speaker 7: the Turtle out and string quartet, you know, and it's
Speaker 7: a really cool album, and uh, you know, we got
Speaker 7: to we're gonna once we put that out, we'll probably
Speaker 7: be turning out music.
Speaker 2: I got to ask before we wrap up about what
Speaker 2: made you want to create? First of all, how does
Speaker 2: one create an opera?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: I even reading that, like, I don't know, I had
Speaker 2: the hiccups, Like obviously I felt I felt very overwhelmed,
Speaker 2: Like wait a minute, how does one it even begin
Speaker 2: to craft an opera? Like, so walk us through, uh
Speaker 2: in creating operas? And how how does it start?
Speaker 7: Okay, it starts by somebody coming up to you and saying, man,
Speaker 7: we want you to write an opera, and me bending
Speaker 7: over the table trying to smell their breath to make
Speaker 7: sure they weren't drunk. Do you have the right, dude,
Speaker 7: me write an opera? And they say, ye know. And
Speaker 7: you know the guy Jim Robinson, who's become a really
Speaker 7: good friend of mine, he was like yeah, he said,
Speaker 7: I love the album The Tale of God's Will. And
Speaker 7: they were trying to find some diversity and you know
Speaker 7: what they were doing and creating new operas in Saint Louis.
Speaker 7: So once they hired me, they listen, man, they were
Speaker 7: smart about how they did it. So once they signed
Speaker 7: me up, commission me to do this, they brought me
Speaker 7: to see their season and I actually just sat there
Speaker 7: and went to a bunch of operas in Saint Louis, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, St. Louis.
Speaker 7: Yeah. And then and then once I once I did that,
Speaker 7: then you know, they paired me.
Speaker 1: You know, I.
Speaker 7: Started writing some sketches out and look, bro it it
Speaker 7: is a daunting task. And the first time I did it,
Speaker 7: I was so freaked out about it. They had to
Speaker 7: reschedule my premier, you know what I mean. I was
Speaker 7: supposed to open one year and I said, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 7: he ain't ready. Let's do another year. Because I was
Speaker 7: the one, you know, because I was just trying to
Speaker 7: do so much research and I was just like overwhelmed
Speaker 7: with the whole idea. But it was my composition teacher again, Roger.
Speaker 7: He said, man, stop trying to write an opera. Just
Speaker 7: tell a story, you know. And when once he did that,
Speaker 7: that kind of freed me up. And then I thought
Speaker 7: about something a friend of mine was saying. You know,
Speaker 7: he said, listen, bro, look go ahead and just write
Speaker 7: your stuff, write your oper and tell your story. He said,
Speaker 7: if it doesn't work. You can just say that just
Speaker 7: ain't my ship, you know what I mean. I tried
Speaker 7: it my thing, and I did, and I just tried
Speaker 7: to be as honest as I could. But here's the thing.
Speaker 7: My father wanted to be an opera singer. My father
Speaker 7: was a bartrone. So I used to hear operatic music
Speaker 7: in the house all the time, you know what I mean,
Speaker 7: And all of that, all of those tones, all of
Speaker 7: those those lines, and all of that development of how
Speaker 7: an orchestra can have a rush of energy, all of
Speaker 7: that was in my system. You know. I didn't really
Speaker 7: realize that. Yeah, And then when I started, when I
Speaker 7: had the first draft of the melodic lines, man, we said,
Speaker 7: actually before then, you know what they did, which was beautiful.
Speaker 7: And then, man, if anybody wants to write an operation
Speaker 7: to do this, what they did was they had a
Speaker 7: group of actors just read the libretto like a play,
Speaker 7: and I recorded it right because then I could hear
Speaker 7: the story, you know what I mean, I could hear
Speaker 7: it unfold. I could hear the inflections and the voices
Speaker 7: and all of that stuff. So once I got the
Speaker 7: melodic line down, then we just started having workshops with singers.
Speaker 7: Man and I started learning about how to write for voice,
Speaker 7: because come on, writing for an instrument, bro, I'm writing
Speaker 7: for cello. The cello's rangers from here to here, you know,
Speaker 7: I know what it is, you know, But every baritone
Speaker 7: is different, you know what I mean. So some people
Speaker 7: call themselves baritone, and then more of a bass baritone
Speaker 7: they could produce more lowtones, and some other guys are
Speaker 7: more like in the tenor range. So I had to
Speaker 7: go through all of that. But the main thing about
Speaker 7: it all is that they basically just kind of like
Speaker 7: ushered me through every step of it. And then once
Speaker 7: I got through it, man, when it came time to
Speaker 7: do the second one, I just had so I had
Speaker 7: more experience and I just felt more comfortable with what
Speaker 7: it is that I wanted to do. And I got
Speaker 7: to tell you, it's so rewarding, man, because you sit
Speaker 7: in a room all day writing these lines. But man,
Speaker 7: when these guys start to move around stage singing these
Speaker 7: lines and these words and they bring in the lighting
Speaker 7: and the boardrobe and all of this stuff, it's a
Speaker 7: really powerful thing. And I tell people it's the highest
Speaker 7: form of a musical that your lover ever see. You
Speaker 7: know what I mean, I think there's room for all
Speaker 7: different types of people to experience opera, you know. And
Speaker 7: I'll just.
Speaker 1: Say this and I'll let it go.
Speaker 2: Will you do a third.
Speaker 7: Yeah, as a matter of fact, that there's talks about
Speaker 7: that now. But you know, when my opera came to
Speaker 7: New Orleans, man, it was a bit of a controversial thing.
Speaker 7: That were a lot of people who were seizing ticket
Speaker 7: holders who wouldn't release their tickets and didn't come to
Speaker 7: my show, you know. Yeah, but I said that cool. Yeah,
Speaker 7: that's cool. I mean because the people that did come
Speaker 7: packed the place.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah.
Speaker 7: And when they packed it, I remember this brother man,
Speaker 7: he came up to me. He must have been like
Speaker 7: seventy five years old, and one thing he said, he said, Man,
Speaker 7: if this is opera, I will come right, I said,
Speaker 7: And that was the best compliment I could have ever gotten,
Speaker 7: because what it made me feel like was, that's part
Speaker 7: of what's missing in the opera is our called it.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 6: Those story someone who never would have been got into
Speaker 6: opera otherwise if not for.
Speaker 7: You, because he could relate to the story. You know
Speaker 7: what I mean. The story was Neil Griffith in nineteen
Speaker 7: sixty five, so he can really relate.
Speaker 5: And I was going to ask you, why is full
Speaker 5: circle moment? Like I thought about New Orleans, and I
Speaker 5: thought about Casey Lemons being like the director of his opera,
Speaker 5: like out of all the directors.
Speaker 7: Made me what she did that's the second when she
Speaker 7: wrote for Okay, my brother for the second one, because
Speaker 7: you know, I love Casey man, and and uh, when
Speaker 7: it came time to do Charles Blows book, I had
Speaker 7: to have her that. What was funny was they flew,
Speaker 7: they flew d to Saint Louis man to hang out.
Speaker 7: And man, you know, Casey is like a dog with
Speaker 7: a bone.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 7: So wherever you saw Charles walking with Casey right behind,
Speaker 7: you know, asking ques like three days. But she she
Speaker 7: did her thing.
Speaker 4: She was brilliant.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I feel like she's a little unsung, but she
Speaker 5: sung a lot of places.
Speaker 7: I mean looking man, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Oh, I was gonna say, man, my favorite score of
Speaker 6: yours and I think some of just my favorite music
Speaker 6: of yours. It's from a movie that wasn't that popular,
Speaker 6: but I love what you did for it.
Speaker 1: She hate me scoring?
Speaker 4: Why you do it?
Speaker 1: Dude? Man?
Speaker 2: I love that fucking score. That ship is gorgeous. Dude,
Speaker 2: shn't like I mean, the movie was the movie, but
Speaker 2: the score, and.
Speaker 4: We already spike about the movie, so you don't got
Speaker 4: to hold.
Speaker 7: Up a lot of people are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the score. Man.
Speaker 6: I love you know what you did, and like your
Speaker 6: record with Rob Me don that, Adam and Eve and Eve.
Speaker 7: You know that dude? Man? You know me playing some
Speaker 7: of the keyboard lines on that. Yeah, ask your boy
Speaker 7: Derek is playing based on that? Man?
Speaker 6: Yep, Yeah, what do you remember recording by because that
Speaker 6: that melody? Like, I just I love that man.
Speaker 7: I just remember being in the studio with him and
Speaker 7: the energy was just like on point from the first
Speaker 7: take and it just felt like I don't know how
Speaker 7: to explain it. I guess you guys have gone through this.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: You start off doing that track and it has that
Speaker 7: energy and you think that's sitting and somebody adds something
Speaker 7: and it just keeps you know what I mean, And
Speaker 7: that's what was happening with that track man. You know, man,
Speaker 7: we just had so much fun and Raoul was open
Speaker 7: to it all.
Speaker 1: You know, you could.
Speaker 7: I remember there's this there's this little solo keyboard line
Speaker 7: that I played right going into one of the transitions,
Speaker 7: and he was he was cool with everything. Man, you know,
Speaker 7: so we just we were just going for it, having fun.
Speaker 2: Well I'm I'm predicting, yes, even if it's against my
Speaker 2: own film. Oh no, only because but the thing is
Speaker 2: Trend and Atticus are Actually it's it's so weird when
Speaker 2: the Academy allows a nominee to to come in twice
Speaker 2: because it's just gonna split. They're in for two films.
Speaker 2: They're in for.
Speaker 1: Souls, there for Mink. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so like this this could be a year.
Speaker 2: But not to gas you up on that, but is
Speaker 2: that I mean, I know the PC answers. Yes, I
Speaker 2: don't get caught up in those things. Do it for
Speaker 2: the love, but you know, it's it has to be
Speaker 2: an exhilarating honor too.
Speaker 4: And this day tomorrow is voting day.
Speaker 7: So just saying no, look, man, no, I ain't got
Speaker 7: no shame in my game when any of that comes across,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean. I never thought this would
Speaker 7: happen to me, Are you kidding? Dude? I thought I
Speaker 7: was gonna be a dude who had a day job
Speaker 7: and play jazz because I love playing music, so all
Speaker 7: of this stuff is grazy gravy, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: And then to be recognized in such a way and
Speaker 7: amongst some of some of the films that some have
Speaker 7: been some of the greatest films that have been produced. Man,
Speaker 7: it's a huge honor, you know what I mean. I mean,
Speaker 7: you're right, it's not it's not the reason that we
Speaker 7: do this, obviously, you know what I mean. We've had
Speaker 7: a passion for just being creative, period. But but the
Speaker 7: honor itself is huge, you know what I mean. It
Speaker 7: doesn't go past me, you know what I mean. I'm sorry.
Speaker 7: My father's not around to see that, you know. And
Speaker 7: probably a good thing because they would have to keep
Speaker 7: his ass off the stage if you have the show.
Speaker 7: But you know, it's one of those things that makes
Speaker 7: you proud for your family, my kids, because they really
Speaker 7: get a big kick out of it. My wife.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 7: Hell yeah, when I got nominated the first time, Man,
Speaker 7: I was on the road. I came home. Man, it
Speaker 7: was like ship all over the house everywhere. Man, I couldn't.
Speaker 7: I was tired. I said, Man, I just want to relax, Man,
Speaker 7: So you know, I said, I'm going upstairs. One of
Speaker 7: them says, all over the big.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because Oscar me escra oh was coming extra zero.
Speaker 7: All of the events when we went to that was
Speaker 7: for her. That had nothing to do with me, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean? I just that was it.
Speaker 2: Yes, if anyone is on their way to uh An
Speaker 2: e Got or a ghetto, I definitely feel.
Speaker 7: To you man and thank you for sir.
Speaker 5: I was gonna ask, does it mean something that that
Speaker 5: John teases in the in the category with you in
Speaker 5: New Orleans?
Speaker 7: Brothers my brother man. You know I've been doing that, dude,
Speaker 7: man since she was a little kid. You know. As
Speaker 7: a matter of fact, one of the Knights that we
Speaker 7: played at the jazz Fest, we did a night show
Speaker 7: at the club here a snug Harbor and John Baptiste
Speaker 7: was that after entertainment when he was a young kid.
Speaker 7: Man came up before behind her, Herbie Hancock. So when
Speaker 7: I saw him doing all this stuff he's been doing
Speaker 7: in New York and we just recently, not too long
Speaker 7: before the pandemic did a show together at Carnegie Hall, Man,
Speaker 7: and we texted back and forth. You know the nominations.
Speaker 5: Can I just say too, because I just realized in
Speaker 5: this conversation that meanwhile We've had three people who worked
Speaker 5: with you on the on this show from New Orleans,
Speaker 5: PJ Moore and of course Tank, of course John Baptiste.
Speaker 5: But I want to defend us and say, the reason
Speaker 5: that we waited so long to have you is because
Speaker 5: in our minds we was coming to New Orleans and
Speaker 5: we was going to have a real.
Speaker 4: Show with Terror.
Speaker 5: That is the only reason that it took us so
Speaker 5: long to get down that.
Speaker 7: That's a great look, Tank, Tank. You know, we did
Speaker 7: a song for one night Miami. I know, I know.
Speaker 4: It's awesome.
Speaker 7: And it's funny because it's one of those things where
Speaker 7: you want to tell your students on him and all.
Speaker 7: That woman came in here and did two takes and
Speaker 7: it was done.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, that.
Speaker 4: Sound right that girl? And PJ big up to him.
Speaker 7: Too, Oh, PJ too. He was another man. I remember
Speaker 7: the first time I met him, he told me he
Speaker 7: was a musician. He was a young kid. I must
Speaker 7: have been about twenty and twenty one years old, and
Speaker 7: I'm like, yeah, okay, man. And then for some reason
Speaker 7: he sent me something this stuff and I went, wow,
Speaker 7: what And then I lost track of him, you know
Speaker 7: what I mean. And then when I found track of
Speaker 7: him again. He was like PJ. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 7: that's bound to happen, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Oh man, we have to ask like last quot, last
Speaker 6: last question man, the when the levees broke.
Speaker 2: Oh oh damn, I totally.
Speaker 6: Forgot yeah, man, like just to talk about that experience,
Speaker 6: just you know, the just the emotional joy of scoring that.
Speaker 7: Well, you know the wild part about that, man. You know,
Speaker 7: going through that period of in our history, bro was
Speaker 7: a traumatic thing, you know, because there was something you
Speaker 7: never thought, whatever really happened in this country, and then
Speaker 7: the way it went down, the way we were talked
Speaker 7: about is being refugees. It was so disrespectful to look
Speaker 7: on the television and see people that look like people
Speaker 7: in my family and they were being called such things.
Speaker 7: You know. It was like you couldn't You wanted to scream,
Speaker 7: but there was no place to go, you know what
Speaker 7: I'm saying. So we were in the listen. I had
Speaker 7: to go to la because I had an apartment there.
Speaker 7: Because we couldn't come back to the warts. I couldn't
Speaker 7: find my mom for two weeks when I finally found
Speaker 7: When I finally found my mom and said mom been
Speaker 7: calling you for two weeks. I said, I heard that
Speaker 7: thing buzzing in my purse. We were doing the music
Speaker 7: to Spike lee movie Inside Man. Yeah, and normally he'd
Speaker 7: fly me to New York, but he said, no, man,
Speaker 7: you stay with your family in l A. And I'm
Speaker 7: coming to you. And when he came to my apartment,
Speaker 7: he made he walked in the door. The first thing
Speaker 7: he said was he didn't even say hi. He said, Man,
Speaker 7: I'm doing a documentary on those levees and I'm gonna
Speaker 7: give those people a chance to tell their story. And
Speaker 7: you know, my respect for him went through the roof
Speaker 7: right at that moment, you know. And that's the most
Speaker 7: comprehensive thing I've ever seen done on all the cultures
Speaker 7: of New Orleans, you know. And to to watch it,
Speaker 7: you know, we were actually recording and music the Inside Man.
Speaker 1: That's how he.
Speaker 7: Found out that my mom hadn't gone in the house.
Speaker 7: Ship you know, I was out there. Yeah, I come
Speaker 7: back in for a playback. And then Spike goes, we're
Speaker 7: gonna feel mel your mom going in the house. I'm like,
Speaker 7: what you know? And my mom said, well, people need
Speaker 7: to see what we're going to you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: And that was one of the reference things to do
Speaker 7: with my mom because you know, I'd went to the
Speaker 7: house the night before. I already knew what was up,
Speaker 7: what was about to go down, And when she said,
Speaker 7: I hope my house is fine, it just broke, you know,
Speaker 7: breaks you up. She had a friend of hers who
Speaker 7: had come home, got out his car, saw his house,
Speaker 7: and had a heart attack and died right in front
Speaker 7: of the house.
Speaker 1: Shit, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: So there were a lot of stories like that that
Speaker 7: were going on. So when it came time to make
Speaker 7: the record, man, you know, I kept wondering if I
Speaker 7: was sounding angry because I was pissed. You know, I
Speaker 7: was just pissed. I kept being pissed. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 7: this is America. This shit shouldn't happen. Who designed those levees.
Speaker 7: If it was one of us, we'd be in jail,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean. It's just that's simple. You know,
Speaker 7: it's faulty design. And people lost their lives because of
Speaker 7: when people lost their homes because of it. So I
Speaker 7: kept trying to say to myself, don't sound angry, don't
Speaker 7: sound angry. But all of those stories, all of those
Speaker 7: arrangements I kind of based off of stories that happened,
Speaker 7: you know, during that period. And one of the blessed
Speaker 7: things about it is that once we did it and
Speaker 7: recorded it, you know, and released it, man, this one
Speaker 7: guy came to one of our shoulder and he said, Man,
Speaker 7: he said, I lost my best friend in Katrina. And
Speaker 7: he said, I wasn't wasn't able to mourn. And he said,
Speaker 7: and then, you know, they were having a memorial for him,
Speaker 7: like a year afterwards, and he said, I put your
Speaker 7: album on and as I was listening to it, he said,
Speaker 7: as I was pulling up to the church funeral, dirt
Speaker 7: started to play and he said, I just lost it.
Speaker 7: And he said that was the first time he could
Speaker 7: ever moan the lost more one the loss of the friend.
Speaker 7: So you know, when you hear stories like that, you know,
Speaker 7: you feel like that's why you create music, to help
Speaker 7: people like deal with stuff, you know. And and one
Speaker 7: of the things we kept saying with that album. One
Speaker 7: of the things we said with the breathless stuff, with
Speaker 7: the gun violence, you know, it's like, let the music
Speaker 7: absorb you, Let the music absorb your frustration and pain.
Speaker 7: Strategic about how we move forward, you know, and creating
Speaker 7: a more equitable life for us in this country.
Speaker 1: That's real. Thank you for sharing that, man, Thank for
Speaker 1: sharing that. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you on behalf of on pay Bill Sugar Steve
Speaker 2: and Fan Tikolo and like, yeah.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Flowers, flowers, flowers, flowers.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all you do man.
Speaker 6: Your music, like all your music, it definitely becomes just
Speaker 6: like a whole other character in all the movies that
Speaker 6: you do.
Speaker 1: And I watch them just as much for your music
Speaker 1: as I do movies. Like for real, that is.
Speaker 4: That is listening truth.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yes, absolutely, I love what you guys do. Man,
Speaker 7: So keep it up, man.
Speaker 1: Thank you all right, this quest love.
Speaker 2: Then we'll see on the next ground round of Supreme.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yoh what's up? Sponte.
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