The Third Story Podcast With Leo Sidran

I first reached out to Nate Chinen to do an interview in 2015. At that time, I knew him as the jazz critic for the New York Times and a columnist for Jazz Times, and I also loved the book he wrote with George Wein Myself Among Others. (I interviewed George a few years ago as well.) In the intervening years, Nate left the New York Times, became the Director of Editorial Content at WBGO (one of the most important jazz radio stations in the country) and wrote the book Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century, which was published last week. Reading Playing Changes was a revelation for me. In it, Nate synthesizes many of the tendencies in and arguments around jazz over the last 20 years, and presents a case for contemporary jazz today. He also traces the narrative back to the 1970s, a time when jazz was in transition, and stitches together the disparate threads of the music that have emerged since then into a cohesive fabric. Chinen is obviously a fan of the music, but it’s clear in his book that he’s also a fan

Sociologist and musician Howard S. Becker is 90 years old. While he is best known for his contributions to the sociology of deviance, sociology of art and sociology of music (his book Oustiders from 1963 was one of the first and most influential books on deviance), he also spent many of his early years playing piano in taverns, saloons and even strip clubs. As a young man in Chicago, while attending the University of Chicago in the 1940s he also studied piano with the legendary jazz pianist and teacher Lennie Tristano, and performed with local players of the day including Lee Konitz and Bill Russo. In 2009 Becker published “Do You Know…?” The Jazz Repertoire in Action, a book he co-wrote with his friend, colleague and fellow academic-musician Robert R. Faulkner. In it, the two discuss and describe how songs are passed on from person to person and how working musicians’ repertoire survives and evolves. I spoke with Howard in his apartment in Paris (he spends part of every year in Europe, where he has become so

Madison, Wisconsin in the 1960s was one of the most radicalized university campuses in the country. It was a center for the kind of counter culture that has come to feel like a cliché today. There was plenty of sex, drugs, and rock & roll, sure. But there was also political activism, civil rights, environmentalism. Because of the University of Wisconsin, thousands of young people move through Madison and take the values of the city with them when they leave. Earlier this summer, The Madison Reunion brought over one thousand people with ties to Madison in the 60s back together for three days of meetings, discussions and panels, held at the University of Wisconsin's Memorial Union. The event was billed as “a party with a purpose” and had the feeling of both a nostalgic walk down memory lane and a reignition for a generation of activists who were referred to by journalist Jeff Greenfield as “the long ago young”. Although I wasn’t in Madison in the 1960s, it is fair to say that I’m a byproduct of that time. M

What is there to say about guitarist Lage Lund that hasn’t already been said? Not much. And plenty. Lage has been a fixture on the New York jazz scene since moving here in the early 2000s as a “skinny kid from Norway with dreads”. The dreads are long gone, and there is very little about him today to indicate that he grew up in a small Norwegian city (Skien) where he had to take a three hour train ride to Oslo to buy the latest jazz albums, and that before he was one of the most creative and virtuosic guitarists of his generation, he was a frustrated skateboarder with no place to skate “vert”. A regular in the “Rising star – Guitar” category in the Downbeat Critic’s Poll, he has been hailed by Pat Metheny as a favorite young guitarist, and is “all music and all soul” according to Russell Malone - one of the judges who awarded Lund top prize in the 2005 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. Of Lund, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel once said, "Of the younger cats, Lage is THE one. He's a wonderful player. S

Talking to Brendan B. Brown about his life and music is like talking to a dozen guys at once. There’s the singer-songwriter - the guy who wrote the hit song “Teenage Dirtbag” and created the band Wheatus nearly 2 decades ago, and who has been riding that wave ever since. This is the guy who writes brilliant, provocative, genre bending pop songs, and who tours stadiums in the UK and Australia. There’s the kid who grew up in a “lobster town in decline” on long island in the 80s and was sent to an all boys high school an hour away because his parents panicked after a satanic murder took place in the woods behind his house. This is the guy who ultimately ended up moving into the extra house on his parents property, building a work-live space and staying there well into adulthood. There’s the gear geek - the one who wants to know about each microphone, guitar amp, drum head and compressor used on all the records he loves. This is the guy who remembers every piece of equipment he ever bought and can explain why he

Joe Goodkin was a part time singer songwriter, part time paralegal with a penchant for classical Greece and a sensitive side. After years of playing in bands he realized that the big record contract was not coming anytime soon and taking a band on the road was economically impossible. But he knew there was a place for him as a musical storyteller. One day, he dusted off a project he had started when he was just out of college, a musical companion to Homer’s Odyssey, and started thinking about how to present it and himself in a new way. For over a decade he’s been touring the country singing a one-man original 30 minute musical retelling of Homer's Odyssey for audiences at revered institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, and many others, over 200 performances in 33 states. Based in Chicago, Joe continues to write his own brand of quirky, emotive and highly personal stories about his experiences. His career is completely unique, and speaks to the possibility of carving out a niche as a

"If you're not sad you're not paying very much attention." Donovan Woods has a talent for writing songs that feel like “real life”: Funny and sad at the same time, plain spoken and poetic in the same breath, nostalgic and hopeful at once. As he says, "Two opposing ideas can be true at the same time."  So it’s no surprise that he named his latest album Both Ways. He says that when he thinks about it, there’s just “so much sadness”. He says that he loves to watch an audience turn to mush, to make them feel comfortable and then slowly deliver the tragic sense of life. He says he does it by using “tricks of language” that feel familiar and colloquial. He says he developed his confessional style of songwriting, which is generally considered to be country or folk, by listening to hip hop as a kid growing up in Sarnia, Ontario. There’s a lot about Donovan Woods that makes him an outsider to the Nashville singer songwriter circles in which he often travels, but there’s plenty that puts him right at home there. Partic

Nate Wood is a drummer, bassist, guitarist, singer-songwriter, mixing and mastering engineer. Raised and educated in Los Angeles, he joined the band Kneebody in 2001 (along with former Third Story guest Ben Wendel).  Eventually Nate moved to New York where he has been a fixture on the scene for years, working as both drummer and bassist for the likes of Donny McCaslin and Wayne Krantz. In fact, it was Nate’s love of the music Krantz was making that helped to motivate him to move east.  Nate is an extraordinarily gifted, natural musician. Although in recent years he has started to gain notoriety among musicians and hardcore fans, he’s still (in my opinion) greatly underappreciated, particularly as a drummer. But that’s starting to change now, in part due to his new project “Four” which features Nate playing drums, bass, keyboards and singing simultaneously.  Here he talks about why screwing around is so important to creativity, what’s so special about 83bpm as a tempo, what ever happened to swing, and that ong

Larry Klein started out as a musician’s musician before becoming a producer’s producer. At a young age he was playing bass with his heroes in the jazz world, including a long and creative stint with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The way he explains it, Klein became more drawn to the world of songs, singers and popular music, and put off by the jazz insiders’ insistence on what was and what wasn’t “the real s*#t”. As a session player he worked on some of the most classic LA record dates of the 80s and 90s (for the likes of Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman, Don Henley, Bob Dylan, Cher and Joni Mitchell) and seemed positioned for a life as a hired gun sideman. But while married to his first wife, Joni Mitchell, Larry began producing records. Over the last 30 years he has become one of the most sophisticated, musical and thoughtful producers around, producing records for Mitchell, Madeleine Peyroux, Melody Gardot, Herbie Hancock, Luciana Souza (who he is married to now) and many, many m

Rapper, singer, spoken word artist, writer, and science nerd Dessa is an open book. As a young girl in Minneapolis, she dreamed of being a writer, and in high school she submitted essays unsolicited to the New Yorker. She refused to speak the Spanish own heritage (she’s half Puerto Rican) and instead insisted on learning French. She was, in her own mind, headed for a literary life on the Upper East side of Manhattan. “The third martini and witty repartee” she says. Life seemed to have other plans for her. She ended up channeling her love of language into a different outlet: rap. Dessa has been a longtime member of Minneapolis based hip hop collective Doomtree. Her résumé as a musician includes performances at Lollapalooza and Glastonbury, co-compositions for 100-voice choir, performances with the Minnesota Orchestra, and a top-200 entry on the Billboard charts for her album Parts of Speech. Eventually she was able to turn her success in music back towards her original passion: writing essays. She’s been publi

Lorrie Moore is the kind of writer that inspires real devotion from her readers. She’s best known as a writer of short stories, although she has also published novels and critical essays. See What Can Be Done, a collection of essays and reviews (many of which were originally published in the New York Review of Books) was published this month. Lorrie is also a beloved creative writing teacher. She spent 30 years at the University of Wisconsin before moving to Nashville to teach at Vanderbilt University, where she still teaches. I was eager to talk to Lorrie about a lifetime of writing, her process, how she thinks about teaching creative writing, and why music is so important to her. She’s spending the year in New York and we met recently at her apartment in Manhattan to debrief. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

Four years and 100 episodes later, I’m still going. What a trip. This week, I take a moment to reflect with one of the most surprising and flattering guest hosts I’ve ever had: my wife, Amanda. I write this in from pitch black hotel room in Palm Springs. Last night on the plane I made a list of all my guests so far (hopefully I haven’t overlooked anyone too serious), and organized them into category. The categories are a bit one dimensional, especially considering that my focus is often on the kinds of people who defy category. How does one place an incredible musician who is also an incredible composer, and a visionary producer? By what name do we call a polymath singer, arranger and multi instrumentalist? What about an actor turned Zen Buddhist priest turned blues musician? Or a bebop piano player who also runs two clubs? So please forgive me if you disagree with where I’ve placed your favorite saxophone player or engineer. Overall when I look at this list, I think my taste is generally pretty clear. I’ve b

To call Larry “Ratso” Sloman a writer is not at all inaccurate - he is a writer. But he’s so much more. Sloman perfected the art of hanging out and he turned that art into a career. Here he talks about how studying sociology influenced his thinking and gave him a way to be inside the revolution and outside at the same time. Allen Ginsberg, The Fugs, Abbie Hoffman, Al Goldstein (Screw Magazine), Kinky Friedman, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, John Cale, Rolling Stone Magazine, Howard Stern, Anthony Kiedis, High Times Magazine… they all make prominent appearances in our conversation. On fashion: “Not to boast but I always had a good sense of unique fashion. I mean I was wearing rabbinical coats way before Gaultier was doing them.” On writing: “It’s like building a house. You have to have a great foundation. Have a great beginning and great ending. You can get away with a lot of sh$t in the middle.” On celebrity: “They don’t want someone to put them on a pedestal.” Visit www.third-story.com or go to www.patreon.com/thirds

Singer Achinoam Nini (Noa) and guitarist Gil Dor on their nearly 30 year long creative partnership, how popular culture has developed in Israel, how they handle the responsibility of their success in such a politicized and charged atmosphere. Noa and Gil shared their unique and provocative viewpoint on Israel, describing the “war between the Jewish people and the State of Israel” and explaining in beautiful terms why “language is the ultimate instrument of equal opportunity.” Visit www.third-story.com or go to www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.

Louis Cato is living proof that some people are simply given a gift. Born in Lisbon, Portugal and raised mostly in North Carolina, Louis began playing drums at age 2. By the time he started high school he was a credible drummer, bassist, guitarist, trombone and tuba player. He found his way deeper and deeper into music despite the fact that, as he says, he was “raised in a bubble”. Louis didn’t hear secular music until he was almost 18 years old, but the music he learned in church, and the music he played in the church with his mother gave him a deep foundation for what would quickly become a career as a “super sideman”. When he did eventually hear the music and the musicians that would inform his professional journey, he quickly understood that he had a place in that world. Soon he was playing with the likes of Marcus Miller, John Scofield, Q-Tip, Snarky Puppy, Jon Batiste, and Bobby McFerrin. Here he talks about the difference between making music in church and playing secular music, what it means to “learn

Liberty Devitto says he was lucky to be the right age when The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. He learned to play drums by listening to Ringo Starr’s parts and playing along to records. Why the drums? “Because they didn’t make Prozac back then.” Still, Liberty says he “likes music better than drums”. Maybe that’s why he’s often called a song drummer. In the recording studio, he’s much more likely to be reading the lyrics than the sheet music. Devitto played with Billy Joel for nearly 30 years, played on all the big records and hits, and toured the world countless times. His sound, style and feel are iconic. Then, at age 50, Liberty was faced with a new reality. Here we talk about the journey from restless funny kid to veteran hit maker, and what makes him a “New York style drummer”. And we tackle the important questions, like do we choose to be musicians because we’re nuts, or does becoming a musician makes us nuts? The episode features an additional bonus intro conversation with Michael Sackler-Ber

Guitarist, bandleader, and label owner Jon Madof talks about how music and spirituality are related, what it means to create your own kind of authenticity, the difference between a job and a mission, and whether or not an artist’s work can be separated from their personal behavior. Jon’s band, Zion80 released their most recent album on Jon’s newly formed Chant Records label, which he launched in late 2017. What does it mean to create a record label in today’s musical universe? Visit Third-story.com for everything you want to know about the podcast and then when you still need to know more, go to patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.

Singer, songwriter, and illustrator Nadia Ackerman’s journey started in Australia. But early on, she knew she was leaving, and she was pretty sure America was the destination. Although she was already a jazz singer by the age of 20, it wasn’t so much the scene in New York that called to her at first so much as it was the American TV shows she loved, like The Brady Bunch. But after spending a summer in New York, she knew there was no going home. What she didn’t realize is that she had brought a dark part of her past with her on the journey, and it wasn’t until years later that she came to terms what had sent her running in the first place. Here she shares her story, through music, becoming a songwriter, then an illustrator, a shop owner and brand developer, and ultimately confronting the abuse that she suffered as a child in Australia (and that she had completely blocked for most of her life, until it was impossible to avoid any longer). Visit www.third-story.com for everything you want to know about the podca

In this, the second of a two part Best of 2017 series, fragments of various episodes are strung together in order to tease out the big ideas, the underlying themes, and the tiny obsessions that have been propelling the podcast all year. Best of 2017 Part 1 looked at community and how community informs creative work. This second part looks at the more interior questions of process, identity and desire. And it explores the idea of the arts as political protest, and the potential disruptive power of creative expression. Featuring interviews with Peter Straub, Theo Katzman, Jonatha Brooke, Leah Siegel, Ben Sidran & Tommy LiPuma, Laura Garcia Lorca, Alexis Cuadrado, Ryan Keberle, Duchess Trio, Morgan James, John “Scrapper” Sneider, and Ryan Hewitt. As a special treat, former Third Story interviewee and guest host Michael Thurber joins as co-host. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

I think we can all agree that 2017 was an unusual year. It was intense, confusing, emotional. A little less than a year ago, as I decided to resume another “season” of episodes, I was determined to focus on community and on positivity through art and creative expression. At least, that’s what I told myself, and it’s also what I told you. In the introduction to the first episode of 2017, an interview with jazz club owner and musician Spike Wilner, I said  “I want to look at the role of community in supporting individual voices and in contextualizing those voices.” As the year quickly comes to an end, I decided to look back at a year’s worth of episodes to see if I delivered on that promise, and to figure out what were the big questions and the major themes that emerged. With the benefit of even just a little bit of hindsight, I can see that indeed the theme of community informed the whole journey. Featuring Spike Wilner, Michael Dorf, Adam Schatz, Dave Jemilo, Ben Wendel, George Colligan, Irv Williams, Mark Da