The Third Story Podcast With Leo Sidran

Clifford Irving was a great writer, and a great character. Although he published 20 novels, he was probably best known for a hoax "autobiography" allegedly written as told to Irving by billionaire recluse Howard Hughes. By the time I met Clifford, he was a gentle old man. We talked during the winter of 2016 about his life, his career, and his general world view. Clifford passed away on December 19. This episode was originally posted in 2016.  www.third-story.com

Laura García Lorca grew up between two worlds. She spent her childhood in New York City, and to this day she considers herself to be a New Yorker. But America was always meant to be a temporary home for her parents, an exile from the Franco dictatorship that drove her family out of Spain. So when her family moved back to Madrid in 1967, the 13 year old Laura left her cosmopolitan New York life behind with a few LPs tucked in her suitcase and a lifelong identity crisis ahead. As she says, over time “things become natural even though they aren’t”. Laura has dedicated much of her adult life to preserving and honoring the legacy of her uncle, the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca. He was one of the first victims of the Spanish Civil War. In the mid 1990s Laura moved to Granada, Federico’s home town, to run La Huerta de San Vicente, a museum dedicated to Lorca’s work, located in his family home in the center of town. I first met Laura shortly after she moved to Granada to set up the Huerta, and I’v

The tradition of American expatriate jazz musicians in Europe goes back a hundred years. What leads musicians to move halfway across the world to a place where they don’t speak the language, hold no currency, and are strangers? Love, what else? Both of the guys I’m talking to today, bassist Peter Giron and trumpeter Andrew Crocker, went to France with little or no understanding of what they were getting themselves into other than the desire to be with a woman, and maybe a sense that they didn’t fully fit where they came from. And both of them have become fully integrated into the French scene. Today they are not so much expatriates as they are immigrants. It’s a distinction that I was not really prepared for when I approached these interviews and it really got me thinking about what it means to be American, and what it means to be an immigrant.   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 and put your a

Ralph Simon is on a relentless quest. That much is certain. His travel itinerary could easily be used in an upper-level high school geography class. Just in the week leading up to our conversation in London, he had been in Amsterdam, Berlin, Vilnius, and New York. What is he in search of? That's a bit harder to define. The next thing in technology and entertainment. He might say it's something like "the next undiscovered young virtuosic talent" or "the latest in mobile and device innovation". Over the last 20 years, Ralph has become a recognizable face in the tech space, seemingly obsessed with the way mobile technology and content influence popular culture. At his core, Ralph loves a good hit. His ability to find a hit, to create opportunity and add value to the creative class started long before the word mobile was a noun. Ralph was raised in South Africa during the Apartheid years. As a young man, he was a piano player, a concert promoter, and eventually a manager. He began his career co-founding the Zomba

"Art is a byproduct of a life led. Your beautiful, tragic, outrageous life." Leah Siegel made a commitment to live an artful life, "to be creative, to live inspired." Early on, she found her voice. A powerful, soul-stirring, timeless singing voice that moved people and put her in touch with a "natural empathy". She began to feel that she could feel others' emotions and transmit them through music. And she began writing essays as well. She moved to New York and quickly became part of the musical fabric of the city, fitting into a variety of musical scenes. Today she has three bands, Firehorse (a vehicle for her songwriting), Leisure Cruise (a pop collaboration with producer Dave Hodge), and Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout, a ferociously funky outfit that was started by the late, great bassist Tim Luntzel. Tim passed away earlier this year from complications of ALS. He was 44 years old, and his death resonated throughout a large community of musicians and friends who loved him and continue to mourn his loss. Here Lea

Theo Katzman is many things. An only child. The youngest of four. An earnest singer songwriter with a deep love of classic rock and a great turn of phrase. A groove machine in one of the most talked about funk-soul bands around (Vulfpeck). A west coaster. A midwestern cheerleader. A long island native. Most of his fans likely discovered him through his work with Vulfpeck, singing, playing drums and guitar. But in this conversation he's definitely got some surprises that you might not be expecting. Like his deep ties to a generation of jazz musicians who most of us can only hear about second or third hand. Here he lays out both a deep and broad set of questions, ideas, experiences. Always with his heart on his sleeve and his mind actively searching. Plus he sings a ridiculously high note in the middle of the interview.  Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.third-story.com  

Jack Stratton has a 20th-century heart and a 21st-century mind. As the leader of the band Vulfpeck, he excites, incites and inspires the YouTube generation to get funky. His video channel is a view into his brain, featuring in studio recording sessions, instructional tutorials, mashups of his favorite musicians, and a series of fugue state hallucinations ranging from dancing in public to funky salad making. (#maindishnotasidedish) In this rare extended conversation recorded in his childhood home in Cleveland, Ohio, Jack talks about growing up playing in a Klezmer band, creating Vulf, and why no one's looking up. Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon!   www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.third-story.com

The fourth and final episode in the Settling the Underscore series, exploring music for advertising. Finally, after weeks of talking to composers, producers, and editors, we hear from the musicians who made the glory days of the jingle business what they were. Bassist Will Lee, keyboard player Rob Mounsey, and guitar player Steve Khan. All three were part of a generation of players on the New York session scene in the 1970s and 1980s, sometimes playing on multiple projects every day. I’ve been eager to share these little mementos, because the deeper I got into the swamp of music for advertising, interviewing composers, music houses, editors, agency folks, the more the conversations centered around business. How is the business set up? How does one get paid? Is it fair? But of course, we don’t become musicians, or composers, editors, or even advertising executives by aspiring to be in business. We do it because of a creative compulsion. And these musicians are perhaps the purest expression of that int

Imagine walking into a restaurant, ordering a meal, eating the meal, giving the chef a hard time, giving the waiter a little bit of an attitude, and then deciding not to pay for the meal at the end of the night. In many ways, that's how the business of writing music for advertising is set up. Why is that? Who set it up that way? Is it possible the music creators, the composers, and music houses are responsible for giving away too much for too little? In this third installment in a series of episodes about music in advertising former advertising executive Ken Yagoda, commercial music producer Mike Boris, and editor Maury Loeb layout the business from the advertising agency and editorial point of view, and explain who influences the music that gets chosen, how the business has changed and what the future holds. www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.third-story.com

Part of the Settling the Underscore series of episodes that explores music for advertising, this interview with composer Alex Weinstein explores an alternate reality in which the composer works in a direct and collaborative way with the director and the client from the very start of the process!  My mind is blown. My heart is open. Whole world turned upside down. Hope restored.  This bonus episode is brought to you by the patronage of listeners like you. Patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast third-story.com

In this, the second of a series that explores music in commercials, we talk to three freelance commercial composers. These are the often invisible, uncredited creators of music for advertising. How does one enter the business of writing music for advertising? Who are the people who thrive in that world? What skills are required? What is the lifestyle of the creative composer? How much rejection can one person stand? What is it like to be a woman in a boys club?   www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.third-story.com

Behind every television commercial, there’s an entire economy dedicated to selecting, providing, creating and sourcing music. What was once considered the “jingle” business has now become one of the last sources of real income in recorded music. Today, publishers, bands, composers, production libraries, artists and labels are all vying for a piece of the pie. In this first of a series of episodes dedicated to the world of commercial music, I talk to two composer / entrepreneurs who have each put in their time on both the creative and business end of things. John “Scrapper” Sneider of Storefront Music, and Wendell Hanes of “Volition Sound”. Support the Third Story Podcast on Patreon! www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.third-story.com

Jonatha Brooke has been one of my favorite singer songwriters since the first moment I heard her, 25 years ago. Her haunting, unique sound with the band The Story sent me reeling, and in many ways I’ve still never recovered. Since then, she’s recorded nearly a dozen albums under her own name. The most recent, “Midnight Hallelujah” came out earlier this year. Can songwriting be taught? What is the future for independent songwriters? How do artists monetize access? How much personal information is too much to share on social media? How has her personal journey changed her sound throughout the years? Why is she so self critical? What is it like to write songs with Katy Perry? It’s all here and MORE! www.third-story.com And this week for the first time, you can support the podcast at www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast - get involved!

On this final installment of the Mob Town Tour series, we visit Detroit, Cleveland and Toledo. In our first Mob Town episode we talked to Irv Williams, who at 98 years old, is still performing every week in his community. In our second, we talked to Dave Jemilo, the club owner from Chicago who has helped to shape the jazz scene in town. In our third chapter, we looked at jazz as regional music through the lens of Milwaukee. And today, we look at how the arts are the appetite for life, and how life on the road can change people. From the art deco elegance of Detroit’s Cliff Bells club, to the neighborhood charm of Cleveland’s Nighttown, to the pop up art collective Collingwood Art Center in Toledo (a converted convent), each city has its own unique arts community. Particularly in Detroit and Toledo, two cities that have been hit hard economically, the arts showed some of the first signs of renaissance. Music and art grow up through the cracks in the concrete, like wild flowers. In Cleveland we connected with s

On this third installment of the Mob Town Tour series of episodes, we explore the Milwaukee jazz scene. I’ve always been interested in the Milwaukee players and sound, going back to when I was a young musician coming up in Madison. Here I talk to pianist David Hazeltine, bassist Jeff Hamann and pianist Mark Davis, and my father Ben, about the history of jazz in Milwaukee. We’re also exploring the idea of regional dialects when it comes to jazz, and music in general. What does it mean to have a bunch of creative people leaning in the same direction, or speaking in the same accent, and what brings that on? Particularly today, is it still possible retain local flavor and speak a regional dialect in a global world? Today all musicians have access to the same information - and that’s all the information. But do they still have access to their scene? third-story.com

On week two of the Mob Town Tour series of podcasts, we explore the Green Mill in Chicago. One of the greatest jazz clubs in the world. It’s a kind of jazz unicorn. A joint that walks the line and manages to serve the community at large and the musicians too.  You’d think this would be normal, but it’s not. It’s very rareAnd that is due in no small part to the owner, Dave Jemilo.  In this episode we spend some time talking with musician Bob Rockwell (the saxophone player in the Ben Sidran Quartet) about the Chicago musical legacy, and we also check in with vocalist Kurt Elling and organist Chris Foreman about playing at the Green Mill. But the real meat in this pod sandwich comes from Jemilo himself, perhaps the finest example of a real Chicagoan that you will ever meet.  Pull up a stool and make yourself comfortable because we’re going to do this one Chicago style. Deep dish, baby. Third-story.com

The first in a series of road documentaries capturing our journey, some conversations about it and what it means. Notably it features an in depth conversation with Minneapolis based jazz saxophone player Irv Williams, the oldest working jazz musician alive.

Morgan has a soulful voice: big pipes, lots of power, a certain swagger, and incredible technique. But although she has a classic sound,  fed by by the likes of Chaka Khan, Nina Simone and Eva Cassidy, she has a modern career. Her path has been completely unexpected, unpredictable, and in some ways unbelievable. Here, as she says, we “dig deep into the journey”. Her new album, Reckless Abandon, came out last month.  www.third-story.com

Author Peter Straub started out with dreams of writing poetry and literary fiction. After publishing his first two novels and two books of poetry, he asked himself the question that so many artists find themselves asking: how do I make a living at this? An agent suggested he try writing a “gothic novel”, advice that reoriented him for much of the rest of his career. His natural ability to write novels that as he says, would be appealing to people who love Philip Roth and those who love Stephen King, connected with a huge audience that picked up what he was putting down over the course of many years. But before he became a writer in earnest, he was a jazz lover. He discovered jazz as a boy growing up in Milwaukee in the late 1950s. He gravitated toward Dave Brubeck & Paul Desmond, Clifford Brown, Bill Evans and Miles. While the swinging sounds of his favorite soloists followed him from stage to stage and page to page, there was something else that stayed with him as well: the darker moments of his childhoo

Trombonist, composer and educator Ryan Keberle has been active on the New York scene for nearly 20 years - which is really saying something considering he’s still a young man by many standards. He’s worked extensively with both the Maria Schneider orchestra and indie singer songwriter Sufjan Stevens, each of whom have influenced his own music enormously. Along the way, he’s worked as a sideman with the likes of Wynton Marsalis, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, and Alicia Keys, Ivan Lins and played in the house band on Saturday Night Live. Ryan’s project, a pianoless ensemble called Catharsis, started in 2004. The group has a new record coming out later this spring called “Find the Common, Shine a Light” which Ryan refers to as a “Response to Growing Political and Social Turmoil, An Urgent Call for Change”. Here we talk about the legacy of trombone players and arrangers and how the instrument is undergoing a revolution today, what being a side man taught him about listening, and why all improvised music is a form