The Third Story Podcast With Leo Sidran

Writer Jake Lamar talks about growing up in the Bronx, his lifelong love affair with writing, moving to France in the 90s, his career as a novelist, playwright, and cultural critic in Paris, and his new book Viper’s Dream, a Jazz Noir crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem between 1936 and 1961. After graduating from Harvard University, Lamar spent six years writing for Time magazine. He has lived in Paris since 1993 and teaches creative writing at Sciences Po.  At age 30, he published a memoir, Bourgeois Blues, in which he evoked his relationship with his father. With it, he won the Lyndhurst Prize. In 1993, inspired by the American writers F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin, he moved to Paris in the 18th arrondissement where he still resides. In 1996 he published The Last Integrationist, a novel of contemporary America, criticizing the pace of racial integration and the omnipresent television spectacle he sees as typical of the United States. He i

41 years ago this month, Bruce Springsteen released his sixth studio album, Nebraska. He recorded much of the album on one winter night, sitting on the edge of the bed in a rented house in New Jersey, playing acoustic guitar and singing, using a 4 track cassette recorder. The album would go on to have lasting influence, inspire other works of art including movies and books, and other records. And Springsteen would later muse that Nebraska may be his best album. Four decades later the story of Nebraska continues to be an object of fascination. Among those who obsessed over it was the musician and writer Warren Zanes. Zanes joined his brother Dan's band, The Del Fuegos, at age seventeen. The band toured with ZZ Top, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, INXS, and others during the time Warren was in the band, and also famously licensed one of their songs for a commercial which led to some serious criticism at the time. Warren then went on to build a career as an academic, a writer (including the best selling biog

When Prateek Kuhad moved from India to New York to study economics, there would have been almost no predicting that he would soon become one of the most popular singer songwriters in India.  Prateek grew up in Jaipur listening to Indian pop and Bollywood music, along with a handful of international records that his mother had in the house by artists like Harry Belafonte and Cliff Richards. But it was his experience in America, listening to singer songwriters, Americana and new folk artists like Elliott Smith, Fleet Foxes and Laura Marling that influenced his style. Today, Kuhad performs for tens of thousands in India, and his songs have tens of millions of streams - making him one of the most streamed domestic artists in India.  His song “cold/mess” was featured on an episode of Ted Lasso, and was also included on Barack Obama’s favorite music of 2019 list, alongside Lizzo, Lil Nas X and Bruce Springsteen.  Kuhad's intimate heart-on-your-sleeve lyricism - in both English and Hindi - have come to define his st

For the fifth consecutive year I interview my father on his birthday. This year he’s turning 80 and I surprise him with reflections and anecdotes by friends and colleagues from throughout his career, including Jeff Greenfield, Boz Scaggs, Jann Wenner, Michael Cuscuna, Phil Upchurch, Georgie Fame, Gil Goldstein, Janis Siegel, Jorge Drexler and many more! www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story

Singer, pianist and songwriter Laila Biali recently released Your Requests, built around a collection of songs from the Great American Songbook that were requested by her fans. After a string of projects of her original songs and more contemporary covers, the album was a departure for her. After spending years living in New York, Laila moved back to her native Canada to raise her son, along with her husband, drummer and producer Ben Wittman, who she met when the two were working with the singer-songwriter Paula Cole. Laila had established herself in New York as a reliable and sought after collaborator - she worked with Sting, Chris Botti and Suzanne Vega. After moving to Toronto she began focusing more on her solo career. It paid off. In 2019 she won a Juno Award for Vocal Jazz Album of the Year. And she hosts the popular radio show Saturday Night Jazz on CBC 2. Here she talks about her career, what it’s like being married to her closest collaborator, motherhood, loyalty, leaving New York to return to her

Conversations on community, artificial intelligence, identity, fan engagement, healthy living, life on the road and more, recorded at the 2023 Montreal International Jazz Festival. Featuring Michael League, Nate Smith, Carlos Homs, Julius Rodriguez, Benny Benack III, Emmet Cohen, Stacey Kent, and more. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

When it comes to instruments that are not easily designed for improvising soloists, there is perhaps none more difficult to handle than the harp. And when it comes to contemporary jazz harpists, there is perhaps none more influential in this moment than Brandee Younger.  From the very beginning, as a young music student growing up on Long Island, Brandee Younger was toeing the line between her classical, orchestral musical education and the hiphop, soul and pop music that she grew up loving. She spent her early years musically code switching, trying to figure out how to make sense of her sensibilities.  But for those who listened closely to the samples on records by Jay Z, Pete Rock, The Pharcyde, J. Dilla, or Common it was clear that the sound of the harp had become part of the language of modern music.  Many of the harp samples heard on those in early hip hop records featured two African American women, who, like Brandee, learned to thrive beyond their perceived limitations: Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane

Multi instrumentalist singer-songwriter Theo Katzman (known for his work with the funk band Vulfpeck) bought a van from a teenager in California and drove across the country, settling in the woods of Michigan where he set up a studio, started a label, and got down to the business of writing a new record.  Along the way, he discovered the Wim Hof breathing and ice bathing techniques and came out with a transformed idea of “the self” and his own motivations, and decided that he wanted to make records with as few technological interventions as possible. The result of this journey is his latest record Be The Wheel which he released recently on his 10 Good Songs label. Here he talks about the process of making that record, as well as thoughts on artificial intelligence, psilocybin, social media, touring, and honesty in songwriting.

For saxophonist Ben Wendel, the pandemic provided the space for him to develop his latest solo record, All One (Edition Records), a project that is both very solitary and very collaborative. It features a woodwind choir of saxophones and bassoons performed entirely by Ben, and then joined by special guests like singers Cecile McLorin Salvant and Jose James, guitarist Bill Frisell, and trumpeter Terence Blanchard.  Wendel is no stranger to experimentation or to collaboration. As a member of the genre bending group Kneebody, he has always had one foot in contemporary music. And previous solo projects were motivated by his desire to collaborate, like The Seasons which found him composing 12 original pieces dedicated to 12 musicians he admired and then performed with those musicians.  Wendel performed at the Village Vanguard in New York earlier this spring. He was joined by his longtime friend and musical partner, drummer Nate Wood, Harish Raghavan on bass, Gilad Hekselman & Nir Felder on guitar (they split t

Beth Nielsen Chapman is a songwriter’s songwriter. She began writing before she had any idea that it could be a career; it was just something that came naturally to her. When she first started out, there was no way to possibly imagine just how important songs would become in her journey - both professionally and personally. Here she talks about that journey, which includes writing songs for Martina McBride, Willie Nelson, Tanya Tucker, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Crystal Gayle, Juice Newton, Bette Midler, and most famously co-writing Faith Hill’s hit song “This Kiss”. She has released sixteen albums as a solo artist as well. Along the way, she also talks about processing grief and loss through music (and making music through grief). We spoke only weeks after her second husband, Bob passed away. Her first husband, Ernest, died in 1994. She also tells the stories behind many of her hit songs, and lays out her philosophy of creativity and craft, including what it means to “write from the center of your truth,” chan

Pianist-composer Vijay Iyer has been described by The New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway.” He has been praised by Pitchfork as “one of the best in the world at what he does,” by the Los Angeles Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star,” and by Minnesota Public Radio as “an American treasure.” He received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, the Alpert Award in the Arts, and two German “Echo” awards, and was voted Downbeat Magazine’s Jazz Artist of the Year four times in the last decade.  But beyond all that praise, he is at his core simply a seeker of genuine connection and community. Here he talks about growing up in Rochester, NY as one of a small handful of first generation Indian Americans (his parents immigrated), how he developed his musical identity alongside an academic career as a scientist (he did his und

To say Christian McBride is prolific is both obvious and an understatement. The list of his projects is too long to fit neatly into any one container - he’s a musician, an educator, a composer, an artistic director, and a broadcaster. He’s an ambassador, a personality, an icon. And of course, he is a bass player.  One gets the sense that his days are simply fuller than most people’s days. He always seems to be coming from some other event, or heading out to another gig. Honestly it’s hard not to run into Christian McBride if you’re engaging with this music on any level.  At 50 years old, he has appeared on more than 300 recordings as a sideman, has made nearly 20 as a leader, and is an eight-time Grammy Award winner. There’s nothing trivial about his career. But as he picks up his bass to play, there is an almost mischievous gleam in his eye - a childlike excitement, and a clear sense of joy. He loves to play and it’s infectious - it’s hard not to feel good watching him do it. Here he talks about his band New

Accepting her Grammy award for Best New Artist last month, Samara Joy looked out at a sea of faces that she had grown up admiring and said, “I’ve been watching y’all on TV for so long…I’m born and raised in the Bronx.”  It was almost as though she was reminding herself of just how far she had come, and just how quickly. That was a big moment for the 23 year old singer who was just a year and a half out of college. As she delivered her speech, the camera cut to Lizzo and Adelle, each with a hint of a tear in their eyes. It was also a big moment for jazz at the Grammys and by extension in the larger popular consciousness (Samara was only the second jazz singer to win the award - Esperanza Spalding was the first). Samara also took home the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album that night for her record Linger Awhile.  In many ways, Samara Joy’s extremely rapid rise is like a fairy tale. On the other hand, it’s a reminder that sometimes artists arrive just at the right time and meet their moment head on. In this case,

This week on the Third Story Podcast I’m turning the tables on myself and sharing the stories and the creative process behind my new record What’s Trending. Featuring excerpts of past episodes with artists who collaborated on the record and inspired the songs, including Boz Scaggs, Louis Cato, Janis Siegel, Michael Leonhart, Peter Coyote and more. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/studios www.leosidran.com

While almost everyone is sharing the most polished and curated versions of themselves, Braxton Cook is asking “Who Are You When No One Is Watching?” Actually, as it turns out, it’s a question he’s asking of himself, and in a somewhat postmodern and ironic twist, he’s doing it quite publicly on his new record, called (surprise!) Who Are You When No One Is Watching? which comes out February 24 on Nettwerk Records. Braxton Cook is an artist of his time - that is, he’s hard to define, hard to categorize, highly educated, determined to share his most authentic self and in a constant state of searching.  He’s a Juilliard trained jazz saxophone player who has worked with jazz artists Christian Scott, Christian McBride Big Band, Jon Batiste and Marquis Hill as well as more mainstream artists like Solange Knowles and Tom Misch. He’s also a deeply sensitive solo artist, singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist who is committed to keeping the saxophone alive in soul music, speaking his own personal truth i

Music is not only a form of expression, it’s also a way of traveling. It’s astounding how many people’s lives have been completely transformed by their relationship with music - and sometimes the simplest experiences we have as kids can profoundly alter the course of everything that follows.  A few seemingly unrelated events during Andy Narell’s early childhood in New York helped to lay out a path for him to follow, and he’s still following it today. They included Joseph McCarthy’s “Red Scare”, a rise in gang violence in Harlem in the 1960s, and the innovations of a musical instrument maker from Trinidad named Ellie Mannette. Andy Narell is known as one of the most celebrated - if not the most celebrated steel - drummers in the world. Throughout a five plus decade career, he has contributed to both the development of steel drum music, and to the development of the drums themselves.  Andy has appeared on hundreds of records and film scores, he’s been the subject of two documentary films himself, made nearly 20

Will Page was working for the UK Government Economic Service in the income tax division, and moonlighting as a music writer for Straight No Chaser magazine when his life changed almost overnight. Pretty soon he was living in London, and helping to shape the new music business and the economics of music streaming.   Page eventually went on to work at Spotify where he was the chief economist. Will’s work is regularly featured in Billboard, The Economist and the Financial Times. His book Tarzan Economics was published in paperback this month, and retitled Pivot: Eight Principles for Transforming your Business in a Time of disruption. Here he discusses “how music responds to suppression,” the need to “press pause on nostalgia,” what qualifies as “content,” and the idea that “the internet can scale just about everything but one thing it can’t scale is intimacy. [And jazz] is an intimate form.” www.third-story.com www.wbgo.org/studios www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.tarzaneconomics.com  

Rachael & Vilray are a perfect example of the idea that sometimes what that once seemed old fashioned can actually resonate as new again. Their new record I Love A Love Song! comes out this week.  Rachael Price is best known as the singer in the band Lake Street Dive. She and Vilray met at college two decades ago. But it would take them years before they discovered their mutual love of the American songbook standards from the 1930s and 40s, and decided to create a project to showcase Vilray’s special gift of channeling classic songwriters in his original music.  We spoke recently about how this project came about, how they approach making original work in the mold of a musical tradition that is nearly a hundred years old,the art and craft of classic songwriting and getting the words right. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story

A collection of Art of the Story pieces for WBGO News by Leo Sidran / The Third Story Podcast from 2022, including coverage of the Montreal and Umbria jazz festivals (featuring Dave King, Julian Lage, Samara Joy, Matt Pierson, Terence Higgins, Gregory Porter, Kurt Elling, Dave Koz and more) as well as short profiles on Lau Noah, Michael Thurber, Tomasz Stanko, Tyshawn Sorey, Jesse Harris, Jorge Drexler, Christian McBride and Larry Goldings.  www.third-story.comwww.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story

Every year, The Third Story collects more interviews and conversations than we are able to publish as full episodes, and 2022 was certainly no exception.  Finally, we have found a solution: THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY, 2022 HOLIDAY EDITION. Conversations with saxophonist Bill McHenry, keyboard player/producer Didi Gutman, pianist Jon Dryden, pianist Dan Tepfer, trumpet player/graphic designer Jamie Breiwick, and pianist Randy Ingram with singer Aubrey Johnson, collected around the world this year. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story