The Third Story Podcast With Leo Sidran

Ryan Lerman has a few tricks up his sleeve. Best known as the cofounder of Scary Pockets, a dynamic funk band from LA who came to prominence on YouTube, Ryan is also an accomplished singer songwriter, bassist, arranger and producer.  His early work with Michael Bublé, John Legend, Vanessa Carlton and Ben Folds prepared him for a career as a session player, and his early solo records showcased his plain spoken, plaintive and soulful connection to the human condition.  Lerman met his Scary Pockets cofounder Jack Conte when the two were still in high school in Marin County, California. It’s a relationship that has informed and influenced him musically and professionally since then. He says that they “tend to be systems level thinkers” who “focus on the process instead of the outcome.”  That kind of process oriented approach has paid off: Scary Pockets and Lerman are extremely productive: they have released at least one new video each week since 2017, racked up millions of views and a loyal audience of funk enthu

When Lionel Loueke was coming of age as a young guitar player in his home country of Benin in West Africa, there were no music stores of any kind. He would have had to travel to Nigeria, the next country over, just to get his hands on some new strings. So he made due with what he had, cleaning and soaking, reusing his strings and even going so far as to tie knots in them when they broke.  Loueke’s story is the stuff of legend. After finally getting his hands on a guitar as a teenager, he put together enough technique and understanding to get himself to the Ivory Coast to attend music school, and then managed to get to Paris for further musical study. Eventually he went to Berklee College of Music in Boston, and then to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at UCLA in Los Angeles, now called the Herbie Hancock Institute, where he had the opportunity to study and work with luminaries like Hancock, Terence Blanchard and Wayne Shorter. Soon he began to work with those same mentors, appearing on albums

We’re back with another classic episode from the archive in honor of the new partnership between this podcast and listener supported WBGO Studios. All month I’m revisiting some of my favorite episodes from over the years, and starting in June I’ll be back with all new fresh episodes. You can find these at www.wbgo.org/studios where you will also discover their ever expanding selection of hipster content. And if you want to dig on the full Third Story archive, you can find that at www.third-story.com where we’ve always been.  Eric Harland thinks about time. He thinks about taking time, he thinks about giving time, and he thinks about sharing time.  He’ll tell you: “Time is a joint effort. It’s everybody at once. You want to talk about synergy, alliance, brotherhood and sisterhood? Just watch people getting together and having to play time. So much shows up in that. There’s so much judgment, so much blame. But then you get to these points of surrender and ecstasy. Something wonderful happens because you went on

The fact that he grew up in Toronto is not necessarily crucial to understanding guitarist Matthew Stevens point of view. He’s regarded to be one of "most exciting up-and-coming jazz guitarists" in his generation, in any part of the world. His songs and guitar playing are featured on albums by the likes of Christian Scott, Esperanza Spalding, Terri Lyne Carrington, Dave Douglas, Linda Oh, Harvey Mason. He has worked as a guitarist with producers Quincy Jones, Glen Ballard and Tony Visconti. As a producer himself, he worked on Esperanza Spalding’s albums Exposure and the Grammy winning 12 Little Spells and on Terri Lyne Carrington’s Grammy nominated album Waiting Game. In addition to his solo recordings, he has also made three albums with Walter Smith III who I spoke to recently: they call the project In Common, and on each record they call together a different collection of collaborators to round out the group. The most recent In Common project came out earlier this year on Whirlwind Recordings and features Da

What do A Tribe Called Quest, David Byrne, The Roots, D’Angelo, Pat Metheny, Erykah Badu, Jason Moran, Me’Shell N’degéocello, India.Arie, J Dilla, Run DMC, and Theo Croker have in common?  They all benefited from the sound of Bob Power’s recording, mixing or production.  Bob has had a profound effect on the sound of Hip Hop and modern music in general. Despite the fact that he says “I learned early on from working in television that if someone notices your work, you’re probably screwed,” I did notice what he was doing and I think a lot of people did. He has degrees in classical composition and jazz performance, and spent his early professional years both gigging and composing music for television. He was 30 years old and living in San Francisco when he decided to move to where the action was in the music business at the time: New York.  An unexpected gig as a recording engineer for early rap sessions ended up re-orienting Bob’s career. He says he thinks he was one of the few people in the recording establishm

Jason Moran is so prolific and multifaceted that any attempt to summarize his career poses a daunting challenge. Now think about what it’s like preparing for a conversation with him. He’s a composer, conceptual artist, educator, and public intellectual with a critical disposition — critical in the sense of challenging the status quo, while still respecting the accomplishments of his mentors. First and foremost, he’s a piano player who straddles avant-garde jazz, the blues, classical music, stride piano, and hip-hop. In other words, he’s just an incredibly thoughtful person. Moran is interested in reframing and reassessing the relationship between music, history, and place. When we spoke for this episode of The Third Story, in the spring of 2020, he was in the midst of curating an exhibition at the Louis Armstrong House Museum. Given that fact and what was happening at the time, I was particularly interested to know how he was dealing with social distancing and isolation. Our conversation is both a snapshot o

From an early age, Walter Smith III began taking music very seriously. “My first gig was playing at a McDonalds in Houston with another saxophone player. I took a solo on “Blue Bossa.” It was terrible. People clapped, and I figured if I could get away with that and get applause, how could I fail?” ​Although it may appear Smith is a new voice on the scene, he is widely recognized as an adept performer, accomplished composer, and inspired educator. This spring, Smith welcomes his newest release, In Common III. The boundary pushing album features some of the most important and talked about musicians in the world - Matt Stevens, Kris Davis, Dave Holland and Terri Lyne Carrington. ​Smith has developed under the wings of many of the music’s greats. Walter is/has been a member of several legendary groups (recording and/or touring) including the Roy Haynes Fountain of Youth Band, Terence Blanchard Quintet, Eric Harland's “Voyager”, Bill Stewart Trio, Jason Moran’s In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall, Ambrose Akinmusire Qui

Before he reigned supreme at the Grammy Awards, before he was an Oscar-winning composer (for Pixar’s Soul), before he was bandleader for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and well before he’d become one of the rare jazz artists considered a household name, Jon Batiste was simply a rising star of the piano, making what he called “social music.”  Batiste hails from Kenner, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans. He was born into a musical family, and thrust into the mix at an early age, singing and playing drums. At around 11, he switched from drums to piano, and never looked back. Eventually he moved to New York to go to Julliard. But while he was still in New Orleans, he studied and played with Alvin Batiste, who he says taught him to “Be you, even if it’s the most obtuse thing. Do that rather than imitate something else...” And that original lesson has guided him throughout his life and career. While he was still in school, Batiste started to work as a sideman for jazz artists including Abbey Lincoln, Roy Ha

Michelle Willis is either already one of your favorite singer-songwriters, or she’s about to be one.  If you haven’t already discovered her from her work with Snarky Puppy, Becca Stevens, or David Crosby, prepare to fall in love with her intelligent, soulful, emotive singing, writing and playing.  Her latest record, Just One Voice invites us into a world of doubt, anxiety, hope, balance and letting go—a process Michelle Willis skillfully guides us through with arresting arrangements that seem complex, but are deceptively simple—just like her subject matter. It features guest appearances by Michael McDonald, David Crosby, Gregoire Maret, Becca Stevens and Taylor Ashton, and was produced by Fab Dupont.  We spoke recently about growing up in Canada, how she thinks about her music and her career, how working extensively with David Crosby has affected her, teaching songwriting, imposter syndrome, getting the right “blend”, the job of the songwriter, reading poetry, and whether or not it’s okay to be comfortable. 

Nate Craig is an internationally touring comedian. He plays "Phil" in the Netflix series "Maniac" and was a cast member on TruTV's "World's Dumbest". He was recently featured on Comedy Central's "Roast Battle" and AXS Gotham Comedy Live. Nate has appearances on Comedy Central's Tosh.0 and "Mash-up", which he also wrote for. He's written for 3 seasons of "Ridiculousness" on MTV. Nate has been featured at the Bridgetown, RIOT LA, and HBO Las Vegas Comedy Festivals, and has headlined the "Laugh Your Asheville Off" and "San Francisco Comedy and Burrito Festivals". He's been on "You Made it Weird" with Pete Holmes, has written for "A Prairie Home Companion" with Garrison Keillor, and was featured on the "Best of the Bob & Tom Radio Show". He does theater tours with Bill Burr, headlines all over the country and has multiple full length comedy albums available. We got together recently to talk about the parallels between music and comedy, what is the “job” of a comic, how “what’s funny” has changed over the last

Vocalist Lauren Henderson is unusual in all the best ways. Described as "somewhere between a comforting whisper and a cogent  declaration" by The New York Times, she sings with an intimate, sultry, haunting intensity. Her music might be mysterious, but she is an open book.  Raised in Marblehead, Massachusetts (birthplace of the American Navy and just down the road from Salem, MA) she attended some of the finest schools in New England. She was a varsity field hockey player at Wheaton College, and then went on to receive her MBA from Brown University. She spent much of her early life being one of the few people of color in a largely white environment.  She says her journey of discovering and celebrating her heritage has gone hand in hand with her music career. She describes it as uncovering “the layers of her diverse background in English and Spanish. Her compositions paint stories reflecting journeys imposed through the African Diaspora in  connection to Henderson's Panamanian, Montserratian, and vast Caribbea

Jake Sherman is everywhere at once and yet somehow maintains a certain air of mystery. There he is singing romantic 80s inspired jams. Here he comes making a jazz Hammond organ record at Dizzy’s Coca-Cola Club and jamming with Larry Goldings. Don’t look now but he’s hanging out in LA with his friends in Scary Pockets, or with his project Jake and Abe (a duo with drummer Abe Rounds). Is that him playing on the new Rosalia record? Wait, he plays harmonica? With Jacob Collier?  Maybe you heard him playing with Meshell Ndegeocello, Andrew Bird, Emily King, Bilal, Nick Hakim, or Chance the Rapper.  Yes, all of this is true. But who is Jake Sherman really? Born in Boston, Jake learned classical piano by listening to his father play Bach every morning. If not for an intervention - stumbling upon the catalog of Weird Al Yankovic at 11 years old - he would have followed in his father’s path or perhaps become a jazz purist.  But Weird Al changed everything.  Fast forward some years beyond his time studying at Berklee C

Saxophonist Melissa Aldana on growing up in Chile, her journey to America, practicing, teaching, numerology, playing the blues, “the gender thing”, learning to embrace imperfection, her new record “12 Stars”, her idea of success, and what she values most in music: sound, time and ideas. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.melissaaldana.net

David Poe is a songwriter’s songwriter. He refers to himself as “a songwriter of a certain age”. As a young man in Dayton, Ohio he got his first taste of success by winning a talent competition and using his prize (free studio time) to record what would become his first radio hit. That was back when a young musician might dream of a big record contract. He sings in a new song “Now I’m part of history, when the music cost money but the water was free.”  He has covered a lot of road since then and logged a lot of miles as a performing solo artist, producer, songwriter, collaborator, lecturer, and creative thinker.  David Poe is a kind of Zelig-like figure who appears where you least expect him, and somehow manages to fit right in wherever he shows up. At the same time, his songwriting and singing are distinctive, personal and cultivated. Talking to Poe, one is reminded that at their best, songwriters are our popular philosophers. Rather than creating a diversion from everyday life, they illuminate the human str

Amir ElSaffar has spent much of his life in search of the ecstatic moments that help connect to something bigger. In his case, he does this through his relationship with music and culture.  Trying to define or even explain what he does is not so simple, even for him. He leads five ensembles and has released seven albums over the past 16 years. His primary instrument is the trumpet, and he has devoted much of his career to expanding the vocabulary of the instrument. He also sings in the Arabic maqam idiom and plays the santur, the Iraqi hammered dulcimer. As a composer and band leader, he’s devoted to what he calls “transcultural creation” in which he explores the space in between jazz, Iraqi Maqam music, and various other musical traditions from around the world, which have included Spanish flamenco, and Egyptian tarab. In late 2021 he released The Other Shore with his Rivers of Sound ensemble.  We spoke recently about his ongoing search for the ecstatic by way of what he describes as the human “sea of conne

Sometimes when a child of a musician shows an interest or an aptitude in playing music themselves, it’s called “the curse”. Sometimes the curse is revealed in mysterious ways, and the cursed child might not even realize that they have the curse until something clicks in them, a light goes off, a switch flips.  In the case of Adam O’Farrill, he says he discovered his curse when, at 8 years old, he went to his older brother’s Zach’s middle school band concert and saw the trumpet player. Looking back on it, he admits that part of it was simply the shine and brilliance of the instrument - he was called to it. He certainly wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last to react that way.  But for Adam, it was really just a matter of time. For the cursed child, there is no escape. He’s a quiet but intense observer, an omnivorous receiver of inputs and inspirations, from foreign films to video games, literature to cuisine. And he’s also what some people would call musical royalty - the grandson of Afro-Cuban-Irish compos

Benny Benack III didn’t necessarily start out thinking he would be a hipster crooner. He spent his 10,000 hours dealing with the trumpet, and he’s still dealing with it. He tells me that he brings it with him everywhere - even on dates. He says, “Freddie Hubbard, Clifford Brown, Roy Hargrove, and Clark Terry were my early idols and everything about my musical identity is steeped in the trumpet vocabulary.” Benny Grew up in Pittsburgh, the third in a trilogy of musical Benny Benacks (he follows in the footsteps of his trumpeter/bandleader grandfather, Benny Benack, Sr., and his father Benny Benack, Jr., a saxophonist/clarinetist). Young Benny (sometimes he goes by the moniker BB3) was made very aware of his own family ties to the music and also the Pittsburgh tradition that also produced Roy Eldridge, Earl Hines, Art Blakey, Billy Strayhorn and so many more. Benny is a serious musician, a deep swinger, who clearly loves both the blues and a sweet melody. He loves to be on the scene; he leads a weekly jam sessi

When Lionel Loueke was coming of age as a young guitar player in his home country of Benin in West Africa, there were no music stores of any kind. He would have had to travel to Nigeria - the next country over - just to get his hands on some new strings. So he made due with what he had, cleaning and soaking, reusing his strings and even going so far as to tie knots in them when they broke. Lionel’s story is the stuff of legend. After finally getting his hands on a guitar as a teenager, he put together enough technique and understanding to get himself to the Ivory Coast to attend music school, and then managed to get to Paris for further musical study. Eventually he went to Berklee College of Music in Boston, and then to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at UCLA  in Los Angeles (now called the Hancock Institute) where he had the opportunity to study and work with his greatest mentors: Terence Blanchard, Wayne Shorter Herbie Hancock. Soon he began to work with those same mentors, appearing on albums by B

Before Tyler Duncan was a Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist producer/composer with credits including Carly Rae Jepsen, Vulfpeck, Lake Street Dive, Theo Katzman, Scary Pockets and Antwaun Stanley, he was just a kid from Michigan who was obsessed with bagpipes.  Tyler is still based in his hometown Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he makes artful, patient, beautifully crafted productions in his home studio.  We had a wide ranging conversation about “just how rich the world sounds”, how producing a project is like “being the surrogate parent” of the music, and how when it comes to making pop music, “You can’t mold yourself to a moving target.” Plus, more Vulfpeck origin stories. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.tylerduncan.work/about

Advice from friends and family ranging in age from 10 to 93 about how to stay young, what makes a meaningful life, ambition, desire, fear, success and music.  With  Sol Sidran, age 10Zelta Sils, age 10Zane Gruber Baruth, age 21Michael Thurber, age 34Michael Leonhart, age 47Jorge Drexler, age 57Daniel Levitin, age 63Gil Goldstein, age 71Ben Sidran, age 78Howard S. Becker, age 93 www.third-story.com