The Third Story Podcast With Leo Sidran

Kat Edmonson will tell you that, “A lot of the time we don’t need permission to do great things.”  Kat Edmonson will say, “There are certain things we know about ourselves and we get in our own way assuming that there’s some gate we have to go through to be recognized to then finally say I’m allowed to do this now.” Kat Edmonson will tell you that “There’s a quiet power in merely having a dream.” Kat Edmonson knows of what she speaks. She is a dreamer, a romantic who knew she was destined to be a singer, songwriter and actress long before she knew how she would do any of it. Her new record Dreamers Do explores concepts around dreaming, “all of the wonderful things and the fearful things, the things that keep us awake in the middle of the night.” Here we talk about her journey out of the Lone Star State and into the Big Apple, her love of old well-made things, why “a tree is not scheming”, enjoying the moment, working with Woody Allen, loving “the limitations in a room”, acting vs singing, her new record, and

Video editor, bass player, recovering sketch comedy and improv player Mark Hervey on the journey that took him flying “too close to the sun”... twice. Along the way, he discusses why video editing is like playing bass (if it’s very noticeable, you’re probably doing too much), the alt comedy scene in New York in the 90s, what to do when the best work of your life goes uncredited, and how “death has no satisfactory resolution”. It's a real deep dive.  www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

Mark Guiliana is having at this very moment a profound influence on the way the drums are played. There’s a conversation happening in his playing between organic, traditional sounds and electronic music. Part of his innovation is to get his acoustic drums sounding more electronic, and to approach the drums in some ways as though he were a dj or a programmer.  Mark was born and raised in New Jersey, and until six months ago he lived there. Now he lives in LA. But he was in New York for the Winter Jazzfest - he was the artist in residence this year, which meant that he was invited to put together a series of shows and events. Over the course of the week, he did a different show every day with a different group, different configurations, some completely free improvised, some very organized, as is the case with his project Beat Music, his most electronic band.  The sound of Mark’s drumming and drums are so identifiable, and here he tells me that he thinks “Sound is everything.” He says “If the sound can be right,

Gilles Peterson is one of the most influential DJs and music curators in the world. Whether as a broadcaster, live DJ, record producer, festival organizer, or music curator, Peterson has devoted his life to finding, contextualizing, and presenting music from around the world. He sees his job as “connecting the dots.” One of Peterson’s most recent discoveries, Kassa Overall is, in the words of Time Out New York, “a Renaissance man: part chopsy, super-funky jazz drummer, and part rising producer-MC.” www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast  

Steven Bernstein, Peter Apfelbaum and Will Bernard are all innovative, creative and boundary pushing musicians who are equally at home in the avant garde as they are in the swamp. It comes as no surprise that they grew up together in Berkeley, California, exploring the edges of the music they loved, finding “controlled substances” in their parents’ freezers, and improvising freely. We recorded this conversation at the Winter Jazzfest in New York. Here they talk about looking forward, looking back, the musical concept of opposition, defying category, broken mirrors, free improvisation, why coffee is so expensive and music is so cheap, the musical conversation between Berkeley and New York, spontaneous composition, rock and roll, Jewish weddings, Sly Stone, Bill Laswell, Trey Anastasio, and why “sex” is still a dirty word in jazz. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

Here is what Caleb Hawley says about himself in his website biography: Caleb Hawley is a Harlem based, Minneapolis-raised singer, songwriter, and producer who has been shoveling Gobstoppers into ears for the past decade. Combining catchy melodies with dark and satirical lyrics, one has to be careful not to slip while dancing in a puddle of their own tears.  I don’t know about the Gobstoppers, but the rest of it feels pretty accurate to me. In our conversation he tells his journey of self discovery, addiction, creativity, Tourette Syndrome, longing, how telling the truth is like a drug, and why it’s so hard to write a happy song. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon and following the podcast on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. https://www.third-story.com https://www.calebhawley.com/

When Ari Herstand first came on the Third Story Podcast in 2016, he was still in the process of becoming. He struggled with the what he saw as a “duality” between being a musician / performing artist and a business person. Would success in one realm undermine success in the other? “I got to the point where I have accepted that I am equally both,” he tells me now.  “Success is very personal and nobody can really define success for you,” he says. And Ari has spent much of the last decade examining many of the biggest successes in the independent music business, analyzing them, and then teaching them, first through is blog Ari’s Take, and then in his book How To Make It In The New Music Business. The Second Edition was published in November of 2019. It remains at the top of the Amazon charts and has been widely adopted by music business schools worldwide. In fact, because of the success of both the book and the blog, he eventually started Ari’s Take Academy, an online music business school that he hopes will eve

Legendary recording engineer and producer Glyn Johns’ career and discography are so extensive that it’s very difficult to summarize quickly. The sound of his recordings has had an immeasurable influence on the way we listen to popular music, particularly Rock and Roll. The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Beatles, Eric Clapton... he worked with them all.  Here he talks about his philosophy of recording, producing, and managing a career in record making.  www.third-story.comwww.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.glynjohns.com

boice-Terrel Allen (better known simply as boice) is a podcast host, musician, and writer. His podcast, Talk Music Talk, started in 2014 and features long form conversations with musicians, authors, music psychotherapists and meditation teachers, DJs, musicologists, MacArthur Fellows, Grammy nominees and such from all musical genres. In 2019 he started his second podcast, The Strandcast, a literary podcast from the Strand Bookstore featuring author interviews, reading recommendations and literary horoscopes. To celebrate the 200th episode of Talk Music Talk, here the tables are turned and he lays out his personal and professional development, creativity, spirituality, Buddhism, depression, perseverance and love of Tina Turner. We also compare notes on podcast life, techniques, strategies, and ambitions. www.third-story.comwww.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast http://www.talkmusictalk.com/

Zev Feldman is an independent record producer who got started in the jazz business as a young man (in his early 20s) and came up through the ranks of sales (“schlepping a bag of CDs”), merchandising, marketing, distribution - all of the pieces of the business as it existed at the end of the last century. Over time he came to settle comfortably in an area of the jazzosphere that focuses on locating, unearthing and releasing previously unknown recordings. Some people know him as “the jazz detective.” Variety magazine called him “possibly the most widely admired archival producer working in the jazz field today,” Downbeat refers to him as “The Jazz Sleuth” and perhaps most famously, Stereophile Magazine called him “the Indiana Jones of jazz.”  He works with almost every major jazz label and many small independent labels, but his primary professional residence is with Resonance Records. He has shepherded the release of previously unknown recordings by the likes of Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Eric

Vulpeck keyboardist Woody Goss on his early days growing up in the suburbs of Chicago where he learned to elevate rhythm playing to high art, when he connected with the crew that would become his Vulf family at the University of Michigan, how talking about evolutionary psychology is emotional, why organized religion is dubious, where he likes to go bird watching, and who he really is when the spotlight is turned away. This conversation is surprisingly provocative, enlightening, and funny. Woody is not entirely as he appears to be. He is, in fact, much more. www.third-story.com https://woodygoss.bandcamp.com/ https://www.veryvulfychristmas.com/

When ALA.NI was growing up in West London, she wanted to be a ballerina. Eventually she realized that there were almost no black ballerinas and the message that was sent to her quietly but consistently was that there would be no easy place for her in the world of ballet. She started to sing. She loved musicals, especially The Sound Of Music, & Grease. Again and again, she was told that she didn’t sound “black enough” because she was so influenced by Julie Andrews and Judy Garland. Too black to dance, not black enough to sing, she started to feel like there was no way forward for her in London. Her father was a bass player, her great uncle had been a famous musician and singer from Grenada, Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson – one of the first musical success stories to emerge from the West Indies in post war England. She remembers spending her childhood tagging along with her father to pot-smoke filled rehearsal rooms and hearing the bands play. Despite her family’s creative background, she says, “I love my family

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Camila Meza on growing up in Chile, the nature of translation, improvisation, self observation, bootleg videotapes, identity, cruise ship living, synesthesia and distortion. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.camilameza.com

The world is full of talented people you’ve never heard of, and it’s quite possible that Ryan Scott is one of them. Around New York, if you know about Ryan Scott, then you know. “Ryan Scott?” Enough said. Funky? Oh yes. Soulful? Unquestionably. Prepared to surrender himself totally to the music and the moment at all times? Affirmative.  But if you don’t know, it can be difficult to catch up. Ryan Scott doesn’t make it too easy to find him. He claims it’s not intentional. “You just have to know the right people,” he tells me. Indeed.  Ryan spent years waiting for someone to throw him a bone before ultimately deciding that “there was no bone.” He worked as a sideman, session cat, songwriter for hire, wedding singer, “jazzy jazz jazz” player, and probably plenty more things that he still won’t mention. Eventually he decided to start saying no to the rent work and start saying yes to the muse. The good news is that he made a killer solo record, the bad news is that the rent might be late this month.  He released

When Adam Sandler first sang his “Hannukah Song” on SNL in 1994, even he was surprised by the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response it received. He was singing something we all understood even if we didn’t know the details: The Jewish contribution to American comedy and entertainment is significant, undeniable, indelible. And the American contribution to global popular culture in the last century is equally palpable. So… what? One question to ask is, is the Jewish comedy of today related in any way to the Jewish comedy of yesterday? And if so, how? Are there themes in Jewish comedy that go all the way back to the beginning of Jewish thought, and if so, what are they, how were they represented historically, and how do they show up in contemporary examples? Wanna know? Jeremy Dauber wrote the book on the subject, Jewish Comedy: A Serious History. We spoke recently in his office at Columbia University about how comedy evolves through context, the “complicated relationship of ownership and loss” among contemporary

Peter Himmelman had momentum. Before he had a decades long career, videos on MTV (back when there were videos on MTV), Grammy and Emmy nominations, Parents Choice Awards, critical acclaim, a family, TV and movie scores… before any of that, he had momentum. Peter came out swinging, with something prove and something to offer. He was motivated in part by what he describes here as a “reigning sense of isolation”. He grew up in a Minneapolis suburb and came of age in the 70’s at a time when funk and punk were both beginning to flourish and “children were still allowed to be feral”. By the time he graduated from high school, there was no question to him or his family that he was going to be some kind of a musician. He started hanging out in the predominantly black North Side area of Minneapolis, tagging along with soul singer Alexander O’Neal, and doing his best imitation of blues musician Luther Allison. He tells me “maybe learning is not really possible without modeling - through that modeling you gain some mast

Richard J. Davidson had an intuition early on that the mind was fundamental to human experience. As a child of the 60s he believed early on that “if we wanted to promote a different way of seeing the world, we needed to change our minds.” At the same time that he began to dabble in meditation and mind training, he also became a serious student and began a path that ultimately became his life’s work.  He is the founder and chair of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. As Davidson explains it, the mission of the Center is to “cultivate well being and relieve suffering through a scientific understanding of the mind.” Davidson has been a longtime friend of the Dalai Lama, and in fact it was the Dalai Lama himself who encouraged and even challenged him to find a way to bring together his two interests (meditation and science) and communicate his findings. Time Magazine named Davidson one of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2006. We met up recently at the Center for

Chris Potter is an incredibly influential saxophone player. Downbeat Magazine has called him “one of the most studied (and copied) saxophonists on the planet”. In this introspective and philosophical conversation he talks about art, the search for something new, what motivates him today, what he sees as his role, responsibility and contribution to the history of jazz. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://www.chrispottermusic.com/

David Maraniss has a motto: go there. What he means is that when he’s researching one of his books, whether it’s a biography of a person or the history of a place and time, he believes that in order to fully understand the story, he has to go to the physical location. Not, like, just for a weekend. He really goes there. He moves in.  But there’s another meaning behind the phrase “go there”. He moves in, not only to the space, but also to the nuance, subtlety, complexity of a life, of a time, of the history, sociology, feeling of his subject. He gets totally obsessed. He says he can’t write a book about something if he’s not obsessed with it.  Fortunately, throughout his career, he has managed to get obsessed with plenty. He’s written many celebrated biographies including books about Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Vince Lombardi, and Roberto Clemente, and books about social, political and cultural importance (like Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed The World and They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peac

Musician, singer, writer, producer, philosopher... Ben Sidran is a hard person to define. He belongs in multiple categories, or none at all. He says that his main focus throughout a career that began 50 years ago has been to document what he saw, felt, and heard, by way of various “idioms” (including performances, interviews, essays, recordings, etc.). That’s why he sees himself primarily as a journalist. Or at least, he sees what he does as a form of journalism.  I’ve been engaged in a series of conversations - one long conversation really - with Ben Sidran since before I could really talk. We often pick up where we left off days, weeks or even years earlier, on any number of topics. So to conduct a formal interview with him is almost impossible for me. There’s simply too much history between us, because I know him so well, because we’ve been over it a hundred times before, because he’s my dad.  We’re more comfortable co-hosting, discussing, debating, having more open ended conversations. In fact, he has eve