The Third Story Podcast With Leo Sidran

Ten years ago, on a bit of a whim, I invited bassist Will Lee to come over to my home studio in Brooklyn to do an interview with me for a new project I was starting: a podcast. A year or two earlier, my friend Michael Fusco-Straub had turned me on to Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, and I was totally hooked on the concept of casual long form interviews among peers. At the time Maron spoke almost exclusively to comics, and I thought there might be a space for something similar but focused on music. Although I didn’t have any real experience as a journalist or a broadcaster, I knew I could do it. In fact, maybe more than anything else I’ve ever done professionally, it was the most natural decision I can ever remember making.  But the format was a bit of a mystery. Who was I supposed to be? An expert on music? A friend of my guests? I thought maybe we would perform together. Or maybe they would demonstrate something. Or maybe it would be a document of the local scene in New York - in the early episodes I asked my guest