Planetary Gig Talk

Stephen Jay is a fabulous musician, composer, and really smart and spiritual guy! He has played based in Weird Al Yankovic's band for decades, but also has amazing insights and stories, such as music in Africa during his younger years. He also is working on new discoveries about rhythm and pitch, as he explains in this podcast. We recorded this under the Pavilion one afternoon at Wooten Woods duri...

Roy "Futureman" Wooten has been playing music with his brothers his entire life. I was fortunate to be able to talk with him for the 100th Planetary Gig Talk podcast at Wooten Woods while there for Victor Wooten's Spirit of Music camp. Please check out this amazing performer and futurist thinker. Here are some of the conversational tidbits for you: - Roy says artists and musicians are carrying the...

Vance Umphrey says, "Music was there before I can start remembering anything." His mother was a singer and his grandfather was a choir director. Vance began playing with the family's electric piano when he was 5 and started lessons when about 10-11. He joined the middle school band and took percussion. So, when he went to Humboldt for college, he ended up with a double performance major in percuss...

Dan played music at school growing up in California, and was in several bands, but also conducted music. He says music education is very important, like team sports, but it is not competitive, and helped him get in touch with his emotions while growing up. Although he dropped out of college to be in the music industry as a session musician and record producer, he eventually went back to get his de...

Greg Crossfield started with music in church, played trombone from 4th grade through high school, and later came back to music with guitar. He says, "I have a belief about music, that music has an interest in what it wants us to do with it." He likes to share music with people who don't play by showing them how to play Ode to Joy on two strings of the guitar. "To be a musician means to facilitate...

Mester Bo and Tina Israni form the group Ritual Sound in Copenhagen, and conduct sound baths by playing singing bowls, gongs, and the handpan. Their goal is for every home on the planet to have at least one singing bowl. Bo's mother played piano, and Bo played various instruments through his life, guitar, piano, and saxophone, but a few years ago found the handpan, which is like an inverted steel...

Singing has been Sara Wood's passion her entire life; she just happens to also be an association executive. She started singing with a children's chorus when she was 11 years old and sang classical and opera, before beginning to sing Barbershop harmony six years ago. When singing Barbershop, you're focused entirely on singing together, she says. "For those few minutes, I feel a freedom and peace t...

Chef Daniel Ben-David is currently a chef at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego and has a passion for music, art, and cooking. His father was a chef growing up in South Africa, and music was always playing in their house and at parties. Chef Daniel says that when you put music and food together it becomes more of a unity rather than an event and it is very natural. Chef says there is almost alway...

Dave "Razz" Rasmussen grew up in a family that played music around the house all the time. His mother was a pianist who played piano until very late in life. His father played the gut bucket, and Razz's brother and sister played music too. He remembers living in Hawaii at the Navy base where everyone was playing ukulele, but he liked guitar because it had two more strings. He was constantly playin...

Zach had a lot of music around his house growing up, as his mother is a musician and music teacher. He focused on sports when young, but then his parents got him an acoustic guitar when he graduated from high school. It was in college in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado, he says, when he "really started writing from my heart and my soul." It helped him get some peace and tranquility in his lif...

Tara Linhardt is a musician, educator, photographer, event coordinator, and movie maker. She didn't have a lot of music in her house growing up, but started playing guitar at seven just because it was fun! She then played music with friends in high school and began playing the mandolin. She got serious about music when she spent time in college in Nepal and Thailand, even using music as meditation...

Elijah Wald is a American folk blues guitarist and music historian, and 2002 Grammy Award winner. He says there was always music around when he was young. He started playing when he was seven and, after seeing Pete Seeger when he was eight or nine, he decided he wanted to be a musician. He also was influenced by Woody Guthrie's book Bound for Glory and, after studying with Dave Van Ronk in New Yor...

Elena Mannes had music in her life "from the womb" and many musicians in her family, so it is no surprise that she is an award-winning author of a book and director of a documentary movie on music. The book is titled The Power of Music and the movie is The Music Instinct: Science and Song . The book includes great information about music and along with the movie are both listed on the Planetary Gi...

Tracy Silverman remembers listening to music with his father as young as 2 or 3 years old and by 5, he had been totally smitten by the violin and started taking lessons. He practiced incessantly and eventually attended The Juilliard School. After that, he started playing in rock bands and began making electric 6 string violins. "I wanted to play violin so it sounded like an electric guitar because...

Dave Welsch says, "I don't remember a time when there wasn't music in my life." His mother played piano, his father played trumpet and had weekend gigs, and Dave's first performance in front of an audience was when he was nine years old; he was gigging with his father at about fourteen. He learned music mainly by ear and playing along with records. He met Victor Wooten in 1994 and helped create Vi...

Both Bob and Ira have been smitten by bluegrass music most of their lives. Bob's band Big Hillbilly Bluegrass played a regular gig at Madam's Organ in DC for about 20 years, and through that made a connection that led to invites from State Department public affairs offices at various foreign missions. They eventually brought their bluegrass music to over 30 countries in Africa and Asia. Bob says,...

Roddy Barnes grew up on a farm but knew he wanted to play the piano when he was only three years old. He ended up taking lessons a few years later and got his college degree in classical performance on piano. But he always loved Black church music and called it "that good music," and now plays blues, jazz, and gospel. He says, music is a "thing that we need," and healing the psyche is what we are...

Richard Lewellen fell in love with music as a toddler, watching movies such as Aladdin, Fantasia, and the Jungle Book, and the amazing music in those films. His mother was a classically trained pianist and his father loved jazz. Richard was a Beatles fan in middle school and played guitar, but was introduced to Barbershop harmony singing at age 14 and it has been a huge part of his life since then...

Will Ackerman plays guitar beautifully and has inspired many people with the heart in his music, including his many records and the artists he produced as founder of Windham Hill Records. He listened to music all the time as a youngster, and used to call in to Jim Lange's show on KGO radio to request songs. He was even interviewed by Lange when he was young and saw the record business. He also kne...

Paula Bellenoit had a lot of music in her life when young, and started taking piano lessons at age six. She took lessons for many years, played in a wedding band at age 16, and then was music director of the church choir when about 19. She loves music with a purpose, the kind of music that could "make me soar." She says, "Music can affect your emotions" and "takes you places you might not have gon...

Milagros Phillips grew up in a musical family and she says, "Music was always in my life." She was always singing as a child, various eclectic forms of music, but stopped singing in her teens because of an issue with a teacher. She started singing again when a friend asked her to sing in her wedding. She then discovered a new way of using her voice, in sound therapy, which came naturally and intui...

Scott Ainslie's mother played piano, and he started learning to play music at the same time he learned to talk, about 3 years old. He played all sorts of instruments, but when he first heard John Jackson sing and play guitar, that was his first taste of vital, homemade, handmade music. Scott sought out John and other experienced musicians. He says, "I'm a strong believer in the power and necessity...

Marcus Sims started playing music and writing songs early in his life and played with his brothers in a bluegrass band. He says, "Music comes naturally, so you can jump into it." In this podcast, Marcus explained TaKeTina, which is a musical activity for the purpose of creating inner peace and learning about life. Marcus says, we are rhythmic and have rhythm in us; life is rhythm, but modern human...

David Julian Gray has been playing music for 60 years; the clarinet chose him to be his main instrument. He remembers hearing music when he was just 4 years old and being profoundly influenced; he had never experienced such pleasure before and music has been the most important thing in his life since then. He says, "All that we experience as so-called reality is the intersection of vibration." He...

Arminda Thomas grew up in Memphis and her parents always had music playing. She sang a lot as a child but didn't really play an instrument, until Guy Davis left a banjo at her house and she started playing. She also remembers that, when both of her grandmothers passed close in time, she began researching the music they would have listened to when young, which led her to discover the wide variety o...