The Jake Feinberg Show

Prior to full interconnection and the complete digitization of music mastering we had in this country pockets of eccentric engineers who more often then not wore more than one hat. Rudy Van Gelder held down the fort in Englewood Cliffs while performing optometry in the daytime. Michael Cuscuna found his way to Woodstock engineering Bonnie Raitt all the while hosting free form radio programs and wr...

In the great lexicon of drummers some are often equipped with a lot to say. They know their primary job is to accompany and swing the band but it hard when they have their own thing to say. Mose Allison once said that producers and A&R guys wanted drummers to play backbeat in order to make a hit song or record. While there is nothing wrong with backbeat it has in some ways has stilted what dru...

My show has been dedicated to entrepreneurs. Creators of percussive instruments that increase the sonic nature of music. The "Mark Tree" and the water phone, the Gravity Adjusters Expansion Band and New Music of the West. My show has also been dedicated to  the congero. The hand drum that was introduced to this country by Dizzy Gillespie when he brought Chano Pozo to the states. The same can...

Sicily is 17 miles from the coast of Africa which is where the origins of rhythm lie. The ancestral heritage of that country bled into the soul of my guests family who came to this country to play straight ahead, pulsating melodic invention, syncretic music engrained in New Orleans, supported by the mob and appreciated across the world. My guest is a bone player who came up as an original left coa...

I started my show the day after Gabrielle Giffords was nearly assassinated in Tucson (01/08/11). The entire community was in a state of shock and for this host I was just Trying to get my sea legs on the radio. While the community was mourning my guest was going through a transformation of his own. From Space Navigator to family pillar, from Desert Storm Patriot to healer, from an abstract belief...

Spiritual horn player talks about his gravitational pull towards tribal burning music that makes the masses uncomfortable. 

Most people think of the violin as a classical instrument. Most classical cats are pretty uptight. It takes someone with unbridled passion and bravery to step outside and swing down a lazy river road, through the heart of Memphis, or play rock with jazz asthetics. Because when you play the blues you have to throw the book away. My guest came from an era when you could be an impoverished improviser...

Bad to the bone artist talks about his life on the bandstand. 

My first experience with "The Motherland" was playing with the Umoja (Unity) Ensemble. We were scheduled to play in "The Rumble In The Jungle." We were scheduled to be on that show. Miles booked some gigs in Europe so I couldn't do it. The next time I visit Africa we're going over there for the 50th Anniversary of their revolution in Ghana. I stayed a bit in Ghana, the next year I was made a Chief...

A continual discussion of rhythm and love

Sonically Lazy 7/7 by Mtume ​I always looked at sampling like somebody making a quilt. The quilt is made up of many other blankets. You have to learn how to make your own blanket. ​I don’t down hip hop. I think it was a very creative thing, because for the young black kids, music was taken out of the schools. When was the last time anybody’s seen a music store in a black neighborhood? Maybe thirty...

Back in the 50s and 60s you could find no more Racist state in America than Alabama. Swampland and urban squalor blacks getting hosed down and the overt fears of one race towards another was revealed. These overt acts of hostility provided character development from folks like my guest who grew up playing black clubs on the Chitlin circuit. Because of the communal/spiritual nature of music it push...

The success of Batdorf and Rodney was a confluence of factors. They came of age during free form radio. You might here The Flying Burrito Brothers followed by Cannonball followed by Buck Owens. The jam circuit was alive and well for these seasoned woodsheders. They could go coast to coast have a week or more engagement building indigenous fan bases because you were in such close proximity to the b...

On Wolfgang (Bill Graham) When I was in college I was real tight with a few of the guys from Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) which was a band that emanated out of the area. The whole spirit of that area was beautiful. I remember being on the Chitlin Circuit and we'd go up Mandrakes to play a gig. We had a manager named Bruce Gladner who's company was Shady Management and my god if there ever w...

Go Ahead ​by Jerry Cortez ​What turned into Go Ahead had several different incarnations. The first was a band called Kokomo, which featured Billy, Brent Mydland, David Margen, and Kevin Russell. Billy was the only member of the Grateful Dead in Go Ahead. Apparently, Brent was kind of in the wings saying, “That sounds like fun; I want to be part of that.” So Brent got involved and eventually Bob We...

Seasoned pol talks about advocating for human rights and liberties. 

This journey has provided me with an education. The education has occurred because those who seek have always sought truth. In the case of my guest it was the stone truth of music and the musicians who made it. The swing of Dixie and the marching bands. The Ed Bogas Soundtrack Machine and the clave beat of Cal Tjader. Boys turn to men because they believe they can play with the titans - no barrier...

My guest today has been a band leader for over 60 years. He made his name playing the vibes which is this hosts favorite instrument. It's a percussion instrument with a warm sound and can be played in a trio setting the way Red Norvo did with Tal Farlow and Mingus or in a Quintet setting like Cal Tjader did with Armando Peraza, Al mcKibbon and Dick Birk. It fits into all types of musical settings...

Art is to be shared and not to be judged. Shared in a world of non conformity with others who bring their own gifts to a project. In the case of my guest he is saint maybe his hardest critic because he at a relatively early age got his feet wet under the tutelage of Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye and Allan Ginsberg: he experienced the power of music as transcendental and knows that this can only manif...

Iconic Bay Area drummer talks about the funk roots of Oakland and playing every night as if his life depended on it. 

Too often in life we desire bigger things failing to see what we have in front of us. Unable to appreciate how far you and your bandmates have come. Can you see the growth and painstaking groans of a space bound child sent flying at a summer music festival or the Brooklyn Bowl. Blue Eyed Soul was Boz Scaggs gig but my guest is doing the Blue Eyed Blues.... sticktuitiveness that resembles the gritt...

Within the belly of the beast in this country lies the soul turnaround of African Preachers from the South. They need to be black because certain portions of blacks were enslaved and some say they still are. They have to be black because they need to have good rhythm. They need to be from the south where Montgomery and Birmingham are seared into the minds of every kid who watched the black and whi...

NOLA bass player talks about creating the foundations of funk!

While this host has primarily looked state side for hotbeds of regional music there were cities north of the border that were just as impressive. North of the motor city lies Toronto in Canada which was a mix of immigrants and hillbillies. Farmers and Fishers and Indians all there to seek independence from the culture of conformity. Cats from cabbage town or the rural country where pussywillows an...

In the live music experience the most important aspects that can be conveyed to the audience are authenticity and individuality. True nature and differentiation. Not being a good rock star helps. You wear any old clothes and grab a hot meal not leaving on a jet plane but taking a bus. The conundrum comes into play when a non-conformist becomes part of a mainstream sensation. Then the planes are wa...