The Third Story with Leo Sidran

I can't think of anyone I would rather talk to right now than Jason Moran . Here we consider so much about history, and so much about the present moment in our country. The conversation is as deep as it is wide, and along the way Jason considers truth versus passion, promoting the "Freedom Principle", America's unfortunate way of forgetting the past, what happens when innovation becomes rhetoric,...

Orlando le Fleming is the kind of bass player who possesses that mysterious element, that sound, that groove, that thing that you want to hook up with. Maybe that's why some of the finest drummers in jazz have chosen Orlando to play in their groups - he logged serious miles playing with Jeff "Tain" Watts, Ari Hoenig, and Antonio Sanchez - three of the most influential drummers alive. And an early...

Saxophonist Richie Cole died on May 2, 2020. He lived a jazz life all the way. His playing, his demeanor and his philosophy were all contained in his catchphrase / modus operandi: Alto Madness.  "He was devoted to the bebop lifestyle," says his old friend Janis Siegel. But he was also torn between impulses to be a serious musician operating on the highest level, and to be an entertainer and make p...

Becca Stevens is a singer, songwriter, teacher and genuinely lovely person, and also one of the few repeat offenders on the Third Story Podcast. I first talked to her in 2015 and I remember our conversation as being truly connected, candid and comfortable. We had never met before but I left the experience feeling that we were genuinely friends. She has that thing about her that makes you feel like...

Josh Norek is a difficult man to define. He is generally a behind the scenes kind of guy - president of Regalías Digitales (a firm that helps hundreds of Latin recording artists collect their music royalties and license their songs to film and television productions), co-founder of the Latin Alternative Music Conference (LAMC), co-host of the nationally syndicated public radio show 'The Latin Alte...

Ron Sexsmith likes to take walks. "I was a courier for a number of years and I wrote most of the songs on my first couple albums on the job," he says "Whenever you're doing something that's kind of mindless, then your mind is free to roam. For me it's a good way to zero in on what I'm trying to say."  Very few songwriters develop the kind of skill and status that Ron Sexsmith has. He's a songwrite...

Curtis Stigers got his big break as a young man in the early 90s, with a top ten pop hit (1991's "Wonder Why"), followed by a series of soul-pop records. Around that time he also recorded a version of Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" for The Bodyguard soundtrack, which sold in the 10s of millions of copies. That is to say, Curtis got his start in the deep of the...

What is needed in these adverse times? We turn to our spirit guides, our philosopher kings, our rabbis: the musicians. Because although this particular form of adversity is new, musicians have been choosing to feel good in spite of adverse conditions for a long time.  In this episode, we explore the nature of the musician joke, particularly the jazz musician joke. Jokes about gigs, drummers, singe...

Since the very beginning of this podcast, my father (Ben Sidran) and I have been having occasional, timely conversations to process our own shared experience and often the experience of the world around us. Here we are again, contemplating the future after Covid-19, considering the consequences, and wondering what jazz has to do with it (and what it has to do with jazz). www.third-story.com www.pa...

A life in the theater must be a pretty serious thing, because in these conversations with members of the Broadway community, the conversations are brutally real, big picture, somewhat cosmic and profound. André De Shields , Dale Franzen , Michael Thurber , Schele Williams and Rob Jost all weigh in on the fate of the Great White Way.   Meanwhile, original music for this episode is culled from Insta...

How is the Coronavirus impacting the creative class? What happens when musicians lose their primary income overnight? What opportunities are there for creativity in this moment of social distancing? What is the conversation for performing musicians, online creators, and artists? How is it different in countries with a social safety net?  Victoria Canal , Jack Conte , Joe Dart , Joy Dragland , John...

Michael League is learning how to sleep. A friend sent him a book called Why We Sleep and reading it "rang a lot of bells". Until recently, he says, "the majority of my rationale for not sleeping was about guilt. Saying it out loud I realize how ridiculous it is."  Then again, he's responsible for a lot of creative output, and he feels "a lot of pressure". Michael is a composer, producer, and mult...

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 Powers' 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 ear...

Victoria Canal is a 21-year old Spanish-American, LGBTQ, differently-abled, singer-songwriter with a massively powerful message of diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Everything about Victoria is completely exceptional - from her life experience to her demeanor and her talent - and at the same time maybe her greatest gift is her empathic, generous spirit. She's just a good listener and incredibly...

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."...

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...

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...

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...

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 th...

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...

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 no...

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 philosop...

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 literar...

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...

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 spot...