The Third Story with Leo Sidran

Latest Episodes:

116: Rick Margitza Dec 21, 2018

Show notes

As a boy in Detroit, Michigan, Rick Margitza's mother asked him "do you want to hear a recording of your grandfather playing cello"? Then she put on the Charlie Parker with Strings album. After hearing Charlie Parker play, Rick knew that he wanted to be a jazz saxophone player.

Margitza's paternal grandfather, a Hungarian Gypsy violinist, taught him to play the violin at the age of four. His father also played violin with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (and recorded on classic Motown sessions). So it was almost inevitable that Rick would be a musician, and he was drawn to jazz.

He loved the sound of what he calls "the white Jewish tenor player" school of playing: Michael Brecker, Steve Grossman, Dave Liebman, Bob Berg and (apparent honorary Jew) Jerry Bergonzi.

Rick bounced around from music school to music school in his 20s, and ended up in New Orleans playing on the local scene and finishing school. He was thinking about moving to New York and wondering if it was already too late for that. His childhood friend and future record producer Matt Pierson (see Episode 5) encouraged Rick to make a demo tape before making the move, Rick obliged.

That demo tape ended up moving a lot of history. Pierson played the tape for the president of Blue Note records, Bruce Lundvall, who signed Rick to a contract based on what he heard on the tape. Pierson also played the tape for Tommy LiPuma (see Episodes 33 and 69) who in turn played it for Miles Davis over the phone, and Miles hired Margitza on the spot based on what he heard on the tape.

What was on that tape?

Here Rick tells the story of what happened next, what it was like to be thrust into the jazz limelight overnight, working with Miles, moving to France, dividing the octave and choosing the right note.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

115: Joe Dart Dec 07, 2018

Show notes

Joe Dart was on his way to Boston. He had enrolled in the Berklee College of music - a somewhat inevitable step for the young, very talented bass player from rural Michigan who loved funk and soul music. Although he had already been performing regularly in and around his home of Harbor Spriannngs, Michigan, he knew he would have to get out of town to achieve his goal of being a touring and recording bass player. But he didn't go. Something kept him in Michigan and at the last minute he changed his plans and decided to move to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan instead.

Any guesses what that one thing might have been?

You're probably right.

Anyway, it didn't take him long to meet the musicians who would change his life and trajectory. Within weeks of moving to Ann Arbor, a jam session with Jack Stratton reoriented both of them. Along with Theo Katzman, Woody Goss, and a continually expanding collection of regular players (including Cory Wong, Antwaun Stanley and Joey Dosik) and special guests (like drummers James Gadson, Bernard Purdie, Michael Bland, and Louis Cole) Joe Dart became both the backbone and the bottom end of Vulfpeck. Through their youtube videos, Vulfpeck has become the subject of enormous fanaticism and enthusiasm for a new generation of funk loving hipsters. And Joe Dart has inspired a special kind of fervor from fans, fed in part by the band's own Jack Stratton who seems committed to making sure Joe Dart becomes a household name among the internet connected backbeat illuminati.

Joe and I got together last month in an Airbnb in Paris to talk about how "the way you groove has power", why the magic of Vulfpeck is in the freshness of the music, what it means to "play every note like my life depends on it", if his vigorous head bobbing influences his groove, and where he learned to play bass "like a drummer".

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

114: John Fields Nov 12, 2018

Show notes

John Fields was a normal kid growing up in a normal family in the Boston suburbs, in prime position to take over his father's hosiery business. Instead, he moved to Minneapolis straight after high school to hang out with his uncle Steve Greenberg, whose hit "Funkytown" had been a huge international success.

Fields quickly became his uncle's right hand man, learning the ropes as an engineer, producer, and bass spanker. His band Greazy Meal was a mainstay on the Minneapolis scene in the 1990s, and his early record production work earned him a reputation as an enthusiastic, creative and very fast collaborator.

Eventually he moved to Los Angeles where he worked with some of the biggest names in pop, r&b and rock music, including Pink, Jonas Brothers, Switchfoot, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, Semisonic, Selena Gomez, and a whole lot more.

In 2016 he moved his operation back to Minneapolis and set up shop in the legendary Creation Audio studios building, where he had interned years earlier as a teenager. John continues to do work from the west coast, but more and more he's celebrating and elevating the music from his adopted hometown. Lately, for example, he's been working with Cory Wong, the guitarist for Vulfpeck.

We got together in his studio earlier this year to talk about working fast, the importance of the second verse, why the artist is often right, how he finds work, what it means to write pop music today, why he has such big downbeats and if the first thought really is the best thought.

John says, "I just try to be stoked." As you will hear, he definitely succeeds.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

113: John Leventhal Oct 16, 2018

Show notes

John Leventhal thinks his initial, preanalytical ideas are the good ones. John Leventhal realized that there "really is no daddy, there isn't anybody who really has it all together, knows all the answers. You're kind of in the wilderness. You have to take a chance to fail." John Leventhal isn't sure how to measure success. John Leventhal is a self invented guy.

Despite his five Grammys, his critically and commercially successful work as musician, producer, songwriter, and recording engineer who has produced albums for William Bell, Michelle Branch, Rosanne Cash, Marc Cohn, Shawn Colvin, Rodney Crowell, Joan Osborne, Loudon Wainwright III, and many others, he's still wondering if he's made it.

As a musician he has worked with these artists as well as Jackson Browne, Willie Nelson, Bruce Hornsby, Elvis Costello, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Haden, David Crosby, Levon Helm, Edie Brickell, Paul Simon, Patty Larkin, Susan Tedeschi, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Steve Forbert, Kelly Willis, Donald Fagen, and Johnny Cash.

As a songwriter he has had over 150 songs recorded by various artists, including Rosanne Cash, Shawn Colvin, Marc Cohn, Michelle Branch, The Tedeschi Trucks Band, Vince Gill, George Strait, Shelby Lynne, Patty Loveless, Joe Cocker and William Bell.

We met over the summer met in his Manhattan studio, which occupies one floor of the home he shares with his wife, singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash. We talked about his process in the studio, how he developed his own personal approach to making music, and why even the simplest questions can have complicated answers.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

112: Mary Sweeney Sep 30, 2018

Show notes

Mary Sweeney needs some air. "There has to be a flow of fast and slow, and a pause to allow the listener or the spectator to digest and to project their own thoughts." She thinks I should leave more space in my podcasts, to let it breathe. She tells me this as we sit in the screened in porch behind her summer house in Madison, Wisconsin. As she tells me this, cicadas chirp loudly, as if to underscore her point: "Today's episode will not be edited! You will not remove us from this moment!"

Mary Sweeney should know. She spent much of her career as a film editor, producer and writer collaborating with David Lynch. Beginning in 1985 with Blue Velvet, and continuing through the 2006 film Inland Empire, her editing credits include Blue Velvet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990), Twin Peaks (1991), Industrial Symphony (1991), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), On the Air (1992), Hotel Room(1993), Lost Highway (1996), The Straight Story (2000), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Baraboo (2009). The relationship with Lynch was productive, fruitful, and nuanced (the two were partners in work and in life for much of that time) and they have a son together.

She is currently working as a consulting producer and writer on Matthew Weiner's series for Amazon, The Romanoffs, and is the Dino and Martha De Laurentiis Endowed Professor of film at USC, where she teaches Graduate Screenwriting Thesis and "Dreams, The Brain and Storytelling."

Before we had this conversation, Mary cheekily emailed me a list of topics that she would be happy to discuss. They included editing, producing, screenwriting, parenting, Paris, Cairo, pie baking, and the Catholic Church. Guess what we talked about? All of it.

And we also talked at length about living and working in an intensely creative partnership with David Lynch for all those years (both personally and professionally), collaborating with one of the most innovative voices in film, and what's so great about coming from a big family. Visit the Patreon Page for an extra 20 minutes of juicy conversation that didn't make it into this edit.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

111: Nate Chinen Aug 22, 2018

Show notes

I first reached out to Nate Chinen to do an interview in 2015. At that time, I knew him as the jazz critic for the New York Times and a columnist for Jazz Times, and I also loved the book he wrote with George Wein Myself Among Others. (I interviewed George a few years ago as well.)

In the intervening years, Nate left the New York Times, became the Director of Editorial Content at WBGO (one of the most important jazz radio stations in the country) and wrote the book Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century, which was published last week.

Reading Playing Changes was a revelation for me. In it, Nate synthesizes many of the tendencies in and arguments around jazz over the last 20 years, and presents a case for contemporary jazz today. He also traces the narrative back to the 1970s, a time when jazz was in transition, and stitches together the disparate threads of the music that have emerged since then into a cohesive fabric.

Chinen is obviously a fan of the music, but it's clear in his book that he's also a fan of musicians as well.

I spent an afternoon with him in his home in Beacon, New York, talking about Playing Changes, jazz criticism, displaced backbeats, the importance of live music, and the trouble with trying to define what music should and shouldn't be. This is a conversation I've waited a long time to have and it was absolutely worth the wait.

Visit the Patreon Page for an extra 20 minutes of juicy conversation that didn't make it into this edit.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

110: Howard S. Becker Aug 07, 2018

Show notes

Sociologist and musician Howard S. Becker is 90 years old. While he is best known for his contributions to the sociology of deviance, sociology of art and sociology of music (his book Oustiders from 1963 was one of the first and most influential books on deviance), he also spent many of his early years playing piano in taverns, saloons and even strip clubs.

As a young man in Chicago, while attending the University of Chicago in the 1940s he also studied piano with the legendary jazz pianist and teacher Lennie Tristano, and performed with local players of the day including Lee Konitz and Bill Russo.

In 2009 Becker published "Do You Know…?" The Jazz Repertoire in Action, a book he co-wrote with his friend, colleague and fellow academic-musician Robert R. Faulkner. In it, the two discuss and describe how songs are passed on from person to person and how working musicians' repertoire survives and evolves.

I spoke with Howard in his apartment in Paris (he spends part of every year in Europe, where he has become something of an academic celebrity in recent years) last November. We talked about how in his day live music was a function of geography, strong union leadership, and cheap beer, and why jazz is like philosophy (the only money is teaching).

This conversation is a companion to the Mobtown series of episodes from 2017, and it features an introductory conversation between my and my father, Ben.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

109: Ben Wikler, Anat Shenker-Osorio, Dan Kaufman Jul 16, 2018

Show notes

Madison, Wisconsin in the 1960s was one of the most radicalized university campuses in the country. It was a center for the kind of counter culture that has come to feel like a cliché today. There was plenty of sex, drugs, and rock & roll, sure. But there was also political activism, civil rights, environmentalism.

Because of the University of Wisconsin, thousands of young people move through Madison and take the values of the city with them when they leave.

Earlier this summer, The Madison Reunion brought over one thousand people with ties to Madison in the 60s back together for three days of meetings, discussions and panels, held at the University of Wisconsin's Memorial Union. The event was billed as "a party with a purpose" and had the feeling of both a nostalgic walk down memory lane and a reignition for a generation of activists who were referred to by journalist Jeff Greenfield as "the long ago young".

Although I wasn't in Madison in the 1960s, it is fair to say that I'm a byproduct of that time. My parents met there in the mid 60s and I grew up in Madison in the shadow of the revolution, part of a generation that was raised to feel that we had just missed something major.

So at the Madison Reunion, I moderated a panel of three other Madison natives, all of whom left Madison after high school, to talk about the impact of the city, the values and the Madison-state-of-mind on their lives, careers and overall point of view. Ben Wikler (Washington director of MoveOn.Org), Anat Shenker-Osorio (writer, researcher and communications specialist) and Dan Kaufman (musician and journalist) joined me in conversation.

While the panel began with a simple overview of what it meant to come up in the 80s and 90s in Madison, it quickly moved into more contemporary questions of working with the media today and what the legacy of the 60s might be in a modern context.

By the end of the conversation, I was slightly overwhelmed by how much work there is to do in order to stay ahead of (or just in touch with) the way political and cultural messaging is manipulated today. But I was also highly encouraged and inspired just hearing the three panelists talk. As long as Ben, Anat and Dan are out here fighting the good fight, making sure the right messages are being communicated, and telling the important stories, there is hope.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

108 - Lage Lund Jul 06, 2018

Show notes

What is there to say about guitarist Lage Lund that hasn't already been said? Not much. And plenty.

Lage has been a fixture on the New York jazz scene since moving here in the early 2000s as a "skinny kid from Norway with dreads". The dreads are long gone, and there is very little about him today to indicate that he grew up in a small Norwegian city (Skien) where he had to take a three hour train ride to Oslo to buy the latest jazz albums, and that before he was one of the most creative and virtuosic guitarists of his generation, he was a frustrated skateboarder with no place to skate "vert".

A regular in the "Rising star – Guitar" category in the Downbeat Critic's Poll, he has been hailed by Pat Metheny as a favorite young guitarist, and is "all music and all soul" according to Russell Malone - one of the judges who awarded Lund top prize in the 2005 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. Of Lund, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel once said, "Of the younger cats, Lage is THE one. He's a wonderful player. Scary actually!"

Acclaimed as one of the finest guitarists in jazz, Lund has performed and recorded with artists like Ron Carter, Mulgrew Miller, Wynton Marsalis, Maria Schneider, Carmen Lundy, David Sanchez, Seamus Blake and many others.

He is currently preparing three new projects: "Lage Lund Lonely Band" The upcoming release "Party Of One" has Lund covering all parts in each aspect of the process: writing, arranging, performing, recording, producing as well as directing music videos; a new Criss Cross release of all original material, written for and developed by his longstanding quartet consisting of Sullivan Fortner, Matt Brewer & Tyshawn Sorey. And a duo album with pianist Bryn Roberts.

Lage came over recently to talk about who influenced him, where he's looking when he plays, when he discovered that guitar doesn't suck, how musicians communicate, what happened to swing, and why jazz musicians drink natural wine.

This Episode also features an extensive introduction by my guest co-host for the week, singer/ songwriter Joy Dragland. Joy also happens to be married to Lage.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

107: Brendan B. Brown Jun 21, 2018

Show notes

Talking to Brendan B. Brown about his life and music is like talking to a dozen guys at once. There's the singer-songwriter - the guy who wrote the hit song "Teenage Dirtbag" and created the band Wheatus nearly 2 decades ago, and who has been riding that wave ever since. This is the guy who writes brilliant, provocative, genre bending pop songs, and who tours stadiums in the UK and Australia.

There's the kid who grew up in a "lobster town in decline" on long island in the 80s and was sent to an all boys high school an hour away because his parents panicked after a satanic murder took place in the woods behind his house. This is the guy who ultimately ended up moving into the extra house on his parents property, building a work-live space and staying there well into adulthood.

There's the gear geek - the one who wants to know about each microphone, guitar amp, drum head and compressor used on all the records he loves. This is the guy who remembers every piece of equipment he ever bought and can explain why he cares deeply for the kind of equipment that most people would find little value in.

There's the punk from the east village - the guy who spent the 90s at the Mercury Lounge and the Luna Lounge, attacking New York city with a raw, DIY "anti" attitude that he continues to carry with him to this day.

There's the music fan. (This is the episode in which more specific examples of music have been given than any other on the Third Story before.)

At the core, Brendan is a natural, self taught, self invented, homebody who seems to be firing on all cylinders at all times. He is intensely curious and passionate about what he does, what he thinks, what he thinks he does, and what he does about what he thinks.

I recently met with Brendan in his studio on Long Island - the same one where he has recorded almost all of his albums, and which happens to be on the property where he grew up. Here he talks about the power and responsibility of writing a hit song, what it's like to have your dreams come true, and how to recover when they don't.

The episode features an introductory conversation with my old friend and musical collaborator Joy Dragland.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

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