Jeff Goldblum Gets Jazzy

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. I love Jeff Goldblum. Over a fifty year acting career, He's played unforgettable roles like the snarky scientist in Jurassic Park, he saved the world from an alien invasion with Will Smith in Independence Day, and most recently, he was Incredible and Thor Ragnarok. Next year he'll being the newest installment of Jurassic Park. And Jeff even has his own show on Disney Plus. But the one place I didn't expect him to show up was in jazz. Jeff Goldblum is a surprisingly dedicated jazz pianist. He played a weekly gig in La with his band, The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra until the pandemic, and he still practices every morning. He's released two albums with this band. Their latest is I Shouldn't Be telling You This, featuring vocals from Gregory Porter, Fiona Apple, Miley Cyrus and Moore. And before you start thinking this is just a celebrity vanity project, it's not justin playing around for thirty years and clubs and bars. Broken record producer Leah Rose and I talked to Jeff on Zoom about his career as a musician. He told us about how we started playing piano in Pittsburgh. Cocktail lounges at fifteen about his morning practice routine, and he tells us about meeting two of his heroes, Stevie Wonder and Muhammad Ali. This is broken record liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmondson. Here's Leah Rose and me in conversation with Jeff Goldblum. Hi Justin, Hey Hilia Rose, thanks for doing this. Oh my pleasure, your kidding. I'm honored and thrilled. Hey, I saw. I just was listening to a little bit of your podcast with Esperanza Spalding. Yeah, isn't she incredible? So incredible? And I met her. I was invited because I know a little bit Wayne Shorter and his wife, so I so I was invited to their house, to his house and saw a little bit of a presentation of what they're working on now that their opera. Yeah, their opera, and she it just it was great. Yeah. And she wears those life Force suits. She has like ten of them, and she wears it every single day. So she gets that out of the way. She doesn't have to worry about how she looks, what she puts on. Just like, I think Einstein did that, and my character in The Fly did that. I show Gina Davis my closet at some point I've got five herring bone jackets and I say, yeah, I don't want to have to think about what I'm putting on. Yeah, that's like the Steve Jobs thing too. Yeah, same thing. Well, oh you know all of us, Uh cookie, I'm not like that in real life. I'm just kind of a regular thencome phoop in real life. Oh come on. Well, I don't know about that. But I was at the Grove about twelve years ago. Um. It must have been right before Christmas time, because they were there was like there's a Christmas tree setting up, and I was there and I was like, wait a second, it is that Jeff Goldbom and you were rehearsing. I wasn't there for the big thing, but you were rehearsing earlier in that afternoon. I was like, holy shit, he plays Pia and you were like, really good. I'll be darned, that's the I know exactly what you're talking about. That's the only time we ever played the Grove like that, But we played something there and you know who else was on that bill? Was Bert backrack, Oh, I miss Bert, Yeah, man. They asked us to be part of this you know, tree lighting ceremony or Christmas eve thing or I don't know what it was where we played some Christmas song we just took came out with a Christmas song. Now you know you can you can law gone and get Winter Wonderland. We do a nice little version you know about za. I like that what we did? How about that? I later saw you at Rockwell, like when did you start performing again? Like when did you start getting out and putting a band together and playing? About thirty years ago? Now it's been three decades where my friend John Mastro and I here's what happened. Peter Weller said, hey, let's play out and about. We've been fooling around at my house. He plays trump a little bit and not nicely, very nicely, and we did that, and then he got the idea we should play out and about. So we had a there was a lovely guitar player that he knew and a place that he said they'd let us set our stuff up and play during brunch or something like that, and we started to play out and about and and then he's gone off and done other things, but we had this band that grew, and whenever I've not been working, I keep doing it. And now it's even before we did these records, it's sort of developed. We've been playing at this place rock Well where you saw us like for the last I don't know, six or seven or eight years or something, whenever I'm not working once a week, and so as much acting as I do, I've now clocked as many hours of so called performance, but it always just feels like a hanging out and playing and rehearsing publicly, and I just kind of adore it, you know, more than anything else. And now it's become a show, a show that we do in theaters, big theaters. We did the Glastonbury Festival, and go all over and it kind of translates itself wherever we go where we play stuff that now we kind of cook up and the band is really good. And then I do spontaneous games and talking and you know, gold bloom stuff with people. And why the piano, why is that your instrument of choice? Well, I'm not one of those guys who've ever had much of a facility for anything else. I like to drum on things and I like the piano, and you know, to the extent that it's percussive, you know, so I like to I like tap dance, and I was always interested in making making rhythms, but the piano was just something that was around our house. I grew up in Pittsburgh and we had a piano there, and then they gave us lessons. You know. My mom was dutifully, you know, good about exposing us to things that might interest us, and she gave us all lessons. My brother had a clarinet for a little bit, but we had a piano, and I had some facility for it, but we didn't know the joys of discipline yet would dread the lessons. And Tommy Emil coming over and I hadn't practiced, and da da da dadada. But then he gave me a piece of music, an arrangement that I learned because I'd learned how to read music of Alley Cat and I first sort of became aware of syncopation and day that kind of thing and just killed me. And I was just I'm going to sit here and play and I'm going to practice now until I can do this. I just love it so much. And then I think Stairway to the Stars and Deep Purple were the next two things that and that they were chords. You know. I had been playing Cherney and you know, just some you know, scales things, and uh, but something about those chords just got me and I just started to get better and play. And then we had fake books around and uh. And then I got with his teacher, Frank con Amando in Pittsburgh that people may know, and he was great. I used to go over to his house. My parents were good that way, and he taught me about composition and harmony and different voicings and different modes and how to possibly improvise to you know, what was going on, and I just fell in love with it. Met around fifteen years old. I thought I was I'd already set my heart on a career in acting, but I, just like I do now, had this side parallel passion for piano and music and got the talent the Yellow Pages and started to go through them, uh cocktail lounges and started to call cold call people and say, hey, I understand that you you're interested in a pianist, and most of them would say, no, we don't have a I don't know who this is kid. Well you're you're you're misinformed. But a couple of them said, who's this. Yeah, we got a piano here nobody's playing. Would come down and play it. And I got a couple of gigs that way and so amazing. Yeah, I know, just for the fun of it. What were you playing? Oh? You know? Well, I would bring the fake book with me, like I used to do up until recently, really until we really kind of honed our repertoire and had something to kind of present. And I had a show that which I do, which has games and things and it's kind of a neat hour three hours actually for me. But at that time I just brought a you know, my fake books and would just go through them. You know. My dad's song favorite song was Misty. You know, he loved Errol Garner and exposed me to it early on. I'm still crazy about him, you know, and he brought home that album. You know, Errol Garner plays Misty, and i'd listen to that, so anyway, i'd play that and other things. I think I played as you know, Sat and Doll you know, probably you're all from Meet Panima, probably you know, anything else, And then I would take request, I'd say, you know, what do you want me to play? And then I'd look it up. I'd see if I have it because I could kind of you know, cold rita rita lead sheet, you know like that. Were people receptive in these bars? I don't imagine Pittsburgh as being like a big jazz town, even though I found out a bunch of jazz like Are Blak and Arrol are from there. But were they receptive when you're playing a mad Jamal, they're different people. Well, I don't think the places that I went were serious jazz. I don't think they were going expecting to see, you know, a mad Jamal or Errol Garner there. But from what I gathered, there were places that I should have been going to that were serious there. You in Pittsburgh is a hot bit of talent, But I didn't know the places I went, Like the guys that I got on on the other end of the phone, I think they were just cocktail lounges and they said, yeah, I come down. And so I just saw the people there wanting drinks and stuff, and they were receptive plenty. They were receptive enough. You know what I thought I was doing? You weren't getting you, weren't getting booed. People were appreciative at least listening. They seem tickled in some way. You know, at that point, did you act at all? Had you done any like just little plays around it? Well, around that time I had my heart set on acting, because I'd gone to Carnegie Mellon University in the between ninth and tenth and tenth and eleventh grades for these six weeks summer sessions that they had the serious professors of that good school and that good program teach these kids do from all over the country, and I just felt like I was home and had felt and had found my family somehow, and was very excited and would write on the steamy shower door every morning as I took a shower before school, Please God let me be an actor. And then I kept it secret. I would wipe it away so nobody saw it, because it was just a secret of mine, but I would. I was sort of baying at the moon about the whole thing. But I hadn't really done anything because even the kind of cheesy a thing in the high school that I went to, which was sort of provincial in some ways, you know, they did Oklahoma or something like that, but I kind of didn't participate. I was stupidly not, you know, kind of thought I was had other other notions and this and that, and as soon as I could get out at seventeen, I graduated, went to New York somehow and got to the Neighborhood Playhouse where Sandy Meisner, a great acting teacher, was teaching, and that's when I started to do it, but still hadn't really done anything studied that year, and then in between the first and second year, I fell into, by a fluke, a production of my first job, and the first thing I didn't even go up for. They called the school, in fact, said did you have anybody tall? It could be a guard in this thing. We're doing this musical version of Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Galt McDermott, who wrote Hair along with Jerome Ragney, wrote the music to it, is doing the music to it, and John Guare's a great playwright, is adapting to Shakespeare and rel Julie was in it, and then added I got the part, and I joined that, it was in the it was in the chorus, and this and that and played in the pit. I used to go down play piano. When I was down there and in the pit was Thad Jones. Wow, would be in the pit. You know, all these guys take a little stints and in Broadway or orchestra pitch sometimes. And I had seen him because my dad the jazz fan. We'd gone to Atlantic City from Pittsburgh. We'd driven to Atlantic City like we used to do several years, and like on the steel pier or something, there was some he said, I, Hey, I see that Thad Jones mill Lewis are playing. We got to go see them. So I saw them and they're big band live. I can still remember it. Anyway. Then I saw him. I was like, hey, I saw you and did I did? I play a little And so I was playing with these guys, you know, with a lot of moxie. Was Gald McDermot down in the pit two Gold McDermot. Do you know? No, he would? You know? Like that was a Broadway show. Was the biggest hit of Shakespeare Festival that ever had and because a big story that summer at the Delacourt outside and then we went to the Saint James Theater. I was there for a year, understayed one of the bigger parts, and no, the composer of it. I think they check in on it probably, sure, you know, even unbeknownst to us sometimes. But no, No, my friend Tom Pearson was conducting, and oh do you know who else was in that pit for a while who played drums? Bernard Party? Do you know Bernard Party? We were supposed to interview him for this, Well, this is nineteen seventy one, and he was, you know, in his full flush of his of his brilliant tendencies, having played for Aretha Franklin with Aretha Jeez, Bernard Party, how about that? So did you talk to these guys and sort of asked them like lean advice or you know? I was stupid, like I've always been kind of stupid. I kind of am like zelling in some way. I kind of would show up and just had a lucky, you know, intersection with some of these types. But unlike now where I wouldn't get really hip. I was sort of just sort of stupid. And now go on IMDb, you can use you know, Wikipedia. Before I have meetings, I go and work with people. I go, She's, oh right, I know them. But there are all sorts of stories that I can tell you about actors that I've worked with, and including that Jones and Bernard Purty, who I barely realized how lucky I was, you know, likewise with many actors. But now that's why I kind of go, I hope it's not a violation of protocol. But I I find out about you do some research. Yeah, I do my research, and I say, oh, and I'm then I asked them my question. It's so cool so early on, So those early performances at like Pittsburgh Bars, those are your first public performances ever, Yeah, you could say that. I guess. I guess. So that's right. It's so strange. It's so funny that that was your you. You know, you go on to act, and acting was really your main the main thing you were after. But then the earliest public display of Jeff Goldblum is is playing piano. Yeah, that's right. As first. That's why it feels natural now. And it was always just for fun. I never had any kind of identity investment in it, like or career ism about it. I was just like, hey, I just want to do this, this is fun. And still that's kind of how this whole thing has happened now and it just changes my days in my life. Every day, like this morning, I get up and play for about an hour. It's one of the first things I do before the kids get up. And around five am or six am, I work out here and I play piano and I work on my lines for Jurassic World. At this point I got a part to work on, so I get all my homework done them very now. I know what it's like to be disciplined and how that can bear fruit, and so I just play and it changes my day. It's music is as much a meditation and a tonic for me as anything that I do, and I just adore it. And then playing out and about which is kind of developed now and making these records is just as sweet a thing as you know. It could have happened to a fellow here on Earth. We'll be back with more from Jeff Goldbloom. After a quick break. We're back with more from Jeff Goldbloom, who's talking about his skilled band mates in the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra. How is it playing with those guys because you didn't go to I mean a lot of your band like Berkeley, and you know they played another great players they all went there. They're all to all those places and their their masters and they teach and they're they're great for me. Uh No, it's just a great playing with all those guys, you know. And now what I do every morning actually is from the last album, which is what we're gonna be playing when we do it, I hope live again soon is we're gonna be doing a lot of that stuff. So I put on the album and play along with the songs plus several other things that we're cooking up that we that are currently in our back burner. But I play all of it every day. I go through that whole album and play all of it. You go through your most recent record and play along yep, wow, yep yep. Every day with Miley Cyrus and Creona Apple and Sharon van Etton and Anna Calvia everybody and aar George and a great reporter. Every single day I play, you know, at least once in the morning. You know, makes some unhappy. I'm getting better, I tell you. Do You almost wish you could rerecord the album. Do you feel like you're getting it under your fingers better? Oh? Yeah. At the time we did the album, you know, we had just come up with these arrangements. And the first album with something Else, we did this kind of you know, effects simile of our rockwell date and was very spontaneous in the songs we played. You know. We had maybe a couple of takes, but we was whatever came out, you know, And so I was kind of it was however we did it. But we arranged these a little more complicatedly and sophisticatedly, and I had something to learn on them, and I was just getting my sea legs on most of them as we recorded them and kind of reading and turning pages and getting them done. But now I know all of them. I keep investigating them every day and do different things every day with them. But oh yeah, they're more under my fingers for sure. How do you go about choosing the vocalists that you work with. Is there a type of voice that you feel especially drawn to. Well, we had a wish list, and we have many people I do and the band did. I started defer sometimes to them. They know who they like and I love their taste. But I was crazy about all these people that we worked with. Greg Reporter, you know, I is kind of the way we got hooked up with Decca. I was promoting for that movie a few years ago and I did the Graham Norton Show in London and Greg Reporter was the musical guest, and he was promoting that Nat King Cole album and he wanted to sing Mona Lisa and he had done it with just a piano player, and said, hey, do you want to accompany me on the show? And we ran through it backstage once and I did. And it was because Decca, Tom Lewis, Rebecca Allen saw the show and said, hey, maybe we should do something with Jeff that that whole thing came about. So anyway, I was thrilled that he was on the album and I love his voice and we were thinking, gee if he was even before he agreed to do it, that I had proposed it to him that we said what would he sing? What could he sing? Everything he sings? But we like this song make someone happy, and it's we can do it so slowly that he you know, it could be right in his sweet spot. I'm sure enough. I'm just crazy about what he did with us. And then the other singers you know we were looking for. I think we were looking for singers who weren't ordinarily in the jazz veins right, and thought that they're brilliant, unique, you know, artistry could mash up with us in a way that would be unexpected, surprising, And on a lot of those songs, as you see, as you know, we mashed up a couple of different tunes, you know, jazz tunes to stand jazz standards with you know pop tunes. Yeah, the Sidewinder with the Beat Goes On. I've listened to the Sidewinder so many times. I've listened to Beat Goes On a bunch of times and they fit together so well, and never it never occurred to me until I listened to the record. It's so incredible. Yeah, the guys from the band, they all, they all did that. You know, that was the same harmonic composition, and you know, I love that. Yeah, the Beat goes On with Sidewinder, that at all. We played that at gigs before that was in our you know sometimes repertoire, and it always drove me crazy. I love love that song. It just drives me wild. But how about the thrill is Gun that Miley does with with Django my brother. One of the records that had big influence on me was the modern jazz quartet, the records that he would bring home and John Lewis and Django, so they knew about that. They they sort of some of the band Um Joe Bag and John Story and Alex Frank kind of figured out that Jang would be good with the thrill is gun. I love that. But how about four on six with Broken English? How did that? How did that come together? Well, the guys they had it was before we got Anna Calvy to join us. They put it together. We we they said, let's do another mash up like that, and the chord structure was right for it. And so four on six, which we'd played a bunch before West Montgomery tune, but broken English, uh, Mary Ann Faithful. I was not as familiar with that, but they they figured that it was right, and I played it every day. Now I know that a lot better. I can't wait till we play that again, you know, g Minor and I get a little solo in there for a moment. Oh, I like that song, and then oh how about it? If I knew then, you know with Gina Saputo, that little we transpose it was their idea to transpose that. Sarah Van solo that she does that she scats on that, and we we played that all together just in a little snippet. So was there a concept before you started recording the album? Well, just only that um that that this mashup of not only tunes might be interesting, but this mashup of uh maybe not traditionally jazz singers, what could mash up with us? That was the That was our theme. That was it. And then somebody said, well, maybe you should sing a song. And I do like to sing just for my own annoyance, you know, and pleasure and m and uh and then a little bit, you know, I recorded into this into Alex Frank's iPhone one day, a little man, you've had a busy day, which I've been singing to the kids when they go to sleep sometimes, And he said, yeah, do that they come up, came up with a an arrangement for that. Yeah. Do your boys look at you as sort of like a music man? Are you? Do you play the piano a lot while they're around and sing to them? Yes, I you know, I'm we're singing all the time. And I played the piano all the time. I've got keyboards. I got a nice Fender Rhodes old Fender Rhodes that I have another Yamaha keyboard that I use for practicing, and a nice Yamaha Grand Acoustic Grand. And so they're they're around and I play him all the time, and I'm singing, and they're you know, I think they're musical, and they're taking lessons themselves. Wow. There. Yeah, Emily was very good at, you know, keeping them exposed to all sorts of things. We got them into suzuki, you know, the suzuki yep. I did Suzuki method when I was younger, you did, ye, I didn't know it so much. But now we've got a very good teacher named sense Kevin and h And during this period we had gone, I drove them over to the valley and on Ventura Boulevard there's a nice little studio and he took some lessons there. And now he's been doing it once a week or no, twice a week virtually, and I play with him every day. But believe it or not, he and he's five. Charlie the other one, you have to kind of force him to. He does as little as possibly. He's really not interested in it. He's plays Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star. But Charlie is going through this Zuoki book and he does what I do. I guess because maybe I've modeled it, but he really he knows that I play every morning. So every morning he gets up at six thirty and he runs through his whole repertoire. Wow. Yeah, and he's just learning to, you know, do things with hands together, you know, um in unison. But he's just but he's learning a couple of pieces where there's some where it separates them and there's something coordinated you've got to do with two different hands. And he's in he's worked on it and he's getting them better, and he's passing through stages and it just kind of thrills me, like a like the average papa, you know. I looked at it and it kind of, you know, just just blows my blows my mind. That's incredible. It's amazing. I'm gonna send my kids to your house, Jeff, you can get them disciplined. Really, how many kids you got? What are and what are they doing? Two? I have four year old in a almost two year old. Hey, we're in the same boat. Well that's it. They started around you know, four, So it's been easy. I mean, and I look at him. One of the things that I say to myself and oftentimes allowed to Emily as wow, I did not I started play taking lessons when I was I think, I don't know, eight, nine, ten, something like that. I was not playing like he was at ten. And then he says, you know, we do listening things. He goes here, play what I just did. And then he just likes to explore the piano, and he, you know, he puts all over the all over the keyboard. And then sometimes although we say, oh don't you know, don't ruin the piano, but he goes inside the piano. He likes to see how it works. And you know, started think think, think, you know, plucking the strings. They might be an avant garde. Uh, you know player. One of these days, has he gone do any of your gigs yet? Uh? You know, he was, well, you know, the nighttime gigs or two they go to bed at seven thirty. But we started to gig at nine. But when we've played a couple of these festivals, one I'm thinking of I forget where it was. You know, in the daytime, we all drove up to wherever it was and it was a big outdoor festival and he was on the side of the in the wings as I was playing. I don't know that it made much impression on him, and but it maybe I imprints on them, you know, someplace. But you know, I don't know if I even know if he'd remember now. But but even now they're not Maybe they model themselves after me in some way, but they're not particularly impressed. Oftentimes they'll say stop playing, stop playing. They want to interrupt and stop. But then he'll say, hey, do you know, do this stuff from my book? And I'll play stuff from his book and they'll get kind of, you know, frenzied and jump on me and stuff like that. And music is, as you know it. It has a wild effect on the on the on the nervous system, doesn't it. He's going to be calling around a cocktail out just pretty soon, watch out. I'm sure. I'm sure we'll have more with Jeff Goldblum. After the break, we're back with the rest of our interview with Jeff Goldblum, who, when we left off, was talking about his kid's newfound love for music. When you were their age or a little maybe a little older, but just in your childhood, you weren't maybe as disciplined as they were with the plane. But was music an important part of your life? Were you listening a lot and introduced to a lot? And yes, I was listening. Like I say, my dad brought home those Eryl Giner records and they would bring Broadway musicals home, and the Music Man and My Fair Lady and stuff like that. But jazz. And then I had an older brother, like I say, four years older than I was, who was really into jazz, and he would bring home Stan Getz and Joe Barretto that album I was. I was listening to a lot and modern Jazz quartet and all kind of all kinds of stuff. So it was, yeah, it was around and it did something to me. I was you know, I would get jazzed up, you know, around music early on. So would you say, do you consider jazz to be your favorite type of music? Well, and can you try to articulate what it does for you? So many things, you know, jazz, there's so many kinds of jazz and different songs that hit every all manner of chords in you. But yeah, it's very I find it complicated, you know sometimes and can hit places in me that are uniquely unreachable otherwise, certainly, I love early on I sort of got the idea that musicians and even in recording could do something spontaneous and be inventing something on the spot. That has always done something to me, that idea. I'm still enthralled with it, and I try to bring that to my acting and my presentations of one kind or another. And I'm a student of it in as it applies to jazz, you know. I just love that. I love to try it myself and feel like I'm you know, inventing right now, and it kind of calls upon you to be it obliges you to be present, you know, which is sort of overlaps with another of my interests. You know, I've exposed my had some exposure to Kartal for instance, you know, and be here now from the sixties around us and stuff. So that's that's been part of my you know, appetite and interest all along. So it does all those things. But jazz. When I saw that movie which I'll bet you like, Around Midnight with Herbie Hancock playing a part in it and Dexter Gordon, of course, I when I saw that in the theater, I just started to cry. At one point, tears sprang out of my eyes when they started to play something, and there was no reason, there was no lyric. There weren't lyrics too. It was of course an instrumental and it was herb playing something. And it was just the complication and the lushness and of the chords that just did something to me. And of course all those practitioners, their their devotion, lifelong devotion to it and a sacred you know, romance with it is just you know, hits me hard. Yeah. And then we had a little forty five player, my sister and I who was two years younger, and she and I would collect these things. Oh boy, we had. There were a couple that we just played over and over again. I got the Stevie Wonder record of for Once in My Life that I played over and I must have played in thousands of times. And now I've come to meet him and know him a little bit. Believe it or not, he stopped in to the recording one of the recording sessions on our first album. How frightening was that? I know, I just or him. I've adored him my whole life. But we all these forty five's, we played over and over again. We played this Peggy Lee song. Is that all there is? Uh? We had a little forty five of that. Uh, you know, so it was it was all over the place. Yeah, So what do you say to Stevie wonder when you meet him, because people must come up to you all the time and want you know, it's like, this is my chance, this is Jeff Goldblum. What do I say? Well, so I'm sensitive to you know how you know, he must be beleaguered um. And you know his wife was very nice. We've become friendly with his wife. We were on a cruise. It was a kind of an intimate, a semi intimate, you know, setting where we first met. And he couldn't have been sweeter. I was very nice. And you know, as you can imagine, Uh, he touches you and I touched you know, we were holding hands a little bit and you know, um, uh you know I said into his ear, you know, you know, it was a little always year around. I said, you know how much I adored him and this and that, and you know we talked. He couldn't have been sweeter. He was just great. It was one of the thrills of my life. Amazing. It's like the time I met Muhammad Ali and his wife. It was later. He was a little bit already getting a little bit uh challenged and uh and he said, oh, Jeff, Jeff Goldman, you scared me. You scared me. I said, what do you what do you mean? His wife said, oh, Jeff, we saw the fly. We just saw the fly. He said. I said, well, Champ, I just so I got a little weepy. I said, I just adore you so much and I've always, I've always You've meant so much to me, and thank you so much. And he said, well, where you know, I may come over and knock on your door someday and come over and visit you. I said, oh, Champ, that would be just just great anyway. You never I never got a chance to, or he never did. But I just, uh, you know, I'm very easy start strike by a couple of types, especially Stevie Wonder and Muhammad Ali are too good times. Oh Man, you're telling me, you're telling me. It's funny too, because I guess a lot of people, you know, people probably have seen The Big Chill, And a big part of that movie is the soundtrack and a lot of people you know of your cohort, it's like that's the soundtrack of their growing up. You know, the Stones and the mo all the Motown, which of course Steve is a part of. But it seems like you were more jazz geared than like, you know, Beatles and the Who and or were you did you also listen to a lot of rock and roll, and I was jazz geared. I had a big thing for jazz. But but at art when I went to this little kind of provincial, small town school. We were in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and we used to have little dances. But right around that time, let me see, I was born in fifty two, so when I was like thirteen, coming of a particular age, it's now, why fifty two sixty five something like that. And look up the hits that we had at our at our lunch time, you know, dances and all, and they played all motown stuff, so you know, Diana Ross and the Supremes and Marvin Gay and all that stuff. Where I was really into Ray Charles. I was into real early. And then the only kind of rock stuff, you know, it would come on the radio, but rock stuff. My brother, the same brother who was interested in jazz, took me over to his apartment once he'd already moved out of the house. When I was like, I don't know, fifteen sixteen. I looked up to him and he had a bunch of Beatles albums and introduced me for the first time to you know, the White Album, Sergeant Peppers and Magical Mystery Tour, and I loved those, you know, they's had a big made a big impression on me. Yeah. What an era of music to be a young person. I know, it was totally magical. I know. Oh, I feel very lucky to have been right where I was somehow and in New York. And you know, I had a really cool time too, for not only for acting, but music, you know. I mean you could still go into any jazz club and see incredible people, or go to Glench Village and you know insane. Yeah. Yeah, what would you do like on off nights when you weren't working in New York City. Well, I wish i'd, like I said about my you know now, you know, encounter with some people. Sometimes I didn't know who I was with or where I was. I wish I'd looked around more because I was a very focused kind of acting student, and you know, I had things to do and I was very good at that that point. But my friend Tom Pearson, who was in who was the leader of the band and a piano player, took me to a couple of gigs and I remember I think we saw Wayne Shorter and saw some very kind of you know, new stuff that they were doing that was you know, atonal and went on and that was really something else were we were there. Yeah, yeah, I wish i'd I could have appreciated where I was more and everything that I might have exposed myself to more. Probably just like now, there's probably right in my own backyard things that if I were fully awake, fully awakened, I would cherish investigate and understand more. You know, I'm sure there are things like that. Yeah, well that goes back to the b here. Now you're just supposed to be happy here in the moment present, where you are. It's all enough, I think, so. I think so we're getting exactly what we need right here right now somehow. Yep. What drove you to acting, primarily given your sort of early leanings towards piano and music and performing with you know, at these bars. Yeah, it's a little mysterious. All of this is a little mysterious. I just was I are my parents once again, you know, exposed us to you know, theater. We went to children's theater. I remember early on when I went to at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. Uh, some a couple of shows, you know for kids, I don't know, Beauty and the Beast or you know, something like that. I just was very excitable about because of it. And uh and I remember thinking, who are those people who are doing that? What are they doing backstage? What's how do how do you do something like that? And that you know, it just happened like that, and then uh, well I took those summer classes Attornegue Million University. I was already yearning for some kind of part of me that was as yet unexplored in this, like I say, small town kind of school. And I think it had something to do with listen to this. My parents had had parts of them unexplored, potentially unrealized, that were theatrical. My mom early on had some kind of experience where a scout of some kind said she should, you know, leave Pittsburgh go to New York And her mom said no, no way that I don't know. And then my dad, at some point in his you know, the late teens, thought, because he was trying to get out of poverty and make something of himself, thought for some reason he was either going to be a doctor or an actor. And he said he stuck his head in the back of a class at Carnegie Tech, which Carnegie Mellon was then called, and he thought to himself. He reported to us that it was out of his league. I don't know what he meant by that. Maybe it was that it was emotionally, because he was always a little bit conservative emotionally, I think, even though an authentic person of deep feeling, you know, he was not theatrical. He thought maybe and so he was a doctor. He became a good doctor, h and like that. So maybe the lost you know, hot potatoes of unreal used talent and interest. It came to me somehow, and maybe that had something to do with it. You know, who knows. Do you think your parents saw it the same way? Like you were living out this dream that they had in a way, And they never said, if I can remember rightly, I don't ever recall a conversation where they said, hey, you know, we didn't do it, but you do it or you know. And I don't think it was a conspicuous and ever present part of their current adult life where they were like, oh, I should have been an actor. I don't think they thought that. So it never came up like that. And I don't know if it ever even accurac to them or they said to themselves. But I'll tell you this, they were both kind of tickled by the idea that I was doing some of this stuff. And like I say, music, you know, my dad was like, you know, listen to Errol Garner. Listen, listen, he likes the pauses, and listen how brave he is there, and it would go bah baha and these octaves that he kind of knew he had a music appreciation and a real kind of appetite for it. And so you know that when they drove me and I could see, you know, they were I'm sure grinning, you know, at me playing at these cocktail lounges. And then a couple of years later, once I was in New York and did one of my early plays. I did a play called City Sugar. It was by Stephen Poliakoff, a British writer where I was the lead character and a kind of off Broadway theater and it was the first big part that I'd had, and my dad and they, my parents came to see it. And after the show, my dad came back stage and he burst into tears and he threw his arms around me and hugged me. And it wasn't either of those things, the tears part and the hugging part were. It's uncharacteristic and it really it really got him. And now that i'm thinking of it, when I was, when I was going to Carnegie Melon and coming back, he said a very memorable moment for me. He said, I was there and he said to my mom, well, look, as I was saying, oh, this is what we learned that I was kind of chattering up. He said, look, the kid is stimulated. He said, the kid is stimulated. And I remember that. I think it. I think he appreciated because he had said to me, he had said, you know, I don't care what you do. You don't have to be a doctor like me, but if you find something you love to do, that's a compass and a key to your uh you know, vocational choice. So he was smart and uh and he realized that that that I'd sort of found something. Yeah about that, the soulful guy, your dad was especially for a doctor. You know, you don't think of a doctor's being so open and disencouraging and to hear this stuff in the music and explain it to you and take the time. Yeah, he was actually very lucky, you know, very grateful for the parents that I had. You know, it's not as if I've gone through my life without oh, you know, dark struggles of one kind or another, and I think healthy struggles where I'd find my own separate identity from theirs. But in fact, I'm very grateful for those two parents. They were just the right combo for for me to have wound up right here, right now. And uh and yeah, he was, you know, for in any objective way, kind of sophisticated, soulful uh wi. Uh wise, fella, how about that? And very generous. Uh sweet, sweet guy, that's amazing. Do you are you writing at all? Do you do you ever are secretly composing any songs or anything unrealized? Do you want to na? Not? Really, I don't really compose. I don't really compose, although I must say the other day. Uh, Charlie. We sat down and he brought me a couple of blank sheets of you know, like a you know, printer paper, and he said here right. Uh. He didn't know how to say right or right music right. Let's let's make up a song, uh, he said. So I wrote a staff. I put the trouble cleft and I wrote the staff, and he's and he did something and I wrote it down, and then I added something to that, and then he added something to that, and I wrote it all down. It's on the piano in the living room right now, and I like playing it. It's it's different. I wouldn't have come up with it on my own. It's a little I don't think we're letting a McCartney. But we came up with something. It was fun. It's this a side project. This is your new band. It was fun. Well, we we like playing together. I got a couple of drums. I got sbongo drums and a nice kind of conga and and we all make sounds together. We like it. That's amazing. If you had to put together a jazz starter kit, which albums would it include? Well, that's a good that's a good question. The guy I you know, i'd i'd ask the guy for real, for the real good answers. I'd ask Joe Bag and Alex Frank and John Story. But let me see from my own personal experience. Well, you know, because they're still turning me onto. You know, Winton Kelly. I'm learning a solo of Wint Kelly's right now, and I had not been so focused on him before. So there's so many But you know, Oscar Peterson, if you're interested in the piano, I'd listened to Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans, and I like Keith Jarrett, and I like Thelonious Monk. Anything by any of those guys. I like She's You know, there's so many tributaries of that river. You know that you can go down to kind of personal taste, and you know, like I say, I'm still getting turned on to so many different things now. But though you know, Miles Davis, you know I do love those those piano players, Oscar Peterson, Errold Gardner, Diloneous Monk, all pretty different. Do you Is there anything you think you taken from their playing you put in yours or anything you ever playing And you're like, oh that I got that from Oscar Well, Arlie Well, Oscar Peterson. You know, you have to be content to get those chops. You know, you can't just kind of even imitate those chops. But I do like to do runs, and I do like a couple of his Gospelly kind of voice things that I've sort of tried to study a little bit that I you know, I I love to listen and when I listen, I feel like I'm immediately not that I can reproduce it, but I'm immediately you know, influenced and excited about it. And then Monk, of course, you know, I like to play a hard, masculine, angular, unexpected fifth down low and do something you know that's full of ugly beauty, you know, all over, you know. And he's very inspirational. Keith Jarrett, Oh the way he I like the way he is has a kind of religious experience that comes deeply out of him. And he's so sophisticated and at the same time, you know, spontaneous with what with a connection seemingly between his musical imagination and his fingers and he hears, which is so brilliant. You know immediately, you know, making music like that, it's a beautiful thing to watch, you know, I love it. Have you have you seen him at all? Ever? No, I'd love to I'd love to you. Yeah. Some of the Concert Hall in two thousand and six when I was like sixteen, saved a bunch of months. It was expensive, but about a ticket went and it was it was solo and improbably did a solo improv and it was it was mind blowing. Oh, mind blind. I'd love to have seen that. If I had a time machine, maybe that's that's the reason to go back. I'd go back with you and we'd watch it again. Cool. I'm so curious about this. I've heard you refer to yourself as a late bloomer. Well, true enough, yeah, yeah, So how does that manifest itself? What does that mean to you? How are you blooming? Well? You know, I mean, first of all, here I am at the age I'm at and I've have a five year old and three almost a five year old and a three year old, so that's late blooming and fertility of some kind. And my teacher, Sanford Meisner, was very good. He said that it takes a serious two decades, twenty years of continual work before you can even call yourself an actor, meaning that you it really takes that much time before you can grow in yourself inside the life of an actor and how you really live and use things and see things and can function theatrically imaginatively and know yourself and can use yourself, etcetera, etcetera. And then he said after that, it takes a life time if you're lucky, to keep getting opportunities of progress where you can keep progressing. And that's the aim. That's what I'm recommend to you and steady, And I think I took that to heart. So even if I wasn't made of that kind of stuff, although I think I was a kind of slow learner of some kind, and you know, I took it to heart and have sort of at least imagine that I have designed. But there's some design that's a little bit like that for my arc, you know, not only acting wise, but musically certainly. I mean, I'm at a time right now of more flourishing and flowering than ever with these records and with what I'm doing. I'm playing better than ever. I played this morning, better than I played yesterday, and ever. I think I look for that, and I think I'm that's what's happening. And in life, my gosh, here I am with these kids and learning by leaps and bounds, and I've got this show that world, according to Jeff Goldblum, where I'm ostensibly to make use of my curiosity and my you know learning, you know, you know, exposing myself while in the learning curve. And so I'm I'm full of I'm a humble student and full of eager learning. So I am I think I'm I think I'm blooming late. Yeah, it's I mean, it's super inspiring because so many people just reach a certain age or point in life and just sort of shut down, you know, and whether it's shutting down to like even discovering new music or anything. It's people can get so rigid. Yeah, so it's it's really nice to hear that. Oh, thank you. Well, I was exposed to have the right idea here and there, and I do aspire to it, and and uh, you know, I try to lend. I'm sure I'm becoming brittle and and shriveled and pretty soon I'll be all all gone. But but you know, in the time that I have, however much it is, I'm trying to supremely make the most of the and cherish the opportunity. You know, cool, incredible. Thanks for the time. I really appreciate it, Jeff, Thank you, Jeff, thank you so much. It's such an honor to be on this great show. I'm thrilled. Thank you so much. Thanks to Jeff Goldbloom for chatting with Lee yet night. Jeff Goldblan's new album I Shouldn't Be telling you this is out now. You can hear it along with tracks from the artists you mentioned in the interview in the playlist for this episode at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you can find all our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is the production of Pushkin Industries, and if you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider becoming a Pushnick. Pushnick is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad free listening for only four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushnick exclusively on Apple podcast subscriptions. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast. At the Musics by Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond, h