Questlove and Christian McBride on ‘Norah Jones Is Playing Along’

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Norah Jones and today I'm playing along with Questlove and Christian McBride two.

00:00:07
Speaker 2: For I'm just playing.

00:00:10
Speaker 3: With you.

00:00:14
Speaker 4: I'm just playing alone with you.

00:00:21
Speaker 5: Hey, good people, what's up? How you doing?

00:00:22
Speaker 6: It's Quest Love and you're about to listen to an episode of my good friend Nora Jones on our podcast called Norah Jones is playing Along. This particular episode is with myself and one of my closest buddies in high school, not named trek Trotter, uh, named Christian McBride, who I.

00:00:43
Speaker 5: Basically call god God of base.

00:00:46
Speaker 6: We're gonna go back and reminisce about all the times we've been sent to the principal's office for playing James Brown and other details like that in our high school days, messing around before we became professional. So we do covers of di'angelo, pop Staples, of the Staples singers Chris Christopherson, and a lot more. I hope you enjoy it. This is Nord Jones playing along with me and Christian McBride.

00:01:16
Speaker 5: All right.

00:01:23
Speaker 1: We actually recorded this episode in twenty twenty three, but we really.

00:01:27
Speaker 7: Wanted to replay it. It's a rerun, yeah, but a really good one Yes, and we wanted to show it some extra love. Both Christian and Questlov have been keeping very busy with other projects they've worked on since we put our episode out, so we wanted to mention some of them. In twenty twenty five, Christian McBride released Without Further Ado Volume one. He also dropped the single Old Folks with Samara Joy, and he announced this new ensemble called Ursa Major and Questlov has also been equally busy. He directed Sly Lives, which heard at Sundance in twenty twenty five. He co directed the fifty Years of SNL music special that aired in January of twenty twenty five. He's also directing the Big Earth, Wind and Fire documentary coming out in twenty twenty six. He co wrote the Rhythm of Time series with sa Cosby, which is a middle grade sci fi book series. The first book came out in twenty twenty three, but two more are coming out in twenty twenty six. He's also involved in a posthumous D'Angelo album that was recently announced.

00:02:29
Speaker 1: We also covered a Dangelo song in this episode called Betray My Heart, which was from the Black Messiah album that came out in twenty fourteen, and Questlo was a collaborator on that album, so that's kind of why we covered this song. Plus it's just an amazing song. So I hope you enjoy hearing this episode if you've never heard it, and if you have, I think you're gonna like it again.

00:03:08
Speaker 2: My man don't.

00:03:09
Speaker 4: Love me, treats me?

00:03:13
Speaker 2: Ohso, I said, my man, he don't love me.

00:03:27
Speaker 4: He treats me?

00:03:28
Speaker 2: Ohs me.

00:03:37
Speaker 4: He's the lost man.

00:03:40
Speaker 2: Live and say.

00:03:53
Speaker 8: He wears her tram pants and strips.

00:03:59
Speaker 9: I really yell, he wears hardly.

00:04:11
Speaker 3: Paints stripes are really.

00:04:25
Speaker 10: When he starts in loving me, he's so fine and mellow. That would make you drinking gamble and make you stand out.

00:04:46
Speaker 2: All night all love.

00:04:55
Speaker 11: We'll make you drinking gamble, make it stare at all.

00:05:03
Speaker 2: Love. That would make you do all the same.

00:05:17
Speaker 3: That you know.

00:06:14
Speaker 12: Okay, get an increase about.

00:06:29
Speaker 5: The bad.

00:06:40
Speaker 12: Bad day? Would the lady?

00:07:02
Speaker 13: Oh, if you treat me right, baby, I'll stay home eh re day. If you treat me right, baby, I'll stay home.

00:07:27
Speaker 10: Readay, But if you saw mean to me, baby, you know you're gonna drive me away.

00:07:51
Speaker 2: That was just like a fascet.

00:07:56
Speaker 10: It turns off and it turnsmello was just like a fozzy. It turns off and it toos. Sometimes where your thing is on is turned off.

00:08:30
Speaker 5: And gone, gone with your bath.

00:08:51
Speaker 14: No Joe bringing the grits and gravy.

00:08:52
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's it's.

00:08:54
Speaker 5: Too early for that kind of song before noon, That's what I'm saying.

00:08:58
Speaker 1: Well, if you wake up, if you wake up at seven usually then it's more like three in the afternoon.

00:09:03
Speaker 14: Right, Well, I suppose.

00:09:06
Speaker 1: Oh, thanks for doing that with me. That was fun. I love that Billie Holiday song.

00:09:12
Speaker 14: That's thrill.

00:09:13
Speaker 1: Is that is that old Billie Holiday song? Or did she did she get it from somewhere else? That's hers? God, I love Billy Holiday. Man, I haven't sung that song in a really long time.

00:09:26
Speaker 14: You could have fooled me.

00:09:27
Speaker 1: That's from the old days, you know, the old days of playing and singing in restaurants and just playing.

00:09:33
Speaker 14: Well, see that.

00:09:36
Speaker 15: Those gigs, you know, back in the day when you were doing the you know, hotel lobby or restaurant gig, whatever it is.

00:09:44
Speaker 5: You know.

00:09:44
Speaker 15: I always tell musicians that's your shared time. That's how you build that's how you build your skills.

00:09:51
Speaker 1: Semi paid practice.

00:09:53
Speaker 15: Totally, totally what it is. I mean, like I used to play. I can't remember the name of it, but Benny Green and I used to have this kind of semi regular gig at some Chinese food restaurant over on the East Side, and.

00:10:10
Speaker 14: We would just sharre tunes.

00:10:11
Speaker 15: You know, nobody was really listening, kind of sort of you know, so we just call songs and I'll be learning the changes right there on the spot.

00:10:20
Speaker 5: That's the best, That's how you learned.

00:10:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had a gig like that in Dallas. I wish it was Chinese food. That sounds really good. Actually right now.

00:10:29
Speaker 15: If I remember correctly, just like most jazz venues, we couldn't pick off the regular menus.

00:10:36
Speaker 14: They had a musician's menu.

00:10:38
Speaker 1: I remember that. I had a gig in Midtown right around the corner here at that place Sofia's. Did you ever work?

00:10:44
Speaker 11: Yes?

00:10:45
Speaker 14: I never worked there, but a lot of people did.

00:10:47
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.

00:10:48
Speaker 1: Actually was surprised he hired me because there were a lot of really great piano players that play there. But I think he liked my singing. And that guy was really nice, actually, I really liked him. But they did not let us or very nicely. Right, you go back to the kitchen and you could only have like a few things and you had a set meal.

00:11:07
Speaker 5: Time, right, yeah, exactly, that's right.

00:11:10
Speaker 1: And it was like a four and a half hour gig.

00:11:12
Speaker 14: Long gig, long gig.

00:11:14
Speaker 15: I remember when well, when I first moved to town, most clubs were three sets a night. The Vanguard was nine, eleven and one.

00:11:26
Speaker 1: Oh, it was three sets back oh yeah.

00:11:29
Speaker 15: Yeah, six nights a week. Bradley's was ten, twelve and two. That was hard because you had an hour break in between these shows. All your momentum yeah be gone.

00:11:39
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:11:39
Speaker 1: And if you're having a drink, it's we're eating. It just makes you tie.

00:11:43
Speaker 15: Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you what so much. See, this is why when people began to know who you were, you were already all your skills were totally strong already. I'm serious. You weren't starting from scratch. You've been out there working.

00:12:00
Speaker 1: I kind of feel like I could use a weekly gig again, you know, like a weekly not a bad idea bar gig where the stakes are low and the fun is high, you know, just working it out.

00:12:12
Speaker 5: I'm sure you could find something I.

00:12:15
Speaker 1: Love doing that, you know. That's what's great about living in a city.

00:12:19
Speaker 14: Right right right, you can hide in a crowd exactly.

00:12:25
Speaker 1: Man, tell me about your bass.

00:12:28
Speaker 14: This is many.

00:12:29
Speaker 15: Yeah, yes, she's like you little bit mighty.

00:12:36
Speaker 1: Did you bring her for me, because I'm I'm sure no.

00:12:39
Speaker 5: No.

00:12:40
Speaker 15: This has been my main base since January of ninety six.

00:12:44
Speaker 1: Really, oh, man, So you have others that you use sometimes, but this is your.

00:12:49
Speaker 15: Main This is my girl. I had a base that was I used to think it was made by John Jiuzic, but a guy in Check Slovakia told me that John Jewsk, that's a big name in the bass world.

00:13:04
Speaker 1: Oh, I know, because I dated a bass player. I'm sorry for a long time and I will never forget the bass saga of him getting.

00:13:12
Speaker 15: A jews Well, I found out that John Jeuwsk was not a base maker. He was a base distributor.

00:13:19
Speaker 1: So it was all a lot.

00:13:20
Speaker 15: He was the middleman. Yeah. So I went to Czechoslovakia to go kind of track him down.

00:13:29
Speaker 2: Really I want to.

00:13:29
Speaker 15: I want to learn about the Jewsak family line. And I went to this bass shop in Prague, and uh, it was so funny because the guy said, and he didn't really say these exact words, but I was reading in between the lines. He was like, oh, you dumb Americans. You think Jiwsak was the guy. He was not the guy. He was the distributor.

00:13:51
Speaker 14: You know.

00:13:51
Speaker 5: I was like, oh, oh, okay, so who was the guy?

00:13:54
Speaker 15: And then he gave me like a whole bunch of check names that I couldn't spell.

00:14:00
Speaker 14: You couldn't find him, Yeah, I couldn't find him.

00:14:02
Speaker 1: But so there was more than one guy, basically, Oh yeah, there were several guys.

00:14:06
Speaker 5: Guys.

00:14:06
Speaker 1: They were kind of in the same community of making bases, right, okay.

00:14:11
Speaker 15: And so I had a Jewsak distributed base from nineteen eighty nine until British Airways destroyed it.

00:14:21
Speaker 2: Oh no, of ninety five.

00:14:23
Speaker 15: Yeah, that's right. I'll never forgive you for that, you know. But yeah, I had my jews Ak was was crushed, fell out of the belly of the plane. You know, it's like a foot drop, you.

00:14:36
Speaker 1: Know, from on the ground.

00:14:37
Speaker 15: But still, yeah, I mean I had it had a really good case. But I you know, I guess the you know, it was it was so far drop. Uh, it just it didn't make it.

00:14:48
Speaker 1: That's a bummer.

00:14:48
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:14:49
Speaker 15: And so uh, David Gage, the guru, I know him. I'm sure you know him. I love him. He tried to fix it, he restored it, he did everything he could, but it just didn't get that old sound back. And so while I was waiting for him to fix it, he said, man, somebody just came in my shop with an old base.

00:15:09
Speaker 14: They want to get rid of it. You need to come check this out. And that was many.

00:15:14
Speaker 1: That's it, he called it.

00:15:15
Speaker 15: Yep, this is an old German base made in estimated in nineteen ten.

00:15:21
Speaker 1: That's beautiful.

00:15:22
Speaker 15: Yeah, so she speaks, she's.

00:15:32
Speaker 1: That's beautiful.

00:15:34
Speaker 14: Yeah, so many she's been there.

00:15:37
Speaker 1: That's great. I remember seeing on your maybe your Instagram page once and you took a picture of a flight attendant who was super sweet about your instrument.

00:15:47
Speaker 14: I always try.

00:15:48
Speaker 1: I was going to say, I think you do that. Don't you shout out when they're really nice?

00:15:51
Speaker 5: Yes? Yeah?

00:15:52
Speaker 1: Do you shout out when they suck about.

00:15:54
Speaker 2: It or you?

00:15:55
Speaker 5: No?

00:15:55
Speaker 15: I just go direct to uh, I just go direct to customer service. You know, I've discovered the My friend Terry on Gully, his wife is she writes letters all.

00:16:07
Speaker 1: The time, complaints, kind complaints, well worded, thoughtful.

00:16:13
Speaker 15: And she and he used to tell me, he said, man, you know those complaint letters go a long way.

00:16:18
Speaker 1: They do, like they really read them.

00:16:20
Speaker 15: I don't know if they do now, but you know, so fortunately I have not had too many bad instances and quite some time.

00:16:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, it can be tough trying to go on a plane with a weird shaped instrument. They just don't know.

00:16:37
Speaker 15: They just don't working musicians. I mean, I see flight attendants giving trouble to just like guitar players. You know, they got like a little soft gigbag that's not gonna fit overhead.

00:16:49
Speaker 5: Of course it will.

00:16:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's a tough gig on both ends. I think too.

00:16:55
Speaker 14: Well. Absolutely, you know, you gotta have empathy.

00:16:59
Speaker 1: You know, but sometimes people just stink about it.

00:17:06
Speaker 15: You know what I feel bad about. I go, I go to the airport, and before I check in, you try to read the friendliest face.

00:17:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.

00:17:16
Speaker 15: So Like I'll be standing in line and I'll see like three ticket agents and I see one about to become open, but they don't look like they're a nice person. Like I'll turn to the person behind me, like no, no, no, no, you go ahead, but you're next, No go, I'm waiting for.

00:17:33
Speaker 5: The nice person.

00:17:36
Speaker 1: Did you start out on upright base?

00:17:38
Speaker 14: Nope. Started out on the electric at what age?

00:17:41
Speaker 5: Because of my dad nine I was nine, He played bass. He still does.

00:17:46
Speaker 1: He still does.

00:17:48
Speaker 14: He's one of the workingst bass players in Philly.

00:17:51
Speaker 1: That's amazing.

00:17:52
Speaker 14: He's my dad.

00:17:53
Speaker 15: His name is Lee Smith, and he's working more now than he was when I was a kid.

00:17:59
Speaker 14: Ain't that right? Clyde?

00:18:05
Speaker 3: Hey are you?

00:18:08
Speaker 1: I got some good stories about you before you got here. I'm just kidding.

00:18:13
Speaker 11: I'm just kidding.

00:18:14
Speaker 1: We didn't get to it yet.

00:18:16
Speaker 2: What's good man?

00:18:29
Speaker 5: All right?

00:18:29
Speaker 6: I'm gonna give my on and play traditional for the first time in what thirty years?

00:18:35
Speaker 1: Traditional? How so a that's great. That's some technical thing that I don't know about. You don't usually hold your exactly.

00:18:48
Speaker 5: All my idols play this way, something like what wow? Since I was twelve?

00:18:54
Speaker 4: Really whole episode.

00:19:11
Speaker 14: Google?

00:19:31
Speaker 10: Whoa ah my treating so bad? Whoa ah my treating so by?

00:19:59
Speaker 2: You know, as I seen this song.

00:20:06
Speaker 16: Him after so Bad, I'm not ask.

00:20:29
Speaker 2: The messages day.

00:20:36
Speaker 3: Ready seemed to be in day you may be bad? You maybe late.

00:20:58
Speaker 10: Brocord her mrssion, Dove, who change so Bad?

00:21:58
Speaker 5: Tround ticket.

00:23:04
Speaker 3: Now the best of the day things are?

00:23:19
Speaker 2: They seem to be.

00:23:21
Speaker 17: Lame you maybe line you, maybe lay just walk up?

00:23:34
Speaker 18: How messes made? Don't treat so bad? Do you teach? Y?

00:24:17
Speaker 5: Chris brother?

00:24:22
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:24:22
Speaker 5: But can we just be normal for once and not ever?

00:24:27
Speaker 14: No, we can't.

00:24:30
Speaker 5: Or what are you about to learn?

00:24:33
Speaker 14: You're about to be in O school with us? This is this is a thirty year camaraderie.

00:24:39
Speaker 6: Where he and I are having a total inside conversation with each other based on like every reference.

00:24:48
Speaker 5: I know.

00:24:48
Speaker 1: I texted with you both for about ten minutes.

00:24:58
Speaker 14: Are you going to.

00:25:08
Speaker 5: This might be a three episode?

00:25:10
Speaker 15: I know?

00:25:10
Speaker 3: Right?

00:25:11
Speaker 14: All right, give it to Billy?

00:25:23
Speaker 5: How long before you committed this in your memory? You gotta get that in this right right right? Spot Stick?

00:26:01
Speaker 14: Say what spot Stick? Great?

00:26:12
Speaker 5: Crack break.

00:26:20
Speaker 2: Tom right now.

00:26:42
Speaker 5: Is a question of you two? So when all right, watch me take the podcast over?

00:26:49
Speaker 1: Take it over?

00:26:49
Speaker 6: So when when you two play? Have you two played long enough where you're literally in a linear state of mind where you know the song and you are playing you Because I just realized I only realize who I am when I'm not in roots world, because when I'm in roots world, I'm more like traffic cop. Yeah, but I noticed that when I'm in jam session. Like literally in that song, I've referenced maybe twelve drummers from Bill Wither's Drummer. Ye yeah, between Yatson and you know Clyde Jabbo. I try to do Melvin, but I couldn't bring myself to it.

00:27:38
Speaker 14: It might have been too slow for Melvin.

00:27:39
Speaker 6: Right right right, and so I'm literally going through. See the thing is Melvin is reverse Clyde.

00:27:50
Speaker 5: So all right, I do funck you woman. So basically.

00:27:55
Speaker 6: James and I, Chris and I are connection of courses. Is James Brown, And so with James's I would say top three drummers. Clyde Stubblefield has the probably the best ghost note left hand ever, so a lot of his like slowed down a little bit, so like he plays he plays a snare like like old Black Church people play the tambourine with a little like of course, the the pace is this, but he'll add the.

00:28:35
Speaker 5: You know what I mean.

00:28:39
Speaker 6: And Adris Mohammed is also in under this umbrella where his left hand and the ghost note.

00:28:47
Speaker 5: Right.

00:28:49
Speaker 6: And also I would say Steve Roone formerly of the Heartbreakers, and of course the average white man who's probably a more nuanced Bernard Party like Bernard Purty's trademarkets of course, yeah, you know what I mean.

00:29:09
Speaker 5: So Steve Arroni.

00:29:10
Speaker 6: Takes Clyde Stubblefield's left hand and uh it takes Bernard Purtty's right hand. But also Adris Muhammad does that a lot. But with James Brown's other drummer, uh Clyde uh Javo, John Davo starks he's more he's more of a food guy. So I say, John Davo starts like he's more about the pass.

00:29:52
Speaker 5: So I'll say that.

00:29:54
Speaker 6: Even though we credit Clyde Stubblefield with being like James Brown, the funkiest drummer, claud Seville feels more like boutique shopping, whereas Jabbo is more like common every day right, meat and potatoes drummers, you know what I mean.

00:30:14
Speaker 5: Like he's more in a swing h.

00:30:26
Speaker 6: So that's and he's also heavy on the one that's that's zab all day, so his emphasis is more on the foot.

00:30:39
Speaker 5: Now, the thing is, Melvin Parker, you don't play one right.

00:30:45
Speaker 6: Melvin Parker never hits on the one, so he hits everything but the one.

00:30:48
Speaker 5: And so he's more like right, so that one that's missing, that's his.

00:31:05
Speaker 6: Infloye, so he's more single pated drummer, you know what I mean. But it's always my question to you is when you're not playing your own material, are you do you morph into another musician or like I find out I'm more of a shape shifter than I am, Like I don't think I've identified I've identified myself as a shape shifter more than like, oh that's a mirror plan.

00:31:33
Speaker 5: But you know, when I'm playing, I.

00:31:34
Speaker 1: Think that's interesting because I feel like I know when it's you.

00:31:38
Speaker 5: Well, also I've made my presence known.

00:31:41
Speaker 6: But also it's also like my style of drumming is more like like right now in the culinary world, there's there's.

00:31:47
Speaker 5: A big giant worry that with words like kale and plant based that we're going to lose. I mean, you know, like this twenty twenty is the whole era of.

00:32:02
Speaker 6: The fight between you know, traditionalists how it used to be and this is how I was raised, versus the disruptors who are like, no, this is this is the new, this is how it's going to be. And there's you know, I guess my staking that claim is more about the musicianship. So you know, I never wanted to be what they would call like a you know, like a gospel drummer, gospel chops. So I always imagine that I'm the drummer that works at a steel mill in Ohio or Milwaukee or whatever, and you know, his wife lets him play with the guys at the local bar, but he's like real sloppy.

00:32:51
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, like like I could, I could perfect him. But for me, oh.

00:33:01
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean see, the problem is when I'm doing it in terms of hip hop, I also not only have to be the sample, but I have to also be the drum programming. So that's that's my my my big risk with this next record, because I'm actually not gonna play like a computer and I'm gonna play I'm trying to play.

00:33:26
Speaker 5: Like the sloppiest drunk four year old, like how I used to play when I was a kid, without the Like my mind is that.

00:33:38
Speaker 6: But do you do you like for you, do you guys shape shift as well? Or do you are you just too preoccupied with the melody whatever? Because when I'm drumming, it's so second hand, like it's like the back of my head where if I think about drumming, then I'm fucking up. So I'm thinking about like yeah, and wait, that'll leave my while or two, like I'm thinking of anything else but drumming. Really yeah, because when you start thinking about it, that's where I remember once, uh, one of my dad's gigs when I was eleven, we were doing we were doing all the Wings of Love and I was I was twelve years Yeah.

00:34:24
Speaker 5: Did you know that Steve Broon's drumming on that?

00:34:25
Speaker 14: Yeah?

00:34:26
Speaker 5: Yeah, I did not know that. So it's like one in the morning, I'm twelve years old.

00:34:34
Speaker 6: We're in the nightclub and this is like out in some some club in uh like Darby, like in the in the outskirts, and we're playing you know. My dad's like, all right, you know, you get on drums. The bar's empty. It's like the last set, so he lets me sit in and I did good. And then we got to on the Wings of Love and we got through the first verse and there's there's there's like, you know, the drunk guy. It was Tavern on The Simpsons. Yes, he's looking at me. He's the only one that's like, wait a minute, what's a twelve year old kid doing in this nightclub at at two in the morning on a school night, but he's real drunk and he's like, hey man, that drummer is really good.

00:35:17
Speaker 5: And then I messed up that just about.

00:35:22
Speaker 6: So when I think about it, that's when it's problematic. But is it the same for you at all?

00:35:29
Speaker 1: Like I think thinking about it is always a problem. Feeling it is better. But I'm always trying to be myself because also as a singer, it's more obvious when you're copying other people you love, you know, So I just try to embody the lyrics in my own way usually.

00:35:47
Speaker 15: And we were talking earlier about that, the steady gig, all those steady gigs you played, and you know, hotel lobbies and things like that, and restaurants and bars.

00:35:57
Speaker 5: That's it.

00:35:58
Speaker 14: That's where we all got our train.

00:36:00
Speaker 15: You know.

00:36:01
Speaker 5: Did you ever pall on the paper like that? I feel like you came out the wound a legend.

00:36:05
Speaker 15: Yeah, I know, revision is history, but I I mean, I've always been too pragmatic because like as a bass player, my my thing was do whatever you have to do to keep the gig. I was the best worried about, you know, individualism and trying to find you know what, I'm just don't get fired that was always my number one thing.

00:36:27
Speaker 6: You playing fight or flight? Well, I mean there's two ways to live. Either gonna fight or flight or you're gonna live. Like, hey, what can I do to you know? I never I never thought that you would ever have that thought, like, I don't want to get fired?

00:36:41
Speaker 14: Absolutely?

00:36:41
Speaker 5: Have you ever got a fire Christmas?

00:36:43
Speaker 14: I've gotten close?

00:36:45
Speaker 15: Oh yeah, yeah yeah, but it wasn't you remember this well, you remember the no app days, the make Base Great Again days, when all of these young cats were coming on the scene not wanting to play with an amplifier.

00:36:59
Speaker 4: Oh my god.

00:37:00
Speaker 15: Yeah, you know we were trying to muscle up and yeah, exactly right right, and uh oh when I first.

00:37:07
Speaker 14: Moved to New York eighty nine, ninety ninety one.

00:37:10
Speaker 1: Well, an AM's just an extra thing to carry?

00:37:13
Speaker 5: What's that?

00:37:13
Speaker 1: And an extra thing?

00:37:15
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:37:16
Speaker 15: So there was all these cats like, man, you know, real bass players don't use an am got to muscle up, raise your strings, and you know, have the microphone way out there and project right. So uh that was that was courtesy of a particular sect. But I got on body wear suits? Are they from New Orleans? See what I'm trying to nobody, but I.

00:37:43
Speaker 5: Wonder who you're talking about.

00:37:44
Speaker 1: No names, no names, no names, no names.

00:37:49
Speaker 15: But I got on Bobby Watson's gig and he was like, say, where's your AM. You know I don't use no AMP. I got a big sound. He's like, I'm sure you do buy one an AM? Like no, man, you know amp man, that's that's some punk shit.

00:38:03
Speaker 5: Man, you know.

00:38:04
Speaker 15: He's like, oh it is huh say uh no, no, no, no, no, wait wait wait I'm getting an AMP. And actually it was it was Jeff Taine watch that saved my gig with Bobby watching because I was playing the Vanguard with Bobby.

00:38:22
Speaker 5: And Bobby was pissed. He was like, man, get an AMP. You know.

00:38:25
Speaker 15: I was like no, I was being a petulant eighteen year old, you know. And U Tane came down there one night and and this is when I learned, like, you know, it's cool. So Tane was kind of part of that whole crew.

00:38:39
Speaker 5: He had one foot in there and with us.

00:38:41
Speaker 15: That's right, that's right. So I said, hey, man, can you believe what he wants me to do? He wants me to get an APP and so Tine was like, we'll get one. I was like, for real, He's like, man, just because you have an AMP, don't mean you got to crank it. Just just get an AP, you know. I was like, for real, it's cool. You ain't gonna be mad at me. There's something along those lines, right. That sect was really powerful cool in the early nineties, and Tay was like, man, you better get a namp and keep your kick.

00:39:11
Speaker 5: So wait a minute.

00:39:12
Speaker 6: If now I can see if it's Village Vanguard, but with that sect, say the same for oh, I don't know, Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center.

00:39:21
Speaker 14: Yes, no amp under no circumstances.

00:39:24
Speaker 1: Are you serious?

00:39:25
Speaker 14: Yes?

00:39:25
Speaker 1: Wait was there a mic on the Yeah, it was a mic.

00:39:27
Speaker 2: Oh.

00:39:27
Speaker 5: Oh.

00:39:28
Speaker 1: The theory was I thought, I here, I was thinking, no amplification at all in a club. But well, you mean there's a microphone.

00:39:36
Speaker 14: Yes, there was a microphone.

00:39:38
Speaker 1: So the theory is the pickup doesn't sound good.

00:39:41
Speaker 15: The theory was the sound, the natural sound of the acoustic bass was destroyed in the seventies and early eighties. Now, I can't argue that you agree U two, And I think Ron Carter was probably one of the only ones that made it out of that whole era, like unscathed like even though he was using an AMP and used the d I, he still sounded nice and fatten and and good you know.

00:40:08
Speaker 6: Uh.

00:40:08
Speaker 14: But a lot of other people had that real real.

00:40:13
Speaker 5: You know and.

00:40:17
Speaker 6: Like that.

00:40:17
Speaker 14: Yeah, and so, but Ron was the only one that everybody was like, Okay, that's cool.

00:40:26
Speaker 1: Became its own thing kind of exactly.

00:40:29
Speaker 15: And then so in the late eighties, when when the sect was was was getting big, you know, it was kind of like yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So and then it was like, well, everybody raised their strings, unplugged the amps. We're going our natural to return the base to his original glory, you know. And then Ray Brown, Ron Carter, you know, Mill Hitton, all the great bass legends, they come here us play.

00:40:54
Speaker 14: We all be like.

00:41:00
Speaker 5: And man takes that toe on your hands and.

00:41:02
Speaker 14: They'd be like, what are you doing?

00:41:05
Speaker 15: Asive Yeah, there's a I'm gonna call him out because that's my man. There's a YouTube clip go. I think it was when Harry Conneck Jr. Was on some morning show and my brother Ben Wolf was playing bass. From a long camera angle, you can see his strings are about that high, maybe three, and he's playing like I'm very sure he had ten to nighters. At some point, can't you gut strings? You know, high super high action. And at some point I was just like, you know, this is this is not right. It doesn't sound good, you know. So Ray Brown changed all.

00:41:50
Speaker 5: Of that, So this all right?

00:41:51
Speaker 6: So you're answering the question for me because at in my studio set up a thirty rock. What I'm trying to do is get acquainted with all of our plugins. Like I spend my lunch time just like, okay, let me figure out a new sound or whatever. So you know, when you get a pro tool system, then you know there's over like seven hundred plugins or seven thousand plugins, and of course there's different combinations of that stuff. So you know, I'm trying to think of figure out a new sound, and I keep I kept seeing as there's a plug in called fat wood.

00:42:30
Speaker 5: Right, which caught my attention because I need right. I said, fat would that's right. Let me check this out.

00:42:39
Speaker 6: And I got to it and my engineer, Steve, Steve Vandel, was like explaining to me how in the jazz world, like the woods, the natural wood sound, there's an argument over who we And he said, you know how like your your di versus miophon thing or whatever, and how I don't like the microphone to the more than I like a d I sound, but I need it for a specific reason.

00:43:09
Speaker 5: So now I get that. You you you your challenge was natural sound versus and to.

00:43:17
Speaker 14: Find a happy medium.

00:43:19
Speaker 15: And uh, I think I mean, like right now, I'm not using any d I, it's just all microphone.

00:43:26
Speaker 1: Well I can't imagine using a d I in the studio on an acoustic bass.

00:43:31
Speaker 15: I can't either. But it depends on it depends on the on the music, what kind of music you're doing. Like when we did the Philadelphia experiment, that was I think that was mostly d I, not very much microphone, but for that music it was perfect. Its yeah, yeah, see I got a story about her. Yes, he said, no, wait da right right right. It was the first time I heard of you when you played at.

00:44:03
Speaker 1: Mccoor really yep, oh that was forever ago.

00:44:07
Speaker 5: It was like it was like two thousand, two thousand and uh.

00:44:12
Speaker 15: My manager at the time, it's like, Hey, we're gonna go see this girl, Norah Jones, you should come.

00:44:17
Speaker 5: You know.

00:44:18
Speaker 14: I think all of the people from Ted Curlin's office came.

00:44:24
Speaker 15: They all came, right and yeah, like this girl is gonna be huge, She's gonna be huge, really yeah, yeah, And I remember it was packed and I was in I was in the black of the club. I said it on purpose exactly.

00:44:43
Speaker 3: And uh.

00:44:44
Speaker 14: And then you had your record come.

00:44:46
Speaker 1: Out yet I can't no, but I had a long lead up to it. So the labor was I had a weekly gig there. It was a Jewish community center, yes, and it was singles night on Wednesdays, and I had I didn't know, every Wednesday on singles Night. And it started out with nobody regular gig there. I had a regular gig there for a year and it was a singles night and there weren't a ton of people there for me, and it was just singles. And then it built up slowly and slowly. And then right right before my record came out, I think we had our last weekly or something and it was like bananas man.

00:45:20
Speaker 14: And then and then you shout out like a cannon man, and I was just like.

00:45:24
Speaker 5: That's her.

00:45:25
Speaker 1: You came to the court, did you say, Hi.

00:45:26
Speaker 14: No, there's too much too much traffic in there.

00:45:29
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:45:29
Speaker 6: I was going to say the last the last stages of your buzz before your debut came out. I distinctly remember in a forty eight hour period, I can claim that I saw you pre you and pre Gaga, you pre you and pre Gaga Stephanie uh at sort of like piano bar gigs in New York area within like a seventy one night. I think I saw her on a Thursday night, and then I saw you on a Sunday night. Wow, And yeah, it's that's probably yeah, the only time where I saw someone in there there started like incubated level before.

00:46:13
Speaker 15: You know. John Batiste was my student at the Aspen Summer Program. Yeah, yeah, yeah, in two thousand and one. Look at him now, I'm telling you, right, so when I see him now, I'm just like, you know, you ain't famous to me, that's crazy. But no, he and and Diana Crawl as well. You know, we kind of came up. She was together at the No no, no no, but.

00:46:41
Speaker 14: Yeah we can.

00:46:42
Speaker 15: Yeah, like when she made her first album, well her first album for g RP. It was ninety four. We recorded that. I mean, you know, she was brand new, you know, she she was doing like the the bar and hotel circuit, you know, and uh, Timmy Lapuma heard her and the rest is.

00:47:03
Speaker 1: History, and you played on that early stuff with her or later.

00:47:07
Speaker 14: I played on her.

00:47:09
Speaker 15: I think I've played on almost all of her records except her second and maybe one other in between there.

00:47:16
Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, so you So you were produced by Timmy Lapuma. That was my That was like my third dad. Okay this on this album? Were you acoustic or electric?

00:47:28
Speaker 14: All acoustic?

00:47:30
Speaker 5: Always? We ever done anything electric with him?

00:47:32
Speaker 14: Big time?

00:47:34
Speaker 5: Yep. It's like for me, if there's ever producer that has such a got replaced.

00:47:39
Speaker 4: I was.

00:47:42
Speaker 15: How did you know Marcus Miller? I was like, well, why don't you just get Marcus. We's gotta break my heart when the record comes out. I was like, damn wait, but it was cool later on, Wait, what is that like when you find out that you heartbreaking?

00:47:57
Speaker 5: Is that a common thing before? You know?

00:48:00
Speaker 15: I don't think it is now. I don't think that happens much anymore. I can't be sure, but I don't think that happens much. On Kenny Kirkland's first and only solo album, Delfiel Marsalis produced it, and I remember he called me in and he said, hey, man, we got this track. We got like four bass parts on that. We got Seannette Maffitt. We got Robert Hurst. I think maybe no what Originalville, but it was just Hurst and and Seanette is like, put your bass part down because we can't figure out which one we like. Yeah, so I'm pretty sure on one of those songs on Kenny Kirkland's record, there's like three bass players on one.

00:48:40
Speaker 14: He just kind of you know, I got four bars, Hurst got four bars.

00:48:44
Speaker 1: You know, I've almost done that. I don't think I've ever done that.

00:48:46
Speaker 5: Really.

00:48:47
Speaker 1: No, Well, I saw both. I saw you play when I was in college down in Texas. I saw the roots.

00:48:52
Speaker 6: Really yeah, wow, I thought I thought the first time we saw each other was when you're sitting in the front ruck of Wait you're from Denton.

00:49:01
Speaker 1: Text, Well, from Dallas, but I went to college in Denton.

00:49:04
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, I'm only learning about that. I'm doing the slide doc right now. And I didn't know that he was born in Denton, Texas.

00:49:11
Speaker 1: I actually didn't know that either.

00:49:12
Speaker 5: No, I didn't know that he's born in I'm in the there's a there's a really crazy.

00:49:21
Speaker 6: Lost concert that we just found which is supposed to be like this is this is in seventy two. So I'll say this maybe like three months before Larry quit and the first okay, so of course, uh and in prime self savage mode, you know, Slide used time as a means to protest, always famous for being late to shows and whatnot.

00:49:46
Speaker 5: So uh, you know, this is like his homecoming show.

00:49:51
Speaker 6: You know, he went away for two years after his triumphant Woodstock thing and you know, greatest Hits album was was he was literally like the biggest star in the world.

00:50:02
Speaker 5: And so you know, they planning this homecoming thing in Denton, Texas.

00:50:06
Speaker 6: And all you when when the they recorded live and you know, wanted to preserve it on taping, so all of a sudden, you here it just starts with booze. So obviously he was right, right, so he I believe one of the band members told me that they were waiting for about sort of north of ninety minutes, so maybe like one hundred minutes yea. And but he's also he keeps getting away with it because he's also very charismatic, charming guy and literally when he walks on stage, he you know, he does this, and you know, and he does the look guys, I'm sorry, but look, I can either solve the problem and start playing now, or you guys can just continue booing.

00:50:57
Speaker 14: What would you like to do?

00:50:58
Speaker 6: Like he's really very logical, right and the second may hit it was like they forgot everything.

00:51:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so that's exciting in Texas, man, I can't wait to see that. Yeah.

00:51:12
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's a lot that I'm learning right now.

00:51:42
Speaker 11: You might burn me here lett a one, you might drive him back all the bush's tailmate too much.

00:51:52
Speaker 1: I knew he had.

00:51:55
Speaker 10: If I try to escape, which was shut.

00:51:59
Speaker 4: Out, pull the red tape, A man lives, no one cast.

00:52:05
Speaker 5: Them say.

00:52:13
Speaker 2: On the last bustle long.

00:52:16
Speaker 8: So.

00:52:20
Speaker 2: Still with me, I'll tame.

00:52:27
Speaker 4: Your riting and take the bullet and that gun.

00:52:42
Speaker 2: I'll bear you, mussel.

00:52:45
Speaker 4: Everything you want to know, swallow be afu.

00:52:51
Speaker 8: If I try to escape, you william play the pa.

00:52:58
Speaker 4: If you dismis, hold you.

00:53:04
Speaker 10: S all sides moss up long should then I'll pretend that out five s oh las, washup um shoe.

00:54:41
Speaker 2: Sh with me.

00:54:47
Speaker 4: I'll put everything.

00:54:51
Speaker 14: And so you saw they came.

00:56:12
Speaker 1: To U n t no that you guys were playing in Dallas. We went down to Dallas to see you.

00:56:17
Speaker 5: Was it in that bowling alley? Uh?

00:56:21
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't.

00:56:22
Speaker 5: There's there's like a in Dallas.

00:56:23
Speaker 6: There was something bowl and it was like a bowling alley, pool hall and kind of a house.

00:56:31
Speaker 1: Of bluesy what is a theater?

00:56:32
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah?

00:56:33
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't there. It was a place where there was a balcony surrounding the stage.

00:56:38
Speaker 5: I can't remember where it was, okay.

00:56:40
Speaker 1: And then I tried to go see you play with Josh Redman and Brian Blade at Caravana Dreams. But I was told later by Chris Thomas that it was actually him. I was out of the band about you were you weren't there, and I think my memory got, you know, sideways, But Chris was like, that was me.

00:56:59
Speaker 14: You want to Christian Chris?

00:57:01
Speaker 1: No, I knew who you were. No, no, no, But I don't think I got to see you till later, like maybe after I moved to New York.

00:57:09
Speaker 14: Yeah I didn't. I don't don't don't play in Texas much?

00:57:13
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, is that true?

00:57:15
Speaker 5: Where's your Like?

00:57:17
Speaker 15: How is if I do go to Texas, it's probably Houston, Houston or Austin.

00:57:22
Speaker 1: No Dallas for you?

00:57:23
Speaker 14: Huh not really?

00:57:25
Speaker 5: So where's your jazz? Where's your Like?

00:57:29
Speaker 6: Every American in your American kind of.

00:57:33
Speaker 15: All the Amtrak so Boston, between Boston and d c of Rochester, Buffalo, Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis has gotten a little better.

00:57:47
Speaker 14: Saint Louis not much in the South Man not not a whole lot.

00:57:55
Speaker 1: That's interesting because of chause Denton was a big old jazz school. So well, exactly we have people through to the college a lot, right, Yeah, I've.

00:58:01
Speaker 14: Done like master classes.

00:58:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:58:04
Speaker 15: So the place where it was, of course in la of course, you know, Seattle, all the way down to San Diego, Phoenix, Denver.

00:58:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the only place there was a jazz club in Dallas called Sambuca, but it was very small, and then there was a chain, Yeah.

00:58:17
Speaker 2: It was a chain.

00:58:18
Speaker 1: But then there was a caravan in Dreams in Fort Worth, which is like the club that was the one that was the only real place that people came of.

00:58:27
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you're trying to tell me the place where it was invented. It's almost like, well in New York and did the same thing.

00:58:35
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean New Orleans was so insular. They're like, we don't need no northerns come down here.

00:58:39
Speaker 1: We got to go oh yeah, there's not a lot of out of town r Gota. Yeah, and then then you got the festivals in Europe?

00:58:47
Speaker 5: Yes, are you tired of all? Right?

00:58:50
Speaker 6: So for me, like okay, for you is most of your summers and for both of you when you're touring, are most of your sum outside of the United States? Like have you been in the United States for a good two months stretch without.

00:59:07
Speaker 1: Going to Europe?

00:59:08
Speaker 5: Yeah?

00:59:08
Speaker 1: I mean I don't tour as much as I used to, but I did last summer just States, and this summer I'm just doing a month in Europe. And I was excited to do some of the same places I've done a lot, and then I realized, oh, this is just what there is for me. It's like all the same festivals, a lot of the same places, which I do love, sure, but it's like, yeah, it gets a little like, wait, did I just go back in time?

00:59:32
Speaker 5: Yeah?

00:59:34
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean the summer o itinerary tends to look the same. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I've seen the July seventeenth in the United States since we graduated. Well I didn't see it then, so yeah, probably nineteen eighty eight.

00:59:47
Speaker 1: So you're always in Europe every summer pretty much, Well, maybe I'll see you this summer. Are you going to be there this summer?

00:59:52
Speaker 5: Not for long?

00:59:53
Speaker 15: I'm actually this is I'm only doing two gigs in Europe in July. I actually get to stay.

00:59:59
Speaker 1: Home, stay home and work or stay home and hay.

01:00:02
Speaker 15: Oh I'm going to stay home and hay yeah, I'm going to watch Law and Order. My asshole. It would be marathon and like crazy.

01:00:11
Speaker 6: Oh man, Wow, this is this year mark the first year that we're finally doing our first round of arena tours really, because the thing is is that, you know, we've played big numbers in New York City. Yeah, and MSG really isn't that big.

01:00:31
Speaker 1: No, isn't it like nine or ten thousand.

01:00:34
Speaker 5: It's like maybe twelve thirteen, but you think of it as like thirty and yeah, you would think like forty some whatever.

01:00:40
Speaker 6: And we just never, you know, it's always like, okay, when do we when do we play our cards to see if we can actually do arenas or not? So wow, But after the the thing that we did at the Grammys this year where we gathered everyone in in the history of hip hop to do like this mega twelve minute, it was great.

01:01:04
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was fun to watch you look dude eight, I should have a separate podcast on MD gigs. What do you talk about it.

01:01:16
Speaker 14: I've come close to suicide in.

01:01:18
Speaker 1: Time musical director gigs. Oh yeah, where you're running the show and trying to organize it all.

01:01:24
Speaker 6: I'll guarantee you know this story and basically say that when I landed in New York, my tooth fell out. So there's there's this there's this rock and roll dentist that Lenny Kravitz put the whole community onto in which this guy does twenty four hour work.

01:01:40
Speaker 5: Like he even comes to your house. That's a little weird.

01:01:43
Speaker 6: You can, yeah, like you leave them keys whatever, you take these pills, you're asleep, you wake up in the morning.

01:01:48
Speaker 5: He already operated.

01:01:49
Speaker 1: Wait wait, back up, back up.

01:01:52
Speaker 5: Yeah, are you kidding me. I don't do that. I'm not I'm not that rich. But yes, you can. Actually this guy, he's the rock and roll dennist. He goes on tour. He could if you have a football, you know, I've got time.

01:02:02
Speaker 2: We got to be home.

01:02:03
Speaker 5: He'll come to the crib and.

01:02:05
Speaker 14: He's in New York.

01:02:07
Speaker 5: So he's on a twenty four hour call.

01:02:09
Speaker 6: And when I landed, the amount of stress that seven weeks was because it's somewhere in between, like one standby, there.

01:02:18
Speaker 5: Was a life coach, because you a life coach.

01:02:22
Speaker 6: So we also experienced this and then the rock and roll So in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it's sort of the same thing where you have to reunite people that haven't played with each other.

01:02:32
Speaker 5: For a long time.

01:02:32
Speaker 1: Oh and there's a lot of history there. Yeah, a lot of bad history, a lot of was there a therapist, Yeah.

01:02:38
Speaker 6: That's why I had to have this person there, like literally there to talk. So there was there's two situations where you know, you go back in two thousand and seven, you took three thousand dollars out of my bag and did it whatever like that.

01:02:52
Speaker 5: Wow.

01:02:52
Speaker 6: So there was that, but then there was mostly like, well, how many bars is da da da getting? And you know, how much explosions is data DA getting?

01:03:02
Speaker 14: I used to think that wasn't real, dude.

01:03:04
Speaker 6: It was like if you ever seen I don't know if you watch thirty Rock, but if you ever watch the Source Awards episode of thirty Rock, which alone is a setup and a joke and a fund's line at the same time, it literally it was it almost went Murphy's Law. And then at the last minute, it was the it was the biggest hail. Mary with seconds on the clock left, tossed the ball up and just praise. Someone on the other end catches it, and they caught it.

01:03:41
Speaker 5: I'll put it this way. The last act, little Uzi Bert, I didn't even know he was on stage.

01:03:48
Speaker 6: And that's only because the way that the show was built. I couldn't see what was happening around the corner. But do you remember how like after Prince did Purple Rain and he stormed off stage, I've ruined everything.

01:04:01
Speaker 5: I fucked up. That's what I did. Like I was having a panic attack.

01:04:05
Speaker 6: I was about to cry wow, and I stormed off stage and I was like, oh man, I've ruined it.

01:04:09
Speaker 5: I ruined it.

01:04:10
Speaker 6: And then my band's like congratulating each other. I'm like, what are y'all doing? She's like see what I said? Wait, he was there, so yeah, he came up last minute and literally they had to show me on Twitter what had happened.

01:04:23
Speaker 5: You didn't even know and they were like, how did you not know? And you literally on stage?

01:04:26
Speaker 6: But I swear to God, like after after a point, I just blanked out because I started going to my head, like I fucked this up. Everyone's going to cancel me. I'm be trending on Twitter. He messed up the Hip Hop thirty thing and literally my last because there was even acts that dropped out ten minutes before because they lost one our headliner. I thought he might win a particular award, and you know when it went to someone else, Man, fuck the Grammy.

01:04:56
Speaker 5: I'm like, yo, you cat.

01:04:57
Speaker 6: And it was every type of stress and that's how my tooth fell out. So just in terms of like m DM man, it's hard. You can't be no one's friend. Sam Moore got got mad at me one time. Sam Moore, Yeah, Sam? And Dave yeah, oh he's more famous for that. He's waving.

01:05:16
Speaker 15: So we're at the White House and it was the big Ray Charles tribute and I'm kind of wearing.

01:05:21
Speaker 14: What I have on exactly right now, a T shirt.

01:05:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:05:24
Speaker 15: I had a black T shirt on and a black sport jacket. So I got the big band and uh, you know a lot of you know, Demi Levado was there, Usher, Jolanta Adams, all these people, so I wasn't paying attention. I had a James Brown T shirt on oh no, oh no, but my jacket was, you know, kind of clothes like this. And so Sam Moore comes in and, uh, you know, mister Moore, you know, good morning. It's great to see you. I'm so honored to work with you. He's like, who is that? He looks at my shirt as soon as he saw, oh, it was too late to change my clothes. He's like, James Brown, what's their history? Why y'all look at James Brown. I was like, well, listen more, I can, I can, I can go change my shirt?

01:06:16
Speaker 14: No, no, no, it's too late.

01:06:17
Speaker 2: Now.

01:06:17
Speaker 15: Why you got a James Brown shirt on? It's like it's the only clean one I have. Yeah, I've been on the road for the last fight. I didn't get to do laundry.

01:06:28
Speaker 11: You know.

01:06:30
Speaker 15: He's like, and for the next fifteen minutes, he wouldn't he wouldn't sing the song. He was just I can't believe you wearing a chance Brown. It could not think one of them card games. So later on I texted Alan what's the deal?

01:06:47
Speaker 5: And so allan le friend Alan Le.

01:06:51
Speaker 15: And so he's like there was there was no direct story that he knew of. It was just sort of like an overall He's like, man, no, none of James Brown Piers from the sixties liked them.

01:07:02
Speaker 5: There's either a woman car game right right right, the answery I got to cut you.

01:07:08
Speaker 15: I felt so bad. I was like, man, I should run my room real quick, seriously. I was like, let's take a forty five minute break. I'm gonna go back to the hotel and change my shirt.

01:07:17
Speaker 1: I did not, but the damage was done.

01:07:20
Speaker 14: Oh my. He finally got over it the day of the gig.

01:07:26
Speaker 5: I remember once we did you ever play River Deep Mountain High?

01:07:31
Speaker 14: Sure?

01:07:31
Speaker 5: And that turnaround is one of the hardest things.

01:07:39
Speaker 14: Yeah, right.

01:07:42
Speaker 5: Right, So that turnaround as hard as he yes, it is.

01:07:44
Speaker 14: Yeah.

01:07:45
Speaker 6: And we used to do this annual gig out in the Hampton's where the former owner of the Apollo Theater does one of those fancy spancy like ten twenty thousand plate thing and you know, like an occasional pal McCartney shows up or whatever. You know, it's like a fun time and like the Roots have been in the house band for this thing for like like maybe the last ten years. And but the thing is it is also I think one of the downfalls of being on The Tonight Show is a lot of people just believe in the smoke and mirrors of it all of like, oh.

01:08:19
Speaker 14: The roots could do anything. No, no, they could do it.

01:08:23
Speaker 6: And so you know they'll come in the door, they'll come in the gate, like, Okay, you're gonna play these three songs with McCartney and three songs with Sting and these three songs. So you know, we already got like eighteen songs. But then always the last minutes, like Banjovi wants to do that, do you know what? Meanwhile you're playing the song and I got to put on my computer and learn living on a prayer that way. And so Darlene Love wanted to do River Deep, Mountain High, and this is all I know.

01:08:54
Speaker 5: I messed up.

01:08:55
Speaker 6: Okay, so I messed up that turnaround, right, But at least I was smart enough to just sixteen.

01:09:01
Speaker 5: I didn't know the count, so I just.

01:09:09
Speaker 1: Right right.

01:09:10
Speaker 6: I cheated it that way. Yeah, man, when I tell you, oh boy, like we didn't even meet yet. But because she wasn't accustomed to doing it like the way she normally does it, all I remember was.

01:09:25
Speaker 5: I took responsibility. I was like, my bad. Whatever. She turned around and said, I'm gonna fucking kill you. Yeah.

01:09:37
Speaker 6: Yeah, I will say that dealing with your heroes or your peers in the MD position is the fastest way.

01:09:47
Speaker 5: You just gotta you just got bull's eye on your chesties.

01:09:50
Speaker 6: They gonna get you now, somebody's gonna get you, Okay without naming your name? Has an idol ever?

01:09:57
Speaker 5: Wait? Do you know?

01:09:58
Speaker 15: Way?

01:09:59
Speaker 1: No? No, no, no, has an idol ever? Been mean?

01:10:02
Speaker 5: Disappointed you? No? Wow? Don't you looked at charm Life.

01:10:07
Speaker 1: I'm serious. One time they kind of annoyed me. But I'm not going to name a name. Yeah yeah, like I was like, oh, they're kind of annoying, but like, I still love them. I'm not even gonna say if it's a man or woman.

01:10:22
Speaker 14: Well, you already know my answer.

01:10:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've had some disappointments, I strangely haven't. I actually am surprised. I've never had a disappointment.

01:10:31
Speaker 5: But wait, was that instance your last interaction with that person?

01:10:34
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't. It was just like, okay, I'm not going to get too close there.

01:10:39
Speaker 14: Maybe, but yeah, I feel bad. Well James Brown, No, it was fine.

01:10:47
Speaker 1: You're naming name.

01:10:49
Speaker 14: It ended on a very high note, so it was good.

01:10:53
Speaker 1: We go back who were you? Just that was tricky and it ended.

01:10:57
Speaker 2: On a high note.

01:10:59
Speaker 14: Yeah, that was below tricky.

01:11:02
Speaker 6: I'm almost saying that Chris has undersold his love for James Brown.

01:11:06
Speaker 2: I think, I.

01:11:08
Speaker 6: No, but it's it's beyond you know, it's beyond me any anytime a person comes to me and like, hey, you know this is James Brown.

01:11:15
Speaker 5: Probably no, no, no, no, no, no no.

01:11:16
Speaker 6: It's almost like I got to ask my dad first. I'm like, did you ask Christian McBride first? Liked the DNA of James's you know, heavy, and Chris so well.

01:11:27
Speaker 8: You know.

01:11:27
Speaker 15: So that's a perfect segue into how we met in high school because you know, we both grew up in Philly. We went to Creative and Performing Arts, which is the same high school where the late great. It still feels weird, seems you just said that the late Great Joe d Francesco, Rosewinkle Boys, the man Amel LaRue.

01:11:51
Speaker 1: I didn't know Kurt went there too.

01:11:55
Speaker 5: Yeah.

01:11:57
Speaker 2: Kerk was like.

01:12:00
Speaker 6: Like it was like a game and him and Joey were the crips and Kirk was the Bloods and I was on whatever side was winning at the time. Well, this is my first time that I've been in that situation where like I'm with peer's my age play and so they're like traditional jazz, So in order for me to get their respect, I better speak their language. But then he's like trying to unteach me everything they're teaching me by like this Captain b Park and.

01:12:29
Speaker 15: This is for example, and so. But but the thing where I felt really alone was I was also hardcoreing R and B and funk. So I mean, Joey could play it, but that he didn't know a lot of that exactly, you know, uh, and Kurt didn't, you know. So like I was by myself when it came to you know, Motown and Stacks and James Brown Earth went to fire all that.

01:12:55
Speaker 14: So when he comes to school and uh, I remember.

01:12:59
Speaker 5: He on Roseen Winkle's guitar.

01:13:02
Speaker 14: I thought you were playing this but not not this bass, but you were playing the bass. I was in the bass line. You was messing around.

01:13:08
Speaker 15: I came in, I came in the music room and there's this new this new dude in the music program and he's kind of like and I just kind of stood there like, oh, really, we got a James Brownhead in school now? And uh, I mean instant bond, instant bond. And my mother was so happy because she was like, thank God, you got somebody who can talk to Funk. You know, you got somebody you can hang with now talk about Funk instead of as old people.

01:13:46
Speaker 5: Exactly are you?

01:13:50
Speaker 1: Were you in a younger grade? Is that why you came along? Later? Transferred?

01:13:55
Speaker 6: Like for the first eight years of my life, I went to the private version of that school, performing art school, and then members a period where.

01:14:06
Speaker 5: I don't know if you know this, this educator named Marva Collins. Okay, I'll tell you what.

01:14:11
Speaker 6: When you listen to songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder, when you listen to the last two minutes of black Man where the teacher who's like the little kids are yelling back at him, just listening to the last two minutes of black Man, that's more of a Collins school in Chicago. And she was a woman who Kribeini green projects the good time projects like these were like.

01:14:34
Speaker 5: You know, the worst kids were the worst GPA on earth.

01:14:37
Speaker 6: And she just decided one day, I'm gonna turn you all into mental level Ivy League students, and so one by one, everyone who's ever been in her class wound up going to doctors, nurses like that sort of thing. And so that's like every seventies parent was like. So I went to a lot of schools that were like private schools that were guarantee that your kid was going to be in Harvard or whatever like at the end of their school tenure.

01:15:13
Speaker 5: And then the last two years I happened to see.

01:15:20
Speaker 6: On Channel ten on on CBS, I saw this fourteen year old kid, right.

01:15:28
Speaker 15: Dreams Yo, don't even yo dah that don't take no, but it's on YouTube.

01:15:34
Speaker 5: I hate you right now, man. Yes, Dreams is sort.

01:15:39
Speaker 15: Of like it's a made for TV movie about our school.

01:15:44
Speaker 6: This is before I went there, But I saw Joey playing on like this this clip, and I was just mind blown that a thirteen fourteen year old could play like an adult because I only grew up. You know, my dad was an oldies duops singer, so I only hung with old musicians, which is why I played the way I played now, because literally it was like me at five and a bunch of thirty year olds and I never interacted with kids my own age whatever. So that's you know, I just told my mom, like I want to play with kids my own age. Like I grew up thinking like, oh damn, I'm the only kid that knows how to play like this, and I came in for the rudest awakening. That is interesting, dude, the first day of school, Miles Davis is at school, like giving him first two.

01:16:40
Speaker 14: Weeks of school. Yeah, something like.

01:16:42
Speaker 15: There used to be a morning talk show in Philly hosted by a guy named Bill Boggs. It's called time Out and they had right and they had Miles Davis as a guest.

01:16:55
Speaker 14: And so I found this out later that.

01:17:00
Speaker 15: Uh they felt that because I saw an interview with Bill bogs It was interesting. He said he remembers that episode well, because the producers didn't think Miles Davis's name was big enough to carry an hour of a of a of an interview. Can you imagine the absurdity of that. So it was remember Maurice Hines was also against that day. So that was the reason they said, well, you know, we need a s Miles can't do it by himself, you know. And also to to kind of make it cute, see, they decided they would get some kids to play for Miles and so and then Miles look at right now. Well, that's that's what everybody said, right and so, uh so they had me Joey Stacy Dozer playing drums. She she played drums in a high school band before a mayor got there. And they invited four uh young trumpet players from the Philly school system to play. And Miles, would you give them advice on live television? Foolish decision?

01:18:05
Speaker 1: Is this on YouTube?

01:18:07
Speaker 5: Yes? Yeah?

01:18:08
Speaker 15: And I can't watch it? Yeah, it's watching that sounds it was a really ridiculous idea. And you know, Miles, Miles apparently not. They first of all, they needed the second seven second delay because Miles dropped a few f bombs on.

01:18:27
Speaker 5: And this morning television Morning.

01:18:29
Speaker 15: Yeah, you know all the parents and you know that moms, you know, and uh, Bill Box asked Miles. He said, uh, you know, Miles, you know you you went into seclusion for a few years. You know, what was it that that gave you the to come back? Seriously, Miles, Miles, he waited for a second.

01:18:50
Speaker 5: He said. One day, Dizzy Glassy came over and he said, man, what the fuck are you doing?

01:19:05
Speaker 14: God bless Bill Box. He's just sitting there like m hm.

01:19:11
Speaker 1: Trying to just act like it's totally regular, get up off your ass.

01:19:18
Speaker 5: So like.

01:19:19
Speaker 14: And there was another time Miles was trying to remember somebody's name is yeah it.

01:19:23
Speaker 5: Was me and oh ship, I forgot.

01:19:29
Speaker 14: Damn Miles, this is this is my TV dude.

01:19:33
Speaker 6: This is my second week of school in a in a public school, discovering that people born the same year as me can play like me and better than me. So the bubble I was in was instantly like Bursted and I had so much catching up to do.

01:19:55
Speaker 5: Man, just.

01:19:57
Speaker 15: I kept begging him to join the All City Jazz Man. I got him to come with me a couple of times. I was like, dude, come on.

01:20:05
Speaker 14: He's like no, no, no, no, no, sit down. Play so you playing, like, come on, bro, you got this brose.

01:20:14
Speaker 15: And then uh, little John Roberts was up there too, and he was literally a little John Roberts like.

01:20:20
Speaker 5: I looked at him like a little running because because he was younger than us, he's like in eighth grade, right, eighth or ninth. Oh he looked like he was in seventh grade.

01:20:29
Speaker 15: Yeah, yeah, he was two years behind us, I think, yeah, but uh yeah, we we did have some good drummers.

01:20:34
Speaker 5: I mean you know who's got more pocket than him.

01:20:38
Speaker 1: I know, but you guys played together in and on some school. Yeah, in school, but you were more in the jazz zone and you didn't go deep into the jazz zone.

01:20:50
Speaker 5: Se the thing I tried to tried to get him. So my story is really it was like, come on. But the thing is is that I I the the part I always leave out. The story was like my dad was like a Joe Jackson backstage mom Oh the worst, so he wanted me.

01:21:15
Speaker 6: My dad was like dog, He was like, you got two options, three options, Curtis Juilliard or a job.

01:21:26
Speaker 5: Curtis Juilliard or job.

01:21:29
Speaker 6: And I to this day people don't believe me when I tell them my dad didn't find out about the Roots until our second album because.

01:21:41
Speaker 1: He was too much pressure.

01:21:42
Speaker 6: The amount of sneaking I had to do, Yeah, she knew, but the amount of sneaking I had to do was like I can't let these guys know I listened to hip hop that way and can't let Kurt Rosenwinkle know that. Yes, you're trying to undo. Because the thing was is Kirk was like, jazz needs to go forward. And the first time that Kirk even planned the seed to me that this particular god figure in jazz might be a step backwards and not forward.

01:22:17
Speaker 5: Was he planned that seed to me?

01:22:18
Speaker 6: So he's like, yo, man, all the beatbop stuff from before you that's dead, man, that's dead.

01:22:23
Speaker 5: We got to move.

01:22:24
Speaker 6: And he's trying to like tell me about like you know, Embase and you know, like all these like crazy jazz ensembles and everything that I'm like a lot of am on guard whatever. So I'm doing my avant guard stuff with Rosawinkle, but when these guys are around, I'm like, okay, all right, so good Larry Jung's Unity record study that up and down and da.

01:22:43
Speaker 3: Da da da da.

01:22:44
Speaker 1: That sounds like a lot of conflict.

01:22:46
Speaker 8: It was.

01:22:46
Speaker 5: I was on whatever side was winning.

01:22:48
Speaker 6: But then but then because of public Enemy finally making sense of my dad's boring record collection, you know, I have someone upstairs that I'm like trying to build a few with. And you know it's also in the name of impressing a girl. Always that was a fel but I got the career, hey man, So yeah, pretty much, I decided. So you went to Juilliard, yes, And I was like, all right, well, Chris right, you did the same. You did the Miles thing right, Studying sounds like I'm gonna do the same. So I did my I did my New School audition, my Curtis audition, and my Juilliard audition. One particular uh uh weekend Tarik went with me and coming back on the train, this is like, this is like either somewhere between a Great Poop.

01:23:49
Speaker 5: Plane commercial or the last scene and Dumber and Dumber.

01:23:53
Speaker 6: The world's most beautiful girl walks up in slow motion and says, aren't you now side note? Yes, I was the drummer. Boys and Men had let me drum in their motown filling video. So she got it mixed. She says, aren't you the drummer in the Spike Lee Levi's commercial. So like busking just started to become a thing in America where you know, there was a kid that was playing bucket drums and Spike Leader put him in a commercial whatever. He had similar hair to mine, he had like twisting braids, and so she came out. It was like great poupone. He's like, aren't you that drummer in the Spike Lee Levi's commercial? And my dumb ass was like, no, that's not me. And she was like, oh, oh okay, and then she walks away and teks like you. I was like, because it wasn't me, Jode, you knew she was talking about. You knew she was talking about Motel Philly, Like Tarik would use me as his magnet, like wear the shirt. You got the shirt on, now go back and put your outfit on, like I don't have to wear that outfit every weekend. And right, So he spends the night at the crib and we're watching Soul Train and commercial comes on and it's the Spike Lee Levi's commercial, and it was the it was our eureka moment. We looked at the commercial. We thought about that girl that I could have got a number but didn't, and we looked at each other like.

01:25:20
Speaker 5: Yo, why don't we do that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, And cut to running in the kitchen sneaking the you know, the chilling bucket out or whatever you know, you mean that red budget the red chitling bucket. Every household has one.

01:25:39
Speaker 15: I remember, never forget the first time I smelled chiplins. My grandmother was cooking chitlins.

01:25:44
Speaker 14: I was coming.

01:25:45
Speaker 15: I smelled them two blocks away. I was coming down Urban Street and I was like, I really pray to God, that's not coming from our house. There's a line of people the front. I'm like, oh, no, there's no black household.

01:25:58
Speaker 5: Yeah, doesn't.

01:25:59
Speaker 6: Even if you don't eat shitlands, you still have that red bucket that used for other.

01:26:05
Speaker 14: Stuff along with the government corn flakes and the cheese and the milk.

01:26:11
Speaker 6: Son all that all right, the government milk, Yes, I still stand to it this day. And the corn flakes were killing Yes, yes, I can't believe we're talking about.

01:26:22
Speaker 15: This and that.

01:26:24
Speaker 5: Oh come on, man, dude.

01:26:25
Speaker 6: I would have to wake up when my parents weren't tour Yeah, I would have to wake up, Uh, staying at my grandmom's house.

01:26:34
Speaker 1: What your mom toured to?

01:26:35
Speaker 6: Yeah, both my mom and dad were. My father was famous in the fifties. He had a group called Nges in the Hearts. They were on like Chess records, and then by the time I was born, there was a nostalgia wave where they would do these oldies shows that you know, Masson Square Guard and you know Bowser from Shanta Presents, you know Harvey and the moon Cloths and all that stuff. So anyway, they got off that circuit and then just had a club act. And so when I couldn't tour with him, I had to stay at my grandmom's house. Now, in order for me to watch Soul trade at twelve, I would have to do whatever chores were necessary. And on the first of the month, that's when the new cheese supply comes. And since I'm Filma's grandson, you know, it's like it takes a village period where now not only do I have to get cheese and stuff for my grandmom, but I got to do too for miss Gussie, Missus Evans, Missus Fields.

01:27:36
Speaker 5: Across the street.

01:27:37
Speaker 14: Got to get the whole neighborhood right.

01:27:38
Speaker 6: So I got to get up at seven in the morning and stand in the cheese line.

01:27:43
Speaker 14: Where did your grandmother live?

01:27:44
Speaker 6: She was in southwest Philly, like a forty ninth and King se oh. Yeah, So I would have to stand in that line and do about four trips. Not to mention the ridicule the neighborhood kids like.

01:27:56
Speaker 2: You in the cheese line.

01:27:57
Speaker 14: Yeah, Later that day I told that.

01:28:01
Speaker 5: I'm like me, this Jesus is going to your grandma's house.

01:28:05
Speaker 14: Motherfucker, Like yeah, hey, you know, they's how they do.

01:28:09
Speaker 5: It, so I couldn't. Yeah, I couldn't.

01:28:11
Speaker 3: Uh.

01:28:12
Speaker 6: I couldn't even watch Soul Train until all that was done. So every first of the month I hated it. But yes, we took that chip lim bucket on South Street. And the thing is is that if we if we don't make one hundred and twenty dollars in four hours, we're not doing it again.

01:28:31
Speaker 5: It would just be like, hey, you man, that time we went on South Street and play for money or whatever.

01:28:35
Speaker 6: But we made like one hundred bucks in the first like hour, and we looked like, yo, we're rich because we was thinking, like, yo, we get Trizzy a trans pass is you know, like a monthly ticket that yeah, New York has that here, right, Like yeah, a train ticket for a month.

01:28:53
Speaker 5: It's like, yo, you can get it Trizzy.

01:28:54
Speaker 6: And then uh, date night, see the movie before five pm, movies on three bucks, go to wah wah, get a quarter pound of turkey cheeze.

01:29:04
Speaker 5: Like we were like rich, Like yeah, we gotta do it again. But the next week we did it.

01:29:09
Speaker 6: I still was in Settlement music School and the bass player there, Josh Aprams, was like, yo, y'all.

01:29:16
Speaker 5: Going to do it again? I said, yeah, he's like, well, can I join? Yeah? Sure, cool. So he picks me up in the station.

01:29:22
Speaker 6: Wagon and he has his upright in the back and I'm bringing the bucket and he's like, wait, we got the station wagon.

01:29:28
Speaker 5: I was like, huh, get the drums. He's like, get the drums. I was like, oh man, my dad, man. He's so it was the most covert operation where like you had to sneak them out.

01:29:38
Speaker 6: And this is why like when people ask like why don't want to play on a regular drum set, Like literally, I was like, look, we're just gonna get the kick.

01:29:44
Speaker 5: Drum, steal drum and one ride right, sneak it out.

01:29:48
Speaker 6: And literally I'm you know, he's listening to sports talk upstairs, and you know, anytime the water runs, like we're running outside whatever park down the plot and that entire summer of ninety two, like I snuck and we got our independent record out and a year later when we finally signed to Geffen, Uh, I was going to break the news to him, but already he put a Philadelphia Inquirer, which is like our New York Times.

01:30:13
Speaker 5: We were on the cover. He's like, what's this. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, I mean too, we got a project.

01:30:20
Speaker 2: So you know.

01:30:22
Speaker 3: So well.

01:30:23
Speaker 15: I remember like when we were still at Kappa, uh Tyreek came downstairs. He was he was an art major, right, so I didn't even know he had any sort of you know that he could. He could freestyle like that. He's like, yo, play.

01:30:38
Speaker 14: Uh the Bone.

01:30:41
Speaker 6: Right would call the rap reference like, oh, play the Gidea by three times due, and then I've had to trans play to him play James Brown steone to the boat. So I was the middleman between all the hip hoppers right and him. But knowing that allowed me to sit with the cool kids in the lunch.

01:31:01
Speaker 1: I feel like that says a lot about your personality and your strengths, just this whole like dynamic of you bridging all these different things.

01:31:08
Speaker 14: Yeah, I mean he he plays well in the playground.

01:31:12
Speaker 5: With everybody, you do.

01:31:13
Speaker 10: You know?

01:31:14
Speaker 5: Yeah, I played just to get bye, thank you.

01:31:17
Speaker 1: But it's no longer stressful, is it?

01:31:20
Speaker 5: Is it stressful?

01:31:22
Speaker 14: Probably?

01:31:23
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, I guess being the MD for everything is always stressful.

01:31:26
Speaker 6: It's you know, for me, I'm I'm learning now, uh okay, this this is not even, this is not even. I just gotta come out and say it and not try to diminish the humble, braggingness of it all. But occasionally I might call a famous former world leader and ask for advice on how to be diplomatic and talk to people, because that's one that's one thing I'm I'm I was a relation leader, But clearly I'll be stuck in that place if I don't get over the fact that I have to, Like, you can't.

01:32:08
Speaker 5: Be everyone's friend.

01:32:09
Speaker 1: You have to get over it and.

01:32:11
Speaker 6: Manage people's expectations and yeah, yeah, and that that comes with being a band leader.

01:32:17
Speaker 1: I wonder which world leader you're talking about.

01:32:19
Speaker 5: I don't know.

01:32:24
Speaker 1: You guys want to play tune and then we'll.

01:32:27
Speaker 2: Can we do this?

01:32:28
Speaker 1: Chris Christopherson time, so I can see it's kind of weird. I was just with him a couple of weeks ago, and I was just revisiting this album that I love called Borderlord, and I just feel like, with your groove on it, it would be pretty awesome.

01:32:42
Speaker 5: Follow you might.

01:32:43
Speaker 14: Giving me my note again. Take its.

01:32:50
Speaker 1: Hmmm, wait, I'm in the wrong key. Sorry.

01:33:18
Speaker 10: Darkness had us covered when we spread from Mansota in morning rain black, his eyes was feeding and the street was slack and shiny as a snake. Each of us was a hurrying to the half forgotten echo, hanging Lola in the brain, time in time and thinking of the time we never had the time loosing it, rising cots, living her and loving heart. They evy yesterday behind turning every bridging costs is.

01:34:22
Speaker 18: Putting down before your off, burning.

01:34:26
Speaker 2: Back the devil just in.

01:34:28
Speaker 11: Time, breaking many times before day, by taking any commoy you can't find, putting.

01:34:44
Speaker 8: Like you're learning, tagging off.

01:34:52
Speaker 2: Tail. It's all.

01:34:56
Speaker 4: Understanding.

01:34:59
Speaker 8: When you're getting for the board load, you bound cross.

01:35:17
Speaker 3: Good lucking women and time you stop.

01:35:23
Speaker 10: Waiting there catch you when you fall, getting back enough, let him keep you back enough you'll just prefun kilp back a gift, blow home, looking many ties before they brand, taking many come who you can find.

01:35:54
Speaker 1: Running like you, I'll tag no ck.

01:36:01
Speaker 2: It easy, well, it's a b.

01:36:06
Speaker 10: Understand when you can for the boat load of bound across lash.

01:36:51
Speaker 3: King at it time for in bunjie.

01:36:57
Speaker 8: Tagging covered, okay, are fine?

01:37:03
Speaker 2: They like you lady out of time. I'll tag you.

01:37:12
Speaker 4: Till it's over. Understanding. When you're heading for the boat load, you're bound across.

01:37:24
Speaker 5: The m HM.

01:37:46
Speaker 2: Hmm, thank you.

01:37:58
Speaker 14: That is Norman Letter production, right exactly.

01:38:03
Speaker 1: That was fun.

01:38:04
Speaker 14: I feel like roberta flat Ron Carter and uh Ray Lucas.

01:38:12
Speaker 1: Thanks for doing that.

01:38:13
Speaker 11: I love that.

01:38:15
Speaker 5: That was cool.

01:38:16
Speaker 1: We're not done yet. We still got two more songs. Oh that was great. Thanks. I love that song because his words are just always so good. And then I like how it kind of changes keys. What key is this in in the end?

01:38:31
Speaker 14: Down d? Yeah, that's the James Brown keys. Did you know that?

01:38:36
Speaker 15: Oh?

01:38:36
Speaker 2: No, I didn't.

01:38:37
Speaker 14: Everything's indeed just about I didn't know.

01:38:41
Speaker 1: It makes sense, but right, right? Do you guys have any any good stories about each other from high school that are worth telling?

01:38:54
Speaker 15: My favorite one is uh so, I'm going to reveal it now. You already know because I told you in the text. So we used to produce this big show every year called it called Sentimental Journey, and it was like the whole school, you know, like the dancers, the singers, the actors, We all get together and put together this big Broadway type show. And we were, of course the house band, and uh I mean what a house band?

01:39:22
Speaker 5: Me?

01:39:22
Speaker 15: You, Kurt and Joey and a couple of horror players and uh so, we had this big overture and at the end of the overture we had to play New York, New York, and so we had to play a real corny so we had to like that. So yeah, right exactly. So we get to the to the concert, me and him conspiring, We're like, you know, it's.

01:39:46
Speaker 12: In D.

01:39:49
Speaker 6: Now, Chris, you've set up that anytime we've got sent to the principal's office, when any when anything ever was like, at least in D for a good eight to sixteen bars. They could be girse waining. It could be whatever, we will find a way to code talk to each other. That's right in a way, and eventually he caught on to any reference.

01:40:14
Speaker 14: It could be like.

01:40:22
Speaker 6: And then you know, and then already you know, the kids are all like, you know, starting to dance and all that stuff and get out of here.

01:40:29
Speaker 5: So it was it was our last chance to go rogue. And it was like, were you with us.

01:40:34
Speaker 15: When we went to see the fill off your orchestra rehearse because they would have those open rehearsals, and so they were playing the Ride of Spring. Yes there's one you know, so there's one part in that piece with the Timpany plays boom bee boom bean boom beem boo just for those two bars. Remember Stacey knows you did.

01:40:55
Speaker 14: Boom boom boom. She comes go oh.

01:41:03
Speaker 5: In the middle of the Academy of Music.

01:41:09
Speaker 14: So we we get no place.

01:41:12
Speaker 6: Yeah, we we get there that night and we we had a look like, hey, we're seniors, yes, and there's only three weeks of school left.

01:41:22
Speaker 14: What are you gonna do to us?

01:41:23
Speaker 6: And what's he going to send us to the principal's office here in front of our parents at the show?

01:41:28
Speaker 5: Go go to the build up for New York, New York. So we went, and the rehearsal was right right, So that's rehearsal.

01:41:37
Speaker 4: Man.

01:41:38
Speaker 15: We get to the concert and so so me and him we come. He said, hey, man, you know we should do that, and so then we pulled Joey and Kurt In on it too. So uh so here's how the concert went, you know, all the parents to what God spread and the.

01:42:01
Speaker 5: God Yo. Then Curtis going.

01:42:08
Speaker 14: It was only for thirty Joey's playing the organ patch on his keyboard. He screamed.

01:42:15
Speaker 5: The look or misterizers.

01:42:17
Speaker 14: He was so angry, really, he was as red as that exit he could.

01:42:23
Speaker 1: He should have been proud at your music.

01:42:25
Speaker 5: Proud now everyone's proud of us.

01:42:29
Speaker 15: He's glad we did it now, right, So I have I found So I had this on VHS for for like the last thirty five years or whatever it is.

01:42:38
Speaker 14: My dad shot it right, Yes he did, Yes, he did.

01:42:41
Speaker 2: God.

01:42:42
Speaker 15: So I finally got it digitized, so sooner or later? Oh god, yeah, I was about to say, there there is there, there is a member. I went rogue on y'all when I did my James Brown routine because I was always suposed to sing two songs.

01:42:57
Speaker 14: We we always going road.

01:43:00
Speaker 5: Yeah, we had we added some sort of ad live and you said the diva was She was.

01:43:07
Speaker 14: Like, what is he doing?

01:43:11
Speaker 5: Get him off the state? No, no, no, the audience is screaming exactly.

01:43:15
Speaker 6: He came out and fulled James Brown regalia, the wig and the whole nine.

01:43:20
Speaker 15: Yes, that's what I could. I can still, that's what I could get up from a split. I can still do a split.

01:43:30
Speaker 1: I want to see that.

01:43:31
Speaker 14: Yeah, I'm sure you do see that.

01:43:33
Speaker 5: That's our version of Carlo Carlo. You know I still had that m P three.

01:43:39
Speaker 3: I can't believe you.

01:43:40
Speaker 5: Know, yo, the amount of people, so we were on tour.

01:43:46
Speaker 6: This is like, this is really when like pre social media, when like AOL chat was you know, welcome you got. You know, is there any more satisfying feeling than when you plugged your hotel telephone man inside.

01:44:03
Speaker 14: The mode and.

01:44:07
Speaker 5: It goes through. Welcome you got was a great feeling that was like different.

01:44:13
Speaker 15: Remember when they had for a short period you could download a celebrity to say that for you.

01:44:18
Speaker 5: Yes, I had David Leman, you used to I am me on right right.

01:44:25
Speaker 6: We were all pals and you sent me one of my first MB three's.

01:44:30
Speaker 5: I had of Carlos. I did, yes, and.

01:44:35
Speaker 1: You were you surprised?

01:44:36
Speaker 5: Yeah, I played everyone like you know what she sent me. You know, it's weird.

01:44:41
Speaker 6: That's such a weird time period because now there's at least five other singers that did.

01:44:48
Speaker 5: Their version of going against type.

01:44:51
Speaker 6: Mariah is another person where she made the best album of her career, but just as a joke because she was like upse with America's obsession with Whole and Courtney Love. Okay, so during lunch breaks or dinner breaks, she would just tell her band, like, you know, just play some like.

01:45:10
Speaker 5: Ragged you know, grun song, whatever 'sus.

01:45:15
Speaker 6: But I was listening to it and I'm like, like, I don't want to insult her, but I'm like not for nothing, but you know this is your best record?

01:45:24
Speaker 5: Right?

01:45:24
Speaker 1: Wait? Is this something that's out?

01:45:26
Speaker 6: So she wants she's figuring out what to do with it. She did this like right when she was doing the Butterfly record. Now, if you look throughout history, a lot of the great musical decisions in music were always afterthoughts and never planned out. Like the Isisley Brothers tells the story of that they had ten minutes left in the session and they were like, let's do that church song real quick, and it would shout, you know, Tequila to three minutes to do. Like literally, there's a history of like just last minute songs. So she she made like fifteen songs of just like you.

01:46:03
Speaker 5: Know, I Hate My Life and Da Da dad yea and all this.

01:46:08
Speaker 6: But it's like it's the I still maintain it's Mariah Carey's best moment singing ever because she's not being Mariah carry She's being free in herself.

01:46:20
Speaker 1: And so there's a freedom in doing something that's not your thing.

01:46:24
Speaker 5: We just think it's so how many other just like, let's fuck around and you got that.

01:46:30
Speaker 1: I do a lot of bands that aren't under my name, but that one's the furthest from my thing, probably ell Mass.

01:46:36
Speaker 5: So the world's never just you've never released Carlo for the world.

01:46:39
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's been released. We released it.

01:46:41
Speaker 5: Did you clean it up?

01:46:42
Speaker 7: No?

01:46:42
Speaker 1: We released it. We released it then what yeah, back then, back in the like two thousand and four or five or six or something. But we released it without any of our names on it because it was a tricky thing. At that time. My second album was still pretty big, and I didn't want it to be like remember when Garth Brooks put out Life of Chris Gaines. Yes, yeah, I didn't want it to be a joke because it wasn't a joke. It was really fun and but it was funny, but I.

01:47:11
Speaker 5: Didn't want to ever do it in concert.

01:47:13
Speaker 1: We did a bunch of gigs at the Delancey down on the Lower East.

01:47:16
Speaker 5: Side at the time, but you but where were people's reactions to this.

01:47:21
Speaker 1: We wore wigs and crazy makeup, so which was also part of the fun for me. I got to be a character, you know, and part of it was hiding myself from the audience, but part of it was just the fun of doing that. Like I can't imagine putting on a wig and crazy blade runner makeup to do a Nora Jones show because I feel like people would think I'm trying too hard to be somebody else.

01:47:43
Speaker 5: But never, but that's in my bones. I love dressing up, but never for an encore.

01:47:47
Speaker 6: Once you're like dude and just go into it and the audience is like, wait, what the hell's going on here?

01:47:52
Speaker 2: Oh?

01:47:52
Speaker 1: Like it a yeah, Carlo, No, I feel like I couldn't do it without them, without that band, that's yeah, But we kind of we kind of parted ways eventually and the album was released, but none of our names were on it, so it's not like anybody knew about it. A couple of people knew it was me, but it wasn't a big deal.

01:48:11
Speaker 5: Well, this also proves that I do not keep a.

01:48:14
Speaker 1: Secret because well, now I wish it wasn't a secret because in hindsight, like I love it, but at the time, it just felt like people would pick it apart too much and that's.

01:48:24
Speaker 5: Not what it was for.

01:48:25
Speaker 1: I was like, man, she's cool, Maybe we'll get them on the podcast, and we'll do a repeace of it.

01:48:32
Speaker 14: You gotta.

01:48:35
Speaker 15: You know how I knew you were cool because you were tight with Brian Blade. Uh huh and uh you know when you when I knew that he had been working with you. He's one of those kind of people that you know, if he can't mess with you, he ain't gonna but he ain't not gonna play with you.

01:48:53
Speaker 1: He won't return, right right, It won't.

01:48:55
Speaker 14: Even be mean r gonna ghost you.

01:48:58
Speaker 1: Right, I know. He definitely the coolest.

01:49:01
Speaker 14: Oh yeah, yeah, And so.

01:49:04
Speaker 5: That's how we that's how we connected through Brian recently.

01:49:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, But I mean I've I feel like I've known you forever, but I haven't. I know, we only played together once exactly, and not that last year for Jazz House Kids your foundation.

01:49:23
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:49:24
Speaker 1: And I had a dog bit me on the nose that morning, so I was all scared to show my nose.

01:49:29
Speaker 14: Yeah, but you killed it.

01:49:31
Speaker 1: It healed.

01:49:34
Speaker 5: All right. So what's the next joint?

01:49:36
Speaker 1: Okay? So, so I wanted to try the Stangelo song?

01:49:40
Speaker 5: Okay, what do you think.

01:49:44
Speaker 1: He'll play electric?

01:49:46
Speaker 2: I don't know.

01:49:46
Speaker 1: I just thought you should play it on something, okay. Yeah, And also if for this. It can be sloppy. It's no big deal.

01:49:54
Speaker 5: That's all I know.

01:49:55
Speaker 1: That's all I know. You said you wanted to be some more sloppy. I'm your girl.

01:50:00
Speaker 6: Actually, I want to challenge myself to see if I can play it unlike the record version.

01:50:04
Speaker 5: So this will be fun. We started it.

01:50:07
Speaker 6: We started, so it's weird that we're here. We actually started Black Messiah in this very room.

01:50:16
Speaker 5: Really, that album took fourteen years to make, really.

01:50:19
Speaker 6: Like Voodoo took five, but Black Messiah was pretty much started two thousand and two. He's like Molasses man. So but we didn't we didn't do that here. I think we did betray my Heart at Electric Lady. But yeah, just coming back to this room, I remember, is this where primarily most jazz albums are recorded in this particular room.

01:50:47
Speaker 15: That if you got a nice budget. Yeah, the Criss Cross records used to be made upstairs.

01:50:53
Speaker 14: What Yeah.

01:50:55
Speaker 15: At Sears Sound. Yeah, what a there's a few records I've made upstairs.

01:51:02
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, I've done a bunch here. But you guys both worked with di'angelo on Yeah, so.

01:51:13
Speaker 15: Pretty much thanks to him, I got a piece a little tiny lickings.

01:51:23
Speaker 6: Yeah, at Electric lady, I'll say that, you know, probably some of my most adventurous escape moments, like my chance to not be a route and just to figure out what else is out there? Like his projects allowed me to do that, and then subsequently, once that record came out and anything else I worked on, like Common or Erica or Blow or that sort of thing. Like that's kind of how the what they call the soul quarian era like started.

01:51:54
Speaker 1: But yeah, man, that's how you grow.

01:51:59
Speaker 14: I got a what if?

01:52:00
Speaker 5: What?

01:52:01
Speaker 15: So there's two what if Speaking of D'Angelo, you probably noticed, D'Angelo told me that he initially had well he was going to go to VCU in Richmond, where he's from, to study jazz piano with Elis Marcellus.

01:52:17
Speaker 5: Oh god.

01:52:18
Speaker 15: The year he graduated high school was the year Ellis retired from VCU. So he was like, well, if I can't study with him, I'm not going to study jazz. I always wonder Alice Marcella stayed one more year.

01:52:31
Speaker 1: That's interesting.

01:52:33
Speaker 15: Who knows D'Angelo might have been the piano player in Roy Hargroves Quint test.

01:52:39
Speaker 5: Elis Man, you give me nightmares. Look at you. You look like a rock drummer. Playing all that rock. Why is that snare so tight?

01:52:50
Speaker 2: Oh?

01:52:51
Speaker 5: Really, man?

01:52:52
Speaker 6: He he roasted me, man like on the news, why is that snare so tight? He's like, why is that snare so tight?

01:52:58
Speaker 15: After he played with James Black and Idris and all them cats, Nah man, heartbreaking? Oh and another thing went here's what if this came back to Hauntum. In two thousand and one, I started touring with Sting and so there was a bunch of different drummers in there. My new catch a was first. Then Able Boreol Junior came in for a spell, and Vinnie call You came in. So it's like a bunch of different cats coming in. And so Sting said, uh, hey, I got a string of gigs. Who you like playing with? Who can you who can you recommend? I said, you need to get my man, I'm mirror. He's like, oh, I'm not familiar. So I gave him the Philly Experiment and I gave him a couple of Roots records.

01:53:42
Speaker 5: He was like, oh that that guy.

01:53:44
Speaker 14: Yes, yes, So I gave him the recordings. Never heard nothing.

01:53:49
Speaker 15: I said, well, okay, okay, I ain't gonna you know, I ain't gonna pry you Sting you know who you want. Fast forward ten, maybe even fifteen years later, you finally you finally played with him.

01:54:02
Speaker 5: Here's Sting's house band for almost like all of.

01:54:06
Speaker 15: Yeah, and then I see him somewhere. He's like, oh man, you you know Questlove right, He's amazing. I was like, man, I'm not going to tell you what I said on the microphone. I was like, you remember what a long time ago you asked me about drummers. That's who I was talking about. Oh, like, can you imagine had we played in these things band together that'ren crazy, every breath you take would have sounded a lot different.

01:54:38
Speaker 1: It would have sounded like a James Brown's.

01:54:44
Speaker 6: He's so he's so triggered by Stewart's playing again. Oh gosh, yes, this is me being a shape shifter that when I played with him. Yeah, he instantly knew and he stopped the song. Yeah, he says, you can't. Don't do that exactly, you can't what he says. I know you you worship the police, but don't play none of that. Don't like Stewart. It triggers me, like you don't know, It's very true. So I had to undo. I didn't know how to play like anything. But you know my regular.

01:55:15
Speaker 14: You know right.

01:55:17
Speaker 15: Like all of you know Stuart's have we played in these things band? Everything she does is magic, Every little thing she does is magic. Would have been halftime little.

01:55:28
Speaker 2: Right?

01:55:34
Speaker 1: That's great?

01:55:36
Speaker 5: Are give me a g? Wait? Is this this is notated in like a real or a fake book? What betrayed my heart?

01:55:54
Speaker 3: No?

01:55:54
Speaker 8: No?

01:55:55
Speaker 2: Oh?

01:55:55
Speaker 5: I was like, wow, he really made it?

01:55:58
Speaker 1: Oh you thought I picked it out from a fake book?

01:56:00
Speaker 5: Yeah?

01:56:00
Speaker 6: I was like so proud, like whoa, No, no, no, we just made some Look No, I just don't understand.

01:56:06
Speaker 5: I literally was something I had to do with Literally, isn't a fake book?

01:56:11
Speaker 1: Or maybe maybe it is?

01:56:13
Speaker 2: Maybe it is.

01:56:14
Speaker 1: Honestly, this is a great song.

01:56:16
Speaker 5: Thank you.

01:56:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, h em nine must take its sure as birth must surprise and fall.

01:57:10
Speaker 10: I'll be there to see you through just as long as it is. I will live on live your sight.

01:57:24
Speaker 8: And if you should ever faith, then my love is nsensey.

01:57:28
Speaker 19: I will never betray your heart. I will never betray your heart. I will never chase.

01:57:51
Speaker 2: Like a breeze that blows into.

01:57:56
Speaker 10: I will whisper to keep you. Could this I swear in with allstue I take.

01:58:06
Speaker 2: Nothing in place.

01:58:10
Speaker 3: When you're freezing down down.

01:58:13
Speaker 2: Now you must love.

01:58:16
Speaker 8: You can't depend on me. You don't never have to feel that my love is nice.

01:58:23
Speaker 2: And see, I will never betray in my heart.

01:58:28
Speaker 19: I will never betray my hot I will never betray my phone.

01:58:47
Speaker 2: Through the storm, to.

01:58:48
Speaker 10: The rain, I come running to easier pain, like the rail, across the train, like.

01:58:55
Speaker 2: The blood in my veins. I will never betray your heart. I would never be a drink your car.

01:59:05
Speaker 8: I will never be drink your ho.

02:00:47
Speaker 5: See, that's the fun part of the danger. We don't know what's going.

02:01:59
Speaker 1: That was so danger experience awesome. I think it was great. That was fun. That is a hard as to play, but it's so good and the lyrics are so beautiful.

02:02:11
Speaker 5: This is the first time I've heard them in the English language. I'm playing, I'm playing I Love You man.

02:02:21
Speaker 1: It's a great song, though, and it's hard to play.

02:02:25
Speaker 5: I'm sitting him a photo of this right now.

02:02:28
Speaker 1: Tell him I love him.

02:02:32
Speaker 5: He'll love it.

02:02:35
Speaker 1: I don't even know where one is in that song. No, I don't need I don't if I think about it, I don't know where it is. Thanks you guys have been super generous with your time.

02:02:45
Speaker 5: Thank you, Norah, I appreciate this. Any any chance to play with my brother and.

02:02:51
Speaker 14: Yeah, yes, no joke, no Joe.

02:02:54
Speaker 1: Honestly, I would have loved to do this with either of you separately, but I just knew would be more fun together.

02:03:00
Speaker 5: Oh, well, he's awesome.

02:03:01
Speaker 14: Yeah, I never get to play with my man.

02:03:02
Speaker 2: No, I'm so glad.

02:03:03
Speaker 1: Thanks for doing this, y'all. They're special.

02:03:06
Speaker 5: Thanks for having us, Thank you, thank you all right, sure enough.

02:03:22
Speaker 1: These guys are such a blast. They're fun to listen talk. I love that they have so many inside jokes. It's like they have their own language. Yeah, they do talking, but also musically they have inside music jokes. Well, I started a text thrive with them when we were trying to get together for this, and that alone is like the most in. I was just like, Okay, I don't know what's happening because they were just fire and wagon forth. Yeah, they got their nicknames for each other. Oh, I don't know what's happening. That's the history, man. But we got a lot of good stories.

02:03:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, and great music.

02:03:53
Speaker 1: So fun to hear a mirror questlove? Whose name is a mirror? Do the lesson?

02:04:00
Speaker 5: Oh?

02:04:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, the breakdown, the breakdown now, all the different drummers. That was amazing and just playing with Christian on the basis it's insane, actually he's insane. Lee amazing. That was a dream. And I wish we had just done two days. So I wish we had made a record, which we just wait we did. Oh, I got some words wrong. But if you want to look up the right words. But if you want to look up the right words, here's the songs we did. We started off with Fine and Mellow, an old jazz standard from nineteen thirty nine written by my favorite Billy Holliday. Why Am I Treated So Bad? A song by Pop Staples and recorded many times by many different people, including the Staples singers and James Brown, among others. We did say No More from one of my albums, pick Up Me Up, pick Up Me Up, off the Floor, and that song was actually written by me and Myota Sarah Oda. You wrote that song. We did border Lord, a song by Chris Christofferson from nineteen seventy two. Songwriters on that are Stephen Bruten, Donnie Fritz, Terry Paul, and Chris Christofferson. I love that song, by the way, and that's an amazing album. The last song we did was betray My Heart from DiAngelo's twenty fourteen album Black Messiah, on which Questlove was a collaborator. Thank you so much for listening. We had a blast. Hope you did too. Don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast if you're able to, if you're kind, be kind, if you like us, actually even if you don't like us, Yeah, just like us. Special thanks to Questlove and Christian McBride for joining our podcast. We'll be back next week with Lucinda Williams. Noura Jones is playing along as a protection of iHeart Podcasts. I'm Your host Nora Jones. This episode was recorded It's Your Sound in New York by Steven Sacho, assisted by Jasper Leech, Maximilian Trophy, Tanner Wallace, and Andrew Kohinka. Mixed by Jamie Landry, edited by Sarah Oda. Additional recording by Matt Maronelli. Audio post production and mass string by Greg Tobler. Artwork by Eliza Frye. Photography by Shervin Linez. Produced by Nora Jones and Sarah Oda. Executive producers Aaron Jan Kaufman and Jordan Runtogg marketing lead Queen A. Nake