Latest / My Favorite Things / My Favorite Things Episode 21: Musician And Composer Ian McLeod

Transcript

My Favorite Things Episode 21: Musician And Composer Ian McLeod · My Favorite Things

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Ian McLeod, thanks
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: for being here.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me, my man.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: Have you been interviewed on a podcast before?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is the first one.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's my inaugural podcast.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's exciting.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: Gosh, I hope you're not too nervous.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: I am a little nervous, actually, yeah.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Well, nobody's listening to it besides my mom and your mom.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Can you tell people a little bit about who you are in your current iteration?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: I am a music composer.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: I also run a music and sound house called Cloud9,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: and we're a small team,
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: small boutique studio that makes music and sound for commercials,
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: television, film features, branded content, things like that.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm also a dad to a four-year-old and a two-year-old that are giving me a run for my money.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: The kid's mom's still around too?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, that's right.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: And a hubby, you know, Tori.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: We've met each other at many of the film festivals.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: So she's in the trenches with me.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think is the most widely known piece of work that your music is featured on?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like if people have heard your music, they maybe don't know, but like, what do you think?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think it is?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh boy.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like from,
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: um, From a regionality standpoint, I got my start going to Telluride Mountain Films.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this whole outdoor adventure community.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is where we met, you and me.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: So some of the films that I've scored that are your films and are widely viewed
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: across REI's platform, et cetera, those have gotten a lot of eyeballs.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: We make music for a lot of Ben Knight films,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: and Ben seems to have a big audience in that outdoor adventure space.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: But if I were to look at, okay, who's seen our work?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Globally, it's probably our work with National Geographic and PBS Nature.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Early in my career, I started working with Netgeo as one of my first clients.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then under that umbrella comes a lot of similar brands with ethos that focus
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: on conservation, wildlife, environmental justice, sustainability.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we've done a lot of feature docs that have kind of popped up on their channels,
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: PBS Nature, etc.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's probably where our work is seen the most.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And Burger King or KFC.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I don't brag about those as much.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I should.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know what?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: What's the saying?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: You make one for them, you make one for you.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that what directors say or actors about films?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like they make a superhero movie and then they make this indie film
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: that doesn't make any money, whatever.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: I always knew that my brilliant original score for chicken tendies would lead to an eight.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I guess we'll start talking about how you fell.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Your way into that job that you created for yourself.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: As you know,
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: this podcast is called My Favorite Thing,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: so you have sent me a list of ten of your favorite things,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: which we are cutting down to five,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: maybe six, maybe with an honorable mention if we're lucky, if we have time.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: Number one on this list is the album Everybody Digs Bill Evans by jazz pianist Bill Evans.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Can you tell us where you were in life when you first remember experiencing this album?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: This is a great story.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to go back and give you a quick recap of how I got to where I am.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm a piano player by trade and I credit my dad for putting me into lessons.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: He saw me banging on the piano one day and I was playing something different
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: in my right hand than I was in my left hand.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And even though it was just totally nonsense.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: He said, hey, all I can do is chopsticks.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: I can only hit the same notes at the same times.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Let's give this kid a lesson.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I took to it right away.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I was classically trained.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: And like most classically trained artists,
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: you know, you go through the motions, you start to do competitions early.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I was good.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: But there was a rigidity to classical music that I just didn't quite take to.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd get in trouble a lot by changing the notes and like not playing what was on the page.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is no joke.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: I had a piano teacher named Atmar Weinman from Vienna, Austria.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Shout out to Atmar.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Lovely guy, but very strict.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a sixth grade,
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: seventh grade kid,
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: and I want to go out and play football or basketball with my friends
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: and not practice an hour a day.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I was getting ready to quit.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I credit my dad again and both my parents really, but my dad had this intuition.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: He said, you like to change the notes.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: I know nothing about music,
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: but when people play jazz, they play the wrong notes and they seem to get applause.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: So why don't you give that a try?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we found a teacher that was local, a DC legend named Wade Beach.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: He brought me over and we started playing and he was improvising to one
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: of my favorite tunes, Lady Madonna.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I want to do that.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, let me teach you.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Come back here every Saturday.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you an hour of my time.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that started my jazz career.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Going back to Bill Evans,
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: the way I got introduced is once I started getting into jazz, I would go into D.C.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: I lived right outside the district and I would try to hit jam sessions as often as I could.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was Wednesday or Thursday nights.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: They had an awesome jam session down at this place called Twins Jazz Lounge,
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: which doesn't exist anymore.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: But it was like an iconic jazz club in the district.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: So many cats had rolled through there, legendary players.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just an Ethiopian cafe that was so unassuming with a little red awning.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: The part of town was a little rough.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: So my dad would drive me down there.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was all but 15.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I was confident and I really knew my stuff.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I get down there on a Wednesday night for the jam session and the drummer leads it.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: And usually when they call you up on stage, this is sort of like a unspoken rule in jazz.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: When you walk up and they ask you, what do you want to play?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: You name the tune and you name the key.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: But me being my cocky self, the drummer asks, what do you want to play?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I look back at him and I said, you pick.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And this guy was like, all right.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: So they throw out a tune and I don't know how many of your listeners are jazz fans,
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: but there's this tune called Cherokee and it's very fast and it's very difficult.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And they throw out a random key, you know, E flat or like F sharp minor or whatever.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And A, I didn't know the tune and I certainly didn't know the key.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I might have one right note.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just fumbled my way through it.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, I'm beat red.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of that jam,
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: I get up from the stage and the drummer,
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'll refrain from naming him,
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: grabs my arm and he says,
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: don't you ever come back on my stage unless you know what the F you're doing.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: I was 15.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I get back in the car and I bawl my eyes out.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And for the next six months, I don't go back.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And all I do is maniacally practice Cherokee in every single key because I'm a psycho like that.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And, um, We go back to Twinge.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, it's a different season, you know, so I'm wearing a sweater now.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And there's our drummer.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I walk right on up.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, he doesn't recognize me at all.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, what do you want to play?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, Cherokee, E flat.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And he looks at me like, that's a weird choice.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't even play.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we play it and I nail it.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I hit every right note and I probably had my,
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: you know, my improvisation already kind of lined up in my head.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: But afterwards I walked up to him and I said, his name was Tony.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Tony, I said, do you remember me?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, no.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, you told me to get the F off your stage unless I knew what I was doing.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he chuckled, he laughed.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, oh, kid, I'm sorry if I came off gruff, but let me teach you an important lesson.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: He said, we are all connected on this stage.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: So when you don't prepare, you make all of us look bad.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be prepared and you have to listen.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, if you want to be a great pianist, go home and listen to this album.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it was Everybody Digs Bill Evans.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, I knew Bill Evans' music.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I heard him play on Kind of Blue.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: That was the first album I had ever heard.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: But this was, I think, maybe his third studio album and maybe one of his greatest works.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the second I put it in, it clicked.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, something about Bill's touch, his phrasing.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's a genius, so there's not much more I need to say other than that.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I found his playing so approachable.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was just like a warm hug, you know, and so many different styles.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: He could play hard bop.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: He could play a slow tune.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know the song Peace, Peace?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably one of my favorites.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I also found it interesting,
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: too, the cover art of that are reviews written by his contemporaries.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it was like his buddies that he played with,
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: be it Miles Davis or Cannonball Adderley,
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: you know, they'd have a quote about the album.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: I love it because of this.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: And if you read the front of that album cover, it's their words.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: And enough said, you know.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's like book blurbs.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: You get everybody,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: all the famous people you know to write about why your book is probably good
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: and people should read it.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, rarely done on albums.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Why do you think that album works for people like yourself
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: who actually know what's going on with the piano and people like me
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: who have no idea what's going on?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not listening to it from any sort of technical perspective.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just like, this is good.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: Bill Evans is good.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: I enjoy it.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: Why do you think it works like that?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great question.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: To me, I think the main melodies of the songs on that on that album are memorable.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can hum them.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can follow along rhythmically to the layman.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: They feel approachable.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: I said that word before, but,
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: sometimes you can you can put on jazz and it can be Like full on,
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: you start playing John Coltrane's Giant Steps for my mom and my dad and like by
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: the third solo, they're kind of like, what's going on here?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm feeling frantic and, you know, my energy.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, we're big into rituals.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: We wake up every morning, we pour our cups of coffee and we start our day.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: I, without a doubt, always listen to the Bill Eddins Trio.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: To me, there's just like a natural pairing to his music.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, that's my son's...
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Digital keyboard over there that my dog Arnie keeps walking on.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's like the baby Einstein keyboard.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's the baby Einstein
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: keyboard, yeah.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully that's the last time it goes off.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think when you listen to Bill's playing,
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: it assimilates into any room or environment that you're in.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of that has to do, like I said, with his chord structures and his melodic phrasing.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're memorable.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: They're easy to listen to.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he has a light touch, a very articulate touch to his improvisation.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: So nothing feels too abstract.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you can listen to it on a car ride home from a party.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can listen to it Friday night,
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: lounge night,
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: you know, going out for a drink with a partner and your morning coffee.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: You could put it on and watch the birds and settle into your day.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's just so, what's the word?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: It can blend into all those environments.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Does that answer your question?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, boy, that's good.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to sell five copies of this album for Bill Evans.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: Lucky guy for this endorsement.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: I have one more story about this album and a question to throw to you
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: because there's this notion sometimes of when you find a song.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Remember earlier we were talking about that book, The Uncool by Cameron Crowe?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's a litany of songs that he finds throughout his life that he comes back
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: to time and time again.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: I remember in college, you know, I was a jazz pianist and so I started out as a music major.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have exams in music school.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: We have not competitions, but kind of final concerts.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: You basically pick particular tunes and then you sit before a jury at the end of
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: the semester and you play it.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're a classical pianist or some sort of classical music major,
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: you're in those practice rooms eight hours a day and it can get very competitive
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: and very insular quickly.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember early mornings on like Sunday morning after everyone had partied
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: the night before and I'd be walking to the music school with the sunrise
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: and I would listen to Peace Peace, this slow, beautiful piano tune.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then I would lock myself in that room for the next six hours and crank away on
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: the music I had to memorize.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Fast forward 15 years and I'm in the delivery room with Tori, with our first daughter.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we can bring music in.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they told us, yeah, you can bring a speaker.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I had made a playlist.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the first few moments we had Evy in our hands, skin to skin, you know, that golden hour.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: I played piece, piece.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard not to get emotional thinking about it,
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: but where I was in college, totally different person.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And now I'm a dad and I'm holding my daughter.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to ask you,
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: do you have moments with songs that have eclipsed,
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: you know, decades from like I heard it then, but it's now changed me here and now?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Totally, dude.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes like I'm not.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: I was just thinking about that running today about how how great it is
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: when you're sad and you find a really sad song,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: and like I don't I don't have that much like I don't have
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: that like brooding teenage slash early 20s sadness that.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I have to listen to those songs again to get back into that mindset just
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: a little bit emotionally.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, man, just so many things like that.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's always a visual memory too, right?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: A friend of mine,
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: he's actually the first episode of this podcast, Bodhi,
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: he manages Shaky Graves and several other musicians,
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: and you've probably run into him before.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: But he does a lot of film rights for films.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so he'll find music or when you have the song you want to get,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: he contacts the right people to get the rights to it for a short film.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: But he said...
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: Are you familiar with Lord Huron at all?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like,
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: oh my God,
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: I can remember standing in my buddy's living room at night in Salem,
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: Oregon, in like probably late fall 2011, maybe, when he
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: He played the song The Stranger for me for the first time.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was just like on a YouTube,
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: on his TV, like with the album art in the background for an EP.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, yeah, man,
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: that's like the theme song of me living in a van for a year,
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: you know, for several years, I guess.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it was just like...
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: You could write a story about so many of these little songs like that.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: For Birth, we didn't do a playlist.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: I was kind of shy about, I don't know how this is going to go.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to ruin any of these songs for life.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: So we listened to...
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Old Major League Baseball Game of the Week broadcasts from the 80s.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: Just streamed them on YouTube.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just like this white noise,
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: you know, that was like playing while Hillary was in labor overnight.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just like,
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: and up to
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: bat comes, you know, Harold Reynolds, who said, well, you know, it was just like in this low.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: But they said the same thing.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: You can put together a playlist.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, yeah, I don't know.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a little shy about that one.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: 80s baseball broadcast.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: What happens if you have like a Bob Uecker, that ball is back, back, gone, forgotten.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's barely, we were barely, we weren't really listening.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it was just like on the background.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: So, but yeah, it is, dude.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: They're like, there's like hundreds of them on YouTube.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: So, I just play that and have YouTube premium, not to flex too hard.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: So, we didn't have the ads.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: So, it's good.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: Shall we move on to number two,
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: an album with which I am extremely familiar,
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: A Tribe Called Quest, Midnight Marauders.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Where are we now in life when we experience Midnight Marauders?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I have two introductions to this album.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously being a child of jazz and piano and gigging around D.C.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: at a young age, you know, my world was just blown open.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a white kid from the suburbs.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden I'm gigging in D.C.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm meeting hard musicians that are touring 200 plus shows a year around
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: the world.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: So naturally you get exposed to different genres.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And of course,
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: hip hop is just,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: it not just sits adjacent to jazz, it's completely blended together.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: So my hip hop world blew open too.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I just started to get introduced not to the current, I guess, when was this?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Probably like mid 2000s, early 2000s hip hop.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: I obviously had that time capsule of artists and albums,
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: but then I started to go back,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: and I've really gravitated towards What I consider to be that second golden age
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: of hip hop,
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: 91 to 96,
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: all the artists,
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: you know, in between those years and the amount of work that came out of it.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I knew Tribe Cult Quest,
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: I knew the Native Tongues,
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: I knew De La Soul, of course, Nas and Jay-Z and OutKast and so on and so forth.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I was loosely introduced to Tribe just because Q-Tip was a producer
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: that would take jazz albums and sample them.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I gravitated towards that.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: I love producers that were really good at listening to a song and then finding
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: a drum loop and pattern and throwing that on top of it.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden it became a new song.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: The Pete Rocks of the world, the DJ premieres of the world, right?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Those were sort of where I got from.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't until college, my freshman year, I had a roommate, shout out to Chaz Armistead.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: He had a shirt on when I first met him and said, J Dilla changed my life.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew he was a hip hop head.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: And he had a nice record collection and he put Midnight Marauders back on
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: and I really sat through and listened to the whole album.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then at that point I became a lifelong fan and it sat in my pantheon
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: of top five albums of all time.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of reasons for it.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: But that's how I first got introduced.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: In high school, it was sort of broad.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: I knew the guys.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: I knew who Q-Tip was.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: In college, I really dug in, got to know their discography, and memorized every word.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sometimes I think I'm a little shy about maybe preferring Midnight Marauders
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: to Low End Theory,
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: which is like the mega classic that people would probably assume you like better
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: if you're a Tribe fan.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: How do you feel about that?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, it's funny.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: I love deliberating these things.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, do I think it matters?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: These guys, multiple classics, right?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: To me,
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: the reason why I pick Midnight Marauders is when you climb the mountain and you make
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: the thing that breaks through and reaches a pinnacle of success, how do you respond?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to talk about one of my other favorites later,
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: a Stevie Wonder album that did a similar thing.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Tribe came out with low-end theory, too much critical acclaim.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it put these guys on the map and it was their best album.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you follow up to it?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they followed up to it with more genius.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like, you know, the Knicks win the championship.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: What do you expect of them next season?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Are they going to miss the playoffs or are they going to win the championship again
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: in a more dominant fashion?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I feel about Midnight Marauders.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: They came back.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: They took swings.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: It was very different.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: But equally, if not better in terms of production value and sampling and lyricism.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how I feel about it.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Low End was a classic, but they responded with more greatness.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: Have you seen the Tribe documentary that Michael Rappaport made?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like this is probably 10 years ago.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: I have my own thoughts on Michael Rabaport.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, that's a whole other discussion.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: But there's this moment in there,
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: and I think it's Midnight Marauders, where I think it's Chris Lighty.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: He describes,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: he's basically saying,
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: if we didn't tell Q-Tip to stop working on the album,
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: he would still be working on it.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: We need to, at a certain point, we just physically go in there and rip it away from him.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you're done, you're done, stop, it has to come out now.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: You remember that?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: How does that, does that resonate with you at all in your work?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: The perfectionism is real.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: I've always,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: that has resonated with me deeply throughout my career because I'm hardest
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: on myself.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm my harshest critic.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think in music, maybe similar to writing, you know, it's coming from a vulnerable place.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: You have to reach in and find something and you make it and then it goes on to
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: a picture or onto an album.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: And when I look back,
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: sometimes I cringe and other times I sit there and go,
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: man, I'm damn proud of myself.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: But in the moment, it's hard to give it up and go, OK, I'm done.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I really I really relate to it.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: the other thing I related to Q-Tip was his I've always looked at him as
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: a leader amongst his crew.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: he and Fythe had this great balance,
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: not just in how they sounded and like their lyrical approach to each song,
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: but I think Q-Tip was really Maybe more of the mad scientist,
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: tinkering, analytical, trying to find some things.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Fife had this natural God-given ability to just create these beautiful rhymes over a track.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Do I think he was as committed?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at the history, this album in particular, I jotted this note down.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: On Midnight Marauders, it was so hard to get Fife into the studio.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of that had to do with his diabetes that he built a makeshift studio
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: in Fife's mom's basement.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: There was no excuse.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, dude, you just need to go two flights of stairs down and I'll bring it to you.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was like this relentless dedication,
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: not just the obsessiveness of the craft,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: but a dedication to getting it done that I respected.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: He's, he seems obsessive and like,
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: also like, yeah, he was the engine behind everything happening, I think.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: And Fife did show up and, you know, deliver for sure.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: But like,
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: it was like,
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: you had to,
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: you had to get him to like the basketball court and be like, you got to play today.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: We got to play, put on your shoes,
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: But when he did, he was great.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Before we go, I want to say one more thing about this.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Two parallels, by the way, between Bill Evans and Midnight Marauders.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: The first is the album cover, right?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: Bill Evans has the written portion from his contemporaries.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Midnight Marauders famously puts all the faces of their contemporaries on the album.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what's also crazy to me.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was born in 91, so this came out in November 93, which was a big year for hip-hop.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: When this album released, it was the same day that
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: Wu-Tang, 36 Chambers.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: 36 Chambers,
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: arguably the most famous album of hip-hop ever,
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: maybe aside from The Chronic or whatever.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's so many.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: The same day.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: What a day.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Can you believe that?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's incredible.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Think about that body of work that's going on from from 91 to 96 in hip hop.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's still somewhat fledgling, right?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hip hop as a genre.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's only been around for the better part of a decade.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: And now it's evolving into this incredible You know,
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: now it's a national talking point and you've got this West Coast beef.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: The thing that strikes me about Bill Evans and Tribe is if you look
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: at their other contemporaries, a lot of other folks were shinier.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: They were louder, more abrasive.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they talked about things that maybe were more political or they took a stance.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they were more opinionated.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: They had a particular flair and a style that people would talk about.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: But Tribe lived in this world of just like we're going to continue this excellence
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: and we're going to talk about,
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: you know, positivity, an Afrocentric lifestyle, street culture.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Everything is uplifting.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they never deviated from that too much.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: But.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Their standard of excellence never dropped.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: They just like orbited around their own world.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think Bill Evans is the same way.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: You can look at other pianists like Les McCann or Oscar Peterson.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: there's so many of them,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: but they all have a particular style and maybe an edge and a flair.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say Bill's a little bit more center plate.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: And Tribe kind of lived in this world that was maybe not center plate,
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: but also away from all this discussion on the national platform of hip hop.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And yet they never, their excellence never dipped.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: I've always been in admiration of that.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think they were like,
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: that's like the one musical group I know of that I knew of at the time
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: that I realized now was like ahead of their time.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: And the people say,
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: I remember wearing a Midnight Marauders t-shirt into a coffee shop in like 2013
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: or 14.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: And a kid who was, I don't know, let's say 15 years younger than me was like, I love that album.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, all right.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: All right, man,
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: you know, like it's still, you know, it still hits, which I think it still does.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: But it was just like,
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: it didn't necessarily feel futuristic at the time,
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: but I don't think that many people, as many people got it as maybe could have.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: And even then it was still successful, but yeah.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like with most great works, you know, you don't quite get it.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: Number three, Tinker Hatfield's Sneaker Designs.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we should describe who Tinker Hatfield is first.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Would you like to take this one?
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: No, I mean,
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: I can just say he was a designer for Nike and designed most of all of
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: the Air Jordans up until... Do you know this fact?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think he went all the way through Jordan's career, right?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: He did, but maybe the more famous point about Tinker is the entry point.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: That he came in with Nike.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: So he did not design the Air Jordan 1, which is my favorite.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's the classic.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's the thing that kicked it all off.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: But to most, I'm a sneakerhead.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: The reason I put him on the list,
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: and it was hard to not put, you know, a literary work or a movie.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was leaning towards a movie, but I thought, how could I go comedy or, you know, all time.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: It just was, I got overwhelmed.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, what are the pillars of my life?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, my kids, my marriage, my music.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: But the things that I wear every day on my feet,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: and I've been obsessed with since I was in high school, are sneakers.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was a sneakerhead.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: I got immersed into that street culture world early,
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: and Jordans were the epitome of what you wanted to wear on your feet.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to know who designed them.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Where did the colorways come from?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: How did they evolve shoe to shoe?
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so for Tinker,
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: who is a designer and most famously a sneaker designer,
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: came up with arguably some of the most famous sneaker designs in the history
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: of sneaker wear.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: He obviously made the Air Max 1, which has its own history, etc.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I would say how he came in with Jordans and the Air Jordan shoes most famous,
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: the Jordan 2 came out.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it was not a success.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was widely criticized.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Jordan was unhappy and was getting ready to leave Nike.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: At least I think he had said, he's not happy, I want to leave.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: Tinker came in and they made the Air Jordan 3,
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: which is one of the most famous Jordan silhouettes for three big reasons.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I jotted them down so I didn't forget.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, it's a mid-cut, right?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: So remember, everything up until that point was high tops.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of players thought, high top, protect my ankles.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Jordan wanted more flexibility.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: He moved different than everybody else.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden,
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: he brings a mid-cut,
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: and he feels,
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: from a technological standpoint, I might have an advantage over other players.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, high fashion.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know Jordan, flashy on the court, a little bit off.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: They put the elephant print on the joint.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden this isn't just like a canvas sneaker.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're using leather, you know, sourced from Italy with intricate designs.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it sets the tone for what other Jordans are to come.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they become artwork more than they do athletic wear.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing to me that stands out above everything was the birth of the Jumpman logo.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what makes Tinker Hatfield maybe the most famous is with the Jordan 3,
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: they no longer have the swoosh.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's the Jordan logo with the ball extended and his feet separated.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then in Jordan's eyes, he becomes his own brand.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: He's not just the face of one.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: He becomes his own.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a huge swing by Tinker.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: And not only did it save the relationship with Jordan,
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: but I think it establishes Arguably the second most identifiable brand,
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know, in the cultural sphere.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: What was your first pair of Jordans?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Chicago ones.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just the classics, the red and whites.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Let me revise that.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: The Chicago Red Toe, which had the black toe as opposed
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: to... Oh, okay.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: What year did those come out then when you got them?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: That was...
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Look back on that.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: My high school years were 2006 to 2009.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it was like a reprint of the Chicago ones.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't get them at the store, by the way.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: Never at the store.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Always on the reseller market and it was usually sketchy.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I know.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: I bought a pair of Jordan ones for my brother-in-law who grew up in Australia
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: and lives in New Zealand and would never buy himself a pair of Jordans.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: But I thought, you know what, here's one thing I can do.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I had the app, you know, what is the app called?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's just called Sneakers.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know how anybody's able to buy a pair of sneakers.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: They sell out within like literally three seconds.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I waited like two weeks and got them.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: For a few dollars more on the resale market,
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: but somebody told me the bottom has just dropped out of the sneaker market in
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: the last few, in the last couple of years.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe there's some deals to be had there.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: I've phased out of that part of my life.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like I now, you know, you have kids.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: There are much more prudent ways to spend our money.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Baby Einstein pianos and more padded diapers that last you overnight.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: So what are you wearing now on your feet?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Stan Smiths?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Tory has dressed me up to be more an adult.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: So now I understand I can wear loafers and look a little more presentable
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: than wearing the Air Max One, which we never talked about, by the way.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: But this is another part of why I love Tinker Hatfield.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: I like...
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think the thing that struck me about him,
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: like most artists in life,
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: is showing people what they don't know and what they don't like.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden they see it for the first time, they go, wow, I really like that.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like nobody in the Air Max one, no one had ever shown the inside of a shoe.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: The bubble.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: The bubble, you know, and to make that a thing, which now we just like take for granted.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, there's another Air Max.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like I see bubbles in shoes all the time.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: But just as such a genius piece of ingenuity, you know, or being innovative in a way.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Stevie Wonder, songs in the key of life.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Why is this important to you?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: I look, I'm not overly religious.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: I find most of my spirituality not just comes from nature,
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: but comes from moments listening to music.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think with music in particular,
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: we've talked about what a beautiful gift this is to the human race,
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: you know, or to the world, not just humans.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: I know other people can enjoy it, other species.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: But we have Steve McLaughlin, Semi-Rad.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Is his volume of work, right?
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know he's a blind pianist and a great album maker,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: but nobody looks back often and thinks about when did he start
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: and how long was his run?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: This guy came on the national stage at 16.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: He put out an album every single year for a decade.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: Think about that.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's incredible.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: Mm hmm.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: The two albums that preceded this one,
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: both one album of the year, Inner Visions and Fulfillingness or something like that.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: So why this album stands out to me is when you listen to it all the way through,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think it is the pinnacle of his journey.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I know there's other works that came out after this and they were brilliant.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: But sometimes you think, how much does this guy have left in the tank?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then he comes out with this album,
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: a double album with 21 songs with all these hits and brilliance.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think,
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: how can there not be some sort of like little divine intervention with this,
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: you know?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why it's my favorite.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: So impressive.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: When are you introduced to this later in life or like when it became important?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: It must have been a little later in life, according to our order of our list here.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was later in college when I really dug into it.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: I knew Stevie again from high school days, the same way I knew Ray Charles and Nina Simone.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: I always listened to his stuff and it was catchy and it was soulful and made me feel good.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: But in college,
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: I had a radio station and I had a Tuesday morning show from
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: 8.30 in
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: the morning till 10.30.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: I had all but four listeners.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: Three of them were family and one was a townie who was really creepy.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a jazz soul funk fusion show.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I had a great intro to it, which maybe I'll treat you to if I can remember it.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I had access to the whole, you know, their backroom with vinyls and cassettes and CDs.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I'm just curating my list week to week.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, man, I haven't dug into Stevie's catalog.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Let me go back to, you know, these albums I've known most of my life.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: Inner Visions was probably the one that I knew the most.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: That was early 70s.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then I would dig in for more information about him and the journey to this album.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I learned a few things interesting back then.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: So he comes out with inner visions and fulfilling this both within
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: the they win album of the year back to back.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then he essentially quits.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: He says, I need a break.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: This has been a crazy run.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: He goes to Ghana, go back to his ancestral roots, you know, deals in philanthropy.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, all the marketing and music execs are begging him to come back.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: Stevie, we need you.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Motown needs you.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the world needs you.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: So he comes back and he starts the process of making this album.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: And legend has it over the course of a few years, he made nearly 40 plus tracks.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: This could have been a 40 piece album, a quadruple album.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he whittled it down to 21 songs.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: And, um,
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: He comes out and to high, you know, there was critical acclaim.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: There was,
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: people had definitely said it was self-indulgent for whatever reason that,
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know, that was.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: But I can't remember if it won album of the year or got really close.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, people now consider this to be his best work.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it was college that I really dug into the discography during that radio show.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: What's your entry point for somebody who's not a Stevie Wonder fan currently?
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: What's your entry point on Songs in the Key of Life?
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: Which songs?
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, boy.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Take your pick.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think it depends on what you're looking for.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: If it were me, when I think of Stevie initially, you want to bounce a little bit.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: You want to smile.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: You want to feel good.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: So put on Sir Duke.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the most iconic brass lines and the most happy brass lines to start out a song.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: Da-da-da-da.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden you're off and moving.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that one and then Isn't She Lovely is a classic.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: Those are two beautiful songs.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you want to dig deeper, maybe you're more of like a jazz enthusiast and you love...
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, am I nerding you out on this?
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: Nope, nope.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: This is what this is about.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's exactly what we're here for.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to dig a little deeper, challenge your ear.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's Contusion or...
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's probably the name of it, Contusion.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'll have to look that up.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: But that's like a very sort of funky,
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: piano-driven, synth-driven riff that is exploratory and very adventurous.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that would be my other song, Contusion.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think the standout song on this, there's two, Village, Ghetto Land, Haz.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: But if you listen to Village Ghetto Land,
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a really, really brilliant piece of political commentary.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: And Stevie is not totally vocal when it comes to
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: That particular era of political commentary and the civil rights and activism
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: and Black Americans.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: But that particular piece,
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: Village Ghetto Land,
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: is a really beautifully crafted song,
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: a little tongue-in-cheek song that invites you in in a very unexpected way.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say those are probably the two most challenging pieces and absolute lessons.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: That's like several songs, but we have your little EP of intro to Stevie Wonder.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: Based on who you are, here's where Ian suggests you start.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's great, dude.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: Number five, Keith Haring's paintings.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: I love this.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: Huge Keith Haring fan.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we were just talking before we came on,
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: like talking about all the books I have read about Keith Haring
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: and Keith Haring's journals.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I'm interested.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: Why did this become important to you sometime after college?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: Why did Keith Haring's work?
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well,
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: there's a through line,
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think with all of these people I've picked,
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: um, And Keith is probably the culmination of it all.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I think about sneaker wear,
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: when I think about music, I think about my own musical journey.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Most of these things are interacting with the public on some level, right?
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're making commercial music.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: Heck, you're even doing what I'm doing,
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: making music for picture, you know, for film and television.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: You're interacting with your audience.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's probably the coolest part.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're making art that's out in the world, that's interactive.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: And when I think about Keith Haring and his history and his launch point into
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: the public sphere,
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: what gravitates me towards him is like he really
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: sharpened his toolkit
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: in public spaces.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: the New York City subways,
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: black canvases with old advertising space where he could go in with white chalk
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: and make designs and have people walk by and respond to his artwork.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know much about his history in terms of how he was trained,
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: but I know there's a difference between graffiti art and all
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: the graffiti artists I love and fine art,
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: you know, art that's made by the artist for their own creative expression.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it's in curated studios and it's not exposed to the masses.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: Keith's work early on was exposed to the masses,
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: which I can relate to as a musician,
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: you know, not that the masses are listening to my work, but you hope they are.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: And with Keith, it was a similar ordeal.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: I just found it was approachable.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was out there in a public space.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: You could digest it.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: You could respond to it.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then he, in turn, would respond to that and make something else.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's probably the reason why I gravitate towards him the most.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's also a second part to that answer, but I didn't want to.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: Go for it.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mentioned I'm a composer making music for all these different visual mediums.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I run a music and sound house cloud nine.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's a boutique shop with four other composers.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we're a team of five.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: And if you go on to our site a few years ago, we had a very big rebrand.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: Which was designed by the wonderful Anya Miller.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: And when I thought about our North Star for how our brand would be represented,
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: it was Keith Haring.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: That was number one on the list.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, all of his artwork.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think what his artwork stood for, which to me has always been playful.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my inner child coming out, warm, inviting unity, bringing us together.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: In our line of work,
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: I see a lot of other composers and other sound houses
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: that they do really brilliant work and they also take themselves very seriously.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously,
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm an ambitious person and I've built a company,
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: but I also don't really take myself too seriously.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of what I love about Keith's work is just it's very relatable.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was the North Star for our company and our design.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's really resonated with people.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, big music overlap with Keith Haring, too.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: He was a huge early days of hip-hop fan,
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: and a lot of the clubs that they did stuff in and for at the time,
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: like, really, really big influence on him.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: Even, I mean,
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: you can see a lot of his paintings that have,
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: like, actual DJs and boomboxes and stuff in them that are...
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: Pretty amazing.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: There's a thing about his art that I didn't really think about too much
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: until I read this latest book that was a biography of him, The Radiant.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's called The Radiant Child.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_02: But how much he had to practice or how much thought and...
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: That practice went into his line,
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: like the simplicity, you know, and it's like that thing that looks easy.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: You're like, oh, I could draw that baby.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I could do that, right?
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: But how much he had to practice and how much he had to do it quickly in the subway.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: before he would get caught,
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: because he did get caught a couple times and actually arrested,
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: for doing graffiti in the subway,
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_02: which was just those old advertisement or the blank advertising spots
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: that you're talking about.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: But get in and out,
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: get it done before,
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: like, a crowd of people shows up, like, you know, as he got more and more famous.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: Is there any overlap for you as a musician in that sort of idea that, like,
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: Do you find,
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: do you find making it look,
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: making it look easy is,
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: this expression of years and years and years of learning piano and other,
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: other instruments?
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's a, that's a very good question.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, let me try, I'm going to try to answer this in music terms.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like it's easy musically to take a maximalist approach,
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: like, um, You know, with a score.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: First off,
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: some of the best scores of all time are some of the best scores of all time are
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: from John Williams.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: So this is no knock on John Williams,
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: but sometimes he's such an influence on me that when I'm scoring something to film,
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: it's easy to be maybe Front and center or bombastic or heard and kind of create
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: that defining melody that you want people to walk away with.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: Indiana Jones, right?
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: Or Jaws or whatever it may be.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_02: Star Wars too, right?
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: Star Wars theme?
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: Endless, right?
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: ET, just the whole deal.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I find the hardest thing to do is to be felt, not heard.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, music is this...
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: That accompanies a scene and it shouldn't often dictate a viewer's emotion.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you shouldn't be too heavy handed, but that can be really difficult.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: That simplicity to find in that score is really difficult.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's probably what I relate to most with Keith talking about those brushstrokes
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: that are just simple lines.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's the reps that we have just making sure we're not heavy handed on the score.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: But it's complimenting what you're seeing visually and has a sonic identity,
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: but just not overtaking what you're watching, you know?
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's, that's great, man.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, all right.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: You want, you want your bonus?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: You sneak in this bonus.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: What are we going to let you have a sixth one, I guess.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: More of a question for you.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking long and hard about putting a book in this top five,
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: and I just couldn't find, I couldn't come to an agreement on one.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: You just wanted people to know you read a book.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_02: I did,
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: yeah.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm capable.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: I actually have it here.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: Ray Bradbury's Dandelion One.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: Phenomenal book.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think you would love it.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think most people would.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Very simple premise about a kid.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: Experiencing summer in middle America and just his account of the things that happen.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not really driven by any particular plot.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: But what I love about it is, well,
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: there's a number of things,
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: you know, Bradbury's known more for science fiction.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is not science fiction.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you and I have talked a lot, just,
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: we're in similar stages in life with our own works,
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: our families, finding the joy in the little things.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a quote that I took out from this and it really resonated with some
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: of our discussions.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: It says, Bill,
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: when you're my age,
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: you'll find out it's the little savers and little things that count more than
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: the big ones.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: A walk in a spring morning is better than an 80 mile ride in a hopped up car.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know why?
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's full of flavors, full of a lot of things growing.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: You've got time to seek and find.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're after the broad effect now, and I suppose that's fit and proper.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: But for a young man working at a newspaper,
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: you got to look for grapes as well as the watermelons.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: The premise of this book when they start the summer is they talk about rites and rituals.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: What are the things that define that season that you love doing?
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I love this exercise because I'm like,
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: man, when summer rolls around, I know we're in the thick of it now.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: What defines this season for you, year after year, the things you come back to?
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, first of all, I hate summer.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: You hate summer?
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_02: I try not to be a negative person, but summer is my least favorite time of the year.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_02: Right now, it's high in the mid-90s.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_02: Air quality is 140.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_02: Air quality index because we have a fire burning.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's not my favorite time.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: But what rituals?
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: Rites and rituals.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you say that, by the way, you don't even have to deal with humidity.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we do.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's as high as it can get into 90% humidity here.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of days in the late spring and a lot of days it's in the 70s.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it's not like D.C.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_02: But rites and rituals.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, man, like the whole my whole.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_02: Beginning of my day is just like rituals of like,
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_02: if I'm home,
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_02: which I am home,
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_02: 95 days out of 100 right now, or 98 days out of 100, I make breakfast for my family.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then if it's my turn,
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_02: I bike to school with Jay,
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_02: which is 1.45 miles that takes us anywhere from 15 minutes to
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_02: We ride our bikes and I try to keep them alive all the way to school.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then I strap his bike on the back of our big cargo bike.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then I bike at home.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the start of my day.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: And there's like this little relief of like, okay, he's fine.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_02: He's going to be occupied.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: He's going to go hang out with his buddies and goof off for the whole day.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I can actually like focus on work for a while.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: Another ritual is like,
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_02: This is going on over four years of very distracted cups of coffee in the morning.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: When was the last time I just sat and had a cup of coffee?
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: Not very often.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, does that answer your question?
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful answer, and you've morphed it into more of your daily ride.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: I can't knock.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think some things about summer are like inherent to my childhood
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: that maybe I'm trying to recreate with our kids to a neighborhood pool.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: So like, you know, smelling chlorine on my hair.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: I now smell it on Ewan's hair.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: I always think of blades of grass,
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: putting my feet in the grass for that first time
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: where it doesn't feel like Just dead, compact, hard winter dirt.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden things are back to life a little bit and I can feel
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: that tickle underneath my heel.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you know,
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: Evie will laugh and my daughter,
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: she'll laugh and giggle because her feet get tickled underneath like that too.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: So some things are inherent to that particular season that I love,
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: but I also cherish the everyday rituals.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: Complaining is like my number one summer activity.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_02: I don't complain that much.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_02: In my head, I'm complaining.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: In my head, every time I start my watch to go for a run, I'm like, God damn it, it's hot.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: What's that?
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: Larry David would be proud.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a good question.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: Do we have rites and rituals?
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: I like yours better.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: You should have just gone with yours.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_02: You shouldn't even ask me.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_02: That was the way to go.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, hey, it was off the cuff.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't have time to prepare, but I like it.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: The distracted cups of coffee, and I know there's countless.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: I relate to that, no matter the season.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_02: We leave early enough where I don't have to rush Jay to school.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_02: We can goof off.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_02: We can do whatever on our little bike ride,
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_02: and I think like Every time I'm doing it,
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like,
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_02: I have this feeling that I got to get going because I got to get started in my day
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_02: because I got to get this done and this done and this done
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_02: before I have this meeting or whatever.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm just like, dude, this is going to be the best part of your day.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: You might as well just be here for it.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_02: So you look back on your entire day and you're like, what did I do today?
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, man, we had a nice bike ride to school.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: That was cool.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_02: That was fun.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: Good times.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: Mic drop right there.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: You said it all.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome, dude.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we had Everybody Digs Bill Evans, A Tribe Called Quest, Midnight Marauders.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_02: Tinker Hatfield's Sneaker Designs, specifically the Air Jordan one and the Air Max one.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life album.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_02: Keith Haring's Paintings.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_02: And you snuck in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, which I will acquire and read.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_02: Dude, thanks so much for being on.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_02: This is super fun.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: I know there's a lot of sonic brilliance in these albums.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: It may not be everybody's cup of tea,
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: so for your listeners that don't gravitate towards the jazz or hip-hop world,
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: give it a spin.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: Challenge your ear a little bit.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think you'll find some joy in it.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: Big caveat there.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much, dude.