Latest / Kyle Meredith With... / Ben Folds on Orchestral Album, the Kennedy Center, and Artistic Freedom

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Ben Folds on Orchestral Album, the Kennedy Center, and Artistic Freedom · Kyle Meredith With...

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[SPEAKER_03]: Just an example of what you get when you subscribe to the Kyle Meredith with podcast.
1:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Kyle Mera today, talking with my friend Ben Folds, the ever-sardonic piano pop raccoon tour, who's made decades-long career out of turning your awkward break-ups, your suburban malaise, your own self-loating into chamber-pop gold.
2:02
[SPEAKER_03]: from Ben Fold's Fives, Nineties, Alt Radio Days, to his more recent solo adventures, writing symphonic pieces with a national symphony orchestra, he's the guy who will crack a joke, mid-chorus, just remind you not to take him or yourself too seriously.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But what we're talking about today is quite serious.
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[SPEAKER_03]: As I just mentioned, his latest project is a new album with a national symphony orchestra recorded at the Kennedy Center just before his dramatic exit as artistic advisor under the Trump takeover.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Ben's going to dig into why the Kennedy Center's mission goes beyond just staging performances, how nonprofits keep communities connected, and what it means when the firewall protecting the arts from political intimidation breaks down.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Ben's also going to reflect on the symbolism of releasing this orchestral record on the Fourth of July.
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[SPEAKER_03]: He'll share stories about Rostropovic and Shastakovic's resistance under Stalin, and why artists today can't afford to just shut up and sing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's an inspiring, candid conversation about music as an act of resistance, the future of orchestral music, and how we can all be capable of anything.
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[SPEAKER_03]: For better or worse, if we're not paying attention.
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[SPEAKER_03]: All that and more, as we talk about Ben Fold's live with the National Symphony Orchestra, it's Kyle Meredith with Ben Fold's.
3:29
[SPEAKER_03]: How's it going?
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[SPEAKER_03]: What an interesting time of what an interesting year I think it's been for you at least from what it looks like from the outside.
3:39
[SPEAKER_03]: You were artistic advisor at the Kennedy Center then everybody got thrown out and
3:47
[SPEAKER_03]: because it's easier to say that than his name, I think sometimes.
3:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I threw myself out.
3:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, okay, yeah, because you got out before you did all the throwing out, right?
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[SPEAKER_04]: The takeover was at two o'clock and I
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[SPEAKER_04]: had my publicity statement up by two o one I believe.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So you knew it was coming.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Let me let me back up a little bit too.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You recorded an album with a national sin feeding orchestra and we're gonna be talking about that because first off my god what a beautiful album what an amazingly recorded album like it's one of those that like it doesn't sound like a live record until the people are clapping kind of a thing.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean David Boucher who was the
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[SPEAKER_04]: recordist and mixer on that is one of the best to ever occupy the field.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He's another level.
4:39
[SPEAKER_04]: It's funny because you'll
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[SPEAKER_04]: I'll ask him, like, what'd you do with the Paners?
4:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, nothing.
4:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Really?
4:47
[SPEAKER_04]: No.
4:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I just, I just balanced them.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Like, but it's great.
4:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
4:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
4:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Some people have it.
4:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And it doesn't hurt that the room that you're in.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And again, we're talking about, you know, not all's a great set in room for recording.
5:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, every place has this limitation, but it's, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And this is a room that I'm so familiar with, you know?
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[SPEAKER_03]: And it's because you've been, so how long now have you been working with the Kennedy Center?
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[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I think I was there about eight years.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We knew the contract, I mean, the last year I think, and yeah, about eight years.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We knew the contract.
5:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, let's see.
5:25
[SPEAKER_03]: The last maybe as long as everyone thought it would.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's what's a contract anymore.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But you've been doing this fantastic series, I know that I've been keeping up with with declassified, been folds present.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So I'd love to hear about that room, because again, eight years in this room, and it is one of the most storied in our country.
5:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, what is it about to place?
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[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you know, the room, of course, is a beautiful room and the building itself.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It all comes from what's a special by the Kennedy Center and sets it apart from the other performance venues across the country is that it has a mission.
6:07
[SPEAKER_04]: or multiple missions.
6:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And so the vibe of it, I mean, you've got what seven real performance places in there, you could count a couple more if you wouldn't improvise.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And God knows how many thousands of shows happen across, and just none of those spaces are really massive.
6:30
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not doing arena work, it does have a self-limiting nature to it, but it's the mission and so it's
6:42
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I guess the more times you grace a room and everyone's association with it with, well, here come all the kids.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Bus loads and bus loads of kids coming in to see the symphony for the first time or for the young people's concerts or for a ballet or even an opera.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's just it makes it really special.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, that word that you said mission, I mean, that starts to hold all the weights.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's what we're talking about here today.
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[SPEAKER_04]: That's why I was there.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I can go book bands or book, you know, orchestras or whatever somewhere else.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I play all the symphony halls and performance spaces that most of them and get the grades.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But their
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[SPEAKER_04]: their mission is to go where the wind blows in terms of their bottom line, which is understandable, and they may have some integrity and taste and all that stuff.
7:38
[SPEAKER_04]: It's nothing wrong with that, but a place that was built
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[SPEAKER_04]: on basically the words of Robert Frost and JFK and just the idea that, yeah, we all need to survive, but even if you're barely surviving, you have the right to be enlightened.
7:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Not that you survive first, and you're like, Whew, now that I'm rich, now I'm gonna go see the symphony.
8:06
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, no, seriously, if you can find the time,
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[SPEAKER_04]: you can get there and find something and you're welcome and you will look on the stage in a place like that and you'll see someone who looks like you no matter who you are in this great diverse country and that those things were busted the trust was broken the firewall was broken down and the sanctity of the place you know is in limbo now
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[SPEAKER_04]: And I can't work that way because trust is one of the key items when you are booking your homies to come in and play with a symphony orchestra.
8:51
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, yeah, look, it's we got two hours of rehearsal.
8:56
[SPEAKER_04]: It was symphony orchestra.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We'll find a lot of money with donors to get your charts up.
9:01
[SPEAKER_04]: You won't get the here at probably.
9:03
[SPEAKER_04]: You'll make about one tenth of what you make on any other gig.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You want to do it.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It takes, you know, but it's the Kennedy Center and it's, you know, me saying that you're in good hands and it's safe.
9:19
[SPEAKER_04]: I could no longer do that at two o'clock on that Wednesday.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And I knew I was looking up at my
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[SPEAKER_04]: at my roster coming up.
9:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And I knew none of those people were going to feel good about it.
9:29
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to know with it.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to cancel or not.
9:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And if they made it to the stage, let's say they decide to be opinionated as they have the right to be.
9:41
[SPEAKER_04]: absolute non-partisan place and always has been one of the most beautiful things about, but that doesn't mean that an artist can't come in and express themselves in any way.
9:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So what's the boss going to get upset?
9:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, are you going to stick somebody on you?
9:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it going to take to his little account?
10:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, well, what is going to happen?
10:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that that dirty is the whole thing up in a breaks of trust?
10:07
[SPEAKER_04]: So in a nutshell, the mission was broken.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I was there for mission.
10:13
[SPEAKER_04]: All of us know we can make more money.
10:14
[SPEAKER_04]: It's stuff like that in the private sector.
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[SPEAKER_04]: That's not why we're there.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And that's not even hyperbolic.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I say, because we see it happen in real time, right?
10:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Bruce Springsteen says something in different country.
10:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And Trump says, you might want to worry about coming back into the country.
10:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, did you just threaten to keep out in American citizens?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Like, we're seeing that in real time now.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So that's what I'm saying to you by point.
10:38
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what's interesting about that, please.
10:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Here's how I think of it.
10:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Roster ProVage.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They called Slavic, because his first name was to complex to pronounce Soviet era, cellist, and conductor.
10:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And he worked really closely with Shastakovich.
10:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, Shastakovich, in the time of Stalin, was he was, like, I don't know, the Taylor Swift, the Bruce Springsteen of
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[SPEAKER_04]: The Soviet era of composers, he was big, big stuff.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And Stalin was, of course, being authoritarian, was jealous of his sway and jealous of it, didn't agree with the things he had to say.
11:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Shostakovich, if he was opinionated, if he put a little musical, you know, statement, joke, something in his music that would piss off Stalin.
11:34
[SPEAKER_04]: It started with Stalin showing up,
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[SPEAKER_04]: pointing at him from the box and laughing.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And that's like a tweet.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I hate Shostakovich.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Then pretty soon, Shostakovich had to worry when he did these things.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Anything he stepped out of line on, anything he expressed that didn't please dude.
11:54
[SPEAKER_04]: He had to worry about his friends being sent to prison, rounded up, snatched off the street, family members, possibly killed.
12:04
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a real threat.
12:05
[SPEAKER_04]: It didn't start with that.
12:07
[SPEAKER_04]: It started with him tweeting, I hate Chasticovic.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You have to stop that line right there.
12:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And Sorostropovic comes over to the U.S.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He defects to the U.S.
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[SPEAKER_04]: and he became the director and the conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra at Kenny Center.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, redecate.
12:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And he carried with them all the stuff that Chasticovic
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[SPEAKER_04]: was had to be in fear to play.
12:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And so the National Symphony Orchestra is the orchestra to carry the work of Shostakovich into the States by far, because Rostropovic, who worked for Shostakovich, was there, and beaten end to their heads and indoctrinated.
12:55
[SPEAKER_04]: There are still members of the symphony that
12:58
[SPEAKER_04]: that were there during that tenure there were still members of the symphony at least that studied with the people who did that it has an effect you feel slava in the place in my over my piano has been for years
13:12
[SPEAKER_04]: a poster of Slava, that's roster povich, at the National Symphony Orchestra conducting at the Kennedy Center concert hall.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And so thinking about how Slava came to the US, and he could finally have a place where there was that firewall, the trust.
13:35
[SPEAKER_04]: that a tyrant wouldn't come in and try to intimidate, threaten, change, shut down, muzzle art.
13:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And he was on my mind when I got out of there and it made it an obrater.
13:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like one of those people, you know, here in the Midwest, it's all good about tornadoes.
13:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I never thought it would happen to my house, you know?
13:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And here we are, right?
14:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Because that seems like a story we would read in history books, places across the world.
14:05
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't happen here like that.
14:08
[SPEAKER_03]: But you came face to face with it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Like, you're there.
14:11
[SPEAKER_03]: You're in the story now.
14:12
[SPEAKER_03]: You're part of that story.
14:14
[SPEAKER_04]: It's crazy.
14:16
[SPEAKER_04]: It raises your anxiety level, too.
14:19
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, for no reason almost.
14:22
[SPEAKER_04]: It's almost like, what's that?
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[SPEAKER_04]: What's that feeling?
14:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, you probably know people's well then lived in the Soviet era of lived in an authoritarian country.
14:34
[SPEAKER_04]: they describe that general malaise and almost low energy in the kind of like just look straight ahead feeling and I could feel the sort of the extra weight like putting just a couple of little extra bricks on your backing and it's it's so unnecessary and I will say one more thing about that
14:56
[SPEAKER_04]: take over, which is another thing that had anxiety to my life.
15:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm a musician, and I'm certainly not going to dive into economics or geopolitical theories and none of the stuff.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I stay in my lane, but we're all, I think, many of us, most of us probably, are skeptical when we hear, oh, they've come in, they're cutting waste, and they're just bringing a hammer and breaking things and moving fast, and you're like,
15:27
[SPEAKER_04]: That doesn't sound right, but maybe.
15:30
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I'm in musician.
15:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's see.
15:32
[SPEAKER_04]: I'd love if it works.
15:34
[SPEAKER_04]: It doesn't sound right to me.
15:36
[SPEAKER_04]: When you're in the middle of it, and you can see the incompetence, that's what scared me the most, was that arts administration is an art.
15:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And when they let go, Deborah Rutters, one of the best to ever grace the field.
15:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Without even, I mean, she was supposed to help them make the transition in good faith, write it out to the end of the year to a retirement, and they went, did that little mean, bully trick where they was cutter?
16:08
[SPEAKER_04]: I knew what that would do to the morale of the entire place, and I knew that they weren't going to have an effective system that.
16:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Furthermore, when you're aggressive,
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[SPEAKER_04]: And everything's got to be ruled by fear, arts administration.
16:23
[SPEAKER_04]: You're not going to sell tickets.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You're not going to get the artist.
16:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, shit.
16:29
[SPEAKER_04]: I was getting all these artists in that would normally charge like five to ten times as much.
16:36
[SPEAKER_04]: There you go.
16:38
[SPEAKER_04]: We were cutting corners.
16:40
[SPEAKER_04]: These people are not going to have to do it.
16:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And they're not going to be able to book as much I'm afraid.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, look, I would be happy if they did because I want to see the Kennedy Center at least retain his life.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And my friends down at the NSO, I want them to be happy.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And I wanted to play a good stuff.
16:56
[SPEAKER_04]: I like the country to succeed.
16:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I think a big part of the country succeeding is in remaining
17:04
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, exceptional in these places, like in the Kennedy Center.
17:08
[SPEAKER_04]: So I actually do root for it to work.
17:11
[SPEAKER_04]: So I probably shouldn't have made that projection, but I do feel like
17:15
[SPEAKER_04]: they didn't show me, I didn't feel very confident about theirs, about their likely success talking about, yeah, we're gonna do water tax season, another cafe and stuff, it's like, take that shit to like, some other like public, you know, private performance hall, that's not, as far as I know, Deborah ran a surplus more than anyone's ever done.
17:38
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I think she's probably three years in the millions, in the black, right?
17:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Six million, I think is what I remember hearing.
17:45
[SPEAKER_04]: She's not supposed to do that.
17:46
[SPEAKER_04]: She's supposed to run up a big debt like Trump.
17:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And we'll be right back, right after this.
17:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back.
17:53
[SPEAKER_03]: It's Kyle Meredith with Ben Foulds.
17:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's the thing though, right?
17:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Like when you say something doesn't feel right, I'm going to paraphrase quote that you'd used another interview about the authoritarian instinct to take control of the culture and arts.
18:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm at a public radio station.
18:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Our new station is an NPR affiliate.
18:17
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's like we were feeling it from that side and and that's the question it comes to because for for the average American
18:26
[SPEAKER_03]: quote unquote to support NPR.
18:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's a dollar, sixty a year.
18:32
[SPEAKER_03]: That's how much it costs them.
18:33
[SPEAKER_03]: The average American, one dollar, sixty cents a year.
18:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Why go after the arts?
18:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Because as you're saying, and I agree with you, it's not like they've got a humongous pool to replace these musicians with.
18:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you know, it's pretty shallow from from what we know in the past.
18:53
[SPEAKER_03]: So for me, of course, it feels like we're not trying to replace it, we're trying to silence it.
18:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Exactly.
18:59
[SPEAKER_04]: It's about muzzling it.
19:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you know, there's always been the argument that MPR and PBS and all things attached to the arts.
19:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And even the media, it's like, there's a real cry baby thing comes from the right.
19:14
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, you know, I'll lift wingers.
19:16
[SPEAKER_04]: It's all left.
19:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's all relative.
19:20
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like if you're comparing it to a till of the hunt, yeah.
19:23
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's the arts are naturally about humanity.
19:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And I like what we've got going on in the States, in the private public tug of war.
19:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And it really works when it comes to the way that we have invested in the arts.
19:45
[SPEAKER_04]: because people that I know that have to do with art organizations in Europe, most of Europe, it's really very, very government-funded.
19:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And over here, like Kennedy Center, I believe that the Kennedy Center was running somewhere between five and fifteen percent government
20:10
[SPEAKER_04]: subsidy to what they did.
20:12
[SPEAKER_04]: That's pretty much like any or extra in the country.
20:15
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think it's that far off.
20:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Whatever it is in that range.
20:18
[SPEAKER_04]: People will be surprised to know that it wasn't like a hundred percent.
20:22
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, they think all the country seems to have.
20:24
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's we have run like the NEA like what they were it became so good at.
20:30
[SPEAKER_04]: I would have thought in my youth, then I did, that we should fund it all with the federal government.
20:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And I came to feel that we were on to something with that tug of war that pull, because what happens is the NEA goes in to a town they say.
20:48
[SPEAKER_04]: They want to invest, help the town out with a new
20:54
[SPEAKER_04]: a new theater and not like an old like restore an old theater.
20:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Their formula seems to be roughly they put in a dollar and they require like seven eight dollars to come from the private sector.
21:05
[SPEAKER_04]: That's it.
21:06
[SPEAKER_04]: So the town funded it.
21:08
[SPEAKER_04]: They just came in spearheaded it, used their sort of knowledge of how it works, got it started, connected the dots.
21:16
[SPEAKER_04]: like the way you put a road into the mall, made it happen, and then the mall took over.
21:22
[SPEAKER_04]: And what bothers me is like with you, if you're really trying to save money, you'd cut that.
21:29
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not the thing.
21:30
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I heard once that, and I knew that I knew it was accurate at the time, and it probably is roughly, it's applicable now.
21:41
[SPEAKER_04]: If you were spending equally around the year, all days of the year,
21:46
[SPEAKER_04]: twenty minutes you you could dedicate to the arts.
21:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Everything that the country spends on the arts.
21:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Twenty minutes we're still spending twenty one work we're off the rest of the year.
21:59
[SPEAKER_04]: No more.
22:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Twenty minutes in the year.
22:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Even for us, much like Kenny Center, our federal funding is five percent of our budget.
22:10
[SPEAKER_03]: That's it.
22:11
[SPEAKER_03]: We say this on the air a lot during the pledge drives.
22:13
[SPEAKER_03]: We make sure people understand that.
22:15
[SPEAKER_03]: We say if that five percent gets cut, it's our biggest grant is how we say it.
22:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Like we will feel it in certain parts.
22:23
[SPEAKER_03]: We will have to make adjustments.
22:24
[SPEAKER_03]: It will not be the death of us, but the smaller rural stations that uses it for most of it.
22:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's, and that's supposed to be their main base, right?
22:38
[SPEAKER_03]: These smaller places for us.
22:43
[SPEAKER_03]: cutting this funding, people don't know this, that also means it cuts funding to like the emergency alert systems.
22:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
22:51
[SPEAKER_03]: It cuts funding.
22:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Because there's always more, right?
22:54
[SPEAKER_03]: There's always more than what you think.
22:55
[SPEAKER_03]: It cuts funding to, because that's what pays for us to pay musicians and the rights to play the music.
23:02
[SPEAKER_03]: It's all of these little things.
23:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And for those smaller communities, not just to lose their local radio station or whatever.
23:10
[SPEAKER_03]: but their local arts, whatever that means.
23:12
[SPEAKER_03]: That's when it's, you start to feel it way more than somebody in a metro.
23:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Imagine though, if part of just, even part of a semester kids learned that sort of civics, I mean, just the way that the private and the public sector
23:37
[SPEAKER_04]: work together.
23:38
[SPEAKER_04]: And how lean and mean we've gotten that, five percent.
23:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Ninety five percent of it has got to come from the fact that I can dial in for dollars shit you got to do.
23:48
[SPEAKER_04]: That's it?
23:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Horrible.
23:49
[SPEAKER_04]: So you got to crawl around the ground with a G string with them throwing dollars in it.
23:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's like the thing is, it's like I've become, I don't know about you, but I've become a little more of a believer in that.
24:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's a little too far, but I mean, I see how that energizes
24:07
[SPEAKER_04]: And also keeps things, you know, in other countries where you have to do any kind of art project in you, then you find yourself just fill out endless applications about what you are going to do, and then the government looks at it and says, yeah, well, we've got too much of this, and so you just change your tune, but at the end of the day, then the artist just does what they want to, but they all learn how to fill out the forms.
24:31
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I don't know what people in the US really think that we're doing over here, but it's very privatized anyway, and cutting off that five percent of course.
24:41
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, let's say Ms.
24:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Gott Rocks is like your biggest donor to a station in Louisville or something, and she just stops her dyes.
24:50
[SPEAKER_04]: That might have been like a half a percent.
24:53
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, like your biggest person, it's like, oh, man, it's got rock.
24:57
[SPEAKER_04]: She passed down where we're going to do.
24:58
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, this is like, you know, whole bust load of of rich people.
25:04
[SPEAKER_03]: It is something, but yeah, I don't mind the pledge drives.
25:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I like knowing that we're sort of answering, you know, to our listenership, energizes them.
25:14
[SPEAKER_03]: It really does.
25:15
[SPEAKER_03]: They fill the ownership.
25:17
[SPEAKER_03]: We, I don't want to pay attention to ratings.
25:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you know, on my side of things is like, is membership great?
25:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Then we're good, you know, but it is.
25:24
[SPEAKER_03]: It's that it's that relationship that we have.
25:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And, and that's
25:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to tie it back around, of course, to what's going on with you.
25:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's the luxury that we have in this country of this art scene.
25:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And when this happens, not just here anywhere, probably even mostly everywhere else.
25:45
[SPEAKER_03]: The revolution, if I'm going to get too corny here, but the revolution usually starts in the arts, too.
25:52
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I hit play on this album that you've done with the National Symphony Orchestra on the very first song we hear is, but wait, there's more.
25:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you still believe in the good of humankind?
26:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Is how the damn record starts, Ben?
26:07
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it started because I laughed so hard.
26:10
[SPEAKER_04]: I was almost crying at the four seasons, parking lot, press conference, you know?
26:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I thought, this is so sad.
26:20
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, this is the only relief I felt if I saw it.
26:24
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's not because anything good happened.
26:27
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just because it was like, that's crazy.
26:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And I thought, God, and that took so much of my
26:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Attention, like maybe I should have been like looking into hospitals that they were building in Malawi or something, like something else in your head should have been happening besides Rudy Giuliani with sweat coming down his face and a parking lot next to a dildo shop.
26:48
[SPEAKER_04]: That was funny, but it was like, I thought this is this era that's now.
26:53
[SPEAKER_04]: They're doing this.
26:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Is this on purpose?
26:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Are they just trying to make it a big freak show?
26:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's like, it feels like, but wait, there's more.
26:59
[SPEAKER_04]: You thought this, but wait, there's more.
27:01
[SPEAKER_04]: The guy is like farting in court, but wait, there's more.
27:05
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's just so crazy.
27:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And at some point I was writing the song and I thought, this feels so cynical what I'm writing about.
27:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I had this whole long list of stuff.
27:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I thought,
27:18
[SPEAKER_04]: But you know, I actually still do believe in more good than not.
27:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I still believe that the country will recover.
27:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I think the humanity will recover.
27:29
[SPEAKER_04]: So putting that into the song, gave it to me.
27:33
[SPEAKER_04]: It gave it the real feeling that I have about all of it rather than being too overly cynical in the writing, which is far easier to do.
27:44
[SPEAKER_03]: But what a beautiful song to begin.
27:46
[SPEAKER_03]: This record, considering the weight of this record.
27:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, you all record this.
27:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe you always had it in your mind that you're going to release it.
27:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
27:56
[SPEAKER_03]: But then it becomes something else, right?
28:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Like what is the story of how this album came to be and what it is right now?
28:05
[SPEAKER_04]: I've been wanting for some time to make
28:09
[SPEAKER_04]: an orchestral record.
28:11
[SPEAKER_04]: But you know, you want to play with a band a little bit.
28:14
[SPEAKER_04]: The Beatles were playing together for five years every single night before they finally started making records.
28:23
[SPEAKER_04]: That's pretty normal that you do a lot.
28:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just occurred to me maybe a couple of years ago.
28:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Now that it's time to make a record with the band, you know, like we're cooking.
28:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's go make the record.
28:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And it was just by chance, you know, that that was the last time I set foot in the Kennedy Center.
28:41
[SPEAKER_04]: We walked out of that recording and that's it for me at least for the next four years.
28:47
[SPEAKER_04]: So the story is just that it was by chance.
28:49
[SPEAKER_04]: We knew we were going to release the record, you know, that was always the plan.
28:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it went down the pike and the way the timing worked out was that the album is now coming out on the heels of all this stuff.
29:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And it means that much more to me.
29:07
[SPEAKER_04]: especially the first song being wait there's more and there's a song on there about how how divided up families and friends can be due to misinformation called Christine from the seventh grade.
29:20
[SPEAKER_04]: It's got funny stuff in it, but I actually think it's sad.
29:23
[SPEAKER_04]: It's honest why I thought it was a minor key.
29:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and so I don't know, it just happens to be coming out.
29:30
[SPEAKER_04]: There's not much more of a story to it than that.
29:33
[SPEAKER_04]: The NSO, I hope I think they're proud of it.
29:38
[SPEAKER_04]: I haven't talked to my friends back there since I split.
29:43
[SPEAKER_04]: I will at some point, but I could tell it was very stressful for them, and they were taking the signal and stuff, I think.
29:48
[SPEAKER_04]: So at some point, we'll all calm down.
29:52
[SPEAKER_04]: have a big group here together, maybe me and all the members then, so like go out to a bar together, seventy people we all walk in.
30:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you call the forehand?
30:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Nah, that's what's walking.
30:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And we'll be right back right after this.
30:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back.
30:10
[SPEAKER_03]: It's Kyle Meredith with bin folds, but to release and I'm assuming this is still the date to release this on the Fourth of July.
30:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, good release date.
30:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Where I think it's a patriotic album.
30:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great release date.
30:30
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a very American album.
30:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's with Iron National Symphony Orchestra.
30:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely honored for me to ever get to play with them once, much less, you know, know a lot of the members and have it out.
30:44
[SPEAKER_04]: What can be said?
30:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think in this era,
30:48
[SPEAKER_04]: We may find that just the act of expression at all, especially with the symphony orchestra, especially with large groups of people getting together, are oddly an active resistance to what I'm not exactly sure, but just resistance to
31:08
[SPEAKER_04]: All we do is put screws and iPhones, or that life is just about putting food on the table, or life is just about keeping what's yours and screw the other guy.
31:20
[SPEAKER_04]: It's resistance against those sorts of forces.
31:25
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I can't want to make the album too important, but it feels like that.
31:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm performing with orchestras a lot live now, and the audiences are very different.
31:35
[SPEAKER_04]: They've become something's changing.
31:38
[SPEAKER_03]: How's that?
31:40
[SPEAKER_04]: They are in general.
31:43
[SPEAKER_04]: So excited, relieved, energized, to be in a room together at something that is
31:56
[SPEAKER_04]: thoughtful and where they realize that there's more than just them.
32:01
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like looking around in the room.
32:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, no one says it.
32:05
[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't think this is something that I would even say from the stage.
32:08
[SPEAKER_04]: But, you know, we could all do something if we wanted to right now.
32:11
[SPEAKER_04]: We would all get on our phones and we could like,
32:14
[SPEAKER_04]: write this Senator and say, please don't pull this out of the bill or we could write people and say, you know, we're all really here.
32:21
[SPEAKER_04]: We're this thing.
32:22
[SPEAKER_04]: We're having a good time and we thought maybe everyone would want to plank at a twelve o'clock.
32:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you start to realize that the people can think
32:30
[SPEAKER_04]: feel and do things together.
32:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And so when I described some of the things that I was telling you about about Rostropovic and Chastico, which I tell that to the audiences, and when I say that was weighing on my mind, when I, when I resigned from the Kennedy Center, it brings a standing ovation from the place.
32:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Now I've always viewed my audiences as being a fairly mixed between ideologies kind of audience.
32:56
[SPEAKER_04]: I've started a long time ago there, from the South,
33:00
[SPEAKER_04]: people probably know where I stand roughly politically, but I just do feel like I've looked at a lot of people who would say, I'm a Republican, you know?
33:09
[SPEAKER_04]: But this goes beyond that, you know, like what we're saying is like, we're here to be ourselves, express
33:18
[SPEAKER_04]: flourish even if we're barely paying bills, be enlightened.
33:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Learn about the orchestra.
33:24
[SPEAKER_04]: See something that's not simple.
33:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's powerful.
33:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Another thing I've been telling, you know, audiences is that I feel like a king from the era of shut up and saying, you know, and I feel like we let people down because
33:42
[SPEAKER_04]: None of us in my era, maybe a little bit before, a little bit after.
33:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe a little after was maybe a little bit worse.
33:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I think they were a little worse than me, even.
33:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Just didn't want to divide the audience.
33:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Didn't want to play for half of people.
33:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Didn't want to have people set online.
33:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Just didn't want to rock the boat.
34:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And the idea was, I guess.
34:04
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, you should be more concerned.
34:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Like you've got this massive podium here, you've got the microphone, don't abuse it with your little light.
34:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't waste everyone's time and money on your opinion.
34:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't express yourself in that way.
34:17
[SPEAKER_04]: And the problem with that is if you can shut Bruce Springsteen down, then look out of the audience and look who else you shut down.
34:25
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, like like artists are delegates.
34:29
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't have to sign up to that delegate.
34:31
[SPEAKER_04]: People in the audience can leave.
34:33
[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, some of them have, you know, I'm sorry.
34:39
[SPEAKER_04]: But I do think we let people down and I think like right now what is coming over people is we actually have to.
34:47
[SPEAKER_04]: We have to be expressive and opinionated.
34:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Hopefully we're informed when we make that opinion.
34:53
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, no one wants to see some stupid fucking kid on drugs coming out of Stacey.
35:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, fuck the man.
35:03
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, like that, like tired social commentary is not welcome, but hey, you don't have to pay to see that.
35:10
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't have to show up.
35:12
[SPEAKER_04]: But I feel like I saw Bruce's speech from Manchester.
35:18
[SPEAKER_04]: That's for the history books as far as I'm concerned.
35:21
[SPEAKER_04]: The only he could have said it that well.
35:25
[SPEAKER_04]: He's earned it and it was so well stated.
35:29
[SPEAKER_04]: He would say this is happening now.
35:31
[SPEAKER_04]: This is happening now.
35:32
[SPEAKER_04]: This is happening now.
35:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sorry, but Barack Obama couldn't even done that.
35:38
[SPEAKER_04]: That's that's sacred and that's that's for the artist and and he's honest and we know because we spent
35:47
[SPEAKER_04]: forty years of our lives growing up with every word and watched him go.
35:51
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I'm always surprised at the people who are surprised.
35:54
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, weren't you listening?
35:56
[SPEAKER_03]: That's always the comeback.
35:57
[SPEAKER_03]: weren't you listening this whole time?
36:00
[SPEAKER_03]: But even when, you know, maybe most famously, you know, when the chicks said it, uh, they're in Bush too.
36:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And they lost some fans, but they are fine.
36:10
[SPEAKER_00]: the phone.
36:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think they're fine because for people like me, I wasn't paying attention to them.
36:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Of course, they also weren't writing with Dan Wilson before then either, but you know, or Gary Lewis or whoever, but you know, for whoever they lost, they pick back up, you know, I played with him on very early.
36:34
[SPEAKER_04]: The stadium tour had been booked.
36:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And they were playing the quarter seated venues.
36:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And you can see it had taken a massive toll on their audience at that moment.
36:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And then they were all, someone's pregnant and it seemed like they were going to kind of go.
36:55
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think that at the end of the day, they are now unstoppable forever.
37:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's that's my point right there.
37:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah sure there was a moment, but they you know I was I was concerned at that moment.
37:10
[SPEAKER_04]: I have to say and that's why I'm in like the sheepish little shelf in the same group.
37:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I wasn't doing that.
37:17
[SPEAKER_04]: I wasn't.
37:18
[SPEAKER_04]: I got I played on stage where there was thought
37:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not gonna if I can do this.
37:24
[SPEAKER_04]: And now I look back on it and all the people that I think that we're thought more like me.
37:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think we were, I think we were, like, cowards, really.
37:37
[SPEAKER_04]: I do.
37:39
[SPEAKER_04]: I think the nineties artists, I think that, you know, we're not rage against some shame, but think that nineties artists from the most part.
37:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the next group came along in the odds.
37:51
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it was sort of emotional cowards, too.
37:53
[SPEAKER_04]: They didn't want to really take a stand on how they felt about something, because all the angry people had been yelling about non-political stuff, had been hit occupied the nineties.
38:06
[SPEAKER_04]: So it feels like me, like, now we're ready for people to just be honest again.
38:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Just be honest.
38:14
[SPEAKER_04]: And you don't have to write political stuff.
38:17
[SPEAKER_03]: It's never too late, though.
38:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Even in the way you're doing it.
38:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
38:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's where you feel a bit.
38:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's where you're capable of anything, Ben.
38:25
[SPEAKER_03]: And here you are.
38:29
[SPEAKER_03]: That is it.
38:29
[SPEAKER_03]: But here we have that moment.
38:31
[SPEAKER_03]: When you all, when you all did this, obviously, you did not know what was about to come.
38:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Now looking back on it, you know, you do start off, as you said, both with, but wait, there's more.
38:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And seventh grade, it's three new songs right away.
38:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, because, you know, you're also promoting a new record at that point.
38:51
[SPEAKER_03]: But now that you know what this, what has happened and what this record, like, would you have put in other songs than what's on here?
38:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, are there other songs you'd want to know?
39:00
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I think the feeling was in the air for sure.
39:03
[SPEAKER_04]: When we did,
39:05
[SPEAKER_04]: We made that record, I guess, some months before the election.
39:08
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I hadn't gained stuff out.
39:10
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't, I couldn't have told you how it was going to all pan out.
39:15
[SPEAKER_04]: But I felt, if felt ominous.
39:18
[SPEAKER_04]: We're in the south.
39:19
[SPEAKER_03]: We understood.
39:19
[SPEAKER_04]: I think so, it felt ominous, you know?
39:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, yeah, I mean, even capable of anything.
39:27
[SPEAKER_04]: What that is is, to me what that song means is, we're all capable of
39:34
[SPEAKER_04]: horrible stuff.
39:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't do it.
39:37
[SPEAKER_04]: That's, and it's like when I think about like, you know, like, you could be more specific with that song if you want to make another one out of its, you know, genetic thumbprint and say something about just because dad did it doesn't mean you should do it.
39:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, okay, he's, he's an alcoholic.
39:57
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't have to do that.
39:59
[SPEAKER_04]: But what happens is when the top decides that
40:02
[SPEAKER_04]: You can break a contract.
40:05
[SPEAKER_04]: And you can do all these things that we all want to do.
40:07
[SPEAKER_04]: And the sign says, you know,
40:09
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't think that you're capable of cheating or killing or lying, but you might.
40:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's not a pass to go.
40:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that's what you see with the naiblers of things.
40:22
[SPEAKER_04]: They go, oh great.
40:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I would have loved to done this all along, but now that they just opened the door to the trough.
40:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Now I can just step on all kinds of poor children's head and get those gold nuggets.
40:35
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what I always wanted to do.
40:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And now that I don't have to apologize for it.
40:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And boy did the internet open that up for some people.
40:41
[SPEAKER_04]: That's right.
40:43
[SPEAKER_04]: And you said a mouthful there because it doesn't lay the blame at the feet of a party or a political movement at all.
40:51
[SPEAKER_04]: It's where we've been going, right?
40:53
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's time for us to.
40:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I guess we're really some kind of alcoholics when it comes to
41:01
[SPEAKER_04]: The internet are having people agree with us or so there's there are convenience studies already on that.
41:07
[SPEAKER_03]: So quick that they came off, you know, the, you know, the same way that, you know, when you eat a piece of chocolate, what it does in your brain, it's opening up, you know, and seeing that like dopamine and stuff.
41:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
41:17
[SPEAKER_03]: That's it right there.
41:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
41:19
[SPEAKER_03]: That's it.
41:21
[SPEAKER_03]: So on the other side of this on the music side, by the way, capable of anything.
41:24
[SPEAKER_03]: What you all did with that bridge.
41:29
[SPEAKER_03]: John Williams-esque.
41:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's just what came to my mind.
41:32
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's just chef's kiss.
41:35
[SPEAKER_04]: That was a pass-around story that part.
41:38
[SPEAKER_04]: That was the first thing I wrote for the album.
41:42
[SPEAKER_04]: What was the name of the album?
41:43
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't even remember.
41:44
[SPEAKER_04]: The one with one music.
41:45
[SPEAKER_04]: So there.
41:45
[SPEAKER_04]: I know, it's right.
41:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I was back around fifteen years ago.
41:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that was the first thing I wrote for so there was really what you're hearing.
41:55
[SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't as orchestral, but I kind of scored it out for for why music and then I had
42:05
[SPEAKER_04]: I had that chart and an orchestrator took it and filled it out to the orchestra.
42:12
[SPEAKER_04]: And then that seemed like too much, so I took it to another guy.
42:15
[SPEAKER_04]: It was like, a lot like, well, some kind of sitcom you see on TV.
42:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Like it really got passed around so much to finally got to a guy named Jerk Beeshoff who seemed to understand all the good things about all of it and brought it together.
42:27
[SPEAKER_04]: So I've never heard of composing like a pass-around story, like I'm sure Beethoven would have been appalled.
42:34
[SPEAKER_03]: But look what we got out of it.
42:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I like it too.
42:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm glad you liked that bit.
42:38
[SPEAKER_04]: I just dropped out there, you know, like I don't even play.
42:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Let them do it.
42:42
[SPEAKER_03]: What about the intro to still fight again?
42:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Interesting.
42:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Fighting.
42:45
[SPEAKER_04]: It was loosely based on an intro that I had originally done for the song, but for the album.
42:53
[SPEAKER_04]: cut it off and started cold with the vocal.
42:56
[SPEAKER_04]: So the album, we go, good morning, son.
42:59
[SPEAKER_04]: But on the original recording of it, it had French horns and some strings and some sound effects.
43:07
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I showed that to the orchestrator, Eric Allen, who did that and fragile.
43:12
[SPEAKER_04]: And Franchals, one of my favorites, it's Mozart, basically, is what the orchestration is based on.
43:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and so he just sort of didn't know orchestral version of the beginning.
43:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I get my hands all in the orchestration, but I don't generally do it myself and there's so many great orchestrators there, a young orchestrator's out there.
43:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's another thing about my program at the Kennedy Center was this gave them a home sometimes.
43:42
[SPEAKER_04]: We would fly them to the Kennedy Center to work with the orchestra because symphony orchestras have been trying to bring new people into the symphony for the whole life of the orchestra since.
43:56
[SPEAKER_04]: way back.
43:57
[SPEAKER_04]: These play folk music and Mozart's time.
44:00
[SPEAKER_04]: They also played folk music and people run around the venue and maybe you wouldn't play all the movements or something.
44:08
[SPEAKER_04]: And people clap between the movements and they play and they're folk song.
44:11
[SPEAKER_04]: It's gotten a little different from that.
44:14
[SPEAKER_04]: But in this era to try to bring a new
44:19
[SPEAKER_04]: audience in.
44:21
[SPEAKER_04]: You go, well, let's do movie music and pop music and Pokemon music and whatever you can do.
44:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And the formulas to make those things work really quickly are degrading to the orchestra most of the time.
44:35
[SPEAKER_04]: They're asking them to do stuff that's just so not just because it's simplistic, but because they're being used as props.
44:43
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, a behind-center to make it fancy.
44:46
[SPEAKER_04]: My mission at the Symphony at the Kennedy Center was to bring in artist with something to tell, you know, and to make sure that the orchestra was a big part of telling the story to never bring an electric instrument really into no drums and all that stuff to exist inside that and to play it side by side.
45:11
[SPEAKER_04]: with, quote, classical music in a way that all seamlessly went together enough.
45:17
[SPEAKER_04]: You've ever heard that attempted.
45:19
[SPEAKER_04]: It sucks.
45:21
[SPEAKER_04]: The reason sucks is because the PA system is on for, I don't know.
45:27
[SPEAKER_04]: My friend and boy is demand, you know, turn it up.
45:30
[SPEAKER_04]: It sounds great.
45:31
[SPEAKER_04]: It's fun.
45:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Orcsures back there somewhere playing wholeness.
45:34
[SPEAKER_04]: They're throwing flowers out at the audience.
45:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone's thrilled.
45:36
[SPEAKER_04]: No one's gonna come back to see that symphony orchestra ever again.
45:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And symphony orchestra themselves, basically watch their ears out and leave because it was loud.
45:45
[SPEAKER_04]: They weren't doing anything that they could actually hear themselves.
45:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And the problem is is when you bring a new arranger and a young arranger, their stuff has to sit next to Stravinsky.
45:56
[SPEAKER_04]: with no PA system.
45:58
[SPEAKER_04]: And if it's not amazing, it doesn't work.
46:02
[SPEAKER_04]: And people have come in our air to believe that we can't do that.
46:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I was doing it over and over again at the Kenny Center because we'd fly them in for two or three days.
46:10
[SPEAKER_04]: They'd hear the rehearsal.
46:12
[SPEAKER_04]: They'd be aghast at the things that we're missing because Procuffie have played right after and it's like, why does his shit sound good in mind sucks?
46:21
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, because we gotta go back to the hotel.
46:24
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going back to the water gate for two days and we're gonna fix it.
46:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we'd bring it out and it would be there I say in the same category.
46:34
[SPEAKER_04]: And only the Kennedy Center because because it wasn't a capitalistic event just for this, we had a mission.
46:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's that importance again, that mission right there.
46:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's one of the most people are ignorant.
46:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And I've been guilty of it many, many times before about to think that there's no innovation within the classical world.
46:56
[SPEAKER_03]: We also have a classical station here in our little cluster, news, classical, and then we just say music, which is generic as you can get for what's basically an adult alternative station.
47:08
[SPEAKER_03]: But there is, there are people on our classical station.
47:12
[SPEAKER_03]: uh, ninety point five WOL.
47:14
[SPEAKER_03]: That's their whole mindset.
47:15
[SPEAKER_03]: They're young and they're finding that and we got a ratings book back.
47:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to say it's last year that year before and to our surprise had huge numbers and this like eighteen to twenty.
47:28
[SPEAKER_03]: No one ever saw that coming.
47:30
[SPEAKER_03]: because I'm not even furthering your point or I guess I'm furthering you.
47:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I, but I love to hear it.
47:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, this is what people, I love everyone else to hear this, too.
47:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
47:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, like, there are people that want to hear this and there is innovation happening within it.
47:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you can find a spot that will actually give it a platform and nurture its
47:51
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and as we talk about like as one part of the mission that you all are able to do, you're doing things that no one else even has the capacity for.
48:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we were able to, we had the luxury, and that's why I went there to expand experiment and then to
48:16
[SPEAKER_04]: let that radiate out into the other symphony orchestras and let those artists go out.
48:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, like Sarah Burrellis, she, I think that was her first real orchestra show.
48:29
[SPEAKER_04]: So she walks away with charts and me saying to her, look, you've got a template.
48:34
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, if you can keep it.
48:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And then she went on and made a TV special with it and toured some.
48:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, the same with a lot of other artists, John Batista, I think his first big time with the Norcus Trail was when I brought him into the declassified show.
48:51
[SPEAKER_04]: And he walked out of there and they made a documentary of him doing one.
48:55
[SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, like, these things have a resonating effect because
49:00
[SPEAKER_04]: in the center where the heart is in DC, where the country gets its certain part of this lifeblood, these things resonate and go out there.
49:12
[SPEAKER_04]: It is important.
49:16
[SPEAKER_04]: That is well understood by anyone with authoritarian instincts to grab that microphone.
49:23
[SPEAKER_04]: I have only two thousand people in the concert hall.
49:26
[SPEAKER_04]: That's not a lot of people, so why bother?
49:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Because it's the Kennedy Center's grow.
49:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And it just goes out.
49:34
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's important.
49:35
[SPEAKER_04]: And that five percent that you're talking about.
49:38
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, that funds that's your biggest, you know, donor.
49:43
[SPEAKER_04]: That is the symbolism of knowing that the government by the people for the people has said, this is important.
49:54
[SPEAKER_04]: The arts are important.
49:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's why these theaters that the NEA goes into.
50:01
[SPEAKER_04]: help refurbish their old theaters.
50:04
[SPEAKER_04]: That's why it's such a great success.
50:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Even though they're one dollar to the other seven or eight dollars in the community and they don't have any say.
50:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I went to one town and a really honorable wealthy local had done it all himself.
50:20
[SPEAKER_04]: He had been the NEA at this local theater.
50:24
[SPEAKER_04]: It was dilapidated for years and years and had fallen to complete this repair and now
50:30
[SPEAKER_04]: They're bringing in bands, orchestras, stuff, now there's a cafe, now there's another cafe, now people are paying for parking, now they're going to the shops and it's revitalized the place and the guy can be proud that he did that.
50:44
[SPEAKER_04]: But when I asked about the NEA and so because the NEA is almost always involved and he's like, nope, I didn't want them telling me what color to paint the walls.
50:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And I thought, I know a little bit about the NEA, and I didn't know they were into interior design, but, okay, I'm so glad he did it.
51:02
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's like, there's not someone like that in every single town.
51:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And even if there is, we the people, hopefully, are looking out for the people on the other side, the tracks, people of different ages and colors to bring them in too, because, you know, you get a little bit of money and you want to do the right thing, but you don't have any idea.
51:24
[SPEAKER_04]: what the kids who were going to, like we have a multi-pronged charity initiative, whatever, that word of the damn words are, and it's a web in North Carolina.
51:40
[SPEAKER_04]: These are non-profits that existed anyway, and we built a thing called keys for kids to make the money to give to them, get out of their way.
51:49
[SPEAKER_04]: asking what they need, giving some contacts, putting them together sometimes.
51:52
[SPEAKER_04]: We got a bunch of keyboards, Casio gave them a bunch of free keyboards.
51:56
[SPEAKER_04]: We give as much money as we can get our hands on.
51:58
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I like to visit and see where they're going.
52:01
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's huge.
52:03
[SPEAKER_04]: So all this is going on at the same time.
52:07
[SPEAKER_04]: But I didn't know before I visited a place, it's like one of the big deals is
52:15
[SPEAKER_04]: They were asked, like, what do you need?
52:17
[SPEAKER_04]: And we're like giving them keyboards and stuff which is awesome.
52:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And then they go, well, next on the list would be sandwiches.
52:22
[SPEAKER_04]: The kids are hungry.
52:24
[SPEAKER_04]: They show up and they're starving.
52:27
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's like, I wouldn't know.
52:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I'm sorry.
52:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, I haven't, that's not been where I am.
52:32
[SPEAKER_04]: I, you can't depend on a private citizen to really understand that.
52:36
[SPEAKER_04]: This was,
52:37
[SPEAKER_04]: North Carolina, Arts Council and all these, you know, this is a lot of public and a lot of non-profit stuff going out there.
52:44
[SPEAKER_04]: We all, we can't look after each other just by saying, hey, I'm gonna throw a bunch of money into it.
52:50
[SPEAKER_04]: We do need to get together as people, for the people, state, federal, local, and at least symbolically five percent of these things.
53:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, think it is your head and heart in the right place.
53:05
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you're asking the right questions.
53:06
[SPEAKER_03]: In a time where piggybacking a little bit, something like inclusivity has been weaponized.
53:13
[SPEAKER_03]: When all we're trying to do is make sure, as you said, you walk into the Kennedy Center that you feel safe and that somebody up there is going to look like you regardless of what you look like.
53:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Which one do you mean?
53:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyone can be able to relate to that because I mean, you know, you could
53:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Not everyone's good at everything, all the time.
53:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And not everyone has had a chance to do a thing, all the time things are not as equals I need to be.
53:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And almost any walk of life could look at something and go, wow, there's no one in that that looks like me.
53:44
[SPEAKER_04]: As a Southerner, like remember when you'd see a movie and there's like one stupid son of a bitch in the whole movie in some middle of New York City and he's got Southern accent.
53:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, why is he on Southern accent?
53:56
[SPEAKER_04]: He lives in the Bronx.
53:58
[SPEAKER_04]: And he's like, I might not want to pump you guys.
54:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's like that's too good.
54:02
[SPEAKER_04]: So I didn't see many people on TV that were intellectual that were Southern.
54:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Up until Jimmy Carter was kind of nice, but even he kind of played into like peanut farmer kind of guy.
54:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, I think it's so important what you just said that the inclusivity is like it's made to look like
54:25
[SPEAKER_04]: like it's something that the government was ever forcing.
54:29
[SPEAKER_04]: That's crazy.
54:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Like the countries made up of these people.
54:33
[SPEAKER_04]: If they're not being represented, yeah, it's time to look after that.
54:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Make sure it happens.
54:39
[SPEAKER_04]: And I can't say it's always easy.
54:41
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's like I had some friends who were making, you know, it was during Black Lives Matter, they make it all
54:48
[SPEAKER_04]: on all black album to raise money into these things.
54:52
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, we're gonna call me because they were mixing the record, they're like, Pan, do you know any black asking engineers?
55:02
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was like,
55:04
[SPEAKER_04]: shit.
55:04
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I only know ten and they're all just like kind of old nerdy white guys.
55:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
55:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Let me check on that.
55:11
[SPEAKER_04]: So I called, you know, an African American engineer and I said, you know, someone that masters records that's not an old white guy.
55:19
[SPEAKER_04]: He's like,
55:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I never thought, but I wouldn't want to do that.
55:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I've never, I've never thought of that.
55:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, well, I never have either.
55:27
[SPEAKER_04]: That's interesting.
55:28
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's Sarah Burrell.
55:30
[SPEAKER_04]: I also remember, I was asking me about female producers.
55:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was like, well, I don't know, there's three.
55:34
[SPEAKER_04]: What's ridiculous?
55:36
[SPEAKER_04]: You need to see, you need to see that.
55:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Once you see it, then it becomes possible.
55:42
[SPEAKER_04]: But when everyone starts to go and I've never seen that, I've never seen that.
55:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And you go to a show.
55:46
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's like, the symphony orchestra was a hundred percent white guys.
55:51
[SPEAKER_04]: up in the seventies.
55:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Then they let a couple chicks in in the seventies.
55:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And that crazy?
55:58
[SPEAKER_03]: No chips.
55:58
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a long ago, right?
56:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Wasn't that long ago?
56:01
[SPEAKER_04]: None at all.
56:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Now it's like, well, they're, they're like some, the best players.
56:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So it wasn't that.
56:06
[SPEAKER_04]: It was just that, what little girl ever went to the symphony and thought that was for her.
56:10
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, never, never happened.
56:13
[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't know.
56:14
[SPEAKER_04]: We know that.
56:15
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know why I'm going into all that.
56:16
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's like, what kind of is upsetting is like, you know, you said it more briefly because you're better at that.
56:22
[SPEAKER_04]: But that, that, that it was weaponized.
56:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and that's the thing, you know, I have to tell this to some of my family, you know, conservative family in the South here, inclusivity doesn't mean replacement, like doesn't mean because there's still plenty of white people that you're also going to see up there by the way, you're still going to see yourself up there as well.
56:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you know, it's just like, but also the person sitting next to you will.
56:43
[SPEAKER_04]: It just means that things aren't assured for you anymore if you're a white guy for that world, you know, it's like that's
56:53
[SPEAKER_04]: And I know, I realize that can be a hard pill to swallow, that sometimes it's like it seems like the floodgates have opened in your competition is more.
57:01
[SPEAKER_04]: But that's all it is.
57:02
[SPEAKER_04]: So you have to be inevitable.
57:04
[SPEAKER_04]: You have to be better.
57:05
[SPEAKER_04]: You have to be great.
57:06
[SPEAKER_04]: That's all it is.
57:07
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, I mean, it is sometimes a pain like an, I guess that's where I was going, is there a time when we'd be going, you know what, I really just, we really just need someone that's not a white dude as the conductor on this show.
57:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Not because Biden call this up and said, you better get yourself an African-American woman on stage doing that or anything.
57:27
[SPEAKER_04]: That was like, it was in the air because we were course correcting like the United States is always done.
57:34
[SPEAKER_04]: We were course correcting and going, okay, look, let's do that.
57:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's commit to do that.
57:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And then it's like six weeks out.
57:41
[SPEAKER_04]: We're like, if we found anyone, it's like, no, because everyone wants the only small pool.
57:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it seems counterproductive at a moment, because it seems frustrating.
57:51
[SPEAKER_04]: But when you pull it off, then you feel good about it, because you can see what that means.
57:57
[SPEAKER_04]: And you learn something too, because someone who's fought through all of the stuff you have to fight through to hit the top, you know, if you're not the right race or our gender,
58:10
[SPEAKER_04]: You work with those people, you get to learn something every single time.
58:14
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I don't have a moment of regret about all the damn DEI and I might have done.
58:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I think it's, we needed to do more because it still didn't match.
58:28
[SPEAKER_04]: It's still hadn't caught up with what's going on out on the real world.
58:31
[SPEAKER_04]: But, you know, I come from, I'm proud public school product, you know, and came up in the middle of, you know, the most desegregated time and in our history and my classes were all races and my teachers were.
58:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think I had a, I think we even had a white principle, Charles, like seventh grade or something like that.
58:57
[SPEAKER_04]: And so even for me, what that meant for seeing that kind of inclusivities, I didn't read it as, oh, they're feeling a quota.
59:08
[SPEAKER_04]: I just thought, here are my heroes.
59:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Mrs. Brown,
59:11
[SPEAKER_04]: This tell us, Ms.
59:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Jackson, this is my heroes, and never thought twice about it.
59:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, when I grow up, it's not doesn't seem like the eyes seem like people.
59:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know who these people are shouting about it are, but I understand the frustration if you have a hard time finding someone.
59:28
[SPEAKER_04]: When you have a hard time finding a black mastering engineer, because no one ever, you know, like that wasn't an opportunity afforded them.
59:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, hopefully it is, you know, hopefully it is.
59:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, and luckily you had the upbringing you did because all that influence goes into you.
59:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And somewhere way down the line, we get song for the dump.
59:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And the little sister piece.
59:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
59:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm trying to have been so incorrect in my career.
59:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, look, if someone wants to go back and just completely, you know, skewer me.
59:58
[SPEAKER_04]: They can do that.
1:00:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm, I've been.
1:00:03
[SPEAKER_03]: We learn, though.
1:00:04
[SPEAKER_03]: We learn and we change, right?
1:00:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and the world changes and everything is always, you know, this is why we, you know, and you learn, you know, course correct.
1:00:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I believe that.
1:00:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I said, and you do a beautiful record with a National Symphony Orchestra at some point.
1:00:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And by the way, bonus tracks, I'm hoping to, I mean, so many, clone, Gracie and moments and not the same and we get, I like,
1:00:30
[SPEAKER_03]: the work that you all did together is so beautiful.
1:00:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
1:00:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And it hurts so much knowing that that is not happening right now.
1:00:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Hearing this, it is document of what we didn't, you know, don't know what you got to let's go on, right?
1:00:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And there you go.
1:00:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
1:00:46
[SPEAKER_04]: I agree.
1:00:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I think the the bonus tracks that we had to cut off were a fine album too, but
1:00:55
[SPEAKER_04]: We had our reasons and mainly because I've always made my records to be vinyl always.
1:01:04
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I never left that.
1:01:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's not a comeback to me.
1:01:07
[SPEAKER_04]: But vinyl is a sound good after you hit about twenty two minutes.
1:01:11
[SPEAKER_04]: and with symphonic versions, the symphony may play like still fighting it.
1:01:17
[SPEAKER_04]: They may play an intro that is now, you know, forty-five seconds a minute longer and so that adds up.
1:01:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So we cut off, but we'll use those for other things for sure.
1:01:26
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a hell of a document and I hope it's not too long until we figure out a way to get back to it.
1:01:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, thank you.
1:01:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Me too.
1:01:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm hoping maybe all this makes us appreciate what we still have that our artists can vow to be as expressive as they need to be and people can be as vocal and expressive and as engaged as they can.
1:01:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe this wakes us up.
1:01:52
[SPEAKER_04]: That's one out.
1:01:53
[SPEAKER_04]: All right.
1:01:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll wrap with the most obvious question that we always wrap with.
1:01:58
[SPEAKER_03]: What happens next?
1:01:58
[SPEAKER_03]: What's next for you?
1:02:01
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a good old baseball game, and then I go back to her.
1:02:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Back on tour.
1:02:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I want to make some musicals.
1:02:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh nice.
1:02:11
[SPEAKER_03]: You want to write some musicals?
1:02:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:02:14
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
1:02:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, can't wait for you to talk about that as well.
1:02:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:02:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It's always so great.
1:02:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much for taking this man.
1:02:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And my thanks to Ben Foulds.
1:02:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Ben Foulds live with the National Symphony Orchestra is out now.
1:02:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks to you for checking out the episode.
1:02:28
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[SPEAKER_03]: After that, you can head over to wfpk.org right to a show Monday through Friday starting six PM Eastern four hours of classics from the the eighties and nineties.
1:02:57
[SPEAKER_03]: You get the best in new music bonus interviews tons of music news one of my recent shows feature some classics and favorites from Bjork Bob mold
1:03:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Delimmetry, the bottle rockets George Harrison, a tribe called Quest, Oasis, the baths, radio heads, solar asylum, filter, blond shell, deep sea diver, Casey Musgraves, my morning jacket, and my interview with Desi Leidick of the Daily Show.
1:03:23
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what you get weeknight starting six p.m.
1:03:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Eastern at wfpk.org.
1:03:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Consequence has your music and film news.
1:03:29
[SPEAKER_03]: You can also find me on any of the social media sites.
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[SPEAKER_03]: The address is always the same.
1:03:32
[SPEAKER_03]: It's at Kyle Meredith.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I do hope you like and follow along.
1:03:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And that does it for another edition.
1:03:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Kyle Meredith.
1:03:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll see you next time.
1:03:52
[SPEAKER_02]: consequence podcast network.
1:03:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's easy to hear your favorite artist on WFPK from wherever you are.
1:04:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen on your smart speaker live stream from our website at WFPK dot org from Louisville Public Media.