Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Jeff Goldblum Gets Jazzy

Transcript

Jeff Goldblum Gets Jazzy · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. I love Jeff Goldblum. Over a fifty year acting career,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: He's played unforgettable roles like the snarky scientist in Jurassic Park,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: he saved the world from an alien invasion with Will
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Smith in Independence Day, and most recently, he was Incredible
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and Thor Ragnarok. Next year he'll being the newest installment
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: of Jurassic Park. And Jeff even has his own show
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: on Disney Plus. But the one place I didn't expect
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: him to show up was in jazz. Jeff Goldblum is
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a surprisingly dedicated jazz pianist. He played a weekly gig
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: in La with his band, The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra until
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the pandemic, and he still practices every morning. He's released
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: two albums with this band. Their latest is I Shouldn't
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Be telling You This, featuring vocals from Gregory Porter, Fiona Apple,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Miley Cyrus and Moore. And before you start thinking this
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: is just a celebrity vanity project, it's not justin playing
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: around for thirty years and clubs and bars. Broken record
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: producer Leah Rose and I talked to Jeff on Zoom
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: about his career as a musician. He told us about
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: how we started playing piano in Pittsburgh. Cocktail lounges at
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: fifteen about his morning practice routine, and he tells us
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: about meeting two of his heroes, Stevie Wonder and Muhammad Ali.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: This is broken record liner notes for the Digital Age.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmondson. Here's Leah Rose and me in conversation
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: with Jeff Goldblum. Hi Justin, Hey Hilia Rose, thanks for
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: doing this. Oh my pleasure, your kidding. I'm honored and thrilled. Hey,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I saw. I just was listening to a little bit
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: of your podcast with Esperanza Spalding. Yeah, isn't she incredible?
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: So incredible? And I met her. I was invited because
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I know a little bit Wayne Shorter and his wife,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: so I so I was invited to their house, to
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: his house and saw a little bit of a presentation
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: of what they're working on now that their opera. Yeah,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: their opera, and she it just it was great. Yeah.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: And she wears those life Force suits. She has like
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: ten of them, and she wears it every single day.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: So she gets that out of the way. She doesn't
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: have to worry about how she looks, what she puts on.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Just like, I think Einstein did that, and my character
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: in The Fly did that. I show Gina Davis my
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: closet at some point I've got five herring bone jackets
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: and I say, yeah, I don't want to have to
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: think about what I'm putting on. Yeah, that's like the
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Steve Jobs thing too. Yeah, same thing. Well, oh you
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: know all of us, Uh cookie, I'm not like that
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: in real life. I'm just kind of a regular thencome
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: phoop in real life. Oh come on. Well, I don't
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: know about that. But I was at the Grove about
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: twelve years ago. Um. It must have been right before
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Christmas time, because they were there was like there's a
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Christmas tree setting up, and I was there and I
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: was like, wait a second, it is that Jeff Goldbom
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and you were rehearsing. I wasn't there for the big thing,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: but you were rehearsing earlier in that afternoon. I was like,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: holy shit, he plays Pia and you were like, really good.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: I'll be darned, that's the I know exactly what you're
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: talking about. That's the only time we ever played the
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Grove like that, But we played something there and you
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: know who else was on that bill? Was Bert backrack, Oh,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I miss Bert, Yeah, man. They asked us to be
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: part of this you know, tree lighting ceremony or Christmas
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: eve thing or I don't know what it was where
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: we played some Christmas song we just took came out
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: with a Christmas song. Now you know you can you
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: can law gone and get Winter Wonderland. We do a
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: nice little version you know about za. I like that
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: what we did? How about that? I later saw you
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: at Rockwell, like when did you start performing again? Like
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: when did you start getting out and putting a band
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: together and playing? About thirty years ago? Now it's been
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: three decades where my friend John Mastro and I here's
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: what happened. Peter Weller said, hey, let's play out and about.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: We've been fooling around at my house. He plays trump
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: a little bit and not nicely, very nicely, and we
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: did that, and then he got the idea we should
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: play out and about. So we had a there was
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: a lovely guitar player that he knew and a place
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: that he said they'd let us set our stuff up
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: and play during brunch or something like that, and we
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: started to play out and about and and then he's
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: gone off and done other things, but we had this
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: band that grew, and whenever I've not been working, I
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: keep doing it. And now it's even before we did
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: these records, it's sort of developed. We've been playing at
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: this place rock Well where you saw us like for
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the last I don't know, six or seven or eight
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: years or something, whenever I'm not working once a week,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: and so as much acting as I do, I've now
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: clocked as many hours of so called performance, but it
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: always just feels like a hanging out and playing and
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: rehearsing publicly, and I just kind of adore it, you know,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: more than anything else. And now it's become a show,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: a show that we do in theaters, big theaters. We
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: did the Glastonbury Festival, and go all over and it
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: kind of translates itself wherever we go where we play
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: stuff that now we kind of cook up and the
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: band is really good. And then I do spontaneous games
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: and talking and you know, gold bloom stuff with people.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: And why the piano, why is that your instrument of choice? Well,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not one of those guys who've ever had much
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: of a facility for anything else. I like to drum
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: on things and I like the piano, and you know,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: to the extent that it's percussive, you know, so I
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: like to I like tap dance, and I was always
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: interested in making making rhythms, but the piano was just
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: something that was around our house. I grew up in
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Pittsburgh and we had a piano there, and then they
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: gave us lessons. You know. My mom was dutifully, you know,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: good about exposing us to things that might interest us,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: and she gave us all lessons. My brother had a
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: clarinet for a little bit, but we had a piano,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: and I had some facility for it, but we didn't
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: know the joys of discipline yet would dread the lessons.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: And Tommy Emil coming over and I hadn't practiced, and
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: da da da dadada. But then he gave me a
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: piece of music, an arrangement that I learned because I'd
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: learned how to read music of Alley Cat and I
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: first sort of became aware of syncopation and day that
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: kind of thing and just killed me. And I was
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: just I'm going to sit here and play and I'm
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: going to practice now until I can do this. I
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: just love it so much. And then I think Stairway
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: to the Stars and Deep Purple were the next two
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: things that and that they were chords. You know. I
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: had been playing Cherney and you know, just some you know,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: scales things, and uh, but something about those chords just
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: got me and I just started to get better and play.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: And then we had fake books around and uh. And
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: then I got with his teacher, Frank con Amando in
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Pittsburgh that people may know, and he was great. I
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: used to go over to his house. My parents were
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: good that way, and he taught me about composition and
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: harmony and different voicings and different modes and how to
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: possibly improvise to you know, what was going on, and
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: I just fell in love with it. Met around fifteen
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: years old. I thought I was I'd already set my
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: heart on a career in acting, but I, just like
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: I do now, had this side parallel passion for piano
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: and music and got the talent the Yellow Pages and
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: started to go through them, uh cocktail lounges and started
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: to call cold call people and say, hey, I understand
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: that you you're interested in a pianist, and most of
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: them would say, no, we don't have a I don't
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: know who this is kid. Well you're you're you're misinformed.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: But a couple of them said, who's this. Yeah, we
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: got a piano here nobody's playing. Would come down and
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: play it. And I got a couple of gigs that
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: way and so amazing. Yeah, I know, just for the
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: fun of it. What were you playing? Oh? You know? Well,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I would bring the fake book with me, like I
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: used to do up until recently, really until we really
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: kind of honed our repertoire and had something to kind
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: of present. And I had a show that which I do,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: which has games and things and it's kind of a
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: neat hour three hours actually for me. But at that
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: time I just brought a you know, my fake books
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: and would just go through them. You know. My dad's
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: song favorite song was Misty. You know, he loved Errol
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Garner and exposed me to it early on. I'm still
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: crazy about him, you know, and he brought home that album.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: You know, Errol Garner plays Misty, and i'd listen to that,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: so anyway, i'd play that and other things. I think
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I played as you know, Sat and Doll you know,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: probably you're all from Meet Panima, probably you know, anything else,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: And then I would take request, I'd say, you know,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: what do you want me to play? And then I'd
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: look it up. I'd see if I have it because
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: I could kind of you know, cold rita rita lead sheet,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: you know like that. Were people receptive in these bars?
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: I don't imagine Pittsburgh as being like a big jazz town,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: even though I found out a bunch of jazz like
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Are Blak and Arrol are from there. But were they
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: receptive when you're playing a mad Jamal, they're different people. Well,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think the places that I went were serious jazz.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I don't think they were going expecting to see, you know,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: a mad Jamal or Errol Garner there. But from what
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: I gathered, there were places that I should have been
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: going to that were serious there. You in Pittsburgh is
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: a hot bit of talent, But I didn't know the
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: places I went, Like the guys that I got on
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: on the other end of the phone, I think they
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: were just cocktail lounges and they said, yeah, I come down.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: And so I just saw the people there wanting drinks
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: and stuff, and they were receptive plenty. They were receptive enough.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: You know what I thought I was doing? You weren't
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: getting you, weren't getting booed. People were appreciative at least listening.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: They seem tickled in some way. You know, at that point,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: did you act at all? Had you done any like
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: just little plays around it? Well, around that time I
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: had my heart set on acting, because I'd gone to
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Carnegie Mellon University in the between ninth and tenth and
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: tenth and eleventh grades for these six weeks summer sessions
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: that they had the serious professors of that good school
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: and that good program teach these kids do from all
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: over the country, and I just felt like I was
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: home and had felt and had found my family somehow,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: and was very excited and would write on the steamy
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: shower door every morning as I took a shower before school,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Please God let me be an actor. And then I
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: kept it secret. I would wipe it away so nobody
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: saw it, because it was just a secret of mine,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: but I would. I was sort of baying at the
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: moon about the whole thing. But I hadn't really done
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: anything because even the kind of cheesy a thing in
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: the high school that I went to, which was sort
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: of provincial in some ways, you know, they did Oklahoma
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: or something like that, but I kind of didn't participate.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: I was stupidly not, you know, kind of thought I
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: was had other other notions and this and that, and
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: as soon as I could get out at seventeen, I graduated,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: went to New York somehow and got to the Neighborhood
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Playhouse where Sandy Meisner, a great acting teacher, was teaching,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: and that's when I started to do it, but still
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: hadn't really done anything studied that year, and then in
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: between the first and second year, I fell into, by
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: a fluke, a production of my first job, and the
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: first thing I didn't even go up for. They called
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the school, in fact, said did you have anybody tall?
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: It could be a guard in this thing. We're doing
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: this musical version of Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Galt McDermott,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: who wrote Hair along with Jerome Ragney, wrote the music
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: to it, is doing the music to it, and John
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Guare's a great playwright, is adapting to Shakespeare and rel
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Julie was in it, and then added I got the part,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: and I joined that, it was in the it was
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: in the chorus, and this and that and played in
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: the pit. I used to go down play piano. When
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I was down there and in the pit was Thad Jones. Wow,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: would be in the pit. You know, all these guys
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: take a little stints and in Broadway or orchestra pitch sometimes.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: And I had seen him because my dad the jazz fan.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: We'd gone to Atlantic City from Pittsburgh. We'd driven to
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Atlantic City like we used to do several years, and
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: like on the steel pier or something, there was some
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: he said, I, Hey, I see that Thad Jones mill
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Lewis are playing. We got to go see them. So
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I saw them and they're big band live. I can
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: still remember it. Anyway. Then I saw him. I was like, hey,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: I saw you and did I did? I play a
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: little And so I was playing with these guys, you know,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: with a lot of moxie. Was Gald McDermot down in
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: the pit two Gold McDermot. Do you know? No, he would?
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: You know? Like that was a Broadway show. Was the
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: biggest hit of Shakespeare Festival that ever had and because
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: a big story that summer at the Delacourt outside and
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: then we went to the Saint James Theater. I was
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: there for a year, understayed one of the bigger parts,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: and no, the composer of it. I think they check
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: in on it probably, sure, you know, even unbeknownst to
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: us sometimes. But no, No, my friend Tom Pearson was conducting,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: and oh do you know who else was in that
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: pit for a while who played drums? Bernard Party? Do
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: you know Bernard Party? We were supposed to interview him
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: for this, Well, this is nineteen seventy one, and he was,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: you know, in his full flush of his of his
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: brilliant tendencies, having played for Aretha Franklin with Aretha Jeez,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Bernard Party, how about that? So did you talk to
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: these guys and sort of asked them like lean advice
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: or you know? I was stupid, like I've always been
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: kind of stupid. I kind of am like zelling in
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: some way. I kind of would show up and just
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: had a lucky, you know, intersection with some of these types.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: But unlike now where I wouldn't get really hip. I
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: was sort of just sort of stupid. And now go
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: on IMDb, you can use you know, Wikipedia. Before I
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: have meetings, I go and work with people. I go, She's,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: oh right, I know them. But there are all sorts
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: of stories that I can tell you about actors that
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I've worked with, and including that Jones and Bernard Purty,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: who I barely realized how lucky I was, you know,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: likewise with many actors. But now that's why I kind
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: of go, I hope it's not a violation of protocol.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: But I I find out about you do some research. Yeah,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: I do my research, and I say, oh, and I'm
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: then I asked them my question. It's so cool so
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: early on, So those early performances at like Pittsburgh Bars,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: those are your first public performances ever, Yeah, you could
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: say that. I guess. I guess. So that's right. It's
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: so strange. It's so funny that that was your you.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: You know, you go on to act, and acting was
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: really your main the main thing you were after. But
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: then the earliest public display of Jeff Goldblum is is
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: playing piano. Yeah, that's right. As first. That's why it
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: feels natural now. And it was always just for fun.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: I never had any kind of identity investment in it,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: like or career ism about it. I was just like, hey,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: I just want to do this, this is fun. And
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: still that's kind of how this whole thing has happened
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: now and it just changes my days in my life.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Every day, like this morning, I get up and play
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: for about an hour. It's one of the first things
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I do before the kids get up. And around five
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: am or six am, I work out here and I
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: play piano and I work on my lines for Jurassic World.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: At this point I got a part to work on,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: so I get all my homework done them very now.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I know what it's like to be disciplined and how
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: that can bear fruit, and so I just play and
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: it changes my day. It's music is as much a
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: meditation and a tonic for me as anything that I do,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: and I just adore it. And then playing out and
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: about which is kind of developed now and making these
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: records is just as sweet a thing as you know.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: It could have happened to a fellow here on Earth.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from Jeff Goldbloom. After a
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: quick break. We're back with more from Jeff Goldbloom, who's
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: talking about his skilled band mates in the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: How is it playing with those guys because you didn't
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: go to I mean a lot of your band like Berkeley,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: and you know they played another great players they all
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: went there. They're all to all those places and their
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: their masters and they teach and they're they're great for me.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Uh No, it's just a great playing with all those guys,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: you know. And now what I do every morning actually
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: is from the last album, which is what we're gonna
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: be playing when we do it, I hope live again
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: soon is we're gonna be doing a lot of that stuff.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: So I put on the album and play along with
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the songs plus several other things that we're cooking up
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: that we that are currently in our back burner. But
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: I play all of it every day. I go through
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: that whole album and play all of it. You go
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: through your most recent record and play along yep, wow,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: yep yep. Every day with Miley Cyrus and Creona Apple
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: and Sharon van Etton and Anna Calvia everybody and aar
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: George and a great reporter. Every single day I play,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: you know, at least once in the morning. You know,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: makes some unhappy. I'm getting better, I tell you. Do
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: You almost wish you could rerecord the album. Do you
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: feel like you're getting it under your fingers better? Oh? Yeah.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: At the time we did the album, you know, we
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: had just come up with these arrangements. And the first
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: album with something Else, we did this kind of you know,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: effects simile of our rockwell date and was very spontaneous
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: in the songs we played. You know. We had maybe
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: a couple of takes, but we was whatever came out,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: you know, And so I was kind of it was
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: however we did it. But we arranged these a little
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: more complicatedly and sophisticatedly, and I had something to learn
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: on them, and I was just getting my sea legs
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: on most of them as we recorded them and kind
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: of reading and turning pages and getting them done. But
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: now I know all of them. I keep investigating them
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: every day and do different things every day with them.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: But oh yeah, they're more under my fingers for sure.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: How do you go about choosing the vocalists that you
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: work with. Is there a type of voice that you
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: feel especially drawn to. Well, we had a wish list,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: and we have many people I do and the band did.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I started defer sometimes to them. They know who they
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: like and I love their taste. But I was crazy
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: about all these people that we worked with. Greg Reporter,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: you know, I is kind of the way we got
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: hooked up with Decca. I was promoting for that movie
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: a few years ago and I did the Graham Norton
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Show in London and Greg Reporter was the musical guest,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: and he was promoting that Nat King Cole album and
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: he wanted to sing Mona Lisa and he had done
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: it with just a piano player, and said, hey, do
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: you want to accompany me on the show? And we
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: ran through it backstage once and I did. And it
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: was because Decca, Tom Lewis, Rebecca Allen saw the show
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: and said, hey, maybe we should do something with Jeff
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: that that whole thing came about. So anyway, I was
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: thrilled that he was on the album and I love
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: his voice and we were thinking, gee if he was
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: even before he agreed to do it, that I had
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: proposed it to him that we said what would he sing?
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: What could he sing? Everything he sings? But we like
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: this song make someone happy, and it's we can do
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: it so slowly that he you know, it could be
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: right in his sweet spot. I'm sure enough. I'm just
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: crazy about what he did with us. And then the
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: other singers you know we were looking for. I think
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: we were looking for singers who weren't ordinarily in the
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: jazz veins right, and thought that they're brilliant, unique, you know,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: artistry could mash up with us in a way that
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: would be unexpected, surprising, And on a lot of those songs,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: as you see, as you know, we mashed up a
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: couple of different tunes, you know, jazz tunes to stand
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: jazz standards with you know pop tunes. Yeah, the Sidewinder
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: with the Beat Goes On. I've listened to the Sidewinder
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: so many times. I've listened to Beat Goes On a
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: bunch of times and they fit together so well, and
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: never it never occurred to me until I listened to
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: the record. It's so incredible. Yeah, the guys from the band,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: they all, they all did that. You know, that was
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: the same harmonic composition, and you know, I love that. Yeah,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the Beat goes On with Sidewinder, that at all. We
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: played that at gigs before that was in our you
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: know sometimes repertoire, and it always drove me crazy. I
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: love love that song. It just drives me wild. But
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: how about the thrill is Gun that Miley does with
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: with Django my brother. One of the records that had
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: big influence on me was the modern jazz quartet, the
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: records that he would bring home and John Lewis and Django,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: so they knew about that. They they sort of some
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: of the band Um Joe Bag and John Story and
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Alex Frank kind of figured out that Jang would be
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: good with the thrill is gun. I love that. But
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: how about four on six with Broken English? How did that?
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: How did that come together? Well, the guys they had
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: it was before we got Anna Calvy to join us.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: They put it together. We we they said, let's do
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: another mash up like that, and the chord structure was
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: right for it. And so four on six, which we'd
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: played a bunch before West Montgomery tune, but broken English, uh,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Mary Ann Faithful. I was not as familiar with that,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: but they they figured that it was right, and I
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: played it every day. Now I know that a lot better.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I can't wait till we play that again, you know,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: g Minor and I get a little solo in there
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: for a moment. Oh, I like that song, and then
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: oh how about it? If I knew then, you know
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: with Gina Saputo, that little we transpose it was their
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: idea to transpose that. Sarah Van solo that she does
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: that she scats on that, and we we played that
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: all together just in a little snippet. So was there
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: a concept before you started recording the album? Well, just
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: only that um that that this mashup of not only
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: tunes might be interesting, but this mashup of uh maybe
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: not traditionally jazz singers, what could mash up with us?
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: That was the That was our theme. That was it.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: And then somebody said, well, maybe you should sing a song.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: And I do like to sing just for my own annoyance,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: you know, and pleasure and m and uh and then
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, I recorded into this into
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Alex Frank's iPhone one day, a little man, you've had
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: a busy day, which I've been singing to the kids
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: when they go to sleep sometimes, And he said, yeah,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: do that they come up, came up with a an
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: arrangement for that. Yeah. Do your boys look at you
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: as sort of like a music man? Are you? Do
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: you play the piano a lot while they're around and
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: sing to them? Yes, I you know, I'm we're singing
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: all the time. And I played the piano all the time.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: I've got keyboards. I got a nice Fender Rhodes old
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Fender Rhodes that I have another Yamaha keyboard that I
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: use for practicing, and a nice Yamaha Grand Acoustic Grand.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: And so they're they're around and I play him all
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the time, and I'm singing, and they're you know, I
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: think they're musical, and they're taking lessons themselves. Wow. There. Yeah,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Emily was very good at, you know, keeping them exposed
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: to all sorts of things. We got them into suzuki,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: you know, the suzuki yep. I did Suzuki method when
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: I was younger, you did, ye, I didn't know it
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: so much. But now we've got a very good teacher
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: named sense Kevin and h And during this period we
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: had gone, I drove them over to the valley and
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: on Ventura Boulevard there's a nice little studio and he
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: took some lessons there. And now he's been doing it
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: once a week or no, twice a week virtually, and
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: I play with him every day. But believe it or not,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: he and he's five. Charlie the other one, you have
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: to kind of force him to. He does as little
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: as possibly. He's really not interested in it. He's plays
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star. But Charlie is going through this
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Zuoki book and he does what I do. I guess
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: because maybe I've modeled it, but he really he knows
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: that I play every morning. So every morning he gets
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: up at six thirty and he runs through his whole repertoire. Wow. Yeah,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: and he's just learning to, you know, do things with
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: hands together, you know, um in unison. But he's just
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: but he's learning a couple of pieces where there's some
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: where it separates them and there's something coordinated you've got
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: to do with two different hands. And he's in he's
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: worked on it and he's getting them better, and he's
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: passing through stages and it just kind of thrills me,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: like a like the average papa, you know. I looked
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: at it and it kind of, you know, just just
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: blows my blows my mind. That's incredible. It's amazing. I'm
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: gonna send my kids to your house, Jeff, you can
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: get them disciplined. Really, how many kids you got? What
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: are and what are they doing? Two? I have four
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: year old in a almost two year old. Hey, we're
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: in the same boat. Well that's it. They started around
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: you know, four, So it's been easy. I mean, and
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I look at him. One of the things that I
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: say to myself and oftentimes allowed to Emily as wow,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I did not I started play taking lessons when I
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: was I think, I don't know, eight, nine, ten, something
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: like that. I was not playing like he was at ten.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: And then he says, you know, we do listening things.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: He goes here, play what I just did. And then
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: he just likes to explore the piano, and he, you know,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: he puts all over the all over the keyboard. And
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: then sometimes although we say, oh don't you know, don't
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: ruin the piano, but he goes inside the piano. He
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: likes to see how it works. And you know, started
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: think think, think, you know, plucking the strings. They might
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: be an avant garde. Uh, you know player. One of
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: these days, has he gone do any of your gigs yet? Uh?
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: You know, he was, well, you know, the nighttime gigs
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: or two they go to bed at seven thirty. But
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: we started to gig at nine. But when we've played
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: a couple of these festivals, one I'm thinking of I
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: forget where it was. You know, in the daytime, we
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: all drove up to wherever it was and it was
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: a big outdoor festival and he was on the side
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: of the in the wings as I was playing. I
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: don't know that it made much impression on him, and
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: but it maybe I imprints on them, you know, someplace.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: But you know, I don't know if I even know
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: if he'd remember now. But but even now they're not
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Maybe they model themselves after me in some way, but
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: they're not particularly impressed. Oftentimes they'll say stop playing, stop playing.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: They want to interrupt and stop. But then he'll say, hey,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: do you know, do this stuff from my book? And
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: I'll play stuff from his book and they'll get kind of,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: you know, frenzied and jump on me and stuff like that.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: And music is, as you know it. It has a
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: wild effect on the on the on the nervous system,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: doesn't it. He's going to be calling around a cocktail
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: out just pretty soon, watch out. I'm sure. I'm sure
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: we'll have more with Jeff Goldblum. After the break, we're
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: back with the rest of our interview with Jeff Goldblum, who,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: when we left off, was talking about his kid's newfound
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: love for music. When you were their age or a
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: little maybe a little older, but just in your childhood,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: you weren't maybe as disciplined as they were with the plane.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: But was music an important part of your life? Were
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: you listening a lot and introduced to a lot? And yes,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: I was listening. Like I say, my dad brought home
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: those Eryl Giner records and they would bring Broadway musicals home,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: and the Music Man and My Fair Lady and stuff
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: like that. But jazz. And then I had an older brother,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: like I say, four years older than I was, who
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: was really into jazz, and he would bring home Stan
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Getz and Joe Barretto that album I was. I was
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: listening to a lot and modern Jazz quartet and all
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: kind of all kinds of stuff. So it was, yeah,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: it was around and it did something to me. I
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: was you know, I would get jazzed up, you know,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: around music early on. So would you say, do you
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: consider jazz to be your favorite type of music? Well,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: and can you try to articulate what it does for you?
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: So many things, you know, jazz, there's so many kinds
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: of jazz and different songs that hit every all manner
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: of chords in you. But yeah, it's very I find
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: it complicated, you know sometimes and can hit places in
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: me that are uniquely unreachable otherwise, certainly, I love early
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: on I sort of got the idea that musicians and
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: even in recording could do something spontaneous and be inventing
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: something on the spot. That has always done something to me,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: that idea. I'm still enthralled with it, and I try
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: to bring that to my acting and my presentations of
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: one kind or another. And I'm a student of it
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: in as it applies to jazz, you know. I just
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: love that. I love to try it myself and feel
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: like I'm you know, inventing right now, and it kind
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: of calls upon you to be it obliges you to
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: be present, you know, which is sort of overlaps with
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: another of my interests. You know, I've exposed my had
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: some exposure to Kartal for instance, you know, and be
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: here now from the sixties around us and stuff. So
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: that's that's been part of my you know, appetite and
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: interest all along. So it does all those things. But jazz.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: When I saw that movie which I'll bet you like,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Around Midnight with Herbie Hancock playing a part in it
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: and Dexter Gordon, of course, I when I saw that
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: in the theater, I just started to cry. At one point,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: tears sprang out of my eyes when they started to
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: play something, and there was no reason, there was no lyric.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: There weren't lyrics too. It was of course an instrumental
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: and it was herb playing something. And it was just
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: the complication and the lushness and of the chords that
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: just did something to me. And of course all those practitioners,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: their their devotion, lifelong devotion to it and a sacred
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: you know, romance with it is just you know, hits
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: me hard. Yeah. And then we had a little forty
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: five player, my sister and I who was two years younger,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: and she and I would collect these things. Oh boy,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: we had. There were a couple that we just played
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: over and over again. I got the Stevie Wonder record
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: of for Once in My Life that I played over
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: and I must have played in thousands of times. And
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: now I've come to meet him and know him a
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: little bit. Believe it or not, he stopped in to
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: the recording one of the recording sessions on our first album.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: How frightening was that? I know, I just or him.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: I've adored him my whole life. But we all these
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: forty five's, we played over and over again. We played
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: this Peggy Lee song. Is that all there is? Uh?
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: We had a little forty five of that. Uh, you know,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: so it was it was all over the place. Yeah,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: So what do you say to Stevie wonder when you
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: meet him, because people must come up to you all
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the time and want you know, it's like, this is
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: my chance, this is Jeff Goldblum. What do I say? Well,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: so I'm sensitive to you know how you know, he
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: must be beleaguered um. And you know his wife was
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: very nice. We've become friendly with his wife. We were
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: on a cruise. It was a kind of an intimate,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: a semi intimate, you know, setting where we first met.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: And he couldn't have been sweeter. I was very nice.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: And you know, as you can imagine, Uh, he touches
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: you and I touched you know, we were holding hands
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: a little bit and you know, um, uh you know
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: I said into his ear, you know, you know, it
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: was a little always year around. I said, you know
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: how much I adored him and this and that, and
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: you know we talked. He couldn't have been sweeter. He
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: was just great. It was one of the thrills of
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: my life. Amazing. It's like the time I met Muhammad
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Ali and his wife. It was later. He was a
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: little bit already getting a little bit uh challenged and
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: uh and he said, oh, Jeff, Jeff Goldman, you scared me.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: You scared me. I said, what do you what do
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: you mean? His wife said, oh, Jeff, we saw the fly.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: We just saw the fly. He said. I said, well, Champ,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: I just so I got a little weepy. I said,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: I just adore you so much and I've always, I've
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: always You've meant so much to me, and thank you
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: so much. And he said, well, where you know, I
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: may come over and knock on your door someday and
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: come over and visit you. I said, oh, Champ, that
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: would be just just great anyway. You never I never
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: got a chance to, or he never did. But I just, uh,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm very easy start strike by a couple
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: of types, especially Stevie Wonder and Muhammad Ali are too
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: good times. Oh Man, you're telling me, you're telling me.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: It's funny too, because I guess a lot of people,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: you know, people probably have seen The Big Chill, And
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: a big part of that movie is the soundtrack and
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: a lot of people you know of your cohort, it's
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: like that's the soundtrack of their growing up. You know,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: the Stones and the mo all the Motown, which of
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: course Steve is a part of. But it seems like
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: you were more jazz geared than like, you know, Beatles
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: and the Who and or were you did you also
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: listen to a lot of rock and roll, and I
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: was jazz geared. I had a big thing for jazz.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: But but at art when I went to this little
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: kind of provincial, small town school. We were in the
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: suburbs of Pittsburgh, and we used to have little dances.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: But right around that time, let me see, I was
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: born in fifty two, so when I was like thirteen,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: coming of a particular age, it's now, why fifty two
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: sixty five something like that. And look up the hits
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: that we had at our at our lunch time, you know,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: dances and all, and they played all motown stuff, so
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: you know, Diana Ross and the Supremes and Marvin Gay
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: and all that stuff. Where I was really into Ray Charles.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: I was into real early. And then the only kind
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: of rock stuff, you know, it would come on the radio,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: but rock stuff. My brother, the same brother who was
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: interested in jazz, took me over to his apartment once
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: he'd already moved out of the house. When I was like,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know, fifteen sixteen. I looked up to him
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: and he had a bunch of Beatles albums and introduced
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: me for the first time to you know, the White Album,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Sergeant Peppers and Magical Mystery Tour, and I loved those,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: you know, they's had a big made a big impression
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: on me. Yeah. What an era of music to be
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: a young person. I know, it was totally magical. I know. Oh,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: I feel very lucky to have been right where I
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: was somehow and in New York. And you know, I
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: had a really cool time too, for not only for acting,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: but music, you know. I mean you could still go
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: into any jazz club and see incredible people, or go
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: to Glench Village and you know insane. Yeah. Yeah, what
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: would you do like on off nights when you weren't
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: working in New York City. Well, I wish i'd, like
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I said about my you know now, you know, encounter
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: with some people. Sometimes I didn't know who I was
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: with or where I was. I wish I'd looked around
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: more because I was a very focused kind of acting student,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: and you know, I had things to do and I
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: was very good at that that point. But my friend
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Tom Pearson, who was in who was the leader of
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the band and a piano player, took me to a
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: couple of gigs and I remember I think we saw
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Wayne Shorter and saw some very kind of you know,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: new stuff that they were doing that was you know,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: atonal and went on and that was really something else
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: were we were there. Yeah, yeah, I wish i'd I
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: could have appreciated where I was more and everything that
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: I might have exposed myself to more. Probably just like now,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: there's probably right in my own backyard things that if
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: I were fully awake, fully awakened, I would cherish investigate
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: and understand more. You know, I'm sure there are things
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, well that goes back to the b here.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Now you're just supposed to be happy here in the
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: moment present, where you are. It's all enough, I think, so.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: I think so we're getting exactly what we need right
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: here right now somehow. Yep. What drove you to acting,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: primarily given your sort of early leanings towards piano and
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: music and performing with you know, at these bars. Yeah,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: it's a little mysterious. All of this is a little mysterious.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: I just was I are my parents once again, you know,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: exposed us to you know, theater. We went to children's theater.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: I remember early on when I went to at the
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Pittsburgh Playhouse. Uh, some a couple of shows, you know
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: for kids, I don't know, Beauty and the Beast or
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: you know, something like that. I just was very excitable
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: about because of it. And uh and I remember thinking,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: who are those people who are doing that? What are
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: they doing backstage? What's how do how do you do
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: something like that? And that you know, it just happened
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: like that, and then uh, well I took those summer
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: classes Attornegue Million University. I was already yearning for some
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: kind of part of me that was as yet unexplored
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: in this, like I say, small town kind of school.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: And I think it had something to do with listen
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: to this. My parents had had parts of them unexplored,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: potentially unrealized, that were theatrical. My mom early on had
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: some kind of experience where a scout of some kind
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: said she should, you know, leave Pittsburgh go to New
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: York And her mom said no, no way that I
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: don't know. And then my dad, at some point in
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: his you know, the late teens, thought, because he was
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: trying to get out of poverty and make something of himself,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: thought for some reason he was either going to be
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: a doctor or an actor. And he said he stuck
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: his head in the back of a class at Carnegie Tech,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: which Carnegie Mellon was then called, and he thought to himself.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: He reported to us that it was out of his league.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know what he meant by that. Maybe it
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: was that it was emotionally, because he was always a
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: little bit conservative emotionally, I think, even though an authentic
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: person of deep feeling, you know, he was not theatrical.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: He thought maybe and so he was a doctor. He
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: became a good doctor, h and like that. So maybe
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: the lost you know, hot potatoes of unreal used talent
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: and interest. It came to me somehow, and maybe that
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: had something to do with it. You know, who knows.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Do you think your parents saw it the same way?
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: Like you were living out this dream that they had
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: in a way, And they never said, if I can
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: remember rightly, I don't ever recall a conversation where they said, hey,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: you know, we didn't do it, but you do it
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: or you know. And I don't think it was a
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: conspicuous and ever present part of their current adult life
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: where they were like, oh, I should have been an actor.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: I don't think they thought that. So it never came
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: up like that. And I don't know if it ever
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: even accurac to them or they said to themselves. But
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you this, they were both kind of tickled
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: by the idea that I was doing some of this stuff.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: And like I say, music, you know, my dad was like,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: you know, listen to Errol Garner. Listen, listen, he likes
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the pauses, and listen how brave he is there, and
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: it would go bah baha and these octaves that he
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: kind of knew he had a music appreciation and a
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: real kind of appetite for it. And so you know
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: that when they drove me and I could see, you know,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: they were I'm sure grinning, you know, at me playing
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: at these cocktail lounges. And then a couple of years later,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: once I was in New York and did one of
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: my early plays. I did a play called City Sugar.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: It was by Stephen Poliakoff, a British writer where I
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: was the lead character and a kind of off Broadway
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: theater and it was the first big part that I'd had,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: and my dad and they, my parents came to see it.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: And after the show, my dad came back stage and
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: he burst into tears and he threw his arms around
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: me and hugged me. And it wasn't either of those things,
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: the tears part and the hugging part were. It's uncharacteristic
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: and it really it really got him. And now that
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: i'm thinking of it, when I was, when I was
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: going to Carnegie Melon and coming back, he said a
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: very memorable moment for me. He said, I was there
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: and he said to my mom, well, look, as I
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: was saying, oh, this is what we learned that I
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: was kind of chattering up. He said, look, the kid
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: is stimulated. He said, the kid is stimulated. And I
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: remember that. I think it. I think he appreciated because
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: he had said to me, he had said, you know,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: I don't care what you do. You don't have to
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: be a doctor like me, but if you find something
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: you love to do, that's a compass and a key
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: to your uh you know, vocational choice. So he was
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: smart and uh and he realized that that that I'd
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: sort of found something. Yeah about that, the soulful guy,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: your dad was especially for a doctor. You know, you
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: don't think of a doctor's being so open and disencouraging
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: and to hear this stuff in the music and explain
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: it to you and take the time. Yeah, he was
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: actually very lucky, you know, very grateful for the parents
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: that I had. You know, it's not as if I've
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: gone through my life without oh, you know, dark struggles
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: of one kind or another, and I think healthy struggles
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: where I'd find my own separate identity from theirs. But
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: in fact, I'm very grateful for those two parents. They
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: were just the right combo for for me to have
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: wound up right here, right now. And uh and yeah,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: he was, you know, for in any objective way, kind
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: of sophisticated, soulful uh wi. Uh wise, fella, how about that?
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: And very generous. Uh sweet, sweet guy, that's amazing. Do
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: you are you writing at all? Do you do you
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: ever are secretly composing any songs or anything unrealized? Do
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: you want to na? Not? Really, I don't really compose.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: I don't really compose, although I must say the other day. Uh, Charlie.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: We sat down and he brought me a couple of
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: blank sheets of you know, like a you know, printer paper,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: and he said here right. Uh. He didn't know how
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: to say right or right music right. Let's let's make
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: up a song, uh, he said. So I wrote a staff.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: I put the trouble cleft and I wrote the staff,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: and he's and he did something and I wrote it down,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: and then I added something to that, and then he
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: added something to that, and I wrote it all down.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: It's on the piano in the living room right now,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: and I like playing it. It's it's different. I wouldn't
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: have come up with it on my own. It's a
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: little I don't think we're letting a McCartney. But we
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: came up with something. It was fun. It's this a
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: side project. This is your new band. It was fun. Well,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: we we like playing together. I got a couple of drums.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: I got sbongo drums and a nice kind of conga
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: and and we all make sounds together. We like it.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: That's amazing. If you had to put together a jazz
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: starter kit, which albums would it include? Well, that's a
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: good that's a good question. The guy I you know,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: i'd i'd ask the guy for real, for the real
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: good answers. I'd ask Joe Bag and Alex Frank and
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: John Story. But let me see from my own personal experience. Well,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: you know, because they're still turning me onto. You know,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: Winton Kelly. I'm learning a solo of Wint Kelly's right now,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: and I had not been so focused on him before.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: So there's so many But you know, Oscar Peterson, if
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: you're interested in the piano, I'd listened to Oscar Peterson
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: and Bill Evans, and I like Keith Jarrett, and I
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: like Thelonious Monk. Anything by any of those guys. I
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: like She's You know, there's so many tributaries of that river.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: You know that you can go down to kind of
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: personal taste, and you know, like I say, I'm still
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: getting turned on to so many different things now. But
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: though you know, Miles Davis, you know I do love
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: those those piano players, Oscar Peterson, Errold Gardner, Diloneous Monk,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: all pretty different. Do you Is there anything you think
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: you taken from their playing you put in yours or
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: anything you ever playing And you're like, oh that I
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: got that from Oscar Well, Arlie Well, Oscar Peterson. You know,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: you have to be content to get those chops. You know,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: you can't just kind of even imitate those chops. But
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: I do like to do runs, and I do like
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: a couple of his Gospelly kind of voice things that
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: I've sort of tried to study a little bit that
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: I you know, I I love to listen and when
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: I listen, I feel like I'm immediately not that I
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: can reproduce it, but I'm immediately you know, influenced and
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: excited about it. And then Monk, of course, you know,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: I like to play a hard, masculine, angular, unexpected fifth
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: down low and do something you know that's full of
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: ugly beauty, you know, all over, you know. And he's
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: very inspirational. Keith Jarrett, Oh the way he I like
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: the way he is has a kind of religious experience
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: that comes deeply out of him. And he's so sophisticated
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: and at the same time, you know, spontaneous with what
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: with a connection seemingly between his musical imagination and his
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: fingers and he hears, which is so brilliant. You know immediately,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: you know, making music like that, it's a beautiful thing
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: to watch, you know, I love it. Have you have
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: you seen him at all? Ever? No, I'd love to
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: I'd love to you. Yeah. Some of the Concert Hall
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and six when I was like sixteen,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: saved a bunch of months. It was expensive, but about
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: a ticket went and it was it was solo and
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: improbably did a solo improv and it was it was
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: mind blowing. Oh, mind blind. I'd love to have seen that.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: If I had a time machine, maybe that's that's the
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: reason to go back. I'd go back with you and
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: we'd watch it again. Cool. I'm so curious about this.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: I've heard you refer to yourself as a late bloomer. Well,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: true enough, yeah, yeah, So how does that manifest itself?
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: What does that mean to you? How are you blooming? Well?
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, first of all, here I am
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: at the age I'm at and I've have a five
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: year old and three almost a five year old and
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: a three year old, so that's late blooming and fertility
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: of some kind. And my teacher, Sanford Meisner, was very good.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: He said that it takes a serious two decades, twenty
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: years of continual work before you can even call yourself
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: an actor, meaning that you it really takes that much
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: time before you can grow in yourself inside the life
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: of an actor and how you really live and use
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: things and see things and can function theatrically imaginatively and
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: know yourself and can use yourself, etcetera, etcetera. And then
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: he said after that, it takes a life time if
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: you're lucky, to keep getting opportunities of progress where you
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: can keep progressing. And that's the aim. That's what I'm
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: recommend to you and steady, And I think I took
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: that to heart. So even if I wasn't made of
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, although I think I was a
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: kind of slow learner of some kind, and you know,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: I took it to heart and have sort of at
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: least imagine that I have designed. But there's some design
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: that's a little bit like that for my arc, you know,
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: not only acting wise, but musically certainly. I mean, I'm
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: at a time right now of more flourishing and flowering
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: than ever with these records and with what I'm doing.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: I'm playing better than ever. I played this morning, better
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: than I played yesterday, and ever. I think I look
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: for that, and I think I'm that's what's happening. And
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: in life, my gosh, here I am with these kids
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: and learning by leaps and bounds, and I've got this
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: show that world, according to Jeff Goldblum, where I'm ostensibly
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: to make use of my curiosity and my you know learning,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: you know, you know, exposing myself while in the learning curve.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: And so I'm I'm full of I'm a humble student
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: and full of eager learning. So I am I think
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: I'm I think I'm blooming late. Yeah, it's I mean,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: it's super inspiring because so many people just reach a
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: certain age or point in life and just sort of
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: shut down, you know, and whether it's shutting down to
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: like even discovering new music or anything. It's people can
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: get so rigid. Yeah, so it's it's really nice to
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: hear that. Oh, thank you. Well, I was exposed to
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: have the right idea here and there, and I do
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: aspire to it, and and uh, you know, I try
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: to lend. I'm sure I'm becoming brittle and and shriveled
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: and pretty soon I'll be all all gone. But but
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: you know, in the time that I have, however much
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: it is, I'm trying to supremely make the most of
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: the and cherish the opportunity. You know, cool, incredible. Thanks
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: for the time. I really appreciate it, Jeff, Thank you, Jeff,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: thank you so much. It's such an honor to be
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: on this great show. I'm thrilled. Thank you so much.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Jeff Goldbloom for chatting with Lee yet night.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Jeff Goldblan's new album I Shouldn't Be telling you this
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: is out now. You can hear it along with tracks
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: from the artists you mentioned in the interview in the
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: playlist for this episode at broken Record podcast dot com.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you can find
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: all our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter
• 50:30
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• 50:33
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• 50:39
  Speaker 1: with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is
• 50:42
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• 51:09
  Speaker 1: the Musics by Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond, h