Latest / WEHM All Access / WEHM All Access - Sag Harbor American Music Festival - Nick Corredor

Transcript

WEHM All Access - Sag Harbor American Music Festival - Nick Corredor · WEHM All Access

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's WEHM All Access.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's the 2026 edition of the Stan Harper American Music Festival.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to get in on the one of the performers that is happening this Saturday, wrapping up as the uh new schedule will be going up at StanHarpermusic.org.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Nick Corridor of the Orchestra La Oransia.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm saying that, right?
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Nick, how are you?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: How are we doing?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: How are we doing, Harry?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's really nice to be here.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for taking the time to give us this little interview here.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's nice to chat with you and get to know you a bit.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, uh, you've been I think you're originally from Hampton Bays, right?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, sir.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hampton Bays, New York, born and raised, yes, sir.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you've been doing a lot of music, uh, really, I think your whole life.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what inspired you to form this project, uh, the Orchestra La Oricia?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: It all just started out of nowhere.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Such a surprising turn of events.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was doing a lot of reggae music, a lot of rock music, a lot of funk music, some soul music, and then I got a call from a good friend that was looking for a salsa band that were gonna give us a residency over at Coche Comedora and Amiganset.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I needed some cash, and I said, Hey, I have a salsa band.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I have a salsa band.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they were like, Oh, I never knew you played salsa.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Yeah, what are you talking about?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, of course I play salsa music.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh in two days I made a band and we made a big set, and in five days we were starting our residency there.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: What does that name mean to you personally?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: So La Herencia means the inheritance, the inheritance, and it's uh because I'm a third generation musician.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow, I'm a third generation musician, and the bongo and cabal player of the band is my dad.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's so nice.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we so we named the band La Herencia, the inheritance, uh, to pay homage to um you know my grandfather, his father, to pay homage to my dad as well, because if it wasn't for him and my mother, um, you know, I wouldn't be where I am today for sure.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just a big passion project at the same time, a big uh business project, really.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's been growing a lot.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's great.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a question for you what did you grow up listening to?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because it sounds like you were surrounded by music in your family.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, similar to uh any Latino kid growing up in New York or in Colombia, Puerto Rico, Mexico, wherever it is, you know, mom waking up in the morning on a Sunday, she has the TV blasting on 10, on 11, you know, it's going crazy in the speakers, and it's salsa, it's bachata, it's merengue, and uh, you're waking up in the morning and you're just like, oh my gosh, you know, you're gonna have to clean the house today because your mom's listening to salsa music.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was that stuff, and it was also my dad, um, similar to my grandfather, both record collectors, both really, really big record collectors in Colombia, and they've uh collected a lot, a lot, a lot of Afro-Cuban music, salsa music, bolero.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so my dad would always just tell me, Hey Papi, listen to this song.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: You should come look come listen to this song.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it took me a while for me to actually come down and listen to the songs because I knew if I did come down to listen to songs with my dad, that means I would have to stay with him for like four hours, you know, because he wasn't gonna let me go.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I was just like, No, I'm not trying to listen to that.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but it was around me all the time.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: I would I would walk down to the basement and walk into my dad like crying to a song, or I'd walk into you know a room and my dad is like shuffling through his uh his iPod just showing me music all the time, you know.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's like music has just been such a prominent thing in my life.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, personally, when I grew up, I was listening to a lot of reggae music at my shut beach in Hampton Bays.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: I would go, I remember the first, first, first song that ever caught my ear, like really, really caught me, was Is This Love by Bob Marley.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I heard Is This Love and I was like, what is that?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I love that style of music.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: What is that?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then after Is This Love would play, it was Dire Maker by Led Zeppelin.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, and then let and then that tune, yeah, that tune caught my eye.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what is this sound?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: When my mom and dad got me my first phone, it was like an Android that I could pirate music on, and my whole playlist was just Calibuds, Revolution, Bob Marley, Proto J, a bunch of the Kali reggae, a bunch of the new reggae in Jamaica, and that was what really drove me to start writing songs, the reggae stuff.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: How long have you worked with your dad uh in in a kind of in a in a formal situation as far as a band?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Or would you guys work together before this project?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Or um so I would call my dad uh a couple of times to come work with my um my funk project with uh Meco Groove.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And anytime he would come, the guys would just be like super like, Oh my god, your dad is so good at the at the congas, you know, he'd have his conga set up, he'd have his bongo set up, his cowbell set up.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it was kind of like an auxiliary percussion thing, but I would only give him a call a couple of times.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'd only tell my dad, hey, can you come through if it was gonna be a bigger show, if it was gonna be a nicer showcase for us, I would invite him out.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it wasn't until we made this band where every single gig that I played with Laurencia since 2024 when we made the band, November of 2024, uh, we haven't stopped playing together.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: So formally playing with my dad since November 2024.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Is it what's that like to work with your dad in a band setting?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because you are the leader of the band.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: What's that like to work with him being being he's your dad?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's funny.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: He he always he might tell you when he sees you on Saturday.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's gonna tell you, oh man, you know, like, hey, now I'm working for my son.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, now I'm working for my son, and and he makes jokes, but um, you know, I always at the end of the day have the respect that I have to my father as he's my father, you know.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: I I respect him as my father over anything.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um but when it comes to the professional setting and being professional on the bandstand and touring and all that stuff, um I I told him I'm I told him both my me and my dad are people that like to surround ourselves with people that are better than us, people that people that inspire us, people that motivate us.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the band is like that.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have incredible musicians on the bandstand that are playing with legendary people that are known for playing with legendary people.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Christian Rivera on the Congas, he plays, he played with Willie Cologne for 19 years.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Ben Romano on Trombone has played with Hilberto Santarosa, he's been on the Jimmy Fallon show.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Cito Lavan on the trombone, he's been playing, uh he has two Grammys.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like big, big people playing on our band.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I told my dad, I'm like, hey, we're gonna have to catch up to how good these guys are.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we we have to be as good as them, we have to show these bandmates that um, you know, we have what it takes to be able to play with each other, you know?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been a very uh inspiring journey with me and my dad.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we've pushed each other to our absolute limits, we've inspired each other countless times.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: The original music that we have coming out, a lot of it's co-written with my dad, and it's just um been a very organic and natural process for us.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: What is that writing process have been like working with your dad on actually putting down uh lyrics and and other things on paper?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: What's that been like for you?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's very fun.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's very fun and it's actually hysterical.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny because um, you know, the the typical format of a song, you know, in modern day would be you know, intro, maybe chorus or intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, outro, right?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Something like that, like a typical formula for a song.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of songwriters are thinking in in this genre that we call salsa music, a lot of songwriters have been writing with that formula, and sometimes it works, but if you take a look at the music from the 50s, the music from the 60s, the 70s, it's completely different.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the things that they're singing about, it's that they're singing to the drums, they're singing to the party, they're singing to the people, they're singing to a whole different side of music that you know I've never been familiar with that songwriting uh part, right?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: So my dad is the one that tells me this.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, listen to this song, listen to this song.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Before we write a song, listen, listen, listen, listen.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: We listen to songs, and then he tells me, it would be so awesome if we can make a story about, for example, your grandfather, your grandfather, his impact, you know, and tell us about this and that and this and that.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he tells me his vision, he tells me his idea of how nice it would be to make a song like this, and then with that, I make the progressions, and then at with that, he tells me, Oh, it would be so nice if we can make da-da-da-da.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so I make the drum breaks, you know, and I'll make the arrangement and I'll produce the song, and uh, you know, my dad will help me out with the songwriting aspect of the lyrics and things like that, and then after we bring it to the studio with the guys and and make it happen.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is it tough to balance kind of the traditional salsa sound with in because you want to obviously bring something new to the genre?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've I think that I really do want to be that guy that it's like, damn, you know, a lot of people tell me it's like, man, if you were born in the 70s, dude, you'd be somebody, man.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: You like you'd be huge.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, yeah, but I was born in 2002, man.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And like, you know, so I can't, I can't go in, I can't be the 70s guy, but all those songs that I would have written in the 70s, I'm gonna write them today, you know?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, so I'd like to be that guy that sounds old school.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to be that guy that that preserves the uh the essence of what salsa music is, you know.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: But also, of course, giving it like a modern twist in the way of maybe uh the things that we say, the form of speech, the sayings that are now modern, you know.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: In the lyrics, I think the composition would be a little more modern.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I want the rhythm and I want the feel to be as old school as possible.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you've been doing this for for sounds like a couple of years, this project now.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: What have you learned since you started that residency, that kind of birth this uh this project?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: What did you learn from that experience?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you how do you take that to performances like Zag Harbor Music Festival?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that um definitely the number one lesson that I learned throughout the last two years is that you can't fake it.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can't fake it.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's if you really want to do it, you gotta go and get it.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta go learn, you gotta go put in the work, you gotta go practice, you have to network, you have to put yourself out there, make yourself uncomfortable sometimes.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And um it that's something that I've learned throughout my artistic journey, but especially in this saucer scene, uh, because it went from leading three guys, you know, uh three other guys in my first band, for a four-piece or a five-piece, uh, that I went to college with, or I went to high school with, or that we played a jazz band together in high school.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: But now there's an 11-piece band.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: 11-piece band, and I'm the youngest guy ranging.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the youngest guy in the band.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my dad is in his 50s.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: We have trombonas that play, that they're in their 60s, you know.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's like people that have been playing for a long time, and and as the band leader, you know, there's a level of respect that I have for my musicians, and that means that I have to be able to not only lead the band, but speak the language that all of us speak, you know, so I can't fake that, you know.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that's been one of the number one lessons for sure.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: What's uh what's the plan for for the set uh for this weekend?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is there new stuff you're working on and looking to put out?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And how how do you kind of design the the set list for this this performance?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: As of right now, what we've been doing is we're taking the songs that inspire us the most and putting those in our set.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of people may know the songs, a lot of people may not know the songs because they're underground tunes.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the the process that we're trying to do right now is making an album.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're making an album right now for our band.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we have two singles out right now, Amor de Mentira and Mi Ritmo Pesa.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're planning on releasing another single this year.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so we're gonna be translating, you know, we're gonna be putting those original tunes into our set list, showing the people the new music that we've been working on, and uh while also showing homage to our legends, to our OGs by playing those underground tunes in our set.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it's gonna be a set just if you like Saturday music, if you like to dance, if you like to feel something inside, definitely come to our set on Saturday.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be really fun.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: It should be.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: What brought you to the Sack Harbor Music Festival?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Out of curiosity, it's always been a milestone gig for us.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was telling Kelly that.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, growing up in Hampton Bays, we'd always see the Sack Harbor Music Festival, the flyer of the Sack Harbor Music Festival, and we'd always say, Oh my god, what similar to you know any other festival, like, oh my god, what what do we gotta do to be one of those guys on that bill, you know?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, one one day this year, Kelly called and and she asked us if we'd like to be a part of it, and it was just like, wow, finally we we're we're getting this call.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's just um an honor and they yeah, it's an honor to be able to showcase our musicianship onto this uh bandstand for sure.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, can't wait.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Nick Corridor from the Orchestra La Orenzia.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have butchered that many times in this interview.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: I apologize.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're getting better each time.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but Nick, thank you for your time.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't wait to see you this weekend out in Sag Harbor and look forward to uh more new music and more projects in the future.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming on.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, guys, thank you so much.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a pleasure.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Harry, thank you very much for your time.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to see you all there.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you guys come and check us out October 3rd, Saturday, Sag Harbor Music Festival with Nick Corredor is Orquesta Larencia.