Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 80 - Lidia Bastianich

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

The legendary Lidia Bastianich stops by with her new Book - A Pot, A Pan and A Bowl and we grab a quick bite with the angelic Morgan James whose new album 'A Very Magnetic Christmas' is out now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, it's time for Breaking Bread with Papa. Hey, don't you know? Hey, it's also a show. Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. Thank you so much for joining us. We have a wonderful podcast for you today as we're getting closer to Thanksgiving. We enlisted Lydia Bastionich, a great, great cook, chef, TV personnel. all-round superstar.

And we do a quick bite with Morgan James, our talented, talented singer. She has a new album out. I love her so much. More about them in a minute. We'd like to thank the good people of Scribd for sponsoring the show today. With Scribd, you get instant access

to millions of e-books, audiobooks, magazines, and more. Automated suggestions and hand-cureated picks. Make choosing your next book easier than ever, and we've got a deal. Go to try. dot scribd.com slash Papa for your 60-day free trial. That's try. dot scrib.

That's try. dot S-C-R-I-B-D dot com slash Papa to get 60 days of Scrib for free. It's a great resource to get you to all these amazing books, two of which I have written. Oh, Lydia Bastionich is an Emmy Award-winning public television host, a best-selling best-selling cookbook author. I think she's done like 15 books. Restaurant tour, the owner of a flourishing food and entertainment business.

She owns and runs Beko in New York. Eatily, all the Edelie places, that is her. That is Lydia. She's an amazing, amazing person, so we're going to get our big Italian on today for sure. This is a great, great resource for all things Italian cooking. She's an amazing, amazing character. She's so fun to talk to. It's literally like talking to someone from my family who they're kind of like no nonsense,

but then when you get into it, you crack them and they open up and they're really, really fun. This is her new book. It's called A Pot, A Pan, and a Bowl. simple recipes for perfect meals. Lydia Bastionic, she really just curates this stuff and just makes it really simple. I mean, she is a great resource. If you've ever gone to Italy in New York City, I think there's like five of them now, actually, all around the country.

I know there's one in Chicago. You just go to these places and you're like, all right, this is, this is, it's almost like climbing inside a giant cookbook. She is just amazing. skillet lasagna, no stuff shells. She gives me some advice about Thanksgiving. She really is amazing and we're very lucky to have her on the podcast today. It's a pretty good thing that we get are able to get like our great comedian friends and then get these food legends. And Lydia is definitely one of them. You'll see this conversation is far ranging. We talk about family. We talk

about cooking. She gives me some tips and some solves about some things that I've been desperately trying to figure out about tomato sauce and serving pasta. A great conversation. And then when we come back, we're going to spend some time with Morgan James, who's one of my dear, dear friends and a great, great musician and singer. And she has a new Christmas album out called Magnetic Christmas. But more on her after this. Let's start off with the great, the legend, Lydia Bastionich. I've been a huge fan of yours as growing up Italian myself and being surrounded by grandparents and parents who taught me how to cook. Watching you is kind of like a parallel part of my life.

And not to insults my family, but you are even a better cook. Yes. You can be, every grandma is a good cook. It's true. I love all the wisdom that you would pass down with those little videos with your mom. I always remember the two fingers of wine. That's it, two fingers. Yeah, if only I can stop at two fingers, it would be great.

Well, I, you know, I don't know how many times you can do the two fingers. Right. But thank you so much for being here. and I can't believe what number cookbook is this? Is this 15, 16? Well, it's actually 12. There's some books, other books in between, like a memoir, children's books and all that,

but it's a 12 cookbook. Right. Lydia's a pot, a pan, and a bowl. This seems to be something I've been seeing in the food world a little bit lately. The idea of the New York Times does a lot of pan cooking, like every, in one single pan. but yours is really takes it to another level because you're taking really dishes that usually are super complicated like lasagna like if I'm going to make a lasagna

I know the kitchen is going to be a disaster for a good week and you actually get it down to one skillet it's very impressive one skillet and did you notice you mean that was my first with pre-cooked pasta you know I I you know I always make my pasta fresh pasta and that's the thing. But you know, things, life is moving on. And especially with COVID and all that,

people are cooking more, want to cook more. And I said, let me do a little research here. Let me try. So I tested the pre-cooked pasta. Let me tell you, it's fantastic.

You know, in one hour, you have a pasta. You got to try it. That's the pasta in the pan. You know, you come home, if you have some sauce from another date, day that you made or whatever,

You have some cheese, some grated cheese, and you get yourself a skillet, and you just layer it out, just like it is out of the box. You put enough liquid and sauce and all of that. You put it in the oven. And let's say, half an hour, 40 minutes later, you got yourself a bubbly lasagna. Oh, my God. I mean, if you're saying that, it feels like I'm getting permission to do it because... You have permission, Tom. Because there are some things you don't want to violate and you feel like you're cheating.

but if you say it's okay, I'm going to give it a shot. Yeah, try it, try it. Let me know then. Can I ask you a tomato question? Sure. Okay, because I'm always playing around with this. And the difference, is there a distinct difference between the whole peeled tomatoes and the pureed tomatoes or the crushed tomatoes?

Are there, is there a difference in? In general, to me, I think it is because if you, have a whole tomato, then you see the tomato, and then you crush it and it's ripe and it's sweet and it's tender. But once it's crushing milk, you don't know if there's some green in the tomatoes. Sometimes you get the tomatoes and there's some green, some things don't cook. Even if you do it with fresh tomatoes, I'm sure that you get that left. So you don't want to, you know, you don't want to have that option. You want your nice whole tomatoes so you can see. And they contained the flavor. But even more than that, a specific, if you're making sauce, the plum tomatoes, the San Marzano

tomatoes are the ones that you really should be looking whole in the can. And that is, you know, the Samarsano, the plum tomato, that's that ablong tomato. And that tomato is good for sauces because it has a thin skin. It has a lot of pulp. Very few seeds. Seeds are tanning, make the sauce bitter. And not too much juice, not too much acidity. So go all the way down the line, get yourself some whole Samarzzano or plum tomato in its juice, in the can, and then you do the crushing.

All right, good. All right. I like that because I was, I'm suspecting that. And I figured it must be, but, you know, you see in the supermarket all of these cans of the other stuff. And I'm like, I don't know. It's nice to just know for sure this is the way that it goes. You're right. Your intuition is right.

Yeah. Did you ever meet Marcella Hazan? I did. I knew her. You did. As a matter of fact, I think they're redoing her book, The Essential of Italian Cuisine. Oh, really? And they asked me to kind of write the kind of the new forward for her. I did. As a matter of fact, some of the, until the very end, I went down to Florida and visited with her. Oh, wow. And she made lunch for us.

and you know she had that famous spaghetti tomato sauce where she put the butter in the butter and the onion yeah that's what she did for me and was delicious yeah i did i did know her she was a a particular individual oh yeah what was was she can you describe her because i made well she was she was you know she was very intelligent wet it because she was a chemist by by studying profession Okay. And so she was, you know, food and its chemistry, she wanted it to be just like that. You know, formulas for her were very important. So she was strict about the recipes, following the recipes, and conveying.

And she was also very much into conveying the traditional regional cuisine. Because, you know, here in America, we have the Italian-American cuisine. And it's a delicious cuisine, but it's a different cuisine. It's not what the Italians eat in Italy. And she insisted on making sure that her recipes were what they ate in Italy. So, you know, she didn't. I did two books on the Italian-American cuisine because I felt the Italian-Intyian cuisine is a valiant cuisine. It's a good cuisine.

People still love it and eat it. But it's different. It's the story of the immigrants coming to America, not having the products they had in Italy. and adopting their recipes to what they found. Yes, there's definitely, it's almost like it's a culmination of all those immigrants that came from all different parts of Italy. Right. I talked to, I grew up in New Jersey, and there were people in Newark who, from the old country, they would have in the cellar. That was where they would keep everything like kind of refrigerated and they would have all the imported things hung up on the meats and the cheeses.

and it was like in someone's home. But there was like this real rush to try and preserve it. But then it ultimately got mixed in with all these other Italians. And then we get New Jersey, New York. Yeah. Well, you know, it's, I think that the first big influence of Italian immigrants was at the age of the 1800s. So, you know, we have 100 plus year there of collection of cooking.

And cooking is what they found. Now, for example, Tom, the Italian American cuisine has a lot of garlic. In Italy, we don't use a lot of garlic. We use garlic, moderate. We take it out of when we cook. We don't always, but here the Italian American cuisine has a lot of garlic. So, you know, when those immigrants came here, they didn't find the tomatoes. Even though a tomato is a new world product, those ripe tomatoes that they had in Italy, the sun is different.

They didn't have. They didn't have oregano. They didn't have basilico, but they did find garlic. And garlic reminded them home. And they kept on using that garlic and overusing it. And hence, the Italian-American cuisine is really full of garlic. It has a lot of garlic. Yeah.

It's interesting you say that because I remember when I first was learning how to make a sofrito and these different bases for sauces and there was no garlic in it. And I was like, that was so foreign to me because my whole. family. Garlic was the main thing always. The base was garlic. Yeah, always, always garlic. That's really so funny. So this, this, uh, when you came over, you were, you were an early teen, right? I was 12 when I came over, yes. Right, 12. And we, I'm sorry, where, where did you come from in Italy? So, so I was born in Istria. Eastria is a little peninsula north of, uh, um, um, Venice, in that area there.

It is now Croatia. Because after World War II, Italy lost the war, and that part of Italy was given to the newly formed communist Yugoslavia. So it was a whole period after World War II was tough. And we got caught. I was just born in that period. We got caught behind the Iron Curtain, being Italians, we couldn't speak Italian and all that. Ultimately, my parents decided they wouldn't let us go back to Italy. We had to escape back to Italy.

And in 1956, we escaped back to Italy. In Italy, in Trieste, we had some relatives, but we ended up in a refugee camp for two years. And ultimately, we're brought by the Catholic relief services, Catholic charities and Red Cross to America. Dwight Eisenhower was the president, and he opened immigration for people fleeing communism. And we came, I came as an immigrant at 12 years old in 1958. Wow. Geez, what a story. That's, that's, yeah, that's, I thought it was a struggle for my ancestors who came over just nicely on a boat and had a long line at Ellis Island.

Well, that wasn't easy either. But, yeah, I was a little, a political dilemma and we had to be in the camp because, we didn't have the papers and ultimately it was difficult but you know once we came here god bless america there's no place like america yeah where did you where was your first home in america new jersey mind you northburgh new jersey oh yeah northberg yeah they yeah they found a little home for us was right on the cliffs now they have these new houses up there but we were on the cliffs and let me tell you it was a beautiful little house uh we shared it with a a Canadian family. And we were right across the Empire State Building. We saw all of Manhattan

in front of us. What better view can you have? Oh, beautiful. That's so beautiful. I was a little further back. I was like Montvale, Park Ridge, like a little bit. You were in the in the Lexus luxurious zones. Yes, it's very luxurious. Exactly. And I could see from my desk, through the trees, I could see the Empire State Building. When I would do my homework, I could see New York. And it was like, one day I'm going to get there. It's a beautiful place. New Jersey is, I mean, there must have been,

you must have felt pretty at home or your parents at the time because there was a lot of Italians at that time. Well, you know, Tom, that's what happened. You know, the Catholic charities brought us, found us a home. But then they rallied the whole Italian-American community. The whole came. They brought chairs.

They brought towels. They brought pots, pans. They filled our cupboards with foods. They really dressed up our home. They made our home because, you know, we didn't have anybody. We didn't have anything. And it was the Italian immigrants and other, you know, I mean, there were other ethnicities and people that really cared that I guess, you know, their ancestors were.

immigrants. And so they really, really came and sort of set us up. It felt so good. And we finally had a home. They found a job for my father. My father went to the barbershop, the Italian barbershop, met their people, and so found a better job and so on. Wow. That's amazing. The community. And was what was food like during all of that time? Was your, was your mom always, always cooking? was she, I mean, it's a, it's such a, it's such a, it's such a funny thing in a way, because we think of food as this, I mean, it is very important and very cherished. But at that time, it was also just about feeding your family. It was survival.

Survival, right, right. Yeah, yeah, we're survival. And absolutely, you know, we had the kind of these, those basic, the same food also that we had in Eastry, under communism, it was meager, meager of eating. So a lot of soups and a lot of. and a lot of beans, potatoes and rice soup. She used to buy chicken wings, chicken necks. We used to make soup.

And our main course was kind of putting salt on the chicken necks and eating us till this day. I love chicken necks. You know, and so that kind of, you know, like one clabaza was, if you made a soup, was enough for the second course, for the whole family. And so on. So was that kind of cooking that gave. you substance and you made a lot in one pot, not unlike this book that I just wrote. Yeah. You know, one pot and you had the first course and the second course all in one pot.

Right. Yeah, it all comes from that. Was that when you were putting together this book, just remind the listeners again, it's Lydia's a pot, a pan, and a bowl. And it's simple recipes for perfect meals. When you were putting this together, was it were, were there any of those dishes from your childhood that came back to memory? Yeah. The soups, the pasta dishes, you know, sort of I elaborated a little bit, but also a lot of that brazing, you know, like where you brace, okay, so you got a little bit fancy

where you some short ribs. But, you know, we would braise kind of even soup bones that had a little bit of meat, brazed and put some potatoes in there, some vegetables. And you had your meat, you had your vegetables, you had sauce to dress your pasta. So maybe a little pasta before. And then you had your, you know, you licked the bones. And it was delicious. Your mother must have been pretty proud of you when you started to become more well-known

and establish yourself in the food world. She was very, she was very proud, you know, because a lot of time, initially I remember hearing my mind. and my dad sometimes whisper, did we do the right thing? Should we have stayed home? Where did we end up? We don't have any family here.

So when it all sort of really worked out, and I think, you know, this is an opportunity. You can waste it. You've got to make the best of it. You got to show mom that all the efforts, the difficulties that she had and decisions she had to make were worth it. Right. And so, yes, at the end, she lived.

she kind of reaped all of this and enjoyed it. She loved it. It's so great that she got to see it. Yeah. Be part of it. Yeah. I told her. I said, Mom, I told her, I said,

look at what you accomplished. I says, it's not just me. It's because she helped me. She and my father live with me. She and my father live with me. Help me raise my children. Help me raise my grandchildren. So I says, Mom, you help them.

You're all part of this. It's not a solitary journey. Yeah, no, it's not. And it's nice that your children got involved in the business as well. I know I'd seen, I think, an interview with you, and you said that you wanted them to go out and take advantage of the opportunities. But then they kind of naturally came back. Yeah. And it's such a nice story.

They came back on their own, yeah. And I'm very happy and proud. You know, now they run the business, the restaurant business. especially after COVID, I kind of, you know, it's been 50 years. My first restaurant was 1971, so 50 years. So I enjoyed the books doing the television and, you know, helping them when they need it. A lot of people who were in the restaurant business for a long time. When COVID hit, they were like, all right, this is my cue to retire.

Like this is only the restaurant business is so hard and you do it for so long. It's like, I can't, this is too much. It is. It is. It's a tough business. It's a rewarding business. You know, you're with people, you feed people. And it's beautiful to feed to see with people. But the hours are endless. There's no holidays. There's none of that stuff. You're just dedicated to this business. And so, yeah, I think that a lot of people took the opportunity. This is, okay, this is the message. I'm going to stop now. Yes. I'll listen to you, God. That's what I did. Yeah, yeah. No, I really enjoy cooking. I love baking bread.

I bake a lot of bread. That's become a passion of mine. And anytime I have a little inkling of opening a bakery or actually making bread for people, I don't think I have the energy. The amount of work that it takes around the clock for these bakers, they work so hard. It's never ending. And then you have the whole business.

business aspect of it. Then you have the whole marketing aspect of it. Then you have to, you know, all the bills, everything is going up. Yeah, let me tell you. Yeah. Think about it twice. Yeah, I know. Exactly. I'll just keep doing it for myself and learning from you. All right. So here's some questions that I have for you. Just based on my own cooking in my own life. And this is why I'm so excited to talk to you. All right. So you're making a dish like a caccio pepe. right and you're serving four or five people should you be just getting the quantities for i always like abundance i always like a lot i never want people to be done and then looking around for more but i also how would you serve it to five people would you put it on a plate and give it to each individual would you put a big a big plate of it out for everybody well i would i would do it on the on the plate because it's a pasta that congeals. It sticks together quickly. So, you know, if you're pulling it out of a big plate, you give it more chance to cool off.

So make a mount in a warm plate and give everybody their share, you know. And yeah, yeah. And, you know, gauge it. Don't, should you have some extra? And, you know, it could be a little bit in the pot. It doesn't even pay to be to put it in the, in a bowl or something. But I think, you know, just give somebody, everybody, a nice portion and then follow with something else. Follow with a salad with a piece of cheese or something just in case, you know, because you don't want to, you know, them to go back and forth the big pot two, three times.

Everything is cold and sticking. It's no good. Right. Yeah. That is the problem. Putting out the, I just always remember like going to my grandmother's house on this big pot, this big bowl coming out, everybody going after it. Yeah, but it was different. Most likely it had some sauce, red sauce. Catcher pepepe is kind of this tight sauce. And also, you know, I think that as a family, we didn't wait that long. You went in and you took what you liked and that's it.

You know, there was no sort of waiting online. So whereas maybe today, if you have a dinner party or something, there might be some resists. resistance in going in right away and the pasta might get cold. No, plate the pasta. Plate the pasta. Placa pepper especially. Yeah. Okay, good. Do you like carbonara? I do like carbonara. It's simple. It's delicious. It's good. Should you only make it with guanchale? I mean, guantrale is the tradition and whatever. But you can make it with bacon. You, you know, I mean, I am one that that sort of I want to give liberties

to people cooking. Not always you have everything. Not always do you like everything. Not everybody likes in your family, everything. So you should have the liberty actually a little bit creativity, even changing my recipes. I'm okay with it. Right. Okay. All right. These are good to know.

You're going to make me so confident after this interview. All right. My other question what was it? Do you ever make GMB? Chambella? Chambella. I do. For Easter, we make the chambella. The, the, the, uh, but there's different chambelas. There's, there's, there's the cookies, chambela. There is the, uh, the bread, the pouliers, the bread, the hard bread, the chambela. Yeah. So there's different

chambalas. Uh, it's chambela means, uh, like a lifesaver. That's what it means. Uh, okay. That's what the word means. I got it. Yeah, because there's the light pound cakey one that's very a little more fluffy and then there's the other one that comes out a little more dense it's a little more yeah yeah there's it's the shape it's the round shape yeah okay here's something that you and and marcella hasan actually opened my eyes to it was in your recipes you you have you both have take very much a lot of care with the vegetables there is it's it's a um you vegetables were always an afterthought. It was always like, oh, and then just throw it in and do it.

But the peeling of the asparagus or the peeling of the stem, using the stems of the broccoli, it seems like, it seems like you celebrate vegetables and things from the garden. Absolutely. You know, ever since I can remember certain of my grandmother, the vegetables were the protagonist, you know, the proteins, what you had, you know, and sometimes you didn't even have any meat or fish or whatever, an egg was the protein. So, you know, a vegetable with a fried egg or a fritata or whatever. So vegetables, you know, and vegetables, because my grandmother had the garden,

were hard. You had to go and work the garden, the earth, you had to plow it. You had to sort of hose it. You had to all of that. So, you know, it took a lot of work. So we wasted nothing. And that sort of remains with you. And also, I remember, you know, for us, the outside of the onions and all of that,

if it's not in the soup, it went for the animals. You know, we had the pigs that I eat it and whatever. So everything was recycled. Right, right. Okay, so my one last question on the menu side of things, when you make a Thanksgiving dinner for your family, what is the Italian flair that maybe I should add to my Thanksgiving? Okay.

Thanksgiving, I love Thanksgiving because it is the one holiday that's American, but we really make it American in our house. Everything else turns somewhat Italian, whether it's Easter, Christmas or whatever. So what I do, which you can do very easy, is you make a reduction of balsamic vinegar, not too thick, but make a reduction. And in the last 20 minutes of roasting the turkey,

brush the turkey with this balsamic vinegar reduction. It gives it a nice kind of mahogany finish, a nice color, a nice acidity, a nice sweetness. So that's, that's one. That's perfect. That sounds beautiful. That is great. I'm going to do it.

I'm going to absolutely do it. Your book, is there anything, any highlight that you would want our listeners to, what is the thing that you want our listeners to take away from this book? I would like them to feel comfortable. And, you know, the combination of vegetables, legumes, root vegetables. and proteins all in one pot. And I think what I think is a problem a lot of time is the cooking time. You know, if you put sweet potatoes and the meat at the same time, the sweet potatoes are going

to fall apart. So understanding, you know, I have steps at this, at that, and that. But in case they decide to do something of their own, even in the oven, know that, timing of the product that you're adding and know when to add it. Just timing. So it doesn't have a cook. For example, I have a recipe here in the oven. I used to let the oven a sheet pan and some Brussels sprouts and some onions and salt pepper oil and some potatoes and I put that in the oven and roast, roast, roast. When it is about three quarters done, I make a little space and I add to it portions of salmon with a little bit of mustard.

So now the salmon is going to take 20 minutes. But you see, time it. Right, right, right. You cannot put it all together. You want to put it all in one pan. You don't need another pan for the salmon. Just move all the vegetables. Put the salmon there.

Put it back in the oven. And you've got yourself, you know, you come out. Everything is sizzling and done well. So this is, you know, something. And when you brace, when you brace, let's say short ribs, you know, brown those first, nice and brown. And then you begin the sauce, then put a little bit of, put your onions, your garlic, then put your tomato paste, then put your wine, then de glaze all of these things,

then let it boil a little bit, and then begin with, you know, once that is gone already for half an hour, 40 minutes, because short ribs will take about an hour and a half to, almost two hours to cook well. Right. So then you add, you know, potatoes take 40 minutes. You add from the end the potatoes. Sweet potatoes are going to take 20, 25 minutes. You add that after.

And so on down the line. The carrots you add, almost with the meat, you can add that. The carrots will survive. So understanding, you know, that sequence is a success of one-pot cooking. Got it, got it. Very cool. So, Lydia, 50 years ago, you start your first restaurant. how do you what is it that that continues the passion for you what is it that can that that that gets you

excited every day about always talking about food sharing food with people it's it's what i love to do i think it's my creative medium it's like you know a painter needs to have his paints need his oil paints or whatever. I need to have my product. I need to have a kind of a setting. What, the pot, the right pot, what am I going to do? And then what's beautiful is that, you know, you nurture people. You give to people.

And, you know, it's, you cook something. I cook something that people ingest take into themselves. There's not many things that, you know, you can do that with, you know. You look at things, you see things, but to eat, to put things in your mouth, in your body. And to be the creator of those things that give pleasure and nourishment to people, it's a special place to be, you know, and food, you know, food is sort of everything around us. We're so worried about the environment. Well, food is a vital element to hold that.

We need to eat less meat. less cows, so we have less CO2 methane gas and all of that. So, you know, food is at the basis of who we are and what we do. Right. Well, this was so wonderful. I was so nice to meet you. It's sharing those, even just sharing your little knowledge, like I'm going to look at tomatoes now for the rest of my life in a certain way just because of our conversation. Good. Good. Good. Good. I wish you much success and hopefully we'll talk again. Thanks, Tom.

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to get 60 days of Scribd for free. Perfect timing this time. of year. You can get all your holiday stuff in. You can see, you can enjoy it and pass it on and give it to other people. Thank you, Scribd, for sponsoring our program. All right, now it's time to grab a quick bite with our good friend Morgan James. Morgan is an amazing, amazing singer. She is just, she's one of the best in the world. I saw her first at the Hollywood Bowl. She was doing the final concert for a prairie home companion and she was one of the opening acts for that show that legendary night at the Hollywood Bowl. I walk in and there's this beautiful, gorgeous woman on

stage and she is just pounding out song after song and you know in an opening of Hollywood Bowl not an easy task a lot of times it's just while people are being sat the place was riveted Everybody was just focusing on Morgan. The sound that comes out of her is so amazing. So fast forward, we've become really good friends, and she comes on and does my live come to Papa's at the Village Underground all the time. She's so amazing, so talented,

and has a new album out. She always wanted to make a Christmas album, and it's called Magnetic Christmas. It's available right now. And she's also on tour, and you can go to Morgan Jamesonline.com. That's Morgan James. Morgan James online.com. She truly is become one of my close friends and I just can't believe that

I went from seeing this beautiful and incredibly talented person at the Hollywood Bowl and now she is a part of my life. And we are going to get on the phone right now and grab a quick bite and see what she's up to for the holidays and talk about all things Morgan. So enjoy Morgan James. Morgan. Hi, Tom. How's it going? It's going all right. How are you doing?

I'm doing all right. Nice to hear your voice. I know. Likewise. Oh, man. I missed the last come to Papa. I was sad. I know.

I was sad, too. You were stuck at the airport. We were stuck at the airport, yeah. It was a big storm. Oh, terrible. Isn't it funny how, like, for so long, because you tour so much, and you're always on the go, and we've talked about this. And then when we were during the lockdown, it was like, oh, this is nice being home.

But then you're like, all right, that's time to go. I got to get out there. And then you're stuck in an airport in North Carolina. You're like, oh, right, this part. This part. Well, I mean, you miss the other one the minute that you're back, you know. You miss living at home and then you miss being on the road. And there's really no satisfying an artist.

No, I mean, exactly. So this is exciting, though. you've got your new Christmas album and touring at the same time. Yes. Yeah. I love Christmas music. I'm one of those. I'm one of those.

Me too. Let me ask you this because it's pretty early. Not pretty early. It's actually Thanksgiving is next week. Yeah. Do you break out any hint of decorations or anything before Thanksgiving? This year I am. I'm actually trimming my Christmas tree tonight because,

I start my tour on Thanksgiving night, so I'm not going to be at home to enjoy any of my decorations, all Christmas long, you know, all Christmas season. So I'm decorating tonight, and I'm putting on the records, and I've already got a lot of candles burning, and yeah, I'm totally there. That's amazing. So what do you mean, Chris, a Thanksgiving night? Well, the tour of us, my poor band, we start on the 26th, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, we start our tour in Washington, D.C., but that means. that we have to get there and we have to load up the tour bus at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving night. Wow. Yeah.

So it's just the Thursday. Just the Thursday. We got to load the tour bus. I love that, though. I really do. And I remember when, before I was a comedian, watching Letterman that they would do the Thanksgiving show. And it always seems so cool to me to be like, in a business that was like still doing show

busy kind of stuff like on the holiday. So like I was at home with my family, you know, with my parents and whatever. And just watching that, it was like, oh, man, I want to live that life. I know. And, you know, things like New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, I can't remember the last time I didn't work on New Year's Eve, you know. And, you know, performers have to take advantage of the holidays and people's, you know, good nature and their willingness to spend money.

Right. Exactly. So how are you going to handle eating Thanksgiving? Will you eat before, the day before? Will you do any kind of treat for yourself or you just go? Well, you know, Thanksgiving is usually an early meal and everyone's, you know, taking a nap underneath the table by 3 p.m. So, or maybe that's just my family. So I think we're vegan.

So, I mean, all the Thanksgiving food is a little altered for my Thanksgiving. But we'll eat early in the day and then we're going to start having to pack up. I mean, we're packing up the entire all the years. all the merch, everything. Wow. That's so cool that it's all there on a bus. That's going to be so great. It's so fun.

I'm really looking forward to it. Yeah, we've talked about that. As a comedian, just like seeing a band and you have everything underneath the bus and just go from place to place. It's like, it's always been envious of that. Yeah, I think it would be so lonely, you know, to be a comedian. And the one hand, if you kill, you're, like the king of the mountain. But if you, if you don't kill, you're kind of, you go back to the hotel and you're

like, wow, I really, I did that. I ruined that. But for me, you know, if I have a great night, my band's there to celebrate. And if I have a crap night, you know, they're all together. You know, there's something really, it's mixed to be travel with a little baby community. Yeah. I, you know, I actually felt it pretty acutely this weekend because I did a couple shows in Boston and Vermont and didn't use an opening act even. I just, so it was fun, like, just to do an hour and a half straight. Like, the performance of it was great. Like, I love that kind of evening with. And I just, like, settled up after, like, selling books and stuff. I just kind of walked back to my dress. And everyone was gone. Like, not even the crew was around. So, looking by myself out to my car,

I was like, this isn't the way it's supposed to go. I should have one person as backup. Right. Just one stalker waiting for you in the back. Exactly. No, it's, it is lonely. You know, people do think it's glamorous to be on the road. And, I mean, honestly, the reality is that I'm like schlepping boxes and settling up. And at the end of the night, like, you are kind of alone, you know. And thankfully, I get to travel with my husband and my dog, so I get to take a little piece of

home with me. But most of the road is not glamorous at all. I know. It really is. But it is, that is kind of what makes it great. also. It's like you're kind of doing all that stuff on the outside. So your album is called Magnetic Christmas. A very magnetic Christmas. A very magnetic Christmas. It's named after the studio, Memphis Magnetic. Wow. Very cool. What's the history behind that studio? Well, Memphis Magnetic is in

Memphis, Tennessee, obviously, and it's with incredible vintage gear from Nashville and all over the place. like the board that I sang through, Patsy Klein sang through, and really historic gear. And the owner, Scott McEwen, said it's called Memphis Magnetic because the entire time he was in National, he felt this toll to go back to

Memphis and make soul music. And he took all the gear. He actually opened up the studio in what was an old bank. And, interestingly enough, it was the first bank to give African-Americans loans way back in the 15

So it's got a rich history of the actual soil that the studio is built on. Oh, that's amazing. It's really cool. Could you feel it when you were recording? Oh, yeah. It's like there's just something so unhurried about being in the South and making a record down there and leaving the busyness of New York. Yeah. It just, every aspect was, we just took our time and we, you know, recorded, we recorded this Christmas album live with a live of the audience.

And to tape. analog tape. So it's very old school. Action also on tape? No, we were filming also for video, so we didn't have like reactions because we were editing together a Christmas special. Right. But to have them all there and watch the process was really cool and we had the full band. Everybody, everything you hear and see is sung live. Oh, man, this is so great. I can't wait.

Yeah. And people can stream it right now, right? get it right now. You know, actually I was thinking about that. Like, you have the album and it comes out. I mean, the old days would be like, go buy this album. Now you can just stream the album, right? You can stream it or downloaded wherever music is found.

You can also order CDs and vinyl, and I have a calendar this year. You can order those on my website or other shows. And then you can, we have a Christmas special from Mandolin. So that's up. You can watch the whole concert, the whole making of the album up on Mandolin. Oh, that's the coolest. What's your personal What's your personal favorite Christmas song to sing?

Oh gosh There are so many I mean I love something really dramatic Like do you hear what I hear We wrote three new songs Christmas songs for the album So I'm excited to sing those Oh nice

Give me some titles One's called Long as I Got You One is called Why Am I Lonely Tonight You know I love a big salad A big set A big sad, no. And then we wrote a phone called I Want to Know, which is like a kind of a really,

um, raucous like gospel blues. Oh, this is so great. Yeah. So perfect. I personally am so excited because we're, we're starting to answer the same question I posed to you. We're starting to break it out a little before Thanksgiving. Like it's slowly, but things are slowly, mostly out of, mostly out of nervousness that I have this vague feeling like

I threw some stuff out last year. and can't remember what it was. You know what I mean? So I'm like, I hope we have a tree. Do you go crazy at Christmas? Yeah, we go pretty crazy. We definitely get into it for sure. And my big thing is the village and the train underneath the tree.

That is so classic. It's so great. And literally tomorrow I have a plan that I'm going to the train shop because I have some items that I need to pick up and some more track and stuff. And there's nothing, there's nothing, better than just as a grown man going into a train shop, like in the middle of a workday when you know other people. Oh, my God.

I love it. That's so adorable. It does. It makes you feel like a kid again. It's so great. Yeah, it's great. Well, I can't wait to listen to the album and share it with everybody this year. It's going to be great.

Well, thank you. Thank you so much. I hope you love it. And just quick, rifle off a couple cities of where you want people to show up. Oh, my gosh. We're going to 23 cities. So we're going to D.C. Philly, Pauling, New York, Boston, Minneapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, National, Atlanta, and Annapolis, we're all those ways. Oh, it's so great.

That's so great. I know you would ask me if we're going to cross past any of them. I was desperately like, oh, maybe I'm going to be performing in one of those plays. And we're really not. Maybe I can get close. I would love to see it. Oh, it's going to be a fun tour. be um we got a couple amazing juliar brilliant juliar kids joining the band and they're going to be

on the road with us so the best morgan i miss you i miss you too tom thanks for chatting with me today all right i'll see you real soon christmas all right i'll talk you soon bye all right everybody that's the big show thank you to lydia bastionnitch i hope you enjoyed that conversation with her she is amazing i think we're going to have spend more time with her in the future for sure And Morgan James, right? What a treat. Morgan James, make sure you go see her. Her tour is taking her all over the place.

It's a perfect holiday event for you to go and capture and get her new album, Magnetic Christmas, available right now. Thank you to our good friends at Scrib for sponsoring today's program. And thank all of you. Go out there and get your Thanksgiving plans all settled. And go out there and do something great. All right, you guys are the best. We'll see you next time.