Good Life Project - Building a Living & Life Around a Passion | Nabil Ayers

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Imagine being a kid who loved music, who’d been brought up with jazz literally in his blood, graduating college, then, instead of heading into a “responsible” adult job like all your friends, opening a record store in the heart of Seattle at a time where the neighborhood musicians, the ones who’d hang out all day and talk about all-things-music, also just happened to be budding icons who’d go one to become scions in the industry, forming bands like Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Sound Garden, and so many others. This is just one season in the extraordinary life and career of today’s guest, Nabil Ayers.Now, years into a powerhouse career in music, he heads-up of one of the most iconic labels in the business, one, in fact, he fell in love with as a young kid. Growing up mixed-race, Jewish and Black, in NYC in the eighties, with a father who was a legendary jazz musician, but also entirely absent from his life, Nabil’s mom and uncle made sure to surround him with music, musicians and other quirky characters. And, that seeded a passion not just for music, but also for the culture, the stories, and eventually the business of helping artists grow and thrive. Along the way, Nabil also found himself becoming a storyteller. Both, of his own narrative, and of the many artists he’d champion and help introduce to the world. And, well into his career in music, Nabil began writing about music, his own life and story, and race for publications including The New York Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, GQ, and The Root. Ayers is the President of Beggars Group US, a music label where he has released albums by many GRAMMY Award-winning artists such as The National. His new memoir, My Life in the Sunshine: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family is about his journey to connect with his musician father, Roy Ayers, and ultimately re-draw the lines that define family and race. You can find Nabil at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Jimmie Vaughan about his life in music.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKED. Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So much of the thing in music is like this objectivity. I mean, if you're the fastest runner, you will win the Olympics. It doesn't matter if people like you or if you get lucky. If you're the fastest person, you'll win because you are the fastest, period. And music doesn't have that, but people want to treat it as if it does. You have to reach people emotionally and be lucky enough to have people that were able to help you do that. And that's kind of what it is. So imagine for a moment, being a kid who loved music, who'd been brought up with jazz literally in your blood, graduating college, and then instead of heading into the quote, responsible adult job, like all your other friends, you end

up opening a record store in the heart of Seattle at a time where the neighborhood musicians, the ones who'd hang out all day and talk about all things music, they also just happened to be budding icons who go on to become the scions in the music industry, forming bands like Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, and so many others. Well, this is just one season in the extraordinary life and career of my guest today, Nabil Ayers. So now years into a powerhouse career in music, he heads up one of the most iconic labels in the business. One, in fact, he'd fallen in love with as a young kid because of the artist that they brought to him. And growing up mixed race, Jewish and black in New York City in the 80s with a dad who was this legendary jazz musician, but also entirely absent from his life. Nabil's mom and uncle, they made sure to surround him with

music and musicians and all sorts of quirky characters. And that seeded a passion, not just for music, but also for the culture, the stories, and eventually the business of helping artists grow and thrive. And along the way, Nabil also found himself becoming a storyteller of his own life, his own adventures, his own seasons, and also of the narrative of many of the artists that he'd end up championing and helping bring to the world. And well into his career in music, he began writing about music, about his own life, and about story and race for publications, including the New York Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, GQ, and The Root. He's now the president of Beggar's

Group U.S., a music label where he has released albums by many Grammy award-winning artists, such as The National and many others. And his new memoir, My Life in the Sunshine, Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family, is about his journey to connect with his musician father, Roy Ayers, and ultimately redraw the lines that define family, life, and race. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. We'll be right back. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

I'm just kind of excited to dive in. We share a love of music. You have made it your life. And now this sort of like layering onto this, a passion for and devotion to writing. I'm kind of fascinated by all the stops along the way. And in no small part, so much of this, you could even argue was set up before you were born. Literally set up, right? Yeah. Yeah. In a lot of interesting ways. You have like this fantastic new book out now, and I want to dive into it. It actually walks through a lot of your journey. There's this line

that I think kind of takes us back to the beginning in an interesting way where you say, by design, my father was never part of our lives. Tell me more. Yeah. It's interesting to type something like that because I've known it my whole life, but decades later to finally sort of say it and put it out in the world, of course, made me think about it more. I mean, I always knew that my mother was young, 21, 20, when she met my father and just met him by chance at a jazz club in New York. He was a relatively famous musician. She was a young dancer. And my uncle, her brother kind of knew my father a little bit and they started talking. And my mother has, I've always known this since as far back as I can remember that the moment she met him, she said to herself, this is the person I'm going to have a baby

with. Not, this is the person I'm going to marry. This is the person I'm in love with. It was very specifically about him giving her a child. So they dated. I use the term loosely. So does she. I don't think they were really together very many times.

But one of those times she said, I want you to give me a child. You don't have to be around or be part of it. Will you do that? And he said, yes. And so I've always known that. Of course, there are issues with it, and I write about them, but it was never divorce. It was never he left us. It was never one of the more traditional things that a lot of people have gone through so it's a unique situation that it's not that she hated him and didn't want him to be part of our lives it's that she wanted to raise me and she wanted to be a young single mother and she knew what she wanted and it turns out you know she wasn't surprised a year later like she was right and she did it and did an amazing job. Which is, so this would have been early 70s, I guess.

Yeah, I was born in 72. So I mean, she has all the dates. She knows the date that she got pregnant. It's crazy. Her memory is really incredible. I know. I remember seeing you writing that and it's like on this date on this year, like the date of inception. Yeah. And she remembers what she was wearing and every single memory is attached to clothing. That's amazing. Yeah. And she remembers what she was wearing and every single memory is attached to clothing. That's amazing. Yeah. It's also, I mean, it speaks to her mindset at that point in time. It's such an interesting time in sort of women's rights and feminism at that moment in time also for her to sort of like step into that place and say, this is my choice. This is what

I'm doing. And it's like, I don't actually need or expect or want this other thing along with it. I'm good. Like really unusual. Yeah. It was pretty early days to be doing that, I think. Yeah. So you're also, you know, this sets in motion a lot of things. Your mom sounds really interesting in a lot of different ways. Also brought up on Long Island, Jewish faith, but ends up discovering Baha'i, a faith that I'd known nothing about a few years ago until I've actually stumbled upon a couple of people. We've had a couple of people on the show over the years, actually, who've gone deep into it. Oh, wow. It's a fascinating tradition.

It is. Yeah, I love it. ends up, if what I understand correctly, actually being in part, at least, from this person who, Nabil-i-Azam, who was this chronicler of the faith back, I guess, in the late 1800s, maybe. Yeah, yeah. It's not that old of a religion. Mid-1800s, right? Right. Who also, I got curious, meets a very tragic demise. Yeah, I don't know much about that. You probably know more. I think that's about all I know. Apparently, he ends up taking his own life by wading into the ocean and drowning. Oh, wow.

This is your namesake, by the way. Let's go with the good parts. Right, but also an astonishing person who is deeply devout. And it was actually an act of, from what I've read, something where the – I guess the founder, he believed to have been spoken to and was almost in a position where he was about to step into the leadership role in Baha'i Faith. When this other person actually becomes centered as the transmitter of wisdom. But he becomes a disciple and a deep friend in it.

And when the leader's life ends, that becomes just too much to bear. Oh, wow. I have to admit, I haven't read the book written by the person I'm named after, and I probably should. It's a very big book. I'm always just so curious when people are brought up with one particular tradition, and then they say yes to another one. Because it sounds like that also has something that over the years has woven in and out of your life, sometimes playing more of a role, sometimes not. And it's

something that you seem to have come back to, to a certain extent. Right. Yeah. I mean, religion's interesting to me because, I mean, my mother and my uncle were raised Jewish by my grandparents, who I knew well into my 20s. And I mean, it's interesting to me because, I mean, my mother and my uncle were raised Jewish by my grandparents, who I knew well into my 20s. And I mean, it's hard to sort of draw the line with these things, but I don't think they would say they were super devout or orthodox. I think they were a normal, air quotes, Jewish family who certainly culturally Jewish food traditions, holidays, things, but not very, very serious. So the notion of my uncle and my mother being 19 and 21 or something like that in New York City in the early 70s and sort of realizing there's more out there wasn't as much of a huge rejection of everything they'd been taught. And because I think a lot of people go through that, like, oh, I hated being raised Christian or whatever it is. And I realized

there's a better thing out there. I think it was more that they didn't feel super attached religiously to their upbringing, and then suddenly did feel really spiritually attached to the Baha'i faith and specifically the people that they met in New York. And it was very much about equality and racial equality and harmony and happiness and, you know, all people from different walks of life kind of trying to get to the same great place. So that's interesting. And how that was sort of passed down to me is my childhood, incredible Baha'i memories, but not religious memories. We weren't going to church or going to services or doing things like that. I mean, I have poems memorized, things, passages

that I still know from hearing them, but it was a lot of potlucks and parties. And when I say parties, you know, Baha'is don't drink. So not those kinds of parties, but like really festive daytime things with music. And just I just remember the sort of happiest, most positive environment I've ever been in my life. So for that reason, religion to me was never this sort of scary thing that I had to challenge and go out and figure out. It just never really mattered that much to me, I think, in a good way. And when we moved to Salt Lake City, and obviously there were tons of Mormons, I think people were trying, non-Mormons were like, oh, this must be so weird. Don't talk to those people, all that kind of

stuff. And I didn't have that attitude at all because there is nothing to fear. So I went to Mormon things. I went to non-Mormon things and it was all just totally fine. It wasn't a big deal. And so I think I've kind of been taught that religion can be good in some ways, but it's not that important of a thing. And at least in my family's life. Yeah, so interesting. So you brought up your uncle Alan also, who it sounds like, you know, was always a big part of your life. Oh, yeah. Huge part. And again, also deep into the world of music, like a musician in his own right in the world of jazz.

And when you were young, as you described, a lot of your time is spent up in Amherst, as your mom's going to school and pursuing her degrees. But then a couple months of the year, you're back down in the city. So if you don't know New York City, especially at the time that you're talking about, right? You know, like Canal Street in, I guess it was early the 80s. Yeah, even 70s. All the way in the west side. This is not a type of kid where you normally think, oh, awesome place for little kids to be running around and playing and hanging out.

But your uncle kind of gets involved in creating this, you could probably call it an iconic space, 501 Canal, for a window of time. And you're in that space with him and with the family and with all these stunning musicians. I'm so curious what that was like for you as a kid. Yeah. I mean, it's so crazy because when you're that young, and this is from age one to seven or something like that, you don don't or i didn't realize you know your life and the life of the people around you is what you know of course you watch tv and see movies and things but that's that's like fantasy but i thought my childhood was normal because that's what i did and i wasn't you know so so i was yeah when i stayed with alan

in new york i mean it was a loft but like not the way you think of a loft in 2022. This is like a building on the sort of, you know, empty, dead part of Manhattan at the time that had been abandoned for 20 years that my godfather, a guy named Cooper Moore, a musician, somehow found and negotiated this deal that they would rent it for, I think, $500 a month for the entire building. This four-story building with this retail space on the floor. And apparently he did tons of sort of fixing up and made it barely livable, which it was. And there are several musicians each had their own floor or shared their floor with one person. And all those people, I mean, they paid $125 a month rent each. So they barely worked some of them had like quick delivering lunch kind of jobs or things but they mostly just played music there

were no neighbors nobody to complain and they put on these concerts in the retail space on friday nights and there's there's a really incredible village voice article from 1974 where gary giddens who's like the sort of well-known village voice jazz critic says some really great things about the space specifically and about uh and about the people playing it's called taking chances at 501 canal which is just such a cool thing to me but um yeah it was a really amazing place to be and I played all the time and my uncle bought me a drum set when I was two and there was there was one there so we have tons of pictures and actual recordings that I still have of me playing drums when i'm three and i'm playing saxophone you can hear my mother's voice in

the background it's really incredible whoever's idea it was to record those i'm so glad they did but beyond that it was just a barely livable so scary building not not dangerous no crime there was nobody around more just like felt like honestly like a floorboard could fall out from under you and you'd fall down a floor. That never happened, but it really felt that run down and sort of not livable, wouldn't pass code. But I mean, as a young kid, I'm just thinking also, it must have been so interesting to have normalized just having characters and music around you 24 seven and just be like right well this is just life you know and and so profoundly different than your sort of like typical upbringing you know in so many different ways and also like this struck me also it sounded like you were really

the only kid right yeah you know so you get like that's funny yeah right like you so you just by default you have to get really comfortable in this world of super creative you know the performance oriented adults and learn how to navigate that space yeah and i don't think that it's an interesting point i don't think there was a tv there i don't remember one and alan taught saxophone lessons that's what he did for a living basically and so some days he'd be like i have three lessons whatever go hang out so i would sit in the next room i don't't remember watching TV. I guess maybe I would just like draw or read what people do back then and just hear these saxophone lessons from the other room for three hours. And then, you know, then we'd go eat or go walk around New York or do whatever we

did. Yeah. Did you have any sense at that early age? You know, like I know certainly that you became really deeply drawn to music and, you music and the creation of it and then the business side of it. At that really early age, did you have any the feeling was this makes me feel a certain way obviously this is there's no like i hope i can try to do this i i never imagined that where there was a way to not do it if that makes sense there it wasn't like you know especially when you're that young i wasn't it was i guess it was my version of like a baseball player or a fireman or a superhero or something that you really aspire to be, except I was surrounded with these superheroes, people who actually were doing it. And in a cool way, none of them were famous. None of them were stars. They were almost living in poverty, but they were really, really happy

and they loved it. And I'm sure I absorbed all of that. So it, you know, this all changed when I saw Kiss, which I write about in the book. But until that point, music wasn't drugs and superstars and women and all that stuff. It was just actually music. And you did it because you loved it, and that's what you wanted to do. And I saw these people who had made so happy. So I think that showed me that it wasn't a fantasy. It was so realistic. That's who I was raised by. fall away at some point, but never having the seed of possibility that this could actually be the thing planted, almost actually being dissuaded from it. Because I think a lot of parents look at that and freak out and be like, almost nobody's going to support themselves. Get a real life, get a real job. What are you doing? Right. Okay.

So you bring up Kiss. This is another fun point of intersection between you and I. That legendary 1976 cassette tape, Kiss Destroyer. Oh, it's a cassette tape for you. It was an LP for me. For me, it legendary 1976 cassette tape, Kiss Destroyer. Oh, it's a cassette tape for you. It was an LP for me. For me, it was a cassette tape. It changed my life. Wow.

Tell me more. Until this school bully actually forced me to give him my tape along with my lunch one day. Oh, no. I was the fifth grader walking around with a green Kiss Army jacket. I was like, there was something about that band and that album that just cracked me open in a lot of ways. I was brought up in a household similar to you, but not as surrounded by music and musicians, but this was different. It seems like it did

something really powerful to you as well. Yeah. I remember being in school. I guess when I bought it, I think I was in first grade. I was five in Amherst, Massachusetts. I remember being in school. Maybe a kid had a Kiss t-shirt or maybe there was a magazine. I knew the imagery. I think it was impossible to be a kid in the 70s and not at least know who Kiss was and have an idea and to be able to see those four faces. So I knew it. I hadn't, I don't think I'd heard them. And my mother and I were at the UMass bookstore, this huge, you know, college bookstore. And I think I was there though to buy the record. I wasn't surprised by the record. I was there to get it. This was going to be the first record that I bought on my own, obviously not with my money, but, and found it. And I mean, that cover, that cover still gives me the chills. That's the funny thing about that band. I mean, that cover, that cover still gives me the chills. That's the funny thing about that band. I mean, of course, I'm 50 now. I know a lot more about music, about business, about all of it.

But you can't take away how you remember feeling when you were that age. It's just impossible. And I'm so glad that it's impossible to take away. I can look at it now and say, OK, maybe they're not the best musicians or maybe it was just all marketing. But I don't care about any of that all i care is that for a few years of my life it made me feel so so so good and i remember that feeling and that's that's a really exciting thing yeah so great there there was just something so and and they have gotten knocked in so many different ways like just like shtick and marketing but the thing i've noticed lately paul stanley's twitter is like he's like the most wonderful kind soul if you don't follow him

you absolutely should it's i mean i like him so much more than i already did he just seems like a great guy uh that's amazing and for those who don't know he was the lead singer um so it's funny that you like those that you mentioned like the four the four faces and their jam was for much of the early years, they were masked. They always had this face of makeup. One of my crowning moments as a kid was Paul Stanley was actually dating Donna Dixon, who used to be on one of those early TV shows. Donna's nephew was in the school play where I grew up. So Donna and Paul show up in the audience. Unmasked.

Unmasked. Without the makeup on. How old were you at the time? I was probably like 13 or something like that at the time. And it's going all around. The theater and the school and everyone's like, that's him, that's him, that's him. You know, obviously way before smartphones or else it would have been the theater in the school and everyone's like that's him that's him that's him you know obviously

way before like smartphones or else it would have been all over the place but that's incredible yeah so like we had this inside skewer like we know what he looks like he just looks like a guy from new york right exactly you know with like long curly hair it's like that's amazing wow i don't have that that story. I've never met any of them. Yeah, it was pretty crazy. But it's interesting because it's kind of like a flag in the sand. A couple of years later, you end up at a Kiss concert with your mom. Yeah. Wow. Which I never got to see them actually perform live. The first concert for me was Cool in the

Gang, actually. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, it's pretty solid. But for for you it seems like there's all this stuff swirling around right there is literally like there's music in your dna there is like you're brought up in a culture of music you start to really attach to it in a lot of different ways and your dad is not present in in any way shape or form right but there are these touch points that you share where like just a random time, there'll be a moment where you meet him or you're brought into a room or you describe this experience actually going into Electric Leyland Studio, this iconic studio. Actually, share a bit

about that experience because you were what, seven or eight years old then? Yeah, I think I was eight. I was with my uncle in New York. I lived in Amherst at the time, but spent lots of time in New York with Alan. So the weird connection with my father, it's so funny writing a book, and I'm sure you talk to lots of authors, but there's so much more that I wrote, of course, and you edit and you pull out what's important. So sometimes I can't even remember what's in it and what's not for that reason. But this I know isn't in it, which is just interesting. The first time my uncle met my father, he was a student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. And my father, Roy Ayers, was playing at the, I forget the name of the place. Anyway, great jazz club, the Jazz Workshop in Boston.

And Alan worked the lights at the pop club next door just so he could go to the jazz workshop for free and see all these people. So we saw Pharaoh Sanders, saw everybody. And Roy Ayers was playing there for a week. And so Alan just started talking to him every night. Alan was this young musician and he said, you know, Roy was really nice. And they talked a bunch. And then he ended up somehow running into Roy in New York. And Roy was like, Oh, you're in New York. Come play. I'm playing tonight. And Alan sat in with him and played some song like it sounded like Roy was like this really like, nurturing, great guy who was basically saw my uncle as this young aspiring musician and did what he could to help him. And I think my uncle sort of obviously latched on to that and liked him. So the first scene in the book is my uncle and my mother walking into a jazz club in New York and Roy is just there to see somebody play. They run into him. Alan starts talking to him and my mother says, this is the person I'm going to have a kid with all the stuff we just talked about. But so Alan kind of had this certainly not deep, but

like existing musician peer relationship with Roy. And they would run into each other once in a while in New York because it's a small town. And that happens to me every day still. So he ran into Roy once on the street when I was about eight years old. And Roy said, I'm recording at electric lady, this super famous studio in New York, bring Nabil by.

And so Alan brought me by this. I remember really well. There are other stories about meeting him as a kid that I totally don't remember, but this I can smell the place. I can do it probably because Electric Lady was exciting and important. through the glass and there were a bunch of people there and i remember being really excited because kiss destroyer was recorded at electric lady and so more than like wow i'm gonna meet my father it was seriously oh my god i wonder if kiss is here right now like that's where my brain was and i really truly wondered it they'd recorded every album there to that point i think so it was a it was a real possibility um and then roy came out and just kind of like, it wasn't mean, but it was this very, very weird conversation where he just kind of came out and everyone was like, great job, that kind of thing. And he looked at me and he pointed at me and he said, do you want some tempura? And I just said, no.

And that was it. And then he said, what about you? And started talking to other people. And you're too young. I was too young to realize that was awkward or maybe he could have done more. But I definitely felt like something was wrong in the room. It felt like what he should have done is said hi or something more than just like this weird passing conversation. And then we didn't hang out for very much longer. Alan and I left. And that was that. That was one of the first times I actually remember spending any time with my father. Yeah. Had you ever talked to Alan about that moment and whether, because clearly this is so many years later and it's burned into your memory, like whether he had a take on what happened in that moment? His thing is always, him and my mom are kind of similar. My mother's thing, I think, she hasn't said this, but this is what I get from it, that the many times we ran into him or even tried to see him, my mother's objective was secondarily to let me deal we made, it worked. Look how happy my son is. This is Nabil. And every time we met, she would just like, you know, dominate the conversation with

just like all the facts about me. She could let him know. And that's pretty obviously why we were there, which is, you know, great. She was proud of us and she should be. My uncle's a lot more mellow about it. And he obviously didn't have the same relationship and the same feelings. His thing was always just like, Roy's a great guy guy if you can spend a minute with him you should but it was never i was never regretful we didn't leave there i remember leaving and we just started talking about all the fun things we were gonna do and it was new york and it was great it was there was zero like wow i'm so sorry i wish he treated you better. Like nothing like that. So in a weird way, I never had any kind of that negativity around him. It was always just like,

that's what it was tonight. Maybe that'll happen again in a year. Yeah. It's almost like there's expectation baked into that also. Also you describe it another moment, I guess a couple of years later where you're kind of like on the street and you run into him and his family. And, and like nobody was introduced as like, Oh, this is this. But at the same time, you're like, Oh wait, there are these other kids. They're actually like my half siblings.

Yeah. Um, which is really interesting because so much of what you write about as, as your upbringing is like, there's no sense of lack. Like you're, you write about like, yes, I had a mom, but I had an uncle and had a rich life and everything was there. And it was never like, we're missing this thing. Everything was full. But then when you describe those kind of random and rare moments, you know, it's, it's almost like, oof. Yeah. And that's, you know, some of those, some of those, I can remember what I felt like at the time, but what's more interesting is to sort of look at all of them and think how they make me feel now. And when you sort of weave them all together, it does sort of change the narrative. Not so much like he should have done something different, but I, in a weird way, wish...

I mean, I was a kid. What can I do? But I wish that I'd had the sort of the thought process or the coping skills to realize more in the moment and think about what I would have wanted or needed instead of just rolling through it. But I mean, when you're eight or nine or 10, you just don't. Yeah. And I mean, maybe what you needed during that moment was pretty much being satisfied by what you had. So it was like, kind of like not this deep yearning that maybe for someone else it would have been. Right. And I'm really, really thankful and glad, and these are just not the people they are, but that in any of those situations, my mother or my uncle never said, you know, started a confrontation with him or an argument,

like something like that. I think that would have made me feel horrible and I would have horrible memories of it. And I would, of course, think a lot less of him. And, you know, there was never anything close to that. And I'm glad. Yeah. MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic.ca slash future MBA. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun.

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The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. You also write about what it was like growing up, like your dad's black, your mom's white. The early days were mostly in Amherst, which is a really diverse community. It's a lot of academics.

It's a lot of kids of academics. And then you end up in the village in the city at Little Red, this legendary place, by the way, like former revolutionary kids go there, stuff like that. Again, like super diverse. And then you, like your mom gets a job and you guys make this jump out to, as you mentioned earlier, Salt Lake City, which is, you know, like largely white, largely Mormon. It had to have been so interesting for you to go from this space where sort of like everyone, all different backgrounds, all different people, and you're all kind of like hanging out together to this space where all of a sudden, for the first time, it seems like you become more aware of the fact that,

oh, like one of these things is not like the other. Yeah, it really, I mean, Salt Lake, it's a beautiful place. And I lived there for seven years and really loved it. But at first, when you don't know if you're gonna love it, it was so weird. I mean, it was like, it really was like being dropped into a TV set or a movie or something. I've never been any place where people looked so much the same, or there was zero visible chaos. Everything was just so sort of orderly and clean, and perfect. And everyone everyone looked happy and everyone walked at this sort of mellow pace. It was really crazy to go from Amherst and Greenwich Village to that. But yeah, I mean, I'm just so glad that for those first 10 years of my life, I had this baseline where I was never the weird kid. So, you know, as a half black, half Jewish son of a young single mother i could have very easily you know with a middle eastern name it's like you know on paper it's terrible and my mother was on welfare all this stuff i mean it could have been so so bad in so many ways but my mother

always made sure to put us in these situations where it wasn't where it was really good where we were surrounded by great people especially in amher I mean, the kids with two parents and one race were the weird kids. So many kids were mixed race and only had a mother, only had a father. It's just really, that's what it was. And so I think having that as my baseline made it so that when I got to Salt Lake, of course, I noticed something was different. And I really felt it immediately. But I had this 10 years of confidence and of knowing what it felt like to belong that there is this part of me that I think even at 10 was like, well, I'm not going to be the weird kid, even though obviously I am for so many reasons. I'm just going to lean into the things that I have in common with these people and try to blend in. And obviously,

I could never blend in completely, but I made lots of friends and it was great. But I think some of it was just an attitude. And that came from 10 years of, you know, luckily, not standing out. Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting. I know you, much later in life, I think it was probably a couple years back, you wrote a piece for The Root, which reflects on some of this a bit. And the way that you describe it in that early piece, the reflection is kind of like

there was a lot of things that externally you could have looked and said, oh, there should be struggle, or there should be alienation, or there should be dealing with all of these isms. And you're kind of like, but I was pretty good. Which was an interesting piece for you to write isms and you're kind of like, but I was pretty good. Which was interesting piece for you to write because like, and you got some heat for that at the same time. So much heat. That's what I was just going to say. I mean, that was one of the first things

I published. The interesting thing about writing, I've never really been a writer. I've always liked it and I loved it in college. It's the only A I ever got in college. And then I started working in music and playing in bands and that was that. But somehow I just started writing. I was writing about bands I was in and about the record store I owned and all this fun stuff. And my wife was the one that said, and at the time, boyfriend and girlfriend, we'd been dating for maybe a year. And she was the one that said, you can write about your bands and all this fun stuff, but really you need to write about your father and your race because that's what interests you. And that's what will interest other people. And it really, really scared me,

because I knew she was right. And I thought, well, how do I even do that? I don't know how to do that. And I just started kind of writing things. And that turned into what that root piece is, which is kind of it's to me, it's weird. I don't like it that much. But I love what it did. And it's kind of as you described, just me saying, I'm half black, half white, had a really lucky, interesting life where it was never that hard for me, at least certainly compared to other stories I've heard. And the end, I mean, it's longer than that, but that's kind of the thesis. And as you say, tons of terrible comments, hates on Twitter, emails, so much stuff. And I read all of it.

And all of that told me that I could keep writing about those topics because it didn't make me feel bad. You know, the comments are like, you know, screw you and your easy life. Here is my story. And it's like, well, that's great. I'm sorry to hear that. I wasn't replying to people. But in my head, sorry to hear that. You should write about it or you should talk about it.

I'm just telling my story. I'm not saying you should do this. It wasn't an advice piece. It was simply a sort of slightly autobiographical short piece. So doing that, getting that heat and knowing that the heat didn't bother me that much helped me think like, oh, wow, I could write about all of this then. It's going to be okay. Yeah. Now I'm fascinated by why the heat didn't bother you because for so many others, Me too. I've written a piece like that, put it out there, gotten a ton of public heat, and been like, okay, I'm out. This writing thing is not for me. Maybe I'll journal because I just need to get it out or be creative. But nobody's ever going to see another word that I write. And for you, you're like, oh, no no this is a signal that like to go deeper yeah i don't i'm not sure why i felt that i'm really glad i did and i i wasn't sure i would i mean as soon as the root agreed to publish the

piece it wasn't out yet my wife is the one who said don't look at the comments not because bad comments existed but because we knew they would yeah because comments exist and it's the internet and and she's you know i think she and maybe other friends are like oh the comments and and i was really scared i was like i've been told to not look at the comments but i'm just gonna look at them and i read all of them and of course some i actually felt physically i remember feeling in my like stomach and chest bad but then it went away. And I just was able to sort of rationalize that that's who people are. And you can't base what you do on somebody's 10-word version of it. Yeah. I wonder if in no small part, we just took a huge leap forward into your writing life and

skipped over the music life, which we're going to dive back into. But maybe actually the link back to is to a certain extent, you have existed in the music industry, both as a creator or performer on the business side in so many different ways, so many different levels, you've been exposed on stages behind the mic, like in the business room on like, and that industry is so like, is so, I mean, talk about negative negative feedback like you put something into the world and for sure you're gonna get a lot of people who love it and then a lot of people who hate it and like i wonder if that was like decades of exposure therapy for you leading up to it i weirdly haven't thought about that comparison that surprises me because it's a really good one i mean i played in

bands especially i was in this rock band in the early 90s in Seattle called The Lemons. And we toured with tons of different bands. And we would kind of get paired with punk bands sometimes. But we weren't really a punk band. There are like some punk leaning elements. But at a real punk show, you know, we were the four wusses on stage. And I mean, I've been at shows where bottles were thrown at us. I've absolutely been booed and hissed and all. I mean, all of it in person, live with four of us on stage and, you know, anywhere from 10 to 1,000 people in the room who visibly and audibly dislike you and want you to stop doing what you're doing. So I guess that's a good point. If I could get through that, then, you know, pressing send on an email and putting it online is nothing. No, I love that's a good point. If I could get through that, then pressing send on an email and putting it online is nothing. No, I love that because it makes sense that it would in some way, shape, or form have developed that muscle in you.

So you end up going to college. You end up in Seattle. You end up playing a lot in college. And there's a growing aspiration from the time that you're a kid.'re like i'm going to be in a band you're studying drums you eventually learn guitar also and you're and you're doing it i think your earliest band you like played their their their opening set in your living room um right as a kid yeah right um and then you know you're sort of like you're doing it you're in college you're performing around um you get an internship at polygram and but it sounds like this whole time, especially in the early days, there are two things going on with you. One is I love music. I love performing. But the other is it sounds like you had this fierce curiosity about the business side,

even from the earliest days. Yeah. I can easily trace it back to not only the concert you just talked about where I was a kid, seven or eight years old, that my friends and I put on in our living room. But that I knew to like, well, we want people to come to this, so we'll charge admission. I'll make a poster. I'll draw the poster. I'll put it up at the laundromat, which is the place that everybody gets information in our little community. And then some people came and they paid. And then at the end, the three of us sat there and counted the money and we split it up.

And that very honestly is like that's my first step into the music business you know playing music doing the thing and then also trying to let people know about it and trying to get paid for it so it's really i always realized that there was a connection between the two and then the other thing is that labels on actual records in the center of the record you know for those of us who listen to records are used to i started to notice that certain records had the same label and i didn't know exactly why but obviously my kiss records and my village people records both said casablanca on them which meant something i didn't know what it meant but i was paying attention to it and i was also you probably were doing the same but just devouring those packages i mean when you're you know seven years old and have a record i mean reading every word over and

over again trying to find meaning and things so so i noticed labels and um yeah at a very early age kind of at least had an idea that there was more than just playing music yeah i mean it's interesting because that that becomes a thread that really like, you know, like never lets go of you. So there are and you're playing around um lemons as you described eventually get picked up by mercury and it's kind of like a shortish run with them but around then also you're like a couple years out of college and i would imagine so many of your friends are you know they're getting their the mainstream jobs this job and this job and this job, you decide to open a record store in Seattle. I know, right? I think it was just a constant avoidance of a real job, which I managed to do until now, I guess, which is still, it's real. But yeah, I just couldn't. I mean, when I

graduated college, it was a weird time because people don't understand this now, but it was, you know, mid-90s in Seattle was not a hard time for a college graduate to get a job it might not have been an incredibly high paying or amazing job but like if you went to college and graduated you could get a job in seattle at a company doing something there's boeing and microsoft i mean all that stuff was already happening starbucks was growing. I had a lot of accountant friends. So everyone from college who wanted to had a job and bought some suits and was going to nice dinners. It was getting nicer apartments. They were getting nicer cars. All these things were happening to all my friends within a year or two of college. And I was like the sort of ragtag buddy who would go along and, oh, we can use your corporate credit card at dinner.

Great. Let's go to a crazy dinner. And I was kind of the beneficiary of all their perceived success. And I just knew I didn't want to do that. It sounded terrible and it looked terrible. And it's not that I didn't want to work. It wasn't the laziness. It was that I just had completely different goals.

And I knew that that wasn't the road to get there. My goal was either to play music or to work in the music business. And it was really both ideally playing music first and working in the industry later. And so the easiest option for me was getting a job at a record store, which was not a combination of the two, but the thing that I knew could get me towards both at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

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Right. This is such an interesting time to be in Seattle in the music world also, right? Yeah. This is such an interesting time to be in Seattle in the music world also, right? Because you have late 80s, early 90s grunge hits. And Seattle becomes like the center of the universe when it comes to music. And it's like all of a sudden, all of the music that everyone was listening to before that was made in the blink of an eye, almost irrelevant and almost bedeviled in a lot of ways. People are like, that's not real music. We're reclaiming it. And Seattle is the place to be. Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, all these bands that dominate the music scape for so long. I'm so fascinated what

it was like for you to be in that space. And then shortly after, you're not just getting a job at another place, you open your own store, Sonic Boom, which becomes one of the epicenters of the music world in Seattle at that moment in time. Yeah. It's a funny combination because comparing... So the store I started to work at right after college was Easy Street Records, which is still in West Seattle. It's a great store. And that's where... I mean, it was so fun. That's where Chris Cornell from Soundgarden and Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam. These people who are literally the biggest rock stars in the world lived right near the store, would come in, would buy CDs, would hang out,

would talk, and it wasn't a big deal. This is a very Seattle thing. They didn't have security guards. They weren't showing up in limos. That's part of the difference between you talking about I assume late 80s LA glam MTV rock compared to this sort of more authentic Seattle thing was that these people really were real people. You'd see them at shows at clubs. They're never body guards. There's nothing that just wasn't the vibe and no one really bothered them that I saw. So what was fun about doing that was I was still just a fan. Even though I had this record store job, I didn't know any of those people. I didn't know the people that worked at sub pop or any of like the really cool labels.

I knew people like major labels, but I was buying tickets to shows, especially even in college before I got the record store job. You know, I was just a normal person trying to do things and I loved it. And I like having those stories more than I think I would like knowing everybody and being in the scene. And then what

happened later is we opened Sonic Boom in 1997. And so late 90s, early 2000s, I was absolutely in the scene. I knew everybody. And that's when the scene changed. And this is sort of the new indie rock, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, Sleater-Kinney, all those bands. A lot of those people were our friends. And those people came in the store and we went to their shows and we hung out with them and it was the opposite of my experience with the other seattle where i was outside and now i was totally in it and those stories are fun but i prefer the just being a fan and you know feeling lucky when waiting in line to buy a record at midnight at tower records all those things really fun yeah that's amazing um when i was in college i was a club dj and um one of our roommates actually we used to call him casey case and

because you you could literally say to him hey stew um tell me like the top three on like the r&b charts from like some prior year on a particular week and he knew every single one he to my recollection actually ended up at Sub Pop in the late 90s. I think he's still there, actually. What's his name? Stu Myers. Oh, yeah. That's his still there.

Oh, no kidding. That's wild. I remember tracking him down like years ago or just looking him up and I was like, oh, that's so cool. It was such a part of him. And then he just, he went into it and he never left. That's awesome that he's still there actually. That's amazing.

Yeah. So, I mean, you're deep into the industry, you're playing around. Does there come a time, you know, because at a certain point being on the, on the artist side is hard. You're basically living a double life. Like you're running a business. You've got this actually super successful music business and you're still out there trying to

quote, make it. At some point, does that just become like you reach a point where you're like... And I think about this sometimes with actors in New York also. Does there come a time where you reach a certain age or a certain number of no's where it's just like, okay, it's time.

Right. I suppose so. I mean, the way in which I was either lucky or sort of maybe built things to work more for me was that it was never the only thing I was doing. So I didn't have to completely rely on it financially or even emotionally. You know, I loved having a record store. I started putting out records and did my own small label that i still do and so all those things are all tied in but they were you know the record store was this incredible safety net that was doing well

enough that that's what i did for a living and i also played in bands and so it allowed me to do that without thinking in a way like i should give this up and and at least with the dot dot dot and figure out my life or and get a real job because luckily i'd already kind of done that on the side so it made it easier to keep doing it and it wasn't i mean of course i absolutely wanted to be in a big band and wanted to make it but it was still really really fun and satisfying to be in a band that didn't get big and that was just like know, still played great shows and made records and had really incredible stories and had a great time.

So it's not binary. It's not like, well, I never made it. And so my music career sucked. It's, you know, it's somewhere in between a lot of ups and downs and moments where it absolutely felt like we'd made it, whether we were playing some huge show with thousands of people or signing a big record deal. And then so many down points too.

Yeah, it's so interesting because music is one of those industries where there's so much mythology about what you quote have to do if you want to try and go for it. And not infrequently part of the mythology that I've heard is it's the burn the ships thing. It's like you have got to be all in everything else, like not devote a single ounce of energy to anything else because it's going to be brutal and it's going to take potentially decades. And if even 1% of you is not devoted to making it, it's just not going to happen. Right. But that's not true. Right.

The thing no one will ever tell you, because no one wants to hear this because it takes control away from you, is that you need to be very lucky right and you need timing to work for you my friend good friend in seattle his analogy is like you can be whatever the best chinese chef in the world but if people don't want to eat chinese food at that time your restaurant's not going to do well it doesn't mean you're not a good chinese chef or that your food doesn't taste good it means that's not the appetite or the trend or the whatever at the moment and so much of the thing in music is like this objectivity i mean it's if you're the fastest runner you will win the olympics it doesn't matter if people like you or if you get lucky if you're the fastest person it's you know you'll win because

you're the fastest period and music doesn't have, but people want to treat it as if it does. So people will say, I can't believe so-and-so won a Grammy. They're not even that good at their instrument. Like it doesn't, no one said you have to be good at your instrument. You have to reach people emotionally and be lucky enough to have people that were able to help you do that. And that's kind of what it is. Yeah. I often wonder whether we're talking about music or writing or painting, whatever it is, any sort of form of creative expression, whether part of it is really you develop your own skill, you develop your own sense of taste. And you get to a place where you actually have a high level of skill and you really know what you are, like who you are. Right. You have your voice.

Your voice and all that. And then maybe, like you said, those things happen to coalesce at around the time where the zeitgeist happens to say that's what we want. But maybe the zeitgeist is actually 10 years out. And sometimes the stories you hear about people touring in vans and doing this stuff for 10 years, it's just them not giving up long enough for the timing thing to kind of circle back. Or maybe it's just them actually loving what they're doing, too. That's what's always interesting to me. I can't think of a band, but some huge band will do a reunion tour.

And someone will say, why are they doing that? Don't they have enough money? It's like the money might not be the reason. They might have enough money? It's like the money might not be the reason. They might have enough money. Maybe they love playing music or maybe they love going to a different city and getting that attention every night. And maybe that's the only thing they know how to do. And they really miss it. You know, there are so many reasons people do it and so many different sort of ways in and different goals.

It's always been really interesting to me. The advice thing, too. I mean, so many people ask me. I work for a record company. Will ask me to listen to something and just give them advice and it's really really hard for me to do because my advice no matter what it sounds like is you know the question is do you really like what you're doing do you love it do you believe in it and if they say yes which they always do then the advice is then keep doing it and go do it more, go play live, write more music, do all of it. But like, I'm not going to sit here and say, make the chorus happen twice instead of

once or make the guitars louder or change the lyrics. That's for you to decide and hopefully reach people with it. But that's, I can't tell you what you should do. Yeah. It's so interesting because especially now when, when people are starting so much of – I think the newer mythology is, well, success in that business in particular is algorithmically based. Right. Which it is in some cases. Right. And to a certain extent, given the platforms out there that sometimes will drive a ton of new eyeballs and ears to your work that plays into it. But I, it just like, it, it hits me so wrong because when you start to be driven by that, you know, then it's like, maybe you even figure out the algorithm that lets you amass a certain

amount of people to follow you around. But have you then in doing that, like said yes to so much of what you like have figured out will make you quote successful that the essence of what you're doing no longer actually is what you want to do right absolutely it's such an interesting dance so you're deepening into the business and at the same time building your own life um eventually you end up back in new york i guess around 08 ish um brooklyn and then really moving um you still have sonic boom but you're completely non-operating Eventually, you end up back in New York, I guess around 2008-ish, in Brooklyn. And then really moving.

You still have Sonic Boom, but you're completely non-operating. And you're moving into the industry side, the label side. It sounds like it was around then also, or within years, where you're starting to get curious about your dad again. Yeah. I think that the timing was such that toward the end of my stint in Seattle, which was about 15 years, it was a long time. I think in 2006, I decided I wanted to meet my father as an adult. I mean, he'd play in Seattle every year or two, and I would see his name in the listings. And just really, just like, oh, interesting, he's playing, would be that quickly.

It just never occurred to me to do anything more than that. It wasn't of interest. Occasionally, someone would ask me if I was going to see him and I was, oh no. But at that point too, not a lot of people knew. I never talked about it, but there was a point where I think it was actually weirdly emerged after my, just my regular doctor's checkup. And my doctor asked me about my family history. And again, I was like, I don't, I still don't know. I think maybe I said it sort of frustratingly, like you asked me this question every year, look at the notes. And then I saw he was coming. And I think I thought, you know, I'm 35 ish,

he's 70 ish. If nothing else, for those reasons, maybe it's time to try to meet him. I wonder what would happen. And, and some of it in my head, I think was also I'm old enough and successful enough that he won't be threatened by me, you know, coming to ask for money or something like that. So, so that that's always in me trying to contact him has been this sort of insecure part of the narrative, me pushing my success forward, if only to make it clear that I don't want anything. So I, I got ahold of him long story short, and we went to lunch in Seattle and it was incredible. And we hung out for, I don't know, an hour and a half, two hours really got along great. I noticed it was so weird to sit across from this person and see him do things and laugh and make mannerisms that I know are exactly the

way that I do them. And to know that that is 100% from DNA, nothing else, there was no exposure. So it was really good. And then, and I walked away thinking, wow, that's amazing. I wish I'd done it earlier. I hope we can do that, you know, every six months or every year when I'm in New York, or he's here. And then he kind of trailed off. And I kept trying to get ahold of him. And he was would either blow me off or kind of not reply or something like that. And that's when, for the first time in my late thirties,

I started to kind of get angry, not because of anything in the past, but because of, but we just had this incredible meeting in a way. I think I was thinking you got off. So Scott free, let's just have lunch once a year. This is all I'm trying to do.

There's nothing else to it, but it just kind of, I don't think he was actively not doing it. I think he was just not interested. Yeah. And that was the deal. Right. Exactly.

It's like, that was the origin. Like that, that was the initial agreement. Yeah. It's so interesting. But that was, that was the agreement with your mom,

not with you, you know, when you reach a point where you have your own sense of agency and autonomy and identity, it's like, okay. Now, like, what's, autonomy and identity, it's like, okay. Now, like, what's the deal that I want? And like, there's no agreement with him. So like, how do we actually work that out?

And for you, it sounds like that also expands into, huh, well, you know, I'm not the only kid. So maybe if I can have the more regular relationship with him, like, I wonder what the rest of the family is like and whether that would be more points of connection for me to be able to really understand like, who am I? Where do I come from? Like who else is out there that that's related to me? Yeah. And that's, that's ultimately where it goes. And I mean, it really, things are really opened up and I found a lot of people and it's, it's

been so fascinating. It's still, it's been so fascinating. It's still, it's not still unfolding. There's nothing super new, but it was to the point where I'd started to write the book and most of it was me, you know, remembering things and pulling out things some 40 or so years of my life and really struggling to remember what it felt like backstage at this concert in Amherst in 1979. But then as I was writing it, I was kind of doing research and connecting with people. And then these incredible things would happen in real time. And so one day I would seriously be writing about that concert or something.

And the next day I would have lunch with a cousin who I didn't know existed who would tell me all these things. And I would be in a hotel room typing as fast as I could, just trying to chronicle this thing that happened an hour ago. So it was a really crazy exercise to kind of combine those two things. But the last quarter of the book was all happening while I was writing the first three quarters of the book, which is kind of crazy. That's amazing. But at the same time, how how cool is it? And things keep sort of like tracking back to the way the creative process works in music in so many ways. Like artists come into a studio, they have, you know, like they have songs, they have music written, they have lyrics and they have, but then when you get in the studio, everything gets blown up. I mean, yes, there's some of it that ends up like in the final cuts, but like, and i think you learn right and i wonder if you were feeling this on the writing side that it's good to go in well prepared and with like some sense of structure but if you hold on doggedly to what you think it should be rather than just opening up to what sort of like the universe is telling you it wants to be you're not going to get you're not going to

get the thing yeah no that's a great point this is totally and i've compared writing a book to releasing an album in so many ways but this is a new one but this is like me going in the studio with 15 songs that i really like but then writing the three best songs in the studio right and ditching some of the other songs right and and literally like the first time you step in the studio you actually didn't have the raw material, like it didn't exist in your head or in your experience to have been able to write it. It hadn't happened. Yeah. Right. I mean, talk about the muse dropping in at the right time. But it is all connected and driven by itself because all these new things happened because I was writing about these old things, which was forcing me to sort of dig deeper into them and reach out to people. And that would lead to something else. So it was really like this, this crazy loop.

Yeah. And while you're doing this also, I mean, so you end up back in New York, you end up stepping into the label side, this sort of like iconic US part of a bigger UK based label for AD. Therefore, and I guess fairly recently, now you're actually heading up the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, beggars. In the US. So you've been on that side for a long time. You've got this really tremendous,

you've been in the business. You've seen a lot. You've like repped some of the largest artists out there in terms of like the label and what you've been able to bring out to the world. Like this has become like your central thing. And yet a couple of years ago, you start to write on the side

as you described it first. Your wife's kind of like, I'll write about this and submit it around. And then all of a sudden, you're like, I'm writing a whole book about this. I'm so curious about, okay, so you're in an industry, a fiercely creative industry,

an industry that can be all consuming. Your creative output, like beyond certainly the creative element of running a company, was also performing. And when you swap on that different hat of, I'm going to write, to me, it's so interesting because it's like, do you feel like it's a similar impulse, but just a different channel of expression? Or is it a completely different impulse? It's pretty different to me because when I played music in bands, I was a drummer. I play guitar too, but mostly I was a drummer. And so I was never writing songs. I was never writing lyrics. I was never at the front of the

stage with the microphone. I was sitting in the back playing along to someone else's song. I make it sound kind of sad, but I loved it. It's a really fun and important job, but the drummer isn't usually the focal point. At shows, people used to ask me, I must be so nervous playing. And I was really never nervous unless it was a first show or something like that. But generally, it didn't matter. It's like, no one's looking at me. They're looking at that guy who wrote the lyrics, who's singing the lyrics. That's what people care about in music. And so there are a lot of ways to me in which writing is very similar to performing music or being in a band and definitely on the creative side. But for the first time, I'm doing all of it. So it's, you know, I'm writing the music. I'm the only voice

when I'm writing the words, writing the chapters, but it's all me. And there's no, I'm the joke in any band is like, oh, if you, if you fuck up, just look over at the guitar player and everyone will think they did it. But there's, there's nothing that there's no joke applies in my situation. It's all me. So that to me is very new. And of course I feel very raw and exposed, but I also like it. And I think the process of publishing a bunch of smaller pieces, of course, before I even thought about writing a book helped get to that point. And again, the music analogy, those were me releasing singles and then the book is the album. Yeah. So as we're having this conversation, it's sort of on the eve of this book hitting the world.

And the book is also, you know, you could have easily have said, I'm going to write a really cool inside the music industry book, you know, like, and I've got great stories. I've got great moments. I know all like all these famous people, I got, it would have been a really interesting book and a lot of people would have, would have really enjoyed it, but you, and it would have been quote on brand with who you are, with your career and all this stuff. It's the right moment in your life. It with who you are with your career and all this stuff it's the right moment in your life it's the right moment in your career to have a piece out there in the world like this yeah so it is interesting me that that you chose instead to say no like this

first really substantial piece of writing that i want to put into the world it's got to be deeply personal it's about me it's about my story it's about you know it's about my family it's about me. It's about my story. It's about my family. It's about race. It's about culture. It's about these moments in time. I'm curious about that. Yeah, you make a great point, and you're not the first to make that point that I could have written a music industry book. I think it's that, of course, the music industry interests me. I love it. It's always interested me. To me, it's this ever-changing, really exciting thing. And I get to work with different artists and different people, and it's so much fun. But for some reason, writing about it or even talking about it has never been that interesting to me. I've done panels and done things like that. And I do them because I should,

and that's part of my job. But I don't love it. And I don't get excited to do that. But this, writing about my life and my story, I think I was just naturally felt this pull and this excitement to do it. And it's almost hard to describe actually where it came from, but I think a lot of it came from, I'm not just telling stories. I'm actually, I learned so much as I was telling these stories. And so going into them forced me to think about the stories, meaning to think about my life more and who I am and where I came from and all these sort of heavy things. And it also really facilitated the process of more things happening and me connecting to more people, which helped me learn more, which helped connect me to more people. It's the loop again. So I think it was really obvious to me that I needed to do this because it wasn't about me saying what I know.

It was about me finding out what I should know. Does that make sense? Yeah. That's such an interesting distinction. Yeah. So when an artist on your label brings something new to market, very often there's a set of expectations and intentions wrapped around it. When you think about this book, which is personal, it's you. Do you have any of that wrapped around this book? Oh my God. I mean, yeah, I'm driving myself and other people crazy right now. So many expectations. And the expectations are not specific. It's not a number one new york times bestseller or you know a new york times review it's not so much specific things like that it's

just and i forget how much i was like this when i was in a band too it's like honestly these moments of like i can't believe everyone i work with isn't thinking about this book 24 hours a day and every little micro teeny thing they can squeeze out of this campaign. How is that not happening? And I saw I absolutely have that irrational brain. And then I, of course, have the very rational brain where I literally am on the other side of that thought every day of my life in my job running a record company. And I know artists feel like that. And I'm glad that I have both sides, because I mean, I'm pushing the publisher and the publicist and all these people. And they're all wonderful people who have helped so much and are great to deal with and are giving me so much time

and access. And I appreciate that. And I think that's just what it is. That's the push and pull. And some people are more demanding like me, and I try to be nice about it. I'm grateful. But I had a really funny conversation with a manager of one of our bands who's also a friend and he just read the book. And I said, I just told him everything I just said. And he said, yeah, everyone who works in the music business should have to put out some kind of creative thing

every 10 years just to remember what that feels like. And I think that's a really good point. In a weird way, I think it's making me, I mean, I was always like the guy who I used to be in a band. I, so I can really sympathize, sympathize with the artist and know what it feels like to be on that side. But I think I feel more like that now than I did two years ago, for sure. Because I can really, I mean, I'm waking up at night thinking about the smallest weird blog and wondering if somebody's gotten ahold of them about this book. It drives me nuts. It's like, oh, now maybe a little compassion for the artist now. It's like, that's right. That's what it feels like. So wonderful. I'm excited for it to hit the world. Me too. Thanks.

Feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation. So hanging out in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer out the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? I mean, I feel like I've done so, so far. I mean, to live a good life to me is to do the things you want to do to make yourself and others happy in doing them. Period. I think that's kind of it i'm sure there's more to it but that's that's what comes to my mind immediately is i mean i've been so lucky to somehow do exactly what i thought i should do and what i thought i wanted to do and to make a living doing it and to sort of be on this this weird combination of both sides where i've played in

bands and then i've put out tons of records by bands and helped those people in doing so and now i'm putting out this book and there are people helping me do that and then who knows it almost feels like an exchange back and forth where someone helps me i help them and so on and i like that part of it a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet you'll also love the conversation we had with Jimmy Vaughn about his life in music. You'll find a link to Jimmy's episode in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you appreciate the work that we've been doing here on Good Life Project, go check out my new book, Sparked. It'll reveal some incredibly eye-opening things about maybe one of your favorite subjects, you, and then show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning, purpose, and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes, or you can also find it at your favorite bookseller now.

Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. We'll be right back. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

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