You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - First Take Friday: Christian McBride & Inside Straight Live at the Village Vanguard

Episode Date: November 26, 2021

Peter and Adam listen to and break down the first track off of Christian McBride & Inside Straight "Live at the Village Vanguard" featuring Christian McBride (bass), Warren Wolf (vibraphone), Steve Wilson (saxophone), Carl Allen (drums) and YHI's own Peter Martin (piano).Preorder your copy of the album on CD or LP HEREListen to this tune on SpotifyHave a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hey. You know, it's Friday. Oh, I love Fridays. What does Friday mean to you? First, take Friday. I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin.

And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Music advice. Coming at you. And inspiration. Coming at you. And dope tracks. I was going to not say it. And then I,

we got to get that in there somehow. We got to get it. And it's got to come. We have a really dope track today. And I'm loving this. And I'm going to kind of surprise you a little bit with this one because you're on this track. Do you know that you're on this track?

Um, I know, but I trust you if that's what you're saying is happening. I think you are on this track. This is, uh, we're going to, we're going to listen to a track that you are on. It's a live track. It just got released in 2021. Okay. With a band called Inside Straight. Oh, okay.

Yeah. There's live at the vanguard. You're familiar with this album. Unless I was late to the gig that night, I think I'm on it. Yeah. I played that whole week. We're going to listen to the shade of the cedar tree, which I actually heard you play here when Christian was in town last time.

Christian McBride was in town last time. And, uh, I love this tune. And, uh, We're going to listen to that, but we should address one thing, Peter. Yes. And this isn't going to be evergreen, but today is as we're launching this, it's Black Friday. And it's Black Friday weekend for all of our listeners. Just head over to Open Studio Jazz.

You can head over to, you'll hear it.com as well. Yeah. If you've been on the fence about getting an Open Studio course or if you have courses and you've been thinking about getting a membership, this is your time. Just so, you know, this is, you know, whatever, prices are never going to be lower. It's actually true. Right. So go over there to Open Studio.

StudioJazz.com. We'll have, of course, have links here to all of our, it's, you know, we've got the biggest savings of the year, essentially. That's right. And I mean, it's, especially if you're thinking about becoming a member and you can go over to OpenCidoges.com and learn this doesn't happen often. Yeah, this is our, I mean, everything is our biggest savings. And it's really our time when we look forward to welcoming in new members of the community at, at this great affordable price. And you can kind of keep that going all year. So if you're thinking, a lot of times, you know, it's like the beginning of the year, it's like, oh, should I get a gym membership, so I get a new teacher or whatever.

Actually, you can keep it not only for the year. We have people that have signed up during Black Friday for memberships at highly discounted rates. And then as long as you stay a member, you keep that. It's never, even if we have price increases or whatever, you're locked in at that. And then there's never any obligation to stay part of the community or member is super easy to resign and leave, as they say, no problem, because we only want it for when you know you have time and you feel like it.

But we all like to save money and we love bringing people in. So it's a fun time because we're we're going. Would that be something you might be interested in? Yes. Yeah. We all like to save money. It might be. So let's get to our first take Friday today.

This is from, this is not, the album's not even released yet as we're. How do we have access to this thing? Because I literally don't have this. Well, it's on Spotify as a single. Oh, right. So we don't actually know if this is going to be the first track or is it. This is the first track I'm seeing. And I love this tune.

Right. It's the shade of the cedar tree. Yeah. And this is Peter, this is Christian McBride's Inside Street. It's Christian McBride. It is Steve Wilson. You know what his nickname is? What?

Wilsonian. Wilsonian. Isn't that great? That's pretty great. Yeah. It's Warren Wolf on the vibes. Yes. Don't make any jokes about him.

Who's on drums on this record? Carl Allen. Carl Allen, of course. Ever heard of him? A friend of the pod. Who is it? Who's on piano? Oh, no, I was the same.

Pedro Martinez. Pedro Martinez at the piano, my alter ego. And at the bass is, what's the guy's name? Ron Carter? No, that was the other guy we've been interviewed. It's Christian McBride. You ever heard of him?

Christian McBride, exactly. So tell us about this record, man. So first of all, congrats. It's incredible. Thank you. Playing your ass off. Well, this track, maybe it goes downhill afterwards. We'll have to see.

But before we listen to this, and I'm sure we'll talk about it. Like, what is it like? Not only just playing at the Village Vanguard with someone like Christian McBride, but recording an album at the Village Vanguard. It must feel so amazing to be in that history. Why don't you call it all four of them and ask what it's like to play with me at the Village man oh sorry that was a joke okay this is a podcast so it's hard my jokes

they don't always convey like if you saw me and you see that I'm laughing and stuff so you gotta give him a sense of that Adam legend in his own mind no but I mean you know I know that you have reverence for the vanguard and just being in that room and playing it's one of the greatest places you could ever play and I'm just wondering

like is it so cool to be like yeah I'm on these like live at the Vanguard record it must be amazing yes okay so I've played there you know quite a few times I've been super, super, super, you know, lucky and blast and all that to do that. But every time I play there, like, I don't play there often enough. I'm not like in the Vanguard orchestra where you play every Monday night.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But even there, I mean, do you get jaded if you're like, oh, God, it's Monday? Back at the Vanguard. I don't think so. But for me, I play there infrequently enough that it is special every time. I mean, every time I walk in there. And partly because, you know, I went there as when I was in, like, I must have been like 14 years old or 50.

I took a trip, like a boy's trip with my dad, father's son, a trip, like in the summer. Like, it was so spontaneous. It was either the day, I think it was that day or that my mom was out of town doing a teaching thing. And I think my sister was in college. She was gone. And my dad, like, got some time off from the symphony unexpectedly. He's like, he was going to be off the rest of the week. And he was like, hey, you want to go to New York?

And I was like, yeah, it'd be cool. He's like, yeah, we could go hear some music. And he's like, I have some friends. I need to catch up with there. And, like, we either left. that day driving from St. Louis or maybe it was that night and we'd left the next day. But it was like super, he's like, cool, we're going to go.

And so among other things, we went to the village vanguard because my dad was like, of course, I knew it from records and from legends already by then. But my dad had been there at least a couple times because when he was on tour in New York, they'd often go down to the vanguard to hear music, you know, after their show. So I saw Woody Shaw at the vanguard.

Steve Tourette was on trombone. Amazing. A very young Terry Lynn Carrington was on drones. First time I saw her. Wow. and Mulgrew Miller on piano. So it was like, I mean, it was amazing. And it was just, and it was in the vanguard.

I was like, wow. So there's really not a time I've been in there since then that I don't think about that. You know, that, like, so that's why it stays kind of late. It's never going to be like, oh, back again tonight. It's never going to be like that for me. Because it's, and then plus it basically looks the same as it did back in the mid-80s when I first went in there. So great. Well, let's listen to The Shade of the Cedar Tree.

This is Christian McBride, Inside Straight. Warren Wolf Steve Wilson Carl Allen Peter Martin Christmas Pride this song is called

The Shade of the Cedar Tree Oh you didn't have to announce it He did Maybe I'm just Project because I played With that I threw a bunch there

Yeah yeah I was I was just kind of going back In to find out when this was recorded Because you know We've generally

With that band That exact band We've played Every December For like I want to say Like eight years Like the last

eight years Or something sometime in December a week at the Vanguard. Christian General has like a residency. He's had it for a while where it can, I think this year, it's two weeks. And you know,

he's got like five different bands. Of course. And sometimes I think it's been as long as three weeks. But we always do it. I think we didn't do it last year because of COVID. There was, they were shut down. But this was actually 2014.

So this is a little while back. Yeah. A little bit early with this band. I mean, not the very beginning, but earlier to the beginning than we are now. Because I was listening, I was like, wait, I don't know.

I was like, that's not the last few years I could tell. I didn't realize it was that far back. But it's kind of fun because it's a little connection we have with the Vanguard. It's kind of our home. We've played a lot of different places. But we've played more there than anywhere because, you know, six nights, two sets a night and doing that every year. It's just a joy.

And I think that it does the vibe of it with the audience. You can feel not only when they're clapping, but you kind of feel it, you know, certainly between the solos when there's some clap, but you can kind of feel that energy there, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is nice, and that comes through on the recordings. I love this band so much, man, and I pick this tune because I think it really typifies

what's so great about Inside Straight, and, you know, the name Inside Straight kind of tells you what's going to happen. Like, there's no, there's no fooling with Inside Straight. There's no trickery. There's no, there's, it's not too cute. It's not trying to beat you over the head or make you sad. Right. It's just music that is so high level and,

feels so good. Last week we listened to Bill Charlap, I would say that this is like on a similar level of like the quality is so good and the musicianship at such a high level that everything that you guys play feels polished and swinging and incredibly

fun and joyous. So yeah, man. And you'll be back there at the Vanguard here. If you're listening now on Friday, what is that, Friday, November 26th? is when this episode is going to be released. You'll be at the Vanguard next week.

Yeah, starting November 30th. With this band. With this exact band. And it's going to be kind of a record release, a CD release. This is dropping on vinyl too. We'll have links below to all that where you can pick this up. And I'm hoping to get a free copy while I'm there, but I'm not counting on it. So I'm going to go ahead and make an order here for some vinyl because they always say like,

oh, yeah, we can get you the vinyl. It takes a while. Yeah, yeah. Like all of a sudden they're like emailing me some MP3 links. Here's the album. I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, I can go on Spotify. But I think it will be a fun one.

And yeah, we'd be loved to love to have, you know, oftentimes when I play up in New York, actually every time now for years now, there's always you'll hear fans, listeners, you know, or as you would say, users of the show. And, but it's always fun to connect when we've traveled, you know, to different places together that we folks, you'll hear it. So please come and say hello. That's always great. And it's kind of an open studio band, too. These are all like open studio artists, the entire band. Every single other. Including Carl Island now, too.

So that's fun. And, you know, thank you for your kind words about this, Adam. I'll just say that for me, this band is especially fun and one of just the big joys that I've had in my professional playing career because I think at this point I'm kind of, it's sort of so comfortable for me. Not only because these are like really good friends. I mean, I've been friends with Christian McBride since we were teenagers,

you know, since I was like 15 years old and he was 14. So, you know, he's one of my dearest friends on the planet. But they're also my musical friends. And they're all amazing musicians, like, that are just enough above my level that I'm learning. What about that, man? Oh, Steve Wilson, you throwing shade on Steve? You're throwing shade on the cedar tree on? I think any of these guys would not say that's throwing shade at all.

I think it's, you are of the same cloth of them. You are your peers with these guys 100%. Maybe. But, I mean, I'm just saying, like, they're good enough. Like, they're at that top shelf level where it's kind of like, you know, you order that bourbon that's like, you know, I like bourbon. It's like, oh, have you ever tried this Pappy Van Binklestein, the grandpappy of Pappy's Pappy?

You know, and then it's like you, you all of a sudden, you can hang with that, but you've got to really be tasting. Yeah, that's you, bro. Well, I hope so. But I mean, but it's also like stylistically, it's definitely like in my sweet spot. So that makes it fun. Absolutely. You sound great in this band.

Like you fit just perfectly with what they're doing. Cool. And they're all, you're totally right. they're all great musicians. All of them are involved in open studio courses. Yeah. What are how that happened? I know, exactly.

Well, you know, it's funny, too. I'll give you a little behind the scenes, things with all the gentlemen in this group. In different ways, they're such astute musicians and such great players and super professional that if you do any, like even the slight, like if you even hint at doing something,

I wouldn't even say wrong. To tell you the truth, like wrong is not really tolerated in this, kind of group well, just because there's no weak link. So it's like, there's a little bit of pressure. But, like, if you even start to seem like you're going to mess something up, like everybody, like the, like the, the forum police and the chord police, I mean, not that you can't be adventurous, you can't, but especially like Warren Wolf.

Like, he's so, he knows the music so well. And like, even if we go through, like, we just play together for the first time in like a year and a half or whatever, like a month ago or something. Yeah. Maybe two months ago. And, you know, we were all like, even Christian, we were like looking at charts and trying to like, remember. I mean, we knew the music.

and we were prepared, but it was like, you know, a little rusty. Warren comes in no charts. He's like, you know, Christian, what do you want to play? Like, he still has the whole book memorized. And there's like, it's big. Like everyone's brought tunes in. Some stuff we played like one time. I mean, Warren's so kind of, he don't even bring a chart.

He's like, let's do this, you know. And so like, even during the sound check, if I'm playing like one little chord, start, you know, Warren will just kind of look over and be like, I saw you were thinking about messing that cord up. Please tighten your stuff up. So there's a very, like, specific kind of thing that's, I really like. It keeps me on my toes for you. I love it. Well, that's the shade of the Cedar Tree.

The album is not even out yet. The album's going to be called live at the Village Vanguard, Chris McBride, Inside Straight. I think it may be out by the time they hear this. If not, it will be within a few days. Nice, nice. And if you're in the New York City area, don't forget to go and get your tickets to the Village Vanguard to see this band live. Next week, Peter, what are the dates on that? Do you know it's December? November 30th, Tuesday.

I think that's Tuesday the 30th through the Sunday, which is going into December. Yes, today. Today is the 26, right? November 26? Yeah, I think it is. Today is the 26. Yeah, today's 26. Yeah, so this is coming out today.

Perfect. So it's available today. This is a great celebration. All right. Thanks, everybody. Until next time. You'll hear it.