You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Musicians Raising Kids

Episode Date: August 27, 2019

On this episode, Peter and Adam answer a SpeakPipe on the challenges of being a musician with children. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Sign up for You'll Hear It Premium to access our SpeakPipe hotline! Go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/yhi for more info.Starting this week, we're trying to help Peter remember when Hump Day is by launching Peter's Hump Day Special. Listen to tomorrow's episode to hear a limited time, 24-hour offer exclusive to You'll Hear It listeners.Like those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey, where are your kids? I don't know. I'm Matt A Menace. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hearer podcast. Daily Jazz advice and occasional parenting advice? What? Really?

Coming at you. Yeah, I don't really know much about that. But we're going to talk about it today because we got a speak pipe from Alex in the Pacific Northwest. We got to have to be careful, though. Yeah, we're going to need to like... You know why? Because we're always talking about, like, we give out... We say this is daily jazz advice.

And we always say, okay, we give out bad jazz. advice. What's the worst thing that can happen? Are they going to sue us for a bad I guess they could. But if we give out bad parenting advice, a poor little child could get hurt and we love the children's. I'm going to mix in too. We had a similar question via email from a guy named Jack. So we're going to do kind of like this will be the same kind of topic. Are people asking us about raising kids? Are they Joe, are they messing with us? A little bit. Like these are the last guys out or are they actually, I don't know which one's scary. I don't know either. Hey so before we do, that was fun yesterday with the jazz

memes. Oh yeah. They should ask those guys about raising kids. They're kids, I think, actually. That was great. Big shout out to Chase and Kevin. That was a lot of fun. Much success. All right, let's listen to the speak pipe from Alex, and then we're going to read this email, and then we can get into it. Okay.

Hey, Peter. Hey, Adam. Mr. Spaceman again. So I promised I would ask out-of-the-box question on the comments. So here it goes. Over the past about eight months, I've realized that there's something that's much harder than playing

giant steps at tempo. And that is parenting. So I was wondering if you guys could lend some advice or even just talk about how musicians raise kids. I'm not talking about forcing music on your children. I'm talking about how your creativity, how your inclination to improvisation and all that. How does that relate to your style of parenting? If Adam and Peter wrote a how-to book on parenting, the Jazz Edition, what would that look like? Love you guys. Really curious to see what You do with this one. Take care. Bye. That's a scary proposition of a book right there. I love the Adam and Peter's parenting book, the Jazz Edition. What would that look like?

Blockbuster or lawsuit? 12 pages. No, and I just want to say for any of our listeners who don't have children, don't turn off your podcast app because we're going to give you some really practical advice here about things like time management and creativity that I think we've learned probably as being dads. Well, actually, part of that advice is to turn off their podcasting. We're going to say, turn off your phone. Pay attention to your kids, damn it. Yeah, so if you're listening to this now and your kids are like not in a car seat, but they're under the age of, I don't even know, how big are they have to be.

Put them in a car seat. That's the first piece of advice, okay? I guess that's not jazz advice, though. We also got this message on Facebook from Jack, and this was quite a while ago. I think this was right around the time that we had our lovely wives guest on the podcast, and Jack writes. This question should go to them, really. I'm excited to hear some dirt flying around

on the upcoming episode with your wife so because it's from a few months ago so I thought I'd throw some gas in on the fire you could of course cover these some other time which we did Jack but it'd be interesting to hear everyone's take on the following how do you guys juggle kids with one parent who's a musician

how do you handle gigs and practicing rehearsals this has been especially difficult for me with a toddler doesn't get easier what you take on getting your kids interested in jazz it's fun and cultural but it's not exactly a financially stable career blah blah blah that's all true. And I think that's where we can start with these two questions,

kind of two pronged approach here. Yeah. And to kind of dive into Alex's question about what is the book? Yeah. What does the book look like? Peter and Alex. Space Man. Yeah, well, I like, so maybe we could kind of,

I want to talk just about what being a jazz musician in retrospect. I realize now helps me, I think, in being a parent, Hopefully a good parent. You'd have to ask my kids about that. But none are in prison. So let's start there. No, but like I think improvisation, the ability to improvise. And then this is kind of a corny thing, but I really think that it's true.

What a great skill to have in parenting. Any parent knows that you have to constantly be improvising because kids are unpredictable, kind of like the chord changes. You know, you think you know them and then they change up on you. That's right. So I think sometimes, like, that's why I always took a little bit with a grain of salt, like all these parenting books. And, you know, thankfully in a way, I think, you know, I was, I mean, hopefully I'm still active parenting. But the idea of like everybody goes online to like look for a Yelp review on how to do something for their kids now. I think it's almost like too much information, you know.

When we were, when my kids were really young, it was like these books. It was the same thing, though. It was like information telling you how to do things as opposed to using your own intuition. And I think what jazz really taught me is like you have to express yourself. You have to be a person and the humanity that we all are, the story that we tell is not separate when you go on the bandstand and you come off. And so when you're dealing with children and a spouse and family and loved ones and all these different things, it's okay to be yourself. Like we were talking about just the other day, you know? It's like you have to, jazz teaches you to get to know yourself for sure.

Yep. It can give you confidence. They gave me confidence. You know, it gave you confidence to discard when people say, oh, you should do this with your kid. You should do that. It's like, no, I know what to do. I'm going to do whatever pops in my head.

And just like a good improviser kind of plays whatever pops in their head in a way. So, yeah, that's the first big part, I would say, is improvisation. Absolutely. And, you know, if we're jumping on things that we usually talk about with jazz and improvisation, number one is always listen. Listen. And I feel like that's a skill that I've really. took to...

I never listened to my kids, but that would have been good. I wish I'd known that at the time. To dadding is really to listen to where they're going. Like really pay attention to what they're into and how they're feeling about things.

And, you know, back to Jack's question on the Facebook thing about, you know, the idea of getting your kids in the jazz or whatever, it's like... It's almost impossible to force on anybody.

Yeah. You know, you just have to kind of have it around and let their musical taste develop and hopefully some day they'll appreciate what you do, but I don't think it's anything you can force. I think it's just have to. I don't think you need to. I mean, it's such a hard thing to become.

I mean, it's not that jazz is so hard, but it's just such a competitive thing. And it is, it's like a, it's a, it's a kind of refined skill that I almost feel like you have to be. Oh, I hate to say, have to be chosen. I always said I wouldn't say that. But I mean, no, it's, but it's like jazz chooses people in a way that not apparent thinks they would in terms of like, oh, I love. I love baseball, so I'm going to train little Johnny from a young age and get him the best instruction and have him work out. And, you know, learn all these things. It's like, yeah, maybe, but the game still has to choose him.

And he has to choose the game. It's really not about you as a parent, you know. I mean, yeah, you can, I agree with this thing of like, we always have music in the house and stuff. And I don't think any of my kids are going to become jazz musicians. And I'm fine with that. They all appreciate the music and hear it. They like other stuff, too. And, I mean, I think at some point, they'll definitely, it already kind of happened with my daughter because,

She was always like, I've heard enough jazz. Now I'm going off to college. Ooh, I finally can get away with it. And then, you know, some of her friends, little hipster friends are like, oh, we're going to see some jazz. You know what you about it. And she's like, yeah, I kind of know everything about it. I know. I know.

And then she was like, you know, different people playing up in Boston. Dad, can you get me tickets for it? I was like, yes, I can. It's all coming around now. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I think, yeah, you have an environment. But to me, that's not even like a big part of raising kids. I mean, to me, it's like everything.

What jazz does, if you're a jazz business, you understand the important. of culture. There's no way around that. And so I think that is such a blessing and such a great thing that I got from jazz was that I understood how important the arts are in education. Like a lot of people talk about that, but they don't really know it and they don't really follow through on it. Through on it.

Like for us and my family, and I had the benefit of having parents that were musicians and aunts and uncle, a lot of musicians in my family. So it was like a thing. It wasn't like some of these families were like, stay away from that. That's a bad career. You're going to be a lawyer and that's it. Yeah, yeah. And so like that is a benefit whether you become a musician or not.

It's almost a bigger benefit if you don't, like an appreciation of literature and plays and visual arts and ballet. Not only an appreciation, but a respect for that. Yeah. You know, yeah, it's easy to say respect lawyers and police officers. And that's all important too. But our society is already teaching people to do that. I mean, just like you said, lawyer or a doctor, lawyer or doctor. Who's just like, so you're going to be a jazz or a classical?

You know, you're going to be a hip hop or a jazz artist. No one said no parent ever. I think that's great, man. And, all right, let's switch gears back to sort of like the nuts and bolts of the question about, you know, to Jack's point of like, does it get better? I have a toddler. And to Alex's point. Yeah, they stop crapping in their pants and they have big boy pants on. They do.

They do better. I think for us, man, we should just throw a shout out here to our partners who are really open. Open Studio. Our business partner. Oh, sorry. Who are we talking about? Andrew. That was not me.

No. Dan Mars. I do not endorse this. Who are we talking about? Our wives, man. Oh, the parenting partner. Kelly and Heather, yeah, who have really shouldered. Yeah, they've shouldered a lot.

And they can talk about this some because they're going to be back, I think. Well, let's go ahead and put it out there. I want them back on the podcast because they were such a hit last time. Our numbers went up. They were good. Our class went up. They were good. You know.

But yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's been like, I couldn't do it without Heather's support at all. No, literally. Me either. Me either. I mean, literally our kids would probably be dead or diseased if we didn't have it. And that, but that's an important thing. I think that's not necessarily particular to jazz musicians. It's particular to people that are very passionate about and doing something that they love that requires a lot of work or time, time away from home at odd hours, all these kind of things. It's kind of, you know, with jazz, where any kind of, well, you know, my father was a cloud. He is a class. musical musician and he played in the symphony here for many years and kids perceptions of what that is is so off like he used to go to work at night I guess a lot because we'd be out playing in the sure but vacant a lot across the street I remember he's leaving in his tux to go yeah yeah and somebody I remember this other kid one time he's like who's that that's your dad and I was like yeah and he's like a night watchman or something because he had like black clothes on and he's leaving a night kind of yeah violas same thing yeah but yeah I think that having a spouse, I mean, that's always important, that understands these things. And then, you know, when you're raising, I mean, when you're raising kids and you're in sync and everything, I think, then everything is just, just happening. I think one thing that I learned early on, and I think this could be helpful if you're struggling at all with finding time to practice or, you know, just the finding the energy or whatever is when I had kids, it was an opportunity for me to really get a little more organized. Yeah. In my practice routine. in my schedule.

Like, I really made an effort to be more consistent with my sleep. Your boojo appeared suddenly. The bullet journal came out because it was time to like, really, what you want to be able to do is to track your progress or to just to keep track of your thoughts

because you will lose them by the end of the day. Whereas before, I would sit around and think about my thoughts all day. Yeah. Can you imagine? My own funny thing is like, people without kids

when they're like, oh my God, I'm so busy. I'm like, no, no, you can't. I mean, you don't, all you got to see yourself. All you have is yourself to worry about. You can manage that. Yeah.

Yeah. I agree, like, and I remember that it was so funny. Like, kids are so disorganized by their nature. That's the beauty of them. Yeah. But they make you organize. They make you organize. It's so funny, like how that works.

Like, that's just a survival thing. And, you know, I was just thinking, too, you know, about, I love this idea of, like, what jazz helped us to be jazz. I mean, parents. Because so many people would be like, oh, jazz taught you how to introduce drugs to your kids or, you know, something negative, you know, that's in the media or whatever. And they're not really anymore. But this idea of like there's something built in with jazz that you're going against the grain, you know, because you have to kind of fight for it at different times. And that's the history of the music. Like the, you know, the people that we lionize, you know, Charlie Parker, you know, Billy Holiday, Mary Lou Williams, Lewis Armstrong, all these great names whose music is so great.

They were actually cultural pioneers and going against the grain of what they were supposed to do. They were supposed to, you know, many times just shut up and be a woman and stay away from the instrument. Like they were they were true trailblazers. So we don't have to do that because they did that in a way. But I think that there's that tradition of that in jazz that's carried on. And it's a cultural thing. And so that's such a great gift that I think that we sort of naturally give our kids. And you should let that all out in terms of like we're involved in something that we're not important, but the music is important.

You know, and a lot of times parents are like, oh, just coming back from work, give me a drink. I hate my boss. I'm going to, I'm going to shoot up everybody tomorrow. would I go, I don't know why I'm using this accent, but I mean, it could be any, sorry, I went a little dark, but you know what I'm saying, like, you're not happy in your work environment. Yeah, yeah. You know, jazz musicians may be unhappy that they don't have enough work environments. Right, right, but no one's, no one's in the game for the wrong reasons, because this is not worth it to do it unless you really, really love it. A jazz musician really loves what they do. Exactly, and I,

so I never brought all my kids like, you have to be a musician, whatever, but I was always like, you have to, not even you have to, but do something that you love, you know, do something that you're passionate. I mean, it's the whole cliche. Do something you're passionate about. You'll never work a day in your life. That's not true. But you'll be working, but you'll be so happy. It's happy work. It's enjoyable. It's something that you'd be doing anyway. I love it, man. Well, thank you Alex and thank you, Jack. Sorry, it's for the delay. And getting back to you, but hope this help. You know, it's like Alex Spaceman. Alex Spaceman. Well, yeah, that's his nickname. Well, he coined it. It's not like we called him that.

He's getting way more coherent lately I hope that's not because we made fun Well, you know, he said he's not actually You know, in Colorado He's not located He's located in the Pacific Northwest That's similar But actually I feel yeah

Thank you guys for the question I actually feel like a little better parent Just talking about this stuff Yeah, I'm kind of amped up to parent my kids Yeah, finally Want to go to Happy Hour? Yeah, let's do it. Whoa Never mind, I'm fine

See, we keep it raw here We're not editing that out We got equipment falling down. Oh, let's talk about tomorrow. Oh, that's the open studio music. We are sponsored by Open Studio. And tomorrow is hump day. A little hump day baseline.

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