You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What's The Motivation?

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

In this episode Peter and Adam tackle the big question... are they sell outs? Have they gone too far with their endeavors or is it coming from the right place. Stay tuned and decide for yourself!Unlock your FREE Open Studio trial to become a better player today.Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hey, when you're playing and you want to connect with people, are you coming from a place of like, are you coming more from a place of like? I think I'm actually coming more from a place of... That's a good place. You know another good place to come from. What?

I'm Anna Maness. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Jazz discussion. Coming at you. Jazz discussion coming at you today. Sponsors by Open Studio, about Open StudioJazz.com for,

All your jazz lesson needs and your free trial. That's right. Yeah. Peter, I noticed you fussing with the bell. Well, I just want it ready in case we need in here. It was a little bit more, it was a skew towards you. It was a little, well. It's been the bespoke bell because we...

You said it. Yeah, during the live show, we were ringing it every time we said that word, the word which shall not be named, which... Waldemort. It shan't be named. Voldemort. But you know what? I realized in the last couple of...

kind of turn into its own thing. So I kind of like the bell is just a little bit of an oral punctuation on the podcast. Absolutely. It's just nice to have a bell around, you know? It's a little menacing with it sitting there, like ready to be. It's an arresting level of DBs that come out of that bad boy. You know, if that comes all the way to the orange microphones. It's meant to be like a front desk bell, obviously for, I don't know, a hotel, a motel perhaps.

Have you ever done that, like, especially in Europe where there'll be like a small hotel. You're getting there checking in late and there's nobody at the desk. And you see the bell and you're like, oh, I don't want to. And in Europe, a lot of times. And it's like, wow! Yeah. And then somebody like gets up from underneath and crawls out from under the counter. So awakens.

Sometimes in Europe, too, it's not just like this is a, this is. It's still ringing by the way. This is, no, it's nice and it's loud and it's crystal clear. But sometimes in Europe they have them and they're like brass. Yes. And they're old and they're ornate. One time, Heather. If they're individual bells, they might even be called bespoke bells.

Oh, that's good. Now that's good touch. Dynamics. That's dynamics right there. Notice the clarity. Yeah. All right. So what are we talking about today?

Peter, we're talking about motivation today. We're talking about motivation for making things. Yes. So for the listeners who don't, who aren't with us at Hilo every time before we record this podcast, Peter and I spent a ridiculous amount of time chatting about, well, I was going to say chatting about the podcast. We chat about all kinds of things before we record. Yeah. And today we're talking about all kinds of things that we might want to talk about. And it's sometimes, Peter, when we talk about the discussions that we're about to have on the podcast and like the ideas we have, it gets, we have like

a animated, shall we say, discussion about it. And sometimes we have discreements. Atette, they might say. Aet, a tat. We're making our points and we're each trying to argue why we think what like what i always find that our discussions that i love our discussions by the way they actually helped me to define i think what i want to be talking about here and just things i want to be thinking about in the realm of music a lot more is by like bouncing them off of you you know what i mean and i think a lot of it when we really when we talk for a long time about it like we did this morning like it ends up being like motivation we start talking about what's our motivation for wanting to talk about something like scales versus, you know,

the state of jazz journalism in the New York Times versus the state of like, you know, young jazz musicians versus the state of other YouTubers. Like, we have all of these options that we talk about. We've done many episodes on different kind of things. But the idea of us being sellouts, it's not so much of like trying to... There you did it. You touched the third rail. I was wondering how long I was going to take us before we got.

What, it's hard to say the S word? The S word, exactly. Sell out. Yeah. No, but sometimes our motivations, I mean, it's so easy to look at like what's worked in the past and try to recreate that. And let me just paint a picture for how that actually manifests itself in our discussions pre-podcast. Inevitably, or invariably, one of us as we kind of evaluate which type of episode we're going to do, you know, kind of pulls out of their, their trump card out of their back pocket and says, well, let's look at what's worked in the past.

It's always the worst part of this. That's another third rail, right? That's a third is looking back to the past of seeing what's the most popular thing we've done. But I think it comes from a place of like what is resonant with our audience. It certainly is coming from there. There's nothing wrong with that with looking back and saying like, well, what is resonated? Because you get ideas. Like, what do people like about us talking about? Right. And this is relevant to making music, too. Because sometimes have you ever had a great gig where everything you're playing is popping?

And then you go, and the next night, you're on a tour, the next night you go and you want to like, I'm going to recreate exactly. I remember what I did in those soldiers. I remember how I started. And then you go to do it again, and you just fall in your face. Right. When you're looking back at what has worked and you just try to recreate it like verbatim essentially, right? Yeah. And so it's an easy trap to fall into.

I remember. But can that be effective, actually. Sometimes it can. Sometimes it could be a good starting off place, but I think. But it's never fun, though, is it? It's never fun. Also, like, I, always think about the older I get the more I realize like I don't want to recreate what I made that worked I want to recreate the feeling that I was having as I was making what worked like so what was it that was happening within me that got me like amped about this that got me curious about something that got me like wanting to make that like I remember the very first one of the very first things I did uh with the singer Aaron Bodie that I played with for years and I wrote songs with her I wrote her a song that ended up being the title track for her first

max jazz record and everybody really loved it it's called don't take your time title track hit it was a little hit it was a little hit and uh i tried to write seven versions of don't take your time each one of them worse than the last right i was young i was 21 years old 22 years old i was just trying to like capture some of the success oh everybody liked this one and then it happened again the next record i wrote a song called holiday for her that was like a legit like on like smooth jazz radio stations and stuff. And I was like, well, I got to write another holiday because that one really worked. You know what I mean? I must have wrote four holidays after that. And I'm telling you, man, it's like, it's a trap that's easy to get into. And what I should have been doing is like

trying to capture whatever I was feeling about when I wrote those songs. And then not, and then the key to this is then just like let it go, let go of those results. But just find that feeling. Again, it's about process, not about the product. So is that, our first kind of sub-definition as a musician or as a composer of selling out, is that when we do something that resonates or sells well, however you want to call it, do if chasing after that same level of acceptance or adulation or sales numbers or views or whatever you want to call it, is that selling out or is that serving our audience? I think it's, I think, again, it depends on motivation. If your motivation is just a

to make as much money as you can, playing music or making art, I think then you can use it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, but no, there are people who try to, I think, make as much money as possible in their niche jazz genres, for sure,

without really considering what it is they want to make. But can you truly sell out and say, I'm going to be in this niche of jazz? Like, to me, there's certain, there's, like, we're almost putting ourselves in a room that if our main motivation is to make as much money as possible, off of music. Like, in other words, if you looked at it, like,

what are the dollars per composition or per record or per hour that I put into doing this? Like, what's the best ROI? Return on investment that I can get for music. Like, that, if that's your sort of guiding North Star, I feel like that's going to keep you away from jazz unless you're going to come up with something totally new. You know what I mean?

Like, I almost feel like, and this is not to be altruistic or anything, but I almost feel like if you're associating yourself, if you're under the umbrella of the, and this is not about like this kind of jazz. No, no, no. We're looking at this as a big tent, right? Yeah. But if you're gravitating towards the big tent of jazz,

black American music, like there is, there's something about that statement, traditionally at least. I don't just mean traditionally in the 50s and 60s, I mean up until now, the tradition of jazz, that there's a little bit of a stick it to the man, given the middle finger to commerce, and to selling out by saying, you know what, we're going to put ourselves in this little smaller area here

because we're not sellouts. We're true to the music. We're doing this for the right reasons. Yeah. I'm not saying this is true or right or wrong. There's 100% like a punk rock streak that runs through a lot of the music that we talk about here.

And there's a political streak to it sometimes too. There's certainly like an ethically artistic streak to a lot of that music. However, there are also, here's the, here's, I think, again, it's about motivation. Jazz billionaires? Is that what you're going to say? There are jazz billionaires?

But like, again, it's about motivation. Kenny G. I don't consider Kenny G a sellout because I've heard Kenny G talk about what he does. He loves the music he makes. To me, I've been on gigs where it's been like a sold-out crowd and it's the band leader's stuff. And I'm not going to name names, but they get off stage and they were like, man, I can't believe these people eat that stuff up.

There's such horseshit. You know what I mean? Like they don't like what they're doing, but they do it because people show up for it. But to them, it's like that's not the real stuff. stuff. I'm not doing it like I'm doing it because people are showing up for it. That's a sellout to me is their motivation is like I'm going. The heart's not in it. I'm going against my heart. Exactly. I'm going against my heart because there's people that are going to buy tickets for this cheesy thing that I don't even like. But I can do that thing that I don't like. Was that under the jazz tent? Yes. Yes. Yes. In the bigger

tent. Yes. So that doesn't make sense to me because like why would you like if you're only interested in the dollars, there's easier ways to make money than to perform jazz live traditionally. That's True. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying. Unless you're just like, this is the only skill that you have and you feel like this is the only way you can make money. Like it feels like there has to be some love in there, you know. And maybe there is, but it's, to me that. Maybe it changes over time.

Yeah, or maybe it's just, I think a lot of these things too, like, you know, some of these situations, it's just like you just kind of fall into some things, right? And like some things happen and you're playing some kind of music that maybe you weren't intending to play or you have some kind of gig you didn't think you'd have. I mean, jazz musicians take gigs all the time from big names. Yeah. And that's another. I've seen people come off stage with like big pop acts and be like, you know. Well, you know, it's interesting. You said you're not going to name names, and I'm going to name some names.

Do it. But do it. Go deep. Better you than me. No, I'm just thinking about, like, what are possible times when I've sold out? And then we're going to talk about you? Well, you just talked about you. Okay.

But, or when there was the perception of it and was that reality, is it selling out, or is it buying in, as my good friend Rodney Whitaker's called it, when we get into maybe these quandries or these gray areas. But, you know, I toured for a short time with Chris Bodie, trumpeter Chris Bodie years ago. I mean, this might have been like two, what do they call it, the aughts, the 2000s, something like that late 2000s? The a a aughts. I ought not have done that, no, I'm just kidding. That word is pretty, it's a good word. It's a naughty, aughty. It's got a little naughty sound.

It's very specific. You might say it's, um, oh boy, okay, there we go. Um, no, but the thing is, okay, so would Chris Bodie, that, you mentioned Kenny G. Chris Bodie, would he be sort of a little bit more current manifestation of, if someone were to say, name me a sellout in jazz and you were going to be a little bit harsh with that and you had to pick somebody out? I would say he might come to mind to a lot of people, especially snobbometers, people that are far on the snobber meter.

or just people that are really into jazz. Yeah, yeah. Right. So I didn't necessarily worry about it too much because I saw it more as a buying in when I was doing that gig. First of all, the band was really good. But this is always a thing.

Like, I always question myself, am I selling out when I come up with justifications about why I'm doing a gig? Well, but it was this. But the band was really good. But the money was really good. Like if you say the money's really good, isn't that the definition of selling out?

Yes, but again, I think there's subtle context in this. So again, I don't think, I think Chris Bodie, like, he might, I think appears to some like that maybe, because he's good looking and he's got, you know, Glamour shot covers or whatever. Like at the mall? I don't get the impression, yeah, he goes to the mall and he takes a glamour shot. I don't get the impression that he is selling, like that he considers, like, I think he likes what he's doing. You know what I mean? So if you like what you're doing, you're not selling out? I think if your motivation is, this is the music I want to be making because I love this music. but it just so happens to line up

that I'm super good looking and people respond to it then like... Well, I can tell you this and he's very calculating in terms of what you were referring to earlier like when you play a solo and then the next night

remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember playing stuff and the audience would be like, woo, on a certain tune and Chris would be like, do that again. And I was laughing.

I was like, oh, that's what are you talking about? He's like, that thing you did on when I fall in love. You got to play that again tomorrow or night. Oh, yeah. And I thought he was kidding. And then the next night, I would just, I mean, I didn't have a lot of soul.

I mean, whatever. You're trying to recreate what happened. Well, no, I wasn't even thinking about it. Then he came up to me. He was like, no, why didn't you do the thing? I was like, what's the thing? You know, and he was, he took that as validation. And I'm not saying this is right around.

This is not the way I look at improvising a solo. Yeah. But I think that a lot of his effectiveness is about identifying things that resonate with his audience, his type of audience. Yeah. And then finding that commonality from night to night and not saying like, oh, well, you played in Indianapolis, and it was a cool piano soul.

That was a one-time-only event. There was something in the air that night with that audience. That's cool. Let's try to recreate that feeling every night because we want to bring that. But who knows? Part of the mystery of jazz is like,

we don't know when it's going to come and go. We don't know. We're not going to try to bring to Indianapolis the same thing we're bringing to Cincinnati. I think what you're describing here is your feeling of maybe being a sellout for those moments. What's interesting, I didn't do it. Like, he kind of pushed into his benefit.

He was never like, you have to play that. He tried to say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was, my whole thing was I couldn't remember, to be honest. And I wasn't, I didn't really care about what I played beyond the moment that much to be like. And plus, I already knew at that point that I wasn't going to be able to recreate it in an effective way. Yeah. And to me, maybe I was trying to raise the bar as far as what selling out is.

In other words, like, it's selling out if you try to recreate a solo and then it falls on deaf ears. Yeah. You know, kind of like what you're saying. When you try to recreate the same hit and it doesn't sell, there's nothing worse than that. There's no way you're going to recreate a solo and it's going to hit the same way. That's just not how it works.

Well, I don't know, but Chris knew how to do that. And he had some other people, really good players in the band that could kind of do that. And I probably did that more than I'm remembering. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, because it's not an on or off type of thing. Like, I would definitely push it to the point where I mean, look, we all do that.

Oh, my thing went off. That's okay. It was going to be a bad example anyway. I think when you reached for the bell, you nudged the thing here. No, but the idea is like, we'll go up for a. a bluesy sound. Yeah.

Like, isn't that a little bit more of a meta level, an example of that? Like, we know it's going to, aren't we selling out when we play something that we know the audience is going to like? Well, I don't know. Yes. I guess, yes, you are. Because we all do that. It depends on if you like it, too, though.

Like, is it something you would normally do? And also, you're like, well, you're going to like this. Like, I do that all the time. But it's stuff that I also very much enjoy. Well, it's like telling your spouse, like, honey, you're not. You cook such a beautiful meal. I really want to do the dishes tonight. I don't really want to.

But there is a part of it that I do want to do because I don't want her or him to do it. Right. So it's like we do things for other people. The music is a service. Don't worry about it. I'm not going to. I got nothing. Oh, well, since you got it, boom, let me get warmed up here. No, but I mean, when me.

I mean, I don't really, I don't dislike doing that, but there's times when I pull that out, you know. And not just when you're in. an old honky-talk bar and someone's got a gun to your head. Come on, boy, play something bluesy. Of course, we're going to pull it out. But you love that stuff, though. That's your Oscar Peterson stuff. I know, I know.

But it's all like, I just don't think it's, it's not in a vacuum. It's not like, oh, we don't listen to the audience at all, but it's not like play that same thing because Indianapolis loves it. Like, where do we find? I think everybody in reality finds that place in the middle. I agree. I remember like Wintmarsaw's playing with him.

I'm not trying to jump a bunch of trumpet player's name. It's just coincidental that I'd... Name of the episode. Are trumpet player sellouts? Well, that's an interesting thing. Like, trumpet players, in my experience, maybe trend a little bit more... Caleb's shaking his head.

Yeah? Yes, he is. I'm throwing him under the butt. This just in. Caleb thinks Winton. No, I think trumpet players, because of when they're really good, you know, maybe trend a little bit more

towards what we would call selling out. Because, like, the instrument, like, what can be great about, it. Like what, they can't play chords, they can't go down low and all that, but when they go high, they're actually going low in terms of integrity. It is a natural fireworksy kind of instrument. Right. For sure. And look, when we listen to a Freddie Hubbard record and he goes up high, we're not like he's selling out. He's like he's an artistic master. But he know what he was doing, right? Yeah, absolutely. He's entertainment. There's an entertainment level here. That's not. Also,

there's nothing wrong with entertaining people. I mean, this begs the question now is, however you define selling out. If you do it, is that, is that some kind of moral problem? Are you a sellout if you sell out? Can you sell out without being a sellout? But is that a negative thing to be a sellout? You know what I mean? So like you mentioned taking, is it. But maybe, but I think, a derogatory term, especially for a jazz musician. Yeah. Because even if you get, think about this, like great jazz musicians, they get called on say like, you know, Beyonce gig or something. They're going to say they're not selling out. Like they've told me this before. I know people who have gone and played on these big pop gigs like that one.

Yeah, yeah. And without me even, I was like, wow, that's so cool. Can you get me tickets? You know? And they're like, oh, yeah, and they go through this mental gymnastics and verbal gymnastics. It's just so amazing. The production is so first class. We're rehearsing and all the, and a lot of our stuff's more complicated than you think. There's like chords. They're like giving caveats to everything. Yeah. And so I'm not saying it's good or bad because, you know, I'm not trying to sell out on this issue, but. They could just say, have you seen my paste-ups?

But I think this is. But honestly, like, Isn't that more honest? I think it also depends on your circumstance too, man. I mean, like, whatever you're, I think everybody is a sellout on someone else's scale. Right. Right. You know, people would say that just us having open studio in a podcast makes us sellouts because we're not just making music.

Let's get into that. Anybody teaching is a sellout or anybody taking any gig that is not just the music that they want to be taking, but like a sideman gig or whatever. I mean, it all changed for me, too, when I had kids. all of a sudden, a lot of gigs that I might not want to do. Right. I mean, if you meet the price that I want to get from this, I might do it no matter what. But that's the ultimate justification for selling out, right?

That's even more so than like all the music's really complicated. It's like, I got to feed my kids. That's right. And that's like, I mean, who's going to argue with that? There's nothing but nobility with that. Exactly. That's like, I mean, there's a certain point to that of like, I don't want my kids seeing me like in a, in a sailor suit, you know, like playing.

you know, really corny polka pop. I don't want that. Poca pop. I just created that genre. That was good. That sounds cool, actually. Well, let's talk about what we actually do here at the pod and with the Open Studio and as teachers and really, I think as kind of creators

and leaders of this community, which... It's a good... Like, what are we selling? Because we can't say, well, we're not... Like, we are actively selling something here much more so than most jazz musicians or any musicians, classical, pop or otherwise, unless you're like writing the music and like in the front line or something

would typically say. So like once you put yourself out there as we've put ourselves out there, I mean, you're all over the internet saying check out these cords and then buy my course that I'm going to like I'm selling you something. That's what we're saying. But what is it that we are selling actually? Well, that's a question we ask ourselves a lot around here. And I think it's valid to question your, again, your motivations for what you're doing. And we can certainly point to who make similar things to us that I think in our view, they're like kind of, it's kind of corny and it's kind of selling out and it's kind of for the wrong reasons, which is to make a bunch of money.

And it's- But why is it selling out there is because it's cornered because we see it as lower quality or is it because they're-we- we suspect that their motivation is not altruistic. We suspect that their motivation is not altruistic. Not that ours is either. It's not like we don't want to make money, but we- have a mission that is led by you, which is to actually help people play better. And if we can run our business with that mission, then that's like the perfect combination, right? If we can make a living helping people play better. But actually not, again, I've told this story before,

but this is, I think, a brilliant move by our CEO, Peter Martin five years ago maybe. But, and the original North Star sort of, what is this called, your mission statement. Yeah. for Open Studio was to be the number one online jazz platform in the world or something like that, right? To be the number one jazz education site in the world. And you changed that about five years ago to something like to help our global community of musicians become better players. And that shift in our mindset of not trying to grow, to be the best, to be number one, to be the top dog, but to shift to, okay, we are. our whole mission is not to be the best and to be number one. It's to be the best at helping people.

It's like to be the best at actually helping people try to get better to communicate our struggles with that, to communicate ways that we've grown. That has ironically made us the number one online jazz community with that shift. But that to me, even as an artist, I think about that move all the time because I think about it's my motivation as a piano player to be the best piano player ever. there was a time when I was young where I thought maybe that's what it should be or to be the most respected, you know, famous burning piano player in the world. And that's not my motivation now.

But that would be leading to you being the dustiest pianist in your 70s, perhaps. My motivation as a more mature artist is to connect with people through music, right? It's to do, it's to continue on what's really a spiritual journey for me through music that has been my whole life and to connect people who see that, We see the same thing. We see the same light. We hear the same light through music. That has changed the whole way I make music, and it's made me a way better musician.

It's fantastic stuff, and I think it, you know... But I just say that's all inspired by that move that you made five years ago. Well, and I can just tell you that that move was made really more for the reasons of, like, we had a platform already. And even before Open Studio, like, I was starting to have this platform that was not really totally by design. because I'd spent years like the platform that I had was playing music. Yeah. And like people hear music, my own records and primarily playing with other people.

I'm playing with some like big jazz artists where I sculpted, you know, with the music direction, all that, you know, similar to you with like, you know, behind the scenes, but kind of out there at different times. And but being involved with stuff that, you know, by grace and luck and, and, you know, just being at the right place at the right time and being prepared was generally, I think, in the zone of stuff I was excited and passionate about. You know, but like once we started to develop, you know, really just starting out as this kind of individual teacher and then a little online where all of a sudden it's like, oh shit, you can reach a lot of people. Let me let me get my stuff together and really come up with stuff that's like showing the exact right fingerings and the right cord.

You know, so it was very much from that standpoint of not wanting to be a fraud basically and not like wanting, you know, I mean, I remember like putting these things out and people like, oh my God, your videos are everywhere. And my first thought was like, uh-oh. I hope it didn't make it into like Jason Moran's feet. That's hilarious, man. Like I was so afraid I was going to get a text from Jason Moran, say, or, you know, Robert Glassper or any of these pianists, you know, kind of my contemporaries, but just like, that's what it immediately went to, you know. I mean, I wasn't worried you were faking the funk or something? Yeah. Or just because it wasn't that I wasn't putting thought into it, but I didn't have a master plan in terms of like, I'm going to put this video and say.

You're just talking about stuff that's interesting. Yeah. And I was definitely trying to be helpful. Yeah. But I didn't really know because we don't talk behind the scenes a lot about how you do this. And that was kind of one of the things that I wanted to get to people because I got to see like Roy Hargrove showing me different things. But we never like whenever we would hang out or McBride, I was just doing it again with them this weekend. We never talk about music.

Like away from the band. I mean, we talk about music that we like and cool things. You're not talking about chord voice things and no. And there's all this stuff that like, you know, I wanted to learn and talk about. So like with you on this podcast and just us hanging out, I've talked more with you about music than anybody in my life. You know, just about like the ins and outs of this stuff. And then also just through teaching we've done together and individually, you start to go through these different processes. So it was that when it got to a point five years ago, whenever when I tried to come up with this other thing, that was just more about like we're getting all this like attention.

We have a platform and I could see that it was about to get like super complicated. I was like, well, how can we make sure not that we take over the world? but that we just do the one thing that I think, I have no guarantee, but I think we have a chance to be able to do, which is to help people play jazz better. That's right. Because remember, like at the beginning,

even before we were working together on this, I was just like, you know, well, maybe this will become piano and classical and all the, and, you know, what, it still may be. But like, at a certain point, once you're starting, to me, the way to keep from selling out, at least in a way that becomes fraudulent,

like I think we alluded to earlier where it's like, maybe you're doing something good, but it's like you're coming off stage. And maybe people are excited and grooving and they're uplifting. You come off stage, you're like, ah, those suckers. Let's go take this to the bank and clocking in kind of a thing. To me, the equivalent here of that would be like if we're selling a bunch of stuff, but it's not having an impact.

Because we're going into this area where we're not just playing music and you have to lift them up for this time. We have to help people find a way not to love jazz, not to love the piano, not to love each other, whatever, but how to love themselves. a way as musicians and meet them where they are and help them to get better. And that was the simplest where I could figure it out, you know? It's the, it just happens to be the hard road to take too. Like that's not the easy way is to just serve yourself. Yeah. And be like, figure it out, you know. Or to just give people, you know, which is where I started out, like, check this out. Yeah. Oh, you can't do that. Yeah, that's why I'm great. I mean, I was never thinking about that,

but I do feel like it came across like that. Or give some cool things like, here's a cool voicing, you know? Yeah, yeah. No, this goes on to the, what you're talking about here we're talking about this a little bit last week so there's the idea that you can it's it's all about asking the question who is this serving like am i serving just me here or am i serving something bigger than myself i either other people or in this case you know the idea and which would be music for us right and so like we've heard people say things like i'm not going to serve someone else's you know vision or something like that and i was talking about talking to Heather about this last week because I heard someone say that. And I was like,

you know what? I was like all the people I know who have like really fulfilled visions, right, successful. They had a dream, Peter Martin included, and they've like executed really well on that. They are service machines. Like your existence as this sort of leader of Open Studio is really to serve all of us on the front lines making it happen, right? That's what great people do. I think about people like Benny Green, who you think, like, that's a very solitary kind of musician, right? Benny Green, he's, of course, he plays with everybody or whatever, but he's very much on his own path. He's got a career as Benny Green, the pianist. I don't know anybody who's more devoted to the music, the way he talks about it, the way he studies it, than Benny Green. He's so

devoted to serving music and the piano and the masters, and he has his gurus. I mean, It's like a devotional practice and a spiritual practice. Like you have a guru and you serve them or you serve Christ or you serve whomever. Like you can name any of the people that you might or the things you might serve. The big dogs. The big dogs in spirituality that you might serve. And Benny Green is, I think, very much a devotee of music and of his gurus, of his masters. And those are people that he knows, people he doesn't know, that he just serves musically.

Yeah. as a great example. And I just used him as one of all of the great people we know. McBride is another one. Chris McBride serves the music and actually serves the greater jazz and music community as a whole better than anybody else I know. And he's made an incredible, like ironically, when you do that,

you get a lot of attention for your own stuff because you have put down serving the eye and you are serving the greater vision of everything. And I think this is what we're talking about with motivation. like, you know, if you are a sellout, quote unquote, I think you're just serving yourself and everything you're doing is to serve your own personal, your own personal goals and your own personal momentum.

And you can have the same outcomes and even sometimes better outcomes by serving something greater than yourself, serving the music, serving your band, serving your audience, really being of service to those people. And then ironically, it looks like your, you're really like propelling yourself forward because people respond so positively to that, but you're, that's not how you're framing it. In your own head, you're framing it as I'm serving

this thing that is bigger than me. And it's not about me. It's about this bigger mission. Yeah. That's, yeah. I think that's, that makes sense. Doesn't it? And I mean, and that's kind of like a beautiful nuanced sort of definition within our music and can be applied a lot of different areas of the whole like art versus. commerce versus service. Yeah. You know, and house, and I think a lot of times people, you know, adding the service element clarifies all this and explains it in, and I think a beautiful way.

Because if you just, too often it's this like reductionist thing of art versus commerce. You know, you're either an artist and you're an idiot and your life is, you know, you're going to die a pauper and your kids are going to hate you because you didn't spend time with them. Or you're an operator that is a genius at marketing. and sucks at music and you're going to have success all over online and everyone's going to be pissed off and bitter against you. And I mean, both of those exist. But they're not, like, when you put in the service part of it, like, that's where you can connect this in a way.

I mean, like you bring up McBride, you know, think about like all the different way. Like, well, Benny Green, too, like you were talking about what came to mind was his writings about art blaking when he first played with him. Like, that's such a service to all of us. That he's put that stuff out there. Like, that doesn't really, like, that's not about him. You know, yeah, it's from his vantage point. But, I mean, think about the young music. And I was around, I saw him play with Art Blake and was like, oh, my God, I want to do that. But think about the youngans now or anybody that's just been involved with the music or something, like these stories.

Of course, always the music that Bandy Green is probably going to be the biggest service that he's given his records and seeing him lying. That's always exciting. But hearing him talk. Because, I mean, it's like him or McBride. Like, we geek out and like, oh, my God, he can play so fast and all that. But the audience is, like, that's a part of it. But it's like that warm kind of musical hug. that's coming out. And that doesn't happen if you're just serving yourself. And by the way,

none of these people are pushovers either. Being the service to someone, to something bigger than yourself, it actually makes them very strong, very like, boundaryed people. Yes. Right? Who are, like I think about Fred Hirsch in a very similar way. Like Fred notoriously direct when especially dealing with students and dealing with anybody. And honest. When we recorded his first course and it was like kind of during some of the pandemic still. And so he was New Jersey and I was on a Zoom in the in the studio he came in and I was like hey Fred good morning really excited about this and he goes the first thing he said was like I don't need any notes on this right but you know that's because he is extremely confident he's serving the music in general

and his teaching that he's spent decades doing and he's very clear I don't think he like is trying to be you know hurt my feelings in fact it's his feelings aren't in his mind my feelings aren't in his mind. Serving the music is the first foremost in his mind. And actually, it's a lesson to all of us of like, put your feelings your own ego aside and how your spot in the hierarchy of things and just let the music be served

in the best way possible. Sometimes that means stepping back. Well, and it's just funny how people, the stories are told about different musicians and that it's like, oh, he's so, like, there's a way to look at that story about Fred and be like, oh, he's so haughty or cocky or... Crickly or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

He's difficult to work with. And when, in fact, like, that's, he's being humble before the music. Like, he's like, I don't need any notes. Not because, like, he's very singular in thinking of, like, how am I going to get the best product so that it can get out there and serve the most number of people? We've worked with the least amount of friction possible. We've worked with him on a ton of stuff now. And he's not hard to work with.

The fact, he's very easy to work with because he knows exactly what he wants to do. Right, right. And he knows he's not there to serve you and your feelings. No, no. He knows exactly what. he wants and he knows how to get it and all we have to do is sort of like stay out of the way and record it as purely as we can. I would say Ron Carter was very similar. You know, a lot of the moves that he was making in the studio, he was like, he knew what he had. He knew exactly

how to get what he wanted out of that recording process. It was great to see, man, because he's serving his vision for the music and what he thinks is best for teaching the bass in the way that he wants to teach it. I think, again, it all comes down to your motivation. Are you serving yourself? you serving something bigger than yourself, i.e. the music, hopefully, or the students as part of that. The community, the art. Yeah. Okay, so did we answer the question? Are we sellouts? Yes. Yes, we answered the question or yes, we are sellouts. We'll leave it. We'll leave it to the dear listeners. Let's both answer honestly. We're going to count to three. and we're going to say

the royal we you and I including Caleb producer Caleb's in this too is going to bring it back in the US I'm going to score this and is it better than KOB kind of thing or yeah we're just going to it's going to binary yes or no are we sellouts

ready after three so like on four one two three no