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

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Adam and Peter talk philosophy on the bandstand! Get to the nitty gritty of what your mindset is on your musical path and why you can't information your way to being a better player. Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Adam. What's up? If I were to ask you about Aristotle. Socrates, morons. Jay-Z. Yeah. Kanye. Okay.

What comes to mind? Philosophers. People who talk a lot. Why is your pinky up and why are you talking like that all of a sudden? Anytime Greek gets mentioned. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you listen to the You'll Hear It Podcast.

Jazz. Explain. Jazz Explain. Maybe philosophy Philosophized Jazz Philosophist Today. Why are we talking about

philosophy? Peter's a music podcast. Well, because I had an idea that we would interview each other about our backgrounds. And would that be something you might be interested in? Well, kind of.

Now, you weren't really that interested in it. Well, we've just recently done that, I feel like. It was a year ago. It was almost a year ago. Yeah, but you had a great idea to talk maybe specifically about our musical philosophies. Yeah, that's right.

And maybe even a few life philosophies because we have a lot of, I don't know if you know about this. we have a lot of new listeners to the pod here. I don't know why. Yeah. Because we've been doing this for a while. I mean, I know why we're great.

The podcast is great. Obviously. It's like flies on Scheizer. They're coming, you know? Oh, my God. Sorry. No, but I mean, we do have a bunch of new listeners. I think some people might come on here and be like, wow, this is cool, but who are these guys?

That's what I always think when I was still talking about the German phrase I just heard. That's ridiculous. Well, it's half German. Half German. So this episode we're going to be talking about your musical philosophy, my musical philosophy, both? Yes. Okay. Well, hold up.

You're the one who came up with this. I'm just, I'm trying to clarify. This is your, this is a joint vision. It's a joint vision. Double vision. We're seeing double. We're thinking for you guys, our dear listeners, this is an opportunity to kind of get to know us a little bit.

And the way I look at it is kind of like, why am I listening to these guys? Maybe you think we're entertaining. Maybe you think we're enlightening. We hope so. and we welcome you in and we're happy that you are here. But we feel like we need to give a little bit of a little bit of a stamp of approval for ourselves. Yeah. For you guys in case you don't know who we are.

And that's why I was talking about the background. But as you're right, we did do that recently. Yeah. But it's kind of like, can we answer the question of why am I listening to these guys? Or why are these guys experts on what they're talking about? Yeah. Or at least, you know. Are we experts?

Well, kind of. At least how, how, you know. Reluctant, experts. Maybe some insight into how we think about. the art that we make, which is interesting. Also, I just want to put out there, too. Yes, you can listen to this, but I encourage you to listen to music as well. So if you want to know Peter Martin's musical philosophy, you can also just listen to his records and you'll get a great idea of the end result. So, but these are fun. And likewise to you. Yeah. You know, you check out Adam Manesson, specifically your trio and your group of 442s because that's really a manifestation, I think, of your musical outlook and philosophy. Save for podcasts. Save for podcasts. I'm sorry. Talk about it. Yeah, yeah. No, but that's a good point. That's a good point.

So, yeah. But because we do talk about music and other musicians and the current scene, the historical jazz scene and all this, we don't just play, which is fine. Look, a lot of musicians just play. A lot of musicians just talk, which is not great. That's not great. We're supposed to be musicians first and formal. So, yes, listen to the music.

But this is, man, this is, you know what we can kind of frame this as? This is an airport conversation between musicians. You know what I mean? You have those. You're on a long tour. Yeah. You're in some airport. Maybe a little delays going.

on there's so you're somewhere in asia yeah you're just sitting there for hours you have no idea and you're just next to this drummer you've been with for a week you don't really know him who are you yeah what's going on what do you think of this right you know so we or like a long car ride did the van van van conversation fun story about philosophizing in airports years ago and i'm gonna if i can remember this i'm gonna tell you the exact year i would say this is nine no i know it's 1992 ever heard of it yeah barely how old were you were you alive then i was a love 12 oh you're 12 yeah okay 13 13 13 okay so i was 20 and I was playing with a group called the Jazz Futures 2.

Oh, no, I wasn't. I'm sorry. Future. Made of jazz. Exactly. No, actually, I wasn't. I did that year. I'm confusing stories. Who was in the Jazz Futures?

Jazz Futures was Nicholas Payton. Oh, my God. Christopher Thomas. Wow. Brian Blade. Jesus. Ronald Westray on trombone. Okay. And some other Herb Harris on tenor saxophone.

Herb Harris. Yeah, kind of a lost soul in jazz. Great player. He kind of drifted off into, I'm not sure what. I think he had stopped playing for many years. Really good player that was up around that time. And I'm probably forgetting somebody. I think, no, I think that's the whole group.

Yeah, sex debt. But anyway, this was around that time. I'm confusing. This was not a jazz futures tour. I was actually going to do a gig. I played a little bit with Witton Marsalis' small group during that time, mainly subbing for Eric Reed, but then also kind of I did a couple tours. Hey, look right behind you there.

You dropped that. Oh, I dropped it. You dropped the name. There is. That's true. Pick that up. But philosophizing airports, Winton Marsalis,

who's one of our great philosophers and promoters and just orators about the music, certainly of this generation. We were sitting for a flight. I remember in Washington, D.C. That's right. I had done a gig with Jazz Futures the night before, and I'm going to do a gig with Winton for NPR in Seattle. And we're flying to just,

just Winton and I, we're sitting there at the gate. We're there early Northwest Airlines. Big shout out to them. Remember them? They went bankrupt. unrelated to us sitting there. Shout out Northwest.

Sorry, it didn't work out. So we got into this heated, not really heated, but just intense discussion. And Wint was like, yeah, you know, cats today need to do this. That's what I love by you young. You know, he was just like, I was like, first of all, you've been not that much older than me, but he was doing his whole thing. Wynn can be dogmatic for sure. He was very dogmatic, especially then.

But just, I was just mesmerized and we're back and forth talking about different things and Miles Davis and all this, blah, blah, blah. We're sitting at the gate, blah, blah, blah. We were there early, so much time. back and forth. All of a sudden we look up and Wynne's like, man, where'd everybody go? I was like, what do you mean? Like, nobody at the gate.

They're on the plane. They're on the plane. They're already on the way to Seattle. Oh, my God. We missed the flight. So we go up to the counter and I was like, the flight leave, like, yes, are you Mr. Martin and Mr. Marseilles? Yeah.

Oh, we've been calling you. We've been calling your names. Guys got caught up in the philosophy. And then we had to like, you lost track with reality. And I was like, hey, Wynne, you're a big time. Jess start. Take care of my ticket, please. You know what?

We can weave this right into the episode because this maybe... That story was so long. That might be the episode. That might be more about a time. Thanks, folks, for coming to the... No. But what we could do is talk about how, like, the first sort of artistic philosophy that you can embrace from a very high level is how much do you talk about stuff?

Like, how much do you talk about it and how much do you decidedly not talk about it and just let things happen? So famously, some musicians love to talk about music and discuss... analyze what's going on. What are the changes? All of these little micro Jacob Collier things. And then some musicians famously, Roy Hargrove, famously Miles Davis, didn't like to talk about much of it at all, right? Because they felt like they would lose some of the magic, some of the mystery that's in it. So maybe we could talk about our personal philosophy with that. I think most people are going to understand. We have a podcast. What used to be a daily podcast. But obviously we don't fall super into the ladder. Although I will say it's two degrees because

I think that you instinctually, it's not that you don't want to talk about it, but I do feel like you tend to, I've noticed, leave a lot of things open, which is really smart. It's only out of ignorance. No, no, no, no, no. I don't think it is at all.

I think it's because I think it's out of wisdom. You think you leave a lot of things in your musical philosophy open because things change. We change as people. Yeah. The music we love changes. We change as musicians. And it seems to me like you like you like getting in there

and talking about some really, important stuff, but not, you don't go like all the way down to the minutia and really dig in, I think as much as I like to do. I think that is a degree difference between the two of us, you know. That's interesting. I hadn't thought about like that, but I think that's, that is probably accurate. I think it's also layered in for me with something that I used to hear a lot. It's just sort of a general philosophy about learning music or learning art or really learning anything that I didn't understand and probably didn't agree with because I just hadn't experienced it yet. And that's this idea of like the more you learn, the more you realize what you don't know.

Right. And I was always like, well, that's stupid because I just won't learn anything. Yeah, I was like, well, what am I doing this for? But it's like, okay, if I have a cup and I want it to be full by the time I'm 100 years older, by the time I die, then surely as the cup gets, okay, yeah, maybe it goes up and down a little bit. But in general, as I'm getting close to that cup being full of water or full of knowledge, then there's less that I don't know.

That's why I couldn't understand, like the logical side of my, my piece. brain. Interesting. Yeah. But not, but then I started to realize that that's like it isn't just a cup. It's like like it's not predefined what we are to know what we can know. What we can teach others and what part of like an artistic philosophy we can be part of like the knowledge base, yes, but also the experience base and the vision based and the collaboration, you know, all these different things. So I think it is like the more experience you have, the more knowledge, which those become intertwined. The more confidence you have. The more confidence you have. You know, the more. And the more confidence you have. You know, have does lead I've found to realizing wow there's so much more out there which becomes exciting because you know I think some people get to don't get to that point yeah not through no fault of their own but they did they just they either don't want to or they just they don't work to the point where they can see over that mountain to see or maybe they peek over the mountain they see all there there is still to do and they're not excited by that they're scared by that yeah right so they turn around and like I'm I'm comfortable with what I

have which is fine too or there's the kind of lip of that where it's like you are so convinced that knowledge is the key to being a better player that you can almost get paralyzed by the amount of knowledge that you have to do or the fact that like well I don't know this therefore I can't be this good or whatever I don't understand everything I'm doing therefore it doesn't count that's actually not true if all you had hadn't if only you had come up with a phrase that would explain that oh something like I don't know you can't information your way to being a better player like that yeah like that TM that's totally true right because this is not

We don't go to a gig and say, all right, everybody, look at all this theory I know. Enjoy. That's not the performance. The performance is us, you know, moving sound around in the air and providing a vibe. And it's not just sound. It's like it's a, it's a show. Like we're technically in pencils down jazz musicians. You're technically in show business. And so it all counts. Like how it looks counts. How it is presented in a live format in a room counts. Well, not only does it count. to most listeners, especially the type that we're supposedly aspiring to get to, the casual listener, not other jazz musicians that will never buy a ticket that call you, put me on the guest list plus three. I'll let you know if I can make it later, you know. The actual listeners that we want to get to when we talk about expanding our audience and stuff, they, it's not a matter of like the theory and what our abilities are outside of being entertainers that doesn't impress them. That's zero to them.

Because they don't even know what that is. Like that means so little to them. It's not even that they could care less. It's not even on their radar. They don't even know what they should be liking within that regard. Right. And I used to get so angry when I first realized. But that's not wrong.

It's not wrong. It's actually right. But when I was younger, I would make me mad because people would come in and be like, oh, play some music or they would act like it's such a minor thing of what we're doing. Yeah. And actually it is. Like all the, and I would be like, do you realize how hard it is? this to do this. This isn't like doing those other kind of music. You got to work hard because we don't

necessarily nor should we, you know, exhibit the pomp and circumstance that big shout out to all my classical brothers. I'm not talking down to you, but and sisters. But, you know, the pomp and circumstance that's kind of included as part of the classical world. Yeah. It's sort of already built in. Yeah. So they don't have to act in that way. But there's a certain kind of reverence to the music and to the skills and to the arts just because it's older and because some powdered wigs were involved. I don't know. Like that's just built into the culture. of it. The same way kind of hipsterism and being cool is built into the jazz world in certain ways, you know, which is great because that's all part of the story and the folklore and the, you know,

the, the, the myth around these kind of musics that does get people interested in it. It definitely isn't the core changes. No, it definitely is not. And if it is, then it's, you're just not going to reach a lot of people. Right. Because that's just not that interesting to people who don't know, literally, I mean, think about how much you have to know, to realize the difference in subtle core changes intellectually. Right. It's a stupid thing to expect an audience to know. Your audience is going to feel stuff.

And some of the most popular and also artistically heralded music, I'm thinking of Comasi Washington, who makes like these epic sounding and simple harmonically. I mean, there's some hip stuff, of course, happening, like all great jazz musicians. There's like couched in with some very simple and big ideas are some very slick stuff happening. But in general, that's a palette that, like,

anybody could understand what's happening there because it's so raw and vital. You know what I mean? That, to me, is like a North Star. I mean, like, not that I want to make music exactly like that because I couldn't possibly, but, like, the spirit behind that. And that's to me what, you know, for me, my band the 442s, which is not decidedly not jazz,

straight ahead jazz at all. It's just like pre, you know, through composed things with members of the St. with symphony here and our buddy bob debu but that for me is my outlet to like do you know i have a lot of just two or three or four chord songs with that that is really really rewarding to try to make those artistically you know at a high level as opposed to just like messing with core changes would you know i love to nerd out on right opposed to that when i think a lot of people would be surprised if they were to hear your teachings and follow you there and then come to your music only through the 442s for

instance, it just shows another element of who you are and what your musical philosophy is, but they might be like, wow, I don't hear any drop twos in there. Yeah, but that's the case with everybody. You've got Larry Goldings playing with James Taylor. Right. Right now that James Taylor is fairly harmonically sophisticated for a pop act, right? But Larry Goldings can do all of this crazy, you know, amazing jazz piano stuff. Right.

But he's also known for being able to do this really beautiful, simple orchestration on the keyboards, right? And to be able to do, you know, the funk organ stuff at a high level with Macy O'Park. are people surprised if they've only heard that. And then like, what? He can play bebop. I'm like, when I met him, that's all he was playing. Dude, there's no, there doesn't have to be a delineation. That's so clear that this is like art music and complicated and weird and this is simple pop music.

And I think most of that is in the heads of people who aren't really doing it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because musicians don't really seem to give a shit about that at all. No, no. Well, this was cool. That's fun. Yeah.

We're going to call this one jazz philosophy 101. Did we land on some kind of like codified philosophy or no, we just kind of. No, we just, you know what we landed on? What? Peter and Adam are philosophers. I play. No, I'm sorry. Peter and Adam think they're jazz philosophers.

I play, therefore I am. I am. I made up a word. That was good. That was fun. Thanks, Adam. Well, we will be back on Wednesday. Until then, you'll hear it.