The Third Story with Leo Sidran

Jon Lampley knows how to "get in where you fit in." He's been doing it since he was a boy in an Ohio suburb, spending his week as "the only black kid at school" and his Sundays at Apostolic church in Akron, learning to play gospel music and call the spirit down.

He also learned early on that commitment is crucial to what he does, commitment not only to the music he plays but also to the people he plays with, and to the audience too. You get the sense watching Jon that if he doesn't feel it, he won't do it.

Maybe that's why he's so in demand in so many projects right now. He's a member of Jon Batiste and Stay Human (catch him regularly on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert), Huntertones (a band he joined in college at Ohio State and that led him to New York), and Cory and the Wongnotes. And works often with O.A.R. and Lawrence, among others.

Jon says, "I've just prioritized the people. I've identified the people that I want to associate with and what I need to do, how I need to better myself as a musician and as a human to get into that circle."

Huntertones new record Time to Play, produced by Louis Cato and featuring guest collaborations with Cory Wong, Lionel Loueke and Cato, comes out this month. Jon and I spoke recently about growing up in two worlds, learning to play "unnecessarily soulful melodies" and call on the deep well of musical emotion that he learned in church, what he looks for in a collaborator and why he thinks he gets called so much, how he practices and prepares, and what he means when he says "music is the vehicle."

If you've ever seen or heard Michael Bland play drums, you probably didn't forget it. He was legendary practically from the moment he started playing professionally as a teenager in Minneapolis. Maybe you've heard him with Nick Jonas & the Administration, Cory Wong, Chaka Khan, Maxwell, Soul Asylum, Mandy Moore, Johnny Lang, David Crosby or Vulfpeck. Chances are, you definitely heard him playing with Prince - he was the drummer in The New Power Generation, and played on classic Prince records including Diamonds and Pearls, Chaos and Disorder, Emancipation, and more.

We talked recently about his early development in Minneapolis, the "guilt by association" of working with controversial artists, getting the gig, keeping the gig, losing the gig, recovering from the gig, confronting racial politics in Minneapolis, playing music with "endless potential", his first time flying on an airplane, keeping the flame lit on local music, and much more.

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Philip Lassiter spent his early years in Mobile, Alabama. He was the son of a white pentecostal preacher. "They clapped on one and three in my father's church," he says. Moving to Peoria, Illinois as a teenager was a revelation for him. As he tells it, "They beat the racist out of me in Peoria."

Lassiter's story, both musical and personal, is a bit hard to unravel. He somehow managed to pay dues in multiple scenes seemingly at the same time. Philip's has been a hero's journey. Blink once and you'll find him in the "Afrocentric" Dallas music scene running the band at a large church, mentoring a young Michael League during the inception of Snarky Puppy. Blink again, and you'll find him doing the New York hustle. Turn around and he's still there, this time living in Nashville. But what's this? Then he's an LA cat, writing arrangements for gospel and r&b records. Wait! Now he's an expat, living in Holland and raising a family with his Dutch Caribbean wife (the talented singer Josje).

Phil is a trumpet player, arranger, band leader, teacher, songwriter, cat. His first major recording opportunities were on gospel records, and he has done arrangements for dozens of major praise and worship albums and artists. Eventually that work led him to do arrangements for pop, r&b and soul artists as well.

His sound is identifiable, punchy, funky, funny, narrative, empathetic - in fact, you've probably heard his sound so often that you take it for granted. It's that sound; the sound of a horn section hooking up a record, elevating a production, bringing the project to life in such a natural way that you almost can't imagine the song without it.

Philip wrote for and toured with Prince as his trumpet player and section leader, and he has worked with a full roster of other top notch musicians as well. Most notably Ariana Grande, Chris Cornell, Kirk Franklin, Timbaland, Roberta Flack, Jill Scott, Kelly Rowland, Fantasia, Anderson. Paak, Yelawolf, Queen Latifa, Al Jarreau, Fred Hammond, The Isley Brothers and Ledisi.

Why does he get called so much? "People ask me how did you get this gig or that gig. I always tell them, 'I didn't get the gig. The gig got me.'"

Lassiter recently released his fifth solo album, Live In Love, a collection of nasty grooves and thoughtful messages, a love letter to his former life in Los Angeles, a manifestation for a better America, and a gathering of collaborators from around the world.

When Julian Lage plays guitar, it's hard not to get swept up in it. His relationship with the instrument is natural and contagious. Maybe that's because it's been with him for most of his life. When he was just 8 years old, Julian was the subject of an Academy Award nominated documentary film called Jules at Eight. Before he entered his teens, he had already performed with Carlos Santana and jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton. While still in highschool he was a faculty member of the Stanford Jazz Workshop. So he was undoubtedly a child prodigy.

Lage plays like someone in love. Despite his productive personal relationship with singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy (she co-produces his new record, Squint along with Armand Hirsch), perhaps the deepest love affair of his life may in fact be with the guitar itself.

We talked recently about his new record - his first on Blue Note, which he recorded with drummer Dave King and bassist Jorge Roeder. He told me his story, how he traversed those murky waters of youthful exceptionalism and came out on the other side with more sensitivity, to the music, to his audience, and to himself. During the course of the conversation, Julian also described the connection between the artist and the audience and how he thinks about notes as having the weight of speech. "I want it to feel like I'm talking to you when I play."

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Michael Mayo is cautious when it comes to labels and categories. He prefers for the language he uses to be "descriptive rather than prescriptive." It's easy to understand why: because he defies category in many ways.

A singer and composer who draws equally from the deep well of jazz vocal language and from neo soul, he's a modern classic.

Growing up in a musical family in LA (both of his parents are successful musicians) he was exposed to a life in music from the very start and had two supportive role models. He says that one of the things he most admired about watching his parents at work was the diversity of the projects they did - from gospel to country and everything in between.

Michael was drawn to jazz - he studied at the New England Conservatory and then the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz (now called the The Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz) - but always had a wide range of influences as well including everything from J Dilla to The Beach Boys.

But beyond that, he is also a gamer - he loves video games, posts regularly on Twitch and has a band called Shrek Is Love dedicated to the movie Shrek. So he's open.

When it came to the more subtle and tender questions of sexual identity, especially in the black community, there were no role models who looked like him. In fact, it would be a long time before he felt that it would be possible to be out as a bisexual black singer and live safely. He tells me, "Traumatized people traumatize people."

One gets the sense that through musical liberation, Michael found some personal peace as well. He says, "Just because something hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it can't be done." And he says, "I love living in multiple worlds." After years of coming to terms with questions of identity both personally and musically, he made his stunning debut solo record Bones.

Here he talks about managing his relationship with social media, which he describes as finding the "balance between staying sane and being seen", the subtle space between process and performance online, live looping, bi erasure, shedding "Giant Steps", generational trauma, the "syllables discussion" in jazz singing, tokenism, discernment, and living a life authentically without labels.

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A story about stories.

How seven years and nearly 200 episodes of podcast interviews inspired the record The Art Of Conversation.

Excerpts of conversations with Amy Cervini, Andre De Shields, Jorge Drexler, Kat Edmonson, Kurt Elling, John Fields, Larry Goldings, Tatum Greenblatt, Ryan Keberle, Jo Lawry, Orlando le Fleming, Adam Levy, Howard Levy, Anya Marina, Matt Munisteri, Ricky Peterson, Becca Stevens, Doug Wamble.

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When singer/songwriter/educator Roxana Amed moved from her home in Argentina to the United States, she didn't walk. But she might as well have. She describes her new record as being like "a bag full of songs and memories" that she collected on her way from one shore to another. She seems to stand with one foot wading in the waters of the Hudson River and the other in the Rio de la Plata.

When she left Buenos Aires, she was leaving with an already established career as both a singer and songwriter, having collaborated with many of Argentina's most celebrated artists in both worlds. And when she arrived in America, she began to blow in the wind, like a tumbleweed. So it should come as no surprise that the first track on her new album Ontology is called "Tumbleweed."

When Roxana moved to America, she went to Miami, where one might think she fit in perfectly because of her Spanish speaking roots, but in fact in some ways she has felt like more of a stranger there than she would in New York, or Paris, or anywhere else for that matter.

Then again, maybe she would feel that way wherever she went, because she's not really any one kind of artist, she's not really sure where she or her music belong - maybe it's somewhere along that long and winding road from Argentina to America. It's that classic paradox when you belong to no-one, you're available to all, when you belong nowhere, you're always in the right place.

She is inclined to follow an arrangement of a Miles Davis song with something by Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, or to adapt a Piazzolla tango piece in a jazz quartet, but then sing Cindy Lauper as Argentine folk music.

Roxana Amed is an eternal student - she's constantly thinking about her craft, working on it, contemplating it. Maybe that's what makes her such a celebrated teacher.

We spoke recently about her new record, and about the ongoing relationship and conversation between artist and audience. She says, "Art is not there to make you comfortable. You have to be surprised. You have to be challenged." We talked about surrendering yourself to your art, about how and why different languages swing, about authenticity and freedom in music, and how the soul of America is black, and we talked about Argentina, Argentine music and identity.

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For a farmer's daughter from Western Kentucky like SG Goodman, a career as a singer-songwriter was not the obvious choice. Her family had farmed the same land for generations, and the path was laid out for her.

On the other hand, coming from a long line of "some of the best storytellers who ever lived" a life spent writing and singing songs made plenty of sense.

Pretty much everything out of her mouth sounds like a story to me. She says "I've done my best to get my heart broken during this period just to have something to write about." She says "It's not easy having the palate of a Manhattan millionaire in Western Kentucky but I do." She says "I don't like to say that music is divinely given, but I definitely didn't ask for it."

SG (née Shaina) released her debut record Old Time Feeling in 2020 after years of watching her college friends become professionals with postgraduate degrees while she continued quietly with "that music thing". The album leans into a soulful southern tradition, but also upends it in a way, or at least updates it, as she seeks to debunk rural stereotypes, while exploring mental health, living with OCD and the notion that you can still love your family and community even though you may disagree with them. SG is also an openly gay Americana singer, hailing from a part of the world that she describes as being years behind in its thinking about so many issues.

She uses a classic frame to paint a picture of a progressive south and "to stand up to stereotypes that exist about the south, to spread the message that we should all care what our neighboring states are doing, especially politically." That's where she manages to subvert whatever straight and narrow expectations you might have about an Appalachian storyteller and turns left, in more ways than one.

She has that way - of conjuring a melody, a mood, and pulling you into her own space time vortex. Listening to her record is like some invisible pointer finger is reaching out through the darkness and signalling you to follow it.

We had a conversation that was absolutely of this moment, in which she laments having to use Instagram and livestreams to connect with her audience in spite of her desire to maintain some mystery in her art. We talked about how Covid disrupted her tour plans, how she discovered K Pop at a gas station in Alabama, and how she feels about high end coffee.

We also had a conversation that is of every moment. About how music in many ways saved her life and gave her a sense of solidarity with a new chosen family when she had to leave her farm life behind. It also gave her a way to honor her storytelling tradition. We talked about how one keeps spirituality in life after leaving the church, the intersectionality of living in the south, and how solitude influences creative work.

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There are some musicians who live in multiple universes at the same time. Clyde Stubblefield was one of those. From 1971 until his death in 2017, he lived and worked in Madison, Wisconsin. He was a local treasure, a celebrated adopted son of the midwest, and a legendary character. For those who had the chance to know him, to play with him and to see him in action, he was like a brother.

At the same time, he has come to take on a kind of mythological status among funk musicians and enthusiasts, DJs, producers and fans. His recordings from the late 1960s with James Brown are considered to be some of the standard-bearers for funk drumming, "Funky Drummer" which by many accounts is the most sampled beat of all time, which is why Clyde is often called the most sampled drummer of all time.

To me, he has always been both. I was born in Madison in the late 1970s and Clyde was a big part of the local scene, and someone who would regularly pass through my living room as well because he played often with my dad, Ben. He was my first drum teacher, and later on he would also be one of the first artists that I produced.

On the occasion of what would have been his 78th birthday, I reflect on Clyde's life and legacy from a personal point of view, revisit recorded conversations that my dad and I had with him over the years, and consider a series of live gigs and records with him going back to the early 1970s.

A new sample collection of Clyde's drumming, taken from his performances on the album Clyde Stubblefield: The Original was released this week by Yurt Rock. The tracks were originally recorded in 2001.

And a new documentary film about Clyde's life and legacy is also in the works. www.givethedrummersomefilm.com

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This year musicians and creative people have had to confront themselves, their work, and their ambitions head on, and Bob Reynolds is no exception. But unlike so many of us, Bob already had some mechanisms in place to process that struggle in a creative way.

Bob Reynolds is a Grammy Award-winning saxophonist, composer, and educator known for his work with Snarky Puppy, John Mayer, and 12 solo albums. He is no stranger to large stages and tour busses. At the same time, much of his career has been a series of self generated projects.

On his YouTube channel, he shares tips, tricks, anecdotes and ideas, and he has coached thousands of students through his online Virtual Studio.

I found Bob at the crossroads of what's happening and where am I going, and we had a beautiful talk about managing that existential crisis that so many of us are having. He talked about his influences, approach, playing with Snarky Puppy, John Mayer, the subtle but significant distinction between practice and the practice, what it means to make music with sincerity, and finding himself on tour in Spain and Italy last March just as Covid was descending on Europe.

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