"If you're not sad you're not paying very much attention."

Donovan Woods has a talent for writing songs that feel like “real life”: Funny and sad at the same time, plain spoken and poetic in the same breath, nostalgic and hopeful at once. As he says, "Two opposing ideas can be true at the same time." 

So it’s no surprise that he named his latest album Both Ways.

He says that when he thinks about it, there’s just “so much sadness”. He says that he loves to watch an audience turn to mush, to make them feel comfortable and then slowly deliver the tragic sense of life. He says he does it by using “tricks of language” that feel familiar and colloquial. He says he developed his confessional style of songwriting, which is generally considered to be country or folk, by listening to hip hop as a kid growing up in Sarnia, Ontario.

There’s a lot about Donovan Woods that makes him an outsider to the Nashville singer songwriter circles in which he often travels, but there’s plenty that puts him right at home there. Particularly, a devotion to highly personal, narrative writing.

Despite all the tragedy, I think he’s also one of the funniest writers around. Listening to his music, one is constantly toggling between tears of laughter and tears of sadness. At least I am. And talking to Donovan Woods is similar. He’s very a pleasant guy, easy going, down to earth and funny. Sad funny, sure. Bitter funny. Excruciating funny. But funny all the same. 

Although his songs are custom made to be performed by him (“people say I sound like I’m singing right in their ear”) they have also been recorded by stars like Tim McGraw and Charles Kelley (of Lady Antebellum).

Donovan came to the Third Story headquarters recently during a run of shows and promotion for his new album. Here he talks about writing songs that feel like real life, the big scam of success (“by the time you get the thing you always wanted, you feel like you deserve it”), how to make it in Nashville, and why Wisconsin is the state most like Canada.

This episode features an introduction by me in conversation with my wife, Amanda.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoy it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon!

Nate Wood is a drummer, bassist, guitarist, singer-songwriter, mixing and mastering engineer. Raised and educated in Los Angeles, he joined the band Kneebody in 2001 (along with former Third Story guest Ben Wendel). 

Eventually Nate moved to New York where he has been a fixture on the scene for years, working as both drummer and bassist for the likes of Donny McCaslin and Wayne Krantz. In fact, it was Nate’s love of the music Krantz was making that helped to motivate him to move east. 

Nate is an extraordinarily gifted, natural musician. Although in recent years he has started to gain notoriety among musicians and hardcore fans, he’s still (in my opinion) greatly underappreciated, particularly as a drummer. But that’s starting to change now, in part due to his new project “Four” which features Nate playing drums, bass, keyboards and singing simultaneously. 

Here he talks about why screwing around is so important to creativity, what’s so special about 83bpm as a tempo, what ever happened to swing, and that ongoing Third Story question: should I move to LA? Because he’s so multifaceted, this interview is filled with Nate saying “but that’s a whole other conversation….” 

The episode features a short introduction from me and Nate’s old pal, pianist Randy Ingram. It’s a great one. Enjoy. 

Thanks for listening. If you enjoy it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon!

Larry Klein started out as a musician’s musician before becoming a producer’s producer. At a young age he was playing bass with his heroes in the jazz world, including a long and creative stint with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The way he explains it, Klein became more drawn to the world of songs, singers and popular music, and put off by the jazz insiders’ insistence on what was and what wasn’t “the real s*#t”. As a session player he worked on some of the most classic LA record dates of the 80s and 90s (for the likes of Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman, Don Henley, Bob Dylan, Cher and Joni Mitchell) and seemed positioned for a life as a hired gun sideman.

But while married to his first wife, Joni Mitchell, Larry began producing records. Over the last 30 years he has become one of the most sophisticated, musical and thoughtful producers around, producing records for Mitchell, Madeleine Peyroux, Melody Gardot, Herbie Hancock, Luciana Souza (who he is married to now) and many, many more. Klein has won Grammys for his work on Mitchell's Turbulent Indigo and Both Sides Now; and Hancock's River: The Joni Letters.

I've been a huge admirer of his for a long time. I love how he manages to make timeless records that also feel contemporary. It’s a kind of magic trick that anyone who has ever tried to make confident, approachable music in the studio will recognize as much easier said than done.

I recently spent a morning with Larry at his home studio in Los Angeles. Considering how great his records sound, it should have come as no big surprise to me that underneath it all he’s still just a huge music fan. Here he talks about the art and craft of record production, what is and isn’t the real s*%t, why he often works with female artists, and the importance of good coffee. This one was a long time coming for me and I’m delighted to share it.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoy it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon!

Rapper, singer, spoken word artist, writer, and science nerd Dessa is an open book. As a young girl in Minneapolis, she dreamed of being a writer, and in high school she submitted essays unsolicited to the New Yorker. She refused to speak the Spanish own heritage (she’s half Puerto Rican) and instead insisted on learning French. She was, in her own mind, headed for a literary life on the Upper East side of Manhattan. “The third martini and witty repartee” she says.

Life seemed to have other plans for her. She ended up channeling her love of language into a different outlet: rap. Dessa has been a longtime member of Minneapolis based hip hop collective Doomtree. Her résumé as a musician includes performances at Lollapalooza and Glastonbury, co-compositions for 100-voice choir, performances with the Minnesota Orchestra, and a top-200 entry on the Billboard charts for her album Parts of Speech.

Eventually she was able to turn her success in music back towards her original passion: writing essays. She’s been published by The New York Times Magazine, broadcast by Minnesota Public Radio, published two literary collections of her own, and is set to release her first hardcover collection with Dutton Books in the fall of 2018.

Her most recent solo album, Chime, brought together her songwriting with her longtime love of science (one of her first jobs was as a medical technical writer). She turned her own personal experience of heartbreak into a kind of science experiment, and let the process inform her songs. The result is extremely compelling and also great pop music.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

Lorrie Moore is the kind of writer that inspires real devotion from her readers. She’s best known as a writer of short stories, although she has also published novels and critical essays. See What Can Be Done, a collection of essays and reviews (many of which were originally published in the New York Review of Books) was published this month.

Lorrie is also a beloved creative writing teacher. She spent 30 years at the University of Wisconsin before moving to Nashville to teach at Vanderbilt University, where she still teaches.

I was eager to talk to Lorrie about a lifetime of writing, her process, how she thinks about teaching creative writing, and why music is so important to her. She’s spending the year in New York and we met recently at her apartment in Manhattan to debrief.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

Four years and 100 episodes later, I’m still going. What a trip. This week, I take a moment to reflect with one of the most surprising and flattering guest hosts I’ve ever had: my wife, Amanda.

I write this in from pitch black hotel room in Palm Springs. Last night on the plane I made a list of all my guests so far (hopefully I haven’t overlooked anyone too serious), and organized them into category. The categories are a bit one dimensional, especially considering that my focus is often on the kinds of people who defy category. How does one place an incredible musician who is also an incredible composer, and a visionary producer? By what name do we call a polymath singer, arranger and multi instrumentalist? What about an actor turned Zen Buddhist priest turned blues musician? Or a bebop piano player who also runs two clubs?

So please forgive me if you disagree with where I’ve placed your favorite saxophone player or engineer. Overall when I look at this list, I think my taste is generally pretty clear. I’ve been so fortunate to talk with people who make things I love, some of whom have influenced me, some who I call friends, some who are both.

Moving forward what do I hope for? More. Much more. The rest of 2018 is shaping up to be an eclectic and very exciting batch of new conversations with musicians, writers, producers, and thinkers. And I look forward to continuing to push the edges of the format whenever I can.

But in the spirit of celebration, today is about looking back. Thank you for joining me on this journey.

Singers and songwriters: Nadia Ackerman Jonatha Brooke Alex Cuba Jorge Drexler Duchess Kurt Elling Falu Alan Hampton Jesse Harris Michael Hearst Jascha Hoffman Greg Holden Theo Katzman Jo Lawry Adam Levy Madeleine Peyroux Morgan James Janis Siegel Becca Stevens Sachal Vasandani Pat MAcDonald Noa Leah Siegel Adam Schatz / Landlady

Bass players: Alexis Cuadrado Adam Dorn Matt Geraghty Peter Giron Jeff Hamann Will Lee Billy Peterson Paul Peterson Michael Thurber

Drummers: Louis Cato Liberty Devitto Steve Gadd David Garibaldi Dave King Bill Stewart

Guitarists: Doug Wamble Steve Khan Charlie Hunter Jon Madof Gabriela Quintero

Keyboard Players: Jon Batiste George Colligan Mark Davis Larry Goldings Monte Moir Ricky Peterson

Various: Settling the Underscore - on music in advertising Should I move to Nashville What is music therapy

Arrangers: Jacob Collier Gil Goldstein Rob Mounsey

Producers: Michael Leonhart Tommy LiPuma Matt Pierson Jack Stratton Creed Taylor Butch Vig

Engineers: James Farber Ryan Hewitt Al Schmitt

Music Presenters: Michael Dorf Dave Jemilo George Wein Spike Wilner

Other Instrumentalists: John Ellis Tatum Greenblatt Ryan Keberle Ze Luis Howard Levy Bob Rockwell John Scrapper Sneider Ben Wendel Irv Williams

Entrepreneurs and technologists: Ryan Gruss Peter Koechley Benji Rogers Ralph Simon Gabriel Stulman

Writers, actors, directors, literary people: Peter Coyote Andre DeShields Michael Feldman Laura Garcia Lorca Ari Herstand Clifford Irving Daniel Levitin Ratso Sloman Emma Straub Peter Straub Marc Webb

With Ben Sidran: The election of 2016 The Mobtown Tour Remembering Tommy LiPuma Newport Jazz festival 2015 Welcome to Copenhagen What happened in Paris

www.third-story.com

To call Larry “Ratso” Sloman a writer is not at all inaccurate - he is a writer. But he’s so much more. Sloman perfected the art of hanging out and he turned that art into a career. Here he talks about how studying sociology influenced his thinking and gave him a way to be inside the revolution and outside at the same time.

Allen Ginsberg, The Fugs, Abbie Hoffman, Al Goldstein (Screw Magazine), Kinky Friedman, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, John Cale, Rolling Stone Magazine, Howard Stern, Anthony Kiedis, High Times Magazine… they all make prominent appearances in our conversation.

On fashion: “Not to boast but I always had a good sense of unique fashion. I mean I was wearing rabbinical coats way before Gaultier was doing them.”

On writing: “It’s like building a house. You have to have a great foundation. Have a great beginning and great ending. You can get away with a lot of sh$t in the middle.”

On celebrity: “They don’t want someone to put them on a pedestal.”

Visit www.third-story.com or go to www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.

Singer Achinoam Nini (Noa) and guitarist Gil Dor on their nearly 30 year long creative partnership, how popular culture has developed in Israel, how they handle the responsibility of their success in such a politicized and charged atmosphere.

Noa and Gil shared their unique and provocative viewpoint on Israel, describing the “war between the Jewish people and the State of Israel” and explaining in beautiful terms why “language is the ultimate instrument of equal opportunity.”

Visit www.third-story.com or go to www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.

Louis Cato is living proof that some people are simply given a gift. Born in Lisbon, Portugal and raised mostly in North Carolina, Louis began playing drums at age 2. By the time he started high school he was a credible drummer, bassist, guitarist, trombone and tuba player. He found his way deeper and deeper into music despite the fact that, as he says, he was “raised in a bubble”. Louis didn’t hear secular music until he was almost 18 years old, but the music he learned in church, and the music he played in the church with his mother gave him a deep foundation for what would quickly become a career as a “super sideman”.

When he did eventually hear the music and the musicians that would inform his professional journey, he quickly understood that he had a place in that world. Soon he was playing with the likes of Marcus Miller, John Scofield, Q-Tip, Snarky Puppy, Jon Batiste, and Bobby McFerrin.

Here he talks about the difference between making music in church and playing secular music, what it means to “learn what you already know” and how surviving a terrible tour-bus accident changed his outlook on life and music.

Visit www.third-story.com or go to www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.

Liberty Devitto says he was lucky to be the right age when The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. He learned to play drums by listening to Ringo Starr’s parts and playing along to records. Why the drums? “Because they didn’t make Prozac back then.”

Still, Liberty says he “likes music better than drums”. Maybe that’s why he’s often called a song drummer. In the recording studio, he’s much more likely to be reading the lyrics than the sheet music. Devitto played with Billy Joel for nearly 30 years, played on all the big records and hits, and toured the world countless times. His sound, style and feel are iconic.

Then, at age 50, Liberty was faced with a new reality. Here we talk about the journey from restless funny kid to veteran hit maker, and what makes him a “New York style drummer”. And we tackle the important questions, like do we choose to be musicians because we’re nuts, or does becoming a musician makes us nuts?

The episode features an additional bonus intro conversation with Michael Sackler-Berner, who plays in The Slim Kings with Liberty, and who helped to arrange the interview.

Visit www.third-story.com or go to www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast.