Dave Koz

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today the saxophone is extraordinary, Dave, Cause wow,
that introduction where do we go from? There? Where we
go is actually back to a memorial day. The last
time I saw you in person, you were presiding over
Mindy a Bear's surprise wedding. How did that come together? Well,

(00:31):
Mindy is a great friend of mine and a colleague,
fantastic saxophone artists and great singer, and we've done a
lot of touring together and made records together. And she um.
It was actually a funny thing because when are We
made this album called Summer Horns in two thousand and thirteen,
and at the time I was working with this guy

(00:52):
named Eric Querra on a wine project sort of like
a side project for us that we do for charity.
And over the years we've made a raised a lot
of money for a charity called the Starlight Children's Foundation
through the sale of Cause Wine, which is basically wine
with my name on it. That's you can find it
whole Foods and it raises money for charity. As I
like to say, drink for the kids. But these are

(01:15):
kids that are in the hospital for long periods of time,
and this is one way just to kind of help them.
So anyway, Eric guarra Um is a good friend of
mine in the wine business, and he was helping me
for a number of years make this wine and we
were having wonderful success. And we just finished the Summer
Horns record and I sent him the cover of the

(01:37):
album as basically just because he's my friend, I said,
here's our new album, and you know, I wanted to
share this with you. And he wrote back immediately he said,
who is that blonde? And is she's single? And I said, hey,
slow your roll, brother, you know, let's let's go a
little slower here. I thought I was gonna be your
favorite saxophone player, and he said, You're always gonna be

(01:57):
my favorite saxophone player. But who is that blonde? So
I called Mindy and I said, this guy Eric is
is kind of interested in meeting you. Are you interested
in meeting him? And I showed her a picture of Eric. Now,
since this is a non visual medium, bob um, let
me just say he's kind of a He's he's a
hot guy, right, He's got these like the total uh,

(02:19):
you know, George Clooney with the gray hair and the
just the tan and just you know, a very suave guy.
So she's looked at him and she said, yes, I
do want to meet him immediately. So they had their
first date and I was not there, but evidently it
went very very well, and um they started dating and
then they got really involved and they've been involved ever since.

(02:42):
You know. That was it. So Mindy and Eric came
to me many years later and said, we're thinking about
tying the knot. And it was in conjunction with Mindy's
fiftieth birthday, which was Memorial Day weekend. And I came
up with the idea because I presided over one like
a gay wedding about five or six years ago. That
was a total surprise as well, and it was so

(03:03):
much fun because people came to a party not knowing
that the they were gonna get married or they weren't
witnessed a wedding, and it was so much fun. And
so I suggested to them, I said, well, what about
just having a fiftieth birthday party, but at the party,
we just have a surprise wedding. And they loved it,
and so that's that's how it all happened. Okay, how
long before the party did you have this conversation? Say,

(03:26):
it's probably three months a long time because she has
a party every Memorial Day weekend. And I was sitting
in the kitchen. It's mostly an outdoor party, and my
friend Elbow b said he Eric came out in the
suit and then all of said they're gonna get married.
I guess I'm slow on the uptake. But then it
could all put together. And that was before they entered

(03:48):
the Uh. The outside where the suble multitude mostly was well,
if you've never been to a surprise wedding, there's there's
that moment exactly what you just described, Bob, where like
the turn that the situation changes. You're coming to a
party expecting one thing, and then all of a sudden
you start noticing cues that oh something is changing, and

(04:09):
then there's this energy that just erupts and people are
so excited. You know, So I think it's it's um,
it's not for everybody's taste, but for if you kind
of like that adventurous spirit. It worked for Indian era list.
It was great. It's great vibe and everybody was there.
But in addition, you performed the ceremony extremely Well, so

(04:31):
is it your How did you come up with your
lines and you felt comfortable because you're always on stage
or what happened there, that's a different thing, that's right,
That's why I'm asking. But it was very loose. But
you said you felt so comfortable from the outside observer. Well,
that's nice to you to say, and I'm glad it
came off that way. I was rather nervous. I get

(04:51):
pretty nervous for things like That's one thing to have
a saxophone in my mouth on stage. It's another thing
to be marrying, you know, two people you really really love.
But I think it came from them. They were, uh,
they said to me like, they didn't put any parameters
on me. They just said, let's have something that's fun, reverent.
We don't have to we're nonconformists, so let's just not
have a We're having a surprise wedding, so it doesn't

(05:14):
have to conform to anything that you would normally typically
think a wedding should be. And so I just went
with it. And I knew I knew that um that
Mindy had worked a lot with Adam Sandler, and so
I was doing some uh you know, just research before that,
and I found a great Adam Sandler quote that really
from the wedding singer that just was the perfect way

(05:35):
to start, and it just basically diffused the energy and
let everybody know that this was not going to be
a typical wedding, and it just kind of remember remember
the quote, I can't remember it right, right right? I
should have knew that You've known you're gonna ask me
that question. Okay, let's go back to the beginning. When's
the first time you picked up a saxophone. I was

(05:57):
thirteen years old, seventh grade, Portola Junior High School here
in Los Angeles and the Valley Tarzana, California, where I
grew up, and that was the uh the for I
played other instruments. Well, that's my question. Coming from a
Jewish background like myself, we started taking piano lessons at
age six, So did you have any of that experience

(06:17):
or something in the school before this accident. We had
the same piano teacher because did you play Hot Cross Buns?
Probably so he hated piano. I mean, my mom forced
my brother and sister and I to take it up
when we were growing up and I just hated it,
and so I rebelled when I was around ten and
I took up the drum set because I thought I
was gonna really show my parents whose boss. And this

(06:41):
is a true story. There was a time when my
dad came to pick me up from my drum lesson
at Kay's music scene in uh In Mercida, and the
drum teacher came to say hello to my dad, and
I was right there so I could hear what he
said to my dad, and he said, dr Cos you
might want to think about sports for Dave, because it's
just not gonna have I was crushed. This is two

(07:05):
instruments now that I basically crashed and burn was terrible
piano player, terrible drummer, and so I thought this was it.
There's there's no music for me. Let's go back to
your family said your father was a doctor. What kind
of doctor was dermatologist? Dermatologist? So was that something he
didn't discuss his work over the dinner table. Yeah, there

(07:25):
was a healthy diet of zits and karatosis, and uh,
you know, my dad was a very Both my parents
are passed, but my mom was a pharmacist too, So
my my parents in addition to being you know, Jews,
they were also medical Jews, so they had that kind
of perspective. And all three kids, my older brother and
sister and I all went into the music business, if

(07:48):
you can believe that, and they were very supportive. Surprisingly
and to their credit, they were incredibly supportive of of
us following are okay, it's just staying on that topic.
Your father is a dermatologist. Most teenagers get it. Did
you then go to see your father? Of course there
was no charge. Yeah, I guess that's the only thing.
It wasn't weird because you didn't know something. Dermot Toms

(08:09):
is always sort of weird when they're addressing yours. It's so,
there are three kids in the family. Where are you
in the hierarchy? I'm the youngest, you're the youngest, so
you're the oldest. Is my brother Jeff? Okay, and how
much older is he than you? Almost four years older
than me? And then your sister is the middle kid, Roberta,
and she's two years two years old and me? Okay,

(08:30):
Like in my family, it's all two years. And then
if you do the math, you realize this is nine
months after the re anniversary, which is kind of creepy.
I know, it's it's amazing that our parents kind of
got to it exactly. I can't imagine it. They just
like god to it and had and they basically spit
out three kids within less than four years. And um,

(08:52):
I marvel at my parents, my you know, somehow they
were able to make it happen. And I never I
grew up in a very you know, I grew up
in Tarzana and and never really thought about anything. I mean,
I had my own issues to deal with, which we're
you know, kind of having to deal with them on
my own. Like what kind of issues? Well, I grew
up I'm gay? You know, Wait, just since you brought
it up, at what point do you realize you're gay?

(09:19):
I would say, like my earliest memories sitting on my
parents bed, reading the Sunday newspaper and looking at some
of those circulars were that show, you know, people in
in bathing suits. And I think I was noticing guys
way back when, even before there was any sort of
understanding of what that meant. So were you in single digits,

(09:42):
were already a teenager probably six seven something like that? Okay,
need let's just say los Angeles is very liberal on this,
so just like San Francisco. But to what degree did
you try to repress those feelings, if at all, I
completely tried to replace repress the I made have made
a serious habit of repressing them for a long time,

(10:03):
because it's just there was nothing. I didn't really know
what to do with those feelings. And and and this is
what and I don't mean to be over dramatic, be
as dramatic, but um, when I discovered the saxophone finally
at thirteen, this is the connection to your earlier question.
Discovering the saxophone at thirteen when my body was exploding,

(10:24):
you know, like all theteen year olds. Um, it was
finally finding that best friend that I could talk to.
And I've thought about this a lot, and I wonder
why I have a career that I feel very blessed
and fortunate that I'm still able to do this. I've
been doing it for almost thirty years, making records and
traveling around. What is why does somebody want to hear

(10:46):
me play the saxophone? When I've said this before, there
are people who can blow circles around me. There's something
in the sound that I think was made like a
blueprint of the sound was made when I first picked
it up, because there was so much of that internal
like emotion going into this sound, Like the saxophone was

(11:10):
the one vehicle that I could express myself with, and
I think because it was, it started out as this
is that you know, there's a lot of real emotion
and real pain that's in that sound. Even though ironically
the music that I make is is very uplifting and
I consider kind of kind of happy. It's not sad music,

(11:30):
but they're inside of that sound, there is some sort
of thing that I think people maybe on some level,
uh connect to because we all go through that stuff
no matter what we're dealing with. We can recognize that
if there's something in a sound that that that connects
with us on that level. So, uh well, let's stay

(11:50):
let's go back to a little bit of fill in.
So did you ever date girls? If I did, you did,
and that was a good or bad experience. I think
my my most successful relationship was with a woman to
this day, to this day, Okay informed me of that.
Lisa Rosendam. She was my high school girlfriend into college

(12:14):
and we had a great We had a really great
relationship I'm hoping that she's not upset for me outing
her on your podcast. Um. She was so great because
I was very honest with her. I told her what
was going on with me, and I was committed to her,
and I said, I really want to see this through.
And then one day, about two years in, she came
to me and she said, I just kind of need

(12:34):
to know, like, do you think that we have a future?
Are you gonna want a date? Guys? And I said, um,
I think it was on a on a Friday, and
I said, can I take the weekend? So on Monday,
I said, I thought about this over the weekend and
I definitely will want to explore this and I think
it would be a mistake to not And she said

(12:55):
totally cool, and we broke up and remained great friends.
Very soon after she met her husband. There's a guy
named Jeff and to this day it was a long
time ago now and to this day, every time I
see him, he thanks me well, as he should you.
But you know, this is not an uncommon story. I
have a friend who was married to someone and she said,
right up front, you know, I'm into women as well

(13:17):
as you, which maybe this is you know, bisexual as
opposed to They were married very briefly. She came home
and said, Hey, I want to date this woman. He
divorced her. She's still with that woman decades later. So. Uh,
but going back, you said, your sister and brother with
the music business, what do they do. My brother is
a incredibly talented um composer, plays guitar. Uh. There was

(13:42):
a time in his life, in the early part of
his life where he wanted to be a recording artist
and really really went for it. But for whatever reason,
you know, it just didn't happen in that way for him.
So he retooled along the way and decided to do
to get more behind the scenes, and he started a
company that was doing mostly music for commercials and films

(14:04):
and stuff like that, and built a career uh for
approximately thirty years that really was very successful until that
business kind of started to change. My sister was an
executive at MTV before it was called MTV, when it
was owned by Warner American Express, and she was one
of the on the business side, not in the music

(14:25):
or programming side, but on the on the cable side.
She was one of the early executives. She worked her
way all the way up to running the whole West
Coast office until she decided that she wanted to be
more focused on her kids when she had kids, so
she left that. And then, just as a like a
little anti or addendum to that whole story, my brother

(14:47):
and sister and the most unlikely marriage of all decided
about two years ago to get into the marijuana business. So, well,
let's I think we missed a chapter here. Your sister
started making cookies. So how long ago did she start
making cookies? Well, my mom was a baker, uh, And

(15:10):
my mom dispensed these. She was a pharmacist, but she's
dispensed these chocolate chip cookies and they were just amazing.
She never sold them, but she brought them everywhere. And
she my mom was a typical Jewish mom. She equated
food with love, and if she loved you, she was
going to feed you, whether you liked it or not.
And so she had these cookies. And in the beginning

(15:32):
part of my career, Bob it was it was funny
because Capitol Records, I was signed to Capital for twenty years.
Capital fell in love with my mom and her cookies
so much that back in the day and the early
part of my career. They would send her out, not me,
her out on a promotional visits to warehouse records and liquor,

(15:52):
spizza and sam goodies, and and she would get you know,
she would get placement for me just by these cookies.
Were that good. Well that's a great story, irrelevant of
the cookie. So anyway, she was a great baker. How
did it transition to your sister, Well, my mom passed
in twenty oh five, and um, people would she was
larger than life, you though she was only five ft tall.

(16:14):
But my um, all of us just to stay here.
So your mother and father were born in America. They
were born in Canada, Canada, and then their parents immigrated
from the Old Country as we say, yes, how did
they get from Winnipeg to Los Angeles? I think in
a covered wagon. I didn't know the room went in
that direction. I thought it was just east to west. No,

(16:36):
my parents got married and they were my dad hated
the cold, and they grew up in Winnipeg, of all places,
you know, fifty below zero. So when they got married,
my dad was immediately, we're moving to California, and they did,
and my mom went along with him. I don't think
that she really wanted to go, but he really wanted

(16:56):
to go, and so he developed. He was brought into
a practice dermatology practice in in Encino, and my mom
came along and that's where my brother and sister and
I were all raised. That begs a question, do you
have a lot of relatives in Canada? Yeah, all over Canada,
but but especially in Winnipeg's and do you ever see them?
I do, Yeah, I do a lot. Okay, so let's

(17:17):
go back to the cookies. How does your sister decide
to make started making cookies? Well, when my mom passed,
her name was Audrey. And when my mom passed, people
always said, you know, we miss Audrey so much, but
white cookies. So Roberta, my sister said enough already, I'm
gonna try and find the recipe. She, you know, went

(17:38):
through my mom's things, found the recipe and she started
making the cookies and everybody was very happy. And then
she said, I think there's a business here, and she
started doing it. She developed a company called Audrey's Cookies,
and for a while she had a pretty good, you know,
little company never made any money, you know, because because
her competitors were Nabisco and it was very difficult, but

(18:01):
she still got on the shelves and whole food. She
got on the shelves in Costco and a test. She
was in a bunch of different markets, and she would
take two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward,
two steps back. It never really took off. My brother
when he saw the winds of change happening in the
cannabis world in in um, you know, like two or

(18:21):
three years ago here in the state of California, he
suggested to my sister, we should turn Audrey's Cookies into
an edibles company and incorporate marijuana, cannabis and um and
then we can You know, most people uh honor their
dead parents, especially with their Jewish dead parents with maybe

(18:44):
a plant, a tree in Israel, maybe you put a
plaque in the synagogue with their name on it. My family,
we're just in the pot cookie business. So it's my
mom's recipe and it's my dad's name. They're called doctor Norms,
and you can find them pretty much at any dispensary
up and down the state of California. Right now. I

(19:04):
know it's their business, not yours, but I know a
lot of people entered that business. Very competitive now at
this point in time legally and commercially. How difficult has
it been for them. I think it's been difficult because
they started before it was legal in in the state
of California, so there were much different rules. It was

(19:25):
pretty much like the Wild Wild West when they first started,
which is not even that long ago, it's only maybe
two and a half years ago. But when it was
the the the rule was passed in the state of
California and the rules changed, and then the it's like
the government wasn't prepared to figure out how to do
all that at the same time, so it was just
chaos for at least like six months. So they've been

(19:49):
dealing with a lot of that stuff. But um, their
sales are very strong. They were acquired by a big
company and um so they're off to the races. So
once they put in the annibis, it turned into a
profitable business. And they're still very both very heavily involved.
They're incredibly involved. Yeah, they have so pretty much. If
I go to a dispensary, I asked for Audrey's cookies

(20:12):
Dr Norms. Dr Norm's. The brand name changed. Dr Norms. Okay,
so let's go back to you. How do you end
up picking up the saxophone at age thirteen? Well that
was my brother. Um, god, this is turning into a
really this is your life exactly. I hope it's interesting
for your listenership. Did people already turn off? Okay? Okay,

(20:35):
seven people listening now, most of them related to me.
But that's besides the point. You have a lot of fans.
I mean, it's your name comes up, it's like, you know,
spontaneous of my nutritionist. I have high cholesterol. Huge fan
tells me she's going to your shows. You know, well yes, absolutely,
Well god, but you know you do these cruises. But
let's start at the beginning. So your brother, My brother

(20:56):
had a band when I was growing up with his
friends that were they were doing weddings and bar mitzvah's
fraternity parties. It's called Randy and Company. And uh, they
did not have a saxophone player. I wanted to be
in that band. When I was a kid, I saw
him and his buddies. Everybody else had to get jobs,
you know, working at Burger King or McDonald's or whatever,
flipping burgers. These guys played music on the weekend. So

(21:19):
I was thought, this is so cool. I want to
be in the band. Of course, going back to what
I was telling you before, I really had no uh like,
there was no indication that I had any musical talent whatsoever.
But my brother said in in passing one when one
time he said, the only way that First of all,
you're never getting in this band. Right. Of course he's
four years older. That's what I think, total older brother

(21:41):
never getting in this band. But the only way that
you could get in this band, if possibly in a
million years, could ever happen, is if you played the
saxophone player saxophone, because we don't have a saxophone player.
And it was the time when you know, this is
like the late seventies early eighties when when every pop
song had a saxolo. If you didn't have a sax

(22:02):
player in your band for a wedding, I mean, you
really were out of touch. So that's all I heard.
And it was basically at the same exact time I
was going into seventh grade, I could pick up an instrument,
uh part of the curriculum, and so I picked up
the saxophone. And then I just drove my brother crazy
until he let me be in the band. Okay, let's
go back one step. Were you a huge popular music

(22:25):
fan yourself? For sure? Yeah. I was pretty much an
amalgam of everything that was going on in my house. So, Uh,
my parents were listening to the great singers, you know,
whether it was Sara Van or Ella Fitzgerald of Frank Sinatra,
Sammy Davis Jr. My sister had Chicago Earth Wind and

(22:46):
Fire and a lot of the you know, the horn bands,
and and my brother was listening to more progressive rocks.
So I was kind of like just listened to everything,
and then um, when I picked up the saxophone, it
really became about David Sanborn, Grover Washington, Junior, Um Wine Light. Yeah,
I mean those like the real pop because I, in

(23:06):
my in my core, I was never really a jazz musician.
It was more of just a pop fan. Okay, But
were you hearing that those songs on the radio where
you're searching them out? Uh? Probably a combination of them
and being turned on by uh. I mean you know
this like there was that time period where you get
turned onto music by people. There was in a maybe

(23:29):
more so than it is now. Yeah, exactly what is
somebody's house? You gotta hear this record? They put it on,
or even just record shopping. Remember when you would go
down the aisle and you'd talk to somebody and they
would be saying, oh did you check this? I was
a regular certain record store. They would hold record for me,
they would tip me, oh yeah, that was part of
the whole process. I love that time. What record store
did you go to? Well, we had the Warehouse Records,

(23:51):
which was right down the street in Tarzana. There was
liquorice pizza. That's really going way back in Tarzana. Um
those are the two main one and of course Tower
Records on Sunset. But but that was like a special
outing right right, that was a big trip. That was
a very but going there was always the greatest. And
I remember when my first record came out. Do you
remember the big when they those oversized record covers on

(24:13):
the side of the building. Well, for my first record
they did that, and I I remember driving down Sunset
Boulevard and so this was probably fall of when it
first came out, and I I freaked, I mean literally
freaked out because that's like a dream come true for
for any music fan to see your well, to have

(24:35):
a record come out, period, but then to see the
cover on the side of Tower Records. That's also better
than hearing it on the radio, for sure. But wait,
we're driving down the street. I hate to bust into
the story. Did you know what was gonna be there? Um? Yeah,
they had told me that it was going. Okay, So
you're taking lessons in school? Are you taking lessons outside

(24:57):
of school? Um? Basically playing in school? I never really had. Um.
I took saxophone lessons for a very short period of time.
I studied improvisation when I was in high school quite uh.
When you say it took lessons briefly, that was at
the advent of your playing career or somewhere later. It
was probably maybe a few years into it. So most

(25:20):
of the learning that I did on the saxophone. The
funny thing about the sacks, to Bob was that it
was unlike the piano, drums or any other instrument. The
minute it came into my hands, there was a kinship
with the instrument, like it felt right. It was not
a struggle. It was just it had a different texture.

(25:41):
Like all of a sudden, I was okay at it,
you know, and I got good quick. And then two
years later, after playing for two years. I basically, you know,
drove my brother so crazy that he let me be
in the band. And then I was playing with people
who were much better musicians than I was, so it
allowed me. It's like the same thing when you want

(26:03):
to take up a sport or play tennis. Something you
play with people who are much better than you gets
you better quicker. That was exactly the way it worked
for me, because I got all these amazing musicians I
get to play with. You know, the bar mits was
every weekend. Okay, so that's the next question. How much
did you work, um, at least a couple of times
a week, and what kind of money were you ending

(26:24):
up making. I made ten dollars on my first one,
where everybody else played got a hunter bucks. Um, my
brother paid me ten dollars and uh, I filed that
away and uh later on down the road when my
brother and I wrote some songs from my first album,
I think he might have gotten paid ten dollars because

(26:44):
paybacks a bit. Jeff. Although usually people who were successful musicians,
wedding musicians, bar mitzva musicians in high school, they're making
a good chunck of change. Honestly, I from the time
that my first record came out at least six months.
At least six months, I was still working every weekend

(27:04):
doing weddings even though I was a recording artist now
and getting played on the radio because the money was great.
But when you were in high school, you were making
a lot of money. What did you do with the money? Drugs?
Not just kidding, um, I just I don't know. I
think I what did I do with the money. I
probably bought equipment, and I bought a car. That's why

(27:27):
I was usually that that's what you did. What kind
of car was it? My first car that I ever
got was a Honda Accord hatchback copper color, and uh
cost me. So you want a brand new I remember
that model. That model would run forever if something. You
didn't want a new car? Yeah, so I had it

(27:48):
for a long time. Well let's stay on the car
thing for one time. I remember, for ecological reasons, you
switch from your Mercedes to your Prius. But you wanted
something a little more luxurious. So what do you drive
in now? I drive a Tesla, That's what I figured.
And you drive I was gonna just say, so you
drive a Tesla? S I drive a test last, So,
uh do you use the automatic driving mode? You know,

(28:11):
I don't have that on my on my car. You
could update it because some are upgradable, some aren't. This
one is not because I had I got my Tesla
the second year that they came out, and so it's
not it doesn't have the software capability of being U Okay,
So your Tesla is like six years old exactly. Okay,
how had any problems with It's been a great car.
I mean you hear everybody who's got a Tesla doesn't

(28:34):
stop raving, said they would only drive an electric car
out what do you drive? I drive a SOB that's
really a subru so the only thing I drove to
BMW's before that, I wanted to get a Japanese car.
And actually this guy, Jim Ron Denelly record producer, worked
with Matthew sweet Wilko a million people. His father was

(28:54):
in the car business, and he called me up so
I ushould drive this car. You've got a special deal whatever,
and I get a you know service at the super
Group plate SOB. They didn't really know what they were doing.
The only thing the car drives well, because after you
have a BMW, you're into that driving ability. Okay, the
only thing it does well is drive. Well. It's a
turbo charge d engine that's got four wheel drive. But

(29:16):
all the bells and whistles, the computerized stuff. No. I mean,
I got a stereo better than you can buy in
any car. But I was hoping to drive that car
until we went to no one owning cars. I drove
my first BMW for eleven years and my second BMW

(29:38):
for twenty years. You know, it's like I was attached
to them. This is before the days of leasing, and
leasing is really just a way of burning money. And
I take very good care of my stuff. And then
you see, well what what a new car right cost?
You don't want to get a new car. It's like
they say the guy in the Wall Street Journal, the
big he's a number one auto guys is don't buy

(30:01):
a gas combunction combustion car internal combustion because it's gonna
fall off a cliff in a matter of years. So
my nephew is the number, depending on the month, the
number two or three BMW salesman in America. This is
an amazing story. My sister now lives in the valley,
and uh, he didn't make it. In college and then

(30:22):
he bounced around one story worse than another. He ended
up working last job for his karate teacher didn't show
up on time. He was down and out forget it,
and people were stick of getting him jobs. He answered
an ad to work in the Internet department in Keys
Lexus on Wilshore Boulevard. First you're doing nothing. Then he
found out he had a real flair for it, so

(30:43):
he sold lex I for a while. He met his
wife there, and he sells BMW. He sells so many cars.
He told me. I saw him a couple of weeks ago.
He sold nine cars in a month. That's amazing. So
I mean, if I want to BMW, it's not so
much that it's a deal, but if you want to
get a used one, he has all that you know,

(31:05):
he knows which ones are good, etcetera. And my car
was looked like it was on his last legs a
year ago, and I was gonna get one, but I'm
not into leasing. But then I say, if I buy
one having owned BMW's incredible service, costs, unbelievable, great driving experience,
but I said, I don't want to make a big
investment and then find out it's worth nothing. And as

(31:25):
far as a Tesla, especially with a Tesla three, that's
very enticing. But you know my girlfriend well, and we
lived together. She's got a one car garage and her
car is in the garage and you have to charge it.
So that's my car story. Note she has. It's interesting
because this is how we all we know each other.

(31:47):
But her sister has been leasing a car every three years. Okay,
the irony is her car is up next month. That
you think of not getting a car at all, which
I know a number of people have done that, just
take over. But because she doesn't drive that much, and
if you're leasing, your really upside down. But what happened
was they wanted to lease a new car and they

(32:09):
had bought one car they leased and it was a
fully I mean he had everything, the Macabici, stereo, the
cool seats, whatever, lexus and she sold it to my girlfriend,
her twin sister, four years ago with not even thirty
thousand miles on it. So that's the car she drops.

(32:30):
You know, uh uh suddenly I g S three. Do
you think that cars will actually go the way of
land lines? Absolutely? You know, I know a lot of
people that do not have landline. I still have one.
I kind of like it. Actually I still have one,
and I and I have one because it's now baked
into the triple plate with cable, okay, And everyone said, oh,

(32:54):
you know, it's not gonna be as good as landline,
much better than dealing with GT which was and then Verizon.
But uh, you know, I find myself, you know, I
do you keep on your phone to use the ICL
calendar app to have all your appointments? Yes, you know,
I find so addicted that. And then I I have people,

(33:14):
you know, I used to always helps call my landline.
Now there say call my cell phone, and unless I'm
literally at home, I really don't use it. And the
other thing I find is people now forget that people text.
What astounds me is when I look, I still have
an answering machine, very specifically because with voicemail, the landline
you pick up to know how many calls. If you

(33:36):
have an answering machine, you can hear and know whether
to pick up, and other than junk calls, if anybody
calls at all, they don't call my landline. You have
an answering machine, like absolutely absolutely listen. It was hard
to get one when the last one, where do you
get it? Okay, well, you know you you'll find the
cassette players. This is what I got on Amazon. But

(33:58):
if you remember in your old enough to remember, the
answering machines had a very brief lifespan, like two years,
and then they switched to digital to s s D
s uh you know, solid state storage and then but
they only couldn't have a little things. So now the
irony is I bought one which is nowhere near as

(34:19):
good as the ones you used to be able to buy,
but it's made for Mexico. Because this is a big surprise. Now,
this is something I would have never expected to hear
come out of your mouth. Let's let's say you're at
home and you're working at the computer and I really
can't be up to interrupted when I work, I get
in the mood and the phone rings, and you see

(34:41):
to yourself, hmm, I was expecting that important call. But
if it's not the important call and I pick up
the phone, it's gonna change my mood. It really can
suck me up. But what about color I D like
where you can see who's calling calor I D is
a good point, but lot of people have their numbers blocked.

(35:02):
So this way I used to turn let's forget really
into it. I used to turn the machine off when
it worked. When I work this machine. After once you
get a call in them, you can't turn the voice
coming in down completely. But I could be sitting there
and I could hear if it's somebody important calling. Okay,

(35:23):
as you know, let's go five steps further. We're not
quite like the younger generation, but no one calls anymore anyway.
It is true. My goal is to never talk on
the phone, because what I find is people call you
and they say, ay, how you doing, having a good summer?
What have you seen? And then they get to the ask,

(35:44):
which you don't want to provide no matter what. Uh.
This guy Peter gross life, He was an agent at
William Morris. He ran their department for a while. He
got this very weird disease. He ultimately died of pancreatic cancer.
But this is before that. They couldn't figure out what
it was, and R. A. M Annual ultimately ran wm ME.
When William Morris merged with Endeavor and his brother Rom

(36:06):
was running was chief of staff for Obama and Peter
wanted his disease whatever it was studied by the National
Institute of Health, so rom Connect already connected it with ROM.
He dialed ROM ROM picked up the phone. The first
thing he says, what do you need? Just got right there, etcetera.

(36:27):
And uh so, you know, I mean I just had
some guy doing some work yesterday and the whole thing
was done in texts. I mean, people bare leave an
email anymore. It's crazy. Those are my justifications. Well, you know,
it's possible that we could, as the world moves hurls
forward through technological barriers that you and I never thought

(36:49):
postule because of our age um, that there might be
it seems plausible that there could be a faction of
us that go back to the real old school voicemail
or stuff. That it's kind of fun. It's sort of
like a it's fun to think about going back in
time like that. Well, and you're touching a little bit

(37:10):
of a nerve for me. Yes, there's the steampunk movement,
which is like that. But as a dedicated reader of
like four newspapers a day and I read the New
York Times cover to cover, they are so anti technology
it blows my mind. It's uh Thompson. I think that's
the name of the company is big student book company.

(37:32):
They just went completely digital. But if you read in
the New York Times, oh, physical books are where it's at.
And then if you buy digital books, which I do,
and I could sing the praises all day long, they've
raised the prices so much that sometimes they're higher than
the physical book. One thing we know for sure is
digital books will come. Then you get someone who says, oh, yeah,

(37:53):
i'm anti you know, you know this is BYS and
you find they have an upgraded this is in the
New York Time. They have an upgraded their operating system
for three generations, if nothing else, for security reasons, they
should then Chuck Schumer uses a flip phone, which I
think is just insane. So I am a very nostalgic person.

(38:13):
So as long we can be nostalgic, just as le
long as we can't deny the future. It's like this
whole Vinyl craze. If the album was cut analog and
you want to make vinyl, fantastic, But if the album
was cut totally digital and you're making vinyl, that's just insane. Yeah,
I know, I get it, But let's go back to
your tesla. So you essentially have had no problems. I've

(38:36):
had no problems, and when you've had to have service,
you haven't had to wait or anything. No. And actually
the last time I had at service, they gave me
a brand new Tesla and I was like, I'm not
I'm sorry, I'm not returning this. I was very happy
with my loner. Uh No, they've been great. They really
have been great. And I follow that, you know, the
whole thing with Elon Muskin, who I think is a

(38:58):
guy that is such a visionary, and I feel like
we need to take care of these people. I couldn't
agree more the true visionaries of our of our world,
like he's he's one of them. That and almost and
this is maybe an unfair thing to say, but I
feel like we should, we should protect them in a way.
Uh that they're not because he is soul like from

(39:21):
every imaginable side there after, that guy, I just see
it in his face. You know, it's like it's terrible.
It's the internet error is bad enough where if you're
playing online, do you get any hate email, hate tweets
or anything. I don't really, I mean I'm sure that
I do. Um, but I really, I mean, if if
it happens, it's probably very small number. And I really don't.

(39:41):
I try not to get to inside of it, especially
on social media. My social media is is kind of
one way. I don't really partake in it in an
exchange because I feel like, you know, it's it's um
First of all, it's an energy and time suck big time.
I'm just like a full time job if you really
they want it right, So, but I understand the necessary

(40:03):
you know, it's a necessary thing too for promotion, and
we're out on tour right now. We want people to
know that we're coming to their city. So social media
is an important thing. But to get involved in that
kind of discourse with people can can be a slippery slope. Well,
I find because I have a lot of incoming and
I've learned through experience it's about you. Otherwise I could
tell my own experiences specifically. But ten percent of the

(40:28):
public is certifiably insane. Literally literally, I'm not a good
joke because I have a bad experience. But you don't
know which ten percent it is. That's funny. The person
who seems so reasonable, all of a sudden you find
they're the craziest. Just kind of like email. The people
who send the longest email are bad person of person

(40:49):
people send the briefest email, they're the ones you connect
with offlat Okay, but let's get back. So when you're
when you're playing the saxophone, you're playing in your brother's band.
Are you also playing in school bands marching bands? Yeah?
I was not coordinated enough to to march and play
at the same time, so I kind of got excused

(41:10):
from marching band. I had a band teacher named Mr
camp Uh in at Taft High School in in Tarzana
are in Woodland Hills, and he excused me from marching
in the marching band. And I God, bless that guy.
You know, she's so nice to me. But since you
were playing in this band, did you get any recognition
in your high school for that? Well? Mr camp was

(41:33):
really there were two music teachers, Mrs Brown and Junior
High school was my first real music teacher, and then
Mr camp Uh And these are two people that that
truly kind of saw something in me and and nurtured that.
And then when I started to have more when I
graduated from college and I met a couple of other
people that were really, you know, those are the people.

(41:54):
The best way that that I could describe them is
when you go to a bowling alley when the kids
playing uh bowling, you know, and then they now nowadays
you can put those things in the in the gutters,
so you don't ever have a gutter ball football. Those people.
I've had some people that were like those kinds of
things for me that kept my ball in play. If

(42:14):
you're part of the expression um and and without whom
I don't think that I would be sitting here talking
to you. They saw something in me that I didn't
know was there. And whether it was Mr Camp who
kind of like the just and he was a real
like salty character. This was the time. It was a
chain smoker, bad attitude, just miserable guy. You know. This

(42:39):
was a time when the he was he was a
saxophone player himself and a music teacher and it was
a time in public schools where the music classes were
being shrunk and so he was having to teach more math,
which he hated. So he was just a cranky old
you know, sot and uh. But yet with me he

(43:00):
was he showed a real soft side and real nurturing
side and really gave me some of those those early
moments where I saw a little glimmer of what could be.
But I never ever thought that this would be my
my living Let's go back to the beginning. As someone
who's never put her my mouth to a read on
a saxophone, you had a natural affinity. But it looks

(43:22):
like something that would be hard to learn. How how
long does it take for someone to actually be able
to play the saxophone? When I picked up the instrument
in the first uh, in the first few months, my mom,
God bless her, she made me stuff a sock in
the bell of my mom which only half masks the sound.
But let me just say this, for that first year,

(43:42):
you gotta have some really loving people around you, because
otherwise you're going to drive people crazy because it's not
a not a particularly nice sound. But my parents, this
is the kind of people that they were. They turned
their garage into a music room, a soundproof music room
from my brother and I to be able to to
to do what to our hearts content, what we wanted

(44:04):
to do. So they were very I mean, I'm looking
back at them and what they did for us. They
were exceptional parents, very loving and very nurtural, which is
not necessarily something that you'd see every day from you
know the no believe me. No, I could go on,
but as I say, this podcast is about you. So
were you a good student and they're talking about academics.

(44:25):
M you know, not bad okay, never never really loving school?
But but did okay you know, B plus a minus.
So you end up going to u c l A. Yeah,
you're living in tar Siana. Did you live in Westwood
or did you commute? Know? The first year I lived
in Sprawl Hall in the dorms at U c l A.

(44:46):
And uh I was a communications major. I took one
year off during the five years that I was in
that time period, and I went to a music school
called the Dick Grove School of Music, which sadly no
longer exists, but at the time it was an amazing
place to go where it was very international. A lot
of other people came from from different countries to learn

(45:09):
composing and arranging. It was not necessarily a music school
about performing. I mean, they did have performance classes, but
for me that the principal program was this thing called
c A P Composing and Arranging programs where Dick Grove
taught that, and every week you'd have to write a
chart in a different format, a different genre. So you

(45:30):
one week was country, the next few week was big band,
the next week was Broadway, and you had to actually
right and copy a whole chart for an orchestra every week.
It was the hard I think it might have been
the hardest thing I ever did musically. Um. But by
the end of that year, you knew a lot about music,

(45:51):
and you knew how to read and write at a
level that many people do not, almost no popular musicians.
So when was that in your college career? That was
in my third oh, no second year, so I had
a one year of college. It took one year off
and then I've been went back to c l A. Okay,
So what was the thought process going to Dick Grove? Um,

(46:14):
It just seemed like, if I was ever going to
do this, this was the time to do it. And
I had the support of my parents and my brother
who went through the the CAP program before. He said,
this is something you really need to do, and so
it just seemed like the right thing to do. But
then I went back to U c l A and
I graduated. Okay, you went back to U c l A.
There was no thought of turning professional at that point. No, okay,

(46:37):
so you go back to U c l A. And
you end up majoring in communications and then you graduate.
What year do you graduate? So six? The economy is
relatively good. What are your thoughts for a career of
any stripe? On my graduation day, my Jewish parents look
at me with that look. You know you you're off

(47:00):
the payroll. You better knew. I had no prospects of anything,
and so I made a deal with them. I said,
I'm gonna try music for six months and if I
can get something going with music, great, and if not,
after six months, I will go and get some job.
And I was fine with that. I was fine and
making that deal. And two weeks after I graduated, I
got a call from Bobby Calwell if you remember that,

(47:22):
And of course, and Bobby was putting together a band,
A new band can do some gigs in Los Angeles,
and I auditioned for him and I got the gig,
and um, a couple of weeks later, after rehearsal, we're
at a place called at my place, remember that. So
this was and everybody was there because Bobby called. This

(47:43):
was his re emergence too, and um, it was very exciting.
So it was a two show night True story. First
show and every uh every song of Bobby's had a
sack solo, so that's why I was there. So um
and I noticed he would sing the song and then
during the sex sol he would kind of move off
from the side of the stage, but I didn't move.

(48:03):
I stayed in my little spot because I was kind
of shy. And uh. So the show ends and Bobby says,
I need to talk to you, and I figured, okay,
I'm gonna get fired my first freaking gig. So he
he comes and he says, what are you doing? Man? Uh,
what do you mean? He said, I'm trying to you know,
during your sex sol, I'm giving you the space. You

(48:25):
should go up there and take it over. That's what
I'm trying to do. I'm trying to give you the spotlight.
And I was like, okay. Well he never needed to
say anything again because the second show I just launched
right into it. It It was the first time I remember
that it was like that, the rush of being the
focus of attention on on a bandstand, because up to

(48:46):
that point I had never been the guy that people
focus on and I was very comfortable being in the background.
I didn't even know that this was something that was
inside of me. And Bobby was the first person to
to nurture that and say to push me to the
front of the stage. And then I really liked it
a lot. Okay, for those who've seen you live, you're

(49:08):
very active and to use the uh the phrase, everybody's
very into it. Were you that active and into it
from the beginning, I think I learned learned it and
probably those early days I was trying to feel my
way through it. Um. The second gig that I got,
the big prominent gig was from Bobby. I met a
guy named Jeff Lorver. I hear from Jeff lord an

(49:29):
email all the time. Yeah. Now he's you know, he's
very thoughtful and very interesting guys. He's brilliant. I mean,
he's a genius. And so I just want to go
back to the Bobby called gig very slowly. He was
aware of you, or you were aware of him. How
did you get the audition? There was a woman and

(49:51):
I'm trying to remember her name, but she was a
publisher who had seen me play with somebody else and
back then like that was really the way it worked
back then. Maybe it's still this, you know, for for
new artists now it's like that word of mouth kind
of thing. But somebody sees you and goes yeah, And
then they talked to somebody else, and it was this

(50:13):
publisher talking to another publisher who happened to be the
publisher for Bobby Calwell, who told him about me, And
the next thing I knew, I got this call from him. Okay,
now trying to see how to think of how to
verbalize this if you're a hot guitarist in that era.
There are a million hot guitarists in Los Angeles, million

(50:35):
people calls. Some might be a little bit better than
others when you're getting this gig. How many exceptional saxophonists
are there in Los Angeles? I think there's a lot,
you know, I think that there were a lot. There's
always a lot of really wonderful musicians, especially in Los Angeles.
This is to me still to this day, Bob. I

(50:56):
feel like I, you know, I've been here my whole
life pretty much, and I feel like I know the
community of musicians, and then all of a sudden I'll
find this whole other vat of musicians that I didn't
even know about. An incredible musicians. So it was that
way back then. Maybe not as many as there are
now today, but there's certainly no shortage of people that

(51:17):
could do that gig, right, Okay, so then you get
a gig with Jeff Lerber. Yeah, And so what happens
then or thereafter? Well, the audition for Laudber took place
at his house and Pacific Palisades, and it was because
of the Bobby gig. And so I walked in and
we played a blues I remember this, and and Lauder

(51:37):
has talked about this too. We talked about that because
he was a guest on our cruise, this last cruise
in Australia, and we had a one arm one where
we talked about that exact moment of walking into his studio.
I was a nervous wreck. I'm like, this is a
guy that I grew up listening to and idolizing, and
now I mean his studio, keyboards plastered everywhere, and I'm

(51:59):
auditioning to be in his band. And um, he says,
why don't we just play like a B flat blues?
And so we got one course through the blues and
he stopped playing and I said, okay, well I didn't
get this gig, and so he says, yeah, man, um
let me. Uh, I'm gonna talk to my managers. We'll
get your information and uh, the first gig is in
like three weeks and here's what we're gonna be wearing.

(52:21):
And I also want to talk to you about like,
I think you should make your own records, dude, and uh,
you know, typical Larber, just just going for it. And
I'm like, my jaw is on the floor. I'm like,
what the hell are you talking about? What are you smoking? What? Really?
And he was the first person that said on that day,
on my audition day, that I should make my own records.

(52:42):
And up to that point, I had never the thought
had never even crossed my mind. So I am I
worship the ground that that man walks on. And he said,
we're gonna make some demos and we're gonna get you signed.
And that's exactly what happened. Wow, So we have to
credit Larber. Okay, so because Bobby, but I've tried to say,

(53:03):
as far as the vision to be recording artists, So
from that first date, how much longer period of time
after that, do you make those demos we started right away.
Really yeah. I think I got signed in by Bruce
lan involved me. He rest in peace. I'm sure you've
talked about Bruce on your show in years past. Uh.
He was one of the greats of music. And he

(53:27):
signed me. I think it was to Capitol Records and
my first record came out in I remember really uh,
um a great meeting with Lorber and myself and my
manager at the time, who will remain nameless. I was
gonna get there next but keep going. Um at at

(53:49):
Warner Brothers Records with Tommy Lapuma and we played the
demos for Tommy Lapuma and I could tell that Tommy
liked it, but I think that he was not particularly
excited about having an other artists with the manager at
the time, and so he he said, I'm not going
to sign you. And that's when we went to Bruce
len Ball And it's like one of those things when
you think about at the time, I was crushed because

(54:11):
let's be on Warner Brothers, that amazing roster. Think about
alg Ro, George Benson and all those incredible artists, Miles
David So anyway, um, and then the next thing it was.
It was Bruce ln Ball and there was a cassette.
This was back in the time when the demo was
on cassette. It wound up on Bruce Lamball's office, uh,

(54:34):
in his desk in his office and um, I remember
getting this this. Um there's no from him saying I
really really love your love your music. I want to
meet you. And that was the beginning. It was just
unbelievable how that all. Because the thing is, that's it's
funny if you if you have that dream from the
start and then it happens, it's got that feeling to it.

(54:56):
But if you don't, if it's not part of your dream,
because it really wasn't. When it happens, it is like
it's just a head scratcher, like how did how did
I get here? And still to this day, so many
years later, Bob, I'm still saying the same thing, like
how did I get here? Why am I here? Like
there are people showing up to hear me play saxophones,

(55:19):
just like it's still and I don't mean to be
you know, if it's sounds if it's coming off sounding
uh not authentic. It really it's I understand what you're
saying it's you're You're not just you know, being humble
for for appearances. Do you ever go to therapy to
discuss these issues. Not in therapy per se um. I

(55:43):
have used therapy in years past, but I have There's
some people that are in my life, teachers and and um,
you know, spiritual people that I will talk to about
these kinds of things to put in perspective and to
understand what's going on. Um. It's been been an interesting
thing because I just had This is a very timely

(56:06):
thing because I had back surgery about seven weeks ago
and now I'm starting on on this tour. We're on
a Summer Horns tour this summer, and this is the
first time ever where I've kind of in my whole
life I really had to show up as being a
bit needy. And it's a very awkward feeling for me.

(56:29):
And so I'm staying on the because I can't really
do of what I want to do on stage at
this moment. I will come back to it eventually, but
I'm probably about fifty of the antics. It's interesting too,
because without having I can't actually do the physical things
jumping around that I have done what people expect of me.

(56:51):
But it's forcing me to be to really focus more
on the music side of things. And these shows we
just started, so it's just now three shows in. I
could tell there's like a different texture to the music
this time. So it's kind of an interesting thing to embrace.
How long after you had pain, did you have surgery?
I've been dealing with the uh. I mean, this is

(57:12):
workplace stuff, so I've been because of my jumping around
for the almost thirty years, I've had a lot of
back problems and it just had to be addressed. So
but it was really bad pain for about the last
two years. And what was the diagnosis. I mean it
was the most uh, like harsh sciatica, so herniated discs

(57:35):
herniated disc. And then are you doing the physical therapy?
Haven't started physical therapy because it's not quite ready yet. Okay,
when it is ready, that's the most important thing. Let's
go back. When did you get that first manager? The
first manager was the same. You can probably put two
and two together. One of my gigs right after Jeff
Lorber was working with a guy named Richard Marks, and

(57:58):
Richard Marks, the a songwriter and singer, UH was on
Manhattan Records, also signed by Bruce Lunn Ball and we
shared a manager at the time, and our manager, my
manager and his manager said you should really go out
and play uh this tour with Richard and he was
a brand new artist and playing music that was not jazz. Obviously,

(58:22):
he was playing more rock. Had a monster hit though
you Ain't Seen Nothing or whatever it was called. Yea
even play on it Haven't done Nothing good memory, but
he had. I brought the record because the track was
so good. He had a string of hits, right, but
that was the first one. Then he came more Mellow.
That was a real rocket track. Yeah, I mean he

(58:44):
had had a bunch of hits up that first album.
It was a really interesting thing to see because I
remember the first shows that we did. Do you remember
a club called Sash and it was in North Hollywood
somewhere around there. That was his first gig, probably about
a hundred people and most you're not talking about that
long low club north of Ventura in between Laurel Canyon

(59:05):
and UH Universe. Oh yeah, I was there. Had I
had a process through from the eighties more than once.
It was a dance club when it wasn't a live show. Right,
that was his first show and there's probably a hundred
people there. And on that same tour, that was the
very first show. And on that same tour, which lasted

(59:26):
almost um, about a year and a half, we were
playing to ten thou people at night. And so part
of that unit of watching an artist go, seeing the
power of hit songs to propel an artist forward, it
was an interesting thing to see. And UM, so that's
how that's how that happened. So when did you switch managers? Um?

(59:54):
It happened right around the time that my first record
came out. And how did how did that happen? I'd
you decided to break it off? I decided to get
a new person. Well, UM, okay, I can tell this story.
I mean this is a podcast, right, can you can
I tell this story? Richard? Um? And Richard and I
are great now. But um, at the time, UM, he

(01:00:18):
when I didn't want to, Um, I didn't want to
play in his band anymore. I wanted to focus on
my solo stuff. He didn't really love that idea so much.
And then UM, he made it kind of very clear
to his manager, was my manager, that this was not appropriate.
And so the manager said to me, I'm sorry, I

(01:00:38):
can't manage you anymore. But I got this other person
and it turned At the time I was devastated, it
turned out to be the great thing. And so this
woman who her name was Shelley Hebrew and she's out
of the business now, but Shelley for seven years was
my manager and she was great. You know, she really
knew what to do and she and then that relationship

(01:01:02):
sort of came to an end. And then uh, in
the late nineties, I started working with Bill Leopold and
Mark Graham, who have been my managers for all these
twenty years, and we've developed an incredible relationship and and
they've helped me. I can't even tell you how much
they've helped me. So it's kind of a it takes

(01:01:22):
a village, Okay, So ultimately you have a hit, right
I do. So that was when their first or second album,
well the first album was that came out on Capitol.
I remember because the there was Bruce Lemon was so
upset at the sales department for not taking it seriously.

(01:01:43):
He was trying to make this a real priority, and
the sales department said, well, it's a saxophone player. What
we don't have to. How do you remember? Amazing? Okay,
keep going so uh. I think at the they put
something like eleventh thousand units out for the first week,
which back then was a very low number, and um,

(01:02:06):
but then it's it just started to sell. My record
came out at the same time in the fall when
there was an explosion of radio in the smooth jazz world,
Like there were radio stations popping up in every city
smooth jazz radio stations, and it just sort of like
was sort of dovetailed at the same time that this

(01:02:27):
radio format was burgeoning, and the music just fit right
in and I started doing a lot of promotions with
the radio stations and it just worked. And that first album,
um became I think it's sold probably four thousand. It
ended up selling something like four thousand, surprising everybody at Capital.
And then my next record, which came out about three

(01:02:48):
years later, put a lot of resources into it. It's
called was called Lucky Man, and I think that's the
song that you're talking about, A song called You Make
Me Smile. It came out that really became not a
real pop hit, but pretty close. I mean, for an
instrumental came pretty close getting into the business side. You

(01:03:10):
sold four hundred thousand records. Do you get a royalty check?
After the second album? You get a royalty check. I've
never received a royalty check. That's definitive. That's what I
wanted to know. Okay, so you have a hit off
the second album kind of walked me through when's when's
the third album come out? The third album came out

(01:03:32):
in six and that was my um Like all artists,
most artists, I should say where they say, I've got
another idea, and it was coming off a huge success.
That second album went gold. I think it's sold maybe
close to seven thousand. Can you imagine seven thousand copies

(01:03:55):
of a SOX player's albums Cheez So? And then I
came up with this ideas like, I don't want to
be boxed in by by um foreman, I don't want
to be boxed in by the sound. I have this idea.
I went up. I had this place up in northern
California and Saucelito. I came up with this, this idea
to combine the saxophone with instruments that you would normally

(01:04:16):
not hear it, with mandolin and melotron and oregon and uh,
steel string guitar and um, you know, I came up
with this album called alf the Beaten Path, and it
was the biggest dud ever. It came out with a thump,
and I think it's still sold probably, you know, but

(01:04:41):
it was not going to the right direction now and
it was a huge disappointment, and I was crushed because
I really put a lot of myself in retrospect. Do
you still like it? I do, actually, And there are
some fans. There's a group of fans that will still
say that that is to them, that is their favorite
album because it was very, very different. It was took

(01:05:02):
a lot of chances. But because of that experience, uh,
and I look at album making is sort of like
stepping stones. I couldn't have made the next album, which
was ended up being my most successful one, called The Dance.
I couldn't have made The Dance had I not made
Off the Beaten Path and and gone through that experience

(01:05:23):
to make an album like The Dance, which was really
like a return to the sound that that made me popular. Well,
how self conscious were you when you before you made
The Dance that I have to use this particular line. Um,
it was not like somebody saying there was never any

(01:05:43):
pressure from record company person or because I look at
it my situation as a recording artist. Over the years
that I've been doing this and I've had I've gotten
a chance to work with people who are great that
never stuffed things down my throat. If they made suggestions,
they were suggestions, they were not you have to do this.

(01:06:04):
And usually the advice and the people who came to
came to me with with things to say, their advice
was good and I would often listen to them and
they would be right, you know. So it's it was
kind of a collaborative process. Now, what point do you
become a dj uh? That happened kind of probably around

(01:06:30):
maybe in the mid nineties. How did that gig come about?
We had the Wave which was like the first smooth
jazz UH station of any note in America. They played
your music. How did you end up becoming a DJ Well,
it was a syndicated show first where this this Fellows
program director came to me. He got a gig doing

(01:06:52):
a network um show and he said, we wanted to
our Our idea is to have recording artists most weekend
shows on the radio, and we think that you could
be you could have your own show. And I was like,
really no experience whatsoever. And I remember those first demos
of going into the studio and putting it together and

(01:07:16):
I put on my radio voice and stop, stop it.
Don't do that anymore. Just be yourself. There was a
really good lesson to learn, and I started doing that
in the early days. That was in How many stations
did it ultimately get to we had on our syndicated
show in the United States at the time we were

(01:07:37):
the biggest was probably well over a hundred significant number,
well over a hundred, and then there was the international
side of things, and the show was how long. There's
a two hour weekends show called The Dave CAUs Radio Show,
which by the way, is still on the radio twenty over,
twenty five years later. It's uninterrupted on the radio for
twenty five years. Okay, you're making new shows. Yeah, so

(01:08:01):
you make a new show. Yeah, I'm sure you string
them together, you do like three in a day, fortnity.
And how often you have guests? We do guests every show.
We have one featured artist every show. We have some
other drops that we use with other artists. Okay, and
then how do you get on the wave? The wave
happened later on down the road where the program director,

(01:08:22):
who's the same guy by the way that uh that
I started the weekend show with, he said, UM, would
you ever be interested in doing this in the morning,
and we're thinking about doing an artist driven morning show.
And so that's when Pat Prescott from New York, who's
radio legend, she came out. She's one of my great friends.

(01:08:44):
I went to New York and I said, if I'm
going to do this, you have to do this with me,
because I cannot do this alone. And we did that
for six years on the radio every morning and uh,
which for a musician is quite the feat. And I
knew that I wouldn't be something that I would do forever,
but I really enjoyed doing that for six years. And
then we morphed into an afternoon syndicated show that was

(01:09:04):
on a bunch of smooth jazz stations through a network
for I think I did that for about maybe another
three or four years, and then the smooth jazz as
a format kind of started to really wane. A lot
of these stations flip formats, and UM, about three years
ago I started working with my friend Trinity Cologne at

(01:09:25):
Sirius XM, and we developed something called the Dave Case
Lounge that you can now hear on Sirius XM on
the weekends and you can only hear that one is
only okay, So, uh, how to what degreeed being on
the radio every morning? We havoc with your musical career?
It was not easy. Those those years were like trying

(01:09:47):
to it was it was time well for the age
that I was at. Because I was on the road.
We had this apparatus that I would take with me
that I could connect back into UH to Los Angeles.
It was really quite technologically impressive, especially for me who
was an analog man in a in a digital world.
But it really it was a very nice thing. And

(01:10:09):
they the station and the producers really went above and
beyond to make it work. And admittedly we did record
some shows, not all shows, but some shows were recorded
in advance UH and played the morning of when I
couldn't actually be there. And it was how many hours?
That was three hours? That's a lot of hours. So

(01:10:30):
when you were on the wave, it was only heard
on the wave. Yeah, that was was it lucrative? Very
and did it pay dividends for your career. I think
it did in that it was the first sort of
lately now i've kind of I'm sort of looked at
as somewhat of a host of bringing people together, uh collaborator,

(01:10:54):
you know, or bringing artists together under a canopy. And
that was kind of like the beginning of of that
uh stage of my life where I got a chance
to really interview a lot of artists and be a
cheerleader for other artists. And that's something that I that
comes very natural to me and something I love to
do because I think especially when you talk about jazz

(01:11:15):
music or instrumental music, which is a niche, it's sort
of off to the side, but I think it's an
important thing, you know, even for people who have taste
in music that are completely different, that there's a time
and a place for instrumental music for every music lover, uh,
no matter what it is that they love most. And
so I just love being a cheerleader, being able to

(01:11:38):
stand up and and and and share this great music
and the artists that are making it. And I think
also what happened I've seen it a lot too, where
if artists come on the show, if I'm talking to them,
that there's a intimacy of an artist talking to another artist,
that the communication can can be have a different texture.

(01:12:01):
There was one time that where it was so apparent
where I was interviewing. Because of our schedules, a lot
of the interviews have to be on the phone. So
I was interviewing George Benson on the phone and George
was just I guess it was one of the one
interview of a bunch for the whole day, and he
was just giving me these one two word answers, and
I was like, what am I gonna do to connect
with this guy? It's just not happening. And so finally

(01:12:23):
I said, George, oh no, he said, He said, is
this the Dave cause that plays the Sacks Dave Come.
I said, George, it's me. You know, we're friends, shared
the stage together. I have a show, you know. And
then I could not get the guy shut up. It's like,
oh my god. But it was a great illustration of
what can happen when when artists are talking to other

(01:12:46):
artists and feel that, you know, I mean, it's like,
I know you're not a musician, but I feel so
comfortable talking to you because I know that you love it.
You love it and you understand it and you're inside
of it. And so much of us artists, we we
talked to people who just are not there. They're just

(01:13:06):
answers or asking the questions that are on the piece
of paper, and you feel it and you just don't know.
It's not it's you don't want to open up. But
when you feel somebody on the other end of the
microphone that really is empathetic, that understands it, really gets
inside of it, you want to talk forever. Okay, so
the dances, Yes, when's the next album? The next album

(01:13:33):
was uh something called uh I think now I'm losing
track of number four. The reason I really ask I
don't need the specifics is starting in the turn of
the century, the whole music business goes with change as
a result of napster, digitization, the Internet. Do you feel
that on your end? Well, I did, eventually I made.

(01:13:58):
I spent twenty years in Capital um seven presidents or
not and um, I don't know if that's a Guinness
Book of World Records feat But to survive, to actually
survive as an artist on a label with seven different presidents,
if they're not vested in you. It's very hard if
they didn't sign you. I had a I had this

(01:14:21):
like m O where I would just keep my head down.
I would not really, you know, try and be noticed
that much. Just turn in my records. They would release them,
they would be they do fine. And that's how we
made it happen. But eventually my contract, believe it or not,
my contract actually expired after twenty years. It was renewed
a couple of times and then it was done. And

(01:14:44):
it was like, yeah, your contract is done. And they
didn't renew it. And I didn't think that they would
dream new it. And so that's when I think. I
can't remember what year it was, but it was in
the early two thousand's that I went over to to Concord,
and um it was Hal Gaba and Norman Leard that
that made it a very very comfortable home for me.

(01:15:07):
And I got to work with my buddy John Burke
on a bunch of albums, and um, that was a
great relationship and still is. I don't I release some
stuff on my own and if I want to, I
think that the opportunity is there now. If I wanted
to release an album on concorde. I think that the
doors always open um. But to what degree is your
career presently driven by recorded music? Interesting? I've gone through,

(01:15:33):
admittedly kind of a bad attitude about recorded music over
the last say, seven or eight years, because of the
reasons you're talking about. You pour over these things, these
are like children, these songs, and you spend the time
and spend the money, and then there's no radio stations
to play it, and then there's no record company or

(01:15:54):
no record stores. And you know, what's the purpose? Why?
I remember that only the beginning of my career, it
was you you make a record, you go out on
tour to support the record. The record is it? That's
what you're doing? You know, it's all to sell the record.
And now I mean I've gone through the last several
years where I've made recordings to promote tours, right, just

(01:16:17):
the reverse. Okay, So at this point from your perspective, interesting,
because I certainly can see it on my level, used
to be a cohesive business. Now really everybody is just
their own business. Do you view it that way? I'm
just in the Dave Cose business, and forget the numbers,
the charts, etcetera. If it's working for me and it's
what I want to do. I'm satisfied. Well, I think

(01:16:39):
that that streaming has revolutionized and I don't need to
tell you it's given a tremendous shot in the arm
to our business. And I'm a fan like I think
that Spotify is amazing where you can some song or
artist hits your head and two seconds later you can
be listening to that music right there. It's amazing. What

(01:16:59):
that's what's what's possible nowadays. And I do think that
it's it's forced us. The the technological um uh achievements
of recently that have happened recently have forced musicians and
artists to be to wear more hats. Like it used
to be where you could just be an artist and
where that hat, you'd have the manager, you'd have the

(01:17:20):
record company, you'd have the promotion people blah blah blah,
and you could have the team of people that do
all that work for you. But now most of the
people that are in my world do it all themselves,
you know. And I still have management, um but I
now I'm starting to release to self release. We just
came out with a live album from our cruise that
we put out by ourselves because we can. It's so easy,

(01:17:43):
you know, flick of a switch. It's available everywhere. And
I think that now you whereas it used to be
in the beginning of my career where we would try
and hit big home runs or get as much you know,
throw things out there and try and get as money
many people as possible, now I look at it being

(01:18:05):
more of a Instead of a horizontal picture, it's more
of a vertical picture. So it's a small audience or
smaller audience. Let's just say there's I'm gonna be super
conservative and say say there's fifty thousand people on planet
Earth that are really super interested in what I have
to do or what I have to say, and so

(01:18:26):
we we we really target those fifty thou people, and
how can we capture them and keep them engaged with
a variety of different things. On one level, there's the
there might be an album that comes out, okay, On
the very top level, there's a cruise. So if you're
really a fan and you want to have that immersive experience,

(01:18:47):
you're gonna come on the day of cons That's exactly
where I was going. So when was the first cruise? Uh?
It happened almost about fifteen years ago, and I did
five for UH another producer and learned the business. And
then after five years of of doing that, then we
took it in house. And we've now produced about ten

(01:19:07):
years of cruises on our own. And has it always
been the whole ship or part of a ship, always
a full ship charter and always seven days seven days? Okay,
So how did you how did you first? How did
the first one start? The producer came to you. The
producer came to me as a guy named Michael Lazarov
and who had done a UH. He had a company

(01:19:27):
called Jazz Cruises, and he thought that there should be
a Dave Coss cruise and he went to my managers
and said, you know, and and my managers came to
me with the offer. And I saw the word cruise
and I said thank you no, because immediately I thought
about the cruise that my family and I took to
in Sonata, and I hear it that was the worst
thing ever. I was like, I don't want to be

(01:19:49):
at a cruise ship, no way. And then he kept
coming back and eventually came back with an offer that
could not say no too. So that was my first experience,
and then I saw what could happen. And I'm gonna
say this, Uh that now within our world, with how
much negativity and how much the public discourses so so

(01:20:13):
kind of filled with vitriol, that these cruises have become
havens for people that just want to for one week.
And I know that people get off the ship and
they go back to their regular lives and you know,
goes back to normal, but for one week you can
have young and old, and Republican and Democrat and gain

(01:20:33):
Straits and every race. I mean, it's really a melting
pot on these ships. And when you step foot on
the ship, you even if you know not one person,
you're amongst friends because the power of music to to
to get people there and to unite people, that's an
amazing thing. You could have two people that completely disagree

(01:20:56):
about everything, but you play one song that they both
like and you've got an opening. And that's what these
cruises have proven proven to me. They're they're they're less
about music and more about proving to all of us
what's possible. It's a reminder of what's possible. But there
is a lot of music tons. Okay, so you know,

(01:21:18):
I'm friendly with Kid Rock and his old manager, and
they would say first, you know, Kid Rock would literally
shake everybody's hands. He's like, he's up twenty four hours
straight and he doesn't even do a whole week. What's
it like being the epicenter of the cruise, Well, it's
the it's the hardest work that that I do during
the year. We do two back to back nowadays, uh

(01:21:40):
they sell out about a year in advance, and uh
so and and our mantra is seeing the world together
through music, So every year we go to a different
place on the planet. Our last one was Australia, and
so you if you can imagine, uh we had just
the shy of four thousand people for two weeks, and
nine percent of them came from the United States. So

(01:22:02):
they have to get to Australia just to take the cruise.
That's a huge commitment. So when they get there, they're
pretty darn excited, and all the artists and musicians are excited.
And so it is something that is not just top
of mind or in the back of my mind. It's
completely I wake up and go to bed with the
thought of these guests and how can I deliver to

(01:22:26):
them an experience that is unforgettable because I I know
that there. They're really one thing about the money because
it's not cheap, but it's another thing like they're giving
me a week of their life to entertain them. So
it's a it's a huge undertaking, it's a huge responsibility.
But the funny thing is in in the moment, Like

(01:22:47):
when I'm on the ship. I don't know how it's
it's possible. Maybe it's just adrenaline or fumes or whatever,
but I have this incredible energy level and I think
it's really comes from our guests. I'm just so amazing.
So if I'm one of the four thousand, am I
gonna get face time with you? If I want it? Absolutely?

(01:23:08):
It sounds me one week is bad enough. You do
them back to back just because economically it's better to
do it that way. Well, if you've imagine taking our
our whole entourage is about a hundred and twenty people,
So we take a hundred and twenty people musicians, crew, staff.
We have to fly them to to Sydney. So if
we did a cruise and then took time off, it

(01:23:31):
just would be It's just that would make financials okay.
So you do it for two weeks, How long does
it take you to recover? I try not to talk
for at least a week after two weeks vig on
the cruise. Uh. This last time, I went to a
place called i uh songs Saw in Cambodia, which is
a private island. It's one of those islands that's so

(01:23:53):
small that the huts are actually on jetties stilts. It's
one of those kind of places. And I went with
one of my best friends after the two weeks and
pretty much didn't speak for about four days and then emotionally, okay,
you don't speak for four days? How long? Because I
know people have been on the tour for two and
a half years, literally took him a year to recover.

(01:24:13):
So how long does it take before you work again? Uh?
It was probably about a month and a half or so.
I think it was maybe about a month. I went
and did a tour of Japan about a month after
that that cruise. Okay, so these are obviously very lucrative.
What do you do with the money? Uh? I just

(01:24:37):
redid my kitchen. Yeah, I don't know, it's funny, like
I don't um. I feel very blessed to be able
to make a living for music and for to have
done this for a for a long time. And I can.
I could cry my eyes out if I really let
myself think about my life and how this has all
happened for me and the fact that I can that

(01:25:00):
I can do this and and still um, after all
these years, that people are still interested and still you
know that the money is is it's not about money,
It's not I know it's not about but the money
is sitting in the bank. Do you spend it on?
I mean, and you travel for business, so it's not
like you're dying to travel. And like Tom Styer says,

(01:25:20):
you can only have so many cars. You're only one person.
You know. I'm not thinking deep, I'm just wondering because
that's always somewhat of a driver. If I said go
do it for free, you wouldn't do it for free.
This this is a good question. And and I don't
know because I don't think that nothing changes my life.
My life is great. And uh, it's not like I

(01:25:43):
want for anything, although I will tell you one thing,
but this is gonna this is gonna take a lot
of cruises to get to this point. But when I
did UM two years of touring with Barry Manilow as
his opening act. And Barry is a good friend of mine,
so he said to me, why don't you come travel
with me in the private plane? Like, of course, I

(01:26:03):
so two years and we traveled. We did that a
worldwide tour and it was an amazing experience for me
after because this is already twenty five years into my
solo career of having to prove myself again as an
opening act. That was really really good because that I
hadn't gone into the tool shed to do that UM
in a long time. Where you're now in front of

(01:26:24):
ten thousand people that have no idea who I am.
Maybe they've heard my name, but they haven't heard my music,
and I've got twenty five minutes or thirty minutes to
prove myself. That was an amazing experience. But the best
part was just, you know, living this life of of
complete luxury. As soon as Barry shows over which I
did the encore with him, were in the car that's

(01:26:46):
inside the arena, into the right to the tarmac onto
the private plane. Oftentimes we would do a show in
the East Coast and I would be asleep in my
bed the same night in Los Angeles after the after
that show. So that tour ends and now I'm back
doing my own shows. You love on it. I'm sitting
like kid, you not Bob. I'm in the middle seats

(01:27:08):
on Southwest Airlines and I take a picture of myself
and I send it to Barry and I said, Barry,
who are these people on our plane? I mean that
he ruined me. So I would say, if if there
was one way to get to that level where I
could travel privately, that would be like the biggest carrot
in the world. But there I'm a long ways away

(01:27:30):
from there. Okay, you paint a picture of your career
always being on the ascension from your viewpoint where they're
low moments, um, low moments. Well I have my I
have the answer my question. If nothing immediately jumps to mind,
there really weren't well, I mean there I told you
about that the album that I made, that that was

(01:27:53):
a big flop, um, But there hasn't been. I wouldn't
say that there are places were I really had to
go back and and think about, well, total restructuring of
who I am and what what I'm doing there. There
hasn't been like that because I feel like in overall
I'm a curious person and I love collaboration. I think

(01:28:16):
if I was more of an artist that really uh
had where where I did my own production and I
wrote songs always by myself, I think that I would
have probably gotten into some creative blocks. But because just
by my nature, I love to collaborate, and collaboration allows

(01:28:37):
you to constantly be expanding. Remever hit the point we say, God,
my career might be over. I can't work your way.
You knew you could work at some level? Yeah, I
think so. And there's been a lot of diversification to
you know, try and radio and cruises and stuff like that.
There's I'm a naturally a person that that gets easily bored.
So if I was doing one thing over and over,

(01:28:59):
I'd probably myself. But there's always something, some new wrinkle
that is somewhat related to the core business that keeps
me motivating other than the cruises. How many dates do
you do in a year? Uh? Probably about are okay
at this age? Which just with this level of success,
other than having your own plane or annett jetcount or something,

(01:29:20):
what would you like to achieve? If anything? Wow, I
already got on the Bob Left Sets podcast. So I
mean that's that's a big one that you would invite
me on your podcast. Okay, okay, but leaving me out
of it. Uh, what would you like to achieve, whether

(01:29:42):
it be personally, career wise, impact on society? I think, yeah,
I feel like I've If it all ended tomorrow, I
wouldn't have any regrets. I mean I would just my
two words would be thank Okay, I understand that. But
you are an individual on the planet. You do have

(01:30:04):
this career, You do have fans, which is not a
usual experience that gives you some level of power and
some levels satisfaction if it goes on the way it
does until you choose not to do it. Is that
enough or is there something else you need to do?
I don't feel like I need to do anything else.
The things that are the most motivating factors for me

(01:30:25):
are things that are new, that are that are undiscovered
areas like, for example, um working with this band called
wolf Pack I don't know if you know about, of course,
and getting a chance to to understand how that whole
machine works, and being uh embraced by by these kids

(01:30:47):
they're basically playing the music that we play, I mean,
but they're playing it to kids, so getting a chance
to work with with them. And this this guy, this
young kid named Corey Wong, who plays in wolf Pack
as a guitar player, who mounted this whole campaign last
year to get what he called the cause nod because
he wanted to get into the world of smooth jazz.

(01:31:08):
And he's killing it over in the Wolfpeck world, right,
but he wanted the smooth jazz world. So he mounted
this this social media campaign to get my attention. And
not only did you get mad Test, but we've written
a bunch of songs together. I invited him on our
cruise and he's incredible. He's like one of the new
voices of instrumental music, whether it's wolf Peck or um.

(01:31:29):
I hadn't gotten a chance to to sit in with
the food Fighters on a bunch of shows over the
last couple of years. I like showing up in places
that are unexpected. So if there, if there was something
more for me in music, I love to continue my
my world and expand that horizon. But I really really

(01:31:52):
loved the idea of being pulled into places where you
would least expect to see me Dave, we could go
on for hours. You really very equacious, very interesting. Uh,
it really amazing you light right up. I don't know
whether it's your personality or experience or both, but you've

(01:32:13):
really been wonderful. Well, thank you, and it's a pleasure
to talk with you. And I'm a fan for a
long time, but you know that well. As I say,
we're also personal friends. But as I say, it's it's
funny certain people we don't talk every day, but you
can sit down with them and just pick right up
where there's so many people you can act for them
for years and you can never connect. Well, I really
appreciate this is a real dream come true to sit

(01:32:36):
and talk with you for like Okay, once again, you've
been listening to Day and Cause on the Bob Left
Sets podcast. Sign up for the Cruise Beat Dave. Until
next time,

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Bob Lefsetz

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