Jeff Bhasker

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Stage podcast.
My guest today he's musician, songwriter producer Jeff Baskar. Jeff
has worked with Kanye West, Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift,
the Rolling Stone. Even hear him on Uptown Funk with

(00:29):
Mark Ronson. Jeff, So good to have you, honor to
be here, Bob. So, what's up. You moved to Big Sir. Well,
I'm in the process of setting up a studio there
and having a kind of sanctuary, if you will, outside
of Los Angeles kind of recently after the pandemic, started

(00:49):
doing more traveling again and realizing how much I missed that,
how much I loved being in different places and being
in different and vironments. And you know, and you mentioned
Kanye like we you used to do these excursions in
Hawaii or Wyoming and these really beautiful, uh stunning places

(01:10):
of nature, venues of nature. So I came across this
property in Big Sir and jumped on it because it
just checked so many boxes for me. Um. Yeah, and
I'm looking I'm looking forward to to sharing not only
musical experiences but also kind of in the tradition of
Big sir, all kinds of human potential, meditation, health, wellness experiences.

(01:36):
So there's my plug from my my new studio. Come
come work with me. Okay, you have a studio, but
it's a studio part of your house or part of
your properties. Yeah, it's actually a really amazing compound that
the studio was built by the former owner, uh, in
collaboration with an architect. Hey, Mickey Munich was known for

(02:01):
uh designing all the structures on the post ranch in
and all throughout Big Sir. He's kind of this like
organic modernist and uh, it's an amazing facility that yeah,
just it just kind of was kind of too good
to be true. And it's in an interesting, such a
beautiful setting. So yeah, it's it's gonna be. It's a
compound of all those kind of things. Okay, you know

(02:23):
the road constantly gets closed, etcetera. Why Big sur is
opposed to anywhere else and you think people will come? Um,
I mean, good question. You know It's funny when I
when I first came across this place, UM, I asked
myself the same question. UM, and I think maybe maybe
part of the answer is that, um, those who want

(02:49):
to be there will come. And that's kind of been
part of my producer practice, or at least something I've
learned over the years is I do my best work
when the when, and it's uh, it's kind of meant
to be, you know, like people are coming to get
from me what they want from me and I and
I give that so we'll see, you know. Otherwise I'll
just be up there drinking my well water and looking

(03:10):
at the at the incredible view and uh, I hope
you'll come up. That's how this came about, right, I
sent you the emails had come to Big sir. I
just got inspired. I haven't been to Big Surf for
a while, so, uh, you know, it's really a great
place right over there over the ocean. Remember driving up
Highway One really fucked up out of my mind. I'm stunned.
I'm still here arguing with my girlfriend at the same

(03:31):
time in the car. But forgetting that. You also email
me about new music. What is the state of new
music today where you do most of your work? Right? Well, yeah,
I mean I'm not gonna say I have my some
like exclusive on that topic, but I mean I will

(03:56):
tell you kind of on the same vein of like
the post pandemic. You know, like I became a father
about six years ago, and at that time, uh, I
kind of took a break. I've been working hard. I've
done a lot of music, done a lot of records,
really fulfilled a lot of dreams of mine that were
way beyond what I ever thought I would accomplish. And

(04:18):
you know, it took the time out to kind of
settle into parenthood adulthood. And after a year or two,
I came back in and low and behold, like music
really changed a lot. You know, Streaming started to take hold,
social media started to take hold. There's all these new artists,
Like the turnover kind of happened, and I I was

(04:39):
starting to feel quite old and left out and and
not connected to the quote unquote culture. And you know,
like this young Thug record that I did with Nate
and we performed on Saturday Night Live Going, you know,
they invited We had been talking all pandemic about doing
something together and then finally there was an opportunity where
they invited us to come to Atlanta, Nate and I

(05:01):
and being in the room with Thug, Gonna Metro Booming,
Charlie Handsome, all these kind of like young lions or
not so young lions anymore, because they're also kind of
approaching thirty right like, and they're becoming adults. They're kind
of coming into a more complete holistic all such talented,

(05:26):
brilliant guys. It really reminded me of like, you know,
I got my start in jazz and that was what
really turned me onto music. It reminded me of that
feeling and that culture and and and and Black culture
being immersed in that. That's really where my heart is.
Um So to your question, you know, the state of

(05:48):
it after kind of kind of being feeling quite disconnected
from you, come on, father, You're not up in the
club anymore. You're not out in the streets, so to speak,
to connect with those guys and also feel like their
admiration and respect for me and what how I had
influenced them through my work with Kanye and beyond, you know,

(06:10):
like We Are Young. It's kind of like an amazingly
embraced record in uh, you know, Travis Scott posted this
this very viral video of him rocking out till We
Are Young in the club and and that was specifically
like engineered when we made that record, I was like,
I specifically, we need black people to funk with this
album in this band, and you know that kind of

(06:30):
gulf between white indie music, indie rock, and black music,
you know. So that was like a really exciting moment
for me and then to kind of reconnect with those
guys and feel the energy and the creativity. And in
Atlanta also, which I had where had not spent a
lot of time. Um, to get back to the question

(06:54):
what is the state of new music? You know, I
think it's incredibly vibrant and um, I think you could
compare it to the advent of rock and roll, pre beatles,
you know, the way black musicians were creating a genre
that was mysterious, kind of opaque to the outside ear,

(07:17):
but exciting, dangerous and cool above all else. Right, Because
at the end of the day, if you can boil
anything down to its essence that matters. It's coolness, right,
And that's what music. That's why Apple Tech, anyone, actors, uh,
finance bros. They all want to be in music, because

(07:38):
why because it's cool? Right. So I think there's like
a I was so pleasantly, um kind of moved, to
be honest, It was just such a wonderful experience to
feel the potency expertise. Mike Will made it as another guy.
It's I've known for a long time that we kind

(07:58):
of connected more and more recently, and just to see
how formidable these guys are musically, I think the state
of new music is in awesome hands. Not to mention,
I mean, um, the empowerment that all these tools like
YouTube and being able to publish your own music, to
create your own music, you know. I think there's a
lot of on the other side talk about how it's

(08:21):
kind of made music horrible, um, and it makes it
too easy, which are there are some valid points to that,
but I think the counterpoint to that is it's also
been incredibly empowering. That's how I started producing because I
was in jazz. I wanted to be a jazz arranger
and a composer, and I had to write out these
goddamn big band charts and my wrist is about to

(08:42):
break with my calligraphy pen, and I started using the
computer to print out the sheet music and then it
would play the music back to me. Also, um, and
that was an empowering moment to be able to not
have to write all these charts out get a band together,
have them butcher it and actually hear my music. So

(09:04):
short answer, it's incredibly vibrant. And I think also at
a tipping point where we're about to see and hear
what's next. There hasn't been on next in a while, right,
so I think they're also the youth is a is
really getting tired of the robot music and the computer music,

(09:26):
and they want to hear some really vibrant musical organic
uh substance, and where I think we're about to feel
that what is the Jeff Baskers special sauce? What are
people looking for when they want to work with you?
I mean, I'll flip it on its head and maybe
this is what they're looking for. Is I want to
know what they're looking for and I can. I mean,

(09:48):
as a producer, you know, I have a few different
mode modes. You know. Sometimes I'm a creator. You know
a lot of the music I did with Kanye or
Rihanna or Beyonce or Alicia Keys, I created all that music.
I wrote it from scratch. I played all the instruments,
I wrote the lyrics, I sang the demo, and I

(10:11):
have a very strong creative identity and potency. But as
a producer. My ultimate scenario is when someone comes to
me and knows exactly what they want to do. UM,
and it's not about my sauce, but it's, uh, maybe

(10:31):
it is my sauce, you know. I mean, I'll give
you one example, like with Some Nights, which is about
to turn ten years old. I think um or may
have recently, you know, and and the the incredible Nate
Rus you know, who kind of sought me out when
he wanted to add a bit more of an urban
MPC driven texture to his music UM and started listening

(10:56):
to a lot of urban music quote unquote urban mus
uzic and just my name started popping up on the
credits a lot, and so he sought me out. And
you know, I you know, it's been documented in many
interviews how I turned him down multiple times until he
kind of just by force of will collaborate with me
and saying me, we are young in my hotel room,

(11:16):
and I booked a studio the next day and I
was like, we're recording this. That just made my life
so easy. UM. And in that case, I think it's
you know, a real maybe maybe I'm gonna guess I
haven't really contemplated this before, but I can say for
sure that you know, when I make a record, I

(11:36):
have a very specific goal. I want to reach into
your chest and rip your heart out, you know. I
want to make music that moves people emotionally as a
life changing moment. I want my music to be on
the level of you lost that love and feeling or
um you know, uh nothing compares to you. You know,

(11:56):
so I have a very strong emotional uh component to
my music that perhaps that's what people uh resonate with.
You know, our people are you having? Do you have
enough of the name that it's always people seeking out
you or do you ever say, hey, I want to

(12:17):
work with that person and you reach out, you know,
and not not because I don't want to, but I
have you know, I got kind of I hit a
magic moment from working with Kanye, right, Like that was
the moment when and it's still true to some extent,
like he's got the mightas touched Like if you get
the Kanye stamp of approval, love him or hate him

(12:39):
or whatever controversies surrounding him at the moment, it's pretty undeniable.
He's a genius and an incredible curator of talent. So
I was very fortunate to kind of springboard from working
with him two and being able to work with and
having worked with every all of the most amazing talented

(13:00):
people to then leaving his camp and going right into
Some Nights with Nate, which was like a huge album
at the time, right it was. They were like nominated
Best they won Grammy Best New Artist and we won
Best Song and it was like a big moment. So
after that that led to like the Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift,

(13:22):
uh you know. Um Bruno I had known since he
was seventeen years old, had moved to l A and
that's when I got my first placement on the game's
first album, and Mike Lynn, who used to be Dr
Dre's and R, said hey, I just signed this kid
from Hawaii. Should work with him. And then I went
and did my Kanye thing and then he became Bruno Mars.

(13:43):
But then that's how I met Mark Ronson because he
said for my second album, I want you and Mark
to produce it, and then that became an you know,
I'm the huge fan of Marks and um Um. It
was just kind of a flow of being kind of
lead to these opportunities and now much more recently, I'm

(14:06):
kind of seeking out talent and and not even really actively,
but you know, I really do kind of try to
like stay within myself and then see what opportunities come
my way. And a lot of opportunities do come my
way where I think it's a little bit of the
name recognition or my past achievements that people want me

(14:28):
to work with them or a and our guys or
label heads want me to work with someone, but it's
maybe not exactly for the right reasons. Then I'll get
in the room and they'll be, well, can you make
it sound a little more like this? And I'm like, actually, no,
I can't. Like I'm me. You know that took me
a while to kind of realize that, because I do
also stretch myself and want to I'm so curious about
all kinds of genres and I want to explore them

(14:50):
and I want to I love learning and I love
appreciating all kinds of different music. But you know, to
be honest, it's usually kind of just to letting the
universe guide what comes my way and trying to say
this is the right project for me right now. You
mentioned working with Beyonce and Kanye, were you essentially at

(15:12):
a completed song today's song credits? Canna have fifteen writers
on a song, Let's be specific. You know you're telling
me you write these songs, but if you look at
the credits or all these other things, So what is
it that you do and what is it that they do? Well?
I mean, it can it can be different scenarios can
be different things, right. I'm kind of at the beginning

(15:33):
when I wasn't anybody nobody knew my name or wanted
to place my music. I was sitting at home making
these songs. That was kind of how it started. And
then you get into like, hey, say like Uptown Funk right,
Like there's a good example kind of in the middle
where the credits are gonna say Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars,

(15:55):
Philip Lawrence, Jeff Basker, um and uh and then the
Gap band after the lawsuit. But um, you know, that's
an amazing thing in music too, is that you can
collaborate and have a I think sometimes in in l
A there's like the the publishing uh session shuffle right

(16:20):
where everyone gets in a room and there's a hundred
rooms in l A where everyone's right in the same song, right, um,
But then there's like you find your collaborator, right, like
you've Paul McCartney and John Lennon, right make Jagger and
Keith Richards. You find that foil that the dark and
the light, the push and the pull that kind of

(16:41):
bring the best out of each other. And in some
cases that might be three or four or five people, right.
Or in hip hop, it used to be like the
producer made the beat and the rapper wrapped on it.
They're writing the song, they're creating this song. Then it
kind of turned into like okay, like may you've got
a keyboard player came in and played some things, and

(17:02):
it's it starts becoming very not democratic, but like it's
a kind of an equality where whoever contributed what deserves
some writing credit. I think like the the structure and
the the litigious nature of publishing and how it was
created used to be very used to be like the

(17:24):
melody and the lyrics, right, So there was kind of
definitions that have warped and changed over time. So in
some cases I write the whole song. In some cases
someone might have all complete song written and I might say,
you know what you need, like a melodic cook here
and then I write this melodic cook and I get
my little five percent or something. But every situation is different,

(17:47):
and you know, when you talk to painters or people
in different artistic disciplines, being able to collaborate like that
is not It just doesn't exist. And and collaboration is
one of the beautiful things about music. So a lot
of times I think maybe in cases where people are like,

(18:08):
oh my god, today's music is just written by by committee,
by twenty people, it's like, that's also called collaboration, you know,
in collaboration is a beautiful thing, having a conversation, talking,
bouncing ideas off of each other, someone being there when
you're alone and you're saying, oh, that's a stupid idea.
I don't want to say that, and someone's like, no, no, no, no,
that's a great line. That's great. You need that. And

(18:29):
you get elevated, uh content and creative fruit out of
situations like that. Right, So that's kind of kind of
one take on that question. So you're born in Kansas City, Kansas,

(18:50):
and for those of us have been to Kansas, really
the Kansas City we think of his Missouri, not Kansas City, Kansas.
And you grow up in New Mexico. Give me the
backs story and all that. Yeah, well, I mean take
it even back before that. You know, my dad's a
from from India, from northern from fron job Lahore as
a matter of fact, where which is now Pakistan. And

(19:12):
our family had to flee Pakistan during the partition because
we're Hindu. And then my grandfather moved to the United
States to study psychiatry at the Manager Institute in I
believe it's in Topeka, Kansas. So my dad came to
the United States as like an eight year old brown
Indian kid dropped in the fifties in the Midwest in Kansas.

(19:35):
He ended up going both my parents went to KU
University and my dad graduated from KU Medical School, which
is in Kansas City, Kansas, whereas the hospital I was born.
So that's how I wound up in Kansas. Then he
my mom went to high school in New Mexico and
my my dad had to do his residency. He did
it for like the Health Service and Indian Reservations and

(19:56):
they moved to New Mexico and then they got divorced
when I was about five years old old. So I
kinda went back and forth, but mainly grew up. Grew
up in New Mexico in a little town called Sokoro,
which was an awesome place to grow up, and it
was about like ten thousand people. But we got the
v l A there. I don't know if you've, like
you've seen the movie Contact, when Jodie Foster is in

(20:16):
this big satellite. It raised the most powerful radio telescope.
So you have all these astrophysicists, Carl Sagan, all these
this beautiful horizon, all this space, and you know that
kind of really influenced my sound too. I think like
I was really into Pink Floyd like when I when
I was one of the first things, like when I
really started like getting in the headphones and just listening

(20:36):
to music and this very expansive wide uh sound. You know,
it's kind of similar to the visual landscape and um
you know, like think of like shine on you, crazy Diamond.
You know that's like a New Mexico sky and desert.
So that was kind of my childhood. Then I discovered jazz.

(20:59):
My mom kind and my mom's families from Ohio, like Pennsylvania,
Dutch Ohio family that and her dad kind of played
by ear like Oregon and trombone and really talented actually, Um,
and then my mom could kind of play these like
jazzy arrangements, you know. She used to play like tenderly,
you know. And and I was here these like chords
like what is that? You know? And I'm growing up

(21:20):
also listening to the BGS and Kiss and uh Empire
strikes Back soundtrack. That was my That was my record
collection when I was a little kid. I had the
Muppet Show Empire Strikes Back and Uh Kiss Destroyer, you know.
And I got to meet Bob Ezrian actually he reached
out to me when we did some nights. I was
super awesome and had dinner with him and Alice Cooper,

(21:42):
Um but one of my heroes, and UM discovered jazz
checked out an album from the library of Miles Davis,
and then I was just hooked and just got everything
that Miles Davis ever did, and and also whoever worked
with him. I just started listening to all that and
I fell in love with jazz. Played in my high
school jazz band, and I spent a year in Germany

(22:05):
as an exchange student, got some more opportunities to see
more music and have better teachers that weren't available to
me in New Mexico and then I went to Berkeley
College of Music. But you know, it's kind of like
a nice place to have just the silence of your
own thoughts. And also kind of had like a bit
of a rough childhood, you know, with my parents divorce
and everything, and music has always been like a really

(22:28):
important emotional outlet for me to kind of process uh things. Um,
but I didn't have the kind of cultural richness that
maybe other places, like you know, Mike mark Ronson, you know,
like he really kind of brought me into this world

(22:48):
of culture and took me under his wing and introduced
me to everyone. And you know, he is just the
consummate gentleman of ficionado cultured guy. Um And I think
he even kind of mentioned once we're talking on this topic,
it's like, you know, you're just thirsty for it. So
now I'm in this phase. And like with Kanye, like
he's such a just such a just a cultured person,

(23:10):
you know, but similar from the Midwest, you know, like
we kind of had that simpatico, kind of down to
earth Midwestern nous mixed with this really highbrow kind of
space in our practice. Um. So that's kind of my story.
How do your parents meet and to either of them
get remarried? Do you have any siblings? Yeah, so my

(23:33):
mom got remarried briefly. They met at at university. My
mom was married briefly to another dentist. She's a dentist
in Colorado, and my dad's a physician and he got remarried.
And I do have two step sisters and a half
brother and a half sister who we all grew up
in the same household, so you know, we're pretty close.
And you know, we were like a real family with

(23:55):
all of our fighting and being sleeping on top of
each other and go on ski trips in the suburban
and uh breaking down on the side of the road,
and I had a reel. So I went from being
like an only child to having like being the oldest
of all these siblings. So yeah, okay, wait, hey, why
were we all living in the house and be we're

(24:16):
exactly is this in New Mexico? So it's like south
of Albuquerque due south on Oh wow, so like it's
like in the middle of the state basically, So it's
kind of between like uh, truth or consequences in Albuquerque,
you know, like right dead smack in the middle. Um, yeah,

(24:36):
like kind of on the Santa Fe trail and Rio
Grand Rio Grand just follows right straight down, and so
it's like Rio Grand Valley, Okay, and you're all living
in the same house. Explained that to me. Well, when
my dad remarried, she had two kids, they had two
more kids, and I was living with them. Okay, so
you were living with your dad, not with your mother.
I lived with my mom until I was eight, Um,

(24:56):
and then I uh, you know, my parents were married
until I was five. So I lived with my mom
for three years and then and then I moved back
with my dad when I was eight years old. Um,
you know, I think it was like that age where
I started getting a little bit of like trouble at school.
I was having like uh yeah, I was having I

(25:17):
was having like a tough time, and I think my
mom was like, I think the phrase she uses like,
I think it's time for you to move with your dad.
Because I was getting a little and she was also graduated,
she wasn't met, she was in dental school. She was
kind of having a tough time, and um, it was
just like the right time for me to live with him,
and and definitely kind of instilled a little more of

(25:37):
that like Indian discipline in me when I needed it.
And and also like you know, young young boy, you
want to live with your dad, You're kind of like
having that kind of feeling like, um, he's like your hero.
And and then shortly after that he met his current
wife and she had two kids, and it was like whoa,
this is like a, this is not exactly what I

(25:59):
had in mind. But and then they had two kids.
But you know, we worked it out. We we we
we uh. We had a lot of ups and downs
and and that's family life, right. So what kind of
kid were you? Good in school? Bad at school? A
lot of friends, loner. I was good at school, but
kind of definitely like always through the outsider or the
marginal man, as my dad puts it, you know, like

(26:22):
he I think he felt like that, being like a
Indian kid in America and never really belonged anywhere, but
you kind of can fit in a lot of places. Um. Yeah,
I lived in Colorado. I was a little more dark skin,
not this kind of blonde Colorado kid named Kyle or something,
and like I didn't quite fit in there. And then

(26:42):
I moved to New Mexico, and I'm the gringo because
everyone's like Hispanic and like I'm like, now I'm too white.
So but I definitely kind of got a lot. I
had the advantage my dad's like been a long time
doctor in the community, has also been the mayor for
thirty years, so he's like a very well liked guy,
and so I definitely league fit into being like, oh,
your doctor Basker's son. You know, Everyone's like treated me

(27:04):
so nice, and it was so nice growing up in
a in a small town where everyone knows you. But
at the same time, like even to this day, and
it's funny I look back on like like I was
taking French lessons during the pandemic, and I was I
was always a good student in school, and like, you know,
it was like second in my class and and like

(27:26):
very achievement oriented and I love learning too, so um,
but when I went back into French class, I noticed
how unorganized I was and my notes and everything, and
I had this image of myself as being this real academic,
good student. But it reminded me I just do everything

(27:48):
by ear. It's like how I do music. You know,
I didn't learn how to read music. I can read music,
but everything I do in life I do by ear.
I listen, I take it in, I process it on
the fly. And that is kind of also it made
me think made me think about how like the more
you learn about yourself and how you behave and learn

(28:11):
made me realize how like I'm the kind of person
like I'll meet someone and five seconds later I can't
remember their name because it was like my dad introducing
me to people and I I was like, I was
just like block it out or something, you know, like
you're in your own world and and uh, I mean

(28:32):
it's something that I'm working on, but I think it's
also super interesting, like the more I learned about myself
and how I am and in embracing that, you know,
instead of kind of thing like, oh I need to
I need to work on that or that's like a
like a like an Achilles heel or something. But I
was kind of like that I had and I'm still
like that. I have kind of a tight group of friends,
but I'm not necessarily the most social person or um

(28:55):
post COVID changed out a lot, like I was like, wow,
I forgot I really like being social. I or it's
so nice. Not that I like it, but I like
to connect with people. I love connecting with people, and
I love, um being inspired by people, and and have
learned from some of the most inspiring people that I
know to listen more, to be the one asking the questions,

(29:19):
not just going on and on like I am right now.
But um, it's an interview, so I guess that's okay, Yeah,
it's about you. Well why did you start taking French lessons? Well,
my girlfriend really wanted to move to France, so it
was just something we were doing together and my my
son was possibly going to go to like a French school,
which I was just like, I had no idea why
we were going to do that, but um so I

(29:41):
just just something to do. So how far did you get?
I mean, can you speak French? Read French? No? No,
I can say Bonvon s Cajura said, you know, like
I can do some super basics. It was nice to
learn how to like pronounce things and and I can
speak German from being my my exchange How you end
up being an exchange student? What was that like? Yeah?

(30:02):
So so in my school, like this French teacher and
the German teacher were the same guy Mr Sylvester uh
in Coral High School. So every year would be like
depending on what year you went into school, it would
be like German one, French to German three. Then it
would be like next year would be French one, German two,
French three. So the year I got in, you know,

(30:24):
you know you want to take a foreign language, right,
I got in, it was German. And then one year
there was a sign on the wall that was like
this Bundestalk Exchange, right, they picked a hundred kids from America,
hundred kids from It was during the reunification of Germany
the year that I went um and as a government

(30:44):
exchange program where they paid for everything. I had to do,
all these interviews I had to I had to basically
win and be like one of two kids they got
picked from New Mexico. They picked two from each state.
And I just wanted to get the hell out of
my town. I wanted to get the hell out of
my fucked up family life and get away. And also
I viewed if I could go to Germany, I would

(31:05):
be able to go to jazz clubs and sit in
and jam, and I might find a jazz piano teacher
and exactly it's like a matter of fact, that's exactly
what I did. And I would audition for these master
classes at all these jazz festivals, and I would ride
the train to Hamburg and go see all this jazz
went Marsalis and John McLaughlin and Jack d Jeannette and Gary,
Gary greg Osby and uh Gary Thomas, all these people

(31:29):
that were kind of my heroes. So that's why I
went and did it. And in the end it actually
was you know, and I got to live with this
wonderful family that was were farmers and just filled me
full of love and supported me so much, and it
was just a wonderful, wonderful year. So you're half South Asian.
You talk about issues of fitting, kid, but after you

(31:49):
get out of school, hey, you felt discrimination because it's
not like, uh, there are a lot of South Asians
in the popular music business in America. Yeah, and you
wouldn't look at me and say, oh, you're Indian. I
think I say, like maybe one out of twenty people
can guess. They're gonna guess like Argentinean or Italian or

(32:09):
Spanish or something. But um, it's funny. You know where
you notice it is when you go to Europe, Like
I had this gig in Switzerland one time, playing at
the Ski area, and I gotta look from a guy.
Or in Germany where there's a lot of Turkish immigrants,
you know, you notice it much more in those places,
feeling kind of a bit of this you're not white,

(32:34):
you know, kind of this kind of more deeper like
rooted racism than you even experience in America, uh, because
there's more diversity, you know. On the flip side, it
was really funny being like super into jazz, and you know,
there's this kind of it's like a white man can't jump,
It's like white man can't swing right. So in music

(32:55):
school it would be like once the once uh the
Brothers would find out I was half Indian, they'd say, oh,
you're You're basically one of us, you know. So that
was kind of my ticket into like being able to
play with like the best guys and being kind of
accepted and embraced by them. So it went both ways,
you know. Um and and I think there is maybe

(33:16):
some element to that, even if it's maybe subconscious. That definitely,
like growing up, my dad spoke about uh us as
not being white. You know, we'd refer to white people
as the other and maybe he experienced that more. He
doesn't really get into his childhood, and but I'm sure
he must have felt that to some extent, and and

(33:37):
maybe also why he settled in New Mexico where the
browner the better and there's a strong Hispanic influence there.
Um that also influenced me, I think in how I
perceived myself, how I perceived where I fit into American culture,
and how I view American history. And you know, for me,

(33:58):
especially in jazz, like they teach you about the history
of jazz and the blues and then it came from
African slaves, and it's a very important part of your
jazz education to understand the history of it. And I
love under somewhere along the way, I've just been always
piecing together like the history of the world, right, like
how did we get here? And I think that's kind

(34:18):
of what art is is always kind of this reflection
of time periods, and production itself is stamps a time period,
right Like you listen to Phil Spector, You're you're hearing
the soundtrack to that. It's like seeing in black and
white or something like um. And even musically, UM, I'm

(34:39):
always conscious of where I where, what we're doing, where that,
what's behind us and what's in front of us, Like
we want to be on the cutting edge. We don't
want to repeat ourselves. But you're aware of what is
behind You know that that's maybe a bit that's a
bit lost in today's music. To go back to kind
of your what is the state of music? Of new music?

(35:02):
You know that's a part that maybe yet on some
levels it's it's kind of a perforated page. It's like
some levels some people aren't thinking about it. And then
sometimes you'd be surprised how much music these young people know,
you know, or happened in hip hop? Right, People just say, oh,
hip hop, that's not music, and they don't know about music.
And I used to read that Keyboard magazine. There was

(35:22):
like a magazine called Keyboard Magazine and this interview was
interviewing Chuck d and he made this comment I remember
in this article. He said, people say music isn't hip
hop is in music? How come this guy knows more
about music than I do? Because they went through all
the records and they sampled everything, they read all the credits.
They know, they know the music backwards and forwards, you know.

(35:44):
So that's a big part of my practice is kind
of not you know, and again like I do it
by ear. I'm not like this. I don't have a
spreadsheet in my brain that knows all this stuff. I
have some friends that are just you know, marks like that,
even like diplos like that. You know. I have other
friends my friend Ethan Alipat who does now Again records,
and it's just this just just card catalog of like, oh,

(36:07):
this is a brilliant, obscure music. I do it all
by ear, but it's always on the forefront of my
practice to kind of at least on an approximate level,
know where I am on the map and the continuum
of music and art. So how do you end up
going to Berkeley College or music And what was your
experience there? Yeah, so, you know, being more academically oriented,

(36:32):
but like being so interested in music, I didn't know
if I had what it took to to have a
career in music. And I used to go to these
camps because they used to have these one week camp
in Santa Fe and in my kid in my jazz
band came back with this T shirt Berkeley Santa Fe Camp.
I said, I want to go to that, and then
they changed it to Los Angeles. So I went there

(36:55):
three years and then the last year that I went,
I said, and I'd go there and there's all these
kids from l A. They're like ripping piano and it's like, oh,
piano is actually my third instrument. I'm a trumpet player.
And I'd be like, oh my god, Like I'm just like, oh,
I don't this is not you know, I suck, you know,
compared to these guys. They they have like three jazz

(37:16):
bands in their high school. And um, so I said
the last time, I said, well, if I get a scholarship,
they'd give out these little scholarships at the end, like
partial scholarships. And I did get a partial scholarship to
go to Berkeley. So I decided I'd go, and I
drove my car out there. I drove all by myself
to Boston, and I and I slept on my dorm

(37:42):
mattress without any sheets on it, and and uh, the
the tuition hadn't didn't clear because I was like working
that out for the rest of my dad had kicked
me out of the house and I was just kind
of on my own. But well, Why did your dad
kick you out of the house. I don't know. That's
a long story. Maybe we won't get into that one.
Oh Okay, was it behavior or drugs? It was neither,

(38:03):
to be honest, I was actually a real clean cut,
pretty good kid. I think it had more to do
with like some like uh inter family, like uh, it's
kind of a personal thing. That's like it really didn't
it really, to be honest, it just wasn't my fault.
It was something that you know, like uh uh, maybe

(38:26):
I didn't deserve to have happened to me, you know,
but uh, anyway, we'll leave it at that. Okay, But
just you're going to Berkeley, you take your car, you
go to Boston. You're sleeping on the match without cheets.
Is your father helping you out financially? My mom, my, mom,
my mom, and my uncle took over and pitched in. Yeah. Um.
And then I got there and like, you know, because

(38:47):
I had this scholarship, I had to play in this
scholarship ensemble, this Art Blakey jazz ensemble that was led
by Billy Pierce, who was the tenor player in the
Art Blakey band. When went Marcellis and Brandford Marsalis were
in there, so this really amazing era of and then
I remember this is still the era when like Branford
was the house m D of The Tonight Show, Jett,

(39:07):
Here's Harry Connick Jr. There was like Witten Marsalis is
winning double Grammy's Classical and jazz Like these guys were
still like superstars, right, Like jazz was still kind of
in the forefront of American culture to some extent, which
is I don't think is the same anymore. It's really interesting.
I heard the interview did with m Jacob Collier. You know,
I think it's really interesting the kind of subculture on Instagram,

(39:27):
all these jazz uh people have. It's really inspiring. Another
another one like the current state of like music, so
many look at that kid just just a genius, right,
so everything I ever wanted to be in music, but
now I'm me, which is cool too, um. But I
got in there and just felt like such a fraud

(39:48):
because these guys were just so killing. Like the bass player,
this guy Ruben Rodgers, would get out of classes and
I got to take the train down to New York.
So I got a gig with Winton and I'd be
like oh my fucking god, like I kill myself. But
in the end, you know, like it was great because
being going from being in Socora where I was like
the superstar of music too being like the dumbest guy

(40:12):
in the room, so to speak. It's just like the
best place you want to be, right because that's how
you learn being around this like the super inspiring people.
And there's this there's this famous jazz club in Boston
called Wally's which was like the first black owned uh
jazz club where all the cats back in the day
would go. And then even to that in that time
and probably to this day when anyone's in town, they

(40:33):
play it like I think it's Regatta Club is like
the jazz club in Boston. And then and then they
will sit in at Wali's after So I had I
ended up getting the gig there with these friends of
mine who are in this band Lettuce. I was in
this band Lettuce. I don't know if you've ever heard Lettuce,
It's like yeah, right, So that was kind of like
my crew. And then we got a Sunday night. It

(40:57):
was like Monday night was like I think Monday was
what was it? Monday was blues Tuesday was Fusion, Wednesday
was Fusion, Thursday was Latin, and Friday and Saturday was
straight ahead and Sunday was fusion. And you call it
the Sunday Night Band, Monday Night band, Tuesday Night Band
was the night band. So I went from having the
Tuesday Sunday Night Band two then I got called to

(41:20):
be in Rubens Band and the Tuesday Night Band and
the the first gig I remember he lent he leanked
over to my shoulder right before the first hit and
he said expect the unexpected, and I was like, oh,
ship boom hit the But so I played three nights
a week at Walies, you know, almost four hours a
night for like five years. You know. That's where I

(41:41):
really cut my teeth on being comfortable on stage and
improvising and listening and playing with like world class musicians,
you know. So that was an awesome experience in in
Berkeley and Boston, UM, but mostly Wallis was like the
real education, you know. I mean, it was cool being
in Berkeley, but it's mostly the environment and it's uh,

(42:03):
you know, it's it's it's kind of a it's a
bit of a business, you know, like they're kind of
it's the largest music school, and you know, maybe it's
not the seventies Berkeley that I had imagined, but at
the same time, it was a wonderful time in my life.
For sure. Did you graduate and you went in thinking
you wanted to be X and you exited thinking you

(42:25):
wanted to be what I went in exactly. I went
in and I was like, Okay, I got a major
in something. I'll major in education because I'm gonna need
a job. What other degree is gonna help me out?
And then I switched that to a double major in
jazz composition and music education. And then I had accumulated
all these credits and I was like, Ship, I just

(42:46):
want to get the funk out of here. Let me
change to this major called professional music where you get
to make your own curriculum, and I could take all
those credits and just put them together. And I'm actually
like one credit short of actually getting my paper. And
I was like on the cover of Berkeley magazine they're
always citing using my name as an alumni. Grammy awarding

(43:07):
me asked me to do all this, Ship, I said,
why did you just give me the degree? Like give
me the it's like the credit I'm missing is some
stupid thing like make a record, and I'm like, bro,
like I I like it was the Producer of the Year.
Do you want to maybe just give me the degree?
I can't believe they are gonna make me take the
fucking class. Can you believe that? Well? You know, I

(43:29):
I gotta believe there's some way, assuming it's important to you,
and I think maybe they're listening right now, is uh
they should find some way to marry your experience with
a thing and say, hey, yeah, do this. You know
there's a way. That would have thought so I would
have thought. So they're hardcore man. It's like a it's
like scientology or something like. You cannot break the rules.

(43:51):
You gotta take that credit, you gotta pay that money. Okay,
So how do you end your tenure Berkeley? And then
what do you do? So I decided to move to
New York because I had been kind of driving back
and forth gigging down there, and at this point in time,
you're done with Berkeley, what do you see your future as.
That's when I started getting into production because I bought
some recording equipment. I had an old like D A

(44:13):
thirty digital eight track recorder and a couple of outboard effects,
a s R ten, some keyboards, and I started making
like R and B music and transferring from kind of
like my jazz aesthetic and a ranger aesthetic and instead
just recording the arrangement myself, you know, and kind of
playing everything, sometimes really poorly. But that's the beauty of

(44:36):
recording is you can kind of do it until you
get it right, which is also an amazing practice. Right
you're basically practicing and you're just recording it, listening back
to it, critically, listening to it. Um So I had
moved and I wanted to move to New York and
pursue production more. You know, then you're gonna live on
what So I worked in a wedding band. I worked
in this incredible wedding band that was like all these

(44:57):
amazing musicians and really well runn business. You know. Um
Bill Garside and his wife Karen Garcide, who shout out
to Night Shift in Boston. We played. You know, they
were like the best wedding band in New England, right,
we were like four seasons. Anyone who wanted like the
best wedding band at their wedding, that was us. So
and they paid real good. So I moved down to

(45:18):
New York, and I would drive back to Boston and
all over New England, Cape Cod sometimes Vermont, and like
I would do like a wedding Friday night. I would,
you know, I would drive up through drive up through
New Hampshire, up through all that traffic, sweating that I'm
gonna make it on time, and play a wedding Friday.
I would do a double Saturday, double Sunday. I'd do

(45:40):
the cocktail hour and and i'd make my rent for
the month, you know, and then I go back to
New York and play some kind of shitty gigs and
just produce and write songs. Okay, so you're in New York,
you got enough money to pay the rent. How do

(46:02):
you make the connections to start to get tracks? Well?
I didn't, and I was about to give up on music,
because you know what. The day I moved to New
York was nine eleven. I had my all my ship
packed up in my car, and my dad called me
and said, hey, you're still moving to New York. And
I said yeah. I said, well you should turn on
the television. So I was like, okay, you know, they

(46:27):
advised us not to drive to New York. But I
had this girlfriend that lived outside, like in Yonkers, and
I kind of stayed with her, and then I drove
in the next day to sign my lease. There was
dust all over the cars and everything. So I lived
in this era of post nine eleven New York and
everything shut down, Studios, anyone who wanted to help you,

(46:47):
because that's how you make it right, like people help you,
maybe you get you kind of do some little jobs
for someone who's doing really well. None of that happened,
so I was really struggling. Then I had some friends
who had moved to Los Angeles who were doing really
well doing jingles, mixing five point one stuff and more
technical stuff. But they were my friend Greg Morgenstein and

(47:11):
Jeff Reid, who were like, uh, had this this company
enormous music and they'd say, well, here, do this to
this jingle demo for us. I can pay you three
hundred bucks to do this jingle demo. Okay, I never
won one, but I think I won one. I do
I won like a like a uh sunny d commercial.
I I actually won. But other than that, I was

(47:32):
just making demo fees and they were so sweet. And
I would start coming out and and and uh visiting them.
A matter of fact, my manager and longtime friend Neil Jacobson,
who I think you know who end up being started
up internship at Interscope, kind of went to go visit
him and just fell in love with l A. Oh

(47:54):
my god, like the weather and like everything, so kind
of like you've got a pool in your house and
like compare and I was living in a cave basically
in green Point, Brooklyn, freezing my ass off, just broke um.
So I started coming out and like take you get
like a round trip ticket for like two bucks and
go out and visit. And then I finally said, you
know what, I'm gonna move there. I'm just gonna move.

(48:15):
Their place opened up in the house. We had a
studio there, and the very first track that I did
was the first placement I got on the Games album.
So it was like remember the Game, like in like
two thousand four or something, right, So it was like
Timbaland just Blaze, Dr Dre, Kanye West, Jeff Basker like

(48:35):
it was like this, like wow, like I got so
l A has just been very very lucky and and
uh good been good to me. Moving here and and
everything just changed, the dynamic change of being in New
York and being so it's like a guy who's never
gotten laid talking to girls and they can just like
smell it on you. Like I'd just be in New
York just like can you listen to my demo and

(48:58):
just be like I get away from to Like in
l A, you'd you'd hang out with people and you'd
like just be hanging out and then get to know
them as a person, and and then at the end
of the conversation they'd be like, what do you do,
by the way, and it would always be this is
just the whole energy just flipped. So I've just been
so fortunate to uh to have that experience in l A.

(49:20):
And then things kind of didn't really take off for me.
And I was working for Diane Warren to a friend
of mine did like drumbeats for her that she would
write her songs too, and then he brought me into
help with Then we would make the demos for her
and get a singer to sing, and I'd say, why
don't we, why don't we just why you should just
play this for them? Diane like no, no, no, no,
I need like a real, real, uh real demo. But

(49:44):
I learned so much about so and I wanted to
come to l A to learn songwriting. I wanted to
definitely get into stick a get away from doing like
just beats or production for other people, and write the
song too. And I learned an immense amount from her,
just so subtle and so nuanced the way she writes
these iconic songs that have little details in them that

(50:06):
you don't even notice, you know. And and then also
met Steve Lindsay. I don't know if you're familiar with
Steve Lindsay. He had signed Bruno also, and he was
kind of our mentor in like hit songwriting, UM and
just doing my little songs. Let's go back a chapter.
So it was your first composition? How did you get

(50:27):
into the game? How did that happen? So, my very
first placement was with this girl wop l A, who
kind of had she put out. I met her at Berkeley.
Then she moved back to the Bay. She was from
the Bay and put out this album UM on her
own label with her brother's help, on Skyblaze Records. And

(50:49):
she had this record called Closer that was like a hit.
It was like number one on cam L when like
into club was like the number one song everywhere. At
k M e L it was closer and then number
two fifty in the club. So she had this like
hit indie record and I had a couple of cuts
on that record, and she was doing her second record

(51:12):
and said, you got any You got any music that
you want to share with me. I didn't really have
that much. I had like a couple of things that
were appropriate for her. It's kind of like a neo
soul R and B I from a beautiful voice. Um.
And then I had this beat that I did, like
with g unit in mind, Like I was just decided
I was gonna make the hardest beat of all time,

(51:33):
and so I threw that on there. It's kind of
like a joke, like it was totally inappropriate for her.
But her brother Nomani heard it and was like, hey,
what are you doing at that beat? You mind if
I give it to game? I said yeah, sure, and
he placed it. Last minute. I was visiting my grandparents
and iowah, and I get a call we want the
session files And my buddy had to go dig out

(51:55):
this old computer that I had made the beat on
and to find the session and delivered it to the
studio and Dr Dre mixed the track, and I met
Dr Dre walked in the room and walked over to
me with his hand out, was like meeting like Obama
or something, and like shook my hand and said, you
made a great track. You made a great track. I
was just like wow, like this is just amazing. So

(52:17):
but it all came like totally by accident, like sending
it out. I mean, that's a good lesson that I
still got to keep in mind. Now. It's like like
with Beyonce too, Like I had all this kind of obscure, weird,
dark music that my publisher Katie Welly at Sony at
the time, Uh, I'm you know, it was kind of
Jody Gerson's right hand woman. UM, and I'm still with

(52:39):
Jody at Universal. Um said do you mind if I
send those Billy Craven songs to Beyonce. I was like, sure,
go for it. But and there's no chance in hell
she's gonna want that. Turns out that's exactly what she wanted,
you know. So it's like you never know, a matter

(52:59):
of fact, you should probably count on people want the
opposite of what you are. They definitely don't want their
what their last hit sounded like, which is whatever people
are trying to give them what their last hit is.
They think, what would Beyonce want? Well, I'll sounder another single? Ladies,
It's like, well they want the next thing, you know,
so and most of all they want you and what

(53:19):
your creative essence is something unique? Right, So in both
those cases, it was the uniqueness of what I was
doing that one and bore out, you know. Okay, so
you're talking about all these lessons and these little things
you'll learn from Diane, and then ultimately they're after working
with lindsay, Um, can you give us a couple of those? Sure? Well,

(53:43):
I mean, like one thing I noticed with Diane because
like I had, like I have a really good musical here, right,
and especially from like playing wedding band. Thing was like
pretty easy for me because I could just like listen
to a song and I can just play it and
I know the structure and I have a background in composition,
so you know, I would listen to her demo and
I was like, Okay, I got this down easy. Boom,

(54:04):
I started doing it, and somewhere in the middle or
like a quarter of the way through I would get
off somehow, and I said, this was such a simple progression.
What happened? And I go back and listen to it. Oh,
she dropped a little beat out there, you know. And
you know, I think one tendency is sometimes like you
tend to want to extend a bar or something. And

(54:27):
that's one lesson I learned from her, is like, don't
ever extend pull the rug out, like you want to
take a beat away so that that chorus hits them faster.
You don't want to make them wait, you want to
be unexpected. I mean, she was just full of little
tricks like that, you know, or like just a simple
something that seemed like a simple figure, but there's some
little melody going on on the inside of of what

(54:50):
she's doing. And that was like one of Lindsay's things too,
write like um for everything to be hooks, you know,
everything to be the little hookie things, and especially like
I'm a lot of cook you know, like that's uh,
I'm not going to give away like the secrets of
of Steve Lindsay, but but uh, but you know, a

(55:13):
lot of it is like I mean, I think to
the point is like there's a real craft to doing,
to writing great songs and to making uh. I think
there's inspiration, but I think that gets a little lost
along the way. And that's something I try to do
in my production to try to encourage the artists to
keep pushing, keep refining, keep keep working on it until

(55:34):
it's the best, best, best thing it can be. Play
it for other people, like listen to it through their ears.
You know, you'll know you'll think something is great, and
then play it for something you kind of feel a
lull in the rooms. Okay, I gotta fix that, you know,
but you want you need that song. You talk about
that a lot in your in your letters, like about
really crafty, like you you need something that is gonna
just murder, like you can't look. Don't think you're gonna

(55:57):
go out there and just get in fired and write
it on there. I don't know forget who said it,
but it's a great quote. Inspiration is for amateurs. You know,
you go in there and do the work, make the donuts,
you know, and the special sauces to be critical of
yourself because guess what, once it's released, you can't go
back and fix it. Although I guess Kanye kind of

(56:19):
pioneered like the that being fake, but but you know,
ultimately you this is your chance to make it as
good as it can be. And that's the whatever rules
you follow, or you know, make your own rules, but
have rules, have limitations, be critical of yourself, don't go
for the I'll tell you one thing I did that
really just was a real magical thing that I did

(56:39):
for myself, you know, and your peers. Of like you're
playing music for your peers, like listen to this beat
I did, and everyone's You want to play music for everyone, right,
it starts to become like a burden, like people like, okay,
let me listen to your fucking song. At one point,
for whatever reason, I just said, you know what, I
am not going to ask anyone to listen to my
mean USIC anymore. I want people to beg to listen

(57:04):
to my music, you know. And that's like that's the
reaction you want, right. You want to play something and
you want them to say, can I hear that one
more time? You want them to listen to it again.
So just having that mentality I think of, like you
want to make your music so good that people want
to listen to it, not like subject. It's a lot

(57:25):
of effort to listen to someone's song, you know, so
you better make it freaking good. Like, don't waste their time.
Kanye said to me once. The first time I played
him something, he said, don't ever waste my time like
that again. He says, time is the one thing that
I can't get back, and you just wasted it, you know.
So the next time I played him something is I

(57:45):
made sure it was the right thing, and that's when
he said, Oh, you're gonna make my next album with me,
he told my mom. My mom came backstage one night
to one of the shows because I used to play
in Kanye's band. That's how I met him. I was
his music director and one and my mom came to
one of the shows and he said, I mean, Kanye,
this is the side of Kanye that people don't see.
It's stuff like we played in Albuquerque. He's he hasn't

(58:08):
had slept, He's just did a show. He's not feeling
that great. He like hung out with my family for
like an hour, you know, like and like just like
shooting the ship. That's that old Midwestern like Mama raised
you right shit. And then my my mom came backstage
to one of the shows and he said, oh, Jeff Man,
Jeff so great. He's like, just kinna, He's gonna produce
my next album. And I was like, I am, you know,

(58:30):
because I played him this song. And that's a lot
of the influence of the stuff I was doing and
my love of melody and and learning from Diane and
mixing it with this kind of darker aesthetic. That's what
he was kind of interested in, that realm, and that's
when Ada Waits and Heartbreaks kind of came together and
he his love of melody. He decided he wanted to

(58:51):
be a melodist, you know. And he saw me and
he was like, oh, you can help me do this
because you get it, and you also understand can temporary art,
or at least have an interest in it. And you
understand what I'm trying to do kind of merge highbrow
and lowbrow, classical avant guard. You know, it's always a
mixture and a cocktail of polar opposites that exist in

(59:13):
tension with one another. Okay, let's pick up the narrative.
So you know, you're working with Diane and you're working
with Steve Lindsay, you introduce you and Bruno. What happens next?
So what happens is I get the call to do
some backup keyboard gigs. And we bet you remember the
Scion car. Maybe they still make them, but they were
doing these Scion cars to appeal to like people who

(59:35):
like hip hop music. So they started sponsoring these tours
with the Rizza with Slick Rick, did like a tour
of Colorado with Slick Rick Um and did the Game,
did something with the Game with the Lettuce guys. Right,
we were like backing up these rappers. Then I get
a call I had done this gig with this band Chromeo.
I don't know if you know of Chromeo, right, and

(59:58):
Dave the Dave One, the lead singer, UM and Brilliant
Guys a couple of like awesome guys. I played in
their live band at the beginning. And then but Dave
One's little brothers A track who the DJA, who was
kind of a DJ at the time, and they needed
a substitute keyboard player because their keyboard player had to

(01:00:19):
go to some other gig with jay Z I think,
And so he asked a track said, you know when
your keyboard player A track asked his brothers who recommended
my friend Nick Casper, who was the other keyboard player
and Chromeo and Nick said, nah, you should get Jeff.
He'll do he'll do a better job. You know, it's

(01:00:40):
more his his thing. Um. So I got the call
to be Kanye's sub keyboard player, did the Jimmy Kimmel
Show right when he released Graduation and did a few gigs.
The other keyboard player was ready to come back and
they said, no, what we decided we want to keep you.
You're so I was getting in there. I was like,
it's when we had like a track, a keyboard player

(01:01:02):
and then it's like all female, like Miniature Orchestra was
amazing group. And I've noticed like this this arrangement is
a little like messed up, Like this part's not right.
Do you mind if I And I'd ask him you
mind if I changed that? He's like, go ahead, fix
fix this, fix that, And and a track was telling me,
He's like, you know what, this is great, keep doing
this because he needs someone like you. There's no like

(01:01:25):
music director for someone with your skill set to kind
of polish all these things musically. So I kind of
went in there with the goal of making myself indispensable,
and I had always been kind of a fan, like,
not not so obsessed like it was the end all
be all, but I really admired his kind of idio

(01:01:45):
sync syncratic style and and humor and and the positive
kind of like empowered thing that he embodied. So right
away we kind to hit it off, and then I
became his music director, and then he started inviting me
to the studio, and kind of the rest is history

(01:02:06):
as far as that era of the might work with Kanye,
you know, and worked on EIGHTA Weights and and Dark
Twisted Fantasy as well as like jay Z Blueprint three
and uh a few other things, you know, but but
mainly all that work with and then you know, still
played in his band and like did the world tour
like Glow in the Dark Tour, and which was amazing

(01:02:27):
because we always got to work with the best lighting people,
the best stage designers as Devlin you know. Um, I
love that part of it. And that's how I actually
got the Gaga gig, because remember they were going to
do a joint show and then it fell apart, but
she said, well, you do my my show, So so
many opportunities came from that and also just like the
finishing school of being, like, oh shit, like this is

(01:02:50):
how hard someone can work. Like just seeing how hard
he worked and and how focused he was and uncompromising
and and also like you know, it was just like
the ultimate graduate school of being. Also being an artist,
like taught me what it means to be an artist
because he just true to himself and explores his ideas
and also so outside of the mainstream, right just setting

(01:03:13):
the trends and setting defining, not following ever, and it
kind of it away was my little version of not little,
but my version of working being with Miles Davis. You know,
like as a jazz musician, you'd you would get picked
up by some iconic leader and then you would learn
from them, So it's kind of similar aesthetic. I think

(01:03:35):
also that he was such an intelligent guy, so uncompromising,
but also very rooted in the black tradition and outspoken socially,
and just like that was an incredibly formative time for me.
And then I kind of had to go out on
my own and and and do my own thing. And Okay,

(01:03:56):
so how did it end with Kanye And what's your
really ship with Kanye today? Well, it ended because I said,
you know what, I don't think I want to be
in the band anymore. I just want to be in
the studio. And he kind of got upset about that
because I think it was kind of like, oh man,
it was a tight inner circle. You know, it kind
of maybe felt like I was abandoning him or but

(01:04:17):
the reality was just like, hey, I could be out
there and making hit records. I don't need to be
in this like rehearsal space, eating a bag of chips
and waiting twelve hours for you to show up. Um,
not that it was always like that, because I would
be in the studio, but it was just quite a
brutal existence. You know, at the time it was great,
but taking a forty hour flight from Rio de Janeiro

(01:04:40):
in economy to Singapore, like after you had food poisoning,
like it was just like physically demanding, and you know,
moving forward to me like he's kind of my idol
and role model, like you would never limit yourself. You
want to keep growing and keep expanding on So for

(01:05:03):
a brief period we kinda stop contact, but then you know,
anytime he would call, I would go back and do
some more gigs. I could do the Coachella when he
headline Coachella or any little gig or you know, he
always kind of calls in all the forces for any
project to get all the manpower on deck. Um. So

(01:05:24):
when Kanye calls, I answer and I happily go in
and you know, just like this last one like come
to Life on the Donda record. You know, I always
just love being around his energy, and it's just like
the most inspiring environment and positive environment like you can
be in creatively because he really sets the tone for
her for that and you're always around like the most

(01:05:45):
creative interesting people. But you know, I kind of hold
like a like a have my boundary of where I
have to preserve my own creative practice and how much
time because you can get sucked into it. It is
a very like powerful world to get sucked into. Um.

(01:06:06):
But it's such a you know, it's such a privilege
to be able to move in and out of that
circle and and um, I feel really blessed to when
I get that call and go in and and do
that thing and then be able to go outside and
do my own thing again. Okay, I'll be home with

(01:06:29):
Kanye once. And what I most remember about that experience
was he had no sense of humor about himself. Okay,
he talked about himself in the third person a little bit,
and it was an addressing room, you know, it was
there was no pressure, so it was kind of funny.
And certainly since then a lot has changed in his life.

(01:06:52):
So and then, of course many people believe he's bipolar.
What is going on with Kanye? I mean to be honest,
I can't really comment on what is going on with
him or what, like, to what extent he is a
bipolar or not or anything. To me, he is like

(01:07:17):
the most brilliant artists out there, like by a thousand miles,
and he is uncompromising and on a kind of on
a mission. You know. He's a philosopher in a sense
that he and that's kind of the part of like
the third person is like being able to say in

(01:07:39):
the grand scheme, you know, like here's what I'm meant
to He's always trying to find meaning in what he does,
right and um finding truth, you know, like one example,
one one other story I can tell about, like with
eight O weights and heartbreaks. When I asked for my publishing,
you know, and I think a lot of people around

(01:08:00):
him like we're like, hey, you know, just trying to
protect him, not in a not in a kind of
nefarious or kind of unfair way. We're trying to limit
my contribution, uh, publishing wise and monetarily, because they're just
negotiating for his side. It was had nothing to do
with anything anyone doing anything wrong. And I remember at
one point he said, give Jeff his publishing, like he

(01:08:24):
who made a very point to be fair about it,
and even further, at one point I said, you know,
I got teen percent on this. I think it should
be and and I kind of felt sheepish about asking
him because I was so grateful. He kind of gave
me a big chunk anyway, and he said, hey, it's
not about feeling bad or this or that. It's about

(01:08:46):
being fair, you know. And that moment kind of gave
me a little insight into I think even in his music,
it's very self examining, you know, and he really wants
to get to the body of why we're here, What
is the truth? You know, kind of in classical art
or the idea of like uh uh, a perfect truth,

(01:09:11):
things that are perfect and beautiful, that there's a truth
to beauty that's my take on it, like that he
has this sense of what's what's the truth? And I
think especially in this day and age where things are
so polarized, and I think that I was just having
this conversation with someone about how we want things to be.

(01:09:32):
We need things to be black and white because it
makes it much easier to process and deal with. But
the reality is, it's just not like the world is
just not black and white. There are so many shades
of gray, and everything is a conversation, right, and the
truth maybe even hard to pin down, like if you
even get to like quantum physics, how they say, like
if you observe something, it changes you know. It's like

(01:09:54):
it's just so ultimately and unfathomably complex the world. And
I think in trying to bring those things into the
light and saying the uncomfortable things and saying and exploring
the uncomfortable topics that gets him and a lot of
like people just cannot understand it because they need things
to be black or white. They need to be John Legend,

(01:10:16):
or they need it to be fucking Floyd Mary whether
or I don't know what what what what think how
you want to explain it? But I think with him,
He's not gonna stop being who he is for anyone else.
That's always been the constant mantra, like I am gonna
no one's gonna define me. I'm gonna define myself. And

(01:10:37):
to be honest, in America, if you're a black man
and you have that attitude, you're gonna hit get some blowback.
You know. If you're Marlon Brando and you punch a
photographer in the face, you're like cool and you're you're
you know, wow, such a yeah, Like those photographers are
so invasive. If you're Kanye, like, oh man, he's unhinged,

(01:10:58):
he's bipolar, you know, Like there's definitely an undercurrent of
racism in the viewpoint of Kanye West. And then there's
all kinds of complicated things around it too. And I
don't want to spend too much time talking about Kanye,
but you know, I can just say from many experiences
that he's not a different person so much. He's maybe

(01:11:22):
he's he's grown and he's changed, but his core hasn't changed.
And at that core is a person who truly wants
to better the world through his actions, you know. And
I think it gets complicated, but you know, there have

(01:11:44):
been too many moments of of goodwill. And I think
anyone that has been in a more casual environment, you know,
maybe not with like someone who writes about music and
you're kind of on your guard, but if you've ever
been in this studio, in his creative environments, you feel

(01:12:04):
an overwhelmingly positive and uplifting feeling. I think even his
music it has at its essence that feeling positive, uplifting.
Uh true, true? You know, like those are all these

(01:12:25):
kind of like things that I hear in his music from,
like a sense of hope, you know, touch the sky
you know. Um, I wonder and I wonder if you
know what it means to find your dreams lift off.
You know, it's just like an endless graduation. It's just
an endless dream stronger. You know. It's always this empowering, uplifting,

(01:12:49):
positive emotion that I think says a lot about who
Kanye West is. So you wake up and say, hey,
you know, I don't want to be flying a coach
around the world. I want to do more own thing.
When you leave Kanye, do you have opportunities that have
come to you want to fulfill or do you basically say,
you know, I can't do the Kanye thing anymore. I'm

(01:13:10):
gonna hang up my shingle and see what happens. No,
I already had a lot of pressure. I had. I
had try Sleeping with a Broken Heart in the can
and I don't know if you remember that record by
Alicia Keys, but Beyonce, Rihanna, and Alicia Keys all wanted
that record. So I had like a heater and everyone
was like I had. I had every label and every
manager calling me going like what is it gonna take

(01:13:30):
to get this record from you? So I had like
a missile uh in my back pocket. That was, you know,
already like hey, you know I could do this. I could. Uh.
That's kind of what happened when I signed with Jody
was she came over and she thought she was gonna
sign like Kanye's keyboard player, and I played her try
something the Broken Heart and she was like, oh shit,

(01:13:52):
You're like you're like the total package, Like you have
a whole aesthetic, you can write the whole song. So
it was about kind of falling. It was kind of
like okay, like everything I had learned up to that point,
now let's go. Let's let's get in the game. And
where I kind of left off with the game track.
Why it didn't pop off, it was because I wasn't

(01:14:13):
really ready, you know. Now I was ready and try
to see the Broken Heart happened, the Beyonce cuts happened,
Then Nate Ruce came along, and then it went and
Bruno and Mark ronson and then it was just this
stream of like got to work at Taylor Swift called
I got to work with the Rolling Stones, which was

(01:14:34):
an amazing experience that Jimmy Iveen put together. That was
all from some nights that was all like mix and
here and we are young and be like, why can't
we do a song like that? And Jimmy saying, I
know the guy, you know, because that was when Neil
was That was when Neil was like his protege and
was like, um so just you know, just so many

(01:14:54):
a little bit slower. So you have this song, you
start to have this success us what happens next? Do
you hunker down in a studio and start writing more
stuff or do you start working with people to build
from the ground up? You know, you get you have
that one amazing track, and how much of it is you?

(01:15:15):
And how much of it is Jody or the other
people who are you know, working for you mostly me,
right because it's just after the so I was talking
about like the Kanye stamp of approval, and then also
throw the try sleep in the Broken Heart on it,
which at the time was like a very influential record,
like it was her first number one UK record, and

(01:15:37):
even to this day people tell me like that's their
favorite song of mine, like that was a really special moment.
Kind of became my calling card. I think all producers
out there like and writers like that's what you should
be focusing on, Like you need to make your calling
card song, like the song that's going to define you.
So after that, it was kind of like I mean

(01:15:58):
not to oversimplifying it, but like the phone ringing off
the hook, you know, so I could kind of choose
my about and I did a lot of things that
we're also filling the space to like that that maybe
not weren't necessarily the biggest projects in the world, but
I think, you know, it varies from not always the same,
Like sometimes I'd write the whole song and I'd send

(01:16:20):
it out and people would want to cut it. And
sometimes I'd go in a room and we wouldn't have anything,
and we would write the song from scratch, or we
would get an idea and then we would bring another
writer in. So every every situation is different, right, Um,
But ultimately I think that was like one one of
a big lesson I learned from working with Kanye was

(01:16:43):
don't be afraid to like I'd always want to be overprepared.
I was. I had a lot of anxiety about going
in a room and not being able to like deliver,
you know, So I'd always I liked that having something
that was done and I could send it out. But
I'd also challenged myself to go in there and like
walk on that tight rope and and just say, hey,

(01:17:04):
we're here, we're in the room. Let's believe in ourselves
and like see what happens. And and also just like
let it flow. That's also kind of my jazz background,
you know, where like it's your turn to solo, just
jump off the cliff and see what happens, you know.
And UM, I think that really served me well too,

(01:17:25):
have that kind of spontaneous, improvisational uh skill, um to
just go into rooms and and make something happen or
you know, uh, and have the confidence to just try
things and and it's a really beautiful thing about like

(01:17:46):
you know, or it was hinting at before about collaboration,
you know, to like go and play something and think
like maybe I shouldn't is there's people gonna like this,
and to have someone like that's the ship man, like
that's the like you know, or you might get correct
gets too, but it's fifty fifty or you know, like
you so to answer your question, it was like all

(01:18:08):
of the above, you know, like every situation like kind
of trying to always push myself and and put myself
in a situation and just go for it, you know,
like try to succeed. Like a lot of times, what
would happen was I would have like one song that
maybe like an artist would like and they had cut that,

(01:18:28):
and then I'd come and work with them, and then
he got any more, so I would just go maybe
while I was waiting for them, I would make three
new ideas, you know, and maybe one of them they
be like, oh I really like that, and then we'd
work on it together. You know. So it's kind of
like a like a just I think just ultimately like
having a creative practice that like everywhere you go wherever

(01:18:51):
you are, what room you're in. If you're tired, if
you're hungry, if you're well arrested, if you're a little buzzed,
you go to work and you make the donuts. You know,
like you have a skill set, you have a craft,
and you have like confidence to like be willing to fail,
make a mistake, do something shitty, like you're definitely like, like,

(01:19:13):
how many songs do you think of? Princes? Like he
wrote some of them are stinkers, you know, like we
all here, you're only gonna hear. This is kind of
a Virgil Ablow thing to like talking about in him
and Virgil and Kanye is like practice, like so amazing.
How like that they viewed creativity. Just try everything. The

(01:19:34):
things that suck, no one's gonna remember. You get the
great things. People remember it, so they think that, oh
this person just everything they do is great. It's not true.
They just working like you know, so that was kind
of my life, you know, up to now, or at
least before COVID, you know, just just just working. Okay,
How do you see from being a songwriter in your

(01:19:58):
own studio to alter really being a producer, which was
one of your earliest desires you're moving to New York for. Yeah,
I mean I think it was a lot to do
with my the nature of like how I do music
kind of by ear, and recording just became the perfect
outlet for that because I wasn't great at reading music.

(01:20:19):
I wasn't great, I wasn't the best technical piano player.
I wasn't like the best technical singer. But I could
have a vision and I could bring it to life,
you know. And I think my producing and record and
also I think that helped me like developing. And I'm
kind of a bit of a late bloomer, you know.

(01:20:41):
Even as a kid, I was like really short, and
I was about like five ft two till I was
like sixteen years old, and then I grew like a
you know, ten inches in Germany, and you know, I
moved to l A when I was like thirty, little
kind of late in the game in a way, you know,
like I'm matured very gradually, but in a very steady way.

(01:21:04):
So I think that also helped me relate to trying
to pick out, like for an artist that I'm producing,
try to help them find what their vision is or
at least push them towards articulating that and then saying,
let's go after that. Like let's also like figuring out

(01:21:26):
how to get that out and develop that because I
had to learn how to develop myself, you know. So
I think that's one of my strengths for sure as
a producer, is is identifying the vision that they have
and helping them realize that, you know, and maybe throwing
in my two cents along the way or you know,

(01:21:46):
or maybe a dollar or two, but um ultimately helping
them fulfill what's true to their heart and like the
most vulnerable place that they can find expo using that
and and bringing that into the light. You talked about inspiration,

(01:22:11):
you know, it's from amateurs. So when you're writing songs
by yourself, are you saying, Okay, I started ten am
and I gotta finish the song, or do you say
I get a certain inspiration I figured, you know everything
that I understand. Working in the studio is different. But
when you're working alone, what's your process? How do you

(01:22:32):
get the song done? And how do you finish it?
You know? I mean, I mean one version of it
is like just sitting at the piano and and getting inspired.
That kind of comes back to my jazz practice and
even just how I've been doing music my whole life
since I was like five years old, just sitting down
at the piano and just making a sound and then

(01:22:56):
then letting the craft take over, you know, find finding
one kernel of thing that's great. Like even also could
be like a melody or a phrase, you know, like
marrying a phrase with a melody and saying, oh, there's
something good about that, and and uh, you know, I
think the hardest part is just maybe as a writer
you can resonate like this resonates with you is like

(01:23:18):
just getting something down on the page, right, You just
gotta start writing, and then you go back and you
work on it. You say, let me take this out,
let me let me rearrange this thought. Oh you know
what this this could be more clear. But it always
starts with with an idea, you know, like in your letters,
you're you kind of have a theme. Sometimes. I love
when you write about like your personal experiences, Like you

(01:23:41):
have all these different modes you go into, like you're
kind of like decoding the bigger picture of tech and
the the it's all about society, and then then you'll
go into this really personal thing you're talking about your health,
you're talking about your family, you talk about skiing, you
talk about your passions. But I imagine it's a similar
thing for you, like how to decide what you want

(01:24:02):
to write about? You just have a thought and you
just start writing about it. Or how is it for you? Yeah? Absolutely,
Although the best stuff is when you're in a mood
and there's inspiration of the inspiration always comes when you're
doing something else, you're standing in the shower or you're
reading whatever. But I find the opposite then most no

(01:24:25):
one does it my way. I throw it all down
and I find if I edited, I funk it up.
I've been doing it for a long time. That's interesting.
You know, we could go down the path of me
but staying with you here, you know, the game has
changed certainly from the pre Internet era. In the CD era,
they would cut out the single if the single was successful,

(01:24:48):
you had to buy the album to get the single.
Let's just say twelve tracks on an album. A lot
of songwriters made a lot of money by having not
hit songs on those albums. That generally speaking, that is
not true. So as a songwriter, I know certain songwriters
I've spoken with, household name songwriters. They'll say, you know, yeah,

(01:25:11):
if someone do, if they get inspired, it's a friend.
But otherwise they evaluate, they say, you know, I'm not
gonna put this much effort into something that's going to
go nowhere. In addition, there's only twenty four hours in
a day. You also have to sleep, So how do
you deal with that opportunity cost? I'm sure you have
more people looking for you than you can actually work.

(01:25:31):
And you say, well, you know there's some economic element,
just creative elements, how do you pick and choose? I mean,
that's an interesting that's an interesting point. And I'll have
to say, I think you just kind of following your
analysis of the music industry help kind of like inform
a kind of a different side of like, um, I

(01:25:53):
may be wrong, and I think there's so many nuanced
parts of it, but yeah, the value of publishing seems
to have on down. And you talk write a lot
about like catalog sales and everything and how you and
I feel like sometimes like I feel like most of
the time i'm reading about it, you're you're kind of saying, oh,
don't sell your catalog. That is your that's your baby,

(01:26:13):
that's your nest egg. Don't give that up. Maybe that's
true if you're if you are uh Bob Dylan, or
you are um who we talk about in the news
right now, hard of Gold Neil Young, Right, But you know,
a lot a lot of my stuff. It's like I

(01:26:35):
got a five here, I got a ten there, I
got aft there, I gotta and I already gave up
these songs. I'm not even singing on them. So like
a lot of it is kind of like, man, the
valuations of all these catalogs, not to mention the tax benefits,
and like, you know what happens if you die and
your heirrors inherit your catalog, I RS comes to take
that tax bill. Guess what, Now you're selling under duress.

(01:26:57):
You gotta sell that catalog fast to pay the taxes.
So there are all kinds of arguments for selling the catalog.
And now personally, I'm moving into I want to own
my master I want to be the artist. Now I
get an artist royalty from Spotify. So talk about like
the game changing, And I think that's that's really interesting.

(01:27:17):
Following your your assessment of the history of the music industry,
we are in a much different place now and the
opportunity to own your own master published shit. I at
least I think it's smart to like start exploring those areas.
And yeah, the game has changed, at the same time

(01:27:40):
the game hasn't changed. And you write about this too.
Just do something fucking great. If you do something amazing,
good things are gonna happen and things are gonna start
flowing your way. You need the flow to start going
your way, and you can't bitch and wind your way there.
You can't complain about Spotify, as you point out about
doing that, Like, just be great, worry about being great first.

(01:28:03):
Then we'll talk about all the other stuff. But you're
not gonna like, yeah, I guess all these guys. That's
interesting point you make about like how you could have
these album cuts even that, like you're gonna be the
album cut guy your whole life. Like maybe you make
maybe you maybe you do. But like I think, at
the end of the day, you gotta strive to be

(01:28:24):
great and do your best. That doesn't mean compete with
someone else. Maybe you look at someone else as inspiration
to get up for it, but at the end of
the day, you gotta do your best. You gotta do
your best and in a way that's its own reward, right, Okay,
let's go into some of the specifics here. Uh so

(01:28:47):
you get hooked up with the Rolling Stones, what was that? Like?
That was amazing. I get a voicemail on my phone
one day, says Hallo jf it's make calling call me back,
and I'm like, holy shit, I just got like a
a voicemail from Mick Jagger and just like the coolest, nonchalant,

(01:29:07):
still curious fun guys. And what's what's funny was at
the last minute, because they're gonna do the record in France.
The last minute, he said, you know, maybe we were talking.
He was sending me his demos, he was talking, we
were talking on the phone. That's like what the real
definition of cool is, right, These guys aren't trying to
impress anyone. They're not trying to like they'd just like

(01:29:30):
just super cool dudes. At the last minute he says,
you know, maybe maybe we should just send you stuff
back ah from France and you can like mess with it.
And something in me was like I was like, now

(01:29:51):
ain't gonna work like that. You gotta you gotta fly
me out there. I gotta be in the room with you. Like,
you know, okay, okay, okay. Then I got there and
it soon became obvious that he had not told the
other members of the band that I was gonna be there.
And there, you know, Keith Pitchers is looking at me
like who's this guy? Uh, and they kind of put

(01:30:13):
me in this other room and waiting for them to say,
I brought my good friend Emil Haney with me, so
i'd kind of have like a wingman to too, we're
gonna me. I don't know if you're familar with Emil
Haney produced Lana del Rey's album and he's just like
an amazing producer and artist in his own right. Um.
Finally he's like, what the funk are we doing here?

(01:30:35):
Let's just go down there and just bust in their room.
And he's like from New York, you know, he's like
he's not sucking around. So we go down there. Were
just like walking the room, you know, um and uh,
and they're kind of like, oh, like okay, you just
kind of walked in and very quickly like they're just
cool dudes, you know. Like I had this bottle of

(01:30:58):
beer in my hand and I'm looking around for a
bottle opener and Keith kind of comes over and hands
me a bottle opener and we're having a beer. Also
part of the story is like his his guitar tech
who I forget his names, amazing guy. Um. He was
kind of behind the scenes saying no, he's gonna love you.

(01:31:18):
He's he's cool man like he's gonna you know. It's
like because he could see what was going on, there's
a lot of kind of internal politics. And then and
the end we we um. They cut the song with
um Um, who's their long time producer, had a blue
note and how Don was um you know, Don was
was there kind of like overseeing the whole thing, and

(01:31:39):
and we kind of took the tracks that they tracked
and instead of like you know, I think in the
old days, like all the Rolling Stones records that we
you know, not the steel Wheels kinda era, but like
the old Stone stuff, they sit there and do just
like seven D takes until they got like the right
one right. Well, So this was for their fiftieth anniversary

(01:32:00):
ger thing, and they were gonna Keith was gonna have
a song and Mick was gonna have a song. My
master plan was I wanted to get them back together
and do a song together. And I had this idea
I was gonna have Keith playing piano and Mick was
gonna sing, and they were gonna do the song together.
But there's because they were had a separate thing about
you know. To me, the magic is the glimmer twins,
you know, like you want Keith and Mick together doing it.

(01:32:24):
In the end, it was not to be, but we
took the tracks and then we kind of formatted it
and it's that song, um gloom and Doom and gloom.
It's a great record. Came out amazing, and even a
Meal like programmed this drumbeat like Charlie Watts sating there's something.
They're looking at him with his jaw open, like what
is he doing? And then we actually tempo mapped Charlie's

(01:32:46):
performance and then layered a Meals stuff underneath it. It
was a really cool process. And then even afterwards Keith
was like, hey, will you do my song too? You know,
so it was just too good to be true, you know,
just such an awesome experience, and even like you know,
and afterwards I could call them like can I come
to the show. They're always just so cool and just
such a such a role model for me to see

(01:33:08):
how curious they were. But see them gathering around the
mic doing the Morocca tracks and saying like what should
we have? Oh yeah, I like that, man. I like that.
Like they were still like eighteen years old, you know,
like making music, and that was really inspiring to see.
I guess how I want to be, like getting older
and older and still have that curiosity and excitement about

(01:33:29):
creating something. It was such an awesome experience. Okay, so
you're working with Bruno Mars. Was he even called Bruno
Mars at that point and tell us to the evolution
of bringing him to market and such success? Yeah, well
he was Bruno right, and he was his remember he
was an Elvis impersonator at the age of five, known

(01:33:50):
as Bruno Um. And then one day we started working
on songs. We're making these songs and Steve Lindsay's critiquing them.
We kind of learned that, like went through that process.
We're playing online poker, We're just like doing things. And
then after a while I was just like, God, this
guy is just such a he has so I'm kind
of starting to turn gray in the studio, you know,

(01:34:12):
And I was like, you know, we gotta get this
kid back on the stage because he is a performer.
He's just a god given, god gifted, uh performer. So
we made this little cover band with me and him
and his brother who was a police officer at the
time playing who still plays drums in his band um.
And we used to play cover gigs in the valley

(01:34:33):
that we just found a bar there's hire us and
we do these cover gigs. And you know, he got
signed to Motown, but they wanted him to be this
like urban like Omarion or Floyd or one of these
guys like and it was you know, he had this
other It was amazing. What was amazing about Bruno was strong.

(01:34:56):
Songwriting was not his talent when he him He's an
amazing just raw performer, right, and to see him become
this amazing songwriter is just one of the things that
makes him so dangerous because now he can create his

(01:35:18):
own music. And he kind of, you know, I think
he kind of retreated and I went and did my
Kanye thing and he was kind of like, dude, what
am I supposed to do? Say, well, just keep doing,
just keep doing your band, keep doing stuff, and then
he kind of retreated. A little bit into kind of
being a songwriter. And then I think, uh, you know,
he hooked up with this former manager was an n R.

(01:35:41):
Brandon Creed, and he started doing this more more BEATLESZ
pop three chord aesthetic rather than an R and B
kind of richer harmonic aesthetic. But I Want to be
a billion is so freaking bad. I mean, how are
you gonna how are you gonna beat that? Like he
just nailed the whole advertising level, like perfect songwriting combined

(01:36:09):
with his talent and his available his ability to kind
of form, do the videos, do the stage, show, create
his band, And if you've ever been to one of
his shows, it's like being in an earth Wind and
Fire concert. He's got this band, he's got horn players,
they're dancing on stage, there's young, old, black, white, brown, yellow,
purple people in the audience. It is just like a

(01:36:31):
total and just a joyous fast And you know, when
we did Uptown Funt, it made me realize, you know,
after kind of working with Kanye or having like I
did a project under this moniker Billy Craven that was
kind of a war protest. I remember you were writing that.
You write a lot about that where's the protest music
of our generation? And I did this project kind of
about the Iraq war um call born on the fourth

(01:36:54):
of July, and Uh, I had a strong sense of
I want music to have a strong message, to have
that ability to bring up difficult issues and discuss them.
And I realized when we did Uptown Funk, seeing it
bring all these different people together who can just from
all different walks of life enjoy one thing. That's also

(01:37:18):
a superpower of music doesn't have to be the most
deep and uh polarizing or or or political statement. It
can bring people together. It's an amazing art form pop music,
you know, to be able to do that, to unite people.
And stand next to someone who may have a completely

(01:37:40):
different viewpoint than you and you're dancing to the same song,
you find something in common that you are both human.
You both like this song, you both like dancing, you
both like having a good time, you know. Like so,
I think Bruno just embodies this like being able to
bring joy into people's lives. I think that's an incredible

(01:38:02):
service that artists like him provide to humanity. Um and
that's kind of been his journey. I was driving actually
when I was doing uh, driving to the studio when
I was working for Kanye, I think I was just
writing trying with a broken heart too. I was writing
the chorus to that just in in the car on
the way back. You know, I had done the verses

(01:38:23):
the day before. When I was driving to the studio
thinking about the chorus, I turned on the radio and
I heard that Bob song and Nothing on You and
I was like, oh, Ship, that's that's Bruno. I was
listening to song a little a little longer. Oh my god,
this is a hit song. Bruno is gonna be huge.
And that was that was it was. It was. I
don't know what happened to Bob, God bless him, but

(01:38:44):
like Bruno just took off. You remember that was Billionaire
and Nothing on You was featuring Bruno mars right. It
was at Travis what's his name McCoy, Traviy McCoy record
and a B O B record. But Bruno was the
star of those records, and people figure that out real fast,
you know. So just an amazing talent, amazing story, amazing

(01:39:06):
guy just came from nothing, you know, and worked his way. Uh,
just a raw talent and just just just made his
way to the top and is just always challenging himself,
playing the Purple Rain guitar solo at the Grammys. You know,
like there's just nothing this guy can't do. Okay, tell
us the story of working with Mark Ronson and ultimately

(01:39:26):
creating Uptown Funk. Yeah. Well, you know. The the little
known story about that is after after working on Bruno's
second album and Mark and I became good friends, he
asked he'd produce his album with him, and I was
just like, wow, okay, what a dream. And for some

(01:39:48):
reason I got this, you know, I get passionate about stuff,
Bob I started when I started dreaming, you know, and
like uh, I said, you know what we gotta do
is we gotta drive through the South. We're gonna drive.
There's a book called Mumbo Jumbo by an author named
Ishmael Reid that I had to read in college about

(01:40:08):
this dis mysterious disease that spreads up the Mississippi River
and people start having convulsions and dancing. Well, he was
talking about the spread of black music and rock and
roll and how it infected everyone and changed everything, made
people want to move their hips. So I got this

(01:40:30):
idea that we're gonna find the next Shaka Khan and
or you know amazing. We're at the Franklin and we're
gonna go to New Orleans and we're gonna drive up
the Mississippi River and stop in all these towns and
and uh hold auditions. And he looked at me like

(01:40:52):
I was crazy, but he said, okay, let's do it.
And we filmed it and we had this experience and
that's you know, not really so much came out of
that necessarily like that came into view. I mean, uptown
funt just overshadowed everything, right, But what did happen is
when we stopped in Memphis, we went to Sun Studios,
and we went to Royal Studios, and we ended up

(01:41:15):
coming back to Royal Studios and finishing the record. Um
and it put this maybe that did seep into the
uptown funk aesthetic or you know this this very like
hallowed ground of al green and black music and this

(01:41:39):
mecca of like kind of like the quintessential I shouldn't
say quintessential, but one of the very important uh tent
poles of American pop music. And we involved um this
author um uh oh ship. His name is Escaping me, right,

(01:42:03):
now um uh hold on, let me let me real quick.
You guys can edit this part together, so it sounds
like I have an actual good memory. Um. Michael Shabon
uh you know, got him involved to write these lyrics

(01:42:23):
and and then we would take the lyrics. That was
an interesting process you're asking me about, Like the process.
That was the first time I had like, okay, taking
someone's lyrics and then I write the melody of it.
And if you go back and listen to uh um,
I mean he wrote a lot of the lyrics of
that album and he kind of we've this narrative of
like kind of in the we kind of want to

(01:42:44):
do this kind of steely Dan aesthetic where it's like
these stories about these guys in the sixties and seventies
out there, like I'll learned to play the saxophone. Oh
I played just what I drink Scotch whiskey? Oh not
long then done behind the wheel. You know, it was like,

(01:43:08):
what the what what is this story? It's so like
interesting kind of dark, seedy lifestyle of these jazzy it's
kind of this extension of beat nick stuff with this sleeks,
sleeker kind of aesthetical like you know, like there's a
song Heavy and Rolling on Uptown Special that's like kind
of in that vein and Michael Shabon, We've this story
about these two guys who are kind of grifters and

(01:43:30):
they're gonna pull off this highest kind of like dirty
rotten scoundrels, and they meet this woman who gets involved,
and their plan is to kind of do it and
then leave her in the dust, but she they end
up both falling in love with her separately, and then
she ends up screwing both of them over. And the
whole albums was this whole narrative. In this whole album,
Stevie Wonder played the harmonica on this track and played

(01:43:51):
my melody and like there's all these like little gems
moments that as an album, it's just like amazing updown funk,
just like blew everything away, right, But that was just
an awesome experience to work with Mark and just see
what an expert producer he is and the tones he
would get, the way he would record drums, the way

(01:44:13):
he would introduce collaborators, kind of a different version of Kanye, right,
like bringing these collaborators in and ultimately having your own
vision but being able to involve others and use others.
So he's just one of my favorite people in the
whole world. And I got so much out of that experience.

(01:44:40):
And let's be very specific. Tell us how you created
the track up Tom Funk. Yeah, So that one was like, okay, well,
we gotta get Bruno on the record. So we went
over to his studio in Hollywood and we just started
jamming and Bruno's on the drums and marks like on
the guitar, and I'm on the keyboard and we just
started jamming and it had like the first verse like

(01:45:04):
that night we did that this ship that I school
Michelle five for that white gun boom boom, like this
funk jam and it was just this jammy thing. But
everyone knew this was like something special, like for some reason,
this was in it a super special thing that's like

(01:45:26):
so rough. And we'd even play like the rough thing
for like radio programmers and they just be like, oh
my god, this is gonna be a giant song, you
know and that. But the problem was we got to
the chorus and it was like this is the We
had the amazing first thirty seconds of this record. But
then it's like, Okay, how do we deliver on the

(01:45:48):
promise of how good this feels without it just going downhill.
You know, it needs to just get better and better.
That was a super challenge. So then we continue to
work on that song for like about a year, you know,
we need this, and then Bruno came up with the
dope nope, no, dope, dope, do it needs this? You know,
like kind of like a you know, all these little

(01:46:09):
details that were like, like we were talking about earlier,
just make this thing bulletproof, you know. Like so we
had the first thirty seconds, but then it took like
nine i think nine or ten months to really get
to the end, and then we had all these different
things and then then we just started over and said okay.
We got together in a room again in London in
Mark Studio and just played the song live and said, okay,

(01:46:29):
if we were gonna play this live, what would need
to happen? And then we kind of sorted at all
the details and then it came together and then dear Lord,
it was released and it was like the biggest song
of all time, and especially like uptown funk, like funk
was kind of a dirty word, like people like that
was not an uphealing thing. But just what a magical moment.

(01:46:53):
And I have like a background in funk music, and
and uh you know did all that and Wallis and
all the people I played with Lettuce. You know, it's
like just amazing how that came together and then how
it just like it just infected the world. And um,
I mean that's the story. It was like thirty seconds
of magic. Okay, but you knew you had something with

(01:47:15):
the thirty seconds when it was finished, did you know
this was going straight to the top? I did not,
I will be honest, and I did not think it
was gonna be I thought it had a chance to
be really successful because with like Bruno delivering that and
the records good, I thought it was good. But I
don't think anyone knew it was gonna be I mean,

(01:47:37):
it was like twelve weeks at number one or something.
It was like the longest running number one song at
the time in the ATS era or the two post
you know, twenty one century. So yeah, that was just insane.
What a what a special magical moment? Okay. Taylor Swift,
Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift story. I got a call Taylor
Swift was to work with you. Great came her with

(01:48:00):
her guitar to my little studio in Venice, played me
the song top to bottom. I said, okay, great, I
made a little beat on my MPC and some uh.
It was a song Holy Ground and Lucky Ones, two

(01:48:20):
beautiful songs. That Lucky One song is just so so gorgeous.
But such a pro just came in. I said, okay,
made my Beata said, now can you play the guitar separately? Yep,
did that? Okay, now cut the vocal boom boom, and
I kind of did my thing, and then um came
together incredibly incredibly fast, and yeah, what a what a

(01:48:44):
force of nature she is, right like, she's just like,
I mean, through all I know, you guys have your
history everyone, she's gone her ups and downs, especially in
my connection to Kanye and all that. But another person
who just decided to be great, stick to herself, not
take no for an answer. Not I mean her parents.

(01:49:06):
She may have come from this, like what are her
dad like an investment banker or something no one bought her.
There's plenty of people who are children of investment bankers.
They don't become Taylor Swift, you know. So I think
it's amazing, like what she's accomplished, and um, you gotta
give it up. Gotta give it up to her for
all her success and and and sticking to like being

(01:49:28):
a songwriter kind of in the old old style, right,
like having talking about her life and her experiences and
then and growing changing, going to max getting out of
country music, which is a fucking terrible place for a
female artist to be. I mean, uh, I always talking
about being good people and all this stuff, but they're

(01:49:50):
the worst snakes you'll ever find in the music business
up there in Nashville. Uh. I speak from experience too. Um.
I have an artist in country we Cam who we
had like a number one country song, this beautiful song,
Burning House. Got to work with Doug Morris on that song.
He signed her and I had the privilege of kind
of sitting in Doug's office in New York and just

(01:50:14):
talking about stuff, and he said, let me play this
song for you. Okay, alright, let's do it. What do
you think of that? I don't know, Doug, I don't know.
You know, if this song is really special? You know what?
You're right? When they had r C Records, I had
just had my first country artist signed with him. He said,
would you consider being the president of our CIA Records
Country because like I was like, oh my god, Like

(01:50:36):
this guy was just such a like a old school
and he worked that record, by the way, he did
research on it. He's the one that like broke burning House,
you know, and like that's another beautiful one. That's just
a special song. And always stuff I did throughout my
career is like that was the height of like E
D M bangers, right, and then we come in the
summertime with like a odd bar slow moody song number one,

(01:51:03):
you know. But um uh, just to just wrap up
how horrible country music is for women, it's just like, man, like, uh,
the world has just progressed so far from being trapped

(01:51:25):
in this country radio format. Maybe we literally had our
records sabotaged internally because over some stuff. But then they
keep coming around talking about oh, good people this, you're
good people. If you don't play along, like that's just
not the place for me. Man. I'm probably gonna make
some enemies up there in Nashville, but that's fine. I
don't have no reason to be there because and and

(01:51:45):
that's not against like all the people in Nashville, but
I think specifically for women and like their way behind
in like just like the ethos of like where the
world is at, Like hey, like I don't know, I

(01:52:06):
don't know where I'm going with this. I just had
a horrible experience. Okay, here he styles member of One Direction.
They're selling stadiums, go solo. How do you get the
gig and what's the experience like cutting an album with Harry? Yeah,
Harry reached out to me. I think it was probably
right after I won the Producer of the Year award,
and he's like the biggest artist in the world basically

(01:52:28):
and wants the best producer in the world, which, you
know whatever advertising that is when the Grammy for Perduser
of the Year. I guess that's a pretty good qualification.
So he reached out. And that's kind of at that
time period I mentioned earlier, when I was kind of
had my son. I wasn't really sure how active I
could be, you know, in like the first year or

(01:52:49):
two of my son's life. So I said to him,
I said, what do you want to do? And he said, well,
he played me some references and it was kind of
like he wants like a real rock band, you know.
So I I had signed a couple of producers at
the time, one of Taylor Tyler Johnson, who's like a
who did the Watermelon Sugar number one record with him
and he is like an amazing producer in his own right,

(01:53:11):
who also did the CAM project with me. Brought Cam
to me and um, I said, well, you know what,
I cannot just full disclosure, I'm not going to be
able to go in there and be like in the
trenches with you every day because I'm a new father
and I just can't be. I have a have to
set some boundaries for myself. But I have these guys.
I can get them to go in there and we'll

(01:53:31):
find some band surround you with them, and you know,
if that's cool with you, you can try it out
and see how it works. So he said, okay, cool.
He trusted me another just like you know, totally magnanimous,
like class act and just like spreads kind of just
the groovy vibes everywhere he goes. So I mean funny story.

(01:53:53):
His current musical director and guitarist who played drums and
guitar on the entire first album with my engineer's roommate
who have We tried a couple of guitars. I said,
we need to get you your Keith Richards. You know,
we're gonna find a guitar player. You want to make
like rock music and be like an indie band. Basically,
let's get that guy for you. Tried a couple of

(01:54:15):
people that didn't really work out, and then my engineer
Ryan nowsh She says, well, I could get Mitch over here,
but we'll have to see if he can get off work.
It's where he's a dishwasher and a pizza shop. So
he got off of work, came in, they fell in love,
he did the whole album, and he's on tour with
him now married the drummer and they have a kid

(01:54:35):
together on tour. So just another amazing story of like
just people making it in l A. You know, like
Mitch Rowland, you know, incredibly talented and just the sweetest
guy who came in there and just became Harry's like
right hand man, and it was super fun like making
that album with him. It was also like a period

(01:54:56):
for me where I shifted gears to like realizing I
don't have to do everything, you know, I can have
a team around me or bring people into the project
and I can guide it. I can give my tips,
my influence. They would go in and work in the studio.
I'd come in and say, Okay, this is good, take

(01:55:19):
this part out, move this over. Now, that's your core,
that's your verse. Now we need to make a better chorus.
I'm just kind of editorialize it and really produce it
right in the classic sense. Um. And that's how that
album came together. I'm so proud of that album. I
think it really set Harry on his path to being
a respected solo artist and separate him from the whole

(01:55:42):
uh one direction association affiliation, which is nothing wrong with that,
but he needed to become Harry Styles, you know. And
that's with the album's name, Harry Styles. I mean that
that record uh uh in the Hallway or something that
something something about the six the second record in the Hallway. UM.

(01:56:03):
Just beautiful how that came together. Um, And so happy
for him and seeing like the show and another guy
who just brings that, you know, good vibe and good
energy when he does his shows. Um. But it was
a cool experience for me to see like, Okay, I
can do a project kind of from afar and budget

(01:56:23):
my time and have boundaries, and that was kind of
the beginning of like to kind of bring it full
circle to like you're saying, what's up with Big Sir,
kind of a time of saying, like setting new boundaries
for myself to focus more on my own projects. Two
raise the bar as far as how far we can

(01:56:44):
push stuff musically and provide a place for artists to
kind of go and get away from Elie. I'm just
wrapping up this Portugal demand album that I've been producing
for the last two years and through the Pandemic. They're
an amazing band. We have an amazing album that's about
to um drop. The first single is gonna drop in February,
I think February or um maybe that's not as many things,

(01:57:07):
but um well did did the single with Ryan tetter
Um and it's a bomb. I'm not a bomb, it's
a missile. Uh. But like we did a little we
kind of wrapped up that record of this place Sonic
Ranch outside of El Paso. I don't know if you've
ever heard of the studio, and it was you know,

(01:57:29):
John Gourley, the singer and leader of the band. We
did a little bit of in New York and he
was kind of talking they live in Portland. It's kind
of talking about like getting out of l A, you know.
And I noticed when you or outside of l A
kind of get that noise out of your head, all
the influence walking outside, even just feeling the the gravity

(01:57:52):
of the industry kind of pulling you towards trying to
do something that a n R will like or the
label will like. It's so special to get out of
that atmosphere and get back to yourself, get back to
what is inside you and bring that out. So that's

(01:58:15):
kind of the big sur thing, but kind of like
setting these boundaries between me and my mentor Kanye West,
me and the labels, me and like what I think
I'm supposed to be delivering to the label and creating
an atmosphere where we can make special music again. We
can make music that is from the heart, you know, authentic,

(01:58:39):
highest level, like free from any kind of commercial expectation. Um.
And we're about to do it. We're about to like
make the next wave of like you're going to see
like a wave of of super creative musical like jazzy.
All the kids are into jazz, and I started going
into the sessions now, like with like Travis Scott and

(01:59:01):
like guys like this, like oh god, I don't have
any beats. I'm gonna go in there. I'm gonna like
play something's gonna be like, oh man, this guy's washed up.
So I just said, well, I have all these like
voice notes of me playing piano ideas I kind of do.
You're asking me my process for sometimes I just play piano.
I'll just do a bunch of voice notes and then
I'll kind of work on that. Just playing that, I
feel like people in the eyes in the room, their

(01:59:21):
eyes light up, like just like the piano just plan ideas.
You know, we're getting back to this organic um musical,
stripped down intimate time of music. That's going to be
really exciting. Like Donda, right, I don't know how much
you've listened to Donda, but it's there. There's no drums,

(01:59:43):
it's just all this Like that's a very interesting phenomena, right,
Like post COVID, like no one could go to the club,
so no one needed to put drums on their music anymore.
You just want to listen to it in your house.
So that's like a really interesting shift that I'm really
excited about to just kind of get back to my
musical roots of jazz and aspire to the highest musical levels.

(02:00:09):
Because it's funny, like you listen to like a film soundtrack,
the music can be a film score. Rather, the music
can be so sophisticated in arcane and and dissonant, and
it works. People can process that. Yet in pop music
for good reason, it needs to be simpler. But it's
one thing I noticed when I was working with Kanye

(02:00:31):
versus like, you know, a lot of hip hop artists
i'd work with, I'd have to really dumb it down.
I'd have to really particularly purposefully only play about like
five or ten percent of what I was capable of. Kanye,
it was like, bring it on, Like, let's go Michael
Jackson on this, Quincy Jones, you know, like wants to
hear all that music and Earth Winn and Fire, you know,

(02:00:52):
David Foster like this this high musical level. I'm really
excited to bring that back into the fold, you know,
and and the word front. You stated earlier that you
want to own your own masters. You want to certainly
own your own publishing. Do you see yourself being the
act in the future, And also you've achieved so much

(02:01:14):
in any specific goals, dreams still in the future, I
mean definitely being the act is the next goal, you know,
and not for any um like egotistical reasons necessarily, but
maybe egotistical in the right sense of like so nice
to have your own project and create and own it

(02:01:35):
and own it just from an artistic standpoint, you know,
and control and everything I've learned and being around and
being able to work with all these amazing artists, seeing
the process from beginning to end, make the video, design,
the cover, it really be your expression because that's what
music was for me from the beginning, right. It's my

(02:01:56):
way to process the world, process my emotions. So it's
kind of my gift to myself to like say, hey,
you know what, maybe do one for them, one for me,
or maybe just do all for me and be up there,
but collaborate on the same level where I have an
artistic uh ownership and license of it. Not to mention

(02:02:20):
the financial benefit of doing that right and building your
own future, um and being smart about that part of it.
With all these things that Kanye and Prince were fighting
for against, like the you know, signing shitty deals with labels,
that's like any other person in any other business would
look at those contracts and be like, what the funk
is this? You know, like tech people will be like,

(02:02:40):
I think you may have written about that once said
talking about at least it should be fifty fifty. I mean,
I'm making the entire product here, and not only that,
like just doing it in my studio, you know, but
uh well, not only should be fifty fifty, you should
own the copyright absolutely absolutely, you know, especially solve A
costs are paid for. Why did they get the only

(02:03:03):
album ad? Infinite? Absolutely, And you know a lot of
guys are making strides to that end, you know, like
Logic I think has an amazing deal with def Cham
And you know you got to take the initiative and
and put that intention into your practice. So definitely, Like,
especially after all the success after catalog sales and you

(02:03:25):
got this money in the bank, I think I would
be pretty dumb not to pursue that path. And not
only that, like it's going to be very artistically rewarding
to you know, drop my own music and make my
own videos and and then participate on a on a
little equal footing with like people like I think I'm
a little behind the curve to be honest, as far

(02:03:46):
as my peers like Mark Ronson, Calvin Harris, Benny Blanco, Diplo,
all these producers who shifted into being artists. And Benny
just said to me. I was asked him, like, how
do you do? He's well, I just do the same
thing I did, except now it says my name on
the record. I was like, you know, I come from
such an old school aesthetic where I'm like, I thought,
if I'm the artist, i gotta get up there and

(02:04:07):
like singing dance or something. It's like, no, It's like
it just says your name on the record. It's still
your record. I mean goes back to Georgio Moroder or
like all these guys. I think it's just a mentality
that also like kind of put myself behind the artist.
So it's definitely that's kind of my next challenge, and

(02:04:28):
I'm really excited about kind of, you know, take ownership
and have the confidence and the uh, you know, go
on the adventure of like putting you gotta be guess what,
it's not. It's not easy to be on the artist either.
It's nice to be able to sit in the studio
and make the record and get the royalty checks while
they go out on tour, do all the press, do
everything that be famous and all that ship. That's not

(02:04:49):
all it's cracked up to be. So, you know, with
a green of salt, but it's definitely on my agenda
to bring take back the ownership creatively and financially of
my work. Well, Jeff, this has been great. I mean
I could go on for a couple of hours. I'm

(02:05:10):
certainly more interested in digging down into the creative process
which we got into. But this is something that the
suits really don't understand. They want to control you, but
you know, you say, doing the preparation to be able
to then do something great. I don't want to go
off on a tangent myself, but I just want to
thank you for all the time you put in giving

(02:05:31):
my audience all this insight. Hey, Bob, thank you so much,
and thanks thanks for all you do too, you know,
writing about this stuff, and you're kind of the version
of that and yourself, you're not beholden to editors and
and you really tell it like it is. So it's
been such a pleasure being on your program and uh
and connecting with you, thank you. Until next time. This

(02:05:52):
is Bob left sex

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Bob Lefsetz

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