Julian Lage/Don Was

30:08He's in that room. Okay. So my parents, I knock on the door and he says, oh, you're the kid I heard about. Come in. We sat and we played. And that night, that was the night where it was Jeff Beck and him were doing this tour. But check this out. The best part of that to me was he said, do you want to play tonight? And my parents and I just kind of intuitively looked at each other. No, I didn't come to play in front of 20 ,000 people. I came to meet the master. that that's that's the point yeah and he said well no worries we'll enjoy the show and if you're we come here every year um so when we come back you should just come again and bring your bring a guitar so great so with no communication a year later almost to the date we drove up got there too knocked on the door you know he said oh you paid you came do you have a guitar this time yeah okay and then that's the video you saw but so there and it was surreal but also i i don't think i was in an environment that hyped anything up.

31:04It also didn't push me down. And I've known people who have that figure in their life who says, you know, don't get too comfortable, kid. This is gonna, you still gotta, there was none of that good cop, bad cop, macho stuff. It was real just. It's just like, I don't know, just respond, be present. And music, at the end of the day, as we all know, is a healing force of the universe. It's the sub, what we're talking about is very generous. It's very loving, it's very supportive, and it protects us. I believe that to my core. You sound like Carlos Santana right now. Yeah, right? Well, but that's who I look to.

31:36I mean, these cats, and as a young person, I was around people who were talking about what was behind the door, you know? Being around Higgins, being around Billy Hart, being around Charles Lloyd. Unbelievable. I mean, I knew that it wasn't just, it wasn't your hands moving. It's this other thing. And it's for all of us. It's not just for a few, you know? It's here to make us happy and healthier. So I would say that's a backdrop that probably informs all of this. So the Grammys, it was wonderful, it was fine, it got us here today. That's kind of all I can say. If you do all that when you're younger, does it make you a little more fearless as an adult?

32:17I think it can. I think there's two ways it can go. In my case, I think it let the air out of the tire in a good way. to say, you know, you can, there's varying degrees of success as you look at it. You see, you know, but at the end of the day, if you're in a room with people sharing in the same thing, you're all kind of equals in that moment. And I think it cut down a lot on a lot of the intimidation of, I can't do that or I can't play that venue. I shouldn't be on the stage because I have no experience. So I do think there's been, that's carried me through. So, you know, hey, we're all, we're all just, we're just all kind of circulating in the same world.

32:52now i i've seen it go the other way where when you're around at a young age you feel like if you do anything that's not the grammys that's not major if it doesn't garner a ton of attention then you failed um i don't part i don't believe that for myself but i i feel for those who do because that's you must feel like hey i i was playing for 20 000 people now i'm playing for 100 people trying to get my band off the ground and no one cares because they don't know they haven't heard it yet that's that's a that's unsettling yeah yeah but worth it you know another thing that strikes me is that guitar playing can be a really solitary pursuit sure very solitary to the point where you know it can be you can not know how to play with other people yeah as well yes did were you playing with other people because i mean you that's something you do also very well it's where you was it was it a thing of like keeping it to yourself and in your play with everybody yeah play with i would look for every drummer in my community who i knew was into jazz and play duets with them okay then all the bass players i'll play duets with them every gig i could get playing restaurant gigs play with my teacher my teacher randy vincent was hugely influential in my playing and randy and i i studied with him from when i was about eight years old till i was about 12 so five years and i had two three-hour lessons a week for five years And so, right, that was just like sit down.

34:14And a lot of that was just playing duets. And as we know, playing duets, it's the best training because it really is a conversation. And it's about supporting the other person. And, you know, can I be there for this person who I revere and respect? It's kind of terrifying, but wonderful. So I do come from a tradition of learning, which is very experiential. You play with people. You find out what didn't work. You go home. you take your vitamins and you come back you know that's kind of the deal but I played so much with drummer I was always looking for that I understood that I wanted to be a guitar player that was empathetic to other instruments because just because I can do it doesn't mean it's in the best interest of the band and everybody else has to deal with the same thing too but somehow guitar education you have to kind of be reminded extra because the culture around it There's a culture around it that is a little bit of this top dog.

35:10Everyone caters to that. And we all know that's not really the case. And the best players do it all. We were talking about Keith Richards earlier. And it's like Keith has that thing where there's nothing more compelling than watching him and hearing him play. And when you hear him play, everyone else sounds better while he's playing. And that's the magic trick that I'm obsessed with. How do you lift the band? That's what Duke Ellington was doing. That's what Count Basie, that's what everyone's really doing to me. Well, and I feel like, so on your new record, Speak to Me, that I alluded to earlier, how great it was, there's songs on there like Omission, which kind of omit much of a song.

35:48It feels like just pure groove. Yeah, it is. It almost keeps Richard's style in a sense. Yeah, I'm the rhythm guitar player for that track. And there's a melody embedded, but it's subliminal. It's totally baked into the center. Yeah, that's a cool example of that. How does that go? Well, let me see if I have a plate of it. If you have. So.

36:39that's the that's the sentiment that's the whole tune you know uh it's cool isn't it's really cool it's really so it feels really good it feels really good i so i haven't you know that that i i i humble pie on that one i i that was the a section of a longer song and i'd written it in kind of a writing sprint. I was writing all these tunes and lots, dozens and dozens, pencil and paper kind of stuff. Just write one, throw it. And then I threw it out because it wasn't done. And then Joe Henry, who produced the record, this was on the last day of the recording. I was driving into the session with Margaret and I was like, you know, there was that song that's not finished.

37:23And it's probably a bad idea for me to try to finish the song right now, isn't it? And she was like, well, no, it just, you kind of have, you have other things on your plate. you have to finish the record i don't think you need more but and so i showed joe when we got there and i said well here's the first part and it needs the next part and as you know from a place of such clarity um and experience joe said how about you don't finish it and you just loop that and i said sure you know and uh and it was it was beautiful because i i realized that But yeah, I think at least to me, what I get excited about with that song is the real drama reveals itself once you've gotten to this kind of tantric thing.

38:06It needs time to get you kind of worked up. And had I committed to my stipulation that no, I insist there's more to be written, it just would have been a different drama. And I'm so glad it wasn't that. there's also something very kinesthetically physically pleasing about playing a song where you know i'm not trying to play just a single note i can kind of throw my way into the rhythm yeah and the strumming and the richie havens ode that all all things are and um so yeah that but that's that's a bit of richie to that song oh you say that yeah jim hall used to love richie he would talk about him a lot you know oh yeah because jim oh i can't do it i mean you know jim had the yeah this guy i wish i could do it like him and he'd do with a lighter pick and he would but i would ask him about he's oh richie havens it's all it's all richie you know like of course what was richie havens was it like an open e-tune i think so it was some sort of open tuning that he could you know then access with his thumb right yeah yeah and and like and i i I don't know if I got the sense he used, well, I shouldn't speculate.

39:14That's not my area, but I'm not sure how he held a pick, but it was lighter than this one is my guess. But yeah, so that's part of the joy of it, I guess. Did you have a second section in mind for that song? I did. I don't remember it now. Probably because it wasn't terribly compelling. It wasn't worth remembering. I remember talking to John Zorn about that. I was working on something just like that. I said, well, he just, I just can't seem to recall it because it's not coming together. And he was the one who gave me permission. He said, you can say it's not good and just drop it. You don't have to be a hero and like make it work.

39:47Save it, yeah. And he said in a way that was so sweet. It wasn't, you just kind of don't make it about you not being good. He's just like, it's just not killing. Go do something killing. And then, okay, you know, fine. Yes, sir. So yeah, but that song came out well. And it was nice because it also parlayed into the band sounding great. Band sound, Jorge sounds incredible. Jorge sounds amazing. The bass player. Ooh, he sounds so good. And so anyway, that's what we're going for. How did you hook up with Jorge? That's a cool thing. You know, happenstance. But it's at this point, Jorge Roeder, who I just think is the greatest in the world.

40:24We've been playing together 16 years, pretty consistently. And we met at Stanford Jazz Workshop. And I was teaching. And he was visiting a friend. And we got put in a room, a coat closet, basically. because Peter Bernstein was there that day. We were all in awe of Peter, as I still am. And they said, get a rhythm, get everyone. We're going to play a session. And it was me and our friend Ben Roseth, Jorge, and Peter. And we just hit it off, played. It felt great. And so we would play duets. We started a band. Then Jorge joined Gary Burton's band. and then Jorge became part of my trio. He was always a part of it, but he became part of this new configuration.

41:11And then he became a part of Nels Klein's band that we did for Blue Note, that record. After we recorded with Scott, but then we went on tour. Nels band with you. Nels with me, yeah, no, I was with it. So it was Nels Klein 4. And then Jorge and I both kind of joined Zorn's world. And then we became a part of the new Masada Quartet. so and apart from us just being complete you know completely connected we've shared a lot of our musical development together there's no one else i've been through so many projects with by my side and uh it's it's pretty remarkable but but you knew from the beginning that i knew the time in the same place safe you know i think there's i think i think safety is a big thing where you feel like you can kind of go for something and know that someone's got your back but also I think another part of it with Jorge is that we touch the string differently but kind of similarly we obviously him with a double bass music guitar but there's a I do think we share a similar belief that we deal with obstacles kind of similarly it's there there's kind of a the only and I don't know I could be wrong but I I think we both see any kind of virtuosity as a means towards emotional expression.

42:26So it's like what I was saying about before, you develop these skills. Him on the base is unbelievably great. And yet you're never hit with anything other than the emotional impact first. And then as a dressing, you go, oh my God, and how did he do that? But I think just that shared kind of aesthetic has kind of carried, you know, you can be daring, you can be amazing, you can be virtuosos, you can be fast, you can be, you know, you can be evil, can be evil. you can but you always go i think i love most about jorge is that he will he'll always go for the attempt and he lands it but he'll he that that exhilaration is so seductive and it just and i'm not saying on fast music it can be on a ballad but there's the sense that we're gonna we're gonna jump off the cliff i don't know if the parachute's gonna open um and so it's been nice to have that energy follow us through all these projects do you ever write with him with him not really it's kind of understood that that's not our our domain but but but i should say this i do write with him in the sense that i will write 30 songs 40 songs just bunch of stuff and then the first place i go is to his house and we play them all and we see how it hits us and he's he's a massive part of the music you hear because of that so he's a part of the editing he's part of the sequence of the records he's a part of everything jorge is integral and there There are things we have definitely co-written, but I think it's, I mean, all fairness, anything we've ever recorded together of mine is the, he deserves credit for it sounding the way it is on a compositional level.

44:00But it's usually not because we started it together. Well, one of the tunes on your new record that sounds like virtuosic, if that's a word, but again, kind of like Omissions has a great feel to it is Vanishing Points. Oh yeah, that's this one. I'll just play a little bit.

44:33And then the theme is.

44:48guitar solo

45:13Thank you.

46:01That's the architecture. After this last break, we'll have the rest of Don Was and me in conversation with Julian Lash. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at an Ooclas speed test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged.

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49:17That's O-D-O-O dot com Here's the rest of our conversation with Julian Lash How do you even write something like that, man? I don't even I don't know, I'm trying to remember that one To me that's such an ode to Carla Bley You know, it kind of feels like a liberation music orchestra song There's something blunt about this parallel movement It's almost, it's like, it's so, it's just, it's just so, I don't know what it is. Normal, in a way. It's not terribly clever. It's just, this sounds cool. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And there's something about it where I think it's juxtaposed with this very elegant, almost kind of folkloric sounding melody.

50:10And I think when I say folklore, I think of it even as, it reminds me of certain Italian music, certain Jewish music, certain, there's just, that's whatever, that's my projection. And a tune like that, it's very hard to stop writing, you know, because for me, it's like, well, it's not in time. There's not really a progression that we blow over. And so that's a tune that, you know, I kept putting at the bottom of the pile. I wouldn't really show it to anyone. Because what do you tell anyone to do on that? I seem to have it covered and it does this thing emotionally and I don't really have any more directives.

50:49But as I showed it to Dave King and Jorge Roder, my trio, they pointed out what I think is obvious. Of course there's something to do. I'm just not dictating their part. It's a very inviting tune. But that parallel motion, that's all that. I just keep coming back to Stravinsky and all these things and Bartok. There's these movements and how you use it is everything. Did that just burst out of you in one sitting or did you go a section at a time? I want to say that it was kind of a combination of both. It was an improvisation probably.

51:30I'm pretty fastidious about writing things on a big piece of manuscript paper. and when doing that you see these kind of the sections are just laid out like a storyboard and so I remember with that one kind of moving them around a lot you know is this the beginning or do we save that is this the first thing that happens is this the first thing so I just remember kind of putting them in different orders until it got a trajectory but I improvise a lot and record and then transcribe it that's a big thing you know I will and with this record I was I was really on a side Twombly kick I was looking at a lot of side Twombly art and it was one of my father's favorite artists and I had this book of my father's I was looking at it and so I would spend a lot of time looking at an image improvising recording it and then going back and kind of seeing if anything emerged there was a tune on the record called Two and One so yeah

52:54that's that's that's just that's an improvisation that I okay I write it down and and it's what's interesting to me is that i don't think writing down makes it more significant you know you can write down a piece of garbage you know too and you just go oh that was a lot of work for nothing but but there is something noticeable in that tune and listening back where i thought i that wouldn't have occurred to me to paste something that way if i was looking at a piece of paper you know and then you write it down and it looked to me i i looked at the chart the other day and it still looks like something i never would have written and that's so cool you know but it takes time to say no i'm gonna write everything and kind of how long are you improvising before something like that comes out well i suppose it depends that wasn't terribly long um uh you know not long probably as long as it took to just play and then stop so a minute you know but i i improvise in those chunks a lot for that reason i i believe that, you know, one of the great lessons I learned was from a lauding Matthew, W.A.

53:57Matthew, a wonderful composer who I studied with only once as a kid. And he wrote a bunch of very important books. The short version of the story is that at an early age when I studied with him, he encouraged me to improvise one minute compositions a lot. And here's the quick version of it because it's quite expansive. But he would, I came to him and I said, I'm trying to develop my voice and understand how to be a composer. And he said, well, here's what you do is you improvise a song. So we're not just saying, you're not just playing or you're trying to, okay, at 30 seconds, you're at the middle, at 45 seconds, you're near the end.

54:33He said, I want you to do this with a timer and a recorder. That was before iPhone. So I did. He said, I want you to do 10 of these a day for a week and don't listen to them until the week is up and i saw anything else he said no just try to create a narrative create a narrative and do not listen to them at the end of the week you have 70 minutes it's like a stop you know it's like stop animation or something 70 minutes of you improvising compositionally and he said i want you to listen to that and basically make two lists on one list write down everything you notice about it and on the other side of the list everything you'd like to develop or further and man the first time I did this, I think I saved up 12 days worth or 14 days.

55:17I had 140 minutes of me playing solo guitar, which was, I never would have done at that time if I hadn't done it one minute at a time. What I thought was cool about it was I heard trends. You hear trends in your music. I was playing all these D major chords and I was playing all this country music. I thought I was a bebopper, man. I didn't know what was going on. I was playing all these like languid melody. I mean, Stuff that I didn't relate to, but it didn't lie. I had, you know, here I was. And that got me thinking that every time you improvise, you are kind of stating your language. It's not like I'm gonna wiggle around until something happens.

55:53You are you. So just kind of start, and I think that makes it so it's less of a, yeah, you just be yourself on record. How did you respond to that information? Was it lean into the DMAs in the country? Well, that started all my, that kind of pushed me into all the stuff I was doing with, in my own music, that was probably more Americana leaning. I didn't feel as bad about using open strings. I didn't feel all those tropes. I was just like, holy cow, I'm this kid from California who grew up around this music. Of course, that's what comes out. I just was blind to it. So I endorsed it. I reinforced it.

56:28I wrote that way. And I started a band around it. This old quintet. I started playing with Chris Eldridge. I started playing with Chris Thiele. So it was good. uh isn't that interesting so anyways all to say when you're in front i think you i i you know i don't know i don't know it's probably did you have did you walk away with songs oh so many songs so many songs it's just a matter of kind of picking them out oh that's this thing or a lot of that and i did another big batch of that i did this for years you know five years of the straight um led to a solo record i made called uh world's fair and that was all improvisations basically that i just like took out and then put on wow put a do you still do it ever i do it a lot less less systematically yeah you know um i wasn't feeling well recently for a little while and then i i kind of got my strength back to play and all i do is i just sit in my room and i improvise these things i record them and i just it's great it's it's really healing to do it so i i and then i've in some songs are growing out of it already so it's kind of cool you know tell me one more time yeah okay 10 it's my favorite thing in the world you're gonna set a timer let's just say for ease we'll say voice memo you know app um you press start you begin playing and you begin playing as if it's a song that you know but you're just playing it now right it's kind of make believe you want to keep your eye on the clock because at about 30 seconds this is your this is your last exit you know before you're at so if you want anything to change you can do it there at about 45 50 seconds you want to be conscientiously trying to bring it in for landing you don't want the buzzer to go off and be startled um and you would do this uh 10 times a day but not one after another right so maybe you do it and you go do something come back do another do it you're you are actively trying to get a snapshot it's getting like your blood work done musically you're trying to get your labs done um and and you do but you just don't open it up till the end and when you listen to it you put it in itunes or something so you can listen to it uninterrupted yeah and so you forget where the minutes started where it ended and you do it on shuffle things like that isn't that cool that's pretty if you pick up a different guitar there's a whole other thing absolutely well it's funny you say that don't i feel like my brain is between the electric world and the acoustic world and within that there's varieties but the touch is it's different between the two instruments and i i i feel you know i'm in i i'm humbled that by the instrument i need to just play what the guitar sounds good doing um having said that i i tend to rotate only between a couple you know mostly guitars that are in tune so that at least i have a pitch you know uh i don't use I don't play much with effects or anything, but I know that's another world that would probably be quite stimulating if I just wanted to explore it.

59:22When you're at home and you pick up a guitar, do you just pick one up instinctually, whether it's acoustic or electric, or do you often purposefully pick? Whichever one I can reach from my chair. That's my instinct. This one was out, this acoustic that I'm holding was out, so I've been playing more, but there was about a month where I was too lazy to get my main Telecaster that I play all the time from the closet. And so I was playing this other one and it's set up very differently. And it was really inspiring to play that. You know, I really, really believe that so much education about playing comes from the instrument.

59:56Not to say, just for clarity's sake, that you need an expensive guitar to learn how to be a great player. But, you know, it's not about me bringing my skills to an instrument. It's really about modifying them so that the instrument resonates. I picked up a guitar last night. I never really play lately. It was too far away from my reach, as I said before. And Margaret was working in the kitchen there, and we were just thinking that was so lovely. And I'm like, okay, I got out this old tweed champ that I used to play religiously, and now it just sits next to the tree in the corner. And I said, I'm going to play, and I plugged it in, and I sounded bad on it.

1:00:32I just couldn't get a sound. Everything I played sounded like I had boxing gloves on. But over the course of about 30 minutes, it got better. And by the end, I was playing it with such, it sounded so good, I'm telling you, because I just chilled out. I touched it the way the guitar wanted to be played and not the way I wanted to play it. And I just said, like, thank you. That was what a lesson. I put it down. It's so interesting. That's the opposite sometimes. I mean, I guess going back to sort of the lineage you get into when you pick up a guitar and there's these icons. I mean, the stories you hear is like Hendrix beating the guitar and it's a submission, you know, like a guitar you'd never use and it's right-handed, but he's left-handed and he's just going to make it work, you know, But this is not wrong.

1:01:17It's just different. It's just different. The submission, I'm going to meet it where it's at, that guitar. Well, that just happens to be my interest. I don't think it's right for, obviously not for everybody. But there's, I think also just a point of clarity too, because you make a great point. It's not to take myself out of the equation and say, I'm just trying to make the guitar sound great. I'm a big part of it. but as far as the marriage of the two. So you're not doing it from a place of I'm no good. And as long as the guitar sounds good, it's going to be good. I understand that it's just a dialogue between the forces.

1:01:56That's all. And I need to be present for what's coming back. And it's funny because we're talking about drummers, bass players, piano players. All these are instrumentalists who play instruments that aren't their own a lot. This is not a novel concept. You know, that you, that it's not the, I remember I was starting to do this on some of these shows with Zorn where we fly into someplace for a day and then fly home and can't bring all the equipment. So I just use backline guitars, acoustic, electric. It doesn't really matter. And I remember doing it and it was so liberating because I started to notice that you don't need, you don't need a great instrument to leave space.

1:02:37You don't, you know? And if my main contribution in these bands is what I don't play, then it doesn't have to be my guitar. So all of these things are, I just want to keep coming back to that just for myself, is it's always in service of what the musical act is. And it's really, it doesn't, none of it really matters. You just want to be present. But from a guitar playing point of view, from just being, getting better at it, I like rotating just so I don't get too comfortable. If I feel really good on one, I will pick up another to see if my skills translate, you know or if it was just because of that one that the strings are just perfectly dead and that's why it sounds good you know will you switch positions from night to night yes on the same song oh completely i'm kind of into like any melody uh i don't know how to exemplify but i'm a believer of if i've seen my left hand down here a lot on this song one night the next night i want to see it up here more and then i want to see it in the middle and just because it'll get me into more problems and then I can get out of them.

1:03:34And there's a little bit of a masochistic element. Don't be too comfortable. When you were showing us all the different Cs before. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So on my bass anyway, they all have different personalities. A thousand percent. They are. They are. They're there. And then within that you have where on the string, at least in my case, on the right hand, I play it. I notice a difference between. And then if I move my hand towards the fretboard, and then as volume goes down, that's my favorite is what happens when you get quiet enough is.

1:04:14So in some way it got louder because we all listened, you know, but I played quieter and to play quieter, the big, a big thing for me with shifting of timbre is it has a lot to do with velocity. You know, if you want something louder, you play, you, you move through the string faster. If you want to play it quieter, you move through slower. We're talking incrementally. But that modulation of playing a fast line, but moving through the strings slowly, that's when you get these kinds of things that are kind of ephemeral and they just, that's very different than. I'm actually moving quite, the tempo of the line's the same, but I'm moving way faster through it.

1:04:55And so those interplays I'm obsessed with, with string instruments. and the fact that, oh, this allows me to say my biggest pet peeve, which is that I feel like there's sometimes a belief, especially in guitar pedagogy, that the strings should sound the same. They should. You should have evenness. There was a time in my life where I hunted it down. I want everything to be even so you don't. And increasingly, I just love that they are not the same. No two notes are the same. we were playing in um well lubliana in europe with john's orange band this is like a month ago and like okay we have an hour and 75 minute set first song my high e string just pops off it's like okay great and i'm sitting there and i know no one else noticed it and i know no one else really cares too uh and it was so i'm gonna play a five string set this is great i've always wanted to, you know?

1:05:50And it was so slamming because without the E, the duplicate, and they're hardly duplicates since they're two octaves apart, but I just loved it. And it forced me in all these other areas. And Tamborley, I didn't have access to that thing, that kind of crisp thing. So you're, you know, and I just, I don't know. So I - Did it get you in trouble at any point through the night or no? Nope. I was fine. I got out fine. If you asked me to do it again, I would be screwed because I kind of figured out some ways and then I just, that was it. But yeah, timbre on an instrument is beautiful and on the guitar especially.

1:06:28And I think the bass too, that's something Jorge is very cognizant of. He can deal with, especially with walking lines and different registers. And when the song needs it, he'll go, you know, things will get intense and he'll move higher, but on the low strings so that there's room for me to kind of thunder around in the basement so to speak you know and then we'll switch places but um how you where what strings you play things on that's everything on the guitar for me yeah we were talking before we started this and then i cut it off because i wanted to talk about it and it kind of ties in the same thing we're talking about the abandonment of uh setless yes let's talk about the gig you did with joey you dig this we were on this was not terribly long ago three months ago four months ago the band was myself and jorge roeder and joey baron the greatest you know drummer we just i have such love and respect for joey and i always have and so to play together is a real dream you know and so jorge and i know our whole repertoire we know all the songs and we're cognizant that to bring joey into the fold we're not going to send him a okay here's a binder learn all this stuff and do what?

1:07:38No, no, no. We're coming to you. We'll meet in the middle. And so my first thought was, okay, we'll play standards. We'll play blue. Well, things that he knows. But as we got to the sound check part of the day and we're playing, I'm realizing that Joey is so present and everything Horry and I start to play. I'm like, well, maybe we could show him this. Within 10 seconds, he's playing what is, I would consider the perfect part to it. And he said, Joey, how'd you know to do it? He said, I don't. I'm just listening. I'm just listening to you. I thought, okay, we're in the deep end. We got to really savor this.

1:08:09So I said, well, okay, I'll write up a set list. And this is the only time the whole day, Joey says, well, can I just say something? You know, of course, Joey, what do you? He says, would you be averse to no set list? And I said, well, it's no, it would, no, I've always kind of wanted that to do that, but I'm afraid. And he said, well, just, let's just see what happens, right? so we go out on stage and i'm for the only time and reason i remember shake being shaky you know i was like a packed room in portland oregon and i was just like oh no and okay i said i would do it i'm gonna do it and so we go out and i i just really listened to the room okay where are we and it kind of went against everything that i would typically do but i said we're gonna play you in the night in the music kind of fast which i would never go to that okay we said joey i mean Okay, killer.

1:09:01Next song, I'm going to start this old one I haven't played in 15 years, but I know Jorge knows it. Bam, cool. And though I was still scared the whole time when it was all over, I felt this relief of, I think that was one of the most honest things I could have offered and that we could have offered. And it also leveled the playing field in a way where it wasn't like, we know my tunes, you're sitting. It was, we have a life of music. We can respond. It's going to be cool. And I haven't looked back since. every show we do we just did a whole tour whole european tour and a different set every night every and with with now with dave and hori don i love it i love it you just start playing you just start playing it also i think it also um invites a real consideration of tempos not like i said i would play the song third so i'm going to play it but like where's the room at where's my energy at with this and i think that's a really important thing to consider because you have to occupy that space for the next 5, 10, 15, however long your song is.

1:10:01I felt so much happier every night. I felt so much more at ease, less strenuous. I wasn't trying to shove something into, you know. So anyway, it got me thinking differently, but I think it holds hands with the music I like to play to begin with. Do you start thinking about what the next song will be before you and the other one? You know, I think it does occur that, hey, this is, we're here and this something will pop into my mind but i i'm not i don't hold to it too tightly you know there was a couple times where yeah middle song oh i know exactly what's going to come next and then the song ends and you hear the applause and you look around you go i was wrong got it that's one of my favorite things about seeing uh neil young is same thing no set list and so it's always like what's the first song going to be and sometimes it's like a 20 minute version of like an inca and like half the audience disappears well that's where he's at you know it's awesome well there's where don i was speaking to that very point like i said i would imagine neil young is neil young you're going to get a hit of him on that day and that's the that's the gift that's a great gift um we were speaking earlier about this the time i've been playing with joe lavano recently and we were talking a lot about i guess you would call harm melodics is a way to say it from ornette's world or at coleman's world but here's the distillation is that at any given moment as players we have access to all tempos you can play faster you can play slower you have access to all keys depend no matter what the key of the song is yeah but there there are these matrices where you can i think all my favorite improvisers someone like paul blay can kind of slip between these dimensions you know keith can do that keith chair obviously ornette don cherry charlie can do that um and i I think I'm at a place in my own development where I'm just fascinated by what is actually the song.

1:11:50Okay, we're in the song, but within that, I have freedom. And I want to exhibit that, and I want to challenge it. And I learn a lot doing that. So you can kind of drop what you were saying before. We can drop the needle anywhere. But once you're in, you're in the good stuff. Don't worry. There's an offering at play. There's an offering at play, always. if you're open to it would you mind playing something i was thinking about this yeah i'll play uh i'll play you uh northern shuffle oh i was gonna ask oh yeah that's gonna ask okay i'll i can keep it short too i don't know how long okay here we go then

1:12:43Thank you.

1:13:19guitar solo

1:13:49guitar solo

1:14:22guitar solo

1:15:10guitar solo

1:15:21guitar solo

1:15:49guitar solo

1:16:15Thank you.

1:16:50guitar solo

1:17:14Thank you.

1:17:58Whoa.

1:18:02Thank you. That's a real different version of that. It's different. Well, it's amazing. That lick you do. like that's it like on the record it sounds almost like a like a mark bowlin t-rex yeah that's a choice like i don't know that anybody else but you would make but it sounds so amazing on it it's so it's you have such a distinctive character and personality it's on it's unmistakable man like you could hearing that is as good as like a dna test and that's that's the the highest praise I could offer somebody, man. Oh, thank you. It's unlike anybody else. I understand that you listen to stuff and understand the fundamentals of the instrument, but you take it someplace where no one else goes and it's just thrilling, man.

1:18:55It's beautiful. That means so much to me. Thank you. Thank you both. I was sort of laughing listening to that too because a couple of days before I came out here, I was listening to you play solo acoustic on something. and I usually play acoustic just in my office, just by myself. And it was all of a sudden my kids popped in. They're like, we thought you were, we thought you got really good on us. You're like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And they're like, oh, one day. That's so cute. That's the best. Thank you, Julian. Hey, thank you. Appreciate you, man. It's a pleasure to be here. Pleasure to be with all of you.

1:19:26Thank you. Thank you, BluNo. Thank you, BluNo. Label, the club. Yeah. Don. Yeah.

1:19:37Thanks to Julian Lodge for letting Don and I share the stage with him at the Blue Note in New York. And while we're at it, thanks so much to the Blue Note for having us. You can hear Julian's new album Speak to Me along with our other favorite songs from Julian on a playlist at brokenrecordpodcast.com or in this episode description. You can also watch the full video of this interview and other recent episodes at youtube.com slash brokenrecordpodcast. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at The Broken Record Pod. You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan.

1:20:15Our engineer is Ben Toleday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.

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