Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.

My guest today is John Batiste.

John, last night you played Redrocks.

Tell me about that.

Well, well, you know, riding along in my automobile, my baby besigned me after wheel Man.

I sunk so hard I lost my voice to people were stomp It was two hours and forty one minutes of a performance.

I don't even call it a performance.

It's a spiritual practice, celebration of life, love, joy music.

I mean we played.

So much that I lost track of even where I was and what was going on.

That it was a concert.

The band was on just the band was on eleven, and we had Steve Jordan, Pedrito Martinez and a few other special guests, Nick Waterhouse Andrew Day.

So it was it just felt like a true zenith moment.

And this is just the beginning of the tour.

So I'm very excited to continue.

You say two hours and forty one minutes, so you time.

It exactly, No, but someone on my team does.

And it came to me afterwards, and you know, this is after showing me photographs of the security at Red Rocks who were becoming one with the audience and showing me photos of the staff and videos of the staff.

Just celebrated and danced, and we jumped off the stage at one point, and we were in the audience for about thirty minutes playing.

And then after that, when I kind of came down, my key hour comes to me.

She says, do you know how long you played just now?

And I was like, well, it felt like the normal set length, but how long was it?

She said it was two hours and forty one minutes, and that's not counting the encore, so it just was.

I mean, those are the kind of things that happened.

You know, it's in the church.

They say, we got to tarry here for a while.

Had you played Red Rocks before?

No, that was my first time playing, first time planing, and I just I've heard so many great stories.

It's hard to describe what it's like on that stage until you're on the stage.

So now I have this first hand experience that it's just it's really a sacred zone for music making.

It's a cathedral and ancient cathedral of music, and you feel that sort of presence when you're there.

There were moments where I would just play in the context which you wouldn't recital, you know, just solo piano and I would be playing, and you could just hear the resonance of the space, and you could feel the way that it all just works in the divine alignment, and there's nothing that beats God's design.

There's just such a special resonance in the frequency.

You know how they say that the overtone series, the harmonic series.

If you listen to water, or if you listen to the lowest note on the piano, you can hear the entire infinite harmonic series that makes up the Western Canada music, well tempered music, and it's in nature.

I really experienced that last night for maybe the first time in my life, playing a solo piano segment of the show, where you could hear the resonance of our well tempered system in action with nature ecologically.

Okay, you played a million different venues.

A lot of them are just true aditional concert halls.

Are there other venues that have turned into transcendent experiences or somewhat different?

Bob, That's what I'm in the business of, that matter what I'm playing, what I'm in the business is doing is creating an experience that transcends the space and the time in the moment that we're in, so that this music really is used for what.

It's made for.

It's more than entertainment.

It's a spiritual practice.

Music was a part of the fabric of everyday life for many communities at the beginning of time, since the first drum in Africa, the passing of the fiddle and Appalachia.

I mean, just think about all of the different ways in New Orleans that music is still a.

Part of the fabric of everyday life.

Music for when people are born, music for when people pass away into the next round.

There's just such a special power that music has, and I truly feel blessed to be a joy bringer in music, not just with skill and craft.

Sense of craft is never lost in that experience.

But you know, I mean, I just remember playing in all manner of venue and having this sort of transcendent experience bubble up from the beginning of the concert and by the end of it we're all family.

Okay.

You talk about a long history of music through the time of man.

In your lifetime, have you seen a change in the perception of music, the kind of music or you just think the ball keeps rolling.

Well I think that more and more the music industry is is with.

And this is with many great exceptions.

I don't say this as a blanket statement, but the music industry is more controlled and operated and even inhabited by folks who don't really care about music making.

There are those who still care about music making and still care about the idea of what music is in the world philosophically, the history and the lineage of music and the traditions being carried forward and added to in the continuum of human creativity.

There's a sense of devaluation of the music and there's a sense of creating this sort of pacified audience that I believe is a mark of a lot of the governmental peril that we see in this time and a mark of where we are in the world in terms of how opaying information has become and how there's a sense of not always knowing if someone has been compromised, when in most cases for generations, these are trusted so trusted voices and a lot of things have been compromised as of late, So we're in this age where there's a post truth resonance, and I believe that that directly is impacting the arts and the creative communities.

And it's why the real musicians, the real artists, the ones who really understand the power of what we do, will rage against it.

You saw a similar thing happen in the sixties and seventies, and hopefully there'll be a consensus amongst artists to continue to come together in this time in a similar way.

Okay, let's go back to the sixties.

In the sixties, it was really the youth versus the elders.

We had the war in Vietnam and the draft, and we had ubiquitous top forty radio such as if you had a that said something, everyone heard it.

Other than Trump, no one can reach everybody.

So in addition, a lot of people are afraid of pissing off Trump.

In the consequences, there are people who are afraid to speak up, take a stand, and then there are people who see themselves as brands and don't want to sacrifice a dollar.

Now, there's certainly people like you, But this movement you taught me, you certainly set the landscape.

Is it something you already see or is something going to change?

What has to change?

It's always people power, people power, is it?

Man?

I'm really someone who sees my artistry as of the people and photo people and with the people, And that's really a true statement of what this movement has to be.

It can't be from the top down.

It has to be from the dirt.

And that means that you have to motivate people to understand that we are being duped and bamboozled.

You have to get people to a place where they feel a motivation and a conviction too to use the powers that they have and the band together and use the voice of the collective community to say something.

And that's something that's difficult to do in this time because again we're there's so many things that have segmented society and amplified a minority's voice as the majority.

So when you have that happen, there's this sort of.

That that there's a mirage of of of.

Insight and and and and you can't really know what's real.

So in the sixties, when you just just you just laid out the design of how the delivery systems of music and me right today you said that.

Well, there's only Trump that can reach everybody.

Now I'll add to that, there's also so many people who have a voice and have cultivated a community, whether it be the dark Web, whether it be all of these other toxic spaces that exist.

And that's become something that the mainstream media has not only begin to address, but in some cases even adopt.

And this has created this sort of narrative where it can only come from people face to face.

It can only go back to the natural person to person communication, localized community activism and engagement artists making music and speaking to the things that are around them.

Another things saying to church, take care.

Of demons in your range, that people have to become become social again in the context of person to person communication outside of the bounds of the Internet and outside of the bounds of artificial intelligence.

And nothing's wrong with those things, per se.

But when we lose the ability to see each other and now we're only seeing groups and isms and categories, it leaves us in this state of disarray.

Okay, what can a musician do to effect change, combat the past and move us to this place you said we should be in.

Music is the most powerful force on God's green eer, Bob, let me tell you what music can do.

Music.

Last night we went in Red Rose, ten thousand people singing as to clapping against it.

They don't know each other, they left as family.

If artists make true music and speak from a place of authenticity and perform from a place of excellence, that is something that goes beyond technique, goes beyond study.

It's just a place where it becomes a voice of the creator coming through the vessel of the musician.

And that's what I believe musicians can do is be great, truly great, not great and branding not great, CEOs truly great because when people see that, and people experience that, something in their soul opens up, something in their heart becomes less hardened.

There's an ability then for there to be a true dialogue that's rooted in humanity.

My band for many years and still at times i'll play with this band, it's called Stay Human and my music for many years since I was in college, I started to call it social music for lack of figuring out there was a better genre title for it, and thinking about all that, I'm just seeing the power of music more and more, learning that we can speak to people on a real, authentic wavelength, and then that allows for us to have conversations about other things.

But first it starts with us being great.

You saw this in many, many times in history where artists, whether it's Bob Marley or Lewis Armstrong and Nina some own not just their voice and their perspective on things, but their excellence coupled with their perspective on things moved people, moved mountains.

Maybe of Staples pop state of Staples singers.

I mean, I could go on and on.

Man.

Even before that the way that we use, you know, I was I was able to have a relationship with Congressman John Lewis before he passed, and he talked about the times when they were marching and they would break into song and what the songs meant and what the act of singing together meant in those moments.

And they weren't professional musicians striving for excellence in the craft.

But this is what our musicians left us.

They left us with these superpowers.

They left us with all of these gifts, and we're not using them to the fullest of our ability.

We're using them for scale in capitalism and to make money and to and to dupe our youth into this sort of full sexual revolution, full in the in in identity that this fake identity of this generation gap that's a perceived generation gap when we should actually be all connected across the generations.

There's so many things that we've been duped to believe through music that's been engineered to bamboozle us and to confuse us.

So I believe that if we just used music for what it actually is and for what it actually can do, and we did it at scale, in the same way we're doing this other stuff at scale, then.

It would change so much of the ethos of our time.

That's very interesting because then it becomes less about a specific song and more about the performance and outlook.

But in any event, you're playing to this large audience of thousands last night.

Who is John Batiste's audience.

You know, my audience, which is an audience I'm very proud of, is made up of lots of families.

There's a lot of people who I tell you one story, I was in Indiana.

My first tour was last year, and this is my second tour.

I've had a very unusual career path, if you want to call it a career, I don't really like that word.

But just in general, you know, I feel like I'm humbled to serve people through my music.

And I'm humbled to be born into this cultural inheritance of New Orleans music and New Orleans musical families, and I take it very seriously to carry on the tradition of that.

So that are those who are into that and know that New Orleans lineage and have followed that that are in my audience.

There's a lot of people who, you know, I learned this in Indiana.

There's a four generations of a family that came out and the eldest grandmother comes to me and says, I saw Elvis and you and Alvis are my favorite artists of all time.

I've been waiting for you now.

Usually people are looking for the coveted demographic of the eighteen to twenty five or whatever.

You know that, and they are there too.

But I'm great, full, for the grateful for the the folks who see me and it reminds them of a time or an artist or a meaningful cultural treasure, a meaningful era where we were creating at our highest and representing the best ideals of who we are in the arts.

And then there's a lot of kids who were coming up musicians, A lot of young musicians in the audience who are you know, they're just starting their journey.

There's so many kids that resonate with my music.

Also, now that's the other side of the spectrum.

There's a lot of aid and under.

So there's families, there's a lot of older folks.

There's people who love New Orleans music.

There's a lot of people who are looking for an alternative to contemporary pop music, which I'm also proud to represent bringing a lot of sounds and music into the popular music space without being a pop artist.

But then there are a lot of young musicians who are there and kids who are not musicians, but something in the music resonates with them, which I'm also very proud of.

They're like, I don't know, there's something in the frequency of the sound that makes it feel like it's for them.

And I've done things that are just for kids when I was doing the stuff I did with Pixar and things like that, but my albums in particular, I'm always grateful to see the folks reach out or the concert tickets go to kids, and people online sending videos of their kid dancing to the music.

My kid decided he wanted to play piano because he saw your concert or a lot of first concert goers I get in the audience.

So, yeah, that's a good blend.

It's a lot of it's a lot of range.

Man, I don't know what to say.

Okay, And what about black, white, Latino, red blue.

Yeah, there's a lot of people in the audience from all races, depending on where we go and where we play, you know.

I love the fact that we'll play at Coachella and it'll be one audience, and it'll be predominantly younger people of people who are into the contemporary music scene.

Then we played before Red Rocks, we played in Veil and it was upper middle class white folks wearing Patagonia.

I like to call it Padagucci.

All right, No, No, I'm.

Just no, that's a good name.

I know, zackly D.

I just never heard Padagucci before.

Yeah.

So, and then I'll play in the South, like when we played in Atlanta, or play in New Orleans, or I'll play I'll play places where and this isn't the norm, but if I go there, it's mostly black folks.

And and I love the fact that my community supports me because I'm not a rapper and I'm not an R and B singer.

And we don't have a a archetype in contemporary culture for the musician star.

That's not something that exists anymore.

The musician star and the band leader right absolutely most of the time.

Because of the way that we've been they've tried to program us and to separate us.

The way that capitalism has created these genre categories is so that it can be segregated.

It started off based on race records.

Chuck Berry, to me is one of my top five influence of all time, all of the race records.

I won't go into that as the tangent.

I'm liable to go on tangents, Bob.

Now, No, the tangents are the best part.

Digression is a spice of life.

Go off, fund your tangent as much as you want.

But I'm thinking about how you know, our contemporary black community.

Our people are now programmed to think that music that's for them has to come from the voice of a rapper or an R and B singer in the contemporary milieu of R and B.

And I'm very proud that over the years of building my audience, I've been able to cultivate, specifically in the South, in the Southeast, a community of people of color, Black, a black community, a black audience that is listening to music that sometimes we will play songs from the forties and fifties.

On the show.

We just last night did a Chuck Berry medley, as I was saying, Then we went to Fast Domino.

Then we went into Duke Ellington and we played things ain't what they used to be.

We played don't mean to think if it ain't got that swing into about one hundred and fifty VP chopping wood swing that you would hit basic play right.

So this is not what my community is acculturated into twenty six to listen to.

Yet it's what we were the pioneers of.

And this is the this is part of the mass deception that that's happened in the way that we've spoiled our music and thus the lineage of how we understand the music and what's for us versus what's not for us?

And I say this to say everything is for everyone.

Music is the universal language.

It exists so that it can break down barriers.

Yet because of this sort of this this this psychological warfare that we've been dealing with in a way that branding has overtaken actual craft and history and lineage and the idea of the thing has become greater than the thing itself.

People believe that, oh, this is only for me, and I wouldn't even.

Consider this over here, this whole world over here, because it hasn't been in my orbit.

It hasn't been service to me.

And I'm a proud disruptor of that.

I rage against that, and I love when I can have in the audience.

This sort of experience where.

People now and this is taken close to twenty years.

I started when I was fifteen, and I'll go out.

We did a show in London and it was a Royal Festival Hall and you know, it's about three thousand, three to four thousand people you see in the audience, and it was all different demographics.

And I love that because it was me solo piano in Europe, a black pianist playing in a classical music milieu in a concert hall for a wide range of an audience unheard of.

I love that that happened.

And the reason I bring it up is because the thing happened to the concerts.

To illustrate that is, at one point, as an improptu movement, I played a version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, and then I melded that into Tupac's changes and you could hear the different parts of the audience reacting, and then you could.

See from the response after the concert.

The thought that those two things could be next to each other, and these two poets could speak to each other across time, and the relationship between that being displayed just in a bare form in this way, coming from the vessel of a guy who looks like me with dreads.

It really struck a lot of people, and that was one of the highlights of that concert w when you can see the people were responding to afterwards, and it just struck me as, Oh, this is my role, this is what I do in culture, this is who I am.

I'm here to kind of we finally this time, because of technology and internet, all of these different things, we can bring things together and synthesize things that have never been put together before.

Nothing is new under the sun, but we can take elements and build something out of these elements that the pioneers have left us.

And that's our form of being pioneers in this time, and to really use the power and not forget what we have inherited, So I'll say that to say my audience is diverse by design, but I'm still on the path of developing that, and it's been a very intentional, developmental process to focus on one element at a time.

I was a jazz pianist for many years only, and I faced the world as that.

Then I became sort of like a band leader for a while.

Then I faced the world as that.

I became an artist and even step my toe in pop music, and I face the world as that, and a film composer, and I face the world is that all as a way of trying to create a universal musical experience that is contemporary and that everybody who walks into that venue can have something that when they hear it, they see something that they didn't even know about the stuff they loved, and they develop a sense of what music can be and what it truly is meant to be.

Okay, you talk about the evolution jazz, being leader, working with Pixar, etc.

Are you just wandering through life and opportunities come, or do you have more of a plan or do you have a just an inner feeling like you know, I want more than this.

I'm you asking some good questions, man, you know, and you're catching me at a very My voice is like an octave lower because I've been singing all week, and like I'm at a very vulnerable place.

So you're getting some very real candid answers, Bob.

But I tell you.

I I want more, and I oftentimes struggle with and not because I'm not abundantly blessed and haven't had the opportunity to do stuff that even those in the lineage who I stand on the shoulders up didn't have a chance to do.

And I understand that, and I'm grateful for that.

But when I see what's happening to music, and when I see what's happening to culture and ultimately what's happening to people, I really want more.

I want to do more to disrupt that, to shift it, to change it.

And I feel like I'm just getting started.

And i feel like I've never fit into the patterns of the industry, of labels, of any of that stuff.

And I've constantly felt like I've had to find ways to be disrupted from the inside and to shift gears and to get into a position and then to figure out a way to bridge it to the thing that I know is the realest, most authentic way that you could have at least for me, that John Batist could impact that moment, in that situation, in that project, in that role.

But I feel like I need to exist within a context of my own design, and I have to build something that allows for me to fully utilize all the capabilities that I've been given.

And once I have that, whatever this apparatus is, whatever this thing is, then you'll really get to see the full color scheme and spectrum of what it is that I've been blessed to give to the world.

And until then, I'm just fighting my way through and doing the best that i can with all the blessings that I've been given.

Okay, now more than ever, their acts playing Madison Square Garden that most people have never heard of, their acts playing stadiums that are niche.

There's a Queen song, I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now.

There are people with billions of streams on Spotify.

You don't have billions?

Are you happy growing your niche?

Or really, I don't want to make it about ego career, you know, let's not even give that.

But you have a message, you have a feeling inside, you have a burning desire to reach many more people.

No, I have a burning desire to be great.

When I listen to Ray Charles, who, by the way, doesn't have billions of streams.

Ray Charles is truly great, full stop.

Lewis Armstrong, Nina Simone truly great, truly great, Joni Mitchell, truly great.

Some of my contemporaries who I know are truly great.

You know, I'm talking about people who I don't know what their streams are or how many people they reach, but I do know what they make is one of one.

Could you give me a couple examples.

I'm thinking about people like Sullivan Fortner, a pianist and vocalist who I grew up with, or Caroline Shaw, who's a contemporary composer of my late mental Kid Jordan, who was an avant garde composed I'm truly another thing that that, you know, my early tradition in New Orleans was actually something that is is you may not necessarily think is associated with New Orleans, But I grew up in a in a community where I was learning from avant garde contemporary classical musicians like Kid Jordan and Alvin Baptiste and jazz musicians who were also a part of that community, like Ellis Marsalis.

So you know, I wasn't learning traditional New Orleans music first.

I was learning the avant garde.

So that's always like a foundational element of what it is that I'm doing contemporary classical music, which was a part of their their their pedagogy.

So but it was very hood.

It was like the hood version.

Like it was like we would learn scores, sometimes without the music, and it would be twenty page long score.

Your part would be twenty pages, and we would spend a week with him dictating it like a grio, like an oral tradition, your part on an instrument that's not your instrument, like Alvin would be playing the clarinet to.

You, and it would be, oh, let me interpret.

Oh that's the harmony he means, he outlined, he appregiated the harmony.

Oh this is the melody that I need to play.

Oh in my left hand.

You want that left so he'll tell you.

So then it would become such a part of your system, your bones, it'd be in you once you learned it.

And those were my first experiences.

I learned how to do that before I learned how to read music.

I didn't even learn how to read music until I was I found a way to get into Julliard without knowing how to read music.

They put the sheet music in front of me in the audition.

Quick story, tangent.

I'm sorry, I'm prone to do this, but they put the sheet music from me in the audition, and I just played and I was looking at it might have been upside down, who knows, but I just played improvised.

And then after about a minute, I stopped and I look at the panel of the audition judges, like American Idol panel or something, and they're just looking in there.

It's like a pregnant pause.

And then after this pause, they say, mister Baptiste, if you got an opportunity that would take you out of school, would you take it or would you continue your studies?

And I looked at.

Him and I said, even sixteen years old, I started school when I was seventeen, at Juilliard, so I'm like already very aware of the politics of the situation.

Even at seventeen.

I say, well, if I could take the opportunity and continue my studies, then I would take the opportunity.

And that was the last question of the audition, and I left and I got in the rest.

Obviously it's history.

I went to Julia.

But I'm saying that to say.

I have been fortunate to be around those who early on gave me a barometer of what true greatness is.

What is truly great is not a matter of the taste of the trends of our time.

And for me, I know that's truly great stands the test of time.

So in terms of your audience question, it will reach people who who seek that out and it will sustain itself in the same way that Moza discovered the scores of Bach.

Okay, Bach is not only truly great.

Between Bac and Duke Ellington, you have two people who maybe are the greatest at a thing that anybody has ever been at, doing a thing outside of just music, full stop.

Okay.

Now do people listen to that music every day?

Is that filling concert halls or symphony orchestra struggling.

Gustavo Dudamel is a friend of mine.

He's one of the foremost the conductor's voices in classical music.

We talk about this all the time.

How do you program a concert in twenty twenty five of classical music.

Okay, I'm just saying this to say.

The placebo of audience and taste is based on things that don't have much, in some cases, anything to do with actual music.

It's more to do with community.

It's more to do with the aspect of how you want to cultivate your lifestyle and what things you want to power that lifestyle within the ecosystem of your community.

Okay, John, you talk about the next two to five years falling out, that's just a figurus speech.

That's not the plan.

I mean, what would have to happen for you to go in that direction for.

That to happen.

I mean it's a very likely possibility.

That's not a figure of speech.

Two to five years is not a figure of speech, man.

It's the thing that keeps me doing It is experiences like what we had last night and things that happened when nobody is watching.

Or it's not something you read about an award that I can win or something like that.

It's the it's the people.

Who share the meaning that this music has to them, and not just my music, but the music in the in the culture and the lineage of what I represent and what it means to have that be represented in the world, and have it represented in high places of the world, and have it be in a position to even have a conversation with the mainstream of what's going on that a lot of times is averse to it, and that feels like the motivation to stay in.

But then I feel like the I can still impact that aspect of culture and exist in this in this way for those people and for those who don't even know that that's what they need.

You know, as we proceed to give you just what you need.

But I can do that and not I could retire, or maybe I'll take us to bath.

Sometimes I think about starting a creative church or something.

You know.

I don't know, man, I just don't find it to be real enough.

There's too much fake stuff.

There's too much bs, there's too much stuff that isn't about.

What I actually care about.

Is a distraction from the sort of Mount Everest that you have to climb to actually be great and then to be able to do all of those things and exist within the mediums that are now present for artists to exist in and demands on artists for you to be active in all of these different ways, just because that's where the people are, and that's what the people have been accustomed to doing, and that's where you're going to have the most potential impact.

Or figuring out some way to circumvent the systems as they exist to.

Sort of create this sort of alternate reality.

But that's still in response to the mammoth mechanics of the industry today.

So then you're kind of still in relationship to it, you're tethered to it.

You have to almost become like an alt media system within your own team and community.

I just find all of that to be.

Very very destructive and insidious, especially to those who actually are pursuing the things that we're pursuing.

So yeah, nothing would have to change.

It just have to continue to be what it is or get worse.

Oh okay, let's break it down.

Okay, you're someone who make it very simple.

You make recordings, you go on the road, you do live appearances.

Theoretically you could have a manager who insulates you.

Now, just being a person on the planet, if you're online, you have people looking for you, people abusing you, people complimenting you.

Twenty four to seven as you referenced earlier, there are certain places where the people are which to a great degree, as we speak, is TikTok.

So the system is far from perfect.

You've established that.

But once we get above the system, what are the elements that are truly bothering you that would make you say, man, I'm done?

What a system?

For?

One is.

Immoral, and it exploits artists and it exploits people on both ends.

And anytime that you have a system that's corrupt, it will just become more and more corrupt, and over time it will become something that eats itself and eats its own, which is what we're seeing.

Music isn't meant to be as disposable as it's become.

It's not meant to be as homogenized as it's become, not meant to be as difficult for people to I can go on and on.

So it's immoral.

So let's break it down and get simple.

Just like you were just saying, let's make it very simple.

It's immoral, and it's very very destructive, both to the purveyors of the music and the people who are out there receiving it.

Even though it brings great joy and creates community and it's celebrating.

It's hard to be the thing that you also decry.

It's built on a faulty foundation.

At this point, now, I'm not someone who just makes albums and tours.

I'm involved in a lot of different things without a real understanding of how to bring them all together quite yet.

And you know, there's a lot of opportunities that I have to really impact humanity outside of just music or using music as the way in, but also figuring out how to have a seat at the table in many different philanthropic ways in different parts of the world, and existing in burgeoning fields that I think there needs to be an artist's voice at the table.

I've had conversations with folks who are in the AI community.

I've had conversations with folks who are in the tech community.

I've been sort of.

Courting a relationship with Bill Gates with taken trips to Africa together.

I don't have a manager.

I've been self managed for a while.

I've had a manager before, but I think what it is that I do is a bit too demanding and too wide range for that to just be a traditional music manager.

Some of the music managers that I've worked with, I work with still in some capacity, and some are friends.

But in general, my experience is that I'm difficult to manage, and I want to do more than just tour and make records.

This is only my second tour.

I'm thirty eight years old.

I've been in the industry since i was fifteen.

So I don't think it's as simple as you making it out, Bob.

But it's the.

Big thing that's simple to me and clear to me is immoral and things are not built for the good of people.

And I just want people to feel the true power of what music is.

And I want the authentic experience that the music exists in, and the experience that my community thrives in to be one that's not trying to fleece them and exploit them.

Okay, let's just go to the other side.

You talked about two to five years.

You could say, Hey, I'm packing it in.

You also said the flip side is I'm gonna have number one records.

So tell me what that vision is in your brain?

How you achieve that?

I just don't quit.

You know.

The other reason I would I would step out is not because I'm quitting.

It's because there would be a better way to get to the people and give the people the thing that I'm here to give them.

And it allows for me also to balance the things in my life, like taking care of my family and being with my family, my wife, spending time with my soulmate, being in a world where I can be a human being, so that the things that I deliver the people are coming from a real authentic place, coming from arrested spirit and a spirit that's overflowing with inspiration.

Now, if I stay in it, all of those things will remain true.

Bob.

I'm gonna be inspired.

I'm gonna be able to.

Do the things I need to do with my family, and I'm going to figure out a way to do it within the system, which means you got to get to the top of the system, or you got to get to the top of your place in the system.

I'm in an.

Interesting place because in many ways I'm a new artist and many people are just discovering me.

And in other ways, I've been doing it for a while.

But as I said in earlier in our conversation, you know, it's been many different chapters, and each one of those chapters was a first for a lot of people, and a lot of those chapters in the world that I existed, they're separate from the world that I existed in.

Subsequent to that chapter, just I moved to another world next that's completely severed from the world that I just was in.

And you know, I remember having that experience when I was I had the honor of playing on a tour backing up Prints once and this was in the days when I was just known to the world as a jazz piano player and a jazz trio of my own, forming and playing with the greats of the jazz community like Abby Lincoln, Cassandra Wilson and Roy Hargrove and and and really have an opportunity to play with you know, Lewis Hayes who you know, and Curtis Fuller, played with John Coltrane, all the all of the great elders at that time that I got a chance to play with went Marsalis also another another Kenna City.

Five O four baby.

But uh, I just remember realizing at that moment when I stepped into that world and I played with Prince, and I was like, Oh, the world is there, and if you can deliver something of value to them, then you can create a community around this sort of transaction or this sort of exchange I like to call it.

Now, if you can create these sort of exchange models, this sort of ratio of exchange with many different communities over time and establish a connection between these different communities, and then you can build it into something that represents a common good, a vision of our collective importance to each other and the essence of what we're all here to be and do on this earth and the time that we hear this limited generation of time.

If you're able to do that over time, you'll win, because most people aren't doing that.

Most people are trying to separate people and create a reality that's based around why you and your voice it's special and should be heard.

And I think that's important too, But that's not my call.

My call is to be the unifier.

I'm the piper Bob.

That's what I am.

And once as soon as I accepted that, I realized, Okay, well, whatever it is that I do, it's going to bring people into a room that will never in a room together.

It's going to make people a part of a community together that never would have thought that they would share a community with each other.

And I know that, so that's what I do, and I have the ability to span genres as an allegory for that.

It's not just an exercise in me showing musical snobbery and like, look how great i am.

Most of the time, I'm reining in my musical technique in service of this.

Most of the time, I don't even like people who play with their technique on this leave.

Unless it's like Sullivan or you know, Jacob.

Collier, who's another grade of this generation, who you know doing some very interesting things.

But I don't, you know, I just my thing is is that, and I know that it's very unique in this.

Time, and I know who I am in the world, and I.

Know that if I were stayed in the space, inevitably it would reach the point where I'm playing for the whole world.

And I'm already playing for a lot of people.

So I don't make it sound like I'm I don't I'm going to sound like I'm slumming it all.

I'm ungrateful.

But just to answer your question, what I see for myself if I stay in the industry, it's to be the biggest in the world and to bring back the age of the musician, star, the band leader, the person who is bringing all forces together on the stage to show an allegory for humanity as one.

And if that's what I decide to do, mark my words, I will do it.

And anybody who knows me knows that what I'm saying is completely one percent serious.

But if I stick out of it, you know, that's that's great too.

I don't have a burning ambition to do that or to be number one in the world.

I don't care.

But if I stick in it, that's what I'm going to put myself to do, because that's just that's who I am.

Let's go from the philosophical to the more practical, which will have philosophical elements.

You have a new album, Big Money.

Ay, Why did you decide to cut a record now?

And what is the process of both thinking about what you're recording and actually recording it?

And to what degree do you even consider perception or you're just gonna lay it down the way you want to.

That's a great question, man.

This is great to talk to you because a lot of times the stuff it's hard to present in an answer because the question doesn't give the dimension for me to say what the process is.

So that's great.

I love that.

I don't.

I don't think about reception of the music or the art that I'm making until after it's finished.

So the process of making it is a very subconscious reality that's rooted in very concrete terms.

I signed a record deal, I signed for a certain number of record I committed to that at a certain point, and I have to make a record, So that's a concrete reality.

Now, what is the record going to be?

That comes to me.

Sometimes it comes to me literally in a dream, or I will feel a compulsion to make a certain statement and it won't even be clear to me what the statement is.

Like the name big Money and the statement of big Money didn't come to me until after the album was finished, and there was a song that I wrote called big Money, and it became the title track of the album.

It wasn't like it wasn't it was reverse engineered in that way.

I don't think about perception of it until after it's done, because then once I have the art made on its own terms, and it's presented as true to what it's telling me it wants to be as I possibly can present it, then I think Okay, how do I give this to people in a way where they have the best opportunity of enjoying the party?

How do I present this to the world in a way where they have the best understanding of exactly what this is and why this is?

And then from there it's really up to the people and the systems as they are, and the delivery of the music and all of the ways that people respond to it, and all the context of what's happening in the world around it and things that I don't have control of, And you know, I don't.

I don't beat myself up about the reception of a record, whether it's critical or commercial or things like that.

Oftentimes people don't even have the perspective or have been following along in terms of my artistic statements and the messaging and the connective thread of all of them, going back to my roots and understanding what it is and who it is that I am, and what I'm saying and why I'm saying it.

Most of the time, there's not even that sort.

Of of of of pedigree to even assess fully what it is that I'm doing.

And I don't.

I don't say that in like a judgmental way or in a way that feels like I'm above everybody.

I'm just saying that based upon the fact that what it is that I traffic in, and how specific it is, and how deep I am in it at this point, and how committed to it I've been from the beginning.

If you haven't been with me, like they say, if you haven't been in the gym shooting those shots, then you're not gonna be able to assess it or talk about it in the same way.

You're not gonna be able to play in the same sequence that I'm playing in.

And I'm okay with that because that's kind of what I like.

I kind of like I kind of like hiding in plain sight until I'm not.

I kind of like being a dark horse.

I kind of like doing what it is that I'm doing and doing it at the highest level I can possibly do it, And sometimes people catch it and it gets rewarded, and other times people completely miss it and misunderstand it and don't and they think that I'm doing something that I'm not.

And other times it just is, you know, something that I did that we don't give a certain sense of promotion or a certain consideration of perception or how it's received.

And I believe almost.

That that stuff that I have done and that's been more of that than anything else, Bob, to be honest, more stuff that I've done that I've just put out there or have created or performed or have documented without even thinking about it being received and just putting it there because I believe that it will have this radar to catch people and they need to catch him, and it'll be something that is a document of history.

And it's crazy because I'm not even like a big legacy guy, like I don't really care what people think of me after I'm gone, because it's like what Mike Tyson says, like what is a legacy?

I'm dead, doesn't matter.

I'm dead, Why you shouldn't be talking about me?

Who cares?

So I'm not like a big legacy guy.

But I also have this wild instinct from my youth.

It's just like I call it wild because it's not logical of thinking about what it is that I'm doing and how it's perceived throughout history and service of people who I've yet to meet.

And I feel that strongly, and a lot of my work primarily is driven by that yes, I want to hit certain metrics and reach people and do that.

But I've probably and many times people have told me this.

It's like I told you that, I don't feel like I'm a manageable person.

I'm not like a good client to be a not because I'm difficult or rude, but because there's a lot of things that I could be doing and could have done over the years to be much bigger, much more successful.

Dah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

I think about things primarily from the perspective of if I make this, I feel like it's either for today or it's for some people in the future.

I don't know those people, and I just feel like this is for them and I have to do it because I'm the only one that can do it.

Okay, let's go back to the beginning.

We've talked about once the record is done, perception and reception.

But let's talk about conception.

You say oftentimes you have something in a dream.

There are many Actually, when you're a musician working with other people, there are many steps from conception to completion.

Okay, with some people, there's a demo wing process.

But you can have an idea in your head and then there's so many chapters in getting it to the end that it loses its essence or it's not as magical, or sometimes a reverse.

You're working on it and it becomes better.

So how does it work with you?

It is different every time.

Every single time is different.

And this year, for instance, I'm gonna show you a perfect example by looking at this and not nine months stretch of time.

I put out this big money album which is recorded in a period of two weeks, the band in the same room, breathing the same a playing the music together, and going back to the sense of recorded music is what I really like to think about it as where you're just in a room making the music capture in the moment, and you're trying to capture this sort of lightning in a bottle, and it's like the Rolling Stones recorded that, Chuck Berry, all these people record that way, and then you know, within the same nine months, I did a classical piano album, Beethoven Blues.

The conception of those albums, why I decided to those albums, how I recorded those albums, the approach to rehearsing or to writing or arranging.

Is it just is completely different.

And then before that, I made the World Music Radio Album, and the World Music Radio Album was literally an ambitious concept album that was presented and written as if I was writing a movie, and I was inspired by films.

You know, I'm fat a lot by films.

You know.

I still watch Forrest Gump every year.

It's probably my favorite film.

You know.

And then.

I think about, you know, even the We Are album, how many years of different demos and ideas and things putting things together, and how that album is actually a natural outgrowth of the Social Music Album, which was an independent album that I made that was like, really that was like the manifesto of my concept and the vision of what it is that I want to do, and it's a record that probably no one has heard, but so so I just think about how some of the demos from that, which came out in twenty thirteen, became what the We Are album is, and that's a whole nother process.

For big money.

It was the opposite of that.

It was, you know, me really driving around the country on tour.

My first tour.

We played at the Rhyme In one night, I was playing a lot of guitar on the tour.

You know, obviously primarily a pianist, but I play a lot of instruments and the guitar.

I was playing a lot of guitar, both on and off stage, in the tour bus, looking out the window in the backstage.

Just all these things were processing in my mind, and I took the guitar and I almost became an unorthodox form of journaling where I wasn't even writing songs.

I was just capturing melodies and chords and ideas and all these different people I was meeting.

And I told you that story about the Indiana the four generations of family.

I got a hundred different stories from people that I met across the country on that tour, and stories about how like I've been waiting seven years for you to tour, and like your music is needed now more than ever, the times of you know, all this stuff's happening around that time and still happening.

It just was, you know, I was processing a lot, and the song Big Money came in a writing session post this show I played at the Ryman and I was playing the guitar, and that was sort of the conception of the album.

Subconsciously the seed was planning after that show in that song of Oh, this is a guitar based statement on the times we're in maintaining faith these people, to look in these people's eyes, who I'm meeting, the generational tradition of what Americana is, how we can redefine and readdress that in the contemporary time.

And then also there was this real convergence that happened between Dione and I no Id, who was like my co pilot with this record.

So Dion and I have been talking for about five years about you know, life and all these different things about music, but not.

About collaborating per se.

And then we had the opportunity to collaborate and work on Beyonce's record, Cowboy Carter Record.

When she was finishing that record, you know, we co wrote this song which I was writing on the guitar called American Requiem.

It was the first track of the record.

And then that was also like a convergence because I didn't know that she was working on that project obviously, but it's a similar not the same, because I'm not really into this sort of let's all make country music now, but just the idea of going back to the dirt, which is something I've been doing for many years and have always wanted to represent the contemporary space.

But just having that be a collective consciousness of artists who are doing this sort of repatriation of music and of culture, particularly American music, but globally has been happening, and just to see that on the biggest level and to contribute to that and have the honor of being a part of that, and kind of one of the spearhead records of that led to Dianna and I collaborating, which we had already been doing.

Is kind of where that kind of idea of American recue on part of American recorum came from.

But then just going from that space of conversation with him, all these things sort of converged conception of all of this.

This this stimulus led to a two week explosion, which is like, I'm a binge creative.

A lot of times I'll say that, which is this idea that I'll sit and stuff will be incubating.

I'm always creating.

I'm always doing demos or writing or journaling or whatever it is that I'm doing in that period, you know, takes different forms and then there'll be a boot.

It's like it's like lightning.

It's like a lightning.

I know exactly what you're talking about.

And you want to capture that emotion, that intensity before it goes away.

Yes, and that's what the record is.

So you know that's it.

You nailed it.

I'm gonna switch gears a little bit more.

You had an album that won the Grammy Album of the Year.

How did that change your life in both good and bad ways?

Well, you know, I didn't have a chance to really process to understand at the time because my wife, Sulaika, who is definitely among the most brilliant and special people on the planet Earth and my soulmate, was facing a life threatening diagnosis and we didn't know if she was gonna make it to even watch the Grammys.

She wasn't damn person, but she was at home watching because she had just done a bone marrow transplant.

And my life.

It's not to say that everything that you've been working for up to that point is not appreciated, but it felt more like my life was falling apart than a celebration or sort of a shifting gears based on the Grammys.

It was a shifting gears based on what we were going through at home, and the Grammys just happened to be concurrent with that.

Now, in the midst of that just became such a difficult thing to fathom and even wrap your head around that.

I'm still processing how it's changed me because I didn't stop.

I couldn't stop.

I was and I was on a plane the next day, and by the next night I was in the cancer War that Sloan kettering.

So the juxtaposition between doing that and I was also working with my good friend, the great Stephen Copet on the show, being his musical director, and all this was happening right, and.

There was no time to stop.

There was no moment to say, wow, now let's go back into the studio and make.

Another record, or let's go on the road.

And less like, you know, what are we gonna do, How we're gonna how we're gonna market this, how we're gonna spend this, what.

We we got to get another collaboration on the books?

We gotta do.

No, it was how can I not have a nervous breakdown?

How can my wife live?

How can I maintain a equilibrium at my uh, my day job, my my which which was a thing that actually changed my life more than the Grammys, being a kid just three years out of college and being the youngest band leader on television, late night TV at an institution that's now you know, in the state that it's in.

But to just be in that position, you know, I'm forever grateful for that.

And and to just have go from not having money to having money in the corner office on Broadway, you know, that's the thing that more changed my life.

But so going back to to the moment, just how do I stay faithful to that?

And you're six of that, you're five to six of that, And eventually what change was something had to give and I left the show.

And I also, you know, just before this, my long term team and the folks who really have been taking care of me for that time, I just felt this inner yearning before this, without even knowing what was to come, that I needed to shift gears and to build this thing that we talked about, the sort of world of John Batista and what it is that I want to do in the world and it's not just music and music industry, and how can I build something that really facilitates that, And you know, so I had completely before this storm of life shut down my team.

So I went into this.

With no manager and no record deal, and I won the record that the Album of the Year Grammy and five Grammys that night, with no manager, no record deal, and a complete disarray.

In my life and a.

Job that was four or five days a week, two hundred and two shows a year on national television.

And my position on that show was to bring joy.

Okay, Okay, I just want you to put that into perspective because most people don't understand that when they asked me about, oh, how did the Graham you?

How did that change your life?

You were nominate eleven gram You know, I've always watched Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson one of my heroes, right, And it's like, people like you nominated for eleven Grams.

The only person.

Nominated more than that is Michael Jackson in a single year.

And you think that I would be like, wow, I'm not even worthy.

But I didn't even have chance to to even be be able to sit in that moment and process the magnitude of it.

It was just like how do I stay alive?

Uh?

And and and then that record also what it meant, and what most of the stuff that I make is meant to do feel so far away from what usually gets recognized in that way.

You know, my grandfather was on this record.

He won a Grammy.

He you know, at the time, he was ninety.

He's passed away now, but you know, he's somebody who was an activist.

He was the first hotel workers Union president, and and the and the and and the Postal Workers Union president and fought instead.

You know, at the time of Martin Luther King Junior, the sanitation work strike, he was in support of that.

And this guy is like an unsung American hero.

So he's on the record and he's at the Grammys with me, and you understand, like the people on the record who won Grammys because of what that record was, it's just beyond like no one hare's still not been a critical a journalistic analysis of that and what that really actually meant.

Besides, oh, John Baptiste won a Grammy.

This is not I could just go on and on.

About the significance of that, and we didn't even have a chance to get into that.

You know, listen, I'm someone who congratulations for winning.

I think there's an over emphasis on the Grammys.

The reason I asked the question is, you know, once you have that level of visibility, a lot of people are looking for your time, a lot of people want things, and you know, you're just the same person, so it gives opportunities, but you're more exposed to bullshit too.

Well.

You know, I've been exposed to bs for a long time and that didn't really change, you know, I'm I'm someone who has always had a lot of people that are competing to have FaceTime or to have some sort of time.

And that's before I was known, That's before I was a Grammy winner.

That's just something that I think certain people have a certain sort of position in life where you have to learn something from the way that God sets you up in the world.

I'm an introvert.

I don't like to be the center of attention and to socializing that way, and for whatever reason, for most of my young adult life, there's been a magnetism for people wanting me to do this or be a part of this, or be here or there.

And it's really been something that you know, I've been in therapy for that.

I figured out how to regulate, I figured out how to step outside of my comfort zone both on and off stage.

I figured out how to verbally express my thoughts and feelings acutely.

You know, for many years, up almost to the age of ten, I didn't speak.

I was nonverbal, Like I'm not just saying I'm an introvert, I'm asked there this, It's beyond just I'm a quiet guy.

So it there was not a shift.

For me after the Grammy is It was just like there was almost this sense of knowing within the community the people that I was around that Okay, he has something, we got to get a piece of him, or let there's something there.

And then the only difference after that was now there was more money involved.

So but I don't think that people really understood how to leverage me per se in terms of the kind of stuff you're talking about, which I think happens to a lot of people after like a major moment.

But again, how do you how would someone leverage what it is that I do in the context of what they do in a moment like that.

It's difficult for people to figure that out.

So I think in some regards that protected me from an onslaught of even more stuff.

But yeah, saying that to say, we have so many things that happen every day.

It's like hundreds of calls and requests.

And it's been like that for me for twenty years.

It's just like constant barrage of can you do this?

Or can you be here?

Can you So I feel like I kind of prepared for that in my life by just trying to figure out how to get over my introversion.

I want to get back to the introversion.

But before we do, what's the status of your wife's health today?

We just did a tour together and that is a it's not just the success, but it's a life milestone because we didn't know if we would even be able to travel after the transplant.

We just did a tour together for her book.

She wrote a book and she's I mean, I'm man.

We could do a whole interview about her Man's We talked about I want to use my music to reach people.

She just wrote a book from her her experiences with journaling and her experiences going into the darkness.

She's written a book that's a practice, a creative practice for folks who are going through similar things, even not going through theys, just want to process what's going on in the world, and she created this incredible tour where we were on stage together and she's able to tour and do things and write.

She's been painting as well.

She has an art exhibition that she just had and in our hometown where we live on the East Coast, and she's doing really well with treatment that's indefinite, which you know, is unfortunate.

We have to deal with that, but we're grateful that she's here.

And then she has treatment that we're going through every every month, and beyond that, we're just hoping that as things evolve that will have some better options as she continues to deal with all the treatments.

How'd you meet her?

We met We met in band camp, believe it or not.

We were, you know, twelve and fourteen years old and we met in Sarah Toolda Springs, New York at Skidmore College.

It was a I'm a music camp.

There's an orchestra camp, a dance camp, in a jazz camp, and she was there as a classical double basis now mentioned you know, the fact she plays double bass.

It's just it's like I love to brag on her because it's like she plays the double bass.

She got into Juilliard, didn't decide to go to Juilliard.

But that's when we reconnected.

After the camp.

I was at Juilliard and she was at the She was, well, we stop.

For a second.

Wait wait, you're at the camp.

You meet her at the camp.

Is there a romance at the camp?

No?

No, no, no, no.

This which is you know with kids, it's not like that.

It's more like.

We we we're in the same circles and we have this real connection as friends.

It's nothing that we would even think would ever be what it is today, but it just.

Is a real Oh that's a that's a cool kid.

I like.

I like her, She's cool, and uh.

From there we stay in touch a bit.

But you know, it's more when we reconnect when she's you know, I'm starting my first year at Julia New York.

I moved to New York now officially from Kena, Louisiana, you know, and and then.

She's there and I'm like, oh, wow, look at that.

You know, she's playing a double bass in the Juliard pre college program, and you know, I'm trying to figure out how did I even end up in school like this?

And you know, we just like reconnect and from there, you know, there's so many things that happened.

This this, uh, it's just a really epic journey we've been on together.

Well, tell me a little bit.

Was like an instant romance to that ups and downs, what was going on.

I mean, you know, she had a lot of stuff that was going on, and in a and and in many different ways.

We were friends in a in a way that we supported each other.

I would see her, she would come to concert to mine.

We would hang out with a lot of the same people.

We would sometimes talk.

Her dad was is a huge jazz fan, and he would come to concerts sometimes when I was in the jazz days of the Jazz Trio, and she wouldn't even be there.

So I got to know her family and that way.

It was just very much a setup.

But we always were with other people.

And then at a certain point she got sick.

And this is like twenty ten, twenty eleven, and this was the first time she got sick and she was in the hospital and I took my band to the hospital when I heard the news that she was sick, and we went to where she was and in her room in a hospital room, next to the hospital bed.

We played a second line and he saw the nurses come out and they were dancing in the hallways.

We were playing on when the Saints go marching in and you know, just kind of serenading her, giving her some oh yes as a friend, and you know, she she came through that.

And once she came through that, it was a moment where we both saw something in each other that we hadn't seen before, and that became the a's the beginning of where we are now.

So but there's just there's so many different phases, from the awkward kid phase to the phase of being go get us in New York coming from small towns.

You know, she grew up between Tunisia and Switzerland and upstate New York, and now we're in Manhattan and we're trying to, you know, figure out the world.

And then the phase of her getting sick and having this life interruption, and then and us getting closer than that time because a lot of people actually fell away from her when she got sick because they didn't know how to deal with the fact that someone twenty one years old and you know, everybody's trying to play beer pong at parties not visit you in the cancer ward and she lost a lot of friends and we got closer.

In that time.

So it was like another at phase.

And then from the phase of her getting well again and that us developing a sort of romance, and then my career kind of taking off in a different way, in a way that.

A career like it's a real career moment, like now he's on TV.

Like we saw him playing in the subway and then like the Lower East Side in the village, and now he's on television every night.

And in those early days when I was playing, she saw that transition.

You know, there was like many years where I was playing around until your point about like people constantly want me to do stuff for bringing me into things.

I felt like we.

Had a really cool era where I was like your favorite band's favorite band, and like we would played these secret shows and lofts and uh and in basements in Harlem, and like one show Lenny Kravitz came and he played with us and he was playing the drums and like we were nobody.

And then like questlove Emir, who I'm all forever grateful for shouting me out once and in this article he did, He's like, the three greatest shows that I've seen this year.

It's a three way tie.

So he said, I still have the article because I was such a big deal for us as a band.

He's like, he was, like, it's Beyonce Prince and this kid John Baptiste googled him and thank me later, like we were your red hot Chili Peppers came to one of these basement shows I did in Harlem, and I ended up making a record with Chad Smith and Bill Laswell when I was in college that nobody has heard.

But but like again, like there was a phase where I was everywhere but wasn't making any money and nobody knew who my.

Name except for like people like that.

But she saw all of that, and then it went from that to us being on television every night and and our lives.

We just have been through so much together.

A quick and fun fact side note.

One thing that Lenny Uncle Lenny, when when we want Grammy for Album of the Year, he was the one who made the announcement and gave me the Grammy, and he whispers in my ear.

I don't know if you could see it.

You can't hear it on the air.

I tried to hear it, but you can see him like, man, I'm so glad to be the one to give this to you, from the basement to the grammy, Like it was like a he was he saw you know what I'm saying, just.

Like the the range of what that was.

But anyway, I I would not be who I am without my wife.

And she's she's doing well, God willing, we continue to find advancements of how we can continue to make her be here for years and years to come.

And she's such an incredible voice in culture with the work that she does.

So you know, I don't mind talking about her.

Ever, if you want to talk about her more, we can do that too.

Yes, like us doing well, And that's a little bit about our story.

Let's go back.

You were talking about being an introvert and going to therapy.

Is that why you went to therapy.

Yeah, I've always had a lot of thoughts that they get.

It's hard to describe it.

It's like.

It's like if you have a clog or a backlaw of stimulus and it's so rapid, the pace of it is so the pace of it is so rapid that you can't possibly formulate an understanding of it to verbalize it at scale, So you have to figure out what to do with it, because if it doesn't come out, you have to figure out what to do to regulate yourself as more more more compound on the thought to begin with, I didn't have a way to deal with that.

And as a kid, you know, my mind, it just was it's like racing, like and I'm seeing things.

It's like a lot of pattern recognition and a lot of just like it's hard to just put in the words like in just sometimes images or colors and just you're seeing.

You're just seeing all of this stuff, and it's like some of it is a thought, some of it is a feeling, some of it is a color that's representative of an emotion or a sound.

I don't know how to it's hard, even until today to describe it.

But just figuring out how to put that into words was why I decided to start doing therapy.

And how do I speak authentically and how do I how do I exist as as as who it is that I am.

I'm meant to be out loud in the service.

Of of of of being a good citizen and being useful, Like just how do I how do I deal.

With all of that?

And you know I needed to do that, and and sometimes I am.

I still struggle with that, you know, I still That's one of the reasons why we when we talked about two to five years.

That's a big part of it.

What I'm what I what I do, what I'm fortunate to do.

It also takes blood for me to do, like I don't like like, like Ruvenstein said, you haven't played a concert until you spill to drop of blood.

Like like, I'm I can't.

I can't help it.

It's hard for me to I can't.

I can't even go ninety nine percent.

It's got to always be one hundred and ten.

Like I can't halfway do it when I'm performing.

And it's just it takes so much that it's like, I don't know, man, It's sometimes I'm like, I don't know if I can sustain this.

Okay, I believe you're in Vegas, right, Yes, Okay, if you're in Vegas, we're talking one on one.

It's gonna stop at some point.

You don't have a gig tonight, what will you do tonight?

Man?

You know, probably read YouTube.

I'm a YouTube historian.

I'll probably call some of my conversational sparring partners and try to talk about some sort of Who are.

Your conversational sparring partners?

You know, there's a few for different things.

Nobody you would know.

I don't think let me think about it.

That's not important whether I know them.

But you obviously have a curious mind, are well informed and are very philosophical.

Most people not that way.

Let's talk about the other side.

You're on stage, the other side of stage business.

It's a dumb business.

It's not an intellectual business.

So you're having intellectual conversations.

You know, musicians are different.

So a lot of musicians are quiet speak through their instrument But how hard is it for you to find sparring partners?

Man?

Wow, you're really catching you catching the right questions.

Man, that's good stuff.

I like that.

This is cool.

No, man, it's not easy.

It's not.

But I really don't mean that in a way.

What I'm not saying that there's like a people aren't interesting.

I think everybody is endlessly interesting.

That's what makes me so curious.

I find that the way things work and how the world has become, what has become and how we can be a part in that, Like I was saying, people power and just the understanding of how the the that impacts what we do as musicians as artists, and then what people go through on a daily basis, and just thinking about how that postulating about where that will go and what It's amazing.

But you know a lot of people that's hard to find.

Folks like my longtime friend and drummer Joe Sailor, who you know, he's He's he's he's one of the folks that we talk a lot about that.

And now we always had an incredible, uh musical connection is a great rhythmic hookup and just sort of like a esp on the bandstand, and you know, that was when we were teenagers, and and then as the years went on, I realized, oh, it's because we have a similar interest in these things as well.

So there's like I find a lot of times that there's a musicians who have been with me for a while, we've developed the culture of that.

And then there's other people who I talk to often who are not musicians at all, are not a part of the business at all, and it's really it's quite fascinating their perception of it from the outside.

So yeah, it's true.

Within the industry, it's not.

And that's another reason why I could see myself getting out.

I don't.

I feel like trying to conform to the ways of the industry and trying to service the needs of what in order to continue to scale and be quote unquote successful in this space means I have to sort of damping or flatten certain aspects of what actually drives me and what I want to give to the people and how I want to serve.

Give me one example of something you might have to flatten or flattened.

The narrative of big money as projected through social media TikTok, Instagram.

It's not there's not enough nuance for me to express and for you to fully understand and what it is that I want to express and what I think is ultimately the true value of it.

And an album cycle.

And the way that those things work, and the way that promotion works, and the way that all the things are building a narrative and a headline and how that has to be something that or you got to go on the press and you got to say something outlandish or just like, none of that is for me that's all for the birds.

That does not service and it doesn't serve the audience to really get the music and get the most out of the music.

The way that it is that we make the music over here, the way that what we put into it, the way we cook the food over here, is you're not gonna enjoy it the most if you're trying to.

You might get to it, but you might miss it because of the way of the delivery systems.

So it just doesn't I think, you know, if I think about, like for the for the literary community, like some folks jumped on this thing called substack because they were like, man, the delivery systems aren't really I'm sure you know all about that, but you know, just I'm thinking about, like, I don't know, you see people trying to find alternatives, and the algorithm the algorithms, Man, the algorithms reward stuff that doesn't resonate at the frequency of what I do.

Wait, wait, wait, I read something.

I saved it.

But ultimately three there's this woman who's like a big Mozart you might know Meetsuko Cheetah.

Okay, yeah, of course, the greatest pianist.

Yeah, okay, so she had a quote in Newsweek thirty years ago, she said, I tell all my students to practice really hard and try to do something great, because there's very little great out there.

So, yes, you can talk about the algorithm.

You can talk about this, but it's kind of like pourn with the Supreme Court.

You know it when you see it, you know it when you hear it, and very few people can touch that.

Well.

I think that's true, But I also feel like the difference with porn and why that's so dark is because it plays to the lowest to common denominate.

It plays to the basest, darkest instincts of people.

Greatness plays to our highest ideals.

Not always wait wait, it may have that socially, but and people may have to come to that, but it.

May happen, That's what I'm saying.

Okay, but it may have an element that hooks them unknowingly and takes them on the journey to the destination.

But you got to hook them first, I know.

But people, Okay, go ahead ahead, No, I mean listen for a long time.

In the Internet era, okay, first ten or fifteen years of this century, if you did something great, it would surface.

Then you could do something great, and people couldn't hear it, they could be lost.

I think we're switching back because there's such a plethora of stuff.

We have a complete society that every day is looking for something that can tell somebody else about And you're right, a lot of it is lowest common denominator.

And you're also right, many people are not playing on an artistic level.

But when you plan it, you know, I'm not saying it's one hundred percent success rate, but when someone does something and does something different, that's what truly resonates, you know, timing and all kinds of things you can't control.

The system is fucked, but the system is not completely exclusive.

It doesn't completely rule out true artistry.

No, there's exceptions.

As I said earlier, it has exceptions, and I think there's a lot of exceptions.

But that's my point.

I think that it was somewhere in the middle.

I don't think that it's at a point where everybody who is an exception to the rule is recognized.

I agree there just stop on, just stop one point.

Music drove the culture certainly in the sixties and seventies and eighties with MTV.

If you want to know what was going on you listen to a record, Okay, you're talking about your jazz reference points.

The reference point there's huge incomm inequality.

Okay.

So you have the lower classes having the low hanging fruit, and the year two thousand Survivor launched.

After that, everybody thought they were celebrity.

They were doing something.

Then we had Jersey Shore.

The people was I'm doing this now, and then I'm going back to Poughkeepsie.

There's nothing here.

Okay.

So it used to be that artist and artist that was that was its own special thing.

You went to school.

I don't know what kind of school you went to.

I went to public school.

There were the art kids.

They were different.

They might be beautiful, they might be hit, but they were in their own world.

Those were middle class people.

Those were the artists.

I always use the example, you know, Jefferson Airplane, where you like the music, they would they would say no or they say I'm not going to do that, whereas today the music is dominated by uneducated, lower class people who can be pushed by the system.

You can't you have too much experience, intelligence, and they think, I don't want to make it about Mariah Carey.

But if you're a younger persons out.

That's your reference point.

I'm going to be a diva, etc.

So a reference point.

Let's even use jazz, Mahabish, new orchestra or whatever.

That doesn't even come into the equation.

So the system is not We're not in a good spot.

So I agree with you there the crap is filling the channel.

Yes, yes, I mean and listen.

You know.

I also think.

That that music, whatever how you want to classify it, also has a place.

There's a value to it for what it is.

I don't consider anything that someone creates and builds community around unless they're doing some heinous acts or this sort of a form of destruction or assault and involved that beyond that community is a good thing, and I'm just talking about greatness in music is a different thing.

Than building community with music as a part of it.

And I think that this gotta we have to have different tiers in terms of music for the sake of culture, because music represents something much more than just a form of us making songs.

It's music is a real part of who we are and how we continue to tell the stories of our mythologies generations and develop identity over time and remember who we are and cultivate where we.

Want to go.

So if we don't have the upper rung of culture, the upper rung of music, of great musicians, of great artists, great storytellers, in that way, you know, it's great to have all of the other stuff, but when you don't have that other level, we're in bad shape.

And that's what I'm saying.

We're in bad shape when we don't have that.

The thing you said which stuck out to me was you talked about having people telling you to make compromises, and then you're saying, the audience knows.

The audience knows authentic.

So we live in a world where you say, get a code writer, get a remixer.

You might have something financially successful, but that essence, I mean, I'll reference a classic rock era.

The labels were totally hands off.

We give you money, we have to put out the record, we don't know, just go do what you do, okay.

Weren't the exact opposite thing.

The suits say they know better, they never do okay, And they said, well they got to do it this way in that way, And you have a lot of people saying okay, I'll do that, and then you end up with compromise stuff.

Well, I find that the artists can still figure out how to how to how to make something authentic.

It's just the delivery systems of the challenge.

If you if you gotta if you have to go through what you know you call the suits, right the labels or whatever it is, or you have to get on a playlist, so you have to you know, all the things you have to figure out how to do.

You have to make something that is suited, no fun intended, you to make something that that's sympatical with that.

Otherwise you'll get overlooked unless you figure out a way to kind of bypass the algorithm or create a new algorithm.

Now that is rare, and that's what I'm saying, is a rare thing.

Greatness isn't in the algorithm.

Greatness is something that transcends the algorithm.

It transcends where we are, and it reaches people because it's truly great.

But sadly, and not even sadly, I think somebody doing something truly great, there's an intrinsic value to it that doesn't need recognition.

But I'm just saying that most of the time, the things that are truly great don't necessarily get recognized because of the way that things are built.

In the same way that you're saying that there's a sort of a gatekeeper that's happened in a different way that's impacting the processing of the art and the conception of the art, I'm saying that's also affecting why the algorithm doesn't bring greatness to as many people as it brings things that you know, have merit and are truly important to have in the spectrum of things, but aren't musically great.

Okay, I just want to go back to the introversion thing.

You've established two things, especially on television.

You're doing two hundred shows a year.

You got your phone whatever it is, email tech whatever, ringing all the time.

You mentioned Bill Gates.

Okay, Bill Gates is interesting because not only is he successful, he's mega successful, and he changed the culture with the technology.

Okay, my point being, you're the introvert in this case.

They're looking for you.

Can you relate to these people?

You know, I can relate to most people.

I can relate to people who don't agree with ninety eight percent of what I believe or think or how I see the world.

And again, that's part of what.

Is you know, you talk about the introversion.

I think that's part of why I'm able to relate to a lot of people.

It is because many years of my life was spent observing people, and a lot of times I felt like I was trying to figure out how do I become a human?

A normal human?

Like how do I live in the world?

And everybody seems to be able to express their thoughts and emotions to each other, why can't I?

Well, maybe if I figure out how to understand where these feelings are coming from from all these different people, then I'll be able to do that.

And empathy comes with that, and a sense of wanting to be able to give everybody credence and a benefit of a doubt and understand their perspective truly and thoroughly, and to to really have that sort of face time, that sort of really authentic connection with people.

And then that consequentially it.

It's spilled over into my approach to making music.

So then it's like, Okay, well, if I can create these authentic exchanges and connect to people through this live musical experience and really make something that just feels like a revival or it's like something that just connects to the soul of people, no matter where you come from.

Okay, now fast forward that approach to music and that approach to being in the world as a person has created an orbit where, you know, to talk about Joe Sale, we always talk about like how did we get here?

We'll be you'll see in my orbit where.

In the same room or in the same week the calendar of meetings or events would be.

It's like if somebody took like if you took five different professions and you blended them together from five different worlds, and he just threw darts at the profession board and it just landed in all of these different spaces, and it's like what it's created a magnetism of a different kind.

That's not necessarily about celebrity, but it's about the idea of how do you connect with people authentically and what can be done in that space of authentic connection?

And that's the common thread.

Now do I relate to the people who I'm I'm in this sort of courting or potential collaboration with and some of them even become friends, you know.

But it's not really about that.

It's about the idea of what can we do together that is meaningful, and how can we do it together in a way that is authentic to what.

Both sides do best.

And if we can figure that peace out For me, I'm all in.

I think that that's.

What we should be doing more of in government, in all sectors of life.

Why are we separating?

We need to figure out ways to be in concert with each other and my nature, I feel like I've trained in my life to be able to put a fence to the side in some cases even to sit and to try to figure out.

Okay, I know there's a human in there.

And I'm not talking about anybody in particular right now, just to be clear, I'm just saying in general, there's a human, there's a soul in there.

I'm the soul doctor.

I'm gonna get you to tap into your soul power to James Brown said, and we're gonna we can uh then have a real exchange.

And and I you know, anybody in the world I'm willing to have, not almost anybody, I'll say, I'm willing to have a a one to one to give an opportunity for us to have a.

True, true, true dialogue.

Okay, you've been expressing yourself here.

This is about you.

Forget musicians, which is your culture, and they're different from as a friend of mine would say, civilians.

When you meet these other people and it's somewhat transactionally, you're saying, they know who you are, you know who they are.

Let's see what we can accomplish forgetting the transaction, because usually there's a penumber.

You gotta go to dinner with them, or you gotta go here or there, whatever.

Can you find that you can really reveal yourself or do you feel like I'm talk about your inner thoughts, but you feel like these people are not going to really know where I'm coming from.

I'm just going to service them.

I'm going to try to accomplish the goal and then go back to my room.

I don't do all of that stuff.

I exist fully as who I am, and that's my barometer for if something is going to work or not.

I that's my way of I really should.

Maybe be more strategic, Perhaps some would say, I don't think so.

I don't.

For me to exist, that's also my superpower.

For me to exists authentically and truly be who I am in the world, it would dampen it if I was to try to figure out, Okay, how do I I don't know, how do I maneuver?

I think that's what you're getting at, like this idea of.

I'm actually being less calcululated, like that you're an observer of humanity.

You know how to connect with people.

That doesn't mean they know how to connect with you.

So theoretically you could be a situation where they think you're the greatest friend they've ever had, but they really don't know who you are.

Well, I think that, for one, there's a certain sense of connection that you have with each person who you are close with, who you've spent time with, that is unique to you, and no one can ever know what the vibration between you and that person is.

That's something that it's like sometimes when people see a couple and they're like, why is she with him?

And they're like, you know that vibe, but it's how did they get together?

What is that?

Well, it's not for you to know.

Between those two there's a reality and for them it's.

Real and.

It may not be the same as it is between you and him or you and her.

Are you know the kind of connection that you have varies between different people, and the depth of that connection varies.

You can go deep with some people in a different way than you can with others, but then on some more basic levels, maybe there's not a resonance.

And that's what I've learned about people.

There's levels, and there's different It's like different kinds of songs.

There's hymns, there's lullabies, there's concer thos, there's symphonies, there's instrumental vehicles for improvisation.

And you go to this person when it's like we connect in this way when we want to play straight no chaser and take thirteen minute excurageon like and we connect in a very deep way in that regard.

So for me, I've not limited the experience of relationship with people and the connectivity that can exist the cross the spectrum of humanity for me and for other people, just because maybe there's one aspect of my life or my identity that they don't have access to.

Now, that doesn't mean that you have to also know how to protect yourself and your integrity and integraty the things you believe and to hold the line with that and certain things certain people shouldn't have actscess too, I'll say it like that, Okay, so that that's true as well.

And you have to know what that is for you, and they have to know what that is for them, And that really doesn't have anything to do with you other than what it is, what's yours.

You have to know how to My father's really my father and my mother in a different different ways of both you know, they really instilled that in me, in the sense of, you know, don't you're not trying to be liked by everybody.

In fact, that's not even a consideration.

Yes, you should give everybody a benefit of a doubt.

You should try to be able to connect with people and look at them as a human being first, and that's what I'm saying.

But that's not the same thing as trying to be liked by everybody or be accepted by everybody.

My dad is probably the smartest person that I know, and my mom is the most principled and extremely where I get my curiosity from.

She's still learning new skills now in retirement.

And just the different ways that they embody that it's like you don't have to like me, and that also ends relationships or it deepens them.

It becomes like well, if you don't value this, to value that, it's not a matter of me keeping it from you.

Are you not you thinking you're my best friend and not really knowing me or not truly knowing the depth of where I stand or who I am.

No, I don't hide that.

It becomes a thing where it typically activates a different level of the connection.

Okay, circling back and finishing up.

What is your pre show routine?

How do you get psyched up to the degree you do psych yourself up to go on stage?

And how much is outlined?

I mean, I've been to c household name acts on tour.

We're literally the set list is on the lamited Okay, so you're out there.

To what degree is what happens on stage is unexpected to you?

It's different every night.

Every time.

I thrive on that.

I thrive on shifting gears in the middle.

I'll make a set list, I'll change it in the middle of the show.

Sometimes I won't make a set list.

Mostly I'll make set lists for the band.

I don't really like set lists.

I've never been a fan of in ear monitors.

Sometimes the band will wear in ears, other times I'll wear them and enjoin them.

But most of the time I'm not wearing in ears.

I'm feeling the vibrations of the space and the musicians.

Sometimes I wear one ear in and the other ear out, just you know that that's just an example of you know, one thing we did for the first few shows of this tool, we didn't have monitors or in ears.

We just played with two side fills, two speakers on the stage pointing at the band, and we all shared one mix.

And you know, that made it where we had to depend on each other and we had to follow each other in the moment and figure out what's the next thing we're gonna play, and how we're gonna play it, and where's it going.

And I thrive on that.

You know.

I've also been one who has made shows where every second of the show is every segment is like a beat, and it's almost like paced to the second, to where if things happen any other way, the sequence of the show won't have the.

Impact that I know it will have, just based on how I know people will respond.

Now, there are segments in some of the shows where maybe like a fifteen or twenty minute segment in a two hour show that's like that, and I'll map it out and i'll think about it beforehand if I'm like on the plane, or I'll like map it out and i'll like feel it in my body.

And then i'll teach it to the band and we'll learn it and we'll drill it, and then that segment of the show, I know is like that's ironclad, that's not going to change, and I know what the impact that it's probably gonna be before and after it, So then I'll like frame it with improvisation the whole time.

Okay, So so there's like many different ways that I approach the performances.

But yeah, I and I can do both.

You know.

One I guess you call it like more of a classical approach through composed and then the other is this sort of spiritualist like you almost like a shaman in the space or a great great pastor you know, like the greatest showman.

I oftentimes think about the connection between the you know, the circus tent and the revival tent.

You know, there's just kind of connectivity of that and tent culture and and and.

Yeah, man, I'm trying not to go on tangents so much.

The thing about my therapy is now my thoughts to just spill out of my mouth, but.

They're even going.

There's more that are in my mind that I'm not I'm trying to like put it into nice answers bite size for the press.

I will tell you this, You're much more organized than you think you are.

You tend to circle back to the next point, and you're digressing less.

I don't know what's going on in your brain, but it does not perceive this scattershot on this end, that's for sure.

Well, I'm grateful to hear that, you know, I'm just like it's it's.

It's such a beautiful gift for for for for me to have the opportunity to to share music with people on stage and in a way that makes they were really value and it really makes their life a little bit better.

And it also for me.

The flip side of that is in the show, I can be so exhausted and nervous and overstimulated and just piled on, and in the show something will happen that can't be played.

It's not in the set list.

It's just the endless variety of the creator.

And it will be this therapeutic expression for me that then reaches people on the deepest level in the show, and that is ultimately what I'm looking for in every show, even when I map out the beats and I make something that is like because I don't even like the idea of playing songs in the show.

That's another reason why it's hard for me to really I've had to learn how to form my mind around the idea of a song and promoting songs and writing songs because I've always thought about music and live performance in particular, and being an artist in that regard and seeing myself as a front person, as someone who's creating moments with music.

So that could mean there could be ten songs in the span of two minutes, or that could mean we could play one song for ten minutes, or that could mean we could deconstruct the song in a way that you know what is what I appreciate about bands like Fish, you know, like.

The jam band World or whatever you want to call that.

But like and my cousin, you know, Russell, my late cousin, Russell Baptiste Junor played in the Meters and played in that world.

I would constantly beat under his drum throne watching him play in that kind of space, but just in generous idea of a song and a set list of songs and like, let me play my song.

I understand the power of that, the value that that That's just never really been me.

It's about how do I put and create a moment.

And I use song to illustrate a message and create a moment and build an atmosphere that we can all step into.

And then that moment is explosive in a way that I think a song would limit.

A song capture you in a different way.

That's like somebody speaking to your heart and you and you and artists, like a song is like a friend, whereas a moment is you're cultivating a space.

It's like heaven.

Uh, It's just it's so difficult for me to explain in music terms.

But that's what I want to do in the live show and that's what we've been doing and hopefully we'll continue to do.

Well.

It's been heaven talking to you.

I mean, I got a lot of conversations that are not stimulating for people who are very base, Dick, but you're a deep thinker.

I love talking to you, and I know my audience will enjoy this.

So thanks so much John.

Oh Man, thank your so my voice is so low I'm like, oh thanks man.

Okay, until next time.

This is Bob left six