Trumpet Player Q&A w/ Chris Botti!

Yeah, John Yeah, the Bob Reeves podcast and he was very helpful in making a connection and yeah, just a few months later. Here we are Sitting at a hotel in South Korea Where I was stationed at the time and here that was eight years ago. Yeah, and here we are sitting down again It's really cool. Time flies a lot has happened in that eight.

Yes, and I've I haven't improved one bit in interviewing Just to warn you and the food's worse today It was in your hotel and then we had some dinner afterwards, yeah Yeah, I have some questions just I just called Facebook for sure questions from fellow trumpeters Okay, but what really impresses me Watching you, Because you're very well known.

I guess we call you a pop star. Would you say that's a fair assessment? Popular. Yeah, yeah. But in every, every promo video, every album cover, there's trumpet. We always see the trumpet. You're one of the last standard bearers. Because we used to have Harry James, Maynard Ferguson, they would front these nationally known bands.

Mhm. We don't have that very much anymore. You're like fronting a major band with the trumpet. I think that's really cool. Thank you. I certainly, as the years have ticked on, it's literally we play a show and do we have the ability to be asked back? And that, that has been the greatest anticipation or the greatest kind of achievement.

Like people might say Grammy or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or, or successful records or something like that. But, I think it's shrunk down to do people recognize the face with the trumpet? That's why I have the trumpet in there. Cause you know, a lot of times they don't, it's, it needs the trumpet to sell.

So it differentiates you from other pop stars. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I mean, I think when Diana Krall was coming up, maybe on her records, she wouldn't be sitting by the piano, but a lot of the stuff, people know her as the jazz pianist. That's when she first started to come up. And then she became involved in pop culture in, in our daily lives, so to speak.

And the same thing could be said for a lot of different people over the course of time. But that, that's why I had, I had the trumpet and gives some Identifiable. I want to go see that trumpet player tonight in Morristown and, and it, and it shrinks down to that level rather than when I was signed to Columbia Records 20 years ago.

We think much more like across the country, like how many records sold or how well did your radio play transfer in Chicago as opposed to San Francisco as opposed to New York. And now it's just because people. Give their opinions and they blow up the promoter right after the show like so many of the shows we do we are hired back by the promoter who's offstage and Goes up to my manager and says when can we book for next year?

Okay, or within a couple of months They'll say you're booked again for next year. We leave Palm Springs and boom We're booked for two nights because It used to be radio people would go to the radio stations and then they get feedback from the radio stations and they report back to the record company and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Now people just go, I like the Chris Bode show. I see he's coming to Atlanta. Go check him out. And it's all on Facebook and they get emails to the people that support this theater here tonight. They get emails to the promoter and said, we really liked that Chris Bode show. Okay. And that is. All you focus on anymore, whereas, whereas 20 years ago, you looked at some in a completely different thing, like almost like a marketing, like records to market to radio to market.

But now, thankfully, we have a career enough to get us into a theater like this. And then it's up to us for probably the last six, seven, eight years to hold on to that audience. And that's my whole daily existence now. Which is completely a shift from the way it used to be. Okay, so let's say 20 years ago, who did you need to impress to succeed?

People at the record company. People at the record company. Yeah. I mean, I, my former manager, Bobby Columbia, who did so many great things for me, got me a record deal on Columbia Records, and at the time, I had some little bit of success with Verve Records, and then I switched to Columbia, but I could have just Made some records and he would have sold a hundred thousand or at that time, the record business was really good.

So maybe a couple hundred thousand or 150, 000 or something like that. And, and we played the record company and, and I don't mean played it in a bad way. We ingratiated ourselves in particular to one gentleman, Don Einer, who was the president of Columbia records. And Bobby had a long relationship with him and went into him and on my, when I fall in love record, Don Einer sat there in the.

50th floor of sony music and said You guys go make the record Do whatever you want. Don't worry about radio. Don't worry about anything and when it's done We'll have a glass of wine listen to it and that'll be it And then he just went kaboom and pulled the lever So whatever money we wanted For whether it's getting on Oprah or traveling to Chicago to get on Oprah or the When I Fall In Love recording or the promotion or the photo shoot or whatever.

He just went, boom, done. But to get to that place where Don Iyer goes, boom, done, because he's not doing it to everyone at the record company. So, you have to like, spend a lot of time up at Columbia Records meeting the head of promotion and the radio people. Now, there's hardly anyone left. Certainly at Columbia and the jazz in that kind of Columbia records turned into Adele.

Like it just, they, they just became the Adele record company at a certain point, like five years ago. And I recognized that and I parted ways. And now I'm super happy to be on iconic Bluto records. And so our new record comes out in a week or two weeks, something like that October 20th, three weeks, month.

And, and my, it's now another process of learning, but we're established. And so that's the good take. And so then everything shrinks down rather than trying to impress the head of promotion at Columbia records so they can be on your wheelhouse. So when Oprah does want you to be on, they have the budget to To take my whole band out there and pay for it.

It's very expensive. And yeah, a lot of people don't know that when, when Oprah says you get a car, you get a car, you get a car, she's not paying for somebody, the car company's paying for it says advertising. So the same thing when, when, and I'm super grateful that she loved my music. That's a given, but you've got to get everyone out there, put them all up.

Pay for the rights to the licensing and all that stuff and the makeup and the blah, blah, blah, and the flights packets. When I had no gigs and no money, zero, zero broke. It was a big deal. And Columbia Records, Kim Jackworth, the publicist people and Fran DeFeo and all those lovely people there. They did that.

And they, I was on their wheelhouse, but then they also had Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel and Prince on their wheelhouse too. We're moving in there, us over And thankfully it worked. Like my team, my career. Because in the big record companies, they're looking for the biggest, absolute bang for their buck and the quickest bang for their buck.

And a big pop label, their first thing on the wheelhouse on the 55th floor isn't a jazz trumpet player. And that's what made it unique. And that's what Bobby orchestrated and got us in there. And forever grateful to Don Iyer for that. Yeah. Yeah. So 20 years ago, you're, you sink or swim on the judgment or the opinion of one person.

Is that accurate? Okay. The floodgates don't open for you to have an opinion placed on your music by a large swath of the population, unless someone A gatekeeper. A gatekeeper with the pockets at the record company to pull the boom. When my Italia record came out in 07, we had a full page ad in the New York Times.

That's expensive. Yes. But it also, people see the guy with the trumpet and it registers in there that it's not whatever, a singer, Michael Bolton, whatever. It's not a pop singer, it's the guy with the trumpet. Do I like his music? Do I not? I heard something I like, I'm gonna go see. It gets down to that sort of thing and On many levels, Talia came out and we did all the morning shows and Larry King and Bocelli guested with us on Larry King.

And it was, we sold a ton of albums and that's when the record business changed. Then everything is in a completely different place now, the way people consume music, the way people, but what doesn't change is if I remember John Mayer and I signed to Columbia Records at the same time. And we would see each other different venues.

We struck up a friendship. He's getting with us and I can't remember when it was exactly. He said it, but he nailed it. He said, there's a garage door closing. And if you're lucky enough to have an audience, you get in underneath the garage. It's closing, you know, this thing called streaming or whatever is going to change the landscape of how we monetize music.

The most important thing is gigging. So he was saying like the model as you know it the door is closing Yeah, if you're lucky enough to have if you're lucky enough to be established. Yeah when this thing changes you got a shot But it like if I was trying to come up in the business now, yeah boy I mean I get asked all the time.

What would you do? Like I have no idea like for young jazz musicians The scene is there a scene I don't And how that scene translates into a larger, like throwing a pebble in a still lake, how does that scene translate into something that would make a career? So you could, it's one thing to sell a ticket at the Monterey Jazz Festival, it's a whole other thing to sell a ticket in Columbus, Ohio on a Tuesday night.

You know, like the jazz festivals are propped up. There's two a year. There's Montreal, there's Newport, and there's Monterey, something like that. You can't make your living with it. Yeah. And, and those, yeah, those things are completely different. Yeah. My observation is that the, based on what you've said thus far is the niche, it opens the doors.

Maybe some doors were closed to succeed in that paradigm. But in, in light of this, there are. Opportunities to succeed in a very hyper specialized niche. And this is something that I talk about all the time with doing podcasts, like podcasts is the new television. It is, there's not, there's not going to be, I don't, I don't think in 10 years there's going to be a, I don't think there's going to be a CNN or maybe they'll keep the lights on, but I can't see nobody's watching it anymore.

Okay. And that's why zero, but that's why, that's why all these CNNs and the CBSs, they jumped onto the podcasting bandwagon because they see, but they don't have people, but they don't have anyone really like the real famous podcasters, IE, Joe Rogan, et cetera. They're getting 14, 15 million views per episode and CNN.

I'm sure their podcast is getting 5, 000, not even, not even nothing. In other words, it seems to me like, I don't know. I'm not, I'm certainly not, I'm not on social media. I don't really deal with that. I don't, I don't tend to, I don't want to speak out of school, but just from scooting around on YouTube and seeing like who's successful, these guys are coming out of nowhere and they have massive followings and they're going and people, even in the last, I know this, even in the last year, cable subscriptions are down.

Eight percent? Nine percent? Probably more. In the whole country? That's just what they're reporting. Yeah. And young people and stuff like that are just watching YouTube, they're watching podcasts, they're just, they're getting their information in little streams and snippets. And certainly you're going to find that CNN's not going to be able to afford to pay whomever, like these, the ten million dollars a year.

It's a massive layoff, I think, recently. Oh, yeah. It's happened. But what I'm saying is that That door closing opens the door for people like myself who doesn't have those resources and we're sitting here in a dressing room in Virginia Beach I've got a little tiny little microphone in an iPhone and I'm recording a podcast.

Yeah with Chris Bodie Yeah, and also and I think the thing that I think people really like About podcasts. And Joe Rogan says this all the time is that he's, it's not scripted. You don't have the higher ups at CNN saying, you must say this exact same thing, and this is what we're going to talk about for four minutes.

And then there's going to be an ad. They just riff and they can use profanity. They can get tawdry if they want to. And it's become more democratic. And, and I think that's what I heard with your first remarks about you finish a show. Let's say you finish your show here in Virginia and people are leaving their reviews on wherever they leave their reviews.

And that is your, that's the metric by how you are able to succeed and whether or not you get invited. You're not look, you're not reliant on one person giving his blessing, his or her blessing on your product. You're more reliant on the people. Yeah, and that's been the great thing for me because we got in underneath the garage door closing.

We got into the garage before. So you're riding the wave. Yeah, and that's why I'm saying if I was someone coming up now, if I put myself in my 35 year old, 38 year old person, I don't know what I would, how I would approach it. I don't, I would probably be like all over social media trying to build following and.

That way. And I know there's got to be a way. I don't, I just don't know. Well, people are doing it. Yeah, I know people are doing it. Yeah. I'm just talking about with music. Yeah, like with jazz music, like with instrumental music. I haven't, lately, I haven't seen anyone bubble up that will cross over. I, I, I don't know that it's possible to rise to those levels.

And if it is possible, then you, there is still a bit of that structure that you were talking about. But however, in every city, there's a performing arts place like we're playing tonight. And I always just tell, especially my young singer friends and stuff like that, just hang in there. We've seen like a major, just in jazz alone in the last four years, we've lost a lot of very influential, iconic, Wayne Shorter, Tony Bennett, Chick Corea, Wallace Roney.

Wallace Ronney. I'm sorry, who am I? Clark Terry has passed. Lou Soof has passed. Wallace Ronney. He passed. Yeah, I interviewed him a couple of times. Rolf's Med passed. I didn't know that a few years ago. Nope. I'm almost positive. I'm almost positive. Yeah, I think he, he passed away the second month of COVID.

So I don't, biggest blunder of my life. If that's the biggest one, then you've done pretty well. Oh, Roy Hargrove too. Who? Roy Hargrove. Oh my goodness. Yeah. And that's a big loss. I'm a, was a huge fan of him. And yeah, he, All right. Yeah. This is a great segue for, I just, I just, solicited questions on some Facebook groups and one person asked, Who are your inspirations?

He sang, he wasn't the greatest singer, but it was so honest. And, and he just, man, I just, I thought he was great. Fantastic. But inspirations when I was a kid. Originally it was Doc Severinsen, and then Miles. Beyond everyone else. And then, of course, all the great ones. Clifford, Woody, Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan.

All the standard stuff. Clifford especially. And then when I moved to New York, I heard Wynton. And I I really respect so much Winton's playing. But man, when he just, he like, I think he sort of re worked his whole vocabulary out in front of the world. Like when he jumped onto the scene in, he was 19 or 20, he had this brilliant technique, and he played classical music and stuff like that.

And then by the time, 20 years later, when he released that House of Tribes record, You could just tell, like, his whole, like, everything, his content, what he plays, was so staggeringly elevated. It wasn't just the flashy technique stuff. It was, it was a harmony vocabulary thing on a completely unique, different level.

And that's when I really became, I was always a big fan of Wynton, but that's when I really became a super admirer of him. I don't know anyone, maybe even Except for Clifford Brown and his height, that could just motor through Donna Lee. But to play it with the vocabulary that he plays with, that isn't just like Clifford Brown.

He's got a completely different articulation, and the way he maneuvers through the chords with that incredible intellect and grace. Current day stuff, I mean, like Wynton would be right there, I'm on board. He's awesome. By vocabulary, you're talking about technique? No, through the chord changes. Yes, that's technique, but it's what he's stating, how he's outlining the chords, how he's maneuvering through all the different parameters, and he's got, like where Clifford would, Attack things much more Ly.

Ly. Yeah. Winton has this, a lot of Louis Armstrong, buddy Bolden in his playing and he does like a lot of arpeggios, like old, old school stuff. Old school harmony. But then he has so much intellect from standard like modern day contemporary stuff, so he. Fluids them in before so he's like where Clifford never Clifford was just always the language was the super hardcore bebop stuff And it was more scalular all the way across where Wynton does these outlines the g minor chord Without going to the A and the C, he just goes G, D, G, B flat, D, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup.

But that, that's Louis Armstrong stuff. And Clifford never do that. Clifford go that's scalular. And Wynton articulated, articulates both of those things. That old school and the way that he sits back in the time, a la Louis Armstrong. Whereas Clifford sits right in the, Wynton has incredible time. But this is what I really admired him, and Wynton did all of this.

While he was being Wynton, he burst onto the scene and was famous. And one of the reasons that I didn't make a jazz record in my twenties. And I think it was one of the best decisions I made. Because I saw Wynton being like this glass ceiling and I said if I make a jazz record no one's gonna penetrate that glass ceiling of making a completely purist, standard, Stella by Starlight, Donna Lee jazz record as good as Wynton's gonna do and certainly it's not gonna be accepted to the general population.

I gotta figure out another path. Okay. And it took me How many, 15 years to make another record, to make a record to, to start. Cause I, and I, I think I was right. Wynton for that straight ahead jazz trumpet thing, no one's come up. It's not Terrence Blanchard, no offense Terrence, awesome. I mean, there are so many spectacular trumpet players today.

Sean Jones Wynton's going to have that glass ceiling. And so I, I just maneuvered over here, got involved with popular singers and came back. The backdoor, so to speak, in jazz. So your heart is always in jazz, but you said, if I were to go this route If I was going to release just a very standard Tippin jazz record You'd be just another guy trying to Correct.

And you'd never Who's going to lose? Because Wynton not only captivated all the Grammys and the pop culture and then he had the classical music and he had the great looks and the statesmanly presentations and yeah and if I would have done that and I would have laid my cards out then I don't think it would have been a smart move and it would have wouldn't have been artistically honest.

And therefore, it's, that's what I like about Roy Hargrove, because it's an honest presentation. He's not trying to do something that he doesn't believe in. To try to, because Whitten does this, I should do that. No. So I waited, and I did studio music and that sort of stuff, and worked with a few. It worked out.

Yeah, it worked out. But you're not, it's not like you're compromising your principles. If anything, yeah. And also, like, when I, when I moved to New York, Joining Paul Simon's band and sitting, standing next to Mike Brecker for those eight years or whatever, however long I was in that band, you learn about a whole different thing.

And also being around somebody like Paul early on, you learn how to rehearse a band, how to, and that's one thing that I really have a problem with. Like a lot of jazz guys, they think if they're lighting up a jazz club at night, And everyone's going, this is awesome. Great. They think they can just roll into the studio the next day, put up some microphones and reduplicate that same thing.

And it will be record making. That's not record making. Record making is a completely different thing. And it needs to be looked at like record making and not just jamming in a studio. And I think a lot of, I'm not, I don't want to name names, but I listen to a lot of jazz records. I'm going like, Doesn't sound the most pleasing to me.

Like it sounds like frenetic or too heady or too obtuse or, I don't know, someone's drunk. I don't know, it just seems. But when you listen to Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, that's record making. Because they had the best engineers, they had the best studio, they had the best microphones. They reserved their playing.

And they tabled the beautiful sound of John Coltrane and Miles, of course, and Bill Evans. And, but they recorded it in such a way in that great classic studio in New York. When Miles would go on tour at the same time, he'd be playing this or whatever. So what would be, but not on the records because it has to be cool.

So people can have it on in their house and listen to it. Like. This, but if they want to get into the incredible artistry and the uniqueness of their sound, like a jazz or wood, then you, it has space for you to get into it, but miles is live records or all the outer stuff he did, miles, smiles and footprints and all that stuff.

Did those records didn't sell like kind of blue and sketches of Spain sketches has been kind of blue or the least flashy. Okay. You could get, you could go listen to miles. Dave is live at the plug nickel. And he's playing probably better than he does on kind of blue. He's just crushing it, but it's never going to be the same.

Cause that's in a live club environment. So everything gets brought up in tempo. You bring everything up to get the visceral thing in the audience to go like, man, that was killing. But that same audience doesn't want, it's like classical music. Like if they go here, Long or Joshua Bell play. The audience goes crazy when they, when Joshua Bell plays like a Paganini unaccompanied technique, just, and the audience goes crazy and they stand up.

That same audience, when they go home, they don't put the stereo on and listen to Paganini. They put the stereo on. They listen to Chopin nocturnes or Beethoven and because it gives them space and they can just go, okay, it's a different listening. It's a different. Impulse into your it's a different. It's a different experience different completely different.

So you go to the jazz club and they're on fire But you have the energy of the crowd that's feeding Yeah, and then somehow the jazzers then they don't care about what microphones are playing in they don't care about the reverbs And they don't care about the studio audience They're more tolerable in a live situation Yeah, but when we do when you do it on a record exact the audience absolutely cares about of course I would say Al Schmidt is responsible for Diana Krall's career.

And Tommy LaPuma, when Diana Krall came up, is Diana Krall. Her records had that, Al Schmidt, who did my When I Fall In Love record, mixed and engineered that, had that same exact space for all those Diana Krall, all the Diana Krall's records until two years ago when he passed away. And, He's responsible for that sound.

Her sound is her sound. And I think people resonate with the sound. That Paris live DVD and all that stuff, that's Alice Schmidt. I'm taking nothing away from her talent, but that's the way her voice sits in the space. You could have recorded that album with a different engineer. You could have recorded her first few records with a different engineer, the ones with the strings and all that stuff.

And I don't know if she would have the same, and I would think she would probably say the same thing too, because the, the, the grace with which she was recorded and it brought out her grace is makes her career. I think. On that note, somebody was asking about the, the technology that you use, compression, EQ, both when you're live And recording.

I think they just want to go live philosophy, your thoughts on how you go about that live. We we carry a a thing. It's a Neve EQ, and it's paramount. Like I wouldn't go into a live, I mean I would if I had to. I've done it. Go into a live building and without my setup, my little Neve EQ strips. It's called a Shelford?

Shelford, yeah. And like a lot of people use it. Like Kanye uses it. A lot of people use the Shelford. It is the best single one rack space EQ you can use. Now when we're in the studio, I used classic knee, like the board, like old knees from the long time ago. But they remade that to be able to travel. You can't travel with those.

And it's a compression and EQ. I don't really use the, I don't really use compression on my trumpet. And I don't really use compression on my trumpet in the studio. It's all, it's all just mixed. We use our own compression because, because once you compress something, it takes away the, by imagine shrink wrapping of dried fruit or something like that.

It takes away the space around that. Once you compress something, it takes away the space and pop singers need the compression because they, they've got so much stuff going on around pop music today. They got so much stuff. There's just so much information in the track with background vocals and everything.

So they need to squash it in to get it, the voice to sit up on top of the track. And that's how you get that full on frontal thing of pop music, jazz musicians, you, you create space by moving stuff away and putting different reverb spaces around them. So the trumpet can sit there. Like it would in a room and hear that space.

So you need, so we painstakingly work like the most high end reverb, my current engineer, Alan sides. I've done my last five records with is just a genius at that. So we use, we used to use capital reverb chambers, but we use EMT plates. He has an old AMS box, but it's old stuff and he maneuvers it beautifully.

Yeah. But on the road we use a Bercoste reverb and a Shelford EQ strip. Somebody wants to know about how did you Oh, the microphone. The microphone. In the studio, I only use, for 20 years I've used, and I finally Alan Sides, who owns Oceanway, was such a gem. He sold me Oceanway 2 and Oceanway 3. Or is it 3 and 4?

They had 10 of them. But this is what Sinatra recorded. And Stevie Wonder and Johnny Cash, and everyone recorded on this, this mic. So it is a tele funken. 2 51 is the big kind of tubular thing, and Miles used it on, I want to say he used it on sketches of Spain. He used a 67 tele. He used a Neuman 67 on kind of blue, but on sketches of Spain, the one that's hanging down that he plays underneath it.

That's that one. The two Telefunken 251. So I, now I have two of them and Alan was so gracious to sold them to me, but they just, they just sit in the closet until I do record a record and break it out and play. How often do you record release albums these days? It's been 10 years. Really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, this, the last record I made was 13 and now it comes out this year in October, the volume one comes out in October, but we were supposed to record the record right when the pandemic started.

And so there's been a bit of delay in that. And then, so my, I was transitioning from Columbia Records to, so they had to do contracts, that takes a while and all that stuff. So we've had a little five year break, or ten year break, but usually you should do a record, I used to record a record every year and a half, when we were starting to get it going, but then the touring thing takes over, And that's what I love about this new record.

We call it Volume 1 because it's my first record for Blue Note. And it's a gigantic reset. I turned 60. A lot of stuff. So we call it Volume 1 for that stuff. I just wrote down some notes on the questions that were asked. Apologies for people who might be listening. If I'm asking a question, I'm not giving you credit.

I apologize. But someone made a note to say that he really enjoyed Deborah's theme. And he said he's been playing trumpet for 69 years and it just inspires him. Yeah. Again, that particular song and then so many of my early stuff Emmanuel Someone to Watch Over Me, all that's, Jeremy Lubbock.

Yes, I'm playing the melody, Ba or whatever. But the way that Jeremy's altering the chords through the orchestra, and we lost Jeremy a couple of years ago. And Jeremy Lubbock was one of the greatest arrangers ever. And I don't have a hit song that's been on the radio, but my Debra's theme, I'm sorry, Emmanuel is a hit song, my hit song.

And that's really, yes, I played the melody, but it's the decision to go to Jeremy and say, make this into a violin duet. And the way he did all that. And I got to give him credit. Cause that Debra's theme is just me and the orchestra and it's not a long piece. It's a three minute or something like that.

And it opens Italia, but the way that Jeremy gets those harmonies to come out and we recorded it in London at air studios with the London symphony. And. So I'm happy to have worked with him. He was a brilliant artist. Somebody wants to know about your daily routine, maintenance of your chops, your skills while you're on the road.

I know that you studied with Bill Adam, who's got a very famous routine. Can you shed some light on that? I do some version of that. Maybe more so now. I still do the long tones and the Clarks. And then I just try to like work on articulation and I certainly during the pandemic I was back to college days practicing eight hours a day.

There's nothing else to do except go to the gym and practice the trumpet. But, but now we travel so much and all that stuff. And, but I practice the fundamentals at least for an hour. An hour and a half, something like that. And then get right into trying to make my vocabulary better through chord changes and through content and whipping around, whether it's like analyzing other people's solos or practicing a particular phrase and just when you get older, when you get older on the trumpet, it doesn't, it's not very kind to you.

So you've got to make sure that your sound is always as rich as it can be. And also I play on a trumpet that's, almost 100 years old, 85 years old. So it's falling apart and it's not the It's a very not friendly instrument to get around on, but it has the killer sound. So it's technically, I could get like another Trump, a modern day trumpet and just fly on it so much easier, like articulation, but you put it on a microphone and nothing.

It sounds like that mark. And so I just, during the pandemic, I tried so many different trumpets and they're all excellent, but they're just, they don't sound like me. And especially when you go on a microphone, like I remember one particular new model trumpet, and I played it for my manager. One of our first days back when we got back from rehearsal at Central Park.

And I played it for him in my apartment. He goes, man, that trumpet sounds amazing. And we got to rehearsal with the band and we just, I just played like one note and the band was like, what? Yeah, really? Oh yeah. It's super. The way you sound in a room is not the way that a trumpet grabs a microphone.

Popular music or an opera, the way an opera singer sings when they stand at the And they launch their voice. They're, they're trying to project their voice to the back of the thing. They have so much force and so much power, but who's the most identifiable opera singer in the world, Bocelli. And he sings on a microphone with this intimacy and his voice grabs the microphone.

If he was singing in the exact way that all the other opera singers were, like with all that wind and fat power and stuff like that, no one would, it wouldn't translate. He sings the way Sinatra does with that intimacy. The way Sinatra sings a ballad, but he's singing opera. He's delivering. He's spinning the sound up with all that grace and the whole elasticity of his voice, but he's not shouting it.

And so a lot of trumpet players. They don't, that's what Miles had. Why Miles on a microphone, man? You just harm a mutant, blah blah blah, you just had that, but Miles played a Martin. Ha ha ha ha. Somebody wants to know, do you feel guilty about tripling the price of Martin committees? Oh God. Ha ha ha ha. I, in, in fairness, the one that I play, the Martin, that I've had maybe some impact on the price, you can't find him.

The Martin committee. Handcraft large bore. You can find a Martin committee handcraft, probably in the last 20 years, I've run across two. Really? And I bought both of them. Okay. I think I bought both of them. No, I bought, I've run across one, and I bought that. And I bought one medium bore. And I bought And I have another Martin, another Martin large bore, but it's not a handcraft.

But you just can't find them. They don't exist. You just can't, they're just, they don't, Martin committee, handcraft, large bore. If anyone's listening and wants to sell me one, let me know. But I just haven't seen, in the minute they come up on eBay, I get like a ton of notifications. Hey, Chris, you want to buy this?

Most guys didn't want to play large bores. They're too hard to play. This has been a blast, man. Okay. I'm glad that we were able to hook up again. Okay. And this time, it's 15 minutes away from my house versus 5 hours from Seoul, Korea. Jeez. And here we are meeting up in Virginia, of all places. And what other, who else do you interview for the podcast?

Is it all trumpet players or? This is, this one is called trumpet dynamics. So it's all trumpet. I do repurpose some of the content for other purposes. I have another one that is more life, spirituality, purpose filled type of thing. So sometimes I'll take a snippet off of an episode and play it on there if it's relevant.

But this one is pure trumpet. Four trumpet players, by a trumpet player, interviewing trumpet players. I've had Manny Laureano, Vinny Shishelsky, Sergei Nekaryakov. Oh, he's fantastic. And they're all great. And they're all very down to earth. And all you have to do is just send them a message on Facebook. You want to do an interview?

Sure. Yeah. Boy, I did. I did one zoom call with Sergei during the pandemic and there were And there were a couple other trumpet players on the thing. We were all just, can you just play something for us? And he just whipped out the horn. Man, what a, he's got to be the greatest classical, maybe. Among the, as far as virtuosic, technical, I don't think he can be beat.

Yeah. Maybe equaled in some ways, but I don't think anybody can top him. That cello stuff that he does on the flugelhorn. It's like, Oh my God. And it's a bummer that he doesn't come to the States that much. Does he at all? I, it's very rare. Yeah. People like him. So a lot of those Europeans, they, they found their niche.

Yeah. They don't really have a reason to come here. Yeah. I don't, and I don't know, honestly, if the demand would really be there. Yeah. I think the markets over there, they're more appreciative of his brand of music where here. . So I don't know that he could succeed here if he was based here. Even with that skill.

And Sam Mendo, Sam. Do you know? He won all the Academy Awards. He's like a big shot. She came to my, she came to my show and we, when I was playing with Streisand, she came to my show in London. And we were talking and I said, like, we were talking about like practicing. She goes, Oh yeah, I usually just take out the horn a couple of weeks before I start a tour.

I'm like, wait, what? You play like that and you like take a few weeks off and then you just take it out and like what? She is a something else. She's great freak real talent. And there's that. Till what? Till zing tina thing helseth. Yeah, she's in norway. I believe. Yeah, she's wonderful. She's wonderful I've heard people say they would put her over allison.

Yeah. Yeah as far as the musicality the nuance in the music Yeah, yeah But everybody has their preferences. Sure. And their tastes. And it really doesn't matter at the end. Exactly. The best players don't argue. Yes. Who's the best players? Yeah. Nadal and Djokovic don't argue over who plays tennis. Yes. John Borg's still alive.

They all know it. McEnough. All right. Well, thank you very much. Yes, sir. Yes, that was a wonderful interview. And thanks again to Chris Bodie for being so generous with his time. And Again, this is why I love doing podcasts, is because I get to meet people that I wouldn't ordinarily get to meet. And I also just feel privileged and honored.

And and I also am just privileged to be somewhat of a conduit between some of these great players of our time and you all who are listening. It's a real, it's just a real thrill for me. So I wanted to take a couple of minutes and share my own observations about Chris Bode as a trumpeter. And I'm just going to start this out by saying that Chris is an absolute beast.

On the trumpet you heard him in this interview talking about miles davis the difference between a a recording studio sound or the way that you're going to approach a recording session versus how you're going to approach a a live concert setting and i've heard people say that like chris bode is the kenny g Of the trumpet things like that.

Just they're not really respectful and they're not trying to be respectful And I have to take issue with people like that. I think that that is just very, it's really impolite, to be honest with you, to say such things, because you don't know the man as he really is as a trumpeter. The man is one of the great players of our time.

And that was confirmed to me last night when I saw his show, he is probably the most fearless trumpeter I have ever seen. He may not be the most technically sound or the most virtuosic player on the planet, but I don't know that I've ever seen someone who is as fearless as Chris Bodie playing a double G.

as the like the, the headlining act of the evening in a theater that's holding 2, 000 attendees who have paid really good money to see him play. And he just tore it up, goes up an octave from a G on top of the staff up to a double G, like it was nothing. That takes some real cojones. And I don't care who you are, you have to have that trumpet player's mindset of, I'm going to crush this.

Say what you will about the man, and you may think that his recordings are garbage, you may think that they're boring, fine. You haven't seen him in person the man can play and i'm just going to leave it at that another observation that I had about My conversation with him. He was talking about this The like the garage door that was closing on the old way of succeeding in the music business.

And I think what he was talking about is succeeding, meaning that there's a certain threshold of popularity so that you can get in in the good graces of a well known producer or a studio executive who can then take the reins and, you know, take you where you want to go. As, as far as being popular, as far as being well known to the masses, of course, having the name recognition to sell albums and merchandise, whatever the case may be.

His comments were along the lines of, those days are over. And quite frankly, I don't know that those days will ever come back and that's just my opinion. It's one man's opinion And it's not a very well founded opinion. I'll be the first to admit it I'm, not the the person that I would ask for on this matter I'm, just sharing what is on my mind, but I don't think that those days will ever come back We had a period of time that was, I don't know, maybe a hundred years, that was more or less the exception as far as being able to have, have a certain standard or a certain level or a certain threshold of success.

And I think that this internet and the way that music is disseminated these days, in some ways, is bringing musicians back to reality. And that is my opinion. Now, the common bond between this new music economy and the old music economy that Chris was referring to, where he got his start and where he got his notoriety, he made a name for himself, and he's kind of riding that wave.

As we spoke about in the interview of success and that he's able to continue to tour and do really well for himself. The common bond between the two eras is you just have to be a kick ass musician. And not only that, but you have to be a great person, and you have to know how to work a crowd. You're not going to get in good I'm saying this in the present tense, back in the day, let's just go back 20 years, because that's what Chris was talking about, 20 years ago, you would never get your foot in the door at some of these big name record labels if you didn't know how to work a crowd.

If you didn't know how to have rapport. with people listening. How to touch people at a very deep level that only music can touch them. If you don't know how to do that, you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of even having an introduction to someone who is the person who grinds the coffee for the person who gets the coffee for the assistant to the assistant to the, the executive.

Assistant to the decision maker. You see where I'm going with this. If you didn't have those basic people skills and you didn't have those really, really exceptional musical abilities, you were never going to have a chance anyway. And in my opinion, if you don't have those two things, then you're not going to succeed in today's economy.

Now, the means by which you gain that popularity and that notoriety, as we said in the interview, are more democratic. It's more of The people have a say, the common person, the ticket holders have more of a say as to whether or not someone like Chris, Chris Bodie gets booked again at the Sandler Center in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

If, if enough people leave positive reviews at the Sandler Center, then they're going to want them back. And it's just that simple. So in some ways there is More of that have a say in a person's success whether they're gonna sink or swim They have to appeal to the masses More so than than back in the day where if you got in good with one person or maybe a Maybe a very small group of people then they could more or less ensure that you would have a certain measure of success as long as you did your job and as long as you continued to do make your music very well and continued to work the crowd and get that rapport and that intimacy with your with your audience You worldwide or nationwide, wherever, whatever the case may be, as long as you keep doing that, then that small group of executives would more or less ensure that you're able to maintain that threshold of success.

Now, if you do something stupid where you're going to tarnish your reputation, well, they can't help you with that. But as long as you do your job, as long as you do what's expected of you, you know, it was, I think maybe it was more predictable. And I don't know that I was able to really. Ask that of chris in that detail or in those specific words Based on what he said, I think he would agree with that.

So that's really all that was on my mind based on My conversation with chris and I got to see chris when I met him in korea eight years ago I I mean I I saw his show right after we spoke, for the for our podcast interview Sadly, I don't have that. I wish that I had it and I You have shot myself or wanted to shoot myself so many times because of some of the interviews that I've lost over the years.

All I can say is that administrative, administrative details are not my strong suit when it comes to podcasting. And I've been through a lot of things in the intervening time. I've moved a lot. I've been through, gone through a lot of life changes. So sadly some of the great stuff that I was able to Produce in my early days simply don't exist anymore.

And if you have if you happen to come across a podcast Called outside the music box hosted by James Newcomb with Chris Bodie then let me know And I want, I will, I will compensate you for it. I'll just leave it at that. Send me an email if you happen to find it. And I will make sure that you are well rewarded.

I was really thrilled to be able to hook up with Chris Bodie and share the interview with you. And I appreciate you guys pressing play and listening all the way to the end. If you have any comments, or if you have any questions, or if you just want to say hello, identify yourself as a listener of the show, I would love to hear from you.

Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time.