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And I do find I like the challenge of trying to find what's right.

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Hello and welcome to the Keyboard Chronicles.

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I'm your host David Holloway and I'm thrilled as always to be here with you at this stage
at 4 .41 in the morning and there's no one I'd rather spend the early hours of the morning

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with than you Paul Bindig.

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How are you sir?

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Well I feel exactly the same way David.

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If I'm going to be up at 4 .11 a in my time I might as well be with you in talking about
our favorite subject which is

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keyboard playing and keyboard players and gee, haven't we got a great guest this time?

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Yeah, look, it doesn't get much better than Larry Goldings and as you'll hear in this
first part of two and that gives you an indication of just how deep we went with Larry, we

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cover a lot of ground, particularly his amazing formative years as a player, some of the
incredible people that he studied under and then some of those early significant gigs he

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undertook.

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We cover a whole bunch of ground and do stick around for part two because as you'll hear
in that one, there's a lot more stuff to learn there as well.

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look, Larry is just an amazing guy to talk to, Paul.

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Yeah, he certainly was, David.

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I really was impressed with the...

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It's nice when you can ask a question and the answer coming back shows a lot of thought
and care and introspection.

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And that's really what I got from our time with Larry was just how much he really cares
about his music.

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And he's so open -minded when it comes to idiom and genre.

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And although he's an absolute master of the world of jazz, he has some really interesting
insights and influences from many other aspects.

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And as you alluded to, David, that a lot of that came from his formative years.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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So, I hope you enjoy this one a great deal and we'll see you at the end of part two.

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Larry, I cannot thank you enough sir for joining.

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It's an honor and a privilege.

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Thank you so much.

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Thank you for reaching out.

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Happy to be here.

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So I feel like we've got so much to talk about.

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So I'll jump straight in, but we'll start with our standard question, which is just a bit
about your musical upbringing.

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So I'm particularly keen to talk about your formative early adult years and the amazing
teachers you had.

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But let's start from the very beginning.

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What was your musical upbringing that

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you know, developed a passion for you for music.

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There was a piano in our house in a suburb of Boston, Newton Mass, where I grew up.

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I didn't grow up in a musical family, although my father in particular was a music lover,
is a music lover and listened to a lot of classical music.

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And we had a piano in the house and I gravitated to the piano apparently at around nine
and just started playing things by ear and was

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listening to people on the radio like Billy Joel and Stevie Wonder and whatever was coming
through the radio or was popular at that time.

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And was able to, you know, pick things up, learn about harmony that way by particularly
some of the, when my ear got a little bit more sophisticated, particularly things like

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Billy Joel songs, which were more harmonic than other pop songs.

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Although that,

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At that time, pop songs were generally quite interesting compared to what you hear today.

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Harmonically, I mean, between Stevie Wonder and Steely Dan and Billy Joel, there was a lot
for someone who was maybe heading towards jazz, you know, to grab onto.

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So I didn't really, I did have a classical teacher in the beginning or like just a basic
piano teacher that taught me how to read and things like that.

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But I didn't take, I didn't go very far with that.

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in terms of the playing of it, the listening of classical music, I've done very thoroughly
over the years, but also for just for harmonic information, you know, a lot of that and

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just the beauty of it.

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so I did, I went to a music camp when I was 12 in Maine, in the state of Maine.

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And that was probably when I had my first jazz piano teacher.

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that summer and he gave me, I remember he typed out this list of artists that I should,
know, whose records I should find.

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And that sort of got me on the way.

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And actually a client of my father's was a jazz fan.

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He gave me a Dave McKenna record.

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And it was the Dave McKenna record that I think really hooked me into jazz.

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And I was also listening to Oscar Peterson and

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a lot of blues based kind of players like Oscar.

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But that summer camp experience was very, I think, influential.

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Got to play with other kids who were into it.

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But I also had a rock band and things like that.

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was always been sort of all over the place in terms of what I liked.

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But when I came home from that, I definitely wanted a teacher and I...

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I had a teacher named Peter Casino in the early, you know, when I was probably 13 or 14.

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And he really gave me a lot of my jazz knowledge, you know, gave names to the things that
I already knew and then got me just a little bit deeper into other things, improvisation.

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And after a couple of years with him,

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though he said, I was still in high school, he said, you know, I think I think I should
send you to somebody else.

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And he recommended a guy named Rand Blake.

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And Rand Blake was the head of the what was called the third stream department at the New
England Conservatory.

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And he was teaching there, but he was also teaching out of his home.

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And that was a really big eye opener for me, ear opener, I should say, because he was
really

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very much about training the ear and getting me exposed to music that he figured I
probably hadn't heard yet.

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And that was, again, a very eclectic spectrum of music.

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And he was really important, I think, because of all of those things and other things too,
just working on finding my own voice.

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When I would play my Oscar Peterson licks and stuff, he would say, well, Oscar's cool, but
he sort of suffered from diarrhea of the hands.

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I remember he said something like that.

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And really wanted me to, even at that point, try to get rid of some of those influences,
you know, to really focus on myself.

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I think I might've been a little, I mean, I'm really happy he led me down that direction.

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I think I still needed to absorb some of the great

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pianist at that point, but he did put that notion in my head that it's really about
finding myself.

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But he would give me cassettes of various things on one cassette, like come and be able to
sing the 16 bars of this Bartok piece, plus this Stevie Wonder tune and this Bud Powell

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solo.

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And to him, music was music.

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You know, Duke Ellington said, there's only two kinds of music, good music and bad music.

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So I think that was just the perfect person at that formative stage to get me thinking
about the full picture and the fact that one can draw influence from anything.

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so Rand was very, very important.

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I also thought that he was a very, and still is,

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very original piano player.

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Not like a swinging piano player by his own, you he himself would call himself a, how does
he describe himself?

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A noir, you know, sort of, he's really more into mood and texture and he doesn't really
play any recognizable licks, you know.

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And so I still think of him as sort of someone that

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I look to for, you know, for someone who really, where originality is really where it's
at.

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And, and he turned me onto so much music.

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So that was still high school.

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Also during high school, it's sort of a long story how this happened, but I got the
opportunity to have three or so lessons with Keith Jarrett.

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And that was at his home.

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in Oxford, New Jersey.

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By that, even by that point, I mean, I hadn't heard everything that he had done.

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But he was certainly a huge influence and almost, I was almost too intimidated by him to
fully absorb what happened in those lessons.

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Having said that, he was very supportive.

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He, he invited me to come back after the first lesson and

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But I was really young.

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I was really young.

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if you've ever read his interviews, you know that he can talk on another plane of thought.

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And I think I was a little bit too young at the time to absorb a lot of what he had to
say, or just being around him and seeing him play right in front of me and getting to play

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with him on two pianos and just getting a glimpse of his life.

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was crazy.

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I didn't really keep up the relationship, unfortunately, although I could

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just and I should call him up, especially since what he's been through with his health.

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And I plan to call him, but he's still somebody that I feel like, he's going to judge me
for being an organ player or for not being true to pure improvisation or something.

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And I had sort of a complex about it, which is maybe a therapist's job to help me figure
out.

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But

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He certainly will always be considered one of my main influences.

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And people often ask me, is there anything that you remember that you drew from those
lessons?

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And the one thing that I always talk about, he had this book and I wish, and when I do
call him, I am gonna ask him if he remembers the book, but he had picked up a book in

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England, I think I remember saying.

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where the whole premise was like five volumes and the premise was, here's like volume one,
here's a very simple one hand, folky melody, four bars of it.

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You take as much time as you need to compose the inevitable sounding and that's the word
he used, the inevitable answer.

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to those four bars.

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The point being that what we're doing in improvisation is just a completely sped up
process of that.

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And if you can get good at really coming up with the perfect way to end your idea, that's
what we're trying to do in real time.

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And by the fifth book, it was like atonal, know, two handed harmony.

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So it's a very cool idea.

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And also,

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in retrospect, it made me think of the importance of composition too, because if you can
write something really good when you have all the time in the world, that's the first

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step.

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Not everybody can write something that sounds inevitable.

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if you can practice that discipline, and then it's just a question of speeding it up.

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And if anybody can do that consistently, brilliantly,

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over the years on record, live, you know, it's Keith Jarrett.

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I mean, he does it probably, I mean, I don't want to say better than anybody, but I mean,
in terms of the number of records he made and the number of times he does exactly that,

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you know, plays a phrase and then without flubbing or any, you know, disruption in his
thought.

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just plays the most beautiful, gets out of it in the most beautiful way.

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And he also, he's a great composer.

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He hasn't composed in a long time or he hasn't released anything like that in a long time.

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But those were formative players.

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I then went to the New School for Social Research, the jazz program there in its first
year of its existence.

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And I had great teachers there.

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had Jackie Byard for one, who was really another

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I think I started to learn more about him when I was there.

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Went back and checked him out with Mingus and his own records.

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But I really look to him as someone who is very much kind of what I'm trying to do.

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And that is look at the past and the future at the same time.

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You know, he's someone who can sound totally authentic playing fat swallower stride, but
then set them off on something that's free.

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He's completely.

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beautiful there and he has his own language and but he's very he has a very very firm he
has very very firm roots in the past and he was great he was just a very eccentric and

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original personality kind of an unorganized teacher but it didn't really matter it was
just wonderful that was one of the great things about being in New York in the 80s was you

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could still

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You could still sit with those people, approach them.

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A lot of them were coming through the school.

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And even if they weren't great teachers in the classic sense, as long as they played for
you or told stories about their experiences, it was kind of better than what you get.

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know, it's just that much more, you get that much more in touch with the roots of the
music.

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Then you do someone who's in their 30s and has a lot of information.

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Not to knock younger good teachers, but at that time it was quite a unique thing to be
able to be around Jackie Byer, Jim Hall, Jimmy Heath, Donald Byrd.

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These are all people who were at the school.

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Reggie Werkeman, just to hear them talk about their own experiences was just something
that you would only really be able to get from a book of interviews or something.

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So it was a great experience.

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Roland Hanna, Sir Roland Hanna was not my private teacher, but he was taught an ensemble
that I was in.

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And one day he came up to me and said, would you be interested in being an up and coming
special guest at an international jazz party that I go to every year?

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I was like, I hadn't even been to Europe.

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And that was a huge life -changing experience.

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It was a three or four day thing in Holland.

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The pianists alone were Roland and Tommy Flanagan and Hank Jones and Cedar Walton and
little 18 year old me, you know.

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And then Sarah Vaughan was there and Kenny Burrell and Swedes Edison and James Moody.

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And they, they put a set together where I was a sideman with some of these people and, and
it was just crazy.

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And then there was

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a night where all these cats were hanging out in the bar.

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And my dad, by the way, came with his mother, my grandmother.

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We all went to Europe together.

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And I think they had gone to bed, but I went to this bar where they were just hanging out
and there was this cocktail piano player playing, poor guy.

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And then Roland Hanna, you know, had a few drinks and he asked the cocktail piano player,
do you know memories of you?

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And the guy said, no, I don't.

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And he goes, Larry, you know, memories of you.

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And I'm looking around and I see like the who's who of the jazz world sitting around
having drinks.

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And then I played for about a half an hour and just the experience of getting little
approving glances from Tommy Flanagan and such, it felt like my confidence just went up,

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you know, a hundredfold.

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One of those experiences that in a weekend, you know, just made me feel like.

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wow, maybe I could be part of this community, you know.

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People like that were incredible who took me under their wing in that way.

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Arnie Lawrence, the saxophone player who started the new school, I need to mention him.

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was hugely important.

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He was one of the first guys to hire me for local gigs and make sure that certain people
heard me.

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when people came to give master classes, he would always have me in the band.

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That's how I ended up playing with John Hendricks, which was my first real big name kind
of gig.

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And was doing it through, you know, while I was still in college.

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And not to mention Jim Hall, that was the other person that I started playing with Jim as
a result of Jim being a teacher at the new school.

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So it was a great time to be in New York and the school was really important in getting me
exposed.

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It sure was.

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so I think it's safe to say, Larry, that your formative years were very nondescript, not
much going on there.

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So I do want to ask you about two things.

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One was Rand Blake in the third stream, which you mentioned in passing.

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So how influential was that?

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And for our listeners that don't understand what the third stream is, just how you
mentioned he liked playing a diversity of music.

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And I'm also kind of here just a little bit more about the new school and it's

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00:19:14,870 --> 00:19:20,332
why it was called the New School and its different approach to music education.

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00:19:20,332 --> 00:19:24,534
don't, well, the New School has a longer history than, than the jazz program.

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The New School was, I think started in the forties.

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I'm not even sure why it was called the New School, but Arnie Lawrence, developed a
friendship with the Dean, David Levy, I think was his name.

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And he was a big jazz fan and a big art, artist and, and,

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very important in the art community, I think, in New York.

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And so that's how that started, that relationship started.

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David Levy was more of an academic guy, but Arnie Lawrence was not.

200
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And it was really that kind of tension that made the school very, very unique.

201
00:20:02,266 --> 00:20:12,590
And unfortunately in the end, they kind of pushed Arnie out because he was such a sort of
outsider to that sort of organized kind of.

202
00:20:13,915 --> 00:20:17,716
academic kind of mold.

203
00:20:19,858 --> 00:20:24,620
But, mean, that was unique really because of the people that he hired to come in.

204
00:20:24,620 --> 00:20:34,225
they, as I said, a lot of them were really just, he felt like we have to get players,
people who are players first and maybe teachers second.

205
00:20:34,366 --> 00:20:42,920
And, you know, for the people who already had kind of had a head start in playing, I think
they got a lot out of it.

206
00:20:43,074 --> 00:20:52,919
For some of the less experienced players, I think they were a little bit more lost, you
know, because they didn't even quite appreciate who they were surrounded by.

207
00:20:52,919 --> 00:21:04,334
And they needed more basics, you know, before learning about, know, listening to Jimmy
Heath talk about Coltrane was interesting to them, but they really needed more basics.

208
00:21:04,334 --> 00:21:09,086
And there were a few of us that already had some of that.

209
00:21:09,140 --> 00:21:16,855
down and what we really needed is to be able to sort of play with this type of caliber of
player.

210
00:21:18,177 --> 00:21:33,247
that to me was the most, and going to New York at that time, that was what you got out of
New York is you were able to be thrown into situations that were above your level, thus

211
00:21:33,247 --> 00:21:35,789
making you better much more quickly.

212
00:21:37,750 --> 00:21:39,341
You asked about the third stream.

213
00:21:39,341 --> 00:21:47,417
Third stream, think, was just a name that I don't know exactly what it, you know, there's
jazz, there's classical, and then there's the third stream, which is sort of everything

214
00:21:47,417 --> 00:22:04,989
else, you know, world music from around the world, classical music, and just this whole
idea of getting influence from all that is interesting and worthy of study and using your

215
00:22:04,989 --> 00:22:06,269
ear to learn.

216
00:22:06,770 --> 00:22:10,553
not trans, not looking at transcription books and things like that.

217
00:22:10,553 --> 00:22:12,994
If you want to transcribe, do it by ear.

218
00:22:13,835 --> 00:22:25,313
And if you want to transcribe, just don't do Charlie Parker and, you know, listen to this
Bulgarian women's choir or whatever it's going to be.

219
00:22:25,313 --> 00:22:30,416
Especially for the purpose of you finding who you are.

220
00:22:30,416 --> 00:22:36,022
you know, so I think that's what the third stream was about.

221
00:22:36,022 --> 00:22:41,344
Larry, I'm interested in the journey into the world of the organ.

222
00:22:41,344 --> 00:22:47,667
You mentioned before the hypothetical idea that Keith Jarrett might be horrified that you
went down that road.

223
00:22:47,667 --> 00:22:53,889
I'm sure he wouldn't be, but I'm fascinated as to what attracted you to it, how did you
discover it, and how did your journey into it start?

224
00:22:53,889 --> 00:22:56,350
Yeah, it was very, very kind of random.

225
00:22:56,350 --> 00:23:05,554
I mean, when I went to New York, I hadn't been playing the organ, never had even seen the
Hammond B3L.

226
00:23:05,780 --> 00:23:07,341
Of course, knew what it was.

227
00:23:07,341 --> 00:23:09,792
I loved the sound of it.

228
00:23:09,792 --> 00:23:20,298
I had heard probably some of the Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery records and heard gospel
music or gospel influence music like Aretha Franklin.

229
00:23:20,298 --> 00:23:23,400
Probably would have been Billy Preston on some of those records.

230
00:23:23,400 --> 00:23:27,482
Maybe didn't even realize that it was Billy Preston on some of the Beatles records.

231
00:23:27,482 --> 00:23:35,086
And because I loved Dave McKenna, when I played solo piano, I would concentrate on walking
bass lines.

232
00:23:35,158 --> 00:23:37,879
And so I had that going for me.

233
00:23:37,879 --> 00:23:51,705
But I hadn't thought about playing organ until a friend of mine named Leon Parker, great
drummer, was holding down like three days a week at a little shithole up on the West,

234
00:23:51,705 --> 00:23:55,667
Upper West Side called Augies, which is now Club Cold Smoke.

235
00:23:55,667 --> 00:24:04,500
He called me one day and said, hey, my bass player didn't show up and I know you like to
walk baselines and maybe you'd come up and walk baselines, you know, on a keyboard.

236
00:24:05,154 --> 00:24:07,345
And that's literally how that happened.

237
00:24:07,345 --> 00:24:09,416
I brought up a DX7.

238
00:24:09,816 --> 00:24:15,499
Then I was like, well, if I'm walking bass lines, maybe I could do it on an organ sound
because that's what organ players do.

239
00:24:16,139 --> 00:24:18,831
And that then turned into a regular gig.

240
00:24:18,831 --> 00:24:20,781
We just started doing that a lot.

241
00:24:21,642 --> 00:24:28,525
then I got really, I get very quickly obsessed with this idea of the organ and walking my
own bass lines.

242
00:24:29,678 --> 00:24:34,099
the type of little places that I could get gigs didn't have piano sometimes.

243
00:24:34,099 --> 00:24:39,241
So I thought, well, there's a way to play these little clubs.

244
00:24:40,001 --> 00:24:42,662
And I got more and more interested in the organ.

245
00:24:42,662 --> 00:24:50,344
I got different, I went to a used music place and got this old core double -tiered organ
and got really into it.

246
00:24:50,344 --> 00:24:58,526
Long story short, the personnel of that changed and Peter Bernstein and who I met,

247
00:24:58,638 --> 00:25:03,162
I already forgot about the Eastman summer program, high school program.

248
00:25:03,162 --> 00:25:06,644
was a huge deal.

249
00:25:06,644 --> 00:25:13,930
Did a summer there in Rochester where I met Peter Bernstein and other great players.

250
00:25:14,191 --> 00:25:27,021
And that was of course hugely influential and I think cemented the fact, cemented that I
was going to pursue jazz and that I wanted to go to a jazz college.

251
00:25:28,012 --> 00:25:29,623
or music school anyway.

252
00:25:30,004 --> 00:25:33,006
So that was like my junior year.

253
00:25:33,006 --> 00:25:36,509
That was the summer before my junior year maybe in high school.

254
00:25:36,730 --> 00:25:44,977
That a group developed with various people eventually being Peter who introduced me to
Bill because they had gone to college together.

255
00:25:44,977 --> 00:25:46,989
And the next thing you know, we have an organ trio.

256
00:25:46,989 --> 00:25:48,700
That's literally how it happened.

257
00:25:48,700 --> 00:25:52,974
You know, the bass lines were probably the easiest thing for me to figure out.

258
00:25:52,974 --> 00:25:55,710
Then the next thing was how to get.

259
00:25:55,710 --> 00:26:03,412
good sounds on the organ and how to breathe on the organ and various people that I knew.

260
00:26:03,412 --> 00:26:07,773
Mike Ladon was one of them because he was already playing both organ and piano.

261
00:26:08,594 --> 00:26:11,595
I remember he looked at my bass stop and he said, no, use that.

262
00:26:11,595 --> 00:26:13,975
No, don't use that middle stop with that back.

263
00:26:13,975 --> 00:26:16,726
And people were giving me little pointers about that.

264
00:26:16,726 --> 00:26:19,617
And I just got more and more into organ records.

265
00:26:19,617 --> 00:26:22,738
It was really the first regular group.

266
00:26:22,738 --> 00:26:24,482
It was the first group that I

267
00:26:24,482 --> 00:26:36,132
that I had and we started to play around the city a lot, the Village Gate, Augies,
anywhere, with a portable, with some kind of portable organ.

268
00:26:36,132 --> 00:26:49,883
During that stint, while we were still sometimes playing at Augies, the late David Baker,
great recording engineer, brought Maceo Parker up to hear Bill because they needed a

269
00:26:49,883 --> 00:26:53,406
drummer for a record that was happening like the next day or something.

270
00:26:53,878 --> 00:26:56,639
And he said, well, Bill's playing with this organ tree uptown.

271
00:26:56,639 --> 00:26:58,580
And that's how I met Maceo.

272
00:26:58,580 --> 00:27:01,101
Maceo hired Bill for the record.

273
00:27:01,581 --> 00:27:07,194
And then a few months later, I got a call from Maceo saying, you want to come on the road,
this project.

274
00:27:07,194 --> 00:27:12,746
And I still hadn't really played the Hammond organ, actually, and the real Hammond organ.

275
00:27:12,766 --> 00:27:16,288
And I think on that first tour, I wasn't playing mostly organs, Hammond's.

276
00:27:16,288 --> 00:27:21,920
I was playing my thing that I brought on the road, which was this cork.

277
00:27:22,242 --> 00:27:24,803
whatever it was called, VX2 or something.

278
00:27:24,943 --> 00:27:31,126
And then once in a while they'd have a B3 at the gig and I literally was learning the real
organ on the gig.

279
00:27:31,126 --> 00:27:33,706
Wasn't even messing with the pedals.

280
00:27:34,267 --> 00:27:42,170
And to this day I only mess with them about half as much as someone like Joey D did.

281
00:27:42,510 --> 00:27:51,786
And then the producer of Maceo's record at that time, a German guy named Stefan Miner, who
I see now when I go over to

282
00:27:51,786 --> 00:27:56,308
Europe said, well, you have a trio back in New York.

283
00:27:56,308 --> 00:27:58,358
Why don't you record a record for my label?

284
00:27:58,358 --> 00:28:01,249
And I was like, well, I don't, I've only been playing organ for a few years.

285
00:28:01,249 --> 00:28:03,580
And he said, sounds good to me.

286
00:28:03,580 --> 00:28:05,521
And I really didn't want to.

287
00:28:05,521 --> 00:28:08,772
I just felt like I wasn't ready, but that's what happened.

288
00:28:08,772 --> 00:28:14,474
And suddenly people's vision of me was more as an organ player.

289
00:28:15,928 --> 00:28:21,513
heard me maybe with Maceo, because we made this record with Maceo called Life on Planet
Groove that a lot of people heard.

290
00:28:21,513 --> 00:28:23,324
I don't know.

291
00:28:23,324 --> 00:28:30,029
And without me wanting this, it just kind of happened that people were thinking of me as
an organ player.

292
00:28:30,029 --> 00:28:31,350
And that's really how it happened.

293
00:28:31,350 --> 00:28:33,772
I mean, I was happy with it.

294
00:28:34,193 --> 00:28:35,454
It was getting me work.

295
00:28:35,454 --> 00:28:45,562
And it also led me into other kinds of situations because of the nature of the organ and
how it fits in with pop music and R &B.

296
00:28:46,378 --> 00:28:50,781
So it was just opened some unexpected doors.

297
00:28:51,342 --> 00:29:02,989
And particularly by the time I started playing John Schofield and that I made that at the
first record under my own name, for that matter, the first three or four were all in

298
00:29:02,989 --> 00:29:03,630
Oregon.

299
00:29:03,630 --> 00:29:07,293
So I was really learning as I went.

300
00:29:07,293 --> 00:29:09,944
Didn't even have room for an Oregon where I was living.

301
00:29:09,944 --> 00:29:12,456
So I wasn't even practicing Oregon.

302
00:29:12,456 --> 00:29:15,488
But I did like about it the fact that

303
00:29:15,488 --> 00:29:19,019
you could orchestrate, you know, behind somebody.

304
00:29:19,019 --> 00:29:28,332
And as a pianist, I was and still am very, very into that idea of coloring and a mood
under somebody.

305
00:29:28,332 --> 00:29:34,243
I mean, if I could just comp for somebody great all night, I'd just, I'd be perfectly
happy doing that.

306
00:29:34,303 --> 00:29:45,146
And I love the orchestral possibilities and the harmonic possibilities of controlling the
bass, what it's doing harmonically and everything else.

307
00:29:45,324 --> 00:29:47,455
So that's pretty much how that happened.

308
00:29:47,455 --> 00:29:52,056
And just started doing more of my homework with records and things like that.

309
00:29:52,056 --> 00:29:59,178
And like everybody else who goes to the organ, I was of course interested in Jimmy Smith
and things like that.

310
00:29:59,178 --> 00:30:10,841
But because I was playing with Peter and Bill, who are both very open -minded and Bill is
not like a standard kind of organ drummer and he had heard so much modern jazz by that

311
00:30:10,841 --> 00:30:11,121
time.

312
00:30:11,121 --> 00:30:14,542
And I had heard so many great piano trios.

313
00:30:14,722 --> 00:30:24,979
We sort of just didn't really go the route of a Jimmy Smith type of vibe where the guitar
player sort of is in the background.

314
00:30:24,979 --> 00:30:27,821
It was really more of a, we never talked about it.

315
00:30:27,821 --> 00:30:33,615
It was just the way that it all just kind of went down and we were writing, we were all
writing.

316
00:30:33,955 --> 00:30:42,441
so it just felt very much like I could still write the same, way I would write for a piano
trio, but with these guys.

317
00:30:42,441 --> 00:30:43,766
And that's essentially how.

318
00:30:43,766 --> 00:30:44,337
Yeah, the organ.

319
00:30:44,337 --> 00:30:44,967
Yeah.

320
00:30:44,967 --> 00:30:45,507
Yes.

321
00:30:45,507 --> 00:30:50,892
And so Larry, your collaborators over the years have been astounding.

322
00:30:50,892 --> 00:30:51,943
The number of collaborators.

323
00:30:51,943 --> 00:30:57,238
And I'm just interested at a broad level through your substantive and prolific solo
output.

324
00:30:57,238 --> 00:31:00,650
What are the factors that make a collaboration appealing to you now?

325
00:31:00,650 --> 00:31:10,489
What needs to catch your eye that you go, I want to explore this quite deeply and actually
do some recording or some playing in a more substantive way?

326
00:31:10,489 --> 00:31:11,938
You know, it just has to.

327
00:31:11,938 --> 00:31:17,260
pose some kind of challenge, you know, and allow me, you know, freedom.

328
00:31:17,260 --> 00:31:27,464
Well, there's my trio, which is very much a collaboration, and that's just great, because
we're all very like -minded and good friends and play well together.

329
00:31:27,825 --> 00:31:38,749
Recently, I was asked by the Scary Pockets guys, which was how the Scary Goldings thing
happened.

330
00:31:39,589 --> 00:31:41,430
That came from them, but I...

331
00:31:41,804 --> 00:31:53,686
I really saw that put me in a good light as an organ player and got me a new audience too,
which was great.

332
00:31:53,686 --> 00:32:00,853
And particularly when we started adding some really amazing players, like we did a record
with Mono Neon.

333
00:32:00,853 --> 00:32:06,220
So it's just like, I just want to play with great, good players.

334
00:32:06,220 --> 00:32:08,551
Let's see, I love a good singer.

335
00:32:08,551 --> 00:32:12,952
there's a great, I just made a record with a wonderful singer here named Danielle D
'Andrea.

336
00:32:13,452 --> 00:32:18,954
And we have just a really good thing together and she allows me to do whatever I want.

337
00:32:18,954 --> 00:32:23,266
And we also can write together and that's been a great collaboration.

338
00:32:23,266 --> 00:32:30,562
Yeah, as long as I can be myself and try something new.

339
00:32:30,562 --> 00:32:33,683
I've been playing with this wonderful tap dancer named Melinda Sullivan.

340
00:32:33,683 --> 00:32:37,545
We have a record, a very experimental record that's gonna come out in August.

341
00:32:37,645 --> 00:32:45,168
She just has the most amazing time and is very creative.

342
00:32:46,449 --> 00:32:56,134
it kind of brings back, brings me back to the walking bassline thing, which I hadn't
really done outside of Oregon.

343
00:32:57,600 --> 00:33:12,376
in years, you know, and actually I started doing it more during COVID when I was stuck
here and started taking some of my synthesizers out of storage and stuff and would do

344
00:33:12,376 --> 00:33:17,609
videos where I'm playing left hand bass line, is something I used to do just at home.

345
00:33:17,609 --> 00:33:25,932
Apart from playing Oregon, I never really did that as a piano player, but I started doing
it again with Melinda.

346
00:33:26,134 --> 00:33:35,056
because it just kind of worked and it created this very compact way of being able to sort
of spontaneously arrange with her.

347
00:33:35,056 --> 00:33:45,419
Because I also grew up with synthesizers and stuff like that, during COVID I had the
opportunity to collaborate with this guy named Pete Min, who's got a wonderful label and a

348
00:33:45,419 --> 00:33:50,140
studio where he's got probably one of the best synthesizer collections in LA.

349
00:33:50,621 --> 00:33:55,530
And his whole thing was like, let's make great sonic.

350
00:33:55,530 --> 00:34:09,560
landscapes, you know, and I was like, yeah, you know, which interested me for, because I
love synthesizers, but also because for a while now, I just haven't really, that's been,

351
00:34:09,560 --> 00:34:16,905
I'm fine with not being pigeonholed as just a jazz player and particularly as just an
organ player.

352
00:34:17,626 --> 00:34:24,500
I think my voice is in what I play, you know, the music that I, that I play and the

353
00:34:24,641 --> 00:34:32,545
things that I write and I don't really care so much about whether it might be confusing to
some people.

354
00:34:32,966 --> 00:34:36,508
I just get bored playing jazz organ.

355
00:34:37,129 --> 00:34:42,822
Having said that, I mean, I'm not bored when I'm doing it with some of the people that
I've been lucky enough to do it with.

356
00:34:42,822 --> 00:34:46,254
We Jack DeGionnette and Schofield and Peter Bernstein.

357
00:34:47,175 --> 00:34:52,958
But I either want to get back to the piano or I just want more colors or

358
00:34:53,433 --> 00:35:01,837
So yeah, a fun collaboration for me is just something where I feel pretty free.

359
00:35:01,837 --> 00:35:04,398
So I'm open to all sorts of situations.

360
00:35:04,398 --> 00:35:05,678
And I love great singers.

361
00:35:05,678 --> 00:35:07,419
That's always something that I like.

362
00:35:07,419 --> 00:35:09,609
I also like writing collaborations.

363
00:35:09,609 --> 00:35:14,582
It's something that I've been doing with various people over the years.

364
00:35:14,582 --> 00:35:19,655
And that's a whole other side of me, a whole other discipline.

365
00:35:19,655 --> 00:35:23,296
I'm not a lyric writer, but I love writing with people who

366
00:35:23,466 --> 00:35:29,169
a knack for lyrics and melody and storytelling and stuff.

367
00:35:29,169 --> 00:35:34,931
It makes me think differently, you know, and it just freshens things up for me.

368
00:35:34,931 --> 00:35:40,753
So when I get back to a jazz gig, I feel like I've kind of fresh, you know.

369
00:35:41,054 --> 00:35:45,295
Yeah, well, there's so much diversity in the range of your collaborations.

370
00:35:45,295 --> 00:35:51,678
in case anyone missed it, Larry just mentioned he's collaborated with

371
00:35:52,136 --> 00:35:55,979
diverse artists as tap dancers, is Melinda Sullivan as an example.

372
00:35:55,979 --> 00:36:03,804
And for all our listeners and viewers, and David will put a link in the show notes, I
really encourage you to watch these videos with Melinda Sullivan.

373
00:36:03,804 --> 00:36:06,045
They're very watchable and very listenable.

374
00:36:06,045 --> 00:36:10,178
And it's maybe a collaboration that people don't think of naturally, but they're
wonderful.

375
00:36:10,178 --> 00:36:15,352
And I wanted to ask you about a comment that someone made on one of the Melinda Sullivan
videos.

376
00:36:15,352 --> 00:36:18,704
And they said, Larry Golding's has no boundaries.

377
00:36:18,724 --> 00:36:21,698
And I'm curious as to whether you feel like you've

378
00:36:21,698 --> 00:36:26,622
you're approaching your boundaries or where your boundaries could be or how do you respond
to that sort of idea?

379
00:36:26,622 --> 00:36:47,720
Yeah, as long as I'm proud of the situation and then it's either something that challenges
me as a player or as a writer or is just a fun opportunity for me to communicate with

380
00:36:47,720 --> 00:36:50,742
another person or make them sound better or

381
00:36:51,274 --> 00:36:58,987
then yeah, my only boundaries would be things that I don't wanna do.

382
00:36:58,987 --> 00:37:08,689
And sometimes we're in situations like that because we can't help it for some reason.

383
00:37:08,689 --> 00:37:17,362
But these days I'm lucky to say that I'm able to only be in situations that I wanna be in.

384
00:37:17,378 --> 00:37:30,209
But in terms of genre and style, and I don't really think I have any boundaries except for
those that I wouldn't be able to do because of technique or, you know, for instance, if I

385
00:37:30,209 --> 00:37:43,310
could really read music great, I would love to play more classical music or, you know, be
in a situation that requires more reading, you know, because I'm frustrated by the fact

386
00:37:43,310 --> 00:37:45,922
that I can't just sit down and without being

387
00:37:45,922 --> 00:37:54,486
very, very, without it being a very slow, daunting process, like sit down and open a
Brahms Intermezzo or something like that.

388
00:37:55,067 --> 00:37:57,928
Those are boundaries that I'd like to break through.

389
00:37:59,490 --> 00:38:02,821
But that's only because I'm not there yet.

390
00:38:02,821 --> 00:38:09,505
I don't practice enough and I don't read enough to get me better at those things.

391
00:38:09,505 --> 00:38:12,577
yeah, they're pretty, but again, I...

392
00:38:15,018 --> 00:38:17,899
In my mind, I kind of don't even see the boundaries.

393
00:38:17,899 --> 00:38:19,460
guess that's true.

394
00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:26,083
Throw me in a good, completely free situation with really good free players.

395
00:38:26,083 --> 00:38:32,585
And I'm just as happy there as I am in a real nice swinging situation with great players.

396
00:38:34,606 --> 00:38:39,008
It's all just, it's all music, you know?

397
00:38:39,649 --> 00:38:43,414
And I also put myself in very limited

398
00:38:43,414 --> 00:38:52,177
you know, situations where the language has to be limited appropriately to that situation.

399
00:38:52,177 --> 00:38:54,857
James Taylor is a perfect example.

400
00:38:55,738 --> 00:39:02,239
But just because I play with James Taylor, I mean, I want to go out with every folk pop
person.

401
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:12,232
I've been extremely spoiled by the fact that when I played funk, I was playing with one of
the innovators of that music.

402
00:39:12,998 --> 00:39:20,480
When I'm playing pop music, it's with James Taylor who invented that style of music.

403
00:39:21,161 --> 00:39:22,971
Or more recently Steely Dan.

404
00:39:22,971 --> 00:39:26,022
I went out and I subbed for Jim Beard.

405
00:39:26,342 --> 00:39:38,496
And that doesn't mean I want to be in pop situations all the time, you know, but it just
so happens that I've been able to do these things with very authentic people.

406
00:39:38,646 --> 00:39:52,310
And the situation has to be right for me to go out and do something that's where I'm not
able to exhibit all my jazz knowledge and stuff like that.

407
00:39:52,310 --> 00:40:01,972
by the way, that more and more that's, or I should say that over the years, that's less
and less really what I want to be about.

408
00:40:02,533 --> 00:40:06,094
I love that I can go from one thing to another.

409
00:40:07,390 --> 00:40:22,018
And I'm very, very lucky that when I do something that's non -jazz, it can be with some
really high quality, inspiring people like James, John Mayer was a great experience.

410
00:40:22,118 --> 00:40:35,786
And I do find, I like the challenge of trying to find what's right, you know, in those
situations and turning off those jazz buttons, you know, in my brain.

411
00:40:35,850 --> 00:40:38,351
it's to me, it's just a different kind of challenge.

412
00:40:38,351 --> 00:40:50,308
know, it's why I was always interested to know like who's playing on a Paul Simon record
or which is a good example because I loved like Richard T for instance, or Don Groenick or

413
00:40:50,308 --> 00:41:00,033
some of these people that you're like, you know, like they sound like they know jazz, but
they're not, they don't, they don't, but not in that way of like, that's a jazz guy

414
00:41:00,033 --> 00:41:01,154
playing on pop music.

415
00:41:01,154 --> 00:41:05,896
They just, I could tell that they have some kind of intuition about.

416
00:41:06,136 --> 00:41:16,872
how to play with jazz inflection and feel and knowledge, but really still they're serving
the song and they're serving the artists.

417
00:41:17,512 --> 00:41:20,774
I don't know, that always attracted me, like, how do you do that?

418
00:41:22,235 --> 00:41:29,609
And also within the different keyboard instruments, how do you play the right stuff on a
Wurlitzer electric piano?

419
00:41:29,609 --> 00:41:35,162
And a lot of that has come over the years working

420
00:41:35,258 --> 00:41:39,241
with really good producers in the studios.

421
00:41:39,241 --> 00:41:40,922
Larry Klein is a good example.

422
00:41:40,922 --> 00:41:47,546
Someone who famously said to me, not famously, but in my mind, it's a great line.

423
00:41:47,867 --> 00:41:54,551
He would say, that was a great take, Larry, but could you play less playerly?

424
00:41:55,292 --> 00:41:57,843
Like, we know you can play.

425
00:41:57,843 --> 00:42:00,165
That's not really what's needed here.

426
00:42:00,165 --> 00:42:03,237
We need a different part of your musicianship.

427
00:42:03,237 --> 00:42:04,994
We need just the taste.

428
00:42:04,994 --> 00:42:06,315
tasteful part.

429
00:42:07,596 --> 00:42:09,657
And that's a great lesson.

430
00:42:10,739 --> 00:42:14,721
Even when I'm in a jazz circumstance.

431
00:42:14,802 --> 00:42:25,991
And this is again, taken me years to figure out, but like, you know, I don't feel like I
have to prove myself in every situation that I'm in.

432
00:42:26,352 --> 00:42:34,558
Prove myself as a jazz musician or as someone who knows harmony or can do

433
00:42:34,594 --> 00:42:36,915
it has facility or whatever.

434
00:42:36,915 --> 00:42:41,217
What's needed is what song needs, you know, in a lot of those situations.

435
00:42:41,217 --> 00:42:45,759
And it's not always about you and your chops and your knowledge.

436
00:42:45,759 --> 00:42:56,383
It's more about your, it is about your knowledge, but it's about how to put that knowledge
tastefully into a situation.

437
00:42:56,523 --> 00:43:03,202
And so I've learned that by getting to know James Taylor's material and listening to how
the players

438
00:43:03,202 --> 00:43:07,393
before me played with him and listening to great studio musicians.

439
00:43:07,393 --> 00:43:12,055
And, you know, I recently was able to spend a little bit of time with Bob James.

440
00:43:12,055 --> 00:43:14,745
He was like an early influence of mine.

441
00:43:14,745 --> 00:43:24,898
just loved how he approached the roads and writing and he was dabbling and television.

442
00:43:24,898 --> 00:43:31,470
He was just doing, you know, everything he did just seemed to be, you know, done very
musically and tastefully and

443
00:43:31,584 --> 00:43:43,623
One thing I learned about myself after moving to LA was that I am really fascinated with
the whole history of recording here and all the records that have been made in the various

444
00:43:43,623 --> 00:43:44,223
studios.

445
00:43:44,223 --> 00:43:47,645
It's just really, really interesting to me.