Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson - Tom Welsh

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

Here is Tom Welsh, Craig’s old friend and a music aficionado. Tom was the Director of Performing Arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art, was the Managing Director of Big Ears in 2023, and is the manager of legendary composer Terry Riley. EnJOY! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from Hall of Fame athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life. I had the best dad, and I had the best memories and the greatest experience, and that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Guess what, Will?

What's that, Mango? I've been trying to write a promo for our podcast, Part-Time Genius, but even though we've done over 250 episodes, we don't really talk about murders or cults. I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese, so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy. We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese, so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy.

We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food and how do dollar stores make money. And then, of course, can you game a dog show? So what you're saying is everyone should be listening. Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. For 10 years, I've been obsessed with one of the most bizarre and audacious cons in rock and roll history. We were all facing 20 years and all that good stuff. The lead singer tried to pull off an English accent, and they went on the road as the zombies. These guys are not going to get away with it.

The zombies are too popular. I'll show you everyone. It's that time. Listen to the true story of the fake zombies on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. Here's my old friend Tom Welsh. He's a music aficionado. He runs one of the biggest music festivals in America, Big Ears, in Knoxville, Tennessee. Enjoy. All right, so Tom, you have never taken acid?

That is true. I have never taken acid. What powerful drugs have you taken? Have you taken any powerful drugs? Because I feel like someone who's involved in a music festival as big as this should probably have a past with exotic hallucinogens. generally probably correct, right? It's sort of a understanding or assumption or rite of passage. Like, oh, look at all these guys that are in this work. They've been dropping acid for years, whatever that sort of thing is. But no, from my California days, maybe looked the part. Yeah.

When I first met you, you had very long hair. I did that to blend in. If you live in San Francisco of a certain age, a certain time, then you just sort of become part of the fabric with uh guys walking around with long hair i just felt you have you had long hair kind of the same time metallica had long hair and then did you get the cut the same time as metallica got the cut i'd have to check when they went to the barbershop but i have a vivid memory that you and i had not seen each other for a period of time. Somewhere in there, I shaved my head and we saw each other again at an event and the first thing out of your mouth

was, new Metallica. I was flattered, confused, but honored by that. I don't know who did it first. It was a compliment. It was a compliment. Let's just say, I don't know the Metallica guys, but they needed to do it and I needed to do it too. Yeah, I think it was time. There comes a time in life for a haircut so listen tell me this you do a festival the podcast is about

joy right i've known you for some time and one of the most joyful experiences that i think we had together was going to see a gentleman by the name of iggy pop. Yes. Remember going to see Iggy Pop? I do. All right. And we went to see Iggy, and I loved watching because I liked the songs, and I liked seeing Iggy being alive after his story. And as of recording of this, he's still alive, which is kind of... Going strong. Well, it's an interesting thing,

given the group of people he was running with back in the day. Because you're so heavily... I think of you as being someone who's heavily involved in music, but you're not a musician, are you? Well, I came up as a musician. Okay, so tell me how that happened. Imagine we're at a psychotherapy session, and it's the first session, and you have to go through all the boring stuff about who you are and how you got to this point, and then we can get to the bit where you can't go to the bathroom without wearing a hat yeah let this be my first psychotherapy session because you've never been

no i think this is it okay well just relax take a deep breath you're in a safe place and tell me tell me how it began with you in music probably like many many kids growing up in america and maybe in the suburbs. You are invited at a certain age to sign up to take music lessons in your school. Where was this? I grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And it was probably the, I was about to say second grade, but it might be fourth grade where they take you into assembly and they pass out the sheet of instruments that you might select from to begin music lessons.

Okay. Fourth grade, let's say. And everybody went home with this 8 1⁄2 by 11. No, it was the larger sheet with A to Z, all the instruments you could choose that the school offered instruction. This sounds like a very well-equipped school. Was it a very...

Well, we're talking about the 70s, right? Okay. When music was still in the schools. Right, actively. There was no music there now, right? And people encouraged this. Right. This is good for everybody. Good fors, right? Okay. When music was still in the schools. Right. There was no music there now. Right? And people encouraged this. Right. This is good for everybody.

Good for students, good for kids. Band, all of this sorts of stuff. Marching bands and the rest. And I went home and immediately said, I want to play the drums. Ah. And my father said, pick something else. Yeah. So, I went back with the sheet and to the teacher, whoever it was at the time, and I

checked the box for saxophone. So, I grew up as for saxophone. So I grew up as a saxophone player. I was in a family with three brothers and a sister. All of us played music together. Were your parents musicals? Parents were musical people too. Not professionally, but there was music in the house all the time. Was it a very stable environment? Did you have a stable upbringing? I did. It wasn't like an escape into music from the disruption of a wild family life or anything like that. These stories will wreck and bore and ruin all of your understandings of a life in music.

But yes, it was a stable family that cared about each other. Still to this day, we care about each other and communicate. There was music in the household because it brought joy and fun and something to do. The Christmas carols was the big, the brass. Everybody lined up with their brass instruments to blow the Christmas carols out the front door into the neighborhood that may or may not have wished for that to happen. And it was just the rhythm of a noisy family. Do you still play? Do you still play the saxophone?

Well, the last vestiges of this are really still the Christmas holidays with this gang of people. So you guys still do that every year? The honk and squeak Chorale emerges once a year and then submerges again. There's another generation of kids, grandkids, nephews, and nieces that also pick this up. And so, yeah, it's a musical family that is not professionally musical.

All right, so life takes its course and you end up, when I met you, you were in San Francisco. That's right. At that point, you were running or managing bands and you had up when i met you you were in san francisco that's right at that point you're running or managing bands and and you had a music store it wasn't really a store was it well i had moved to california uh with a band actually to to chase the american dream which everybody knows is write one song and then become super famous and you're off to to forever and these days i think it's just an instagram post but it's much the thing. This was the olden days when you actually had to

have talent. Have some talent and record something with people who knew what they were doing. So we toughed that out for a period of time in the club scene, in the West Coast network up and down, and decided after a long run that we really weren't getting along at all with each other, and it was time to stop that.

That was my experience of being in a band too. Inevitably, you come to that crossroads that maybe I should be doing something else. What I really wanted to do was to run a record company. I really love the idea of working with musicians, not necessarily being the guy in the middle of the stage jumping around, but to help others

get their work moving, get their music out. Now that's an interesting thing. Is that from the family background, do you think, that they're creating the opportunity

for little Tom to choose the drums or the saxophone? No, I don't think so. I think in a very small way, as a musician

and working in a band and trying to make something happen, we never really went anywhere, but you get a feeling of what it's like to be on the stage, to have a room full of people looking at you and waiting for you to do, I don't need to

tell you, you know exactly what this is, right? The exchange between audience and performer is a very peculiar human moment, in my opinion. Very few people probably want to do that, and even fewer still do it well and i think ultimately as a performer musician artist you have to know for yourself what am i doing here on this stage what is it i'm trying to put across what do i want to share with people what i want people to hear hear me say because after all you got a room full of people who are now looking at you saying all right we've given you our time and attention, and maybe five bucks. Say it. Do it.

Did you have anything particularly that you wanted to say? Yeah, I think at the time, as young musicians trying to express fun, happiness, some great songs, and have a damn good time. It starts there, doesn't it? I think so. I mean, when I was in bands, I think what I was trying to say was, I'm available for casual sex. This is baked in there. Definitely. But I don't think that's the way you send it. I think nowadays I'd be on an app or something and just say it.

The menu of things, like I'm available for that. Barring that, I'll take all the drugs you're offering me. Barring that, I'll dip into the advance so we can spend it on beer money right now. Barring that, I need a ride the advance so we can spend it on beer money right now. Yes. Barring that, I need a ride home. Alright. So you end up running this record company.

Yes. Well, right. Okay. So we skipped a brief chapter there when it turned out that music as a performer was not ultimately going to be my direction and calling. I thought what I really want to do is work with other people. And I fall into, literally fall into, a small active record company in San Francisco at the time called New Albion Records. Right. Which had been going for some time charting trends and developments

in modern composition and experimental classical music, this kind of in-between area with very much a West Coast and Pacific Rim point of view. What we're talking about is music of the 20th century, including people like Lou Harris and Terry Riley,

Pauline Oliveros, John Adams, John Cage, and then onward from there, Carl Stone and many others. This had a huge impact on me musically, personally, professionally, ultimately. And is that the music you still listen to now? Do you have an eclectic mix of music you listen to? Because it all sounds quite, almost, I don't want to be mean, but it sounds a little academic also, the taste of music. That is mean. I don't mean it to be mean, but it is very

grown-up and deep-cut, that type of music. Do you listen to ABBA? Yes. The new record really didn't move me the way I hoped to be moved but then again it's hard to stay on Sugar Mountain forever you can't

try as we might yeah the short answer to a good question you're in a common misconception there are

no misconceptions in music everybody hears and understands and enjoys or doesn't enjoy to their own taste this is all

out there for everybody's consumption, delectation, and take what you can from it. But I came to believe working in the area of modern composition, experimental, fringes of electronic, improvised and beyond, these are all artists perhaps living outside of the mainstream, but all of them are true and honest to the thing that they're trying to do. Nobody's trying to be academic or thumb in your eye on purpose in any way. These are people just expressing themselves quite differently that, as it happens, have maybe smaller audiences. Because this is rarefied, sometimes unusual, sometimes difficult to understand because the frame of reference is a little obscure, whatever it is. But I don't think for a second that any of those artists or any other artists are willfully trying to stay outside of your purview. It takes a while to get there.

Right. Well, so let's think that now you're the managing director of this giant music festival, which is one of the biggest in the world, right? Yes, you're flattering to say so, but that's maybe not quite right. I'm here with you in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the home of Big Ears, which is a festival that's been going for, this will be the 10th edition that happens in March of 2023. But it's not hyperbolic, really. I mean, it is a huge festival. It has had an enormous and beautiful impact in, I think, the American landscape of music festivals and culture. Is it huge? Probably 125 artists playing over four days in downtown Knoxville. It's intense. It's a rapturous deep dive into everything, all sorts of things all at one time.

And see, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. So do you have a populist thought in your head when you're booking acts? So, I mean, presumably you're involved in the choosing of who's going to play and who's not going to play. And do you say, well, look, we've already got five guys who are five different acts who are playing obscure saxophone and mathematic compositions? Do we have anyone who's, you know,

doing covers of the Partridge family or whatever people are listening to? You know, a quick check suggests to me we don't have that artist locked in just yet, but maybe I can lean on you about that. Yes or no, there's no calculation beyond let's just find and invite really great musicians without necessarily thinking first of the area or the genre or the old record bins, as we used to say, that they're in. only festival that I can think of in the US or certainly the first that wanted to be about just great music made by passionate great people regardless of genre so typically you and I would go to this festival that does this certain thing or go off to another one that does a different

certain thing and and the outcome of that is you have a good idea of what you're getting yourself into you know perhaps because you bought tickets because you know all of your artists are playing in that festival whether it's bluegrass classical heavy metal whatever but big ears is putting all of this in the same place at the same time so that you can move freely between one world of sound and another and it's just all just great as ellington duke ellington said beyond category why can't we have all of those things in one place at one time? Want to know how to leverage culture to build a successful business? Then Butternomics is the podcast for you. I'm your host, Brandon Butler, founder and CEO of Butter ATL.

Over my career, I've built and helped run multiple seven-figure businesses that leverage culture and built successful brands. Now I want to share what I've learned with you. And on Butternomics, we go deep with today's most influential entrepreneurs, innovators, and business leaders to peel back the layers on how they use culture as a driving force in their business. On every episode, we get the inside scoop on how these leaders tap into culture to build something amazing. From exclusive interviews to business breakdowns, we'll explore the journey of turning passion for culture into business. Whether you're just getting started or an established business owner,

Butternomics will give you what you need to take your game to the next level. This is Butternomics. Listen to Butternomics on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day.

Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like a recent episode with author and podcaster Glynis McNichol on her new memoir, I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself. It's all about seeking pleasure in middle age. At some point, I stopped feeling shame around any part of my existence. There was a point where I thought, who's benefiting from my feeling of shame? If there's a general sense of like,

oh goodness, she's doing what she wants, who benefits from you feeling bad about that? Because usually not anyone whose opinion you're interested in, I would argue. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is. I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee?

Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild.

Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's zero in a little bit more on the personal nature of what brings you joy. So clearly you get joy out of sharing different musical experiences with other people. Right. So that brings you joy professionally. Yeah. So that brings you joy professionally. So in your life, for example, obviously everyone has a point where there is an absence of joy. And then there has to be, hopefully at some point,

a journey through joy. Because I feel that joy is an essential coping mechanism. And if you lack it, you can, or if you lack the ability to manufacture it, it can lead you into a dark path. That's certainly happened in my life. Is that something that's happened in yours, in your world? It's interesting you refer to joy as a coping mechanism. I'd like to hear more about that. I don't see it that way. I don't think. I'm trying to think of my own personal experiences of joy when it comes to me in a variety of different moments, sometimes unpredictable, mostly unpredictable, let's say.

Or I share it or try to generate it so that other people can have it in the context of music, performances, festivals, and even simple as sharing records, this thing we used to do a lot. Yeah. But why is it a coping mechanism? I think when I say a coping mechanism is because I'm aware of having to manufacture it when I have to. As opposed to, I suppose, when I don't have to, when I'm experiencing joy and I'm not in need of it, I'm not aware of having to make it. So at that point, I think maybe it's a coping mechanism. This is interesting to me because maybe I don't think of it quite this way. I'm thinking of examples where, or instances where joy comes, it arrives.

And for me, this is a, yeah, it's a powerful emotional and physical sensation. It's like a wave that arrives. I didn't summon it exactly. I didn't. So you have no power over it. It rolls in like the weather? Is that what you mean? Sometimes in circumstances. I'm thinking of a concert experience where the room, the sound, the energy, the people all converges in a moment where suddenly you're levitating and you're thinking, wow, I'm

being swept up into something and I'm absolutely moving to a higher, a different plane. Can you think of a concert where, any specific concert where that's occurred for you? Yeah, many, many, not millions, but many. I think of, well, there was one here at Big Ears actually a few years ago when I wasn't paying close attention to the program. I just ran into the Bijou Theater to hear what was scheduled in that hour, and it was an hour of the music of Alvin Lucier

that had been organized, I think, by Stephen O'Malley from Sun. I was so late, I wasn't quite sure who put this whole thing together, but it was a beautiful hour of Alvin Lucier's music, which is often quiet, still droning, very slow to unfold. So it's music of duration.

You have to give it some time or else you're going to miss everything that's happening. Right. And it was beautiful. And then Alvin himself came out on the stage. At this point, he's an elderly man who has done incredible work for a long period of time. I didn't know he was there. And so there was that moment of... So who was playing?

He wasn't playing? His final... Well, there was that moment of so he was playing it wasn't he wasn't playing his final well there was an ensemble of people playing his music and the last piece was alvin's master work or the piece that that people know him for called i am sitting in a room which is a classic of i'm not going to use the word academic that you're going to put out there because it's not it is a 20th century experimental let's say deep deep cut okay it's a little It is a 20th century experimental piece. Let's say deep cut, okay? It's a little bit of a deep cut for a little bit. Depending on where you're coming from. For other people, it's right there

on the number one on the playlist. Okay, I got it. But to hear Alvin himself sitting in a chair and to begin his piece, which is a slowly evolving electronic music piece based on, he says, a long sentence, a paragraph that then goes into a kind of a looping mechanism that begins to pull apart like taffy the sound texture of the words until the words themselves become

slowly unrecognizable and it just turns into this cloud of sound it's a conceptual piece yes but it's also quite moving i think over a long slow period of time and the man himself was in this chair doing it and I didn't know that until it happened and I was I was taken away because of the serendipity of the moment I was not sure that was on the program I didn't know it happened and I found myself floating away with with joy here I am experiencing this. What's interesting to me about that first of all it you know it sounds like a very joyful experience but what you point out is that the composer himself is there and so it's a very kind of it's much more intimate than perhaps the composer has been

dead for 200 years and someone's playing a piece of music right very well is it important then that the author of the piece be in the room for it to change the timbre, the feeling of the sensation or can the right musician do that having not composed the piece? Because I think composition is important to you. I think authorship is important to you. Would I be right in saying that?

Yes. That's a yes and. Because of course we have centuries worth of music now that we all enjoy and moves us uh for which we have no direct connection to the people who authored that music right so this is a necessity we have to be able to there's something in that music that carries through the ages not to mention the millions of records that we have between us made by artists who we will never encounter but we love that music too i've never seen the master musicians of

Jujuka, but these records are never too far away. Authorship, or this question of maybe something extra, it's not essential, but here's the person who did this remarkable thing. That is always satisfying, isn't it? Yes, it is. I think that's fair to say. I think I would be impressed by that too.

If it was a painter who had done an amazing painting and suddenly they're standing next to you saying, do you like it? I mean, yes, of course, too. If it was a painter who had done an amazing painting and suddenly they're standing next to you saying, do you like it? I mean, yes, of course, it's going to be a thing. People like to have that connection. Music, I think, is an interesting and strange experience though because I think music speaks a language

that none of us actually understand. But maybe that's because I'm not a true musician. You are a musician. Your audience knows this about you, right? Drummer? Yeah. Part-time shower singer? Yeah.

Yeah, I've done bits and pieces. And certainly, I think, you know that Robin Williams and I were friendly. And Robin always had a jazz mentality about doing stand-up. He always talked about doing stand-up as a jazz improvisation almost, which I'm not a huge fan of. It's wrong to say I'm not a huge fan of jazz

because it's too big an area, but there's not a lot of jazz that moves me that I've heard. But I get the idea of improvisation and an instrument, but that's what interests me about what you do, because at any point in Big Ears, do you pick up your saxophone and go and play? Absolutely not. Well, then why?

I'm too busy working with this wonderful team of people to keep this thing rolling. But you're getting to an interesting point that I think about a lot, probably a lot of people do, but somehow in our world, let's say the Western contemporary commercial world that we are moving around in,

the three and a half minute song became the central currency of music. Yeah. Beatles, before the Beatles and onward. We sort of live in this commodification of music as the song. How did this come to be? Why is this crucial?

Why is it interesting? Because after all, music and sound is boundless and enormously different than you and I sitting with our guitars singing a song in the AAB format with a catchy eight-bar bridge. This somehow became a, what do we say a routine or the the backdrop against which people understand music i bought a record had 14 songs on it i like three of them i'm stuck with a whole album it's got 14 songs well well the argument used to be wasn't it that the album like if you take an album like a classic argument for this is dark side of the moon right like in in order to understand the music and the album the order

order to appreciate the music and the album you have to listen to the old album the way the artist constructed the album but you've said something just a moment before this which the secret is in what you said there's something weird and mysterious and strange about music. The album, the record, the single, the wax cylinder, the CD, these are just containers for sound. So Pink Floyd, we love them. I have those. We have those records. We've shared those records.

They're incredible documents of music and sound because the guys knew that they had a container they needed to manage and release into the world. That's it. So you think the container dictates what the artist puts into it? Looks what has happened with the arrival of the Internet. Now anybody can make any music available out to the world, the audience, no audience, doesn't matter, in any format that they like. Does that improve things? It seems like a very odd question

yeah this is the raging debate isn't it improves access is what it does because didn't we sort of imagine that when the internet arrived fully to average accessibility to people that somebody would step up and say all right we're going to have this musical experience through the internet which was heretofore totally unavailable to us when we had to put music onto a CD or a record or something like that. I'm going to play a 35-hour something because I can do that now. And I'm sure people did this, but it didn't quite come on maybe the way I imagined. But I think that the container has always been too much dictating

how we're going to understand and consume music, isn't it? Go to the record store, buy the record. Do you think it's also to do with the democracy of the internet? been too much dictating how we're going to understand and consume music, isn't it? Go to the record store, buy the record. Do you think it's also to do with the democracy of the internet? I don't think that music, now here's a, let's discuss, does music flourish in a democracy? Because I suspect it doesn't. Like it doesn't, it's not like- How's that? Well, we talk about authorship of music. You can get collaborations, famous collaborations,

Leonard McCartney, whatever it is, but it's not like there's ever 20 people get together, or at least in my limited experience of music, I don't see it as being something which is collaborative to a point where everybody gets a say. That was always my problem when I was in a band. It's not a democracy. Someone is the dictator here.

One version of this is exactly right. Here is the music I want you all to play. Let's do it. I need your hands to realize this vision, so off we go. This is only one path, right? Because there's communal musical experiences, famously the drum circle.

The drum circle, I was going to say. Let's get right to that. And what is that? This is essentially everybody's equal doing whatever their contribution may be. But yeah, any drum circle I've been part of, and thankfully I've kind of let that go a little bit in my life, but I used to take a drum and sit in a drum circle from time to time. I assume you've done the same. I think I have, yes. Don't you notice, even in a drum circle, little power games start to come in at the rhythm? Don't they come in? Isn't this inevitable in any relationship of more than one person in a room,

there's going to be a dynamic interaction? We're being a little facetious about drum circle, but it's true, isn't it? Anybody's welcome to drift in, drift out, contribute your bit, stay as long as you like. If someone absolutely despises what Ferguson over here is doing, they might give you an elbow or something like that. And so some of this starts to push and pull. I always thought drum circles are a little bit like surfers. People think surfers are cool and relaxed, but they're not.

They're kind of angry and territorial and competitive. And I think drum circles are a bit like that too. People are like, no, I can actually do, you're messing up my 5-8 rhythm. Yeah. And I feel that, but that's a different

type of music. Yeah. That's a music which the joy of a drum circle is participating in the drum circle, right? We're talking about music making, I think.

Right. So there's music that you might say, I got this new record and I'm going to share it with you, check it out, enjoy it. So there's music that you might say, I got this new record and I'm going to share it with you, check it out, enjoy it. It's programmed, programmatic, there it is,

consume it or don't. But music making is something else, isn't it? It's about participation, drifting in and out, trying to push and pull with other musicians, maybe to contribute an idea or find something interesting there. I think there are so many channels and avenues and outcomes that festivals like Big Ears

are looking for more. What else is on this horizon that we can hear and enjoy that we haven't had access to before? The sense of discovery and looking for something that I'm not already very familiar with. Want to know how to leverage culture to build a successful business? Then Butternomics is the podcast for you. I'm your host, Brandon Butler, founder and CEO of Butter ATL. Over my career,

I've built and helped run multiple seven-figure businesses that leverage culture and build successful brands. Now I want to share what I've built and helped run multiple seven-figure businesses that leverage culture and built successful brands. Now I want to share what I've learned with you. And on Butternomics, we go deep with today's most influential entrepreneurs, innovators, and business leaders to peel back the layers on how they use culture as a driving force in their business. On every episode, we get the inside scoop on how these leaders tap into culture to build something amazing. On every episode, we get the inside scoop on how these leaders tap into culture to build something amazing. From exclusive interviews to business breakdowns, we'll explore the journey of turning passion for culture into business. Whether you're just getting started or an established business owner,

Butternomics will give you what you need to take your game to the next level. This is Butternomics. Listen to Butternomics on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our recent episode with author and podcaster Glynis McNichol on her new memoir,

I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself. It's all about seeking pleasure in middle age. At some point, I stopped feeling shame around any part of my existence. There was a point where I thought, who's benefiting from my feeling of shame? If there's a general sense of like, oh goodness, she's doing what she wants,

who benefits from you feeling bad about that? Because usually not anyone whose opinion you're interested in, I would argue. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is. I think he was like, oh yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down and out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park?

In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast, Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or wherever you get your podcasts.

Is there ever a point when you hear a piece of music, and like my father, whenever I was watching, when I was a kid, I would watch Top of the Pops, was the TV show in Britain that kids watched. And whenever there was a musical act on that he disapproved of, he would say, that's not music. That's just a noise. And I would say, you know, that's that's not music. That's just a noise. And I would say,

that's kind of what music is. It's a noise. But is there ever a piece of music where you've ever heard music and you thought, I can't conceive why a human being would want to listen to that? Sure.

There have been a couple of things that come across my radar that generally the idea of stopping your listening experience or stopping my listening experience has to do with maybe damage volume distortion yeah it's a combination of loud and frequencies and noise what we talk about is noise now this is tricky area because some things that i might think are beautiful and mellifluous you might say are kind of noisy so we all kind of live on the spectrum somewhere what's tolerable what's enjoyable what is what sounds appealing certain ways don't you think yeah i think that's possibly true i think that's possibly true it must be true

i don't want to give you the entire the entire thing but yeah okay it's true it's true but listen what about a world that had let's imagine for a moment a world that has no music at all

it's inconceivable isn't it it is it's totally inconceivable to me and maybe to others that as humans

who like to engage and connect to live the human life without music it's just it's beyond it's just it's beyond it's beyond comprehension i can't imagine it and yet it is so diverse and like you say everybody's a little bit different everybody like a lot different yeah do you think that

music contemporary music because you're very involved in it. Well, in a slightly... Academic is the wrong word, but you're in a cooler area of music than perhaps. It's not heavily corporate. Although this office in which we sit feels a little corporate. I'll take it up with our people.

Yeah, but it doesn't feel particularly like the main drive is the profit on the spreadsheet here. And yet, music is a huge, multi-billion dollar industry. Well, people get involved for different reasons, don't they? We're talking about entertainment and the arts, broadly defined, attracts lots of different people for lots of different reasons. So there's that. That seems pretty straightforward. Do you qualify a music's value?

And I think I already know the answer to this, but I'm going to ask you, do you give music a value in the amount of people that enjoy it or the amount of dollars it can raise? Does that affect how good a piece of music is? I think it's a measure of where that work will kind of land in the stratosphere, yes. Is it, well, good and bad. This is tricky business, isn't it? that work will kind of land in the stratosphere, yes.

Is it, well, good and bad. This is tricky business, isn't it? Because I might find enormous satisfaction from an artist's work or recording or whatever it was that very few people ever encountered. And that's for me. And it's great. This has nothing to do with remuneration. It's just all about a connection to an individual,

in this case,, or you. You must have records that your friends and family don't care for, but it's important to you. A lot of it, I think. Yeah. I mean, I think it's also, it's in a period of time. Music also. What's that Basquiat quote? He said, art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.

Yeah, right. And I think for me, I think for a lot of people, I suspect for you too, that music, it's time travel. If I listen to The Damned playing Neat, Neat, Neat, I'm 16 years old. Yeah. And I can time travel like that. Do you use it for that?

Actually, that's a really interesting area because probably, who knows, dare I say, most people can hitch musical experiences or the records to moments in their life. As you say, you suddenly flash back to 16 years old, I'm in school or first date. These sorts of milestones in your life are inevitably hitched to something you heard or music that you have in your collection or something like that but i actually really totally deficient in this area uh it's unusual i think but yeah i think that is unusual for someone so involved in it that just seems odd to me there are moments that through the mile markers in life

where yeah i remember that record was happening when such such happened but not so much give me one give me one in your life give me a moment in your life if you can where you think you associate a piece of music with either great happiness or great sadness or a great turning point in your life or something something that that brings you to that moment can you do it yeah maybe i was thinking the other day about perhaps one of the greatest, if not the greatest live concert I've ever been to myself was Fishbone in Philadelphia at a small-ish club that must have been, I'm going to guess here, 1987, 1988, 1989, late 80s.

Right. And it was just one of these nights where, well, by the end of the night, I found that my shirt was off. I don't really know where anything was. How did this happen? I was just overcome. And if you've ever seen Fishbone live. I've never seen Fishbone.

Then you probably had a similar experience, but suddenly you're half naked. I don't know how this happens. I had way too many experiences where suddenly I was half naked and not enough of them involved Fishbone or indeed music. Imagine if that had all come together for you

at that right moment. Things would be different. But that was really, I share that one because it was really a transportative, transformational hour or two. In what Wait, what did it do to you? Where did you start from and where did it lead you? What was the fork in the road?

Two things come to mind. It was an overwhelmingly physical, fun experience of elation, pure joy, where the band, the music, the songs, the energy, the rapport was all in a way, it was of a piece where like, man, I'm in the middle of, if you've seen that, it's like a three ring circus when they're playing. It's just, it's mayhem, but controlled, beautiful, fun, incredible. And it is suddenly you're levitating. I'm in this experience. And years later, this is like part two of that question i was sharing this with somebody like the greatest show i ever saw yeah fishbone and this friend musician friend said i was there too 30 years later he says i was there too now there's a shared experience camaraderie i

didn't know him at the time and nor did i know he was in the room of course but now i have this connection to another person who experienced what I experienced. His joy in that room, I'm sure, was equal or greater than mine. And we talked about that for a long time. It was really interesting to go find someone way down the road. You were there, too. I think that's interesting to me because I think the more we talk about it and the more I hear you talk about it as we distill it down it's really about human connection it's really about the unspeakable or the non-lyrical language of music well here is I think where music is totally different than the other art forms okay

exception of poetry theater comedy it's a it's I think they're all forms of music, aren't they? They're forms of music. Well, you tell me. I was just going to say, they're all... In music, you're managing the illusion of time. You are living in an ephemeral world. When the music stops, it's silence. And you're living in sound.

And sound is vibration, which is physical. And so something is happening to your body. Of course, this is obvious with very loud rhythmic music, rock and roll, dance music, R&B. It's also true for quiet music that doesn't seem to be doing much, long duration. Music of Morton Feldman, for example, Avan Lucia, we talked about that earlier. Or the drone music of Sun, Lamont Young, long duration. Music of Morton Feldman, for example, Avan Lucia, we talked about that earlier, or the drone music of Sun, Lamont Young, and others. It doesn't seem like much is going on, but vibration is

happening, and I really... And it's mood altering. It is a mood altering situation. Look, Sun, which is a music life that I've started to get into recently, and we were talking about it, and I was saying I don't know if I listen to it correctly, because I haven't seen the band don't know if I listen to it correctly because I haven't

seen the band perform live but I listen to drone metal quietly and use it as an ambient sound which I don't know if that's acceptable to the musician but it's how I enjoy it you come to it I suppose you we all approach music however we come to it and I'm sure I don't know about the guys in sun but I imagine it would say that's fine you take take what we have to offer and enjoy it as you wish but there's something physical about all of this activity in music that i believe that the body begins to react much quicker than your mind does so things are happening to you before you've had a chance to sort of puzzle out what's going on here and this is different than standing in front of a picture, I think. It's also a communal aspect to this too.

Well, now you're talking about live music though. Live music. So I think there's two things going on simultaneously to me, which is I'm having this personal, very solitary, singular experience with the sound that the artist is giving to me. I use the word sound in this case, not song or composition or whatever. Okay. Vibration.

But there's also a room full of people and they're having this experience too. So we're all in this together with the live experience or even if you're in a room with your buddies listening to a record, it's a shared experience. I don't think I do that anymore. I think a lot of the time music is solitary now. It's headphones and earbuds and stuff.

I don't know. I think it's the availability, isn't it? Maybe it's headphones and earbuds why i i don't know i think it's the availability isn't it isn't it the the maybe it's too available do you find i'm going to ask you a question do you find that with this the the ultimate availability of all sound courtesy of your phone and the internet and all the rest that your interest or passions for music and performance has changed more or less you're going for, going for less? Do you think about it differently now? I think it did.

And I think what happened is I've circled back around. Very recently, I invested in a proper piece of hi-fi equipment with a deck that would play vinyl through speakers into my room and out loud. And my 12-year-old son, who had never heard vinyl played before, I said, come here, I want to show you something. He is a musician. And he sat in my lap, and I put on a Glaswegian electronic band called Mogwai,

who are fabulous. Yes. and I played it a decent volume and I let him hear it and he let up now he's he's this is a kid that was listening to he wouldn't ever listen to children's music when he was a toddler he was like no no no dad it's Iggy or boy or you know and he would even that was his thing and his mother got him into it very early. But he looked at me as it was coming through the vinyl and the speakers. And he got kind of flushed and he went, what is this? And I said, this is vinyl.

And he said, I feel I've been robbed. Smart kid. And I said, you have. And he's gotten very into it. And he and his friends have gotten very into it. So I think there is a the availability is great but I think that something is always lost

when the neighborhood is gentrified and I think that that that's happened a little bit with with the digitization of music yeah you're right about this I don't when you tell me this story about your 12 year old I immediately think part of his reaction is the physicality of hearing your excellent, undoubtedly excellent hi-fi system with your ratty old damned record going on to the turntable or whatever it was.

And now you're in a room experiencing sound and it hits your body and he expressed himself. It is very different. What's happening to me, or words to its effect. Different than your little white earbud that gives you information, but maybe not a lot of good sound. What I did as well is when I started putting on albums, which I've been hearing digitally for years, and then go back and hear,

I don't know why I couldn't hear that stuff but I there are instruments that had disappeared into the digital process and I love records also

but albums LPs but I love CDs and digital music in the right moment for example

I mentioned Morton Feldman great American composer from the mid-century who wrote music of great duration, very quiet. It was in the scores, like three or four Ps, very, very, very quiet, which didn't profit from being on LP because there'd be long gaps of silence between notes, which would

inevitably be pops. And so in some ways I felt that the CD was invented from music of Morton Feldman because when the score calls for silence, you get silence. And that is equally powerful, isn't it? Hearing and indulging and enjoying music is concentrated listening. I'm making some assumptions here that when we're listening to music, we're actually listening. It's not... I think you concentrate and listen to music. I don't think everyone does that

people do at different times sure sometimes I'm vacuuming and you know the Stones record is on or whatever but you're not concentrating you've got music in the room

but when you're listening deep listening listening deeply and concentrating everything becomes vivid because you're you're focused you're really focused

you're listening so music let me then just wrap this up. Music still brings you joy even although you are within it, even although you are surrounded by it, even although you are procuring it for other people. It still works. It's a search, isn't it?

I feel it's an endless search for where can I find that experience again? Maybe it's the next... Fishbone concert. Are you still looking for the next Fishbone concert? Wouldn't there be a great next Fishbone concert? Yes, please, guys, come back. We're always, aren't we always looking for something that's an experience in the room that levitates us

through sound or through other media, but in my case... We search for time everywhere. Never ends. I know. All right. We got to go. Okay. Thank you for having me here at this table.

It was, in fact, a joy. I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from hall of fame athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life. I had the best dad and I had the best memories and the greatest experience. And that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For 10 years, I've been obsessed with one of the most bizarre and audacious cons in rock and roll history. We were all facing 20 years and all that good stuff. The lead singer

tried to pull off an English accent and they went on the road as the zombies. These guys are not going to get away with it. The zombies are too popular. Listen to the true story of the fake zombies on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Want to know how to leverage culture to build a successful business? Then Butternomics is the podcast for you. I'm your host, Brandon Butler, founder and CEO of Butter ATL. And on Butternomics, we go deep with today's most influential entrepreneurs,

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