BrieSearch Subject : Kevin Leon

My guest today is a super talented musician who is currently working on his first solo EP has a new release dropping so so soon and is patiently awaiting the all-clear to go back on tour with Saint Paul and the Broken Bones who if you missed it just dropped a full length live recording album this week with 50% of the proceeds benefiting Equal justice initiative which I've been listening to this record all week and my dude is a total Beast very excited to catch up with you Kevin Leon 

hey buddies

Hey

Thanks for having me I am very excited to be here and thanks for listening to it I actually didn't even know that thing was getting released until the day before it got released and Paul messaged Me and said oh by the way we’re releasing a live album tomorrow

Fyi

I thought oh that's cool and thankfully when I went to listen to it everybody played pretty well

Oh yeah yeah yeah can you pick a part everybody's performances when you listen to stuff like that i mean first of all it does it sounds great cuz I I usually don't actually dig live recordings of things you know for a lot of reasons but it actually sounds really really good

 that is because of our front of house engineer he mixed mixed and mastered it his name is Dave Lyles he lives up in New York he’s an amazing amazing sound engineer he's worked with Charles Bradley and Sharon King bonobo and all these Great Soul and Funk acts 

nice nice

so he’s the man

I usually start out by asking people imagine we're in the most comfortable place having a chat where are we and what are we drinking

1:35

Ooh that is a great question the most comfortable place comfortable in what way like physically comfortable or 

Well so that's the a follow-up question to that is what is your definition of comfortable

yeah right now if I had to answer anything is does it have to be real life or can it be an imaginary world 

both I mean I like to I like to put people at ease by their imaginary version of comfort and then pretend you're there and then you know tell me what we're drinking

okay okay yeah yeah I like this a lot right now because of the circumstances if we could be anywhere I would say a hole in the wall dive bar somewhere 

sticky tables

in like yeah just like nasty dirty stickers all over the wall old beer on the floor dive bar with some indie band playing in the corner and we're both drinking like pbr's 

nice that's very true.

because I'm I miss that so much right now I miss going out to bars and having a beer friends and listening to a band I’ve never heard of yeah I would I would move mountains right now just to be able to hang out at a crappy Dive Bar and hear a crappy band play and hang out with people and drink a beer

That Does sound really nice I'm on your level though because I'm drinking beer for you crappy beer at that but more importantly

Dig it hell yeah what is it 

it's like it's like bug select or Coors Coors Light or something. 

I applaud that 

That wasn't the important part more importantly is what I am drinking it out of 

oh wow yeah 

which is my Hofbrauhaus Stein that I absconded with from our time in Germany

wasn't that at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich

so I have two of them one of them is from the Hofbrauhaus I get the big giant one and then this the one that I'm drinking out of is the Radler glass that I took from the park when we were in the park in Munich

 I do remember that so Kevin and I went on tour together 10 years ago we figured out in Europe which is how our paths crossed my strongest memory of you I have two well a few my strongest memory of you from tour was walking through the streets like late at night and Muenster and you were like freestyling and we were all drinking out of the same giant jug of wine

I do remember that part. 

so while I don't have jug wine to drink with for you tonight I got beer in my my stein

Yeah that'll do that is awesome that’s a trip down memory lane I forgot about that

oh man

that really does seem like a lifetime ago and I would also like to clarify this term tour because you guys the choir was performing a lot we just like watch y'all sing and flitted around Europe and drink too much 

yes correct the Jazz group I mostly remember we used to sing in between our rehearsals we used to go down and sing with you guys in that tiny little basement recording studio Place whatever that was so yeah I can say I can say that that I've officially played with you which

yeah that's true we have we have jammed the jam has been had

we have we have jammed okay so the first question I asked everyone is who are you

 who am I oh that's a deep question I don't know if I even know that yet who am I is that an open-ended as it seems

right correct that's kind of the point

Okay dig it who am I well when is Kevin I live in Atlanta Georgia I'm originally from Birmingham Alabama not england I'm not sure if you can tell by the accent and I am a musician I am a lover of people and the outdoors I am an artist and I am a very silly young boy in the body of a grown man I think that's the best way to answer that 

Not much has changed I guess 

yeah yeah the hair is longer and there's some more gray in it and hopefully I've gotten better at what I do and that is probably The extent of what's changed since I saw you about a decade ago 

yeah dude literally your hair has become like a thing which is Stellar to me

it's a little out of hand 

it's it's own does it have its own Instagram like it's its own personality at this point

I have definitely had people tell me that my hair should have its own Instagram 

it definitely should

and I have a love-hate relationship with it because all at once I'm sort of recognizable especially the people who are fans of Saint Paul because of it but at the same time like I'm more than a clump of hair you guys 

My eyes are up here

Have you ever heard about Bob Ross's relationship with his afro or as one of my white friends called it his Anglo

no no did he hate it

 yeah he was I don't know if he hated it at the start of it but at a certain point 

by the time you started being defined by it

Yeah and he got tired of it yeah they became His Image and he wanted to cut it off his wife wouldn't let him because It became So Married With His Image and I am by no means on the level of Spiritual Awakening this or or success or Artistry of someone like Bob Ross but I do struggle with my hair identity 

right now you know that’s how women feel all the time you’re like hey I'm more more than this

 I believe it yeah 

I can empathize a little bit now

yeah I mean why that you started growing it out why

8:00

Why did I start growing it out I had always wanted long hair but when I was in high school I hated it I really hated that my hair was Curly I moved to Atlanta for a gig and the gig was they wanted a certain look out of us one of them so I had like one of those hipter haircuts short real short on the sides pompadour on top and when that gig ended I just thought screw it and I just let it grow and that was about six or seven years ago now I've had a trim just a little bit but otherwise it is a monstrosity 

right wow right dude its intense and first of all you guys can go stalk Kevin's Instagram and see this Mane of hair that were talking about it is intensely curly like it's not like mine like wavy kind of just like unruly this is like it's real curly and

Its like ramen noodle level 

yeah and it but it's thick too and I can't imagine like how hot I know how hot my hair is that is nothing compared to yours I just can't imagine how hot you get playing and like

Yeah it's definitely not ideal sometimes especially during summer festivals season it is very hot but it's you know you got to suffer for your art bro 

right right if that's all you have to do is keep up a haircut I feel like you've got it you got it made

indeed yeah it's an aesthetic thing and I even if it is going to be sweaty and awful I just sort of say okay 

Worth it you got to give the fans what they want

everybody wants to say everybody in America wants this hair whether they know it or not 

this is true whether they want it or not it's good

ridiculous I don't know how to feel about the fact that we talked about my hair for the past like 2 minutes 

or not it was a topic we had to cover okay so let’s get into music and you're a musician how do you hear music how do you understand it how do you dissect it how do you imbue it do you do you feel like you have a different perspective innately or that you've developed a different perspective because of studying it

Ooh those are good questions

10:30

I think that I'm sort of a hypersensitive person in general and I think I experienced music in that way like I'm really easily and deeply affected by music and art of any medium I like that that is the thing that naturally happens in me so I get inspired really easily so I had that in my corner from the beginning but as far as like understanding music it's been a struggle like I have been a slow learner sort of a late bloomer but yeah of course studying music for the majority of my life now. I started when I was 13 or 14 I think I certainly have a different perspective than I did I did before it did as far as I as far as how i hear it it sort of depends on the day and what Im listening to and what Im innundating myself with I'm a drummer primarily that's My primary instrument so a lot of times I hear music from the bottom up i hear Rhythm and Baseline and all that  and then I hear the melody afterwards but then there may be times when I'm on a big Shasta Kovach Kick or something like that I'm focusing I'm really listening a lot to his harmonies and his melodies and so for a little while I will hear the music bottom down and I'm also a writer  a composer so what I'm listening to affects how I hear a lot recently I've been listening to a lot of modern Neo-Soul hip-hop type stuff a lot of producers music and producers hear music in a bigger sense they listen to the whole picture as opposed to like someone who's just  a drummer or just a guitar player and focuses in on that one thing  when I'm really diving into something like that like that like a producer who makes music or somebody's  scores films or something like that it's like opens my ears up a little bit so I hear the bigger picture  the last thing I'll say about it is that I'm also a really big Visual Arts  fan and actually if you could see me right now there's like  10 or 12 paintings hanging above my head right now  we have all this really loud colorful art in our front room  I get really inspired by visual art and I think that the only difference between visual art and music are that how you intake them you know what I mean like at the end of the day it's all the same  stuff it's all art it's all as a medium for you for people to express themselves so a lot of times I try to hear music as just what are they trying to say you know what I mean what what kind of emotions or feelings or vibe are they trying to get across and not necessarily like what rhythm are they playing here what 

The analytics of music that's a good point and that's interesting because I feel like especially as performers and as artists we get lost in that sometimes of like dissecting the parts of things and we lose sight of and you made an interesting point because I was I was going to liken it to artwork in the way it makes you feel whatever makes you feel what it brings up when you how you kind of take it in but on top of that is what they're trying to convey is equally as important and totally different from maybe how you are perceiving it so that's an interesting kind of perspective to step back and see the bigger the bigger picture you know

yeah yeah yeah definitely when you when you get when you get really deep in any craft it don't really matter what it is but art or music or cooking or dance or whatever it's really easy to get wrapped up in the technical aspects of it and especially coming from a collegiate background studying music at the univeristy level I had to rewire a lot of those of those circuits that had me thinking all the time and it's easy to get caught up with that as opposed to just hearing it or experiencing it as a listener or a or an observer would and I think thats invaluable as a maker of art that if you can't really put yourself in the shoes of the people you're good you're making the art for there's like a big language barrier you know what I mean 

15:30

Ooh that’s a really really good point and something I feel like gets lost a lot especially in music today is that they're just cranking it out so fast that it's really easy to lose sight of what are you what are you trying to elicit in the people that are going to hear this you know that's a good point

yeah yeah there's actually there's this idea I learned about this from a friend who's an active musician up in Nashville there's an idea in Nashville studios in a lot of them at least apparently the idea of writing for Becky Becky is this just name it gets thrown around 

Becky with the good hair

that's a great question I don't know I don't know what her hair game is like 

Is not on your level Kevin she is not on your level

 who is

 no one 

oh God I'm making so many stupid tongue in cheek like braggadocious comments, that's right now that right after this podcast all of my hair are going to fall out god’s going to come smack me on the back of the head 

 there's this idea of in Nashville Studios of writing for Becky and I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing but they are write for Becky in the sense like what is going to speak to you know the soccer mom Middle America soccer mom that's bringing her kids 

all right like General

exactly like they'll be writing something in one of the musician to come up with an idea and the producer might say okay is Becky going to be able to understand that over her head 

I don't know how I feel about that

I don't know how I feel about it either I don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing cuz on the one hand they're trying to speak directly to Their audience but then there's the question of their Motive and why are why are they trying to speak to them like that Is it because they want to reach them

right right the most General populace you know person who has the least Discerning opinions

yeah yeah so I don't know I'm pretty neutral and I just I was I was I was really interesting speaking of speaking your listener’s language 

I want so first of all you're a drummer I want to ask you what is the difference between a percussionist and a drummer

I think it's I think usually when people think of percussion A percussionist plays anything but the drum set so like if you go to a gig if you got to go see a band and there's somebody playing congas or they Have an array of percussion instruments like congas and cow bells and snare drums or whatever that's a percussionist and the drummer is playing the drum kit but really it's just semantics because I am a percussionist 

okay right you hit things

yeah exactly I hit things for a living so yeah I think in the grand scheme of things when people talk about a percussionist it's some basically someone who's playing a percussion instrument that is not the drum set which is really just a bunch of percussion instruments arranged in a very specific way 

put together

so I don't know if you saw questlove's put out something on his you follow Questlove on instagram and so he put on something it was actually a while ago cuz I went and looked at it today but he was talking about how drumming is the GPS of music right like it directs the flow and tell people's bodies how to respond tells people how like what to do right and how we as listeners respond to certain beats and patterns unconsciously I want to see if you can kind of explain some of those to people who might not know the difference or kind of identify what we are used to hearing you know what I mean specific thing he was talking about was like, and beats at the breakdown that he was he was breaking apart like the four-on-the-floor can you tell people what four-on-the-floor means

oh yeah okay yeah yeah for on the floor is if your if you can picture a drum set or if you can't just Google drum set real quick there is a bass drum or a kick drum The drum that you hit the pedal with your foot and it goes boom  four on the floor and I literally means your  hitting for Beats on that big old  Kick Drum in a measure so disco music is a really good example of it so right or like a lot of modern EDM or pop music 

which is exactly he was like disco and house are the two examples

Yeah those are like the go to when you think of four on the floor I'm trying to think if there's a I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor thats a great example of four on the floor

yeah he references the Billie Jean pattern which is not four on the four do you know what that is

yeah hundred percent so he's saying that is different from four on the floor

yeah he saying it’s one and three

 yeah yeah that's exactly what it is yeah Billie Jean is sort of Like the Bible when it comes to laying down a really simple groove that makes everyone in the room shake their 

Can I curse on this thing

 yes you can

21

 well Shake there a double s is we'll meet in the middle

Oh god

yeah that was a drummer named he just passed away recently he was and amazing drummer his name was uundugu chancellor and he's one of those guys that wasn't known for playing flashy he was known for playing really simple straightforward stuff and making it feel really good so that everybody who heard it couldnt help but shake their ass 

Well so that’s so interesting because the post was about Hamilton Bohannon who just passed away recently and that's that's what this conversation was sparked because Hamilton Bohannon died and he said his style of the unmistakable four on the kick and the snare made me you know and that's that's what's got this whole conversation started which I wish I found so fascinating to kind of break apart for people who listen to music wholely and aren't as you know familiar with the drum patterns kind of identifying the stuff that we love for that reason but we don't know why you know and he talks I think I Can't Get No Satisfaction the four on the floor that he

yeah four-on-the-floor kick and snare like almost the whole time so 

yeah right right right right

Yeah its like unrelenting just driving pulse and there's something about that man it's so simple and it's so undeniable and when it's played with conviction and some hutspuh so to speak it's just it's undeniable man yeah that's a great example of that 

 yeah and then he talks about Billie Jean is 1 and 3 and the snare is 2 and 4 which is more typical kind of dancing music

 yeah that that song is basically disco without the kick drum on all four beats

right so so within those Styles how does a drummer differ like how do you make it your own how do you you know like because there's something methodical about obviously drumming but there's something analytical like mathematical about percussion you know so how do you both subscribe to the trends of what the the beat has to be and then also make it interesting

OOh  that is a great question and that depends on the situation you are in and that might be interesting for people who aren’t in the music industry or are or aren't performers to know or to hear about its really situational I know I'm very lucky with Saint Paul and the broken bones that it's a it's a band and that everybody has creative input and when I came in on when I when I started playing with them they were like any of the songs you know play the songs played play the part but feel free to take Liberties here and then play the way you hear it and feel it as opposed to if you if you were to go and play on any instrument really but on drums specifically 

right right right

If you were to go and play with I don't know like Miley Cyrus or some like huge pop act there is no making it up you play the parts or you're fired 

yeah no you're basically just like re-enacting the same thing from the track

It is very much like a do-or-die situation with a lot of those and I'm not saying there are not like little sections where you can improvise or whatever but  for the most part you are playing the part so  in my situation with Saint Paul like I said I'm lucky enough that it feels like a group of peers and we're all playing together and we're creating together so like if I want to improvise a little bit or make it my own so to speak I can do that and when it comes to how I do that it's just it's just one of those things like any craft or skill-set the more you get into it the more you learn the isms of every genre or every sub-genre you learned that like this type of pattern  is going to sound good here this is going to work here so some of it is  a technical knowledge of working on it and some of it is intuition from not even necessarily sit down and practicing what you're going to play on it but just like listening to a lot of music and let your ear guide you so that you know when the band is I need to  when the band is playing x I need to play y because that's going to feel good based on all of these recordings I have listened to over the course of my life

Right it’s a compounding experience

 yeah was that a pun about percussion with the pounding 

Im here all night

so let's talk about Saint Paul and the Broken Bones how'd you get hooked up with them

do you know Chad Fisher 

I feel like yes

he's a musician He's one of those guys that if you live in Birmingham you have heard his name cuz he's a sort of pervasive in that scene he is a trombonist bandleader composer I work with him when I was in college he was one of the first dudes when I was young and hungry just want to play I was going to his gigs a lot he asked me to play just cuz he saw how hungry and eager I was and then found out I didn’t totally suck at it So he kept calling me so anyway I kept playing with him through college  then I moved away I moved to New York and came back and ended up over here in Atlanta and we kept in touch on and off  and about four years ago now 4 or 5 he got the gig with Saint Paul the original trombonist left and coming up on about two years ago now they parted ways with their last drummer and they needed a last-minute replacement or sub at the time was what they were thinking a last-minute sub or their album released to her for the last LP they just put out called young sick camellia so I got a call from Chad the end of August 2018 and he said hey I was in a recording session Atlanta he called me and he said hey so I know this is last minute but what are you doing tomorrow and how would you feel about being gone until Thanksgiving well and so yeah so I called erin My now fiance girlfriend at the time  and I was like Hey Saint Paul just called me to come out with them for the next 3 months what do you think about that and she was like are you a dumb ass you should probably go do that

Yeah duh pack

 Yeah so I basically dropped everything I called all my students that I was teaching at the time and all the local gigs that I had all the band leaders and it's like hey guys I got this opportunity that I cannot pass up I got to do this and thankfully everybody was super understanding and supportive and I I left the session as soon as I was done came home. Pulled as much of an all nighter as I could but I'm literally can't keep my eyes open anymore and I made cheat sheets for all the songs 

Yeah shedded all the songs

yeah just practiced like well mentally practiced my butt off that I don't have time to sit on a drum set with them and then the next morning I woke up threw some clothes in a bag drove to Birmingham and did a rehearsal and then we did like a month I guess all in all they close to the six weeks in the states and then about three and a half weeks in Europe and it was all supposed to be a sub sub scenario and then they were like hey we really like having you around. How would you feel about coming on board full-time and that was that.

well that's awesome dude what a jackpot of like a sub call too

No kidding 

Seriously 

I don't Kid myself for a second because you can put all the preparation in the world and what you do but if you don't get lucky and get that call from the right person at the right time and all the all the puzzle pieces line up in the right way then I got very lucky there is no doubt about that

totally for sure and and this band is so like right up your alley and 

Definitely

and so interesting and so unique they have such an such a unique style his voice is bananas I don't like oh my God

Yeah paul is a madman

so how do you characterize this genre and oh my God his voice like what is his his history

Paul grew up singing in church 

Clearly

he's speaking of being Technically oriented Paul is the opposite of that  all just yeah he grew up singing in church and just absorbed all the melody like just learned tons of songs and I actually asked him early on in the band cuz if you've listened to the band you know his range is crazy is just 

really insane

Yes so I asked him one day I was like how do you learn how to train your voice to be able to sing such a wide range was that something you practiced and he said no it just happened he said when he was young he really loved Disney soundtracks and so he would learn songs off of them and he would learn to sing the male and the female parts so I guess it just happened that way 

well and all those songs are high tenor too so that probably stretched out his vocal range pretty decently

yeah right yeah that right that makes sense 

But yeah Paul is just very easy an intuitive musician he doesnt think technically a lot and I really respect that about him he is all about the gut and like he doesn't care if what you're doing he doesn't necessarily care how good what you're doing is on a technical level if it has the right feeling 

so true

if it punches the audience in the gut like it needs to 

so true and that mean it's just it is so much more than a feeling it's that like guttural just pulled it out of you he's at he's great

like he's amazing and it's really cool performing with him because I always thought I was a really energetic and high-energy performer and then I and then I started playing with Paul Janeway and it was so fun especially early on when I came on I think I just had this raw energy and excitement and so we would play these shows filled with songs that they have been playing for a long time for the most part they've been playing for a long time already 

And you’re like, new to me!

yeah so could have been easy for them to just of fall into a routine with them but especially early on it still happens sometimes you know when touring was a thing up until a few months ago where we be playing and like I would maybe just be going through the motions then I would look up and I would look at Paul like literally eating the microphone cable on stage or like jumping off of speakers or rolling around and roll yourself up like a burrito and a rug or doing crazy stuff out the crouwd or like he would he may just be singing around look at me and I look like Animal from the Muppets and I'm sweating and I'm gritting my teeth so that sort of 

animals my favorite Muppet by the way

Animal is the greatest 

I want to be when I grow up he is the best 

so he's the greatest seriously I remember somebody asked me that at some point and it's on my interview questions like who's your favorite Muppet and I don't think it's kind of the animals like animals dope you're sleeping on animal cuz he doesn't talk I'm telling you

yeah hundred percent to get to what you asked specifically Paul started out in Church he's a huge Otis Redding fan so st. Paul started out as like early on they were doing Otis Redding tributes and did a couple of songs and their first album after the city is still a best-selling album and that's what I got famous for donig the retro soul kind of thing in the same vein something of Otis Redding and stuff like that 

that makes sense it's a style that I love so much and I feel like is so kind of inherent in the way we grew up especially in the south in the Bible Belt in in Alabama is just like that it feels in my blood you know and so to hear him sing it now is just feels like home

yeah yeah definitely and I think that's why It’s resonated with so many people but maybe the coolest thing about this band is everybody loves soul and everybody loves R&B music but everybody's also really interested in all sorts of other music so like their last album young sick Camellia they started messing with there's like elements of of free jazz of disco like psych Rock and we are we've been recording a lot recently and there's influences that you can hear in there everything from like Aphex Twin to Erykah Badu to Radiohead so and there is always going to have soul in it it’s always going to be a strong by rhythmic thing going on is always gonna have  Paul doing his super Soulful thing on top of it so that’s always at the core but we are all really been experimenting and trying all sorts of new stuff with the music so who knows where it will go next

3550

that's awesome so how many people are in this band like there's a bunch a bunch of people I feel like it's like Edward Sharpe where 41 people walk out on stage and like what is happening what is been traveling and playing with the large band how is that how is that been different for you and did you have like a oh my God how did I get here moment

hundred percent I have that most nights we play shows still like there is a moment and almost every show where I look out at the crowd and I'm just like oh my God how is this my life 

Thats gott be great though man

yeah and I hope that never stops I am so grateful for every second of getting to do this and traveling it's been great cuz when you travel with an indie band I travel with a lot of groups ever like a trio or quartet and it's just for the band like an indie outfit so the bandleader doing everything driving he's managing he's booking everything so you are with those three or four people all the time where as with st. Paul they are there like a relatively successful touring an act so we have tour busses so you get a semblance of normal life When it comes to that and then all in all if it's a full tour if it's an extended tour I think there are 14 people that travel with us between band and crew and and so it's like a big family and like you don't you're not spending all your time with two or three people  so you go out to dinner with a tour manager one night and the bassist the next night  it's great and it's all sorts of different personalities that feels like one big family 

yeah so let's talk about you as a composer I know that drums is your first instrument but you play lots of other things and also write as well has your time with Saint Paul and like you know touring and playing the genre of music influenced the way you're writing for yourself

100% all the guys in st. Paul are so creative and they're all such great musicians but they're all good at their instruments and more importantly are all really creative thinkers so thats definitely rubbed of on me and its a very encouraging environment like I don't feel scared to bring ideas in nobody's going to like make fun of me for an idea I brought if they like it great if they dont they  don't like it has definitely influenced me and if anything it has made me more willing to be myself be less scared to be myself because in the past play I've got to play with a lot of really great artists thankfully but when youre playing with an artist a lot of times your job is is to support the artist and bring their vision to life and with St Paul is that still the case it's still a band and we are going for a unified sound but with more of them create creative Liberties and its more of a democracy then a lot of other outfits when it comes to my music I am the I am the Creator and I don't know the best way to say I like 

Youre the deity

Right there you go Im the deity

I get to create the world and live in the world and I'm the one he gets to say what stays and what goes but that's that's really liberating if that's a big part of the reason why I like writing so much because you get to do whatever you want however you want I actually I saw this really interesting interview with Stephen King recently I know this sounds random but it relates 

ha I trust you

he were saying somebody was asking him what is what's your favorite part of the of writing book unless your least favorite part of writing a book and he said his favorite part is the actual writing process because he gets to create a little word and get to know the characters and how they act and their little isms and his least favorite part of writing a book is handing it over to the editor because as soon as he does it's not just his world anymore he has to let other people in and I thought that was interested and that's hits the nail on the head when it comes to composing and why it's like such a drug its like a high that I chase because yeah you get to create this little fantasy world and it’s yours and you create characters in it you create the laws And yeah its really addicting and Im really glad I have that outlet cause playing live is not a thing right now

Yeah nope not a thing right now 

tell me about this single that you have June 19th this won't be out by then but it'll be it'll already be out by the time you hear this podcast you will you will be able to get the single somewhere it will already exist

right right right yeah yeah

So I listened to it today has some really cool like multimedia components which which made me wonder why we don't do that more often cuz I thought it was really neat so tell me about that

alright thanks for listening to it by the way 

yeah yeah

So this was a song I wrote a few years ago in the memory of my grandmother who passed away a few years ago i was really really close with her and alot of times when Im writing and Ive started to write and something whether it's a chord progression for a melody or whatever it is and I don't realize until I started writing it that I'm writing it about something 

but you just need to get it out

yeah it's these feelings are coming out as I'm writing the music and so with that one I had this like Melody idea that it started with and it was really pretty and just made me feel a certain way and then I was as I was trying to develop I'm sitting at the keyboard I realized that it was like these feelings of my grandmother that I just lost coming out so it's a really important song to me cause its just sort of one of those that just came out 

And the multimedia components are actually Snippets of my grandmother talking

but yeah I know it's so cool

yes oh six months or so before she passed away I was for about a year or so up until she passed away I was going over to her house and each lunch with her and we would just talk and she was very old like 94 when she passed away and she would start to repeat stories and things like that and at some point she started telling me stories i had already heard and so I pulled out my phone to record some of the conversations and chopped those up and put them in the song but the song is already out on as like a drum performance video on YouTube but it's so easy when you see that video to think okay this is about his drumming and so the songs that he is really important so I wanted to put it out on streaming platforms as like a whole package not just watching play drums to this music 

Yeah you know people could get lost in that I could see how that would make a difference

yeah 

I think that's I know what you mean as far as something just coming out like as a whole thing a lot of the times you know I write and I play not nearly as in not professionally but there's something to be said for something that just has to manifest itself that just it just comes out and that's it is a piece a lot of times I think we can get stuck in like oh here's a here's an idea for this hook and here's a a good you know Melody phrase and here is Chords or whatever and when something comes out as a whole thing it's like you almost it's it's too precious to take apart you know it's like this is a whole thing and I can't f*** with it it's just got to be what it is

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yeah yeah yeah that's a very real and very powerful thing a lot of time i feel like the purest for of creating any sort of art you are just a vessel for what's trying to come through you I heard this is this is sort of a testament to real that is and how hard it is to fight it or deny it 

Do you know who tom waits is

Oh of course

Ok just making sure

So i watching this interview with tom waits and he was talking about just that that sometimes this idea comes through you and you cant deny it but sometimes you can't do anything you can't do anything about it because of where you are or what you're doing so he said he was driving along in the LA traffic before the age of smartphones and all of a sudden this melody just comes and thumps him in the head like fully formed and I got to do something I need to get this out of me he don't have anything to record it with and he said he looked up at the sky like seriously right now. Go down the street to give to leonard cohen or something like that sometimes the music is just the means to an end to get the message out and you are just the messenger 

to process something yeah

yeah it's a very real and very powerful thing 

I dig it that's awesome I love I love the feeling of the message behind it I want to do something similar with my grandmother and my grandmother's 96-95

is she still in Alabama 

She’s in South Carolina 

yeah okay 

she's always been in South Carolina and he's smart as a whip and like so sassy I don't know where I got it from she's so great and I actually have started doing its funny you say that I started doing the same thing so like when I would call her I would record like chunks of the conversation cuz just to have you know and I actually I'm I'm considering having like well doing a podcast episode without her knowledge has recorded one of our phone conversation and asking her some questions you know like you were saying she has better days the same thing but just kind of doing it on purpose and a sense of like asking these questions then and recording it just to have it for the future because like you know she's not going to be around and she's like literally my favorite person so anyway

That’s a great idea yeah

4646

so I like to ask musicians three hot takes on songs albums old current you know love hate whatever you want to do something interesting something fascinating to people who wouldn't know by just listening to the song or what makes it cool or whatever so let's do three hot takes

Dig it okay so three songs or albums right 

Yeah anything

okay cool I will start with one that is maybe a little more underground well relatively underground she's a massive artist she has a huge Bjork most people know who bjork its but there is this album that she put out in 2004 that is one of my top 5 of all-time and its called medulla and that album Blew me away the first time I heard it which was probably like 2006 or something and still holds up I get chills every single time I hear that the entire album is all vocals except it's either live or sampled vocals except for piano on one track and it is so badass it's so powerful 

is that just like beatbox beat the entire time underneath this whole thing cuz it's f****** fascinating

Yeah thats actually rozelle he was big in the early 2000s he did stuff with the roots but he was like famous in his own right and he's an amazing beatboxer just like maker of music with his mouth and she said she's got a bunch of Heavy Hitters on there shes got the 2 that come to mind are roz-L and this guy named Mike Patton who most people know 

Faith No More

the singer of Faith No More but he also has all these crazy projects where he's doing all this avant-garde vocal acrobatics basically like a my bungle and phantomas and actually like Mike Patton did the voices the sounds for the zombies in what was the name of the book that Will Smith starred in 

Legend I Am Legend

yes I am Legend he did that either the zombie voices for I Am Legend yeah

oh nice interesting 

 yeah so that whole album is all either processed sampled or live vocals except for except for piano on one trach but if you look up the a video version of who is it which I think was that record on YouTube there are bells on the video but on a single version album version its all vocals 

that's crazy man that's wild that everything is is vocal any not any instruments that's not that beatbox is insane but I was going to ask you about beatboxing because I know from personal experience that you can beatbox I know this for a fact

that album is actually where I learn to beatbox 

no way really

yeah because I was so obsessed with a friend of a friend of mine showed it to me and I've never heard anything like it and I just became obsessed with it I'll listen to it over and over again and especially Rahzel beatboxing on who it is it's just so good that I remember being when we were at UAB when we were in college I would drive around when the CD players are still a thing of have the CD on it and I would just hit rewind over and over again and beat box along with it in my car and I'm not a great beatboxer but any skills I do have in that in that room are because of that album 

pretty good you're pretty good I remember being impressed but I was also like is this something that every drummer has to know how to do to be able to like communicate the sound of a drum kit you know

it's sort of it is important it is important to be able to sing what you play feel the same way I guess that's there's like this whole subculture a beatboxing Rozelle is one of the more famous ones there's this guy who got really famous in that world they beardyman he's from from from somewhere in the UK but he will do entire live shows sold out club shows all with his voice like sampling his voice and moving it and it's the stuff he can do is not of this world is unbelievable 

this just remind me I have a friend who's a beatboxer Heaven he's he's crazy dude like I braided his hair in my living room when I and he was like Beatboxing with a couple friends of mine and I was just like you’re insane he's all right so what's your take two

bjork is real modern in that that album is pretty experimental and out so for not modern and less experimental Aretha Franklin live at Fillmore West another probably top five albums 

that album is so dope oh my god

unbelievable have you heard the King Curtis album that it's from this the same night his band is her backing band and they did the opening set first track on there is Memphis Soul stew and it is just outrageous but I mean the band is just so funky his All Starr All Starr Band like Billy Preston Bernard Purdie King Curtis is just stacked Ray Charles does a song on there that album is just amazing front to back and you can feel the energy that was in the room 

Wow

Aretha is just in tip top shape 

yeah she's that's like her prime

is just outrageous 

not to mention that like the set list is out of this world

oh my God yeah. I'm thinking specifically right now of dr. Feelgood on that and there's some vocal stuff she does on that it's still makes the hair on back of my neck stand up that whole album back to front and as far as drummers go bernard purdie who’s birthday was just yesterday actually is the greatest arguably not really even arguably I'm going to say it greatest R&B drummer of all time 

definitive you heard it here first

he's he has been hit yes he was the hitmaker music guy the got hired to play on friggin everything 

Wow

you have heard Bernard Purdie on everything from Aretha Franklin to Steely Dan to arguably the Beatles there's a lot of rumors that he might replace ringo on some stuff 

wow wouldn't surprise me Ringo's not the strongest drummer

well that could be a whole other podcast 

That’s true there's probably like a dedicated Ringo podcast

yeah yeah but Bernard Purdie has also been sampled and in a zillion hop hop songs he's the greatest

wow that's awesome yeah that that whole albums insane

unbelievable yeah if anyone listening has not heard that highly recommend get it on vinyl it's pretty easy to find 

Ah i would love to have that on vinyl

it is yeah it is gold 

I believe and I don't I don't know if you could even correct me if I'm wrong because I think this was before your Saint Paul time I have a vinyl St Paul record from years ago that is shaped like the state of Alabama and is red and it came out on record store day because I was like of course I want a vinyl shaped like Alabama what are you kidding and I scored it I think is a 2014 collector's item now stay in my vinyl collection

yes 14 or 15 that would have been how many years ago was 6 or 7 years ago 

5 or 6

okay I think I could be wrong but I think they did that for sea of noise which is their second LP and I remember hearing about that when I when I joined the band that was pretty dope

it's really rad I mean yeah it's an LP cause you can only fit 2 or 3 songs on it but it's it's it was really cool and that's like early on when they were doing vinyl shaped like other things before they started like Printing and crazy colors and doing cutouts and all that kind of stuff it was like really cool and then for it to be shaped like Alabama was like uh yeah definitely sign me up

yeah yeah 

okay so take number 3

okay I'm going to I'm going to do an audible here because 

Okay 

because we talked about this a little bit beforehand and I'll mention the new, I'm going to give it a mention, I mentioned the new tame impala record which is great front to back great great song writing and speaking of groves there's so many heavy dance grooves on that record it’s really really great 

But because we talked about questlove and because we talked about rhythms that impact people and have impacted music im gonna talk about voodoo by d’angelo 

Ooh nice

yeah that I mean that is like Rhythm Section Bible and it was actually speaking Questlove is actually this is really great interview with him Red Bull Music Academy or something like that yeah that was a couple years ago

Have you seen this interview 

No

okay what he's talking about the process of making voodoo voodoo was it's it's not the album The created the neo-soul but it's arguably like the it was the biggest Juggernaut of the Neo-Soul era it's the one that like blew that whole scene up because it was so revolutionary and they did so much new stuff to production style they're pulling a lot from J dilla famous hip hop producer j dilla so Questlove talks about playing what he calls drunk playing and if you listen if you listen to that album the first track on there called playa playa its got these snaps up top just like keys bass and snaps and the drums come in the drums are so behind the beat it almost sounds like the band is in one spot and the drummer decided to play just a fraction of a second behind and and if you listen real close you can hear it

 and he said that when they were making that album this was in this in this period Where he calls it the the soulquarians this group of people like D'Angelo Common and Erykah Badu and were making all these records in electric ladyland in New York So they are making all these great records and they go to make D'Angelo's voodoo and D'Angelo starts telling Questlove to play Drunk and play behind the beat and Questlove fought him on it and was like listen man I can't do that I'm going to get made fun of and everybody's going to think I can't play and he did it and it like revolutionized music because J dilla had already done it

if you haven't listened to jdilla pick up The Shining and donuts were the first that introduced me to dilla where I'm like really figured out what he's up to and he I won't go into detail but he sorta started that dunk rhythm thing he would play the drums if it is the MPC is drum pad it electronic drum pads and he wouldn't use to quantize function and if you're not musicians you don't know that means you play the notes into your computer and then you hit this quantize button and it snaps all the all the notes to a grid so they're perfectly in time which if you listen to pop music top40 radio pretty much everything you hear is quantized like that and J dilla didn't do that restore to give us his music that's like loose drunk feeling and Questlove tha album voodoo popularized a real drummer trying to play like that

right that's awesome I had I had no idea but I do remember Questlove talking about in that same thing that I was I was referencing earlier cuz he was talking about how he got his start as a drummer by being so reliable like you could only tell that I was a good drummer because I didn't call attention to myself you know like I was so on the metronome that that's the only way I could showcase that I was good is by being non-obtrusive you know and so I think J dilla bringing him onto the new stuff gave him that freedom to kind of break out of that and call attention in it in his own way in a new way and thankfully it worked cuz it like spawned an entire new genre of music

right yeah yeah right right yeah yeah yeah I do remember hearing Questlove talk about he would play on these albums and his friends would argue with him and tell him no thats not you thats the drum machine when it is really just Questlove being so perfect that you cant tell the difference 

yeah yeah right yeah that's what he was saying he was like I made my start by just being a metronome and I I was so good that I was not showcasing what I could do by just like blending into the background and there's space for that you know there's there's room for that but there's also room for you know making totally crazy different decisions

yeah right if you want another example of questolove stretching out a little bit do you know who Roy Hargrove is Roy Hargrove is a jazz Trumpeter just passed away a few years ago but he but he was part of that soulquarians movement he played on voodoo actually and Roy Hargrove at this group called The Rh factor which was real like R&B Neo-Soul eccentric and they put out around call hardgroove and Questlove is playing on most if not all of it and can hear him stretch out and that album is really great 

Nice I should make a Spotify podcast playlist cuz we all talk about we all reference songs every time you know a musician comes on we were all referencing things and I always end up having to go back and look them up later but I should make a playlist already can like reference all the things that we're talking about

dude that's a great idea 

Yeah

I would support that 

yeah I will add that to my list of things to do I mean I've had people on so far that you know my friend Rob and I talked about music for an hour and 40 minutes and he's reference like so I his hot take for people who should have already listened that episode thanks it's the first one it's his episode his hot take was Tears for Fears Shout and he was like you just can't write a more perfect song and we we broke that apart like we listened to that and broke that down and it really is truly cuz now I listen to it in a totally different way so that's what I'm hoping like people can go back and listen to this music and hear different things hear different qualities hear different perspectives in a way that they haven't necessarily paid attention to it before you know

Yeahhh yeah that is so cool I applaud you for this effort that is awesome 

thanks man bringing it to the people

Its a worthy cause 

Okay so what is up with Saint Paul’s tour and when can we see you hopefully soon

that is a great question unfortunately because of the state of things the live music industry is just in limbo nobody is to have one guy out there that's touring right now 

no one's going to see him but he's going

not that I blame it on his name but is like Mark Rebbblit  or something like that he sort of came out of the Reggie Watts School like comedian musician he's really great but he's doing a drive in tour right now which is really smart but as far as regular old live shows I I wish I had answers I have no idea we were supposed to have like five or six weeks tour with Tedeschi Trucks Band this summer and that all got postponed until next summer so that is the latest that I have 

yeah okay going to be a hot minute unfortunately I think that's just how it's going to be for a while

yeah it sucks 

no large no large crowds

but yeah what are you what are you going to do so whenever touring becomes a thing again whenever Saint Paul start playing shows again we will make plenty of noise about it 

yes good

and you can keep up with what I'm doing and where if and where I'm playing at kevinleon.com or find me on Instagram or Facebook 

beautiful and I will tag all that stuff in the show notes so you guys can check it out if you I know you teach too lessons if you could tell someone who wanted to start learning drums or a person who wanted to better their rhythm somehow like what are the first steps you give people

the first thing I always do is just try to get someone to tap a steady Rhythm on their leg or there chests with a song and thankfully most of the time people can do that without a problem every now and then there's someone who is the I don't know what you mean I don't know what if not being able to hear pitches is tone deaf 

tone deaf yeah

I dont know what not being able to hear rhythm is but it is a thing it does exist that would be the first thing 

They do exist 

yeah oh yeah oh my god I got it! 

that would be the first thing and then I have some really really really simple sort of plug-and-play type things that I have people do up front and Billy jean is one of the first songs that we talk about actually

Really yeah

 yeah because you're the part is really really simple and it's easy to to play along with so yeah my suggestion would be listen to music try to tap along with it and then listen to Billie Jean and listen for the the kick and the snare or the if you don't know those are the low drum sound and the high drum sound alternating

yeah there we go I'm just going to sample that

Hows that?

Its great humming and beatboxing at the same time

Mindblowing

Multitalented

Can you dance I dont remember

oh no now definitely not go ahead

Really but with like your whole career is Based on Rhythm right so like how can you not dance first of all drummers have insane like mind hand body coordination and you have to do it's like an octopus where you control all four of your limbs at once which as a dancer even I don't understand cuz I'm just like I have to do that and stand up but like I don't know how you guys do it but how is your Rhythm has to be so good how can you not dance

right you should talk to my fiance about that cuz she asked me that 

 she's like God damn it kevin

107

she says you're like yeah you're you're good at drums you make your living doing it why can't you dance 

you're clearly coordinated enough

oh God. I think there are different types of coordination because behind the drums I feel pretty confident i feel like I can coordinate things well enough but if I'm not behind the drums I just look like a bunch of elbows 

a bunch of elbows 

yeah I just you can I just pull into that phrase yeah it's bad it's not it's not pretty 

everything but a right angle all the time a bunch of elbows

yeah one day I'll add it to the list of things I'm going to do learn to dance yeah 

put it on the list right under release your own EP and tour the world and get married and all the other things

now that I think of it learning to dance you're probably trump all those 

Move It Up On The Covid list there's there's a hundred different you know classes and shit you could take right now

yeah yeah yeah yeah ok done I just moved it up in the end I have in my phone above getting married I have learned to dance 

dance good so I guess you're looking forward to that

yeah I'm looking forward to learning how to dance one day yeah hopefully it’s going to be sooner rather than later no promises though I'm willing to bet when we talk again in a decade I still will not know how to dance 

No you will have known and then forgotten no you're going to be like Saint Paul will have opened a ballet you're going to be the opening

I do look great in a tutu

well that's true

thanks for coming man thanks for chatting this was fun I feel like we got some inside info 

Thank you so much for having me 

on all things Rhythm

yeah it was a pleasure. I hope I didn't bore you completely the tears but it was it was fun for me to talk about 

good good I'm glad I think people have some homework to do 

Yeah for real while you don't have anything else to do right before the pandemic is over and let's let's be real this life is over y'all we're done

sorry 

so you have plenty of time to listen to all this music and teach me how to dance 

yes.