Sam Hollander

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Speaker 1: Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

00:00:10
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of Questlove Supreme. I'm not Questlove or Supreme, but it is an honor to be here Today's especial. Today we are doing one on ones. I suppose no Team Supreme, just me Unpaid Bill and we can get into why I called Unpaid Bill if you like, because it's just me so I have a lot of time to talk about myself in other news. Today's guest is I will say, one of the most interesting, enigmatic, incredible people I have ever met in my life, and we have only known each other for like what like a year and a half. Maybe let's just go with it. Okay, I had this whole big intro plan, but I think we should just get into it. Today's guest is songwriter, producer, composer, top liner, father, husband, and all around incredible human being. Sam Hollander. Yes, Ca, okay, here we call your name is Sam.

00:01:03
Speaker 3: My name is Sam, So Sam.

00:01:05
Speaker 2: I suppose you've listened to a few Quest Love Supremes over time, couple. Okay, you know when they asked me to do a one on one, the first person I thought it was you because people don't necessarily I mean, you did write a book about yourself, which was a nice touch.

00:01:17
Speaker 3: I thoughts up.

00:01:20
Speaker 2: Just you know, so people would know who you are, but you are responsible for so many things that I don't think the majority of listeners may or may not know. And so I thought we'd get into them all. And I think my favorite way to start all quest Love Supremes, which is the most way, is where were you born?

00:01:33
Speaker 3: Well, let me just start off by saying, it is an honor to be Questlove Supreme. I know you were looking for mid season summer replacements, and I feel like I'm sort of like Stephen Botchko's nineteen ninety cop Rock right or you know it was. It was highly heralded and then forgettable. And that's sort of the story of my life. So I was born in New York City, Bill. I was born in New York City, and uh through some of the darker times in the city. It was a very violent, violent place, and my parents ushered me out of here to Westchester County, and eventually, through lots of stops and starts, I ended up in Bedford Hills, New York, site of the Bedford Hills Correctional Women's Correctional Prison. You might remember Gene Harris who murdered the Scarsdale diet doctor. She would have been one of the many.

00:02:27
Speaker 2: I would I would remember that.

00:02:29
Speaker 3: Do they call him tenants?

00:02:31
Speaker 2: Inmates?

00:02:31
Speaker 3: Inmates? I like tenants better. Bedford Hills attended fox Lane High School. You might know it from Dukes of Hazzard's John Schneider bo Duke was in fact a fox Laner, as well as Susan Day from the Partridge family, KIMMYA. Dawson, Moldy Peaches, MRSA Winaker. The list goes on and on.

00:02:52
Speaker 2: Are you here to speak on behalf of Fox Lene schools?

00:02:55
Speaker 3: It's like a recruiting tread. I'm here for That's what I'm doing.

00:02:59
Speaker 2: Sam. Yes, what is your first musical memory as a child? Because you have? For those who don't know, Sam wrote a book, and I highly recommend reading the book for two reasons.

00:03:08
Speaker 3: It's a salacious tell all.

00:03:10
Speaker 2: It is a salacious tell all from a very silacious life. Lad No. The best part about your book, in my personal humble opinion, is not only that it's you have an incredible story and it's almost impossible to believe any of it, to be honest, I mean, but there's parts in it, and this is important. There are parts in it that any producer, anyone interested in music, any engineer or mixer, or anybody who even wants to be anywhere near music and needs a piece of advice, an unsolicited piece of advice, and not like in a dickhead way, like in a I've lived this life and I'm going to tell you about it and how to get there. There are what you call what is it called in the book footnotes, Yeah, the footnotes, and there's other things you put in.

00:03:51
Speaker 3: The bonus cuts. Bonus cut.

00:03:54
Speaker 2: All the bonus cuts are these parts of these random paragraphs in the book where it's just pieces of advice. Like some of them are go to events that as KAP or bm MY sponsor and meet people. And I think there's a lot of the book is about networking and talking to people and what I like to call the other side of our job, which is like the bullshit. Well, you can be the greatest writer, the greatest musician of all time. If you're a dick and no one wants to hang out with you, then no one's going to hire you to do anything.

00:04:20
Speaker 3: I learned something pretty early on, right, So I mean, I'll get back to earliest musical memory. But I did learn something early on when I started to have any morsel of success. Jonathan Daniel, who owns Crush Management, is one of my best friends and really my mentor in many ways. One day, I was melting down about something and I can get kind of fiery, and he took me for a walk and he put it in such succinct terms. He said, you know, everybody likes happy Sam, nobody likes angry Sam. And I walked away from that and it was like a Yoda moment, you know, and it dawned on me. Likability is something and I never really took stock in it. You know, I'm genuinely curious about people. I like people. I'm pretty social, and I root for people, and I think I always have to some extent. And you know, in the music business, that's something they don't tell you. It's important, is be curious about other people and cheer for their victories even when you're losing, because there will be a moment where the tables turn and you will have your moment and when you finally sort of actualize whatever it is that you're chasing. It's just such an incredible feeling to know that people are actually rooting for you and not shooting darts at you. So that was my little sidebar. But let's get back to let me get back to the genesis of it. The first song I ever heard was Magic by Pilot, which I believe is the ozembic song now, but before before it was pressuring, you know, an era of weight loss. It was the first first song I ever heard. I think my brother had the forty five, and you know, I was completely hooked, and I took guitar lessons. I started guitar lessons at seven with a woman who was in the fast folk movement in Grawich Village and she was really rad. I took a guitar for a few years and I quit, and I do it again, and I quit, and even today I have like five chords at my disposal. I think it doesn't really work with my ADHD. My hyper focus doesn't exist outside of lyrically, so it's very hard for me. But I do fumble with it and I use it in the writing process, as we'll discuss. But you know, the Magic song was interesting because that was this weird gateway drug to k Tel Records, and I got really into k Tel records, which, for those of you who are too young to appreciate, sort of worthy equivalent of the now, that's what they call music series or any sort of compilation of current hits. But in the seventies, when I was this little kid, very tiny, they these k Tel records. They would mix genres sometimes, so you'd have pop hits that would and it would be solo songs, disco songs, rock songs on the same record. And that's how I first heard music, and that's still how I hear music. So I've never really been genre specific. I always hear it as like this weird amorphous just grouping of genres and sounds, you know, And so that was it for me. I also became a huge fan of the notion of a three minute song, right, and that's my attention span, which is why I don't make jam band records, you know what I mean. So I have we'll get to that, well, we'll get there, but yeah, I have three minutes of my disposal and that's where my attention wear was off. So you know, I was just exposed to so many different quote unquote genre as at a young age, and I loved all of it. And I always envisioned songs dressed up in any any fashion. I never really so when I heard a disco record, it wasn't the notion of the four on the floor and the sort of the pounding beat. It was just the song and the structure and stuff like that that I fell in love with. And I've taken that into everything i've done since. It doesn't matter what the assignment is or who I'm working with. I just strip all the noise and anything extraneous about it, and I just take it primarly to what is the basic song in the smallest shape, and then me figure out how to dress it up. And that comes from just being exposed to tons and tons of genres very young.

00:08:20
Speaker 2: So your family is an interesting story, and we don't have to go too deep into it, but I'm very interested.

00:08:25
Speaker 3: They like me.

00:08:26
Speaker 2: No, well, you're already ahead of the game. I'm interested in musical families. A lot of the families, or a lot of the people we talked to you in this line of work grew up in churches which we clearly did not, and or like come from families where music is a big thing. I know you quote your brother as like, you know, turning you on too music. I was just telling before about how my sister doesn't even listen to music. I know your parents were hippies and Da da da da, my preio.

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Speaker 3: Like almost before hippies, they were rad man, they were a generation before that, but they were incredible artists.

00:08:56
Speaker 2: But good, yeah, sorry, And like my parents are doctors and my dad like smooth jazz. Mom likes Mandy Patinkin, which is also fitting, but moving on, it's.

00:09:03
Speaker 3: Also kind of awesome.

00:09:04
Speaker 2: It's also that part of it is great. I'm not gonna lie and yoyo ma, those are her two fixtures. But talk to me about how your family and how your brother's record collection I believe affected your overall.

00:09:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I owe a lot of it to my brother. You know my brother, you know, when we grew up, he was listening to a lot of seventies stuff, and he was listening to a lot of Southern rock and all this shit kicker kind of GARYA the Z twenty eight, And he used to cruise around listening to Mally Hatchet and stuff like that. And I was listening to tons of disco, so I was on the other end of the coin. You know, I wasn't a kiss kid as much as I was a Beg's kid, So you know, I was bullied a lot. But what was funny about my brother, though my brother went off to college, he went to Boston University. In his first semester, he became friends, I believe, with the radio DJ who lived on his floor at the you know, at the university station. My brother came back with crates of vinyl crates, and it was all this early new wave, like the two tone Sky stuff, chronic Towne, I believe, murmur so It's gonna be eighty three, murmur, all the Ram stuff, obviously, the Smith stuff. Like he came back with just this incredible knowledge of this music that didn't exist in the suburbs where I was, you know, certainly not in sixth grade or seventh grade. And when he came in and I was exposed to it, my head fucking exploded. It was just this whole other It was like a revolution of sound because I, you know, I at that point, I was listening to the Beatles, and I was listening to Who and a lot of disco, and then suddenly I'm exposed to this entire weird cultural clash of stuff. At the same time, hip hop was beginning to happen, and you know, I had friends who were really in a rapper's delight, and you know, we got into all the Sugar Hills stuff early on. So we would buy all those twelves who'd go to stores and just get all the twelve inches anything that came out on you know, Sugar On Prelude or Tommy Boy or you know, Sleeping Bag and Fresh, and we would bring back all these records. So between the new wave and the hip hop stuff, you know, I began to really have a taste level for the first time in life where I was really like, I felt like I was early on stuff as opposed to just listening to classic rock and stuff. So I owed my brother immenseally for that. My mom was bad ass, because my mom was like this jazz head, you know. So my mom was mingus and all this cool stuff and chick Corea and stuff like that. And then my dad was really into Brazilian stuff. There was a lot of stan Getz and with Jilberto. Jail asked Gilberto all that stuff, and I was exposed to tons of stuff. There's lots of sounds in our house. And me I had the mom who was listening to talking heads and was listening to what was the record that she really she dug, It's gonna Hit Me Again, and it wasn't the water Boys, but it was one of these Scottish things, and she was just really cool. And so it's funny because I think I was the least cool of anybody in my house, but everybody who's listening to really cool stuff, and I just, you know, I was, like I said, I just absorbed anything around me, and I just was trying to at all costs just sort of learn learn from all of it and combine it. And that was the most That's what I look back on growing up. I remember, you know, I had two turntables, like two techniques at a Gemini mixer, and that was pretty terrible. But I loved mixing genres, you know. So I took the instrumental from Brass Monkey, you know, the Beastie Boys, and then I put the Bob o' riley or peggiated scent behind her something like that. Like I'd mess around with different genres, different sounds. And then I learned about Rick Rubin from a Village Voice article. A Village voice wrote this piece, He's the king of rock. There is no higher sucker MC. You should call him sire or something like that. It was a Village Voice, and it was my senior year in high school. And I'm like this colossal. I'm graduating the bottom of my grade. I'm djaying at parties, I'm singing in a band doing like hohoskerdo and and you know which is crazy? You know, do hooskier doo covers, just screaming into the mic. And I'm lost. I have no idea who I am, but I know I'm a music kid, and I'm really trying to figure out. And I'm writing all this like weird beat poetry stuff. And I read the Rick Rubin article and it was about a suburban kid from Long Island who had gone into the Weinstein dorms at NYU and started a label and he basically took what he knew from rock and he'd brought it into the dorm and hooked up with hip hopcats. And I was doing the Tela rock stuff and I was so blown away by it. My head exploded because I thought, Wow, this is me I'm one of these multi genre quote unquote guys. I listened to everything, and I sort of have an idea of why the hip hop stuff, like why it's resonating at least with my friends and stuff. And at the same time, I'm a rock kid. So that's why that sort of was like that that lightning bolt, you know what I mean, Like that was the moment where I thought, wow, like there's a there's a precedent, and I didn't think I could. I don't really never want to be a producer to the other Rick Ruben variety. I really wanted to be more of a top liner. I wan to write lyric and melody, but just expose the notion that you could get into this from out of nowhere. I didn't understand it. There was no manual, so I wrote a book. There was no manual like coming up. Now you can watch you two tutorials on anything. But when we grew up, like trying to become like a professional songwriter, there's nothing about that. You just had to sort of learn, you know, I mean streets of Hills, kitchen.

00:14:37
Speaker 2: But like, talk to me about your career and also generally the way you talk about music is like in this totally genrealist thing. I feel like as a person who writes music too, I get pigeonholed into certain things all the time. It's like, well, you're the sesame street guid, which, by the way, I'm not saying is a bad thing, but.

00:14:52
Speaker 3: It's a very sexy ca.

00:14:54
Speaker 2: I mean, that's how I got you. I know, here we are. It worked, it did, fuck yeah anyway, but I I you know, or like, you work on a theater thing. In my line of work, it's like you're the music theater guy, and I feel like you don't live.

00:15:07
Speaker 3: There or you have Is it that it's intentional? Right?

00:15:10
Speaker 2: But like, how have you done that?

00:15:12
Speaker 3: Well? Because I had the luxury when I came up, you know, after attending three colleges and two semesters.

00:15:21
Speaker 2: And crushed education.

00:15:23
Speaker 3: Obviously you can tell you tell so well. I'm a soub verbally dextra. Just tell tell all the skills that I have. You know, when I when I moved to the city, I was living in the in the East village, and I started hanging out a bar called Nightingales, which is on twelfth and Second, and it was a place you didn't need an ID and I started hanging out there. I was eighteen with my friend Jake Miller, who was this incredible singer songwriter, had a band called Xenix twenty five. He passed away a long time ago. He's a beautiful soul. And Jake and I started hanging out this bar and there was the scene of like, you know, sort of jam bandy, kind of crunchy, and I describe it, but like sort of greasy, sort of cool bands of the era that were beginning to pop out of there. There was Blues Traveler, there was Spin Doctors, There's Maloz. And I started hanging around this scene and although musically some of it wasn't my thing, I began to notice how instantly the industry swooped in signed all the bands, and then these bands were immediately pigeonholed into that thing. Right, and Blues Traveler have gone on and had incredible careers and they're dear friends and they've transcended it. But I think a lot of these bands got bunched into a scene. And I was twenty one, and I could tell that they were already labeled. You know, I didn't listen to hairband stuff in high school. You know that was sort of a that was my big rebellion. I didn't listen to hairbands, right, But what I realized about hairbands is, you know, the hair band thing was a scene and it was probably the most magical time ever for a lot of people. And then you know, grunge comes and it's eradicated, and I think a lot of people who were connected to it had a hard time getting footing. And that was always my biggest fear is I love this so much. I just never wanted to get to a point where I was. I was completely intertwined with a moment in time, and it was over hard to avoid. But I've consciously always taken steps in the process to go after things that are out of character, outside of the box in terms of what people think I can do. So I'm hard to label. You know, when Panic of the Disco happened and high hopes was this this massive world wide number one. The next record I took was the OJ's Farewell record.

00:17:48
Speaker 2: And really interesting to a lot of people.

00:17:49
Speaker 3: Don't do that, and you know, but on purpose, I think it was very intentional.

00:17:54
Speaker 2: Because you because you didn't want to. My guess is, if we're going to go okay, too. The High Hopes business is the minute you wrote High Hopes, ten different similar ish pop rock outfits called you or like, we want the next High Hopes and you said no, or you said I'm doing the OJ's record, which is a hilarious sense.

00:18:10
Speaker 3: Of well, I can be bought, Bill, Let's not lie. So I probably attempted versions of it. But what I would say is when you have a moment and you're like in the songwriting zeitgeist for a second in time, and I've had waves where I've sort of been deeply in the mix, in times where I'm an afterthought, the one thing I would say is it's just it's strategy. And I think a lot of writers are probably less strategic to some extent because maybe they're less calculated humans than I am. The probably better people. But what I'm going for is I just I'm trying. I look at music as this entire sort of weird canvas that's in front of me, and I'm trying to paint corners of it, and always I want to be able to look at it and think I sort of I hit everything I thought I was capable of, And you know what, I'm not gambling huff but man, I lived for those records as a kid, and I studied them and I wanted one shot to do what I would do with the OJS, and I thought that was that would be to me, that's cooler than working with any band that wanted, like, you know, a assimily of what I've already done.

00:19:10
Speaker 2: Do you look at this like work? Does this feel like? Do you? Because people ask me this a lot, like they think that I you know, we write songs for people and kids and enjoyment, and it's creative and all creative pursuits. I think to some people are sort of just shrouded in like happy and enjoy it's all great and whatever, but like it's a fuck ton of work. Do you how do you look like? I know, we've thought, we talked about this. It's puzzles to your routine, They're puzzles.

00:19:34
Speaker 3: Everything is a puzzle, and I'm trying to crack the code on a puzzle. And I have, like I do treat it like sport, like a professional athlete in terms of their seasons. There's training and I'm I'm extremely thorough and religiously like sort of dialed in when I'm in season, and it is work. It's my passion and it's the only thing I probably am I can function as a capable human doing. But it is work, and it is an absolute mind fuck a lot of the time. And you know, the business stuff I hate. I'm not business. Ye, I don't have that wiring that would have if I had continue to matriculated some university probably would have helped that cause. So I thankfully I'm surrounded by people are who are competent humans in a way that I'm not. But just the puzzle of song is something that eats at me twenty four hours a day and where I write something and then I relive it in my dreams and I constantly am reworking and trying to figure out where the flaw is and it can you know, it just beats me up, you know. And it's one of these things where it's such a strange thing to articulate because you know, people think, oh, how hard is that? Well, you know what, it's a voice in your head all day long where you feel like you're losing your shit, where it's just like I'm walking around just singing something over and over and over and nause even why is this not working? And then eventually when it happens, then it's no longer work and it's just it's the greatest feeling in the world.

00:21:08
Speaker 2: Do you feel like this is what your ADHD and your anxiety are actual benefits.

00:21:15
Speaker 3: I mean, the thing about the ADHD is, you know they always say, you know, it's it's you know, it's your superpowers, your superpower. Yeah, well it wasn't in school, so it definitely wasn't a superpower. My parents went to ivy universities. I graduated the bottom of my high school and did eighteen hours at the University of Pacific in Stockton, California. No disrespect, go Tigers or whatever the mascot is.

00:21:38
Speaker 2: Eighteen hours.

00:21:38
Speaker 3: Eighteen hours. That's true. So you know what's interesting about in life? What I found about ADHD it's interesting is I do have this strange ability to handle many micro assignments at once in song and things like that, where I can have like four or five records going at once and I'm really laser focused on all of them, which is wild and I and then if I just have to focus on one, I lose my shit. It's harder. It's like I'm better with more plates, like sort of flying in my hands. So that's a toy even answer the question.

00:22:15
Speaker 2: Okay, so we talked about college. You went to four different colleges and you did really well at all of them, as we can tell. I believe Temple was in there somewhere or something like that. Well, go al, good Philadelphia situation. Anyway, So you leave college, you don't, will you? I passed college on your way to great news?

00:22:33
Speaker 3: I was. I was on a semester at sea.

00:22:35
Speaker 2: Sure, Oh, like one of those that's good, all right, like a pirate. So you left college and you moved to New York.

00:22:43
Speaker 3: I'm in New York City. The last school I attended was NYU.

00:22:47
Speaker 2: And following Rick Rubin, following.

00:22:50
Speaker 3: Rick Rubin at n YU, and it wasn't what I expected. And I delve in that in my best selling book, I Want To Under Matt Holt ben Bella books available at a local Barnes and Noble or any chain you have, or on Amazon.

00:23:06
Speaker 2: And I will say, I don't read books. It's the first book I've read in ten years, and it was fantastic. I read it in eight hours and I loved her a minute of it.

00:23:13
Speaker 3: People say that to me a lot. Bill people say it was a very fast read. Now I don't know how to take that.

00:23:18
Speaker 2: If they loved it, I feel like.

00:23:20
Speaker 3: You know, I have a friend who's a speed reader. She's actually really a speed reader, and she's it's amazing. I thought, well, you spent six minutes on it, what was your takeaway?

00:23:29
Speaker 2: But is that a profession speed reading?

00:23:30
Speaker 3: She's a speed reader like for life. No, but she's like part of clubs like speed reading clubs.

00:23:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of weird friends.

00:23:37
Speaker 3: Well I'm available, it's true.

00:23:39
Speaker 2: But like you also, I was just going to get to you later. But like you know, fucking everyone. And that's one of my favorite things about you is that everybody who I drop your name to, they're like, oh yeah, Sam, he's the best. Like there's no everybody speaks not only speaks very highly of you, but everybody knows who you are.

00:23:54
Speaker 3: Well, such a quest love Casino showed it.

00:23:56
Speaker 2: Well, Ques, but he also doesn't know who you are, and you've worked with him, but he probably I wouldn't remember that.

00:24:00
Speaker 3: But that's and I'll hold it against them. I like people, man, I like people. I also I like people. I'm probably a pretty lonely guy, so I like being around people, and I like to learn from people, and I'm I like characters. I'm really into characters, and it doesn't matter who that you know. There's no hierarchy in my brain. I just sort of like people, and I'm I don't know. I'm much happier person when I'm out socializing than when i'm by myself, and by myself, I'm kind of dark. And when I'm alone around like big groups of stuff, I like holding court because I just love watching all the interaction between people, and I like connecting people. Something I learned from Jonathan Daniel again from Crush and who early on was the first people who explained to me the notion of being a connector in life where you really connect people and don't ask for anything, want anything, or assume anything. Just connect people who I think might like each other because it puts like a really good energy out there and it will manifest in different ways and always has.

00:25:10
Speaker 2: This is also something I'm very good at, which I think is why we're friends one.

00:25:13
Speaker 3: By the way, look we have very similar wiring. We're both very very attractive people.

00:25:17
Speaker 2: In podcasts, so all the cameras are working very well good at this.

00:25:21
Speaker 3: Moment, my light incredible right now, it's that shirt.

00:25:23
Speaker 2: I can't that that shirt and the shirt the whole color scheme is like so.

00:25:27
Speaker 3: Well, while I'm doing it, this is a floral Paul Smith number.

00:25:31
Speaker 2: Why you gotta drop brand games?

00:25:32
Speaker 3: Now? Underneath would be the homage Doc Ellis t shirt when he did the LSD, when he did throw a no hitter on LSD. Okay, it went with the matching nikes. And there is a blue sock thing happening that was not intention.

00:25:46
Speaker 2: And you always wear a hat as if we're you are a.

00:25:49
Speaker 3: Stunted man child. Here's the thing, you know, I wear lids and hoodies everywhere, which makes me very recognizable, and there's five people who care. But the reason I do is I don't really the shape of my head. And also I've been doing it since I was a little boy. It's funny. I related to Adam Sandler in so many ways. Obviously very attractive Jewish men but with very dowe features. But what I would say about Sandler is I still I never grew up, and I you know, I look at pictures of me in high school and I got my dad's and there was there was there was the baseball half phase and then there was like the I went full ducky, yep, pretty and pink, so I was like doing the pork pie. And then I went to a fedora for a while.

00:26:32
Speaker 2: There's a snow hat like there.

00:26:34
Speaker 3: Was always like the snow hats. I always like the snow hats. And what I realized is, I don't know. I just I feel like I never want to lose the youthful spirit. It's in my writing and it's how I wake up every day. I still feel like a little kid anything that is a constant reminder. When I look in the mirror and I still feel like I'm sixteen, I feel very free, and that's sort of who I am. That's sort of the compositeive my thing.

00:27:02
Speaker 2: Here's a sidebar. How does that affect you as a parent?

00:27:05
Speaker 3: Well, I mean I wouldn't want to be my kid.

00:27:09
Speaker 2: I mean what does that mean?

00:27:11
Speaker 3: Well, I mean when you go to parent teacher night and you know, there's there's seventeen you know, hedge fun bro guys and suits in the back of the room, and there's one very florally draped, sloppy guy with ill fitting clothing.

00:27:27
Speaker 2: Bank account MEAs motherfucker.

00:27:29
Speaker 3: It's just it's just it's for a child. It's it's probably a lot toun back. I have a feeling now, I'm hoping. I kind of feel like I'm nearing that age where my kid is like, oh wait, he's not that mortifying. But you know, for many years it wasn't easy. In La was simple though. In La I was just part of that thing then, But in Westchester it's a little different.

00:27:50
Speaker 2: There's a great there's a great line in your book because it ranked he to me about you took the Descendants gig. What does it total? We're skipping head made years, but whatever, you took the Desceentence gig, so you kid would think you were cool. And I have to tell you that. All I do now shout out to Jake Cousin, Jake, our producer who's about to have a kid. I was explaining to him that his life is about to be over because anything that he ever did for himself doesn't matter anymore. All you're about to do is think to your kids. So all I try to do and fuck you for this, is to get a goddamn descendance gig. Because all I listened to in the car is Camp Rock Descendants High school musical, the musical, the musical, the musical and all.

00:28:28
Speaker 3: And I had that moment, right did I did? So? I had that moment. I remember I did this record called Shake It with Metro Station. It was a really really big song. And when that blew up, I was connected with Steve Vincent at Disney and lovely guy. He's been there forever, he's been, you know. He shepherds the music on every property they have, starting with high school musical on and he's a lovely guy. And I remember sitting with him and I was basically begging to work on camp.

00:28:59
Speaker 2: Rock, you know. And I just watched it last week and.

00:29:02
Speaker 3: I don't know if you I don't think he really got it. I couldn't. I don't know if he understood where I was coming from. And I was like, man, I just it would be a big flex for my kid, she's three, I need something. And what happened was through the years, I would take a lot of these Disney gigs and it was awesome because you're working with very sweet people. And the flip side was, you know, it was so cool when like the Descendants blew up and my kid and her friends are, you know, watching these songs. You know, maybe they're reacting to that in ways that they didn't react to boys like girls or gym class heros or one of these other think it was super cool, but obviously I'm pretty needy. That isn't lost on either of us.

00:29:40
Speaker 2: No, today and.

00:29:43
Speaker 3: Every day Jesus.

00:29:46
Speaker 2: All right back in time, so pot we're post NYU. And the reason I want to get into this is because you after your NYU career, you started to be your performer.

00:29:54
Speaker 3: Yet that didn't work.

00:29:55
Speaker 2: Well, I know, but I find that. But you look the part of the comparisons and the contrast between like you write music, people assume that you perform it versus you don't and you just write it. And I feel like you dabbled in all of it. And this was that early time, right post your fake college career.

00:30:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to look. I wanted once again, there's no manual. There's no manual, you know, And I'm in and I'm in the city and hip hop is is exploding, and I fall in love with all this Native Tongue era stuff, right and it was it was Daylon tribe really and the Jungle Brothers like those three were sort of the pillars of what I got into off the bat, and then there's obviously all the black sheets and roots and everything else that came along with it, you know, but the early native tongue era that eighty nine ninety. I became obsessed, and I knew that I wasn't verbally dexterous in the same way you know it's textious word it is? Sure it is, now, let's go with it. Isn't dexterosa drug whatever, dexadrin, dexn dexadrine, dexterius is that dexterius?

00:31:08
Speaker 2: No dexterous.

00:31:09
Speaker 3: You're the lyricist and be dexterous, so it'd be dexterous, okay. But I you know, I knew my way around words and word play. I just didn't really it wasn't uh innately and I'm seeing any way, shape or form. But I thought it'd be kind of rad to take my jukebox, which was full of, you know, some pretty out records. And I was a you know, I was a record collector, man. I was a flea market guy, just like all these kids were. And I thought I had some pretty cool samples. I tried to get people to wrap over. I couldn't get anybody alive to work on my tracks. I start making beats, you know, and so I decided to just wrap over my own stuff, which basically meant me screaming over them because I didn't really know what I was doing. So I sounded like this weird amalgamation of Doctor Dre and Hell. But I uh I. The craziest shit happened is I got a record deal. We had a group Perfect and my friends Don and Jason Don Jason Lynn two of my best friends, and we had this weird little group and we got signed. We got signed on the day we are big showcase for Select Records, and Select was bad ass because Select had Chub Rock Utfo the real Rock Sana I believe you know. It was a very cool seminal hip hop label of that time. And then they signed us, and that's what that ended the label obviously. But what was funny about is the day we auditioned for the label. As we're about to audition, and there's a TV at the lobby of Smash Studios, which is the rehearsal place where we auditioned for the label, and they announced in real time that Magic has HIV. And you know, I'm rethinking every single bad decision of my life, questionable move up to that point, and yeah, as we all are, and then we have to get on a stage and perform and basically like the Beastie Boys on Meth you know, perfect time. Somehow we got a record deal. So we we got we got a record deal. And it was the first of many many mistakes in my career. Their track masters before they blew up doing all this stuff for Bad Boy, et cetera. They were red Het Lover Tone was signed to Select as well, and those guys were They had spoken and Fred wanted them to produce my record, and I passed Bob Power, the great Bob Power, who on this podcast.

00:33:20
Speaker 2: He was perhaps our I think he was the first or second person that win.

00:33:23
Speaker 3: Okay, so Bob Power right after this is when he had already done that. The second day he did Daylea Soul is Dead, and this is right around the time he was doing Low End Theory. He produced one of the songs, and my dumb they got me a record deal, sure, and then I didn't use them. And then I didn't use them because I had to make my own record because I was that guy. I'm awful and so I decided I'm going to produce my own record. And what's amazing. It was great because you know, I you know, I had my first real check and I had the ability to do this, and I felt like a really you know, a twenty one year old adult. And what of course, I make the worst album ever recorded, and I commit more musical crimes. And God bless my two bandmates because they're sitting in me watching me just crash this car in real time, and they went along with it, and they were so kind that they didn't, you know, restrain me at any point and say, wow, this is mortifying. But I made a record, you know, I had a video. It came out. I was dropped by the time I was twenty two. I will tell you a true story that this a little adendum to my best selling book, Twenty Minute Wonder.

00:34:28
Speaker 2: Oh title this book books Ben Bella Books.

00:34:32
Speaker 3: But book. Yeah, it was a true story. I h it's all true. Before a reefer was legal.

00:34:40
Speaker 2: Okay, I work ages.

00:34:43
Speaker 3: I was a puffer. Yeah, And I was at my brother's apartment. He lived on twentieth and eighth, and he let me. He used to let me just sit there with my journals and write, you know, my poetry or my rap or my songs. Whatever I was writing. He would let me sit out there. He would spin records. He DJ's so he'd spin record and then I would just sit stoned on his porch, staring at you know, if Avenue. And it was it was really, it was actually a wonderful time in my life. But on one given day, I thought, well, you know what, I'm gonna go buy some vinyl myself. I made that that that pilgrimage from my brother's apartment across all the way uh down down Grange av Over to sixth down, through McDougal, through Washington Square Park to Tower Records. Okay, it's important, it's important for me, the ADHD, but I'm landing it. Stick with me.

00:35:29
Speaker 2: I know the exact record you're talking about. Okay, scored the documentary.

00:35:33
Speaker 3: Okay, that's that's look at you.

00:35:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a little flex there. And by the way, that fund yourself. I love that documentary, thank you. It was one of the I.

00:35:40
Speaker 3: Look at you like a little differently, right, thank you. All right. So so I make it to Washington Square Park and I see like this weird sea of purple in front of me, and nah, it was like ten thousand princess. It was the n y U graduating class would have been my graduating class if I hadn't dropped out of college. And I can't believe i'd input it in. But you know, I know Matt Holt wants to do the sequel with me. We've already been obviously talking about it, but no true story. So I actually waltzed by High out of my mind, waltz by my college graduation of a school I dropped out of.

00:36:18
Speaker 2: And what would my class as.

00:36:21
Speaker 3: If anyone knew me? And I didn't really register their bill. But I have no idea where that came from. But you know, I will tell you one thing about that Tower Records though pivotal for me in so many ways, because you know, right up the block was the Whiz. Two blocks up was the Whiz on Broadway right there, and on Friday nights, i'side the Whiz, all the jeeps would roll up and whatever the biggest hip hop and specifically house tracks of eighty eight, eighty nine, ninety. They would just sit outside and blare them. And sometimes everyone's radio was on hot you know, on BLS or kiss or whatever, and I'll never forget. That's where I first heard Gypsy Woman by Crystal Waters, and I can still see the entire two hundred kids in the streets singing La Da Dad, you know. And those are those moments that were embedded in me where I realized music as a culture was just some other shit and I, you know, you don't get that in the suburbs at the same extent. So that's when I fell in love with the city and I just wanted to be around it. And that's when I was going out every night of the week, any showcase, anything I could get into, any if I even in our unsuccessful hip hop amalgamation, when we would do shows at a lot of these venues AKA and underact me places like that, whenever we do a show, if we ever met a junior A and our person I was really big with, like very junior A and our people, you know, and interns. But you know what, I was smart enough to realize that these people someday would actually be running this thing, so I would I'd befriend people who were my age and my level, who were just starting out as well, and a lot of those people run things now. My first gig ever was boxing records at Big Beat Records was just this little independent label and there are about seven or eight employees and there were two interns. It was me and Adrian Bartos, who is Stretch Armstrong, but we were the two interns in the back. And they are about seven or eight of us, and it was run by Craig Callman, who is the chairman of Atlantic. Now you know at that point he was twenty three and I was probably nineteen. So it's a good story.

00:38:37
Speaker 2: You told a story. I'm gonna tell a story. Last night, I went to see Stereophonic, which is the.

00:38:41
Speaker 3: Very tying to see it.

00:38:42
Speaker 2: You have to see it. If you worked in music, or you live in music, or you have anything to do with music, you have to go see the show. It could also be called like Fleetwood Mac making of the rumors out.

00:38:51
Speaker 3: That's what I've found, That's what I've heard.

00:38:53
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. It's like it's like really involved. The music is amazing, blah blah blah. But the take home is, in my opinion as a music person, is this is it should be called why we need producers because it's essentially like a bunch of people who are like on many substances and have many relationships, and there's tons of dynamics, but no one can make a decision and there's nobody overseeing it. And then the guy who's the lead guitarist decides that he's the producer, and we all know how well that goes. So my question to you is, as I was watching this, I was thinking about, God, I'm gonna ask fucking Sammis, is like, talk to me about being a producer versus being a songwriter and why you think being a because I feel like in my life I've graduated from like a ranger orchestrator, whatever the nebulous title that is, to guy who writes things from time to time. But then, like, what people know me as in the last few bits has been like overseer of things, connector of things, which sounds which I try to explain to my parents and they're like, we don't know what the fuck that means, and I was like, don't worry about but like I feel like, talk to me about why producers are important and why we need them and why you're one.

00:39:55
Speaker 3: I just like that you used overseer Like that that's good.

00:39:59
Speaker 2: You can use you can put that in your next book entitled twenty two hit Wonders.

00:40:04
Speaker 3: We're way beyond that. We're at least twenty two point five. We can have half hits.

00:40:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, look here again.

00:40:11
Speaker 3: Here's the thing. I'm a pretty terrible producer overall. Wow, I can I can answer that. You know, it's funny. My breakthrough cut was a song with Jim class hero Is called cup Its choke Hold. I produced it, okay, and when I produced it, it opened up a tidal wave of opportunities. So it was a number one hit. And then I did I Pretty Shake It, I Pretty check Estuliet for Weet the Kings, And these were like big, big songs, and so I was the me and Dave Kats, who I made them with, very important. I did the Wee the Kings and the Metro Station with Dave Kats, and when we did it, we were hot Rolling Stones Hot List Producers of the Year two thousand and eight. I say that flex right now.

00:40:53
Speaker 2: That was like a pretty gentleman.

00:40:55
Speaker 3: You understand where there's is eating It's great is We would start to work with artists who'd come in the room to work with Rolling Stones Hotless producers and see this guy, and then they realized we had no idea what we're doing. Now, Dave katzon knew more than I did, but you know, we were we were prone to do a lot of let's quad that anything. We just kept saying, let's quad that, yeah, you know, and for the uninformed, that just sort of makes that's thouty four right four? Yeah, just just quadruple that whatever the part was. But we liked saying that from the back of the room to our engineer, Hey, Sean, let's quad that, yep. And you know, there are all these sad tropes that we were.

00:41:36
Speaker 2: I double everything leads. I don't give a shit, I double everything.

00:41:38
Speaker 3: I just but you know what, I had no idea what I was doing. And the reality was, I'm a songwriter with a producer mentality, and what that means is, I'm truly a writer who kind of understands the way the movie should end and hears it sort of in his head sonically, like this could be this, this could be this, could be this. But the reality is, when I go deep on something, if I'm really going deep on it, it's gonna suck.

00:42:02
Speaker 2: Why cause.

00:42:05
Speaker 3: Remember when Alex Rodriguez started doing steroids, right, Sure, you start to befuck, right, you start to get really big and you're like, really like your numbers are going through the roof. But the problem is you're gonna get busted. I was the same guy. I feel like I put everything on musical steroids, and I would send my tracks to mixers like Tom Lord. Algae in Miami was mixing a ton of my stuff back then. And there was always this, you know, there were always these moments where I felt like I'm about to get totally outed as the worst producer in the world.

00:42:40
Speaker 2: And I feel like this every day.

00:42:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just like, you know, there's imposter syndrome and there's just being a fucking impostor. And I was truly an impostor with production, and I didn't really know what I was doing. I do, you know, I do a little programming, but I just felt like, honestly, like I'm a guy who's had a lot of joy playing around with an SP twelve sampler SP twelve hundred and you know, I'm at one point five seconds or whatever, and I made like primitive beats and that's how I kind of got started in this and that's probably the peak of my creativity. As a producer everything else, I can get it done, and sometimes I can really hit something out of the park and I think, wow, I'm really not that bad. But I am wise enough not to believe my own hype because there are eighteen year old kids who are infinitely more sonically inclined. We're just more creative. And when I'm in a room with somebody who I deem a real producer, it's mortifying because they just they're just so beyond me. And I've learned there's no ego with this. As a writer, I'm pretty good. I stand by my work and I think I'm unique. But as a producer, best selling novels, best selling novelist.

00:43:46
Speaker 2: It's number on Amazon? Okay, do they still have Z shops? Is that I don't know what that is?

00:43:52
Speaker 3: That's like the cutout bend for always looks at Amazon?

00:43:56
Speaker 2: Or is it like at the strand, like it's in the pile of like five dollars a under.

00:44:00
Speaker 3: All my records started out still there. I'm very used to having an idiot set record, so.

00:44:06
Speaker 2: I want to talk about breaks. So we've never talked about this because I didn't know until I read your book. So when I was in my early twenties. I was making musicals and doing whatever I was doing. And a friend of mine, Chris Jackson, who later became George Washington and Hamilton and all this other shit, he was working with who I didn't know at the time, McMurphy. And so, yeah, so I read the book and I couldn't believe this because so I'll let you talk about McMurphy, but let me.

00:44:35
Speaker 3: Say what I say, pour some more whiskey to.

00:44:36
Speaker 2: It, hashtag angels and begs. And so Chris, my friend Chris, He's like, listen, I've been working on these music with these guys. Dadd have you ever heard of the system of McMurphy. And Frankly, as a Jewish kid from Long Island who liked like Coltrane and Dave Matthews, I did not know a lot about the system of McMurphy, full disclosure. So I went and I'm sitting there with McMurphy, and he he is the nicest guy in the world.

00:45:02
Speaker 3: Sexy fella.

00:45:03
Speaker 2: He is a very sexy fella, like not but like not a person who's ever been in my life I like ever not that like his personality and his son we like went to his house and he like still worked in Acid remember that program, it wasn't you know, And like he played the guitar really well and he was lefty and I was like, who the He's like a cartoon And we collectively produced this guy, Chris Jackson's album, and at the time I didn't know and so finally like this is crazy, So I googled him and like and then like he would teach me. He would just leak all kinds of things to me about how to make music and how to write good songs, and like he would his his shit was so sophisticated, but you would never know. And I loved that about like the the harmonic structures were so intense, and like the way he played the guitar, like Babyface was like so involved, but the songs were so simple and elegant, and it was really one of the anyway you can speak this, but like in your book, Mick and his part David, they gave you one of your early breaks. They give you a space, right, they believed in you, and they gave you some shit. I just thought that was that was a weird moment for me reading in your book that we both had that.

00:46:11
Speaker 3: It's crazy, those guys. So you know, I'm old as fuck. So you know, if you wanted any opportunity in this business, you would look at the back. You'd look at the back of records. You'd see labels, producers, whoever. And then you'd go to the phone book and you would try to find phone numbers and you would cold call. And that's what I did, and I cold called the Science Lab which was their production company, and those guys were coming off don't disturb this group which I danced to at my prom which was kind of rad. I mean, and it's a year later and I cold call and I just say, look, I'm an artist, and you know I'd love to send you a demo tape. Blah blah blah. And this lovely fellow, Todd Allen working for them, and he answered the phone and he invited me in, and you know, I think they dug me and I sign me to a production deal. And I was eighteen, and I mean, those guys were so bad ass. I mean, you know, David was playing on Shaka con records. They were I think they were writing for Shaka. They did this record Attitude, a song I think was called we got the juice, which was incredible. They had really some crazy They had this incredible setup. They were in the sixteen fifty Broadway and a floor below was next Plateau Wrecks, next Plateau Records, which had the beginning of Salt and Pepper, you know, and stuff like that, and then the science lab in their room. Little Louisvega was using their room, so all that early house stuff was getting made at the end of the hall as well. So I was able to absorb so much badass shit. And I was eighteen, and they were lovely guys. I ran into david a hotel in la about four months ago, and look, I owe those guys immensely because they were the first people. You know, it's hard, especially when you drop out of school and your parents were like these, you know, massive intellectuals and very academic, and you're trying to rationalize this decision. And if somebody who actually who's succeeded and is a class act at the level of those guys, you know, is able to, you know, express interest in you and take you under their wing, it buys you a little time with your parents. And that's what it did. It brought me time and so I owe them momentally because even though once again those guys, you know, there was only so much listening I was going to do at that age, I was still going to do my own thing. They just being around and being in their orbit. I was privy to some crazy stuff, you know. I remember Drey Betts was one of the cats in the in their circle, working out of the spot, and he was doing that what's to justify my love? That's when he did justify my love? So I remember hearing that very early. That was pretty cool. What was so great about no Internet and no access is you kind of stumbled into shit And that was the New York that I miss, you know, I miss the wide eyed excitement of stumbling and stumbling in the rooms. I remember, you know, my friend Jake Miller, who I just goss, who passed away a long time ago. Jake and his band they're called Zanix twenty five and they were doing sort of like a Progmeday kind of thing, and they were living on a loft on Second Avenue, and through Steph Skimarta, who is Warren Haynes's wife, who was doing a and RT Forth and Broadway, they meet the Jungle Brothers And next thing, you know, the Jungle Brothers are making this progressive, weird, psychedelic rock sort of hip hop record in this loft with these guys. And you know, I'm the biggest Jungle Brothers fan in the world, man, and I'm like allowed to hang out every once in a while and just watch my friends like throw down with these guys making this really cool progressive shit that never saw the light of day. It was neat. It was just every day was it was just like this weird New York was like this one big reveal. Right, you just like walk through a door and if you were socially inclined and you were not, you know, I was fearless, man. I walk up to anybody and if you still do that, yeah, I mean, well you know now they run.

00:50:11
Speaker 2: But then I was.

00:50:13
Speaker 3: Young and it was a little less creepy feeling.

00:50:15
Speaker 2: We interviewed Chris Rock like years ago, and he said the best thing. He's like, yeah, I know, I'm a comic and I do these things. He's like, but you know, my best quality is and we're like what he said, I I show up and I essentially I show up and I don't get kicked out. So I'm always there. And I feel like a lot of the anecdotes in your book are like I was just there. There's like some bitch about like Cusack, and like you were part of this like weird rat packing New York situation where it was like you and him and whoever the fuck else was and some screenwriter and you're doing all this stuff, and I just feel like you, You're around, You're always and there's some pictures of you in that book where you're just like in the background, fucking just sam just there, like the songwriting aside, I was just there.

00:50:56
Speaker 3: I was like the ultimate hanger ond, you know.

00:50:58
Speaker 2: But that's my thing too, Like seemed to be around, dude.

00:51:01
Speaker 3: I can close my eyes and it's you know, it's Thanksgiving, probably ninety three, and John Cuzak is doing Thanksgiving with me and my grandmother and my mom and dad and my brother. I'm his wife on the Upper East Side. And then John and I go out afterwards and meet up with Jeremy Piven and Uma Thurmat.

00:51:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:51:23
Speaker 3: So it's me, John Cusack, Jeremy Piven, and Uma Thurman and we're all standing on the stairs of the met and it's pouring rain. And we're sort of dancing together and I'm self aware enough to know one of us doesn't belong in this, you know, and I just it was amazing because it really lit a match in me. And that's why I look, I'm forever indebted to those guys because they they saw something in me. You know. Maybe I didn't ask for anything, which was a nice skill. I definitely I wasn't a taker, which is good, but they let me hang around and just being sort of tangentially involved in all their sort of happenings and after hour stuff. What was cool is, man, I just got to see how great it is to sort of to have access and to achieve whatever pinnacle. Like they were all very successful at that time, and it lit a match like, man, if I had a measured level success, I won't feel like an outsider in every room. I will feel like maybe I belong one step more. I didn't want to be a plus one my whole life, and I think that really fueled, like that sent me into orbit creatively because I thought, you know, if I'm able to achieve something and it resonates on any creative scale, if I'm not a plus one anymore, and I'm actually part of the group, and I've you know, I've earned my way where you think, oh, this guy just isn't another one of the hangarounds, do you know? I told Piven not to.

00:53:01
Speaker 2: Do entourage, really, but why is that not in the book I did? That's a good line. Had that conversation.

00:53:07
Speaker 3: Me and my wife and Jeremy went to uh Fred Siegel for dinner with twenty something years ago whatever it is. He told us about this thing he'd been offered. I was like, I don't know. It sounds kind of whack man. I don't know. I'm not an agent. Trust me. You know, you don't want me wrapping you in anything.

00:53:22
Speaker 2: It feels like Lynn invited me to Hamilton off Broadway and he goes, what'd you think? And I was like, I don't know that, like my grandmother from like Long Island, and you just get it awesome And I stuck to that you nailed that. Yeah, I really I feel like I'm a really really good sets for six Jesus. So I feel like this is a good spring where it's like, yes the cusacknith that's a word. So we get into two thousand and I feel like two thousand until today is like or maybe a few years ago is like Sam Holland or Heyday. And what I mean by that is like between two thousand and twenty twenty. This is the time we're talking of you as rock producer of the Year and big Dick of the West and all the shit that you accomplished in those particular years. But like, what was the first song that led off two thousands, that led that that opened the door? I know, there's there's a Clive Davis kind, there's a skipping stone.

00:54:16
Speaker 3: That's a lot of things. I mean, the one thing at the end of the day. There are like three or four little ten pole things that happened. But the first is Carol King. Because I connected with Carol King in two thousand and you know, we begin writing songs together.

00:54:33
Speaker 2: And explain how that happened because it's.

00:54:35
Speaker 3: A really good story, well you know I.

00:54:38
Speaker 2: And also not one that anyone would ever put on you, even in that shirt.

00:54:42
Speaker 3: Okay, wow strong. So what what I realized in my twenties is there are no doors open for me. I failed as an artist, and I started making beats and hawking beats around and nothing's working. I meet a guy named Joe Ricatelli, who was awesome who ended up being the president of RCA, but before that he was a running promotion in Island and I met him through my friend Kimberly, and he gets me and my partner at the time was a guy named dougdan Angelis. He gets his remixes and I start building up remixes, remixes, and then it continues solo and with Dave Scholmer and different configurations. I'm doing remixes of def jam catalog stuff. He gets me in the mix and I'll tell you, these remixes are god awful and no one's ever heard them, but they were always the b sides to like a club promo. So he cared enough about me to always throw my things on. So I had a Suddenly my discography, which had nothing, had method Man DMX the Thong Song, like all these pivotal records of that time, I had, like the techno remix. Now, no one alive was listening for the techno remix on these things, but suddenly I had credits, which was rad my only access to getting bigger stuff. I realized was going to be creating my own groups because there was no future in techno remixes and for me because I'm terrible, but also because there are probably people who are amazing at it. I just wasn't one of them. You know, if your Crystal method, you're like, hey, fuck you, Sam Holland. But you know I'm not Crystal Method. So I realized I got to put groups together because the one thing I realized as a student of the game is somewhere between you know, the Malcolm McLaren's and the Stockacheman Waterman's and a lot of these British cats. You know, if people aren't going to record your own songs, then you better find your own groups to sing them. And so I would take out ads in the Village Voice, and I started casting for groups to like cut my stuff, and I find people, take them off for coffee and just say, hey, I'll write. I have a studio. You know it's a little dump, but like you know, I'll write a song. Whatever. We can collaborate and you know, I'll figure it out. And what happened was I got a bunch of people signed over a very quick amount of time. There was a there was a there was a a news source for music Hits Daily Double, which still exist but they had something called a rumor mill, and if you were in that, your phone ring off the hook. Somehow a guy named Joe Fleischer got wind of my stuff and he started touting me and my partner as like the next guys. And it was right when he had just blown up the Neptunes too, so we're like going to be the next guys, not the Neptunes, you know. And we start getting all these calls from labels, and I'm developing all these acts at the same time, and over like a two year period, I want to say, we got five or six act signed a major labels. The first was a woman named Tarsha Vega, and I believe she was an assistant in the CBS Television accounting department or something like that. And she came in and she had never rapped and never sung, but perfect yeah, but you know, her personality was so great. She was super cool looking and she was just a great vibe and she was down for me just writing stuff. And I started writing these songs with my man, Dave Schomer, and we were he was doing the tracks and I was writing the lyrics and the melodies. And what happened was RCAA Records heard it. They signed her as my first act signed to like a major. I'd had a a singer name Sabrina Sang signed a Tommy Boy that didn't happen, so I'm over one. Then RCA signed Star Shavega, massive deal, all this press, and I'm once again producing a record. I mean no idea what I'm doing. And I make another terrible record and that's on me. But what's funny about it is it's time for a cameo on the record and we're looking for a cool feature. And my wife had just seen Blood Brothers on Broadway and she said Carol King is amazing and Blood Brothers and the label was thinking more along the lines of India RI or something like that, and I was like, how about Carol King? And everyone looks at me stoneface. But Brian Maloof, who was an R on the project, had a relationship with Carol's manager, Lorna, who's very lovely, and Carol next to you know, within a week, is down at our state do you And she sits down across from me and Tarshah the artist, and she's going on and on about what's going on lyrically and the stuff, and she really digs it and to to shout out Tarsha, who is this wonderful person. Tarsia just looks and says, well, he writes the lyrics, and that's him, you know he I don't write the lyrics. And Carol looks at me like very puzzled. I don't thinking, what's up? This is MoU kisso New York in the flesh. That's how we do represent. So immediately me, Dave and Carol start writing together a lot, and we write a bunch of tunes.

00:59:35
Speaker 2: Just because she likes her lyrics. Yeah, I think she's just like the both of us.

00:59:38
Speaker 3: But I also think she liked the fact that, like you know, it was music was changing and we were pulling lots of influence. But also we're super respectful of her catalog. We were knowledgeable. We knew like I could talk jazz man with her and other stuff. And she came in the room with us and three or four songs and we wrote Love Makes the World and that ended up being the title track and the single from the last album She Ever May and that was, you know, twenty four years ago, and that was a really cool calling card because through that she introduced us to Paul Williams, who really became like a big brother figure to me throughout my entire career. I connected with Al Rodgers, you know, and I just started I felt personal. I was getting lots of respect from the old guard. I just still couldn't permeate anybody my own age. And that's when I knew I had to go even deeper into developing acts. And that's when Jonathan Daniel steps in, because we're watching what Crush Management's doing at the time, and they have all these cool young bands and they're bringing me in and I'm beginning to collaborate with them. And while we created Boys Like Girls and we found we the Kings and Metro Station, these things also created a Cobra Starship with Crush Me and Dave katz Day. We created Cobra Starship with those guys. Yeah, we did not do that one, but we did do Snakes on the Plane, which is the greatest song ever, the greatest song ever. But we did that whole first album, and you know, we just we had this incredible symbiotic relationship all of us. We shared this loft and you know, we would just develop acts, and you know, once an act was successful, they would take the next one on the road with them as direct support, and we were working outside of the industry machine, which was awesome, and that's what sort of that was what sort of elevated my moment. I just you know, it just at thirty four, I'm making beats on kids bop records and think and thirty five I have like a number one hit, So anything, it all shifted at that age. And that's really why I wrote the book bill, to be honest with you, because you know, at the end of the day, go fuck myself, thank you very much. At the end of the day, I think what's interesting about my story is the futility in the previous fourteen years was at a level that most people will never fathom. And I thought, you know, I'm so sick of reading you know, people's tomes where they gloss over all this shit where it's literally like one hundred pages of the struggle fifty pages and then it's like victory lap, victory Lap, victory Lap. And what I wanted people to understand is the torture never ends, and I've never gotten to a place of comfort. It's like I might be fiscally sound at this point, but I'll tell you something. I still get my ass kicked every single day creatively where I deliver something and it gets shredded or stepped on or tossed. And that's what I want people to understand is it is the greatest life in the world. I think you and I share this affinity for it, like we've been able to do things that we knit where we never dreamed were possible. And the flip side is we still get spit on every day we wake up. I tell my kid as she has, you know, as she dabbles with her interest in this, I said, look, it's a kin to get stepping outside on Broadway every morning getting hit by a cab and then yeah, and then you know, dusting yourself off and going off and writing a song because that's what it's like, because that's what my inbox looks like in the morning. It's like one like disaster after another. And then I just I do it again, and do it again, and do it again, and hope that the time works in my favor.

01:03:01
Speaker 2: I was impressed, given I'd also work in this line of work that like the so many lows, sam and so many highs, there seems it seems to be like you're always searching for some sort of middle, and there's and what you just said just says this is there is no middle. There's no middle, right. It's either like you've reached pieces of shit or you're number one smash hit right, And it's always it's always that.

01:03:25
Speaker 3: Well, it's also you know, I'm thankfully them at an age. Now I'm twenty eight, and I've aged like a twenty seven year old, just Benjamin Buden. But what's interesting at this age is I have enough perspective to look back on it and understand the waves, right, And I really, you know, I can sort of almost on a pie chart in my head. I sort of understand where the highs were, where the dips were. So I'm not it's hard to fluster me at this point because I'm ready. I'm ready for rejection, you know what I mean. It's okay, and I understand that I'll still have another moment. I'll always have another moment, and I'm always going to have another disaster. And as long as I can wake up knowing that, then nothing sort of irks me.

01:04:13
Speaker 2: You mentioned Paul Williams and the great Paul Williams and the greatest the greatest. And there's a section in your book which I find very funny, sort of like the composers I wish I could have been, or I wish I could be, or the ones I respect the most, or whatever you want to call it. And there's who's he? What's it from? Abba maybe or whatever. But my favor one which we've never discussed, is Joe Riposo and so, and I thought long and hard about this as I read it, and people ask me about him all the time, and what it's like living in that shadow, and it's a lot, and I think it's a weird. I think when someone's the first to do something and do it unbelievably well, and you're someone who like takes over that thing or like tries to carry that torch, it's a lot of pressure. And in the beginning I thought like this, and then I mean, over time, just like I'm just trying to do the best job I possibly can and I'm here for a reason and blah blah blah. Anyway, And the thing you mentioned about how how Sesme Street was major in your in like your songwriting and your childhood and everything else.

01:05:13
Speaker 3: And simplicity Fender Rhodes but it was.

01:05:17
Speaker 2: But it was so complex. And that's my favorite thing about Sesme Street is people are like, it's songs for children, but if you look at that stuff, it is not simple at all, and it's really ridiculous.

01:05:27
Speaker 3: Particularly he was a freak, but I just love the repetition. There were just ideas that even as a young sort of barely formed musical brain, you know, I did he did the three s Company theme.

01:05:42
Speaker 2: You know, there's a lot of like under the hood and stuff about it.

01:05:45
Speaker 3: But he was also Sinatra's favorite, right, Sinatra's favorite writer. It's like, I've always loved people who who are in on the joke. And that's how I look at it, Like we're all in on the joke. It's like it's music. It's the goal of what we're doing is we're trying to sort of make people feel something illicit emotions. And when I listen to Reposo stuff, you think, oh, yeah, it's it's Sesame straight and you know it's it's it's it's this these warm, sort of tender little moments. You know. Won't to come at him, you know, but at the core of it is just the badass like man, you know, put on those songs, you know, and you get chills. It's like they're they're so broad and he was able to write really broad stuff for a genre that I think previously wasn't at that level of sophistication. And to me, he's one of those, like he's one of those pillars. As a kid, when I heard his stuff, and it's crazy because you know, in Cape Cod we spend a lot of time in Chatham in the summer. And it's about twenty years come. I am having a cup of coffee. I'm sitting on a bench outside the library and I turn around and it says this bench is dedicated to Joe Roposo who lived his life here. Blah blah blah blah blah, you know, and I had chills because it was the only bench, you know, I just I had coffee. Probably who sits on a bench in from a library. I was doing but it's like, you know, it's like it's like it was just like this place that I used to go and sit, you know, I had like a routine, and I never looked at the little placard. It's like this small little placard and I was so moved by that. I thought, well, this is this is divine and you know he set the bar for that genre. But I just love the ones. What I love about it. What I mean by the joke is, here's this guy. He's doing Sesame Street at the same time he's writing Three's Company and he's writing songs for Sinatra. He understands that's all music and this is what I would you know, taking it back to square from one. It's all genre lists, right, He's just writing exactly what he felt. You know what's weird is sometimes I listen to my voice. I sound like Joe Biden. It's a really right feeling.

01:07:55
Speaker 2: It's like a weird drink.

01:07:56
Speaker 3: It's a weird feeling. We're just like, fuck, man, I'm a little monotone today. What is going on? I'm sorry?

01:08:03
Speaker 2: All right, So we're Carol King's post two thousand, right in the early two thousands, we get the Carol King. Carol King becomes the calling card of the thing.

01:08:11
Speaker 3: What happens next, well, you know, I start doing these fun little bands and a lot of hits happen. And what happens is once again, because I knew that all scenes eventually die or more for something as these uh as we're making these pop punk or emo records and they're becoming big pop hits. I begin to realize there's a shelf life because we're we're repeating ourselves a lot, like a lot. I'm writing a lot of songs lyrically with escapism themes and us against the world, you know, like this is like I to we yes, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of a lot of a lot of Paul Williams tricks, et cetera. Then I'm just applying to this and I realized that I'm beginning to phone songs in. And I got to this point where I was like, you know, I can phone in a B plus a minus every time out. I know what that is. I know how to get it there. And songs were going from first singles like getting first single on Everything to getting like the third single on things, you know, and songs weren't working the same way, and the talent level started to shift a little bit, where starting to work with some kids who interested me less. You know, that first wave of these scene kids that we worked with, you know, the kids and you know and boys like girls and Wee the Kings, Jim Classerros, Trivy McCoy, you know, these kids were awesome. They were like little stars, you know, and I started to see kids feel less like stars to me. There's still some ones that popped, but there were kids that just felt like they were at the end, dying end of a scene. And that's when I immediately made the conscious decision to jump into what they call hot ac or whatever, but like just sort of like, you know, the equivalent of soft rock. But what happened was I would stay at La Park. Suits in La always stay at the same hotel, and when I stayed at this hotel, they would blast the stuff on the roof. It was always Matchbox twenty or Dave Matthews or you know, Uncle Cracker, Train Sugar Ray, all this stuff and what.

01:10:08
Speaker 2: I'll really you then went on to work with Yeah, what was weird.

01:10:11
Speaker 3: About it was? It was funny about it was I'm sitting up there and I'm realizing that they're not playing my music. My music isn't I think I'm you know, in the Zeichist at the second and these are hits, but they I don't know if they're going to be recurrent. I don't know if these songs are going to live on. And I got into music with the notion of sure, I just want to write one hit, but I wanted to write a hit that lived on.

01:10:30
Speaker 2: It's legacy important to you, because it's another question I get asked all the time as the sesame street guy. It's like, like, you do you do you think about your legacy? Is that a thing that comes up to you? Because it doesn't. It's it's I do not. I'm not. Maybe I haven't reached the age or the gravity toss of my life. I don't think about that.

01:10:49
Speaker 3: Oh I'm psychotic. I think about it every.

01:10:50
Speaker 2: Day, I know, but you're you fine, but you're not psychotic in like a psychonic way. You're a psychonic and I'm in my head kind of way, and there's anything wrong with that. I'm also ninety five, so there are one hundred years old.

01:10:59
Speaker 3: So but you look, it's a lot of people say that where you know, here's what I think about legacy. I've been doing it so long and I've put so so much work into this, and I like to I would love to look back. I love people to look back and think, Wow, this guy brought some joy. You know, that's it.

01:11:15
Speaker 2: That's already happened.

01:11:16
Speaker 3: But that's it. But it's but that's what the legacy is. Like, I hope that people someday can connect the dots and go and think, wow, the guy wrote some really uplifting ship or some stuff that made me feel something, and and there was a lot of it. There's a body of work, and it's a body of work. I know if it's a legacy, but I do take my body of work seriously. And you know, I've also committed many musical crimes, so you know they're worth mentioning as well. I've made some records that you know what, you know, what's I love? You know, there's things I love about Spotify, right, but Spotify with their playlist when they're written by playlist, like each one of them does one, right, Amazon does one, Apple does one, and Spotify. What sucks about Spotify's is it's just every song you've ever done. They don't curate it. So just when they sent it to me, I was honored. I'm like, wow, I get like a written by page. But it's four hundred.

01:12:07
Speaker 2: Songs and not all of them are great.

01:12:08
Speaker 3: Not all were great. I mean there are some things in there there there there is one song written with some Canadian kid who were to name nameless. Where I turned that thing on, I was like, holy fuck, I wrote the worst song ever written. Yeah, and I don't know what the protocol is. If I can just take like, you know, pull it into Alan Smithy, you know, and take my name off it it? Yeah, just you know, has it just a pseudonym very late in.

01:12:31
Speaker 2: Life, but primes committed by all.

01:12:34
Speaker 3: Right, but it was a train train, So then I started writing with let's get it, come on, you're you're you're you're really taking us off?

01:12:40
Speaker 2: Course I do, but like I find, I was, I have more.

01:12:43
Speaker 3: Okay, but here's the thing, my train. So I hook up a.

01:12:45
Speaker 2: Train and ask about train but find talk about train drops. Jupiter.

01:12:48
Speaker 3: Let's want to I want. I didn't write that. But what happens is all these bands let me let's talk about quest left.

01:12:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's just talk about questions the whole time. He'll be happy. But what if he just strolled in right now? What a moment that? Okay, here.

01:13:02
Speaker 3: Is this imposter nice shirt? Yes, so he will rocks some floral shit. I sat next to him at the moth Galla last year.

01:13:10
Speaker 2: All right, moth Galla, did you tell a story? Fuck you first?

01:13:13
Speaker 3: Of all by the way I did once.

01:13:16
Speaker 2: Oh my God with Jeff Garland. Oh you want to go deep, you want to go deep? Go ahead, you got no.

01:13:20
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, like, honestly, if they didn't ask me to speak in the moth gallup, they just they just let me sit there. But Questlove is a very good looking man, and you know he gets a lot of attention. He's like a table one guy. Sure, I'm table nine, but.

01:13:33
Speaker 2: Like, do you always find it funny when you meet somebody who you think is a table who should be a table one guy, but they're not cool, and you're just like, what what happened to you?

01:13:44
Speaker 3: That's the same thing as when you meet me and they think, no, no, did you end up a table nine.

01:13:48
Speaker 2: Thinks you're cool? Like there's no expectation with him, there's like an expectation that you're going to be cool and then you are not him. But with some people and you meet and you're just like, oh, that's bummer, that's not what I thought.

01:13:58
Speaker 3: I find most people cooler than.

01:13:59
Speaker 2: Me percent but you're pretty cool. Moving on, so we're post trained, but before we in the train, I feel like there's minutia of songwriting that I want to get into. I love all your accolades. Read the book. He talks about all the accolades, you chuck, shut up. We talk about songwriting all the time. In fact, we write songs together, you and me Sam all the time now. So having been in a bunch of like writers composer rooms. Yeah, and so there's a section in your book about Max Martin and the whole synchronicity of Swedish pop and how that shit works. And it's another thing that I have a lot of, uh I do, and and the way that they work and how that happens is a thing, right, and and so there's a lot there's interesting things in your book. And we have talked about this at late about like Swedish well that but like songwriter as therapist song like. So in my early days when I let's talk about me for a second, in my early days, when I had a publishing deal, they were like, go to this thing, sit in a room with someone you've never listened, you don't know anything about, and write a song about car washes or whatever the fucking was. And I remember going, and I was so young and naive, and they had paid me five thousand dollars and like taking my whole life's earnings and I was like, cool, I needed I couldn't pay rent, so great, take that for a year whatever. And I remember feeling so uncomfortable and being like this is not what I do, This is not I need like alone time, and I can't deal with it, and dada, so smash cut. Two years later when I stopped doing like the writing sessions, and then I was just like producing records or making things, and I find this idea go back to stereophonic from last night, Like the producer as therapist or psychologist is like I feel like eighty percent of the gig man like dealing with the crazy and then and then also like having the ability to tell so and so the lead singer like actually no, like it should be this or like whatever. And there's also there's a bonus cut in your thing that says, like some of the effect of whether you like it or not, the lead singer's always the person that makes the decision of the bit right whatever your person that is right, which is which is one hundred percent correct, Like the bass players not saying shit, the bass players in the back like thumping out roots and like loving his life and like who cares? And he gets laid the most. Always the bass player, but like the lead singer is always the guy that makes whether he knows what he's talking about or not, that's the guy, right.

01:16:11
Speaker 3: Well, writers, one thing I'll say, aspiring writers, if you're out there, if you're aspiring songwriter, if you are able to permeate this beast of an industry and you get a publishing deal and they say to you, hey, you know what, we have so and so banned and we want you to write with the drummer. You don't do it.

01:16:32
Speaker 2: You just just veto it right away that day and they're not going to happen.

01:16:36
Speaker 3: And I have friends who still fall for it, which is the craziest thing. People my age you still fall for are like, oh my god, it's the drummer from blah blah blah. You know I think I can get on the record. No, you can't.

01:16:46
Speaker 2: Nor do you want to look at the credits?

01:16:48
Speaker 3: You know, look who you know who has the keys to a project? Yes. To answer what you're saying, you know.

01:16:56
Speaker 2: Like, how do you approach those things? What do you have a different mind?

01:16:58
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, it's a speed dating.

01:17:00
Speaker 2: It's a date.

01:17:00
Speaker 3: It's a speed dating. I did it for so many years, and you know, I do it less now just because I'm probably burned out of the process. But for many years I would do two hundred speed dates a year where I would get in a room with some configuration of people and it's thirty five minutes of small talking and trying to bond and you know, sort of forge your relationship. And then we have to get deep and really like expose some nerves and really figure out who we are in the room. And it's interesting because when you're writing with their artists. Some days you're writing with artists who are incredibly lyrical, which sort of falls into my domain. So then I have to shape shift immediately in the room because I do not want to suppress their thing, and I know I'm smart enough not to suppress it. But the flip side is I got to figure out how I exist in the room, because if I'm just the editor, I don't really feel that like I've earned my keep. So it's constantly. The adaptability is huge in a room. You know, you have to be able to do a lot of different skills based on you know, the artists that you're working with, and many times, most times the A and R person or the publisher whatever, won't give you any exposition on the person because they don't really know what their creative process is. So you can get a room with somebody and you think, wow, they write really poetic stuff and realize that they don't have any verbal dexterity at all. They have nothing, and so you then have to become that person instantly. Other days, you know you're writing with an artist who you believe is incredibly lyrical and they're the best melodic writer you've ever seen, but maybe they don't do the things. And in other days they say, oh, they don't really have a lot to say, and you're sitting with somebody and they write the most profound shit. I wrote a song with a sixteen year old kid from London named James t w and a great writer named Nolan Sipe. It's about nine years ago. We wrote the song called what You Loved Someone, and it was written from the perspective of parents coming home and telling their child that they were getting divorced, and it's sort of all the fallout from that. This is not a fun song. I would tell you it's probably the best song I've ever written. Really, yeah, and it's a huge song, like globally huge song, seven hundred million streams. I'm like, that's a big tune. But what's interesting about it is Nolan and I, who are both pros with a lot of hits, we didn't come up with that topic. The sixteen year old did.

01:19:21
Speaker 2: Really he guided it.

01:19:22
Speaker 3: We just like then wrote the song, but it was his vision and he really guided it, and you know, and his melodies were beautiful and he had some really great lines, and also he's a great guitarist. But there was no exposition with that. No one ever said to me, Hey, when you get in the room with the sixteen year old kid, he's gonna write the most profound shit of your career. It's like, you don't know. And so the number one skill as a songwriter and an aspiring writer at any level is to read a room. And reading a room is priceless, and if you don't have that ability, it's going to be hard to be a collaborator because you have to know when at the foot on the gas and you have to know when to slam on the brakes and just get out of the way. And it changes every single day. So that's what I'm saying. You never get to a place of comfort with it, because if you are going with the same, if you're going if you're treating it with some sort of repetition every single day, doing the same routine, it won't work. You're dealing with different especially and you're on a treadmill of sessions. And then the biggest mind fuck of all is that you can write something that you believe is absolutely game changing, but you still have that awful voice in the back of your head that says, tomorrow, this person's writing with a whole new configuration and they're younger, and they're hot, and they are, you know, having their moment, and he's going to fall in love with that grouping because they're cooler, and they'll end up getting maybe the single or the cut that even though you really feel like you wrote the most powerful shit ever, it just messes with your head all day long.

01:20:57
Speaker 2: You're like a lyric first guy always, and I know for a fact that guys like Max Martin are melody first guys. So but like both of you have written hits and for totally different reasons, He's written more sure he has and he's written a ton and he would if he was here, he would have something to say about this.

01:21:17
Speaker 3: But whatever, Well he's better than me.

01:21:18
Speaker 2: No, God, why this is not a competition. It is a competition. It is a fucking competition.

01:21:23
Speaker 3: He's Max Martin, but like, but.

01:21:25
Speaker 2: Like with Max, he always talking about Melly, right, So it's Mellody, million Mellion Melly and I feel like his disciples are million million Melldy and you live in more of like the this is shitt example Bob Dylan lyrical world. And I think that that's so interesting because at the end of the day, a fucking hit is a hit. So like you've written a hit, he's written hit. I've been on the same charts in different places. But like, why is it that?

01:21:47
Speaker 3: Because like, why is it that his songs are bigger? Because because he's better, because he's why let's start there. No, but what I would say is one thing I would say is.

01:21:57
Speaker 2: But how can you have that different approach and still have the same outcome?

01:21:59
Speaker 3: I guess, well, Melody is king, right, So I've been with you, it's not with me. But I think maybe I'm lucky because truthfully, at this point, Melody supersedes everything. The one thing that helps me lyrically is I'm pretty conceptual, So songs like you know a check Yes, Juliet, or one of these things that sneaks through one of these like quirky hand clap, handclaps, A pretty quirky little tune, you know, might be the biggest song in my career might be. And it's a it's a quirky little number, and it didn't come from a melodic place. It came from a lyrical place. I mean that was based on like, you know, that's a there's a real shape to what I wrote there, and there was a reason for it. And then fits really stepped in and with that, you know, the crazy blown out horn sample thing. And when we wrote that thing, it was obvious that it was very unique. But that's a that's that's the kind of record that I love because it's it's kind of a morphous I don't really know what hand clap is. It's not really alternative, it's not really pop, I don't know what is. It's kind of weird. And those are my favorite tunes. The quirky ones are the things that I really react to because they're a little bit off because that's where no one can fuck with me. Like, if I'm trying to write something that's hyper melodic, there's like an entire country of Sweden that can outright me.

01:23:21
Speaker 2: So it's not a big country.

01:23:22
Speaker 3: I just so I know that lyric and concept is going to be the place that I can enter the building first and then you know, just sort of piece it together to the best of my ability. But that's my that's my greatest skill, you know. But you're right in terms of we all can end up in the same place. But what's interesting is a guy like Max and some of these writers who are so blessed melodically, they can kind of hit it every time out because they just hear things that other people don't hear. For me, it's a little harder because I have to these concepts have to be really unique to me and really and they have to sort of hit beat that I feel like are just so uniquely me that maybe it'll raise its hand.

01:24:06
Speaker 2: So we've been talking for a long time and we can stop at any time. But I have two more questions that I think are important ominaries. I'm a sagittari, Okay, so is my wife? See sort of explains it all. It's all coming very cleared out, all right. So I have two questions.

01:24:25
Speaker 3: All right.

01:24:25
Speaker 2: My first question is because people ask me this, like do you know when you have a hit? I know that's like such a generic question, but I feel like it's important because I do. Sometimes you're like, in my so's I'll talk about me for a second. Sometimes I feel like I fucking killed it, and then I'll send it to whoever sent it and they're like, this is the worst. Sometimes I'll write what I believe is the biggest piece of shit of all time and they'll be like, its fucking genius, and I don't and and I've been doing this for not as long as you have, but long enough, and I still don't know. And like, to me, that's a little bit of the excitement that I still can't fucking figure this out. After thirty years, twenty five years of doing this, I still can't figure out. I should be able to fit, but I still can't.

01:25:04
Speaker 3: I definitely know, you know, one hundred percent.

01:25:06
Speaker 2: Okay, because I asked Max the same question, and he we were talking about how great he is. He's like, everything to him is super subjective. So it's always just like, I don't know, it's how I felt that day, like why'd you write this? No? No, how I felt that day like there's no I think. I think there's an idea that there's like a math and a science to it, and I think some of it is. But I think a lot of it, more so than you would think, is super subjective, where it's just like can I say something, yes, sorry, I'm talking a lot. Fuck that guy all high and Low here quest Love Supreme starring Bill had said this is what this is What I would.

01:25:42
Speaker 3: Say, is I get the you know, I get a galvanic response sort of it happens. There's certain songs where I just instantly the chills start.

01:25:51
Speaker 2: Like handclap. Did you know one hundred percent?

01:25:53
Speaker 3: You did one hundred percent?

01:25:55
Speaker 2: Of course you said those songs are fucking awesome, you dick, all right?

01:26:00
Speaker 3: You know? Someone to You by Banners a song that nobody really heard. We heard Steve Day and our guy heard. I don't even know if if Mike the artist heard, but I was convinced that Someone to You by Banners the second it left the room. I was like, man, I just think I wrote a perfect song, like as good as I can get. I believed everything about the song would work. Everything was stacked against this song. It took five and a half years for it to break. It'll be at a billion streams in a year. It's a big song. And the truth is I knew it the second this kid left the room. And this is like a young artist who you know, was at the stage in his career where I don't know if he could sell out of Starbucks yet, but I knew the song was perfect. And they're just all you need to There's certain songs, you know. You know I knew Check, yes, Julia, it was going to be huge. I know, there's just certain ones along the way. You know, I could pinpoint you know that. I definitely wait for Superman by Docot would be a big song. They're just songs where we leave the room and I think, wow, this is a big this just works. I can see it sort of.

01:27:06
Speaker 2: And was it like a chill thing because that happens to me from time to time, where it's like you hear something you're like, oh, I can't not trust my body. Having a completely out.

01:27:13
Speaker 3: Of band cloud, high Hopes, Check, Ustruliat, all three of them.

01:27:16
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, I believe that absolutely.

01:27:18
Speaker 3: And also the Banner song, and also that James c. W ballad. I left there and I thought to myself, Okay, when you love someone, it's like a mid tempo e ballad. It doesn't really have a pulse and it's not a rhythmic record. I have no idea who's going to play this thing. And it's the best song I've ever written. It's gonna get heard, and it did. And people find things. Sometimes people find things that are pretty good. Doesn't happen a lot now there's so much content out there. It's harder. But sometimes if something actually you know, and trust me, everything I do isn't that good, But every once in a while one of them is. And I like to believe there are very few that I think people really slept on, do you know what I mean. I don't look back. I don't have that catalog full of songs where I think, oh, this should have been, should have been if they if they weren't hits, it's usually a reason they weren't.

01:28:03
Speaker 2: Is there one song you wish you had written?

01:28:06
Speaker 3: Changes daily?

01:28:09
Speaker 2: I love that's your answer.

01:28:11
Speaker 3: It really changes daily. I think the you know, I think, at the end of the day, best of my Love by the Emotions is a song. I think that's the to me, that's the most perfect record I can think of. Or September by earth Wind and Fire, both of those Ali willis earth Wind and Fire. One thing about both of those songs is it Morey's white? Is they got feel good? Right? I like feel good records. I like music that's uplifting and feels good. You know, I've only had two ballads work in my entire life. When labels call and say, oh, this just needs a ballad for this record, I tell them to call somebody else because I'm not that good. I like feel good, and I do it because it probably I'm creating natural dopamine for all my lows. I want to make music that balance is how dark I can get.

01:29:04
Speaker 2: It turns out yeah, pretty dark.

01:29:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's like that. That's how I that's what I need to get to to keep my sanity. And so records, those those classics that do that thing are so beyond my capability, and I do my versions of them and they're never on one hundredth is good and just that those are the records. So basically, I want to be more white. I think I've just learned.

01:29:25
Speaker 2: I mean, could be worse.

01:29:28
Speaker 3: All right.

01:29:29
Speaker 2: Sorry, Uh Sam has to receive a phone call from Carol King.

01:29:34
Speaker 3: Uh Hi, hold on a second, Hi, please let it be Carol wrapping up. Hold on, it's my daughters.

01:29:39
Speaker 2: Your daughter, my daughter, she's good. Okay, No, no.

01:29:42
Speaker 3: Don't you know called me in the car once. That was a great flex. Ringo calls in the car. Fuck yeah, I got Ringo calls. And the one that I'd say is Ringo called in the car one day and I was driving around with it here. This is like the name drop of all name drops.

01:29:54
Speaker 2: Is it Ringo? Please say?

01:29:55
Speaker 3: Oh my god, no, it's my you know love this This is what my life's devolved to. Is my parking. My parking expires in ten minutes in not Grisco, New York. Just important factory. But right now fun fight, definitely not. But one thing I'll tell you about Ringo is it took me like five years to even get his phone number. And we you know, we wrote a bunch of songs and finally I hit him up. I was like, Dad, you gotta give me your phone number. And he's like, I'm not giving you my fucking number. And I was like okay, because I'll give you like the landline in our house that goes to an answer machine. Neither I'll call you back or I won't.

01:30:31
Speaker 2: Like Bill Murray, Yes, it was very Bill Murray.

01:30:32
Speaker 3: But you know, truthfully, I did it because I'm desperate. So one night I left on a message and then I flew down to Florida and I'm driving around Florida. You're gonna dig this flex. It's me, my my brother's brother in law, Peter and Bill Cower, ex coach of the Hall of Fame, coach of the Liverburgs Dealers.

01:30:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jesus. And we're driving home with cousin Jake. Who's fucking cousin Jake?

01:30:53
Speaker 3: How about this visual? So we're riding around, it's Cower and Peter and the phone rings and answer it and I hear, hey, you don't think you have him in? And I do do, and I just go right to speaker with it with no exposition. I'm like, what's up, man, what do you got? He's like, what are you doing? And I just see both of their faces sort of do that thing, and I go, hey, ringo, say how to coach Bill and Peter. It's a true story. And Ringo. Definitely. I didn't, you know, I didn't go further on coach Bill or Peter.

01:31:27
Speaker 2: What's on your phone? Did it say Ringo?

01:31:29
Speaker 3: No? So the thing about it is he he's one of those people who comes with one of the block numbers or whatever. Yeah, so it says, And so I think that's either there's only three people I know who have that. It's Ringo, my friend Matt Nathanson, and another flex.

01:31:42
Speaker 2: Those are very different people.

01:31:44
Speaker 3: You've never seen them in the same room. And nor would you ever Why would bring gooing Matt nathan ever go Matt Nathanson and my brother Ben. My brother Ben calls for one of those numbers too, So how.

01:31:56
Speaker 2: Do you answer it? FBI, He's just he's a very covert fella, you know.

01:32:00
Speaker 3: But I would say so somewhere. So I answered it. It happened to be Ringo. And that was a great reveal for everyone in the car. Okay, that's all I got, you know, the good folks. I just want to I want to thank him here. That was honestly, thank you.

01:32:18
Speaker 2: I'd get so much for this. This might Hey, Jake, this might be my last and only podcast.

01:32:24
Speaker 3: Can we just say one thing yeah, cop Rock, cop Rock? Why is ninety Stephen botchko one season replacement? Sam Hollander?

01:32:32
Speaker 2: You the king of the name dropped like Minutia.

01:32:37
Speaker 3: You know it was a great mid season replacement.

01:32:39
Speaker 2: Who what?

01:32:40
Speaker 3: Manimal? Google? Manimal?

01:32:42
Speaker 2: What was that?

01:32:43
Speaker 3: Y'all weren't born yet? But if you know Manimal?

01:32:45
Speaker 2: How old are you really?

01:32:46
Speaker 3: Uh? Well, we say so far? Twenty eight ninety four?

01:32:51
Speaker 2: Pie carry the one?

01:32:53
Speaker 3: You're Honestly, a lot of people would say seven.

01:32:55
Speaker 2: You're fifty? Your what fifty two?

01:32:57
Speaker 3: I don't know what that is? What is a fifty? Wow?

01:33:00
Speaker 2: Old are you really?

01:33:01
Speaker 3: I don't know.

01:33:02
Speaker 2: You look like you piloted Jimmy Buffett's boat.

01:33:07
Speaker 3: She should look like should look like me and Jack Klugman at the racetrack, you know, ponies in nineteen sixty nine.

01:33:17
Speaker 2: I think collectively that you and I look like Stafford and Waldorf from the fucking Muppets, and we could probably be them when we get a little bit older or for you.

01:33:26
Speaker 3: Not old for me, for you, just man for me growing down?

01:33:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, it looks like you run a teaky bar in marathon.

01:33:34
Speaker 3: Key. Look, here's the thing. I'm a festive guys. I think you've noticed, and I'm spirited. I'm joyous until i'm not.

01:33:42
Speaker 2: You look like you celebrate Hanukkah three hundred and sixties in Margarita Ville. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for listening to me and Sam talk about songwriting and our lives and Judaism and all those things. Okay, I'll leave it this because I look, we've known each other a while. I don't read books. I read your whole fucking book, Sam, and I feel like you need to understand that that's a big deal.

01:34:07
Speaker 3: Let me tell you something.

01:34:07
Speaker 2: But hold on, No, no, you talked a lot. I'm talking, so then it is your interview. But who cares. Okay, there's a great there's a great line where you're giving with one of your bonus cut tracks, whatever the hell you call it. You wrote. You write stay Wild and stay Weird, And I feel like that hit home for me. The reason is is because I think that that's important. Like if there's anything I've learned from Sam, it's like he's a true original. He doesn't succumb to any of the bullshit, and he does Sam, and I feel like that, in addition to this shirt is like really sums the whole thing up. And I think that if you want to leave anything here personally speaking, I want to leave with that. And I think that that's a good moment. Thank you very much, Sam Hollander. You're a fucking legend to say whatever you want.

01:34:47
Speaker 3: It's a Paul Smith shirt.

01:34:49
Speaker 2: It costs so much money in addition to my customs, Ford Broncos and all of this house in Bedford Hills.

01:34:57
Speaker 3: Can I say something, can say something? Yes, yes, go ahead. Here's what I would say. The most important thing I want to say about stay wild and stay weird.

01:35:04
Speaker 2: I thought so that should be your shirt.

01:35:05
Speaker 4: You know, market What I believe, I truly believe this is if you are blessed enough to do this with your life professionally, and you catch some breaks and you actually get to, you know, turn some of these weird fucking dreams and realities.

01:35:25
Speaker 3: It should never be lost on you how crazy it is. And don't conform. If you ever were able to permeate the system as an outsider, I was the ultimate outsider. I didn't want to play with inside the lines. I mean, honestly, I'm so unfiltered, and usually you're punished for that, but thankfully. The music business, if you have any success, you're actually rewarded for it, which is crazy. And so what I've learned in all these years of doing it is I just, honestly I trust my own weird little inner mechanisms. I chase whatever I chase, and I'm just I don't have the best time possible doing it because I still wake up every fucking day and I can't even believe that I got to do this in my life because there were not a lot of other options.

01:36:11
Speaker 2: Take it from us, two lawyers, Thank you, goodnight, thank you, thank you for listening to Quest Love Supreme. This podcast is hosted by Mere Quest Love Thompson, Liyah Saint Clair Sugar, Steve Mandel, and myself unpaid Bill Schrman. The executive producers are Meir just walked into the Goddamn room, Thompson, Sean g and Brian Calhoun. Produced by Brittany Benjamin, Jake Paine and liahs Sinclair. Edited by Alex Conroy I Know Alex Conroy. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown.

01:36:49
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.