People could afford to be apathetic without great risk, and now we’re in a different moment.Īnd David has stressed the idea of the artist as the town crier-that it’s important for artists to use their voices to speak for people who cannot speak for themselves-not to take sides politically, but to speak for ideals. And I don’t think that was the case 10 years ago, during the terms of any of the previous presidents-Republican or Democrat. But, right now, at this point in America, if you’re apolitical, you’re basically approving of what’s happening. Snarky Puppy was very apolitical for a very long period of time. He changed the way I think about how we should use political and social messaging in music. So you’re around each other every day for weeks. Making a record with David, we take our time. LEAGUE: For normal people in my financial bracket, making a record is usually three intense days in the studio. I’m faced with a world that distresses the hell out of me and the only way I can lift it up a little bit is to make this music. It’s the only thing I can do that will actually make anything better. Look at it this way: It’s the only contribution that I can make. When I realized that this band could make positive music, I figured it was solid gold and I should pay attention. The same way that war drags us down and brings out the worst in the human race, music lifts us up and brings out our best. It’s a very hard time in the United States, but people have told us that this record lifts their spirits and they really are grateful for that. I wasn’t listening to Nirvana.ĬROSBY: Here If You Listen is a joyful record, which, in these times, is a very unusual thing. From age one to 14, I only listened to music from David’s generation because my dad’s record collection was my record collection. People know me as the Snarky Puppy guy, but I grew up playing folk and songwriter music and, in many ways, it’s more natural for me to make a record like Lighthouse or Here If You Listen than a Snarky Puppy record. He was expecting me to bring in this horde of musicians for this super big, thick, funky, grooving record, and I wanted to do the opposite. He hadn’t made a record like that in a long time. That meant using acoustic guitars with really interesting tunings meaningful, relevant, poetic lyrics a bunch of vocal stacks rich vocal harmonies. I wanted to make a record that captured who I think David Crosby is, what I consider to be his essence. When we were making Lighthouse, I really looked to the stripped-down sound on his first solo record If I Could Only Remember My Name, specifically tracks like “Orleans,” rather than indulging in his psychedelic-trippy-jazz-fantasies or his rock-and-roll side or his more Steely Dan, full-band, produced stuff. Here’s my number.” And he texted me back with his number immediately. I sent him a message and just said, “Thanks for sharing our music. And then one day, my aunt or mom told me: “David Crosby has been tweeting about Snarky Puppy.” So I went on Twitter and he had been on a three- or four-day binge posting our YouTube videos. MICHAEL LEAGUE: I grew up listening to David-my dad and mom are both big fans. I’ve never had an experience like that before and I’ve done a lot of stuff. We wrote, recorded and mixed an entire album in one month. I’ve written with other people a few times-most notably my son James-but not many and I never dreamed that you could write with four people. In the next eight days, we wrote the entire Here If You Listen record together. We had Michelle’s song “Jam It” and we had “My Son”-that’s a set of heartfelt words that I had written to my son about 10 years ago, and then Bill Laurance from Snarky Puppy wrote the music. We went into Michael’s studio in Brooklyn. I want us to write together and sing together.” And that’s what we did. I want the four of us to do a group record. The chemistry was unusually good so I went to them all and said, “For the next record, I don’t want to do a solo album with Michael producing and you guys singing a little bit. CSLWĭAVID CROSBY: Michael is a wonderful guy-an amazing musician-so I asked him to produce my Lighthouse record a few years ago, and he brought Becca and Michelle. Photo by Anna Webber Croz’s unexpected creative encore continues with his fourth studio album in five years.
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