Everything You Learn Comes Together Jackson, Reggie [Media file #3 starts] REGGIE: My name is Reggie Jackson, I was born in Columbus, Ohio way back in 1873, yeah. [laughing] I lived in California for about a year but for the most part I've been in Columbus all of my life. [Media skips forward] REGGIE: Umm, I kind of grew all over the place. [laughing] REGGIE: Umm, I started living - I kind of grew up, my earlier years, on the East side of Columbus, kind of like Livingston and Courtright area and then I lived in Reynoldsburg, Columbus, for about two years and then from there I moved to the North side of Columbus, pretty much lived there from the time I was in the fifth grade until I moved out. SPEAKER: And went to OSU. [laughing] REGGIE: Yeah. [laughing] REGGIE: Yeah, actually I stayed there while I went to OSU, when I finished that's when I moved out. I lived all over just about. [laughing] REGGIE: Yeah, from what can remember, my mom would read to me a lot and I do remember she bought me like these cards, they were like flash cards, they were like flash cards of animals. From what I remember I want to say she bought them from an infomercial and they had, these cards, they had a picture of an animal and on the back they had all the information as far as what the animal was, what was the name of it, where it was from, what it eats, stuff like that, exactly. So I remember her teaching me to read or reading some of those. I remember from the time I was three or four and I must have had those until I was seven or eight, for a long time. So I remember that, I remember a few books she would read to me, I can remember like Dr. Sues books and things like that, I liked everybody. [laughing] REGGIE: Yeah, and that was pretty much it. I think in middle school I did kind of fall behind a bit as far as my reading level goes because I was never into reading at all. [laughing] REGGIE: It just wasn't my thing. I was always drawing or playing music or listening to music and just reading just never was something I really liked to do. But then I think in middle school, I think for a couple of months I was placed in remedial, something class, but I wasn't in there long and I almost wonder, I think, I do remember my mom pushing because she's pretty hardcore as far as education goes. My mother's an attorney, she actually works for the United States Attorney General's Office and from time to time, she actually got her law degree from Ohio state, their law university and she teaches there - exactly right over there. [laughing] REGGIE: Teaches over there from time to time. So yeah probably back then, when she found that out about my reading level, I'm sure she pushed me pretty hard at home in addition to whatever I was doing in school at the time. [Media skips forward] REGGIE: Not really, basically in fifth grade, no, no, no, I think it was second, no that's not right, third or fourth grade I think it was, they had a general music class where like all the kids play recorders. SPEAKER: Oh yeah. [laughing] REGGIE: And then from there, I think it was fifth grade, I played trumpet for a year and then in middle school and on I went and actually started playing drums, although I was actually playing the drums way before that. I think I started when I was three. SPEAKER: Where, how? REGGIE: At home, my mom bought me a little drum set and I would literally play, as she tells me- [laughing] REGGIE: ...play along with the radio and records, you know, and then I started playing in church when I was like six or seven. I've been playing ever since. As far as informative study it was, yeah, first year was trumpet, yeah, that didn't really last that long. [laughing] REGGIE: I didn't really like trumpet that much, well I shouldn't say that, I like trumpet, my mother was just saying wow, I'm paying whatever it was a week for this trumpet and I was spending, you know, I practiced trumpet for like ten minutes and then I played drums for hours. So for her it was like, "yeah there's no sense for me spending this money on this instrument if you're not seriously gonna..." I just remember always just being fascinated by the drums. I remember as a kid, yeah, three and four, when we were at church I would make my way to the drum set and just watch the drummer play the entire service. Yeah, my mom saw that and would say, "he really likes drums for some reason," bought me a drum set, and even when I wasn't playing in church, what I would always do then I would just get as close as possible to the drummer and just watch. I majored in music, yeah, I studied music and got a jazz studies degree, a music performance degree in jazz studies. That was hard work for me because I really didn't have any real music lessons. I played in school but unfortunately like in most schools, music department, music teachers are good but it's kind of hard to really spend individual time with a student when you have thirty or fourth kids in a room. SPEAKER: Like we just played together and that's what music class consists of. REGGIE: Yeah, exactly, and you know I'm sure back then, as it is now, for a lot of music teachers emphasis is really about the performance, it's about the concert. Kids had to do two concerts a year and this at the middle school level where most districts kids are- [Media file #3 ends] [Media file #1 begins] REGGIE: Yeah, oh gosh, my years at Ohio State were pretty rough. I mean they were great but they were hard but they were hard only because there were some great things happening. By the time I started in the jazz studies program at Ohio State I had already played and performed with all the jazz faculty and then when I was actually going to school, I started playing with a local jazz composer, a smooth jazz composer and musician and I was traveling with him. So I would, as well as I was playing gigs around town and I was working part time at a drug shop here in town and going to school full time so my day would consist - I would have class from like, I think back then, I would have like a seven o'clock, I think it was a seven thirty - no back up - first it was an eight o'clock class then they moved it up a half hour because they wanted to get more classes in the day so I remember I was going to school from seven thirty to three thirty then I would work from four to eight at the drug shop, then I would play a gig or something, somewhere on campus or some restaurant. Then I go home and study and then if I had a test or something I would get to bed at probably, anywhere between three and five and get up and have to be at school at, you know, eight. I just remember having a music history class and I didn't always make it to class. [laughing] REGGIE: But, yeah, that was hard. That would be during the week and weekends I would fly out and play some shows in Atlanta or D.C. or New York - that's very rare, I mean it does happen and typically for most musicians that would have had that similar type of situation, school would just like- SPEAKER: Yeah that's what I was curious about as to why you just didn't bail on school because it didn't seem like you're really needed it, or why did you feel like you did? REGGIE: Well, I don't like - it was two parts- SPEAKER: Was it from your mom? [laughing] REGGIE: Exactly, that was for however long, and my mom she has an English degree... [laughing] REGGIE: Yeah, a business degree and I think she had her bachelor's in English and associates in business and she has her law degree. So for her it was just like: you need to get a degree. And then for me having traveling and playing with other musicians who didn't have degrees, I just saw that I should just finish up and if anything at least get a degree and it will give me options which I have always been into having as many options as possible. So that was really for me why I wanted to finish, but it was hard. The first thing, especially in college, the biggest thing you learn is time management where, you know, when you're younger you don't really realize how important that is but I think for me it was great because it taught me how to really be organized and conscious of my time and also I learned my limitations. I remember one time I had, I was talking about the schedule I had, I played a gig, I got home at about two in the morning and I had a music history midterm the next day and it was on a Friday and then I was also flying out to play a show in New York. SPEAKER: Like straight from the test? REGGIE: No. So at the time the plan was I would take the test and pick up my girlfriend, at the time, and I was gonna go to the airport and she was going to take my car for the weekend and pick me up when I got back. Well, I came home from the gig, studied from two till about five in the morning and the class was at, whenever it was, eight o'clock so I was like, ok. So I was done at five, I could sleep for an hour, get up and I could take the test and then go to the airport and sleep on the plane. It didn't work out that way. Actually I went to sleep and I woke up at eleven, totally freaked out and just lost it and my girlfriend at the time had been calling me. I didn't hear my alarm, I must have been extremely tired but of course going week after week and averaging whatever, three, four hours of sleep and every night. So luckily she had called the airlines and scheduled another flight for me so I ended up missing the midterm, I made it to New York, literally just walked into the club just as the guy was doing sound check so I didn't lose my gig but I ended up having to withdraw from my class and take it over and take it the following year. So after that I just wanted be ok, trying to be a full time student and work at a drug shop and a gig when I was locally, but at that time nationally, it was just too much. So I really learned my limitations and learned how to manage my time much better after that. So the other part, for what I believe, a lot of what I learned, there's a lot of what I learned that helped me as far as prior to college, I grew up just playing in church and I kind of played it by ear. I learned a little bit of degree music, a little bit but really [inaudible]. [laughing] REGGIE: Exactly, so there wasn't much - I really had to play catch up when I was in college. A lot of the thing I learned, a lot of those course helped me just in that - I was out playing in New York and this jazz handler I worked with, and as I was doing that I was playing Tuesday through Sunday; I got a call on Friday from L.A., this girl she just got signed to Dr. Dre's label and the musical director I had worked with when I lived in L.A., he called me on his tour and they needed me to be in L.A. on Tuesday and I wasn't getting home from the "Bluno" gig until Monday and so he needed to know if I could do it and I said, "well sure," so he said he was going to send me, that was before you could actually email large files. [laughing] REGGIE: So he had to send me a CD so I wasn't going to get the CD until I got home on Monday and then I had to fly out on Tuesday. So when I got home, I had just enough time to wash clothes and get ready to leave because that was going to be a three month tour. So I didn't really have time to practice the music and the first rehearsal was going to be on the next day, on Wednesday. So all I really had time for was to transcribe the drum parts from the CD and that was it. So I did that but without having the skills that I learned in college to be able to do that and then read what I actually wrote and then to try and memorize an entire CD worth of music in a day. There are guys that can probably do it if they had to but because I had the skills that I learned in school, I didn't have to do that. It allowed me to concentrate on other things like figuring out how I'm going to get home. If had the apartment together, you know, take care of all that stuff. So everything was fine while I was gone. [Media file #2 starts] REGGIE: A perfect example, that was - hip hop was a little of everything like the jazz that I work with now I was working with then. Her manager had made this far different. But the other aspect to that too is, you know, the girl that I work with that I signed with after mine, she was a brand new artist, her record hadn't even dropped yet, it wasn't release, it was released on the radio and was doing really well but the record hadn't even hit stores yet. So she was still kind of unknown in the jazz area that I worked with. She won two Grammies and has worked with everybody, has done the tonight show a million times, plays a the White house, so her career was very much established. Her and her organization had been doing it for a while so it's not always - Dianne's people, I knew what my schedule was two, three months ahead of time. Though some other artists like me- SPEAKER: [laughing] What are you doing right now? REGGIE: And I mean that happens, I remember I lived in L.A., I did a cattle call one time for Mark Anthony at the time when he was on tour. SPEAKER: Um, Jennifer Lopez thing? REGGIE: Exactly, yeah he was on tour and his record company was trying to put a band together - they had this big publicity campaign where they had to do a bunch of TV shows and go on shows like "Regis and Kelly" and "The Today Show", a bunch of those types of things. So it was cheaper to just put a band together and have those live to New York or do the shows in L.A. than it was to like fly his entire band, when he was on tour that's how he was using- SPEAKER: [inaudible] REGGIE: Yeah, it was like six or eight horn players, a drum set player, two percussion players, two keyboard players, guitar, bass, it was a huge band, it was huge tour. SPEAKER: He's not that famous... REGGIE: Well he was then yeah. SPEAKER: Because he was the king of the salsa, king of New York, yes? REGGIE: Right, yeah, he was, yeah. So back then it was just too expensive to fly that large of a band to see. So they decided to do a cattle call to hire some musicians. Well I got a call to do the cattle call at like 6pm the day before and I just happened to know guys that called me about it and I think the cattle call started at one the next day so yeah stuff just - as a matter of fact it's a funny story- [laughing] REGGIE: Because when I walked in, cause how they did it they had a list of all the drummers and bass players and keyboard players and so forth so they would just call people in and you would walk in and it was at SIR right on Hollywood Boulevard in L.A. and Randy Jackson, at that time he was the A and R guy. SPEAKER: This is the American Idol guy? REGGIE: Yeah, so he was in charge of putting the band together and he was running the cattle call. So yeah it was a big deal, there was a lot of money being put behind us but it still was kind of last minute. SPEAKER: Right. REGGIE: At least I heard about it last minute, I don't know, it was last minute. [laughing] REGGIE: Yeah, it happens like that sometimes and other times stuff is months in advance. Media File #4 starts here at 4:26] REGGIE: It's funny, I mean there are some really amazing musician who the first time playing something make it sound really, really good. But I always think that well now, I really do believe that the more time any musician has with a piece of music, the better it's gonna sound just because at that moment musician has had more time for the music to be internalized and to really understand what should be played, how it should be played and so forth. I mostly perform, I did a little bit of writing in college. SPEAKER: Was that required for coursework? REGGIE: Yeah, I had a composition class and I actually really loved it and I'm wanting to do more of it now but it's just really hard when you have to play other people's music, you really want it to be the best that you can so you kind of spend time preparing that so I do write, not as much as I would like, but hopefully one day I will have more time to do that. SPEAKER: What style of music do you write? REGGIE: Umm, most of the stuff, it kind of depends. I love music so it's one of the things that drew me to jazz, good jazz you can listen to something that has kind of a hip hop kind of feel or that you can turn around and you can turn around and you can hear something that's rooted in Brazilian music or you can turn around and hear something that's in reggae music or Africuban or you can hear something that's rooted in big band or bebop or you can hear something that's a combination of one or two or three of those things so it's always just really cool. You never know what you're gonna hear and for me, what I do like to write, a lot of it's just inspired by whatever. I started to write something just cause I had just gotten back from tour in Brazil and I just had a great time, I had always loved the music. We heard a couple of local bands playing and oh man I kind of like that alto rhythm or I like the bossa nova or something, so I write down an idea based off of that so yeah it just kind of really depends on what kind of makes me smile at that particular time. [laughing] REGGIE: You know, like oh that's cool and who knows I might go home and hear something on the radio or on my iPod that's pretty cool. But then there's also writing where, you know, sometimes I'll do something which if somebody hears they'd program a drum beat or- Media File #4 ends] REGGIE: My approach, I do play different and it's so funny, some musicians will pick up on it, some don't. I do just because, one, it's a different genre, and two, I'm an artist I'm always going to try and support the artist and so some artists have some flaws and some don't and you know, I'm going to play differently with one artist cause, you know, let's say one artist has a, I'm saying- SPEAKER: Not to name names. [laughing] REGGIE: These guys weren't the artist that I work with, just an example. Let's say an artist has a problem with tempo, they're like speeding up or slowing down, so I'm going to play very deliberate and I probably won't play as much or as many ideas - I just won't play some things just because well ok I know this artist has an issue with this so I'd be trying to support them on this, not only is it helpful for the artist but it's helpful for the rest of the band. So that if the rest of the band is secure, that's just going to make the artist that much more secure and they can do whatever. Let's say if an artist has an issue with, let's say the artist isn't very exciting, his show is kind of- [laughing] REGGIE: Well then- SPEAKER: How do you get to be a performer or musician if you're not a dynamic performer? [laughing] Anyway with the report that people like. REGGIE: Exactly and that's where me, how can I make you this how much more dynamic when a singer does a song and they do this as opposed to this, how can I do that? So then there's things that I'll just do different because I know that's an issue for that performer. So then yeah, I'll play different. And then as well it depends on the room we're playing in; if it's a small room I'll play different than if it's- SPEAKER: Like an arena? REGGIE: Exactly, yeah, you know, so it's just much more difficult to do. There are some musicians who just I play how I play and- SPEAKER: If you don't like it... REGGIE: ...don't hire me. And that's a rule more for me, it's just never been my approach. SPEAKER: How do you do that kind of reading, like of reading the situation like to see, you know, not in a bad way, but to read the situation into how you should play it? REGGIE: Right, a lot of that just comes from experience. Like I've been playing since three, technically been playing in church since I was six or seven. So, you know, from all those years of experience you just kind of learn, ok, yeah I already know how to approach this. You can, without even playing one note I can walk into a room and say ok, I can walk into a club and say ok. You know, or I can walk back stage or walk into the artist's dressing room and just from how they say "hello" or "hi" like oh ok, I know what this is going to be about. SPEAKER: [laughing] Well what do they seem like desperate when they're like, "You're the drummer." Thank God you're here. [laughing] REGGIE: Yeah, it's just like, you know, an attitude, oh ok, someone doesn't feel like working tonight, oh so and so has a great attitude or is in a great mood, this is going to be a great night, you know. So knowing that I might know, I might feel like oh ok, I might take some chances or ok this is going to be some work tonight. But yeah- [Media file #2 ends] [Media file #5 begins] REGGIE: I had to study tympani, marimba, pipes, I even did some hand percussion stuff, bells- SPEAKER: Like bells? [laughing] REGGIE: ...xylophone, all that stuff. I mean it was just required, I remember I had a whole semester just on tympani and you would be surprised, there were people there who were percussionist, I mean they will get hired in an orchestra and all they did is playing tympani and that was it because it is a pretty demanding instrument. I like what percussion is, but like, you know, the note will be on a line, on a space as well as- SPEAKER: Like an eighth note, a half note, whatever. REGGIE: Yeah, exactly, that would be written down as well. And then, you know, for tympani players that can be difficult because you actually have to tune the drums to the particular pitch and some pieces you actually have to change the pitch in the middle of the piece while you're playing so, you know. I remember, I never had to do it I knew some guys at school who were classical majors that would play pieces where they would have like a beat and a half to actually change the tune of one of the drums and there were two of the drums a fourth from where they were or a third. So not only do you have to read but you actually have to the oral skills to recognize intervals because you got a beat and a half to make that change. SPEAKER: That's where ear-training comes in handy. [laughing] REGGIE: Exactly, my nemesis is sight-singing. SPEAKER: Sight-singing? Did you have to sing stuff? Oh because it was performance studies which I guess includes voice. [laughing] REGGIE: Exactly. SPEAKER: You're not a singer? [laughing] REGGIE: No. [laughing] Not at all, not at all. So it was difficult for me, it was difficult. But much like anything, you do it long enough and it gets easier. I think the music programs are great, much like anything the key should be - and this is for any administrators who are developing programs and this not only goes for music but also education whether it be reading and writing, math, science, whatever. As long as the focus remains on the kids and actually educating then things will be great but as soon as you allow yourself for your own agenda to come before education kids, then there are problems. So as long as people remember to stay focused in whatever it is, if it's education stay true of focus to education and not getting caught up in my own personal agenda, I want this, that, and yeah I think that's where things are kind of falling apart a little bit. I shouldn't have said falling apart, but have lapsed. So other than that, that's it.