Season 03 - Episode 09 – Gideon King | Transcription 

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PODCAST INTRO (Trout): Hey, everybody it’s Trout. Hope you're having a great day. You know when people compare you to a very well-known band, that's a good thing. Well, my guest today is a band out of New York City that's been compared to Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder, and a huge amount of jazz musicians, is because their music is what was shall say, sophisticated, or easy listening, or complicated, or whatever it is, it just really sounds good. I'm talking about the band Gideon King & City Blog. Gideon King spoke to me about his influences, how the band's put together. And now the members change over the course of years, which is very unusual for most pants, but they write some wonderfully great music. It's just different than everybody else's. And I think you'll like it. It's kind of smooth listening. But Gideon is a phenomenal, great guitar player. And the harmonies that his members come in and saying, “Well, that just make you feel great”. He likes Stevie Wonder and he likes some jazz influences. Sit back and enjoy this interview with Gideon King of the City Blog, that's next on The Trout Show. [Music 00:01:57 – 00:02:57].

Trout: So, tell me first and I know you're in New York City, but tell me a little bit why you decided, , most people want to put a band together, they go out and get people they like and all that, but what was your thought concept when you said, I don't? I don't really want to do that, I want to get a band but I want to change people want to write music? How did that all come about in your mind?

Gideon King: I mean, the thing is, I grew up influenced by everything from Neil Young to Stevie Ray, which is someone I know you like based on what you just said, to Wayne Shorter to Steely Dan, and Brahms and Seal. So I have as long as there's some harmonic complexity to the music, I'm pretty drawn. And I was pretty drawn to complex lyric writers, obviously Bob Dylan, Neil Young are complex lyric writers and amazing lyric writers. My wife, who's a monster YouTube fan really hooked me into his lyric writing, which is kind of amazing in its own very different way. So the truth is that unless, I have my band is gelled into a core group of people over time. But I started out very much with the theory that you write music. And you get the best musical athletes possible to come in and be part of it. And obviously, that was initially inspired by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. I mean, I don't need to tell you if you're Steely Dan. Obviously enthusiasts that everybody from Wayne Shorter to Michael Brecker to Dennis DS to Ron Carter what was on Steely Dan recordings. and Michael McDonald I mean, it's basically endless.

Trout: And Steve.

Gideon King: Of course, Bernard Purdie we can go on now for

Trout: It's amazing many people played on and some of the people I found Carlton, he is on to. And that's where I found him and started listening to his music.

Gideon King: And then of course, Steve, Larry Carlton, and then Steve Khan. So I was very drawn to, and I've the idea that, that you could write music and then bring in all of these different musicians to give different colors now, I think that there is almost all upside from doing that you learn from people, i.e. the music takes on a kind of, it takes on a very eclectic kind of in nature to it. And so that's really cool. If to the extent that you lose anything, perhaps maybe over time, you can lose some cohesiveness or consistency, or some common denominator, if you want to put it that way to your sound. But over time, I've settled on. I don't want to say settled on that actually is the wrong way to put it. I've embrace a group of musicians that form the core band more or less, only more or less. We've worked with Donny McCaslin and John Scofield and Mark Richard, and all kinds of great singers and players. But this core group that I have working with me now is a pretty incredible group of players that can do anything from play, straight out, pop, straight out blues, to straight out jazz, classical. And so I'm finding that no matter where I set the bar, they’re right there. In fact, I would say, many of them have skills that far exceed my own. But the idea of being confined to just rock musicians, is not attractive to me, I want to be able to play a rock or a funk or an R&B tune, but I want jazz and classical, and bluegrass, and country and blues. I want it lurking around the music, and I want it to be identifiable to somebody who's listening. And if you don't get a certain type of musical athlete involved, then you're going to be deprived of that the richness or that type of eclectic aspect to your music.

Trout: And the other thing that's interesting to me is in the way you say, athlete, it is you're already starting here, you're not starting down here. You're already up here because of their skill set. I think it's just like anything else, you can always find people better than you depend on what you want to do. But when you're starting at that level, it just changes the game, and it also should make us me and you both better.

Gideon King: And these guys and women are real listeners. Meaning if you make a reference to my bass player to the bass player for Leonard scattered, he knows exactly what you're talking about. If he may, if you make a reference to the bass track on buckets of rain, the Bob Dylan tune, he knows exactly what you're talking about. If you make a reference to who John Coltrane was playing with McCoy Tyner in a 1965 recording in a minor blues you're playing he knows exactly which bass player it is. And or if you just say I want to sound like a bass guitar like a Foo Fighters song. He knows exactly what you're talking about. He can execute it, but it's deeper than that. He also really likes it. Meaning I don't want jazz snobs who don't like you too and Adele. I love you too and Adele, I love Eric Gales. I love Stevie Ray Vaughan, I love Robin Ford, I love John Scott. So I want them to truly love that stuff as well because if you don't love it, then you're just a jazz snob or a classical snob pretending to embrace something and getting paid to do it. But they really love this stuff. So I have my piano player will text me on any given night at two in the morning. Hey, check this out. I'm listening to this great James Blake or this this great. Randy Newman recording and then he'll say to me, “I'm also listening to this Beethoven thing on by the way, check out this Van Halen”. And so I want people who feel that kind of diverse sense of attraction to different types of music because man it just makes it more fun and it's so much more. There's a kind of collectivism and enthusiasm that develops when that type of true diversity in taste exists.

Trout: I don't know whether that exist in the music industry fans because they go under their silos and they stay there. And that was one thing. I've always been kind of asking players, if they know, especially if they're younger, how did you start? Who do you like? If they start telling me stuff, like I talked to a young kid the other day was only 10 and he's 8. He's crazy good already. But here's the thing. So I said, so I like classical. He just couldn't down the list that you just said, “I like this. I like that. I like heavy metal”. But then when I got into the meat and potatoes of it, I said, “Look, he's I'm learning classical now”. And I said, “Who's your favorite classical guitarist?” Most people at that age or later won't even know who Andrés Segovia is. I said, my point is, I liked that. I did too. Obviously, I live in Miami and I gravitate to certain music. I mean, when you start writing, you're going to write to style that you do. I mean, I couldn't write a jazz song if I wanted to. I'm not much of a ballad writer. I can't do that. I know what my lane is. But I'm like you and the bass player, and probably a lot of the members of your band that you have come in. I want to hear a lot of different stuff because you pick up that little nuance. And you're like, “I never thought about doing that”. It's not like you're copying it. It's just that you might go, “I never heard that look like that before”.

Gideon King: The goal is not to copy, but the goal is to at least be humble enough to make reference to the past to them. Otherwise, you have no awareness of the past, I guess unless you're some kind of pioneering groundbreaking genius, which I'm not, then you just write dog shit.

Trout: Well, you can't. I just don't pick a history buff. I interviewed a gal just this week from Ireland. She's an Irish blue singer. She's just told me she got a PhD and blues in Ireland. And she's going to be she's been in the States before, but she's actually touring over here in April, she's going to do the New Orleans blues and jazz festival great singer, great songwriter. But it was funny to hear her talk about something that started in America. But when I talk to people about the blues, I'm a blues aficionado, is tell me a little bit about the history and they can. You want to know, because I'm a firm believer if it's just like people if they've been where they're going. Start talking to me about, , some obscure blues player or some obscure you mentioned the jazz players, I know that you probably are aware of what the music industry is or what you're doing instead of let's just put something together real quick.

Gideon King: I mean, when it comes to the blues, the blues is beyond important. Because I mean, forget that. It's the foundation of Chuck Berry and also but it's also like, “I think people have a limited, not that you asked me this question.” But what the hell, we people have a really limited understanding, I shouldn't say that. Some people have a really limited understanding of what the blues is. They think of the blues, oh, great BB King. , maybe John Mayer plays a game with his trio when he plays blues. But the blues is skipped James and the blues goes back to Louis Armstrong. And the blues goes back before that even just the construction of the one chord, and what you can do over that you can play mixolydian you can play, you can play simple pentatonic stuff. You can find 1000 chords within the associated diminished scale over that type of stuff. And so the blues is honestly, it's endless. And then when you start getting to turn around and Jazz Blues turnarounds and you just get into like those types of turnarounds? I mean, the blues is so expansive that that it kind of bums me out when people say, I really like blues. I went to Chicago blues bar and I heard this guy, but actually the blues. The blues is everything from Art Tatum, through Herbie Hancock through, Van Halen, and through Eric Gales so I've been checking out lately and I love their tails. I think he can really play but the blues is like, you were saying like, one four and all that stuff. True, but the blues is completely and totally Endless, there are things you can do just on the one chord getting to the four chord, you could spend the rest of your life with that cake with that cadence that musical keys from the one four from the ‘E’ to the ‘F’. And we could never talk about anything else. There's so many ways to get there.

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Trout: But what's interesting? Well, here's the other thing about it too, it lends itself to your band. Really good blues players, the ones that aren't even here with us anymore have a lot of space in our music. There's a lot of space in it. And if I list a year stuff, which I have listed, so there's space in your music, brother. You know about that. So it's like you're sitting around, we got to fill it up with a synth here. I got to do 4000 notes at one time. That is really what to me. When you talk to somebody like John Lee Hooker, here's a guy that never didn't much, but he was just like, I can't go. Why is he so freakin good? 

Gideon King: Because he's amazing. 

Trout: He was amazing, but there's nothing there. And it's like, but that's the important thing about. 

Gideon King: Well, in every lane of art, I forget the expression in the negative space, it's a concept. It's a concept of negative space, and it goes for, absolutely, the ability to lay back and do nothing makes what you do, obviously, twice as impactful. And as I get older, and play with better people, and actually not even that as I just listened to myself and say, “Oh my God, that sounds like shit. What the hell am I doing?” As I listened to myself, I'm learning that, like, if you're going to play something, especially when you're just accompany it really better means something. Otherwise, you're just going to annoy everyone around you. It's gonna be like listening to a politician talk, just the lather and nonsense. And so I'm learning over time to be more specific in what I play. And John Lee Hooker is like, he's just unbelievable with respect to that. And there's a lot of jazz equivalents to that, there's so many examples of that.

Trout: So when you listen to your band music, it's, it's and I was telling somebody the other day about Asia, and I was old enough. I mean, I go back to when Steely Dan brought their first albums out. I was in college when they brought out do it again. Katie lied and stuff and then the guys and the reason that I'm caught my eye, which we had albums, was even the cover wasn't that much. But it said a lot. I just looked at that, and I go that is a coolest cover I've and it's still has.

Gideon King: Well, if you want to talk about depth, and space, Wayne Shorter solo on the tune Asia. It's so deep and haunting and gray. Of course, we're talking about Wayne Shorter here. So it's like referencing the NBA and talking about Michael Jordan. Well, it's just funny. You bring up Asia. I just think Asia is one of the modern masterworks. I think it's a way to leave the lyrics. The music talks about Blue. There's plenty of blues in there and plenty of space. I mean, your point is exemplified by that album. And by the way, on top of that, it's sophisticated as hell that out. It's musically sophisticated with a lot of space. It's beyond incredible. I don't know, it's one of the greatest albums of all time.

Trout: And you can't recreate stuff like that. It just sits the special time. I mean, I know that they brought in a lot of different people to play on and all that stuff. But the engineering the recording is it seems like it was all top notch. In a way.

Gideon King: We spent a lot of time trying to get our recording process. 

Trout: Well, that's what I was gonna get to tell me a little bit about. So you got an idea for a song. Do you write things down you record? Just tell me that you do, sit down and take your phone or you go to your little studio? What do you do?

Gideon King: It's two parallel track tracks lyrically just try and hear what people are saying maybe there's a fun Any expression, maybe there's something I read an idea, something that upsets me something that I find funny and I will write down a little spark of a phrase or something like that. And then musically, I'm just always trying to find some into something different. For example, the other day, I was messing around with the scale, the harmonic minor scale. Now, the harmonic minor scale is [Music 00:20:31]like, that's super cheesy. And it reminds you of all the cheesy guys trying to sound like Spanish guitar players. But within that scale, there's actually a bunch of chords, that's one of them. Here's another one. So here's a major chord. Here's the augmented chord. Here's a half diminished chord. And here's the full diminished chord. So if you do that progression. All of a sudden, there's like a musical Centricity to those chords. And there's a lot you could sing over that. So there's a spark of an idea harmonically. And then I say, “Let me start writing some lyrics around that or coming up with a concept”. And then is it a fast hard driving song. Is it a ballad? So there's always some harmonic spark or I wrote a song called “Desert Sun”. It's a much simpler motif. And so some musical ideas, something that Richie Havens, played.

Trout: That's a name I haven't heard a long time.

Gideon King: He's a great drummer, though. 

Trout: Yes, he was. 

Gideon King: So Richie Havens, like something he'll play or something Adele will sing, something of Foo Fighters. I was just listening to Brahms the other day and figuring out the chord changes, and what was happening there or keys chair and just some sparks. So then you have the musical spark, and then you marry it with a lyrical spark. And then I either write the whole song, music and lyrics, or I take the skeleton to the band. And then we spend time in the studio putting blood, guts and bones on the skeleton. And I don't think either way turns out better. I know, sometimes it's a relief when other people get involved in the writing process, just because it takes away some of the burden of completely finishing the song, but it's just about finding the sparks. And the only way I can find the sparks harmonically is to constantly be studying music constantly. Well, I don't care what it is, I literally don't care if it's the first three seconds of an Ed Sheeran song, anything to add on even like Ed Sheeran, to be honest, but anything to spark some pathway. And then the funny thing about it is people, they talk about inspiration, or how do you get inspired the truth is, the only moment of true inspiration is the beginning for me, the initial idea, and then the rest is the rest is sort of pain and suffering and work to bring form and function to it. And people think you're somehow inspired by some divine light all the way through the writing process, actually, to fucking pain in the ass. You just kind of have to slog through it the way that an accountant has to get through his paperwork at 6:45am in the morning.

Trout: I was watching the other day was interesting came up on YouTube, Ringo from the Get back. Maybe Ringo was came in the studio one day and started playing octopus garden. 

Gideon King: I saw that. 

Trout: Did you see that? And he goes, that's all I got. I like to be under this and then and then here comes Georgia and then the rest. I'm what are they doing slogging through the sock going? Have you thought about that? And the thing about it when you're a solo performer like me, and I'm trying to and I told people that I interview I have people now a lot of places that said they'd collaborate with me. But it's not like sitting in a studio when you got great musicians like you do. And you sit there and go, what about this harmony? And they said, I can hear it. I can see you doing it. Where are you sitting in the studio and people the singers are sitting there and booth with you. And you're kind of going over there gets in there in the recording booth, listen to it. I can see that happening, you can't make up by yourself.

Gideon King: And you have to have a mixture. First of all, you have to have nice people. And you have to have people that can change their minds. And you have to have people that they're feeling doesn't get hurt because you're not going in a certain direction. Meaning like, it's much more fun when people just throw ideas into the mix and nobody's feelings get hurt. So I think we've established a great working model in the studio, which is lots of chaos, lots of ideas, and then no hurt feelings, lots of laughter, but everybody knows that eventually, you got to pick a horse and ride it. And you got to get an actual tune done, because you can't call yourself a songwriter. If over the course the next three years, you say, Well, I've done two songs. It's like, “No, you gotta write a lot of songs if you're a fucking songwriter”.

Trout: It's exactly right.

Gideon King: I mean, sometimes I need people are like, “I'm a musical artist”. I'm like, “Cool”. They're like, I've been working on these two songs for four years. And it's like, I don't understand that. You got to get it out. And we do put an emphasis on completion, and finishing the idea and finishing the song. And then we put a ton of emphasis on production a ton where we're very cognizant of the modern tools, which are endless that are available to us. And using them sparingly and tastefully, and still remembering that pianos and guitars and voices, and that stuff's beautiful. And it always there's a reason when you go on Spotify, there's still a ton of streams on Mahler because you had cellos and stuff like that, but that's definitely beautiful then and it's and it's beautiful. Now, what I was saying is just the spark a focus on actual execution, honestly, like a business where you have a budget, you have a board meeting, and you're supposed to get it done and just no egos.

Trout: When you bring people in, they're excited. Look, we're going to studio tougher work. It isn't like in which Rick wrote the song Rick wants it this way. And you sit down, go, “Alright, here's the guts of it but I'm open”. As a songwriter, you have to be open to because it's your stuff. But then that spark of creativity, I'm sure comes when they all come in. And they start going and all of a sudden, that catches in? Already, because they've been with you before they know your production values. They know you're not putting crap out, this is a higher game that we're trying to go to.

Gideon King: Yeah, it is. And these guys, and these women, they get that big time. And you know what, honestly, if you play pickup basketball on the street in a park, you look around, and you say, “I want him”. You want the people that that look like the best athletes. So I've done that. And I just assume these two. I've watched them play for the last hour, and they’re just better basketball players. And I am so like, I'm picking them. And it really works. It works really well. If the people are really amazing musicians, and they're really, really nice. And they're secure in their skills. So if you can find people that are secure in their skills, it's really a big deal, because then it's way more fun, and way more truly collaborative. And someone who's really secure says, “Fuck it”. What I just played stinks. Sometimes I'll do a take of a guitar solo and my engineer who I've been working with for a long time, who's a drummer and a guitar player and a guitar maker and a wizard engineer. He'd be like, “Get that stinks”. Like, you'd maybe try this. And I don't want him to say, “Oh wow”, that was really in the know, but maybe you could try this. I don't just wanted to say, “That one suck”. Let's do another one. So we can just get on with it. So I'm good with that type of dialogue. And I think we found a group of people that are feel that way. And I think the product is I'm really proud of what's now coming out of our studio, more proud of it than I've done. I've actually ever been, I genuinely believed deeply in my heart. It's good quality music.

Trout: If you could wave a wand and money was no object, what would you do?

Gideon King: I would like to look, today is what day it is? 

Trout: Friday.

Gideon King: February 24. So when we do our next podcast together on February 24th 2025, I would like our audience to grow. I would like a community of music nerds to really enjoy our Music. I would like to have a huge catalogue of music. So when you get on a drive to drive 300 miles to go visit your sister or brother or son or wife or whatever. You can listen to four straight hours of GKCB of our band's music and say “Wow, there are some songs I really love here”. And they come from a lot of different places musically. And I would like to just be a really well known, well respected boutique band respected for competently writing interesting compositions that are hopefully a little bit out of the box. I think it's pretty obvious just looking at me. I'm not going to be Harry Styles. I'm not going to be even Gary Clark Jr. I just want us to grow and if we have some huge hits along the way great. Why not make some money that would always be fun to make a little money doing, that'd be really that'd be sort of a funny joke. But if I'm what I'd like to do, and I think we're well on the way to doing that actually, is have people say, those guys are really good, almost the way I hate excessive analogizing. But almost the way years ago, people sort of listened to Steely Dan, they said, those guys are really even before they went live. They were mostly stupid. Those guys write amazing songs with really interesting, different smart lyrics. They're harmonically interesting, and they're lyrically interesting. And there's just a band I really liked. They're competent, interesting, different songwriters, that's all I want is for people to say that about us. And I would like the size of venue that we can fill to grow I would like to be able to have a certain number of people in the audience I would have 300, I'd like to have 900 and five years ago we couldn't have three and five years five years ago we had no streams on Spotify. Now we have 100s of 1000s of streams on every song so my hope is we just continue to grow. I don't have any specific popularity endpoints there's the old expression that man plans and God laughs and so I don't want to fall into that trap just keep putting out high volumes of really quality music and hopefully more, more, more and more people recognize it.

Trout: Thanks Gideon, and take care. See you. 

[Music 00:32:14 – 00:34:58]

PODCAST OUTRO (Trout): Well that's it for this day. Episode of, The Trout Show. Thanks so much for listening. Especially thanks to Gideon King for taking time out of his busy day to visit with me. For more information about getting in King and his band, you can visit him on his website at gideonkingcityblog.com. You know me, I'm the Trout and you can find me and everything about our show or podcast or YouTube's at thetroutshow.com. So until next time, people remember what I always say, “It's only Rock and Roll”. But gosh darn it, I love it. See you.