Bassist Ben Wolfe talks with Mike Jeffers about his new recording "Fatherhood" a self-produced recording that is dedicated to his father's memory.
Ben discusses how the recording came about, his father and his relationship with music, the musicians that are featured and much more.
Read the Review of "Fatherhood" on ChicagoJazzMagazine.com
Here is an excerpt from the Chicago Jazz Audio Experience Podcast with Ben Wolfe:
Mike Jeffers: Hey everybody, it's Mike Jeffers, Chicago Jazz Magazine, Chicagojazz.com, and welcome to the Chicago Jazz Audio Experience Podcast. I'm excited to be on the phone with bassist Ben Wolff. I could list off all of the people Ben has played with and all of the different musical experiences he has had, but we don't have time for that because we need to get into talking about his new recording that's coming out called Fatherhood. I'm going to let him talk about that because it is a tribute to his late father and it is also a very interesting story about how the whole thing came about. It is coming out August 30th, so by the time you're listening to this, it will be out. It'll be out on Apple Music, Amazon, CDBaby.com, all the different places that you can, pick up, download, stream and buy a physical copy. Ben, thanks for taking a few minutes to talk about this incredible project you put together.
Ben Wolfe: Oh man, thanks for having me. I very much appreciate it, it means a lot to have an opportunity to talk about this record.
Mike Jeffers: I'm just reading over the info that I received about the recording and this is why I thought it was a really great story. I'm always looking for great stories and I think a lot of our listeners always love hearing behind the scenes and why things came about. You recorded this under your own name and this particular recording, Fatherhood. Let's talk a little bit about how it came about. Your father Dan Wolf passed away in 2018, I think I read that he was a musician as well and a pretty accomplished one.
Ben Wolfe: Yeah, well he did play one season with the San Antonio Symphony but then quit music. So he stopping being a professional musician many years ago, but he loved music and when I started playing music as a kid, he was very supportive. I loved it man. It was very like having a coach in the dad kind of way, you know. I remember I was talking on stage in high school during a performance and he said “I was embarrassed by how unprofessional you were being on stage”. First of all, I wasn't getting paid so I wasn't a professional. It's kind, kinda funny now because now I talk on stage the whole time nonstop.
He taught me a lot of those kinds of lessons, you know, not things like go up there and show people what you can, but go up there and play for the music, always get good sounds, don’t showing off, you know, playing, trying to play stuff that's beautiful. He was very good at that, that type of musicality. So I learned a lot from him and he was hard on me in a very good way.
Listen to the full podcast to hear the full interview.