308: Theo Bleckmann
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Singer and composer Theo Bleckmann has spent his career between categories - jazz and avant-garde, improvisation and composition, structure and discovery. Born in Germany, he began as a boy soprano and figure skater before discovering jazz and moving to New York to study with Sheila Jordan. Since then, he’s built a singular life in music, collaborating with artists like Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, and Ben Monder. Here he talks about community, teaching, queerness, and the meaning of “a life in music” rather than “a career in jazz.” He also talks about his new album Love &...
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307: dodie
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
British singer-songwriter dodie has spent half her life in public. Long before algorithms and engagement metrics ruled the day, she began posting homemade songs and videos on YouTube as a teenager from Essex. Her soft voice, self-effacing humor, and unfiltered honesty drew millions of viewers who watched her grow up online—sharing heartbreaks, mental-health struggles, and moments of joy in real time. Fifteen years later, that same authenticity anchors her second album, Not For Lack of Trying (Decca / Verve), a project that finds her looking inward with more clarity and balance than ever....
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306: Vera Brandes
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
The Köln Concert by Keith Jarrett is one of the most iconic recordings in jazz history — a completely improvised solo piano performance, recorded in 1975, that became both the best-selling solo album and the best-selling piano album of all time. And yet, the concert almost didn’t happen. The new film Köln 75, directed by Brooklyn-based filmmaker Ido Fluk, tells the remarkable true story behind that night through the eyes of Vera Brandes, the 18-year-old German concert promoter whose persistence and intuition made it possible. Against all odds - and with only a broken, nearly unplayable...
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305: Jacob Jeffries
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Pianist, songwriter, and performer Jacob Jeffries the morning after he played Madison Square Garden with Vulfpeck, reflecting on the surreal thrill of performing in the legendary arena with his close friends, while also grounding the experience in the everyday reality of being a working musician. The conversation traces his journey from South Florida (where his childhood was shaped by Beatles records, summer theater programs like Lovewell, and the absence of a bar mitzvah he later regretted) to his early career with the Jacob Jeffries Band and formative studio experiences with Grammy-winning...
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304: Leonor Watling
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Born and raised in Madrid, Leonor Watling grew up between cultures, the daughter of a Spanish academic father and a British mother who had been raised in Africa. From an early age she was aware of both the fragility and the richness of life: her father was sick for much of her childhood and passed away when she a teenager, just as she began working steadily as an actress. That combination of otherness and awareness shaped her perspective, both on stage and in song. Best known internationally for her starring role in Pedro Almodóvar’s Talk to Her, she is one of the most recognizable faces in...
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303: Stella Cole
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Stella Cole went from nearly giving up singing in college to becoming one of the breakout stars of the pandemic era, thanks to her viral performances of American Songbook standards on TikTok. Now signed to Decca and releasing her second full length album It’s Magic, she talks about following her instincts, finding her voice, and turning childhood obsessions into a career.
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302: Ben Sidran at 82
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Every year on his birthday, my dad and I sit down for a conversation. It started when he turned 76, and with a few exceptions, we’ve done it ever since - capturing an ongoing record of where his head and heart are at that particular moment. Over the years we’ve talked about music, memory, politics, travel, the craft of performing, and the art of living. These annual conversations have become a kind of time-lapse portrait: the same two people returning to the mic, but always a little changed. This year, as Ben turns 82, the theme that emerges is that he is “still auditioning for the...
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301: Mary Sweeney Returns
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
In 2018, film editor, producer, writer, and director Mary Sweeney sat down for a wide-ranging conversation about her career — from growing up in Madison, Wisconsin, to collaborating with one of the most visionary directors of our time, David Lynch. That conversation traced her evolution as an artist, her pivotal role in shaping films like Lost Highway, The Straight Story, and Mulholland Drive, and the intimate creative and personal relationship she shared with Lynch. Seven years later, in the wake of Lynch’s death in early 2025, Sweeney returns for a follow-up conversation, recorded in a...
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300: Moses Patrou
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Moses Patrou has spent the past twenty-five years in New York, carving out a unique space as a multi-instrumentalist and bandleader. From early days in Madison, Wisconsin playing hand drums in hip hop bands, to immersing himself in Cuban and Brazilian traditions, to gigging across the city in every imaginable context, Patrou has done it all. During the pandemic, he taught himself to play organ—a transformation that has reshaped his sound and his role in the scene. Here he reflects on the long road behind his new record Confession of a Fool - a soulful and striking record that represents the...
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299: Joe Henry
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
For Joe Henry, truth in songwriting doesn’t come from confession or fact. It comes from presence, from listening, from surrender, from giving shape to the ineffable. As he puts it: “Total presence—that is the code of my road.” Henry’s road has taken him across both the literal and metaphorical map of American music. Born in North Carolina, raised in Georgia and Ohio, and coming of age in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he grew up suspended between North and South, white and Black, rural and urban. This early sense of duality, of living between poles, helped shape his identity and fed a lifelong...
info_outlineJust like we did after the 2016 and 2020 elections, I spoke with my dad Ben Sidran this week about the latest presidential election.
True to form, it is a conversation that appears to be about one thing but is in fact about many things. What begins as a somber acknowledgement of the election results turns quickly to a sprawling discussion of everything from Will and Ariel Durant’s massive 11-volume work, The Story of Civilization, Seinfeld, The First Council of Nicaea, Irving Berlin, Jack Kerouac, what separates humankind from the rest of the animal kingdom, bottle service at "the party club", the importance of beauty, and what it means to “chop your wood and carry water.”