Dan Karlsberg — The Playing Was Never the Problem

themoneygigs is supported by TriFloral.com T-R-Y-F L O R-A-L.com themoneygigs to get your discount, Trifloral produces THC beverages. They come in 2.55 and 10 milligram varieties in all sorts of flavors. I have one prior to my gig and everything is so smooth. Visit T-R-Y-F l O-R-A-L.com themoneygigs that's trifloral.com themoneygigs and get your discount. My guest today is Cincinnati jazz pianist, compose and teacher who has been playing the city for a long time and doing it on his own terms, which isn't always the easiest thing to hold onto. Dan Karlsberg graduated from CCM, has seven albums to his name, teaches students from age 4 to 91, and just released a solo piano record called Rooms Without Walls, which I bought on CD, the first CD I've bought in 15 years. In this conversation we talk about what it actually feels like to play a gig. Not the playing part, but everything around it. The driving, the parking, the day of call you weren't expecting, the anxiety that doesn't stop the moment you sit down at the instrument, internal voice that tells you can't do this mid performance and what you do about it. Dan also talks about what it took to strip everything down and make a record that sounds like nobody else. And we get into the money side of gigging. Why his floor has gone from 100 bucks to 200 to now 3 or 400. This is a real conversation between two working musicians. I hope it sounds like one.

Holy cow, it's Dan Karlsberg. Let's start off with your baseball card, if you will. Why piano and jazz?

Well, I was obsessed with the piano and music in old you know, my mom would say like I was like in the crib dancing to the Fisher Price radio. My sisters both took piano lessons and I wanted to take piano lessons and I think I was like three or four asking my parents for that and the teacher that was teaching them wouldn't teach me and I just was like how dare they not give me lessons? Although today it's like completely understandable.

Do you remember how you felt about that?

It just felt wrong. Even when I first started. I believe I was five when I first started. It was hard for me to focus, but I remember some things being really hard and it's like, I'm like, I can't do this. I can't do this. And my teacher's like, oh, you can do it. Just here, just try the next note. And now when, as a teacher, I find myself doing the same thing. You can do it. You can do it. It's just. Just one note. So I, like, can imagine, like, that their head is doing similar things.

So were you one of those kids? My kid is a.

Is a musician.

He goes, scpa. And were you one of those kids, like, gets frustrated if he's not the master at something right away?

It's possible at one point in time I was like that, you know, I'd love to just explore instruments now. I think at one point I was, oh, man, I can't wait to gig and play with people on this ukulele or on the clarinet.

You said something really important there. I can't wait to play with people on this ukulele. So there was evidently a connectivity with other people came early for you.

Yeah. You know, the only people that I had to like, other than going to the Jamie A. Bristol camp over the summer for a week for a few years, which was amazing because I was all sorts of around all sorts of, like, people that loved jazz and music, and I could play with people and talk, and that was great. Other than that, it was just my high school jazz band, which, you know, looking back on it, I was the one, like, pulling everyone along, being like, hey, isn't this amazing? We all love this, right? And, you know, people did, but they weren't as, you know, as serious necessarily about it, I think, as I was. I mean, that may be a little bit unfair to say, but I just realized that it was a lot of the energy was coming from me.

Well, that energy took you all the way up through ccm, I think you did four years there and graduated, right?

Yep, I did four years.

What did that experience give you that you didn't have going in?

A lot realizing, like, how much I needed to learn. I mean, again, the people that. One of the best things about it is just learning from both the faculty and the students. I think I learned a lot equally from the students that I was around as the faculty. It was mostly a really positive experience.

Was there anything you had to unlearn?

Yes, yes, there is. And some of that was also related to me being a teacher, too. There are certain habits that I had learned that over time. Like, you know what? This is probably not the best way of doing this.

Does that come to, like, practice or performance or everything? Well, when you're not doing piano and when you're not doing Music. What is your thing to do?

I explore. I'm an explorer. I listen to music, like, every nook and cranny of the history of jazz and classical music. And I obsess over people. I learn all about them. If there's something that I hear that I don't understand, I, like, have to understand it. So I will find every single recording of this person and just try to figure things out and read about them. And there's a lot of that. I'm a composer, so I read a lot of books on composition or composers. I have this Debbie C. Book right here. I have this book on Nadia Boulanger, who is. She is a great composer. Her sister is one of my favorite composers, Lily Boulanger. But Nadia is, like, the most famous composition teacher, the most important in the 20th century. Taught thousands of people, most of, like, all the famous American composers. Copeland, Roy Harris, Gershon wanted to study with her, but she wouldn't. She wouldn't let him. There's just like, just. I'm only naming a couple, but there's like, seemingly endless. Philip Glass was a student of hers.

Oh, yeah.

But I'm fascinated with her as a teacher. I'm very curious. So I've been trying to read as much about her, but also her teaching methods, her philosophy. That's been fascinating to me as well.

Do you cook?

No.

Do you.

Do you have a favorite food?

Let's see. Well, I like. I like vegetables and fruits a lot.

Are you vegetarian?

I'm not. I eat meat, but I, you know, I don't have to eat meat at every meal. Like, my favorite things to eat are usually like. When I was younger, my parents would make dinner. I liked all the sides. I would want more of that and not the main thing.

And again, exploration.

Yeah.

Again, exploring different things. Interesting.

But. But, yeah, that's so. Also, I like to eat peanut butter and banana sandwich. That's a thing.

So you have that in common with Elvis.

Yeah, that's right. Me and Elvis.

We released a new album, Rooms Without Walls, which is available on dankarlsberg.bandcamp. I've listened to the whole thing, and I purchased. You were the first CD I've purchased in 15 years.

Oh, my gosh. Thank you.

What did you discover about your own playing by stripping it down to just you and the piano?

Well, I've been thinking about this for a long time. One of the things that, you know, being a musician in Cincinnati, you have to, you know, be able to do a variety of things, a variety of styles, and even Though I have my thing that I like to do, I end up playing a lot with a variety of things. I try to fit my thing into different settings. But when it comes to, like, trying to depict myself as a stylist, that was tricky because there's one. There are different aspects of me that I like, and I want to show some of which is not that unique to me. I want to show the things that I can do that is not necessarily the thing that everyone else can do. I was trying to, you know, to strip things down. I feel like, you know, if you think about McCoy Tyner or Slonius Monk or Bud Powell actually is another example. I feel like to be their. Their individual self, actually. Andrew Hill is another good example. They had to limit their vocabulary so they could do a lot more, but they had to limit it to stay in this one sound world that was identifiable with them. And so I. I kind of know what that would be for me. But it's scary to do that because the more you do that, the more individual becomes and the less relatable it becomes to other people. So the process of doing this piano music, I'm, like, thinking about all of this, and because I just didn't know exactly where to go, I just set up one hour in the evening from 9 to midnight in July, in August, in September, and in October, which I wasn't planning on doing, but I just had to do a couple things. At that point, I knew what I wanted to do, and I. There's a couple things I thought I could do better.

Well, did you have any surprises as you were going through this process?

Yeah, I think the surprise that I had was the way I solved one of the problems is every piece of music I said, I want to make this so it's something that fits the piano or that could be written only for the piano. Like, how can I approach playing this that sounds like it was written for the piano? A good example would be the song Cotton by J.D. Allen. Mm. It's just a saxophone, bass and drums trio. And if I. I could just play the song on the piano like a normal thing. It would sound like I'm trying to play the song that they recorded, but it's not. So I had to think, well, how can I make this seem like it's meant for the piano? So I slowed it down, and I try to expand. I use the full range of the piano. I opened with the. The bass line being really low at the bottom. It's a ostinato.

Yeah.

And then I use the Higher extremes. They're thinking more like Duke Ellington or Randy Weston. Makes it more grand, but open and hollow.

And Kim Pencil produced the album. Right. He helps you do the recording, Is that right?

So Eric Shepard recorded it and mixed it at Legacy Soundworks Studio.

Okay.

And then Kim did the mastering on this.

Okay. Yeah. Because the piano throughout sounds like there were a few. Or at least a couple, or at least there were different mixes. One instrument.

One instrument at the same place the whole time. But there was a sound change between the first day and the second day I did. Because they came in and not just tuned the piano, but they redid some things and that made it different. So that's possibly one of the things that you're hearing.

Sometimes the piano sounds like a monster, and then sometimes it sounds like what you might hear through a Bud Powell recording of something. Like something he might do, more bebop oriented.

I think that's partly me, and that's not the instrument. But there is. There is a timbrel difference between the first day and the rest. And even the. The third day was. So. The first day was darker, mellower. The second day was brighter. The third day was, like, a little bit less bright. That's the simplest way I could describe it. But it was different. Same piano, same place. Mike's in the same exact position for all of them.

Well, the album is tremendous. And short poem. Immediately my album, my go to is always Bill Evans alone. And immediately I was there. And then Corral for Bud Powell was really interesting because it starts off with all those basic sort of root position triadics floating around. But then gets very complicated, much darker and sort of dark. And I wondered if you were attempting to eulogize, if not do, sort of a chronology of his life, which was really tragic, given his capability. I think he died at 41. What were you trying to do with that particular piece?

Well, the whole thing started from a recording that Bud did of. It never entered my mind. You should check that out because. So Bud. It's a trio, but Bud plays the melody really slow and very simple hymn, like, mostly triads. And very. It's very haunting. Well, actually, in the middle, there's like this. Just really dark dissonances. Clashes with what he's doing kind of a little bit throughout. And the very. The end of the song, the last four notes he plays, or four things he plays, is that which is the opening of this. It's in the key of F major. And he ends with this F major chord. But then in this left hand down low he's playing an E, just really dark and Super Clash, but like subtle at the same time. And so I had a dream where the only thing I can remember is the end of the dream. And I was sitting in some weird dark room and there's like a non existing, like bell like instrument that I was playing. And I was playing that. That melody, that part, those last four chords of the Bud Powell song. And I like woke up and man, actually that would be really cool to build a song off of that. Wow. And so that was. I mean, that's where that came from. It's partially a tribute to Bud and his vibe and whatever's going on with him on that recording. I think, you know, the best thing that I could say about that is just. It had a huge impact on me hearing that. That very serious recording had a big impact. I think that's why that's the importance.

Whereas most of us who have studied Bud Powell in jazz school were transcribing his bebop solos. Definite, a departure from that world.

He had so much more than that. There's a great. I think it's. It's like a radio broadcast from Birdland in 1953. It's like some of the most amazing playing. And he utilizes the full instrument and is like reharmonizations and is. You know, it's not Art Tatum, it's different. It's Bob Powell. But his like approach is much fuller piano and real interesting harmonies. But he. See, this is what I was kind of alluding to before. When he's playing bebop, he chooses not to do any of that. He basically plays in the middle of the piano a lot of times. The A sections of the. Of the melody. He'll just play single note in the middle of the piano with his right hand and he'll play like his left hand like little jabs low of maybe the root and seven or something. Maybe. Maybe just a root or a tritone down low or. And then during the bridge of the melody, he will do both hands unison, an octave apart in the middle the piano. And he solos similarly. None of that other stuff. He chooses to sound a certain way on different occasions.

That's interesting. Leads to my next question. What would you tell a piano guy who might be thinking about doing what you just did?

Actually, I've told a couple other pianists in town that you should do it. You should do it. Because it. Other than just being fun and, you know, like, I want to hear what people do. I want to hear their. Their music. I'M always encouraging people to. To create more because everyone's afraid no one wants to hear it. I just think your friends and family will want to hear that at a minimum, and it's important. So I encourage people to. To do that. But also, like, I grew a lot as a pianist from making that album. I was already wanting to explore that and figure out. And I was having a hard time figuring it out, which is why, you know, instead of coming and knowing what I was gonna do, it's like, forget it. I'm just gonna play. Bring a folder of just songs I thought might make sense for me to do. And I just kind of worked it out as I was recording it. And by the middle of the second session, I knew where I was going.

That must have felt great.

Yeah, it did. It wasn't like.

Was it like an epiphany? I'm doing this. I'm not sure where I'm going. And then it real. It dawned upon you, or.

It wasn't quite as much of an epiphany as, like, oh, this is the vibe that's happening. It wasn't so amazing of a feeling, because my hope was that would happen. It was just like, it's going to work out. Even though I had no idea if it actually would or not.

Well, it certainly did. And what a dynamic album. Everything from how you treated Antoinette at the end, which was so fun because the whole album was kind of complex and the Scott Joplin kind of went to. I was comparing it to how Oscar Peterson sometimes ends his albums with something that's kind of a departure Archer that has a sweetness to it. But there was sort of a Charlie Chaplin smile winsomeness about how you treated Antoinette, but also elation, where I think you're walking bass at some point with some bebop lines. Just the diversity. So let's go into some practical things you were talking about before. So, gigging, what are the challenges that come to mind or thoughts and emotions that come up as you think about the gigging landscape?

For me, I'm not focused on making my income off. Off of performing music. I have at one point decided I'm going to focus on making my income. The largest portion of my income from teaching, the playing was never the problem at all. It was, you know, like, oh, I have to drive and I don't know where I'm going, and I have to drive in rush hour. I have to get there and I have to be on time. And like, where am I going to park and how am I going to unload and get things into the building. And people might call me like the day of that's stressful to me because like again, I have a routine. Teaching is more routine. Like I can plan from week to week, at least what I'm doing. And when I was younger, at times I felt dark on performing music for people because I just felt like no one wanted it. I just wasn't useful. And as a teacher I felt very useful. Now I, you know, feel very different about that. It's almost like the more I took pressure off of making a living on playing, like I enjoy it. The experience of interacting with an audience and being a part of the community and I don't have to do every type of gig where I would have had to. And you know, and that's a musician's choice. Some people love the fact like, man, I get to play an instrument. People give me money, like I'll do that anywhere, any type of thing. But for me, I just like to create. And I think I was very selfish to begin with. Why I wanted to play music, it was for me, wasn't for anyone else.

I think a lot about what I'll call the downward pressure on the economics of the gigging musician. So it's. Gigging rate has not changed since 1980. So at 52 in the position I'm in right now, I've just decided that I'm going to take that on. Like I'm really trying to dislodge. If you look at service workers and other types of workers, their wages have gone up and exponentially. Ours is flat. It's a flat line and it depresses me. But some of that, the call is coming from inside the house. It's on us.

Some of it, yes. I mean I actually have noticed change. So the pandemic changed a lot, you see. Drastically increase my income. And they did it knowing that were all about to just leave because were so far underpaid. And they did it. They knew the exact amount that they needed to raise it to keep us there. That's another story. But gigs like for me it used to be like I won't do a gig unless it's $100. I mean, depending on the type of gig, like if it's at a coffee house or like a super fun like shorts point, like I'm not so worried about how much I'm making there because it's just great play to play, great hang. But now for me it's like I won't do the giggles. It's $200. And that it's been doing that I've been able to, like, that's kind of in certain situations, you know, the minimum pay. But now it's like, well, that's not enough anymore. It's like the cost of things is so much. It's like. And that just. That change just happened in, you know, a few years back, and now it's like, man, I don't want to do a gig for less than three or $400 because, like, I need to make money because I've got to feed yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just kind of snuck up on me, too. Like, I, you know. You know, I don't really, you know, I. I'm playing a lot less for a couple reasons. One, I have a partner, Elizabeth, that we're engaged now, which is awesome.

Congrats.

Thank you.

So the creativity aspect's really important. And I would imagine in your past, as you talked about the anxiety, that getting random calls. The anxiety doesn't stop the moment you set up your keyboard and you start playing. It's kind of still with you. And then sometimes for me, I'd get to the end of the gig and look back on that, and I would judge myself for the product, not realizing it was the anxiety. It was that there's not enough space between the understanding something's going to happen or be needed and my ability to perform for it. So I totally empathize with that.

Yeah.

In the questions that I sent, I asked what your biggest challenge was, and you answered, myself.

You know, I might play with a musician from out of town that maybe I haven't met, but I've heard their music and knew them, and I really wanted to make sure both myself for myself would sound good, but also to represent the musicians in Cincinnati, because I want people to know that this is a great town with so many great musicians, and I always want their impression to be that. So I put pressure on myself to make sure I represent things well. But even if it wasn't that, even if I just was playing, I might just have this anxiety. And so if I'm like, I remember a specific thing or a. I was doing the beginning of a song just accompanying the saxophonists, just piano and saxophone, and I just kept hitting wrong notes and just kept messing everything up. And, like, I realized, like, oh, my God, Dan, you're telling yourself, you can't do this. You can't do this. Stop it. And, like, immediately, I was just able to play just fine, and I have to fight that kind of Thing.

How often do you impart that sentiment to your students?

I try to a lot, especially with my college students. I mean, I have students that have way more challenges with anxiety than I do sometimes. And other times I see them, they. They. They have no idea what's going on. Like, I had a student that was, you know, he had to take the piano board, some sort of piano exam. He was not a pianist. I mean, he could play piano, but he was a composer. And to graduate, he had to pass this. This exam, and he had to read a choir. You know how they're written for Prano, alto, tenor, bass. He came to me to, like, have help reading and playing through it. And as soon as, like, yeah, why don't you just play and show me what you're doing? Immediately he tensed up, and you could feel him. Like, he was like, stop breathing and. And like, he, like, just. His whole body changed. And I'm like, whoa, whoa. It's like, you have to deal with that anxiety a lot of students, in different ways. It keeps people from being able to grow and learn because it's like you can't even think straight. So it can be really hard. I've seen that with a handful of students.

So then what better teacher to have than you? You know what I'm noticing? You're really good with boundaries. And I feel like if I were to send you a synopsis of the way I've spent my days for the past two weeks, you would look at it and go, cliff, maybe make different choices. You're scattered everywhere. Clearly adhd. And if only you would compartmentalize. That's always been my struggle is. Is compartmentalizing.

I mean, I don't necessarily know how helpful I am, but I can at least let them know that they're definitely not alone. And I can recognize it when someone's. When the anxiety is.

You've been through it yourself. You can authentically see them.

Yeah, I even had, like, I was able to record my teacher. My teacher, Elaine. She was amazing. She never really wanted me to record my lessons with her, but I wanted to talk about how to teach, and she was fine with me recording that. But then I was also doing things, demonstrating things myself or asking her questions about myself. And at one point, she's like, huh, I sense a lot of anxiety. I never. I didn't remember hearing that at all or understanding that. But listening back to it now, I'm like, oh, my God. She knew. She could tell. I had no idea. But now I can really recognize that Even in myself, which is the one thing that's helpful.

Is that a facet of you maybe people don't know about.

Yeah. It's been there my entire life, and I didn't understand any of it until I was in my early mid-20s when I started getting panic attacks. And that was huge. Good. I mean, it was scary at the time, but huge, because it started to let me know I'm doing things with my mind that I probably shouldn't be or. Or my environment. I. I have issues with the environment around me that I don't know how to manage or interact with. And it's gradually been. It's like, helped me learn a lot about myself and understand things better and. And, you know, about a year or so ago, my partner Elizabeth, strongly encouraged me to go see a therapist. And that has been really great, too. It's, like, opened up another world of things for me to explore. That's been very enlightening and helpful.

It's important to have a safe space, and sometimes we can close off that safe space by being courteous to others. We don't want to dump on them.

Yeah.

On the ones we love and share it. And so that prevents us sometimes from asking for help. So I've. I've had many therapists over here trying to figure me out. So. So that's important. So that. That's great. Well, as you're teaching students who have their own aspirations in music, I'd be curious as to what gamut that runs. Are they there just because their parents dropped them off or. It sounds like your college students probably have higher aspirations, but how do you feel about that and their future? What does their future look like for them?

Well, first of all, I teach the whole spectrum of human age, except for infants. I taught students as young as 4, as old as 91. I think there's still more extremes than that, but in everything in between and all styles and all ability levels. And I love it. I enjoy that a lot of people, they just. They just want to enjoy playing. And a lot of them, my goal for them is to be able to learn enough that they can just reach for some music of whatever type and just play on their own and explore on their own for their own fun. I always ask, you know, what their goal is, what they want to be able to do, what their. What type of music they like, what could they imagine? And I just work towards that. So my goal is always to help them get to where they're wanting to go. It's different for each person. Sometimes I have students that want to just be able to play at their church, just be able to read music and play, you know, the songs for the services. I mean, I have people come to me direct, like, that really want to learn a lot about jazz, and that could be also any age. The first thing I ask them to try to understand what they mean by that, because I think some people don't know what. They don't realize what that means. Sometimes it just means, oh, they want to play not classical music, which is very different from, like, actual music. Learning about jazz because there's a lot. It's just a totally different. You're learning about theory, you're learning about improvisation. You're having to explore and listen to music and learn the vocabulary. And also, an important thing for me is to make sure that they learn to play the piano without hurting themselves.

Holy cow. You. And I could do a whole session on that. I took myself out of piano doing that.

Me too.

Yeah.

And that's my teacher, Elaine. That's why I went to her, because she studied with Dorothy Taubman, and that was all about Dorothy Talon developed a way of playing. She studied anatomy, so that works with your body. So you should never, like, hurt it or have pain or anything. And I had to relearn how to play because I Both wrist and elbows had tendonitis. And to this day, like, I still, you know, we'll do something and we'll. I'll feel it. But now if I feel that I know exactly what I'm doing and I stop doing it.

Wow.

All because of what Elaine helped me become aware of. Also at college, a lot of my students are singer songwriters or composers for, like, film. And I want to make sure they can play the piano without it being uncomfortable and hard because that just will discourage them. I want them to feel relaxed, not have to be fighting playing the instrument.

Yeah.

So that's. That's another one of the important things that I'm. That even if they don't want that, I do try to push that on people.

I really want to thank you for talking with me today. Dan Karlsberg, that's dankarlsberg.com, People can go there and see all your work in addition to your seven albums, the latest of which is Rooms Without Walls, featuring artwork on the front by our buddy Joshua Moore.

He's done the artwork on several of my albums. And if he didn't do the artwork, he did at least the graphic design.

I know you just did the album, but is there something else coming up that you're looking forward to.

I have endless projects. But right now it's a little bit of a break before I, like, you know, go on to the next thing.

Well, hopefully the break will involve a few album sales of the latest CD available on.

You helped me with that. Thank you.

Thanks for talking with me.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you so much, Cliff. I appreciate it too.

That was Dan Karlsberg. His new solo piano album is called Rooms Without Walls. And I mean it when I say it. It's worth your time. You can find it@dankarlsberg.bandcamp.com that's-a n k a r l s b e r g.bandcamp.com and the full link is in the show notes. Buy it. He made it in one hour sessions at night across four months, mostly not knowing where it was going by the second session he did. That's the part I think about. If you're a gigging musician and you want to know what a venue actually pays, how they treat musicians, whether the load in is a nightmare, that's what the Money Gigs app is built for. A crowdsourced venue database built by musicians for musicians. If you want it, use the code dankarlsberg, that's D A n S R O O M s and you'll get access to the public venue database for $2 a month. The code and the link are in the show notes. Thanks for listening.

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