Geoff: 0:00

Hello, podcats. Geoff Gascoyne here. Hope you're well. Today I'm out in the country, I'm in Suffolk, visiting Chris Ingham, who is a terrific piano player, singer, band leader, performer music journalist and writer, a very nice bloke. And we're going to have a chat about practicing, about standards, about whatever comes up. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Here we go. Hello, Chris.

Chris: 0:52

Hello, Geoff.

Geoff: 0:53

Thank you for having me in your lovely home today.

Chris: 0:55

Well, thank you for being here.

Geoff: 0:56

So should we start by chatting a bit about what turned you onto jazz in the first place?

Chris: 1:00

I think it was to do with my uncle's record collection. All the Beatles albums, and he had Oscar Peterson. But he also had a lot of Sinatra and Mel Torme. I mean, even earlier than that, we had a record by Paul Robeson. He did do a version of St. Louis Blues. And even as a child, and I wouldn't have been older than maybe seven or eight or something, when I heard these kind of notes. That kind of that sound there I didn't know what it was, but I just knew I just knew it had an atmosphere and it made me feel something. And of course, it's just the blues. It's the sound of the blue notes.

Geoff: 1:43

So did you have classical piano lessons or traditional piano lessons?

Chris: 1:47

No, I was uh uh there was a pivotal moment in my childhood uh when we just moved from Newcastle to uh a village in Suffolk, and I was uh 10 going on eleven, and my brother was seven going on eight. And my mother, I remember distinctly, my mother came into the dining room and she said, There's a piano teacher in the village who would like piano lessons. And my brother said immediately, me, and I said immediately, no, not me, because I'd already had a few violin lessons and I hated them. I'd already had a kind of uh institutional uh introduction to uh uh the formal way of making music, and I was already on at the piano at age 10, 11. I was still I was picking out things. Hey, Jude, don't be afraid. You know, I was picking that stuff out myself, right? And I didn't want no teacher getting in the way saying, stop messing around. So I just said no.

Geoff: 2:55

So you had a problem with discipline, did you?

Chris: 2:57

I'm afraid so. It's it's uh if there's any sense of uh authority telling me what I should be doing, I'm likely to run in the opposite direction.

Geoff: 3:06

Yeah.

Chris: 3:06

Which has been it's part of, it's part of my personality, it's part of the the way I've I've dealt with life, probably generally, and it has its advantages, but it has its disadvantages. I could have certainly, I look back now, I certainly could have done with a bit more grounding in in uh in just fundaments, you know. The discipline came later, and it was it was self-discipline, it had to come from within me.

Geoff: 3:32

So you've clearly got lots of self-discipline because you've got so many projects and things that you do, which we'll talk about in a minute, but all these different projects that you organized and stuff takes an awful lot of discipline, you know.

Chris: 3:44

Yeah, but but it all came from um an innate sense of enthusiasm and passion that came from me. It was not imposed upon me. And that is that, as far as I'm concerned, makes all the difference.

Geoff: 3:56

So when somebody discovers something for themselves, it has more value, doesn't it? And when it's imposed on them.

Chris: 4:01

Well, it's more energy, as far as I'm concerned. Don't get me wrong, you know, I I am now a teacher, and lo and behold, I'm inclined to tell people what's good for them, you know, while at the same time understanding. You're just gonna have to learn that tune. Now, if anybody told me, I would not have learned it thing.

Geoff: 4:18

You have to make them feel like they discovered it for themselves.

Chris: 4:21

Almost, yeah, uh, or find another way in, or just do by example. You know, if you want to be able to play with a bit more freedom and a little more authority and feel like you're a bit more intimately connected with the music, I strongly suggest you learn it.

Geoff: 4:35

So, can we go back to where did the writing come and how did that tie in with your music?

Chris: 4:40

Uh no, I was always an uh interloper in the music journalism world. I was a songwriter with a fellow called Jim Irvin, who used to be the lead singer in Furniture, uh, a band in the 80s who had a uh a minor hit with a tune called Brilliant Mind, which just still pops up on Radio 2 every now and again. And Furniture were breaking up, and he was looking for a um he was looking for a collaborator, and we wrote a uh we wrote an album which got long listed for the first Mercury music prize but didn't quite make it through. And so if that had worked, I uh the dream would have been I would have been signed to a publishing company uh and written songs, but it it didn't quite take off in the way that it should have done. Uh and Jim took a left turn into music journalism, started working for the Melody Maker, and then later on for Mojo magazine, and when when it's just started, and when Mojo magazine started, I heard that they just didn't want to uh uh grab all the guys who were working on the Inkies, as they used to be called, New Musical Express, Melody Maker, and just bring them over to Mojo. They were looking for new blood, and he remembered me because we would sit up all night playing records and he would have his opinion and I would have my opinion, and and he just remembered that I had a slightly different sort of take on music, uh on how to think about music or how to express your appreciation of music. And um he invited me to do uh, or rather, the editor invited me to do an audition review to see if I could write. And my audition review was to review Tony Bennett Unplugged. And after that, I found myself writing for Mojo quite a lot. It was a total distraction, but it was never what I intended to do. But they kept offering me nice little things like do you want to fly to uh New York and meet Steely Dan and Yoko Ono and Paul Simon? So you're not gonna say no, are you? Of course, get on with it. Would you like to review um Kid A by Radiohead? Me? All right, you know crazy. Until there came a point where I was interviewing people, I won't name him. He was a guitarist in a band I didn't even like. And the guy was so full of himself, you know, and I'm thinking, oh, what the hell am I doing? Giving this guy airtime, just so I can get paid 150 quid to write a puff piece about it. I'm not gonna do it anymore. So I just stopped.

Geoff: 7:09

And that's when the music took its place.

Chris: 7:12

Everything was working in parallel. Because I've always been a singer pianist, which meant that I could always work in West End hotels and things like that. And when we lived in London, I was doing the Intercontinental and the Savoy and places like that, you know. And when we moved out of London to have babies, I was still schlepping down the M11 to do it until we realised that was pretty untenable. And uh I was on the verge of having to get a proper job when Centre Parcs opened in Elverdon Forest, and they needed a singer pianist five nights a week. So I kind of dodged the proper job bullet. All I had to do was turn up and you know, coon a few Harry Warren tunes, and it was it was fine. Then I started getting invited to play at some of the local jazz clubs until I was running a jazz club in Bury St. Edmunds and put on an evening of Hoagie Carmichael music, and it took immense amounts of work. You know, I thought this is gonna be easy. I know loads of Hoagie Carmichael tunes. Turns out I knew about ten. That was the beginning of me taking repertoire seriously because then I dug, dug, dug, found another dozen tunes, created an evening of magical Hoagie Carmichael music, which went down a storm. And and the the record that we made, the first Hoagie Carmichael album, just called Hoagie, uh, was miraculously reviewed in the Sunday Times. And they made it one of the top ten jazz albums of 2014. I'm talking about now. Unbelievable. We made the album as a souvenir for the gigs, you know. And then all of a sudden, people are going, oh no, we like what you do, mate. It's a bit like the Mojo thing. We just like what you do. So I'm afraid that encouraged me on to do the same thing with the jazz of Dudley Moore, and I just spotted that no one was no one was taking Dudley's fantastic composition seriously.

Geoff: 9:01

So you note the value of a theme to an audience, is they they love it, don't they? Yes.

Chris: 9:06

Yeah, they do. They love a theme, and you they also like being talked to.

Geoff: 9:10

Which you're very good at as well.

Geoff: 9:13

Can we talk a little bit about jazz standards and what part jazz standards have played in your development, how you practice them, and what your uses of my apps might be?

Chris: 9:24

Standards have formed the absolute basis of my love of this music, and it all dates back to listening to that Oscar Peterson plays Frank Sinatra album, and then listening to Frank Sinatra sing the very same songs. When I got into the music, the the songs were in my head long before I was ever playing them. At the same time as I was uh devouring Mel Torme and Frank Sinatra and Oscar Peterson and any jazz I could get a hold of, I was also devouring the Beatles songbook. And I remember noticing that the first two chords of something like uh Sunny Side of the Street, where it goes from C to E7, was the same shift as 'if you don't take her out tonight, I'm gonna change her mind'. And and I was making those connections. So when I was playing rhythm guitar in a trad band at school, I was 14 years old, and I noticed that 'all of me' went from B flat to D7. And I was I noticed that, oh, that's the same as going from C to E7 on Sunny Side of the Street, which is the same as going from C to E7 on 'you're gonna lose that girl'. And it's a bit of a random filing system, because at the time I wasn't going, well, we're going from one to three dominant.

Geoff: 10:49

That's the start of the ear, that's your ear training.

Chris: 10:50

That's the start of the ear train, yeah. Exactly right. All those patterns, all those however many uh conventional uh chord shifts, I'd sort of I'd clocked them and filed them in a in a bit of a haphazard way. But if if given time, and of course as I got better, given less and less time, I could find them. Yeah. And standards was was to me a a never-ending source of fascination. And I loved songbooks, that's possibly why I'm in I've ended up being the repertoire guy that I am. I just love the little, I love the little container of the songbook. And you know, if you're gonna make me sit and you know practice me my modal patterns, the chances are I won't.

Geoff: 11:31

It's much more fun to practice a standard, isn't it?

Chris: 11:34

Exactly right, which is why your app is, you know, it's just a treasure trove.

Geoff: 11:38

Thank you very much. So let's talk about the app. How do you use it? What's your method?

Chris: 11:44

Uh, there are different levels of use. Sometimes I just want to move my fingers so I will find something I don't have to think about because it's already filed, yeah. Uh, and I just want to warm up. So I might play, I don't know, Will You Still Be Mine, a little bit faster than I actually want to play it. Uh, but it puts you in a zone, right? You know, it puts you in a in a fluid zone, and and uh and so uh there might be a bit of that. There might be a little bit of okay, let's play it, let's play a standard. I know very well, but I'm gonna put it in a very awkward key, which of course the app can do, you know. Just put it down a semitone. I tell you what, I tend not to do is look at your chords until you play something that I'm not expecting, yeah, and then I'll just double check. Oh, he's he's choosing to do that.

Geoff: 12:31

Do you ever pick a tune you don't know from the catalogue and play that?

Chris: 12:35

Yeah, that's another level of what I'm doing. Uh I run a jazz club in Bury St. Edmunds called Jazz at the Hunter Club. Um, I run the house trio, uh, which is largely George Double on drums and Malcolm Creese on bass. And Malcolm knows Tim Garland. Uh, but one of the tunes that he wanted to play was he said, I don't know what we'll play, we'll play Falling Grace. Everyone likes that, don't they? So I had to start from ground zero with that one. If a tune hasn't gone in already through osmosis because I loved it, then all of a sudden it's a bit of a piece of work that I've got to do.

Geoff: 13:10

Yeah.

Chris: 13:10

So, you know, uh right. So I did what what everyone does. I got the lead sheet out, uh, I listened to the recordings, of course. And your app was invaluable because uh I I just put it down to beginner level tempo, you know, plodded my way through it, right, and little by little, I must have done 200 choruses of that because I it wasn't sticking because it was a piece of homework. I was having to do it for somebody else. Yeah, it didn't come from my own enthusiasm. Nothing wrong with Fallen Grace, I actually really like it, but it hadn't occurred to me. So it was a piece of work that I was doing, and it was such hard work.

Geoff: 13:57

I asked you to pick a tune to play on.

Chris: 13:59

One of the um lifelong intrigues I've had in parallel to straight-ahead guys who play great swinging versions of standard tunes is the work of Bill Evans, who obviously had a way with standard tunes and could swing, but he also composed absolutely fascinating pieces. And one of those pieces that has always always intrigued me from an early age was Very Early, which I believe is something he wrote when he was a teenager anyway. At first hearing, or at many hearings, in fact, you just think, What's happening? What is actually happening, you know? So got the old Real Book out, you know, the old 70s inky Real Book. It comes back down to learn that tune first. Can you sing Very Early as a melody? And it's not it's not straightforward, and then do the same thing with the root. And once you realise that, you think, oh, we're just looking at a bunch of perfect cadences here. We're looking at a bunch of five ones. The trick is to know what the one is at any given point. Because this is a tune that changes key every bar, every bar and a half, every two bars. And it's all about tonal center. And if you understand tonal center, it gets you a long, long way through these apparently impenetrable chord sequences. This is why jazz musicians love All The Things You Are. They have to navigate four changes of key in the first 16 bars.

Geoff: 15:30

Yeah.

Chris: 15:31

And if if you're of a mind to, if you're inclined to that sort of chord sequence, it's just brilliant fun to play, aren't you? And it's the same thing with Very Early. If anything, Very Early is is, well, it's it's considerably more dense than All The Things You Are.

Geoff: 15:45

Way more difficult, yeah.

Chris: 15:46

Yeah, yeah. But it's the same, it's the same principle. What key are we in at what point? Right. So after that, then we're looking at thirds and sevens in order to start hearing the unfolding of the harmony in its most basic forms.

Geoff: 16:17

Beautiful, isn't it? It's gorgeous. It's a spark, you know. It is, isn't it?

Chris: 16:21

Yeah. So I was doing it considerably slower than that because what I was trying to do. I was trying to just allow the sound of the harmony make its way into my in my favoured way by osmosis. And what what I often do, I don't necessarily always steam into linear improv or or or single note improv, particularly on a piece like this. It's great fun to practice comping and use the use the whole comping thing as a as a story unfolding in itself, you know. And that's another great thing about the app is when you leave the piano on and listen to Graham Harvey's lovely work, it's a it's an inspiration and a master class in itself, you know. Take it off, do your best.

Geoff: 17:08

Right, okay, you ready?

Chris: 17:09

Yeah.

Geoff: 17:09

Okay, so here we go.

Chris: 19:39

Yeah, well, it's

Geoff: 19:40

What a great tune. That's fabulous.

Chris: 19:42

It is a it is, and it's it's a constant source of inspiration and frustration equally.

Geoff: 19:49

But that's what jazz is, though, isn't it? It's that's that sums jazz up, to be honest. That's why we love it so much, because it's you it's a constant search, isn't it, in the whole every time you play.

Chris: 19:58

It is, but this one is particularly un unforgiving for a uh a less than rigorous exploration. I mean, if you're just gonna start flapping your hand at this, you know, and hope for the groove, it you there'll be something that'll catch you out. You what you can do with this is it's a great one for analysing your way through the forest. We're in C. We're on one, we're on five, B flat seven of E flat.

Geoff: 20:28

Alright, so immediately you've gone up from you've gone up a minor third.

Chris: 20:31

Immediately you've gone from C and here's the five, and we're in E flat. No, we're not. We're in D flat via A flat seven. And no, we're back to C. And this B flat seven could be the flat seven of C. Who knows? Yeah. Is it setting something up? No, it ain't because we got a brick wall change to D major, and that's the one that'll catch you up. It comes out of the blue, doesn't it? Absolutely nowhere. Absolutely no setup. I think it's the only moment in the piece that isn't a perfect cadence. I'm sure there's a cadence to go from the flat six to the one. I'm sure there's a fancy name for it. I don't know what it is. So yeah, you can analyse your way through. We're in C. Now we're in E flat, now we're in D flat, now we're back to C. Here's the brick wall, we're in D. There's the five minor, or is it? There's the three, there's the six, oh, there's the two. We were in D all along, but now we're in D flat. Yeah, so it's stuck. It ain't straightforward, and it's the gift that keeps on giving if you want to give yourself a hard time.

Geoff: 21:32

Um and was it easy to play along with the with the app? Was it did it feel good?

Chris: 21:36

Very sweet. Geoff and Seb are one of the greatest rhythm sections in the world. And they just are, you know, in their price range. It's it's very sweet to play on, and uh yeah, it's hours and hours of uh fun and agony.

Geoff: 21:51

Alright, so can we finish off with a few questions? Starting off with what's your favourite album?

Chris: 21:56

The Dave Frishberg Songbook, Volume One. I don't think I'm exaggerating to say it changed my life. And you know, I bought it absolutely blind. I was in Garon Records in Cambridge, which uh vintage East Anglian's will remember with fondness. And uh there it was. It was it was green, and it was the Dave Frishberg Songbook, and of course it it attracted me because I like songbooks. And I went, I don't even know who Dave Frishberg is. Of all his own songs, though, not anyone else's songs, yeah, because he's a great writer. Fantastic.

Geoff: 22:26

Did you ever see him live?

Chris: 22:28

I didn't, but I did write to him. It's one of the few fan letters I ever sent was to Dave Frischburg when I knew he was coming to the Pizza on the Park. I said, if you need anywhere to stay, Dave, we're nice living in Suffolk, and I really like what you do.

Geoff: 22:43

I came this close to meeting Dave Frishberg. Did you? I played in Portland, Oregon with Jamie Cullum. Oh yeah. And he came to the gig. What? And he sat at the front row. I saw him, him and his wife sitting in the front row, and he left before the end. But he left he left Jamie a songbook, a signed songbook. Oh, did he a music book, yeah. Oh wow, because Jamie had recorded a couple of Frishberg. Yeah, because I I introduced Jamie to Frishberg and Bob Dorough, of course, who I know, who I know very well.

Chris: 23:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Geoff: 23:12

I think we recorded Devil May Care, which is a Bob Dorough. Yeah, but Frishberg as well was a huge, huge influence.

Chris: 23:19

Well, I tell you, I'll tell you something. Uh I may or may not have told you this before, but uh um the band I co-ran with Kevin Flanagan, the tenor player, the Flanagan-Ingham Quartet in the 90s. We did uh our first album was called Zanzibar in 1995, which is a Frishberg tune, and on the second album we recorded You Would Rather Have the Blues, which is a Frishberg tune. And also, on the first album we recorded Walk Between Raindrops, and on the second album we recorded Maxine, two Donald Fagan tunes. To me, it's all the same, it's all the same lineage, you know, jazz, wit, literacy, all that business. Now, here's something is what I want to tell you. We were after this hip New York small group kind of vibe, you know, people who knew loads of songs and had a sort of slightly hip take on them. And we got sort of the nice kind of reviews, and then I heard Pointless Nostalgia, the Jamie Cullum album arranged by you, yeah. And I just turned to Kev and I said, I think we're done, mate.

Geoff: 24:26

Really, why?

Chris: 24:27

I just thought it was everything that I wanted uh that band to be. And you nailed it with the Jamie album, and I just thought, yeah, that's a bit of misstiming there. We just missed the boat. I think I'm gonna take a little time off and regroup.

Geoff: 24:40

Oh, I'm so sorry. No, that's ,exactly hopefully it was inspiring though, right?

Chris: 24:44

Of course it was. It was it was a great record, right? And you know, all power to all of you, you know, it was it was fantastic, but it was just a bit too close to what I was after. Oh, wow. So there you go.

Geoff: 24:55

But anyway, I came close this close to meeting Frishberg. I saw him sitting in the front row, and if we hadn't played for over two hours long in our set, I'm sure we would have met him, but we didn't get to meet him. The second question is, is there a favourite musician alive or dead that you would like to play with?

Chris: 25:11

Chris is now has his head in his hands on the piano. Charlie Hayden. The album he made with Pat Matheny, Beyond the Missouri Sky. I revel in his discretion and his aptness.

Geoff: 25:24

That album is is a is one of my favourite albums too, actually. Um is there a highlight of your career?

Chris: 25:31

You know what? We are talking on on the 19th of September 2025, and on the 18th of September 2025, you and I played uh the Steely Jazz Show to over 200 people in the Diss Corn Hall. And the night before we played to a full house uh uh the Pizza Express Jazz Club Soho, uh the Steely Jazz Show. Um and if you'd asked me on Thursday what the highlight of my career was, I would have said, oh, last night at the Pizza Express. Really? Yeah. And because you're asking me on the Friday, I'll say it was last night at Diss Corn Hall. Because, as we discussed, the Steely Jazz Walter Donald project has been a massive mountain to climb for me. I've been working on it since January last year. An enormous learn. Uh the gigs up to now, we've done about six or seven gigs, have been a little bit white knuckle-y. The last two gigs, I just feel like we've hit a peak of comfort and and still having an intrepid attitude to the material as well, though. And it feels like flying, it's absolutely extraordinary. And when you have uh an audience as tuned in to what we were up to as we had last night at Diss Corn Hall, there's nothing better. So it really is. I would say last night was a highlight.

Geoff: 27:01

Well, that's that's a great answer. Okay, what was the last concert you attended?

Chris: 27:05

Oh, it was the Britten Sinfonia at uh Bury St. Edmunds Cathedral, and they did a whole load of Arvo Pärt and a bit of Taverner, and it was absolutely mesmerizing. I'm a little bit sceptical when it comes to minimalist composers until they catch me in the right mood, in the right setting, and with the right orchestra. I was so moved, uh transported in a way that music, I didn't think music could ever do that for me. Amazing ever again. This was so far away from what I do that I just forgot myself. I never looked at the orchestra once. I had my eyes closed the whole time and I was transported. Did you cry? Not quite, but I got close. I got uh there were lumps in my throat throat, that's for sure.

Geoff: 27:54

Do you ever cry at music?

Chris: 27:56

Yeah, I remember very clearly stacking the logs with my headphones on, and I was listening to a documentary about Stephen Sondheim, and they played the recording of With So Little to Be Sure of from Anyone Can Whistle, which my daughter sang uh when she was at the sixth form. She played um the the lead, the female lead in Anyone Could Whistle, and she sang it in the show, and you know, ten years later I was listening to it, and I just crumpled. It is the most romantic, full-hearted song about intimacy and being involved with someone, a significant other, with so little to be sure of. I was in floods, and it's still to this day, I'm thinking about it now and I'm welling up. I can see, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's it's extraordinary.

Geoff: 28:55

Amazing.

Chris: 28:55

And you know, if if it came to it and I was on a desert island and I could only listen to one sort of music, I would take Sondheim with me. I would take everything he did, and I've been caught out blobbing at the end of Company, you know, being alive. That's philosophy and wisdom set to a fantastic tune. You know, anyone who's still dry-eyed at that, uh at the end of that needs to check their pulse.

Geoff: 29:18

The the power of music, I love it so much. Um, next question. What would you say your musical weakness was?

Chris: 29:25

That's reading, isn't it? Of course it's reading. It always is, isn't it? I mean, I'm I'm a bit better than I was. I used to freeze, you know, I didn't even like it. I remember I did a gig once in the uh in the early 90s. And uh I was running the house trio in a local in a local restaurant, and uh we had we had guest blowers, and one of the guest blowers was Dick Walter, the great BBC arranger, you know, big band arranger and composer. And he plunked In Your Own Sweet Way on in front of me, and first called was a circle with a line through it. I didn't know what it was. I said, What's what's this chord, Dick. I'm sure he was really looking forward to the rest of the gig, you know, when I said sorry, what is a A circle of the line through it? A half diminished? I went, What's that? A minor seven flat five? Oh, that. Is that what it is? Because I didn't have any of the kind of American theory symbol stuff. I've got it all now, you know, so I'm better than I used to be. Play in Paul Higgs's Pavane band, which is all scored out, you know. Uh not not everything, not every note is scored out, but there are quite a lot of very particular uh things he wants me to play. Okay. And I've kind of met that, met that challenge. I've faced the fear and I got through it.

Geoff: 30:38

Um, do you ever get nervous on stage?

Chris: 30:40

Uh not if I am entirely prepared. If I get nerves, all they are are anticipatory nerves of looking forward to to doing this thing, which is intense, it's super intense. But when it turns into butterflies because you're not sure that you're going to remember the 28th chord in the middle of Your Gold Teeth II, then that's no fun. Yeah.

Geoff: 31:04

And uh what about when you play with you know musicians that you might revere or sort of people like that? In big venues or something like that?

Chris: 31:12

No, not big venues, uh certainly sometimes uh musicians. I was a bit nervous by playing with Tim Garland because he's you know he's a bit of a heavyweight, but we got through it. It was it was alright. I I think maybe 20 years ago when I was playing with Tina May for the first time, I was a bit starstruck, you know. So that that's a very strange feeling to have when you're playing with people that you've been listening to for a long time, and now all of a sudden you're making music together, you know. That can it didn't make me nervous, but it certainly um it put me on high alert, uh, which is probably a good thing, you know.

Geoff: 31:49

A few other questions now. What's your favourite sandwich?

Chris: 31:52

When I was at university, I invented a sandwich which was wholemeal bread, marmite, cheese, and marmalade. And before you all judge, I'm not judging, I'm gonna try it. I would try it. It's quite an intense sandwich, and I I must say I didn't eat it a lot and I didn't eat it every day, but sometimes it really hit a very uh unusual spot that you didn't even know you needed hitting.

Geoff: 32:20

Yeah. Good luck with that, listeners. I heard um an interview with Paul McCartney. Don't remember when it was, but

Chris: 32:26

Oh, that was the Adam Buxton one. The Adam Buxton, yeah. Yeah, where is his his uh sandwich is his hummus bagel?

Geoff: 32:32

Hummus hummus and marmite in a bagel. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. So I I went through and tried that, yeah, of course. You like Paul McCartney? And is it does it delicious, isn't it? Toasted bagel, marmite, and then and then the hummus on the top.

Chris: 32:47

All right, thank you, Paul, and thank you for everything else. Yes.

Geoff: 32:51

Right, um, what's your favourite movie?

Chris: 32:53

You won't believe this, Geoff. I think it might be The Talented Mr. Ripley. What? You're just saying that. I'm not just saying it, mate. I didn't even know you were in it.

Geoff: 33:02

I was in it.

Chris: 33:03

I think uh it's either it's a toss-up between that or Vertigo. We don't need to talk about why Vertigo is is brilliant, but The Talented Mr. Ripley is is um it's absolutely absorbing, I think. The uh the three leads are completely credible and completely uh compelling as you watch them play out their their peculiar game and their peculiar world. And then in the middle of the movie, Philip Seymour Hoffman comes in and explodes the thing onto a totally different level, and it's the most electrifying entrance in any movie I've ever seen. Yeah where he drives onto the piazza. You just can't take your eyes off him. And because he's so beady-eyed and he's got his eyes on Tom Ripley, it's terrifying, it's the most incredible performance. So I'd go with that.

Geoff: 33:56

Wow, what a great movie! That was an amazing experience for me to be in that film. I mean, we just had a day in Rome, just outside Rome filming, but leading up to it, recording all the soundtrack and the cues and stuff, um, working with Anthony Mengela, he was such a lovely man and really hands-on as well. He wrote some of the melodies. Gabriel Yarid was the composer, he was along in all the sessions as well. Wow. And um, we actually did a tour of premiers. So we went to America and did the Hollywood premiere, played at the party, and then we did it in New York and we did it in Milan, in about 10 different cities.

Chris: 34:31

Oh man.

Geoff: 34:32

And then we went to Isle of Wight, where um Anthony Mengela was from. Yeah, he's he's like an English-Italian family who made ice cream. We stayed in his house and played at a private party with Anthony Mengela. What a lovely man, and what a sad loss. Oh, awful. And my part is very tiny in it.

Chris: 34:49

Yeah, yeah. But you're there, it is a great film. And that that that scene with Jude Law singing uh Tu Vuò Fà L'Americano. Oh, is that an Italian kind of standard is just you know, it's electrifying, it's fantastic.

Geoff: 35:04

It's a good film. Okay, uh, is there a favourite venue you like to play in?

Chris: 35:08

The last two venues I've just played in the Dean Street uh Pizza when it's full and their interview, that takes some beating. Uh, but it was beaten, I'm afraid, last night at the Corn Hall. Everything about it was was just delightful.

Geoff: 35:22

Corn Hall in Diss, which is where we're close to where we are now. Um, is there a favourite country or city that you like to visit?

Chris: 35:31

No, I am unafflicted with wonderlust. My idea of adventure and escape is to go to my caravan in Norfolk. Uh which which just keeps unfolding its mystery and beauty to me and Tracy, my wife, and my beautiful dogs. Every time we go up. I'd like to say, oh well, of course, it's Nepal. Yeah. But I just I'm not bothered. I'm a bit like you. Uh I really dislike flying. I really dislike it.

Geoff: 36:05

Right.

Chris: 36:05

And I think I dislike it so much I'm quite prepared to never fly again.

Geoff: 36:10

So a final question is what's your favourite chord?

Chris: 36:14

I think it's the sus chord, the 13th sus chord, but with the third in it as well. So you're talking about that one. Some of the notes? Uh well, there's various ways of voicing it. And I I think that the the the most beautiful example of it that I can remember is it's the opening chord on the Genesis track called Dusk on their album Trespass. And it's done on acoustic guitars. It does sound like a very guitaristy kind of chord. That's the one. Yeah. It's the SUS with the third present as well, and it's it's uh it sounds great on guitar. And you if you listen to Dusk by Genesis uh on their first proper album, uh Trespass, you get that chord there. I like its ambiguity, I like the fact that it is suggestive without being directional. There's there's there's nothing that this suggests it needs to go to other than just to hover there and be.

Geoff: 37:46

Because it doesn't want to resolve anyway, does it?

Chris: 37:48

It's just it's just got a kind of life. It's got its own little thing. Mind you, in the in the Steely thing, I've come across another lovely chord that I love. Uh it's and it's uh it's in Your Gold Teeth II, because you've got uh after this chord, that one, which is it's C minor thirteen sus four. You've got the seventh, the third, you've got the fourth, and the thirteenth. Yeah. So I make that C minor eleven stroke thirteenth, and that's unusual. That's that that that's what I like about it.

Geoff: 38:42

Oh, we love chords. Wow, okay. Well, I think that'll do it. Thank you so much, Chris, for your time. It's been great.

Chris: 38:49

It's been uh a delight. I think it's a fascinating thing that you're doing. Because to to basically go and talk to a bunch of musicians, but essentially ask everybody the same stuff. But you're getting, you know, entire different worlds coming at you from because everybody's got a different story.

Geoff: 39:06

Yeah, yeah.

Chris: 39:06

It's absolutely brilliant, really fascinating.

Geoff: 39:09

Well, there you go. I'll see you soon. Bye. Pleasure.

Chris: 39:13

Bye, bye.

Announcement: 39:16

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