Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Chicago Musician.
I'm your host, Shawn Stengel.
This is the premiere episode of Season 3 on Chicago Musician. So thanks to our returning listeners and for all my new listeners, I have one thing to say: Shame on you! Where have you been?
But this podcast isn't about shame. Usually, at least. It's about joy. And speaking of joy, it's an election year, have you noticed? So I thought, let's go straight to the top. So my first guest is the president (Obama?) of the Chicago Federation of Musicians. (Yeah, there's no way this guy's getting Obama.)
Hail to the chief, indeed!
I'm excited and honored to have as my first guest this season, the current president of the Chicago Federation of Musicians, or the Musicians Union, as we call it, local 10-208 here in Chicago.
But that's not the main reason I wanted to have him on the program.
He's also a friend of mine for about 25 years. So we have a little catching up to do. Please welcome BJ Levy.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Hello.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: How's it going, BJ?
[00:01:25] Speaker B: It's good, Shawn. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: I'm delighted to be doing this just because we need to catch up anyhow. Yeah, it's the. The way your life has gone and mine has gone. . . we've diverged a little bit.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: It's been a while since we played a show together.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: I'm trying to. Do you even remember?
[00:01:43] Speaker B: I do. The Martinique was the first time.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Oh, 'Singin' in the Rain'.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: No, it was '. . . and the World Goes 'Round', I think.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Okay, I didn't do that one.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Okay. It must have been 'Singin' in the Rain'.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: 'Patent Leather Shoes'?
[00:01:56] Speaker B: No, I wasn't on that one.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Okay, 'Singin' in the Rain'.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: I was thinking it was 'Enter the Guardsman' at Northlight.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Yeah, we did that one too, for sure. That was like a two week. A two weeker.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: So for my fans, or fan, BJ had a great career as a trumpet player before he became "the president", and that's how I know him. And, yeah, whenever that was, you came to town. . . late nineties?
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Yeah, '98.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Okay. So I was reading up on you, and I knew you were an Indiana boy. I knew you were an Indiana University boy, but I didn't realize you grew up there, too.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Yeah, in Brazil, Indiana.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Which. . . where is that?
[00:02:38] Speaker B: It's near Terre Haute.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: So it's kind of like halfway down. It's 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis toward the Illinois border.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Terre Haute is almost Illinois.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: I mean, territorially.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: That's right. The Wabash Valley.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: And was that then the major city in your life when you were a kid?
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Yes, for sure. That's where the mall was.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Okay, the end of discussion. Okay, so did you grow up your whole life there?
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. Until I went to school at Indiana University, it was Brazil.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Okay, and do you have siblings?
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Yes, two older brothers. They're seven and ten years older.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Okay, so they were part of your life? Gone-ish?
[00:03:21] Speaker B: Early life for sure. They were both in band. My middle brother especially was a drummer and was quite talented. And so I grew up a marching band kid, {so I was}, I was going to contests. My parents were band boosters and were heavily involved in all of our lives. But yeah, so the first, some of my first memories are watching band practice.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Okay. I'm a marching band kid myself, so 'Go, Gophers'! Were your parents musicians?
[00:03:48] Speaker B: No, no, not to speak of. My grandmother, actually, my dad's mom, played trombone on the radio. That's all I know. I don't think she was necessarily a professional, but she played trombone and had been on the radio at some point and I don't know any more of the story than that.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: That's intriguing. Now I gotta dig. That'll be my next podcast.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: "The Trombone Playing Grandma".
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: That's kind of intriguingly vague.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't know her well enough to get the story before she passed. Yeah.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Okay.
So I read. . . because back when we were doing these election things. . . I didn't know that your father had been a union leader.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: In what union?
[00:04:28] Speaker B: So he started out in the, it was a glaziers union. So glaziers put the glass in buildings, that's that trade. So there was, in Indianapolis, there was a glaziers union, local 1165, and then, as happens in the business, there were fewer and fewer of those people. So they rolled in with the painters and allied trades. So he had become president of the glaziers union when he was in his mid fifties. And then they rolled into painters and allied trades. They made him president of that union. He never ran for anything, they just made him do it. And then he became business representative for the district council 91, which was a four state area. So he was actually the business manager, was the top position, or is the top position in the district. So he ended up, when he was in his late fifties, president of quite a large union in Indiana.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Was he president and not a glazier anymore.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: That's right. So all construction trades are really hard on the body. Of course, so is our business. But yeah, by his mid fifties, his body was in pretty bad shape. So he started doing that. It was super interesting to watch him do it. He was always a union person. Like, I grew up hearing about it. He was a foreman on the job, went to meetings all the time, and was heavily involved in the union.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: Did you ever foresee yourself going down that path?
[00:05:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, I did. {Yeah?} Well, it was weird because Gary Mattes called me. Gary Mattes was the president of the union two presidents ago. He was a great guy. He called me to run for the board of directors. It wasn't my idea. And when he called me that night on the phone, I was like, I remember being in my car on my way home from the Marriott. . .the Marriott Theater. And when I hung up, I was like, 'oh, my God, this is a new path'.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Right, right. Sometimes when you're like, 'but duh!'
[00:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I thought of my dad right then. I thought, oh, okay. Is this happening? And it did, actually.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: So it wasn't that foreign of a. . . you knew sort of what it was.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: I did.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Okay, so let's flash forward. So two years ago, is it two years ago, almost, where you got elected president?
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: On my notes, I'm like, what's the biggest surprise? But you were in that office for how many years?
[00:06:47] Speaker B: It was 16 years, I think.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So being on the union board, there's not a lot of surprises left for you, I'm guessing.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. I mean, so I was on the board for, what, nine years? And then I was secretary-treasurer for six years, and that was when I retired from playing, was when I became that. So that was eight years ago now I stopped playing trumpet. So that was really the education, then of being in the office all the time. Before that, I was performing and on the board and was participating heavily, but secretary-treasurer, that's a whole different thing because the secretary-treasurer knows where all the bodies are buried because it's all of the finances of the union.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: And, you know, I started taking classes. I went to DePaul, and I got my labor education certificate there and started participating with Illinois AFL CIO and also just seeing how the office works.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: And what does a 'labor certificate' mean?
[00:07:40] Speaker B: Oh, well, it was three years of just classes on negotiating, on what to do in grievance and arbitration processes. Communications was a big one. Labor history and economics, those types of things.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: And did you have a business background at all? Music background, right, right.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: Yeah. The union business is the only absolute. I was a trumpet player one day, and the next day I was an accountant.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Okay. And you had to get smart real fast.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: I had to get smart. It was basically just balancing a checkbook, but. . . luckily we have great accountants that we. . . professional accountants that check everything.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: But, yeah, it was a really, really tough learning curve.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: I would think so. Okay, so now let's back up. So your brothers were in bands, and when I was in school, you know, a little bit older than you. . . everybody, we just pretty much all signed up for bands, and everyone got an instrument, and many kids played for two years and they were done.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: And pretty much. . . I guess it wasn't everybody, but it seemed like everybody took piano lessons and everybody joined the band. And then you got to junior high and there were fewer of us, but still quite a few kids played. Is that how it evolved for you?
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Yeah. So Brazil, Indiana is. . . we have kind of a long history of municipal bands and concert bands. The Brazil Concert Band is one of the oldest municipal bands in the country. And then my high school was a particularly good program. We had a band director named Bob Medworth, who was there for 40 years, started in the late seventies, and he was just really, really great at the job. And that band actually ended up having ten state championships. I was on the first of those in 1992, way back when.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Was this marching band?
[00:09:30] Speaker B: Yeah, marching band.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: In Indiana, it's a. . . I mean, there's a lot of states where it's a great big thing, but Indiana, Texas, a lot of big programs.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: So when you were doing it, was it core style already or was it. . . ?
[00:09:45] Speaker B: Pretty much we were heavily influenced by that core style. Yeah.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: Cause I went to the, I was in the University of Minnesota marching band for four years, but that was high-stepping, Big Ten style military pattern sort of marching. I'm envious now because drum & bugle corps was just sort of trying to come in in the seventies? I suppose it existed, but I didn't know much about it. And now it's this industry that . . . I wish I'd had a little bit more of a mishmash of that into what I got to do, especially because, you know, high-stepping chair position is really hard on the chops.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: It sure is. Yeah. Corp is so cool. It's changed so much in the last few years. My middle brother marched with Star of Indiana back in the eighties, so I was around that a lot. That band director I mentioned, Bob Medworth, he also taught that core, and now he teaches at The Bluecoats.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: And I just love it so much. And the brass playing is just out of this world.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: It's crazy!! I don't know. Is it hard to get into these corps?
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. Yeah, for sure.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: And is it mainly about your playing?
[00:11:00] Speaker B: I really don't know. I mean, I wish I'd have marched. So when I was in college, I stayed at school for the summers and was in the orchestra and played in the operas and stuff. At the time, I was like, oh, it might ruin my chops or something, but ultimately I ended up being a commercial musician, and it would have been nothing but good for me because it's a strength builder and also it's a discipline builder as well.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I found that by the time I was. . . I shouldn't have done it for four years at the U, but it was almost a little bit more of an athletic event than a musical event. And, you know, we went to several other Big Ten schools, and almost every other Big Ten school, maybe not Indiana, requires their education majors to be in marching band at least one year, and that wasn't true in Minnesota. It was all like, whoever wanted to try out for it. So we had a lot of sort of ex high school jocks who used to play trumpet, who now. . . So it wasn't maybe. . . we had some great charts, but it wasn't, I don't think, of the highest musical level. But for me, I joined a 300 person social group at a 50,000 person university. So it was a great way to enter that big world for me. And like you said, it's so fun.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: Yeah. It's such a great social and artistic thing for young people to do. And also, in terms of teaching, what other teacher has 120 or 300 students?
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Yeah, right. And has to keep them organized and focused. All right, so like you said, you went to IU. What did you do in high school? Did you. . . He was your high school teacher, so was it a previously good program and he just made it better?
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I think. So, they had been in a smaller class, a class by size, in high school, and they won a championship in '85. And then all three of our schools in the district merged, so it became one school called Northview, where it was before it was Brazil High School. Yeah, he was great. Kind of lined up well because my older brothers both had kind of difficulties with him. So by the time I got to high school, I just said, I'm going to do whatever he says to do. We're going to get along and it's going to be great. And that's pretty much what I did. And it did work out, and I took lessons, and you know, got better.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: And were you only a band kid or did you play football or did you. . . no sports?
[00:13:35] Speaker B: No other sports. I was in just about every club because, you know, I really just wanted to feel like I was a part of stuff student.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: So, like chess club?
[00:13:46] Speaker B: No, Key Club. . . let's see. Student council. Oh, what were the clubs? The Teens That Care.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Okay. I can't remember now. Oh, theater. I did that too.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: Interesting. Yeah. I think your Brazil was what, around 10,000? A little less. Something similar to what I grew up in. It's weird how the high school with the right programs gives so many opportunities. I had the same thing. Great arts programs. And that's basically why I'm, you know, had a career.
[00:14:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: Because we got jazzed about things and we got opportunities also. You weren't that far from Indiana.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: It's about an hour drive. Yeah.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Did you go there during high school? Were you exposed to their programs or. . .
[00:14:35] Speaker B: No. And I didn't even really know what Indiana University was when I went. Indiana State was closer. That was in Terre Haute. So I went up there to play with the Terre Haute Youth Orchestra. And I took lessons from a guy named Dalvin Boone, who was the trumpet professor there. And he was very helpful. But no, I didn't know. Even when I got accepted, I didn't know that IU was one of these top schools in the world.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: It's like, it's like almost on the Juilliard Conservatory level. Better in some ways.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah. It was super unique. And when I showed up there, just kids from all over the world and I had just, you know, I had been pretty cloistered in a small town, right. And I showed up there and there's people from everywhere and they're all just wonderful musicians. And, I mean, there were 200 people in my graduating class, I forget how many in Brazil, but there were like 3000 kids in the music school alone or something there, right? It was a big.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: It's a big school.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: So. . . intimidating, I imagine, on some level, but exciting? What did you first find yourself in?
[00:15:40] Speaker B: Oh, so, yeah, I showed up in my first audition. I got placed in the top orchestra, which is nothing. It just happened to work that way. I played third trumpet, but I didn't. . . I showed up to the first rehearsal and it was Don Juan (Strauss) and the part said 'Trumpet in Es'. And I had my C trumpet, which was brand new. And I leaned over to the guy, I was like, 'what's that mean?' He goes, 'oh, that's Trumpet in E flat. So every note, you see, you gotta. . . it's up a minor third. What's a minor third? You know, I. . . what are we talking about here? So it was bad.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: Whoa. Yeah, that's. . . Well, I played a B flat trumpet my whole career, but somewhere in my lessons with Dave Baldwin at the 'U' we had to, um, we had these exercises where it would changes keys every four measures or something. So trumpet in B flat, you just read off the page. Then trumpet in C, and you're reading, you know, playing up a step. And then it would go to trumpet in F or trumpet in E and, like, blow your mind.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: Was it the Cafarelli book?
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Yes. It was the worst. Just, like, torture, you know? And imagine, like, in college for me, I was so overwhelmed with all the classes and trying to. . . I'd often show up to my lesson very 'lightly practiced' on whatever I was supposed to be doing. And then to be reading through one of these was. . . If you were beat for the day, it was. . . . yeah. Okay. So, good. Enough about me and my beautiful lessons!
So you got it. That's weird, right? And the top orchestra at IU is something.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: It was something, all right. I mean, it was great. I didn't. Again, I didn't really know where I was. And partly, like, you know, I auditioned well, because I didn't know, you know.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Yes, but did you have an orchestra in high school or just band?
[00:17:42] Speaker B: Just band.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: Right. And then suddenly. . . that was my weird thing, too. We only had band. I ended up being the principal trumpet in the Minnesota All State Orchestra, my only orchestra. . . 'real orchestra' experience. Thrilling, though.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. I was in All State orchestra and band too.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So did you last in that? Or did you branch out into other places?
[00:18:08] Speaker B: That's probably the most interesting part of college for me was I think I was back in that top orchestra once more. And then I was principal. The highest I ever got was the principal of the second orchestra. And that was my junior year. I went off to this summer festival at Chautauqua, New York, which was awesome and played some great stuff. But I came back to that last year for my senior year, and I auditioned very poorly in that year, so I got placed, like, second in a lower orchestra, and I was kind of. I was really upset, and I went. I thought a lot about it. And there was a jazz program in IU, of course. So I went to one of the teachers there. His name is Dominic Spera. He's recently passed, but a great man. I went to him and I said, hey, dominic, you know, can I be in your band? And auditions had already placed. Son, I'm gonna see what I can do. And he put me in his band. So at that point, I started learning the commercial side of the business, and that's where I ended up working. So that happening ended up being a really great thing, because he taught me so much in that last year. And my. Also, my teacher, Edmund Cord, was my professor, and he was very supportive through that. It was just a big change of life for me. I never took an orchestral audition. I just went. I went straight to work. And. Cruise ships after college, right? You.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Carnival. Is that what you did?
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: How was that? Did you enjoy it?
[00:19:22] Speaker B: Oh, well, I mean, it was trial by fire, for sure, but it was still a relatively big band at the time. There were three trumpets and two bones and a sax section, so it was a. It was like a Vegas style show. Bandaid.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: And I showed up with my big mouthpiece and, you know, didn't know what I was doing, but they threw me on lead, and I was terrible. I remember the first night. I mean, it was my first real professional engagement. I had played stuff, but I showed up out there. I put on headphones. I never play with headphones. And click track. And the first. And I'm reading the show that night, too. And so the first page was all above the staff and, you know, loud. So I got through that, and then the next page was all above the staff and loud. And each page after that, Washington. I was just. I was awful.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: It sounds like a nightmare.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: It was.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: And had you ever traveled?
[00:20:08] Speaker B: No, I had never been on an airplane before. I got. I went to Puerto Rico. That was my first flight.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: And then got on a boat.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: That's right. I had never been on a cruise ship. Yeah.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:18] Speaker A: Trial by air, water and fire, for sure.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: I was on that ship for. I was only scheduled to be there for one week, thankfully, because they would have fired me probably. Then I went to another ship for two weeks and played second, and then I went out to LA and I stayed on a ship for like nine months, played second to a really, really good lead player. And then when he left, I took over lead and just. I was a lead player after that in my life.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: So here's my thing.
I thought of this earlier.
What's the lowest high note that you think is required if you're going to be a lead player? Is it f. Do you have to go to G? Is it more than that?
[00:20:56] Speaker B: It's g. Above high c, that's the money range. Above that is all specialty range.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: Then you got into Maynard Ferguson range.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: But you need to be able to pop out a g. Yes. And that's high.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: It's high, yeah. You have to reliably be able to make all those notes happen. Yeah.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. That's why, friends, I play keyboards now.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Oh, it's so nice.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: I can hit all the notes.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: And I do often hit all the notes. Thank you. I'm here all weekend. That's okay. So, did you study improv, then? Was that so?
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I came. So, after two years on cruise ships, I came to Chicago, and my way of getting my foot in the door was to get a master's degree at DePaul.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: So, yeah, I studied improv there.
I mean, I was never gonna.
I can play jazz, but, like, I had my colleagues were the jazz players. Like, those are the people that really studied the language.
I can play because I know melodies and I can play around them, but I was never a very artistic improviser.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: But, interestingly, in big band settings, the improviser was usually trumpet two. Right. There was the screech guy playing lead, and then two was the.
Often, at least from my experience, the one who did most of the solos.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Yeah. If there were two, that would be. Or two, three or four. All those guys could improvise, generally.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: Okay, and. And you just found that you didn't need to know that, or it just didn't come naturally to you, or.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: No, I was glad it did come naturally enough. Like, if I know chord changes well enough, I can hear well enough to not play the wrong notes. But I was never really great at reading changes. Okay. Because I was a right note guy. Like, my whole thing was like, I'm gonna have to play the right notes here. I want to make a living doing this.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: So.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: And there's very little forgiveness for trumpets.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Playing loud and high. Okay, so, DePaul, two years. You got a degree in that?
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Took me a little longer than two years, but, yeah, I got a master's in jazz studies.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: Okay. Which, you know, might be a punchline for some people.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: It's about $0.50 is what it's worth.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Yeah. So, then how do you. Again, you need to make another change and get into. Cause you mostly played theater, right? Did you do recording stuff at all?
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Hardly at all. There wasn't much that time when I showed up was kind of the end of the jingle era.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: I played maybe one or two really early.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And then that went away.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: That was it? Yeah.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Okay, so who pulled you into theater?
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Oh, it was Tim Burke.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Yeah. It called me to sub for him at the Marriott Theater.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: Okay, and how did you know him?
[00:23:43] Speaker B: I don't know. He probably. So being. Being at DePaul was kind of the way in. Sometimes people would call the school and be like, who's the lead player?
[00:23:50] Speaker A: I suppose.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: Right. And then I would get work that way. I really don't know how he knew who I was. Probably I was just one of the young guys who could play one of.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: The names in the air.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Right.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: And what show was that?
[00:24:03] Speaker B: First, I subbed on. I subbed on. Second, I think, on damn Yankees. That was the first time that he was playing lead.
And then he would have called me to sub for him when he was out on a solo book.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: And how long before you, you could make a living doing this?
[00:24:20] Speaker B: Oh, so it wasn't that long. I've been very fortunate in my career. I was jobbing too, like, right when I showed up. Also, 98 was the end of the swing dance era.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: Remember that whole fad?
[00:24:32] Speaker A: Right?
[00:24:33] Speaker B: So I was working like five nights a week in those bands right away.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Oh, fun.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: It was, yeah, it was cool. And then that died off when that fad died off and I started working jobbing, I was working with a guy named Bill Pollock, who's a really good guy. I ran a great band with a wonderful rhythm section. So I was working dates with him and Dick Judson, and I was teaching a lot, too, privately.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: And then, yeah, after. After I started doing shows and then Wicked started. Okay, so when Wicked started was when Tim went downtown to play that full time for four years.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: And so Marriott was open, so I just started playing there all the time and I sat on it. I never subbed out, you know, I just stayed up there and did the work because I knew what a, what a rare thing that was.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Yeah, wicked was an anomaly in many, many, many ways. It ran here in Chicago almost five years. I got to play a good deal of it, but it had a ripple effect, you know, suddenly all of us playing Wicked downtown weren't in the theaters and those became open for others and the pool deepened, I think.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: You know, and Wicked was. I loved Wicked because there's four keyboard books and so, and I played three of those.
One, three and four. And so there were many of it there, like twelve regular keyboard players. And you'd show eventually, you know, in year three and four, you show up and like, oh, who's in the starting lineup today? Didn't matter. We knew we were going to nail it, but finally I was working with people.
It's usually either or. Oh, Carl got the job, I didn't, and suddenly we're playing with Carl and Michael and Rick and, you know, so that was a cool thing. But it did pull most of us out of the local scene, too, for a long time. So you own the Marriott?
[00:26:27] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:28] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:26:29] Speaker B: I played 50 shows up, or nearly 50 shows up there.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Wow. And the band in the box.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: Yeah, the band in the box.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: It's a crazy thing. I.
Interestingly, probably not interesting, but it's my podcast. I played in that pit. I subbed last year on Gypsy for the first time ever.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: I've music directed at that theater, and I've been fired from that theater, but I've never played in the pit until last year. The firing is a long story. I'll do another podcast about that. So.
But it's a weird. It's not as weird as it used to be, because now we're all headphones, avioms and isolation. But back in the day, when we're used to playing out loud in au Naturale, in the pit, it was a stranger place. But that's a good, you know, regular gig, eight shows a week, your chops are going. Did you give up the. There was no job during that, was there?
[00:27:28] Speaker B: No, I. Yeah. Just very seldom I would sub out to do something just to get out of the theater, but. And I had to give up on my teaching. Just. It was just a really full time. Yeah.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Okay. So did you ever pick up teaching again?
[00:27:41] Speaker B: No.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Did you, do you miss it? Did you like teaching?
[00:27:46] Speaker B: I like teaching, yeah, I was. There's certain things that, for me, that. So I was lucky that I always made a good sound. I never had to learn how to make a good sound.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: So when a student had an issue with sound production, that was hard for me to teach, but I was bad at articulation. So in college, my professor took four years to teach me how to articulate properly. And by the end, I was good. So I can teach that to anybody. But sound production, not so much.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Often people who are just whizzes can't teach anyone else because they just did it.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. I have a teaching degree and I like teaching, but I'm too much of a smartass. And I knew the first time a parent said to me, you can't talk to my kid that way. I'd be fuck off, you know, and then I'm fired.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: So I just knew pretty, even though I got the degree that it wasn't really going to be my lane, I didn't think, I really wasn't sure what lane I was going to be in for quite some time. You know, we all have that weird, the way our, our lives weave, right?
[00:28:43] Speaker B: And you don't. You can make a choice if you're lucky, but otherwise, you're taking what comes. And.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: Yes, that's maybe the defining thing about, especially our era of theater musicians. It's like you, if something comes along, you grab it.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: And you a. You can't mess it up, right. Because you don't get very many chances and there aren't very many jobs. So you have to really be ready, overly prepared. It's. I. Subbing's nerve wracking.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: Oh, it's. Subbing's the worst.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: Yeah, there's nothing, there's nothing good about it.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: Yeah. The first time, so the first real big sub was on Wicked again. So I played, you know, sub on second. And Tim, the, you know, big time contractor who hires everybody, like, you can't show up and play second to him and mess it up, right? So I spent all this time preparing the book. I pissed off Carrie because I remember coming and I marked up the book.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Okay. Carrie Dedman was playing the second book.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: Regularly, so I shouldn't have marked up the book. I should have had my own book. But. But I had all the cues, all the vocal cues, so I didn't miss anything. And that was a wicked is. I mean, a lot of the modern shows are difficult, but that was the, that was one of the first of the real modern shows, I would think. But, you know, all different styles, cues.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: Out of nowhere, and it just keeps going.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: It just keeps going.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: 2 hours and 45 minutes of music.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: Right. And I would add that you were, you were my favorite conductor on that show.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: Of course. Thank you.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: That.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: Here's your $20.
It's weird. I really liked conducting that show because it made sense to me visually and musically. Sometimes you're in shows where you're like, I don't even, I don't get what's going on. I'm just mechanically doing that. But Wicked was always fun.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: And the state, the stage was so beautiful. You probably.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: Well, I was second trumpet. I could see, like, just a little bit of a sliver of it, right. And it was so cool. And I felt like, just give me chills thinking about it right now.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: I'm really excited for the movie. Yeah, it looks like they've really taken what's great about the show and expanded it into movie world, but still somehow kept the show. We'll see if that's true.
So speaking of Wicked, I got a wicked take a break and we'll be right back for a little bit more professional talk, maybe with our president, BJ Levy.
Yes, friends, this is the point at which we normally have the interval, that beautiful and moving moment when we have a word from our sponsors. So let's have a word from them right now.
Yeah, that's right. Still no sponsors.
I'll keep plugging away on that, I guess.
In the meantime, I feel some union talk coming on.
We're back with BJ Levy. I'm enjoying our conversation so far.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: And, you know, so don't mess it up.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Okay, I'll keep.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: Keep going.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: Yeah, the nerves are really coming.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: I know, right? I saw you shaking earlier, but I. Relax, it's just me. It's your friend. You don't have to call me maestro or anything.
So you're this presidential coup that you achieved, which I helped you with. I enjoyed.
We needed some fresh leadership in your union. And I knew in my heart, my heart of heart, I knew you're a good guy. You've always been a good guy. When you were doing the healthcare part, I could always call you up and I got a real answer and I'm like, okay, this is the kind of dude I think we need. And I don't know the mechanics of why you weren't on the other ticket, but I don't care. I want to know, like, now, you and a really good board and good people are running this thing. What do you. It's been almost two years.
What do you think you've been able to do immediately that you always wanted to do?
And then what are the things that are like, oh, wow, this is heavier lifting that I imagined. I don't know. Just tell me, give me a sort of feel for what your two years have felt like.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: It's the best job I've ever had. I mean, by far and above, including all of the wonderful music, things I got to do, this is the most rewarding and the best job I've ever had.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: I'm glad to hear you say that because I think it sounds like so hard.
Everything you do is a difficult negotiation or anyhow, but you love it.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: I played hairspray eight times a week.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: Okay, so. So you can do it?
[00:33:29] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:33:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it was, that was, that was hard. That was difficult. And the microphone amplified my mistakes all the time. And I had to take ibuprofen to go to work on Sundays because I was swollen. You know, that was. That was physically and mentally tough, and this is also those things. But I had that preparation to do it, and I do have a little bit more time to make decisions here. I mean, certainly there's a lot of pressure on, but there's not a microphone. And if I need to make a big decision, I'm actually encouraged, or I encourage myself to take a day or two to figure it out. I don't want to make rash decisions.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: So what are your big decisions? What comes to the president?
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Sure, there's the direction of the organization itself, which is I can speak about all that stuff, and I look forward to talking about all the stuff that we're doing, but then there's the other things that come in, more personal issues that members have, things that we can't talk about out loud, or workplace harassment, issues that come to me, that we have to address contract negotiations, which can be very secret at times. And everyone has unique needs, so there's those things. But the greatest thing. Well, you asked, like, what I wanted to do first. I really wanted to get us a new logo, but I've been talked into keeping our logo because it's unique. So I let that go.
I found us a new place to live right away because our old place was really expensive and more space than we needed. So that was like a six month effort, and everyone was on board, and it was really difficult. We tried to buy a place. Many people wanted us to buy a place. I wanted to rent because it was less long term risk. We did put an offer on a place, but we ended up across the hall at our current building, which is amazing with our.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Which for as excruciating as it was, turned out to be great, I think. Right.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: It's unbelievable. We'll be paying in ten years what we paid last year in rent. Yeah. It's an amazing long term, and they built it out for us to meet our needs, and it's just really, really been good for the union. And on top of that, where the election is concerned, it was a very difficult process, and thank you for your help in that. It was. I couldn't have done it without my friends and without people really encouraging me to do it. But the way it turned out, with two tickets running and the mix of people that got elected, it really couldn't have worked out any better.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: Yes. And that, I think, was the major victory because it used to be no one but the slate won.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: And it's like, well, how good is that? We need a mixture. And however it happened, it's a. It looks like I like and know most of those people. It's. They're good folks. They're the kind of people I want representing me.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: In difficult, you know, decision making. So that's cool. Okay. So that was finding the new place, getting some fresh blood in there. All right.
[00:36:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And then, so one of the first things that happened was a group of young hip hop artists came, and they approached us, and they say, you know, we're not making any money in the business.
What can you guys do to help us?
I think so the word help, I'm always triggered when I say it, because it's not my job to help people. It's my job to empower people to help themselves. But I also, I'm a helper, so I want to help people. So I fight with that internally. But they came to us and said, you know, not only do they not make any money in the business, but they have to pay a promoter for time on stage much of the time.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: So we started working with them, you know, and I want to grow our union, and I want to make sure that we're doing social justice work when we can, and also celebrating Chicago music and hip hop and house music and other historic musics like gospel and electric blues and things like that, that were born here. So that was really a great thing. And we started working with them, and that's been a year long process now. So working with them as an organizing effort, looking at organizing efforts going forward with freelance musicians, which is the most complex problem that we face.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: It's so tricky.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: It is very tricky. And then negotiating contracts, I'm going to be bouncing around a lot. But, like, Chicago Symphony Orchestra contract, the Lyric Opera Orchestra, the Grant Park Orchestra, those were all last year, and those are our three really big contracts.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: Right.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: And, of course, CSO had a strike in 2018, and I was on the picket line. Yeah. Thank you. That was such an interesting process. I don't like that they were on strike, but I liked that I got to walk in a circle with those people and get to know them.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: I met some cool people that way, too.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
So we've been doing those things. We lobbied the state last year to get a law passed. So it was the music and musicians tax credits and jobs act that we have $2 million for tax credits for the recording of film and television soundtracks. So that was, we haven't lobbied since it was, like, 2008 or nine that I was on the board at a time. And we lobbied to get money from the Illinois Arts Council to develop something that was like a music performance trust fund for Illinois. And we're successful at that. It's called the arts tour now. But we hadn't done any lobbying since then, and we've never tried to get a bill passed.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: So when you're lobbying, is it a. Like, you go right up to Pritzker and say, hey, I'm BJ. I'm the. Well, you deal with the governor, the mayor. The who of the.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: I have done that with both the governor and the mayor.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Okay?
[00:38:53] Speaker B: And that's. That's my job. So. And I didn't think I would like that part of the job, but I actually do like it, and it's because I have a built in advantage. So, you know, if I represented the bricklayers or the painters and allied trades or something like that, you know, you go up to someone, introduce yourself, and they say, oh, you know, very nice to meet you, but I say, I'm president of the musicians union. And people light up because either they were a musician when they were kids, or their kids are musicians, or they play some kind of instrument as an amateur, or they just love music. Everyone loves music. So when I go up to the mayor or the governor, and I say, I'm president of the musicians union, they engage with me, and that's really been great.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: And isn't that just the irony, that the thing that really jazzes people and they love music and performers is the first thing that gets cut from school and the first thing that people don't want to fund?
[00:39:43] Speaker B: That's correct.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: And yet everybody loves it, but we don't want to pay for it.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: It's. Well, that's part of what's going ahead, is we were pursuing education funding in that bill as well. It got cut at the end. We had to really focus on the film and television soundtrack thing. But we were pursuing that money for education programs and many of our Chicago schools as well, like the Miles Davis Academy, for instance, you would think would have a music program got cut some years ago. Yeah.
And, you know, music makes for well rounded people. And whether or not you become a professional or not, studying the arts of any kind, but especially the performing arts.
[00:40:19] Speaker A: Which is scientifically, they show that music engages a part of your brain that connects language to, like, math to. It didn't connect math to me, obviously, but it's so important. And yet we've been hounded into, like, were unnecessary. So that's interesting. I'm glad you're our advocate.
You were telling me that you were gonna have some chats with the mayor. How is he?
[00:40:44] Speaker B: Well, so, yes, we, he gives a really good speech, but, you know, we're waiting to see the policies come through. We're in the process of getting a meeting with the department of cultural affairs and special events d case. That's a really important city department for us.
[00:41:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: They've gone through some leadership changes, and I, I'm a little bit worried that it was a political appointment that was made for the commissioner. The previous commissioner had two masters in public arts administration and was really great.
This new commissioner seems really focused on the visual arts, which is important, for sure. And we want those artists to be able to make a living. But people don't go out to dinner and see a statue. They go out to dinner and they see a show.
[00:41:28] Speaker A: Dine by the mural.
[00:41:29] Speaker B: Right. So as far as GDP, it's performing arts that really bring people to the city and drive. It's an economic engine of the city.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: And do you connect at all with the other performing arts, like the theater world and the equity?
[00:41:42] Speaker B: And, yes, so recently, especially with equity and with the stagehands. Aiatzi, those unions are both very, very close to us because we work in the same buildings all the time. And, you know, other unions as well, the wardrobe and the directors and those. But really, the actors equity and the stagehands are our closest allies. Recently we've been working with actors equity because there's an issue of modern productions are liking to make actors, musicians. Put.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: Yes, they started my career that way.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: Oh, really?
[00:42:17] Speaker A: Pump boys. We were all playing actors, so I know it well. But I also know how they think the actors are going to all play brass instruments. Like, oh, it was. They couldn't learn that in the six week rehearsal process.
[00:42:32] Speaker B: Right. Were you on an AFM contract? Do you remember, for that?
[00:42:35] Speaker A: No, we were on equity for that.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: Equity contracts. But that was, I believe, before I got here. But that was quite a battle, trying to figure out what we were.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: Well, we're in a real battle now as Sosa is becoming a legal battle. So Shakespeare theater did a show called Lord of the Rings.
And so we have a contract to represent the musicians at that theater. But, you know, we knew they were going to do it. We met with management in advance and said, we're kind of concerned, you know, that you're not going to have a pit orchestra. That's all the musicians all the musical parts are being played by so called actors on stage.
But we went and saw the show, and there are clearly six people who are primarily functioning as musicians. And there's one understudy who only learned the musical parts. So when he went in, he wasn't going in. There was really no acting, what we called de minimis acting. So we're working with actors equity because none of these people were on equity contracts. They were in the non professional ratio, so they were making $700 a week to do eight shows.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: And on Navy Pier. On Navy Pier, we're parking is $700 a minute.
[00:43:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So. But to answer your question, we're working with them because I want those actors who play instruments. I mean, and two of the two of those people were our members, so they were instrumentalists who became actors for that show, or so called actors, and they're loving it because they want to do that. And also the actors have this great skill of playing music, but I need those actors to understand what they have. Like, if you can play an instrument, that's not a throwaway, that's not a 5% bonus.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: Right. You know, it's a whole skill set.
[00:44:09] Speaker B: It's a whole skill set.
[00:44:11] Speaker A: And the paid of skillset, that's a tricky one, though.
[00:44:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: Especially. I was going to ask you, because my own gut feeling is, as a pit musician, I think we're going away sooner than we wish it is.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: It is the part of the business that's most under threat, because while you're not visible to the audience much of the time, and we sound so good that it sounds like a record.
[00:44:36] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. Think it's that we're actually there doing it live.
[00:44:40] Speaker B: I couldn't believe it that we're doing it live eight times a week and it sounds like that.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's. And then, of course, in electronic replacement technology. Lord, yeah, it's awful. And it's getting worse all the time. And key comp, that particular technology of being able to be played in time. So, you know, we're addressing it locally, but, you know, the AFM as a whole needs to address it, and they care about it at the AFM International.
But this fight is local. Like with Shakespeare, theater is local.
It matters, though, nationally, whether or not we're successful.
[00:45:10] Speaker A: Again, I'm so pleased you're our president, because our previous president didn't know a thing about theater, so that was frustrating.
But that's neither here nor there. But we need advocates. But that's what I say. So you love the job I don't really like conflict that much. So diving in there and trying to get people to do what we want, but be pleasant and I don't know, I would get snarky and be out of there.
[00:45:39] Speaker B: I think it's coalition building. I don't know if that directly related to your point, but you bring up the stagehands.
I brought up stagehands. That's a very big union. They have 170,000 members nationally and we have 70,000.
And there at everything that happens in Chicago, all of the major events, there are stagehands, but there aren't union musicians necessarily at every event that happens in Chicago. So we have some catch up to do there. But building coalitions with them, with the other entertainment units, with the Teamsters and with the Illinois AFL CIO, with the Chicago Federation of Labor, building those alliances with those people is extremely important. And also it's great. It's not that hard to do. They're awesome people.
[00:46:25] Speaker A: Interesting. And I'm glad somehow we've lived long enough to get back into the somewhat of pro union momentum. Let's hope we can get Miss Harris elected and not be getting all these right to work states that are trying to just not undercut. It's basically undercutting unions.
[00:46:47] Speaker B: Yes. Well, that's right to work in Illinois now. We are completely safe from it. It's in our constitution.
Illinois can never be a right to work state. There was a constitutional amendment called the Workers Rights Amendment that was passed in the last election cycle.
[00:47:03] Speaker A: Can you tell people from a union view what does right to work mean and what is the danger of it?
[00:47:11] Speaker B: Yeah. So right to work is a brilliant right wing naming of a thing. It's not at all what it is. It's the right to work for less, which I'm sure you've heard of. But it just allows people to take advantage of all the benefits of a union contract without having to pay work dues or membership dues or anything like that they can freeload.
[00:47:33] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's like one of the republican bills from eight years ago was the Environmental Protection act, which was all about oil companies.
You come up with a good name like menopause the musical. Terrible musical. Great name. Whatever. I thought it was terrible. Of course, look at your audience here. I wasn't really the target audience.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: Menopause the musical. All right, so that's cool. What do you.
So, yeah, I feel like my part of the business, what you were into, is pretty under fire and it'll be difficult to defend. I'm afraid, because money speaks.
[00:48:14] Speaker B: Money speaks. But, I mean, it's. Everything is a pr campaign, ultimately, so. And getting ahead of it and also building alliances with producers as well. It's not.
[00:48:23] Speaker A: That's true.
[00:48:24] Speaker B: Management.
[00:48:24] Speaker A: So they're not. There are enemies.
[00:48:26] Speaker B: Yeah, not always. I mean, much of the time, sure. And some of them are terrible, right. The worst kind of people, but some of them are great. Like, you know, we have a couple theaters in town where the management is just first rate and goes above and beyond to make sure that the artists are represented.
[00:48:44] Speaker A: It seems to me, like, back in my touring days in the nineties, when most of my jobs were for New York producers, it's like there was a, you know, we were union and good pay, good contracts, but there was an acknowledgement that all of us, the wardrobe, the stagehands, the musicians, we were all the employees making their product and deserved to be paid, and we all made a living and they made money. When we're good, they make money and we make a living. And it seems like now that we want to skip to the part where we make money, but we don't want the people performing for us to make a living while doing it. Seems so counterproductive, counterintuitive, and, you know, let us share. Like, we love doing this, and if we can make a modest living at it, we'll do it, and we'll bend over backwards and give you 197%. But if you're always trying to pay us less than what we're worth, you're not going to have any talent left. And I guess that would be perfect for them.
[00:49:47] Speaker B: It would.
They like to make us feel isolated. I think the world in general and capital kind of does that. That wants you to feel isolated and alone and not part of a group. So unions are designed to combat that, but it's also on us to organize ourselves. So young people, especially, who are extraordinarily talented, that are graduating from music schools and universities right now, they're coming out into the workplace, and we have to get to them first and build a bridge to the professional world for that group of people so that they know there's a minimum, there's a floor. You can't work for less than that, or the business does go away over time.
[00:50:25] Speaker A: Right. Well, because even the audiences who don't know that we're down there can't believe we're playing it for real.
Often they ask us over the pit rail, what's your real job?
[00:50:36] Speaker B: Yes, I got that before.
[00:50:38] Speaker A: What's your real job? What do you like this must be for fun. And you're like, oh, it's fun sometimes, but interesting for the big kahunas like CSO lyric.
What hat do you put on there? Does that mostly fall on you? Is it fall on orchestra management enabled by you? I don't really know how those work, no.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: So that's, you know, I play more of a management role. I mean, a personality management in those circumstances, for those negotiations, we always have a lawyer on our side. Not every negotiation. We take a lawyer with us because it's quite expensive, but at those ones, we do. So Kevin case would be the lawyer for the lyric opera, then Robert Block is the lawyer that represents the musicians and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. And also those orchestras both have very, very strong and very, very involved orchestra player committees.
[00:51:35] Speaker A: Okay?
[00:51:35] Speaker B: So they work under those contracts all the time.
Those contracts pay for their lives, and so they really take the lead on organizing, on the negotiation parts of things.
So they're heavily involved and really take the lead with the lawyers. I am there in those negotiations to monitor, basically to make sure management respects the musicians.
I feel like it's my job to pound on the table from time to time if it's necessary for me to.
To make sure that, you know, especially, like with the Chicago Symphony, like these people outside, outside, outside people. And even musicians sometimes don't understand what they're. It's a 52 week orchestra.
I didn't know, for instance, like bass players, of course, I mentioned earlier, you know, we suffer from injuries. Many of us do.
John Floater, who's our vice president, is a bass player.
He's wonderful. Played with all of the regional orchestras and subbed with the CSO quite a bit. And he said to me early on in that negotiation process, he goes, yeah, I used to play with CSO a lot, mostly when a bass player was getting a surgery. So, you know, a back surgery or some other type of thing, it happens. And. Or carpal tunnel or rotator cuff or any kind of thing that could. We're tiny muscle musicians. That's what Heather Bohm said. That. And it's completely true and prone to injuries. But I worked 48 weeks one year, so that was at the Marriott. And, you know, I shouldn't have done that. After that year, I was never the same.
[00:53:10] Speaker A: Right.
[00:53:10] Speaker B: It was too much of eight shows a week. So they do that a lot, too. So just, I speak their language. I understand kind of what it is to be a performing artist, which is, it's its own thing. So I monitor and make sure that managements, especially if their board of directors are involved. And sometimes board of directors are art collectors rather than really art appreciators.
[00:53:31] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:53:32] Speaker B: So make sure they understand the human element of what's happening. And these people are humans with lives. They have children they want to send to college. They want to retire one day. So those types of things.
[00:53:43] Speaker A: Okay, so I asked you earlier, you pretty much work Monday to Friday and weekends. How often do you actually get to leave work behind?
[00:53:55] Speaker B: Oh, well, so I'm president of the union 24 hours a day. I mean, my phone message is, if there's an emergency, text emergency to this number and I'll call you back. I mean, I guess I'm fairly lucky and that there aren't a lot of emergency situations that have come up so far.
[00:54:09] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:54:09] Speaker B: But, yeah, if the phone rings on Saturday night and I'm at an event and I need to go someplace, I'm gonna go someplace. I'm gonna show up.
[00:54:16] Speaker A: So say that doesn't happen. What do you like to do? Do you have a vice or do you have, like, you go hiking or, you know, shoot archery? I don't know.
[00:54:28] Speaker B: No, most of my vices I let go partly because the phone can ring at any time. You know, I make, you know, beaded jewelry. I like to do that. So.
[00:54:42] Speaker A: That'S one thing that I do that's unexpected. That's actually, he's pointing to two nice bracelets that are gorgeous.
[00:54:50] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:54:51] Speaker A: So how do you come to that?
[00:54:53] Speaker B: Oh, I don't know exactly.
I was married twice, but my first wife at some point had bought some beads and I made some necklaces, and that was maybe 15 years ago. And then during the pandemic.
What can I do that I might enjoy? So I started ordering beads on the Internet. Now I have, you know, hundreds of these bracelets and, you know, 50 or 60 necklaces, and I just enjoy it. It's color matching. It's artistic. I. Yeah, that's been really cool.
[00:55:21] Speaker A: That's nice. We need outlets.
[00:55:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:24] Speaker A: You know, and they come in surprising forms sometimes.
[00:55:27] Speaker B: And I play bass now, which is, like, so cool.
[00:55:30] Speaker A: So you'll need back surgery, is that you're saying?
[00:55:32] Speaker B: Well, I don't play the hard one, you know?
[00:55:34] Speaker A: Oh, you play electric?
[00:55:35] Speaker B: Yes, that's right.
[00:55:36] Speaker A: So why? Because.
[00:55:37] Speaker B: Oh, it has frets. I'm not going to be guessing at notes all the time.
[00:55:43] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:55:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:44] Speaker A: And, like, do you play in a band at all or you just like.
[00:55:47] Speaker B: Well, not. So I can't perform professionally.
[00:55:49] Speaker A: Oh, that's right.
[00:55:50] Speaker B: Right. You know, so. But I do have. So I have really two sets of friends. It's an. It's interesting. I have my music friends, and then I have these friends that my music friends call the others.
[00:55:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:56:00] Speaker B: They don't really mix it because usually, like, these people have always hung out on Saturday nights and, like, we could never hang out on Saturday night.
[00:56:06] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:56:07] Speaker B: So there were these two sets of friends. So those. There's some amateur musicians and one professional in that group. And we play sometimes together. And it's fun. It's a great outlet. Bass is so cool. It's the opposite of lead trumpet. Like, so. And it's a different relationship with time and with sound production, but especially groove pocket. It's so cool. And you can practice it, you know, you don't have to practice it every day. It goes away. Although at the highest level, of course you do.
[00:56:33] Speaker A: But I'm not that nice. And do. Are you like a streamer? Do you watch, like, Netflix or read or movies or reading.
[00:56:45] Speaker B: I feel like my short term memory or, like, my attention span is not. So I don't read so much anymore. I used to read a lot. And YouTube, I think, is what's done. And I watch a lot of YouTube. Mostly it's a. It's educational in some way.
[00:56:57] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:56:58] Speaker B: But also it's kind of stream of consciousness doom scrolling.
[00:57:02] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. But do you have any favorite, like, series you watch?
[00:57:08] Speaker B: Oh, that's interesting. Yes. Like outdoor type stuff. There's. What's one called? The Veggie boys, which is just a family farm.
[00:57:17] Speaker A: Okay. You don't watch, like, naked and afraid.
[00:57:19] Speaker B: That's a pretty good show.
[00:57:21] Speaker A: I like that one. They're out in the wilderness naked and alone.
[00:57:25] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:57:25] Speaker A: With the cameraman and the sound man, but. Okay, sure.
[00:57:29] Speaker B: That's pretty good.
[00:57:30] Speaker A: But you like it?
[00:57:30] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:57:31] Speaker A: I don't really like those that much.
[00:57:34] Speaker B: That's dumb. Because I'll watch a show, like, alone, which is kind of like that, and it'll make me hungry because they're always hungry. So I sit there and eat food at night and watch survival shows. Yeah, right. Stupid.
[00:57:45] Speaker A: It's mostly people who are naked that I don't really want to see naked, I guess, but, you know, whatever. All right. So. Because I'm just trying to get to the gist of. What do you.
What do you. How long do you think you're gonna do this? The union thing? It's hard work.
[00:58:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:02] Speaker A: Right. It's intense. Often.
[00:58:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:05] Speaker A: Do you have a sort of a long term vision of your life?
[00:58:11] Speaker B: I do.
[00:58:12] Speaker A: I was never like that. I don't really project too far in the future because our lives usually are so unknown.
[00:58:18] Speaker B: Right.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: But you have a gig now. Let's hope you do it for as long as you want to.
What does that look like?
[00:58:26] Speaker B: Well, there are three year terms, so the politics of it is, I mean, I hope that no one runs against me. Somebody might. But running for office is like, my. It's. I hate it. I don't ever want to go through a hard one again. That first one was pretty hard.
[00:58:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:58:43] Speaker B: And, you know, maybe it doesn't happen, but. And that's part of it, too. If I want to do the gig, then that's part of it. So I have to face that. But say I'm lucky and I'm able to do the job to my best abilities, I think, you know, three to four terms. So nine to twelve years of doing it, and make sure that we're training up young leaders to come in and do a better job than me when I leave.
[00:59:06] Speaker A: Okay.
That sounds like a good plan.
[00:59:09] Speaker B: It would be great. I would be in my early sixties at that point, so.
[00:59:12] Speaker A: Oh, you're a child. You're a youth.
[00:59:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:59:15] Speaker A: That's great. Well, you know, it takes.
I just admire you for stepping up to it. I think it's such a necessary thing, and not everyone has the mentality to enter the fray with goodness. I think you're a good guy.
[00:59:35] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:59:36] Speaker A: And again, here's. I'll take my $20 back now. But, no, I mean, like, you've always dealt as a musician, as a colleague. You know, you're just an upfront, nice man and want. I've seen you only treat others that way, even those you don't agree with. And that's a tricky. That's a tricky balance.
[00:59:57] Speaker B: Well, it's what I want for myself.
[01:00:00] Speaker A: Right.
[01:00:00] Speaker B: And you and me have both worked for really, really bad bosses in our lives.
[01:00:05] Speaker A: That's true.
[01:00:05] Speaker B: You know, and I. I just hate it. Like, I hate it. So now I'm the boss, and I want. That was part of, like, why I wanted to do it, because I want to be able to define my work environment. And so.
[01:00:16] Speaker A: And it always comes top down.
[01:00:18] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[01:00:19] Speaker A: Any organization is top down.
[01:00:22] Speaker B: Absolutely. And it's your team is what makes it so, for sure. I mean, they have to let me do that. First of all, it doesn't always happen, but in this particular instance, you know, especially with the secretary treasurer, Karen Suarez Flint, and with Vice President John Floater, I mean, they're both extremely talented people. Great at their jobs and also expanding their jobs, their position. So for sure, it's, it's, it's a good organization needs a leader that's defining, that's defining, you know, vision. But you can't, it can't, it's not one person.
[01:00:52] Speaker A: It's never, well, I think you're doing a great job so far. And I took a poll of all the union members in my house, which is me, and we all agree with me. So anyhow, this has been our visit with BJ Levy. I'm glad to call you a friend and also honored to call you our president. I thought that was interesting. I learned quite a bit about the nuts and bolts of this, and I'm really glad you're doing it and not me. And I'm sure many others agree. So that is going to be our wrap on our episode with BJ Levy. Unless, BJ, you want to add a closing thought, say something deep. Let's go with, say you were on naked and afraid and you won, and you would have to explain how you did it. What would be your wisdom?
[01:01:43] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[01:01:45] Speaker A: It's interesting. Naked and afraid, orchestra edition, let's say, as lead trumpet player.
[01:01:50] Speaker B: Jeez, wouldn't that be dangerous? I mean, we can't, we can hardly keep our hands off each other.
[01:01:56] Speaker A: Of course, we're just always having orgies.
[01:01:58] Speaker B: That are, well, no, the best thing that we're doing now is also part of what we're trying to do at the union is to address those types of issues, harassment and sexual assault, that happens in our workplaces.
I'm so interested in people feeling empowered and to feel like the work of their lives.
This thing that we're doing, especially with being performing artists, I want the world to understand what that is.
Playing eight shows a week or playing four performances of Mahler, five during a week or something like this, is one of the most difficult things that any human being can undertake. And we don't. A baseball player, if they hit one out of three times, they're in the hall of Fame.
[01:02:47] Speaker A: Right.
[01:02:47] Speaker B: But, you know, if you miss, if you play one out of three correct notes, you know, it's, you're in 8th grade or something like that.
[01:02:52] Speaker A: Right.
[01:02:53] Speaker B: So I just want to make sure that everyone feels like their workplaces are safe and that they're places that they can go where they can be their best selves. And, you know, we do have to get through bosses and conductors sometimes that don't enable us to do that. That was one of the, one of our rules at the Marriott was, you know, play as well as the conductor will allow you.
But no, I what makes the job so great is that I am able to maybe have that effect and to at least help some people feel empowered. And it's an amazing thing.
[01:03:28] Speaker A: That is an admirable goal, and I wish you all the best on that.
[01:03:32] Speaker B: Thank you.
[01:03:33] Speaker A: I'm really glad we had this chance to catch up after a few years of not seeing each other too much, and I'm looking forward to some quality hang time in the near future.
[01:03:43] Speaker B: Thank you, Sean.
[01:03:47] Speaker A: Well, that's it for the premiere episode for season three on Chicago musician. A special thanks to BJ Levy, our CFM president, my colleague, and an all around good guy. And thanks to you for coming along for the ride. Please check out all our future blockbuster interviews and interesting travelogues of the next season. In the meantime, thanks for listening. I'm your host, Sean Stengel.
[01:04:22] Speaker B: Oh, well, at the end, I wasn't good friends with the warren.
