Hello and welcome to South beach sessions. I'm very excited about this, but longtime listeners to our show are going to be super excited about our guest today because it is rare that you get in studio the most popular selling jazz artist of all time, a longtime friend of the show, Kenny G, an expert at musical excellence. We are thrilled to have him here to talk about happiness, to talk about inspiration, to talk about as he approaches 70 years old, how he's still hungry, still looks great, at least in part because he loves what he does and spent a couple of hours before coming in here today practicing. It is delightful, sir, to finally be in person with you because that is not something that I have done. We have done before. Thank you over the years for all the times that you have made your excellence a part of our program.

Thank you for saying that. This is the same sax, you know, it's not a different one. This is the one I've had since I was in high school. High school. So, you know, my big joke is that you blow something for 50 years, you stay together.

I want to talk to you about who you were as a kid because you went to an inner city school, right?

I did, yeah. In Seattle, it was. The junior high was inner city and the high school was inner city. So it was a good mix of, let's say, third asian, third black, third white. And I didn't know any different.

What kind of kid were you?

A very nerd. Big nerds. I was. I wanted straight a's. I wanted to study hard. I got straight a's. I got straight a's all the way through, actually, through my second year of college, I got straight a's except for one b in high school. And I'm still pissed at that teacher for giving me a b. I didn't deserve it. But that's. That was it. That broke my record.

When did you stop being a nerd?

I'm not. I'm not stopped. I'm still doing it. That's why I practice all the time. I like to know things. I like to be good at things. I like things that interest me, really interest me. So I like to get into it. I guess that's nerdish. So that's how I am about.

Oh, but I think of you when I think of your interests, whether it's, you're a great golfer, you fly airplanes. Like, you choose things that have great degree of difficulty. What else is on the list of stuff? It seems like you have a bit of an architect's mind and an artist's spirit.

That's absolutely true. And I'm an accounting major out of college. So I've got the artist heart and soul, but I got the brain of a jewish accountant, and so that's good. That worked really well for me in my business, because as my artistry got successful and then the financial part started to happen, I was very aware of what was going on, and that was good for me to be in charge of everything. And I wasn't looking for anyone to take care of me. I was looking for partners in business and how to make. Make even more success. And that's on that part of it.

What is it about you? You're imprinting your parents that makes you somebody who chooses these meticulous puzzles to master?

Good question. I don't know if it's all. I don't know if it's parenting. I don't know whether, you know, honestly, are we born with certain tendencies? I think we are. And my wiring is really. I really like to practice things. I like to. So it's not a chore to me. Like, even this morning in my little hotel room that I'm staying at here in the. In the south beach area or whatever you want to call the area. What do you call this area? South Florida. This is.

This is South Florida. South beach is a little over there. And you're staying in Fort Lauderdale?

I'm in Fort Lauderdale, yeah. So even in that little room, I just couldn't wait to get my horn out and practice. So I'm wired that way. I don't know if my parents did that for me, but I had a father that was very low energy, but nice. Mom was more of a. She was more of a yeller. I didn't ever take it personally, which was good for me. And so she was. I guess I was motivated to do things well so that I could avoid the yelling. I figure if I got my shit together, I can say that on your show, right?

You can let her fly.

Okay. Then I thought, well, maybe I won't get yelled at about stuff if I'm really on top of stuff. So I think that helped develop me in terms of thinking ahead and planning and working hard at things.

The reason that I ask you when you stopped being a nerd is because I assume that this gave you confidence that whatever I associate with nerdiness, a bit of a lack of confidence, I don't associate with you. A bit of a lack of confidence.

Thank you for that. I never lacked confidence. Maybe with girls, sure. I think most guys are timid at first. But I never lacked confidence because I always felt like I had the power to learn anything. So whatever it was that I was working on, whether it was trying to get an a on in a chemistry class or a calculus, I wanted to get an a on the calculus final, or I wanted to master something that I heard Charlie Parker play on the saxophone. It's like I can do it. So I never felt like, lack of confidence. I just felt like, okay, it's just going to take time. So just put the time in.

When you said the name Charlie Parker, it made me think, and I don't know if you heard me because you were concentrating on what you were doing, but when I say you're the best selling, you in my presence are the best selling jazz artists of all time. That has to be crazy to you.

Yeah, it's super cool. I mean, it's great. I mean, really.

I mean, it's crazy, though, to be of all time. What is it? It's over 75 million albums sold, right?

Yeah, I know. Nobody does that anymore. Now it's just about views. And then you use that to get other things going. But, you know, I look at it like there's some magic dust somewhere, you know? And somebody sprinkled some of it on me. And my heart came up with these melodies that sounded right to me. And I had the instrument that was the one that, for some reason was the one I was attracted to. And I played these melodies the way that I played them. And it just clicked with me because I made up my songs in the vacuum of a little studio in my house. I wasn't coached on how to do anything when it came to, like, putting out music. How did that happen? How did that stuff connect with all the people in the world? Fortunately, I had Clive Davis behind me helping to make my music exposed. That helped a lot. It really did help. And then just little by little that things started to just happen. And here you go.

Well, you said all over the world, and we've covered some of this ground. I don't want to be very redundant with you because we've talked a lot over the years and I really am interested in your secrets to inspiration, playing for a couple of hours in your room today because you like practicing your secrets on happiness and gratitude, which I think you carry yourself with all the time. But we've talked to you about how popular you are in China, so much so that your music closes things down. In China, when people hear your music, it's the end of the business day. Everyone knows they might not know that it's you, but the idea that you have that this instrument from high school reaches over there and touches the world has to be mind blowing to you.

Yeah. And it's been since the mid eighties. The first time I went to China, I was. There was like 1986 or so, and we went over there, sponsored by Budweiser, by the way. I'm not plugging them for any reason.

Think about it, 40 years later, you're bringing the sponsorship back, the business mind.

Still, you never know, maybe somebody's going to listen. You know what? Let's bring that back. I was in China, like Beijing, and there was a huge poster, not poster, billboard, on the side of the major highway. And it says, king of beers and the king of saxophones. I saw my big face up there. I thought, this is super cool. So the song I wrote called going home now, I wrote that song. When I wrote the melody, it reminded me of my mother, who had passed away, I guess fairly recently, in the mid eighties. I think she. I can't remember what year she passed away, but it made me think of her and it made me think of going back to Seattle because I wrote that song in LA. So it was for me, going home. That's how I wrote it. The chinese people took the words going home and they decided that it's basically going to mean go home. And so everybody at the end of the workday, you hear my song go home, time to go home. And they took it and ran with it. Since the mid eighties, it's been a song that's played every day in China for hundreds of millions of people every single day.

Today, I'm sure they're all hearing it and going, oh, there's that melody, time to go home. And they do.

The idea that you would have that kind of cultural imprint, I don't know what you dreamt of growing up, what the wildest of success looked like when you first dreamt of that thing, but it couldn't have been this.

I never dreamt of success like that. I never did. It was always really dreaming of mastering the saxophone. That's my thing. Still today, I'm not thinking about how can I sell more records? I've got a team that thinks like that. I'm thinking about how can I play my saxophone better? How am I going to learn to play things? Like if I hear somebody play something, oh, that's super cool, I want to learn to play that. So back in the eighties, I was just thinking about playing well and writing music, doing my best, and my very very best every single time. So that was my. I never thought about the success part of it. It came, and I was very grateful for it because, and the big reason I was so grateful, not for the fame and the fortune, it was because of the fact that it allowed me to keep doing what I love to do, and I didn't have to worry about finding another job.

This may be a dumb question, but have you mastered the sacks?

No, I don't even know, but I'm working on it. I'm still working on it. I'm still, you know, 50 years later. I, you know, my joke is, like, a couple weeks ago, I said to myself, you know what? You're starting to get a little bit better. I'm noticing some improvement.

Well, I would think not, though. I would think that aging at anything, I feel some places where I'm aging at the doing of this, where I feel my mortality, I lack confidence in places that I didn't before because I noticed.

Ah, that's what places do you lack confidence?

I would say that there are some places in talking about sports these days where I've aged out of some things generationally, where some things have sped up on me in the way that people consume things on social media, the sheer amount of information that can be difficult to keep up with, just little things that make me feel my age. But it sounds like that's not an affliction that you have. You don't have. You just, you practice. It seems like from what you're describing, that you are keeping it simple. You are just concentrating on the doing of this and trying to get better and being easy on yourself in terms of how you experience that.

I'm not sure I'm easy on myself. No, because I don't like hitting wrong notes. And so when I'm practicing, like, okay, so this morning I was practicing, and what was I practicing? Well, you know, I'm working on phrases and fast runs and things, and I'm wanting my tongue to tongue notes that I want them to tongue, and my tongue doesn't want to do that. It wants to tongue other notes. And so I have to force myself and my fingers to go in places that it doesn't naturally want to go, which is great, because then over time, that becomes second nature. And I've noticed, as I keep working hard, that things that were very hard a few months ago are not hard today. And then the things that are hard today, I tell myself, you know, a few months from now, they won't be hard, so keep going. And I just keep doing that over and over and over and over so that when I'm standing on stage and I'm playing my things, my music, my melodies, my licks, my solos, I've got a pocket full of these things that I've, let's say I've mastered a certain lick, a certain phrase, I have mastered that, but I have thousands of those things, and I can just pull them out whenever I want and bam, I can just throw them right there and they're going to be perfect.

I just want to keep adding to that list. So I don't know if I'm easy on myself because I'm thinking I got to keep working hard.

Well, I thought to myself, after asking the question, I guess he wouldn't be easy on himself if he's a professor, if you're a perfectionist, that sort of runs counter to that.

I'm a perfectionist in this way. I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my best efforts. I used to be a perfectionist for the results. So if I hit a bad note, I would really beat myself up over it. I don't do that anymore because for me, the beating myself up was a false sense of motivation. If I get mad at myself enough, make myself feel bad enough about whatever it is, if I made a mistake on this or that, then I would learn my lesson. I never make that mistake again. And I thought to myself, that's probably a really lousy way of motivating because I'm already motivated. I don't have to beat myself up to get more motivated. So now I give myself a break there. But if I know that I've given my best efforts, which I always do, because that's my thing now. I can be easy on myself and I can be very, very peaceful, much more peaceful than I was, let's say, ten years ago, because I wouldn't let myself slide now, and I let myself slide. It's not letting yourself slide. It's not beating yourself up for no reason other than you think it's going to help you, and it's not going to help you.

Well, how'd you figure that out?

Talk to a really good professional about that. Yeah, because I would tell this guy, he's a super smart guy, you know, you can call therapy, I don't like to use the word because people go, you must be crazy. But no, you talk to an, I love therapy.

Why wouldn't you want to give somebody the information, the vulnerability that would allow them to give you tools to improve.

Yourself exactly like it you know, if you want to go to the. To court about something, you're going to do it yourself or you're going to call a lawyer. They're an expert. So you talk to a guy that's an expert in how things work with the human brain and feelings, and he's seen everything. So I was telling him about these things, and he convinced me that I did not need that motivation. So I said, okay, I'm going to try it tomorrow night. His name is Robert. I said, ok, robert, tomorrow night. If I don't hit every single note perfectly, which, of course you can't, I'm going to give myself this break. So I tried it the next night and the next morning after that. I was not less motivated to work hard at what I wanted to do. And I thought, well, that was a lot better. And somehow I felt like I was giving myself too much of a break. But after working on that for the last, let's say, four or five years, now I can sleep peacefully even if I didn't perform my best, knowing that I've worked my very best, given my best efforts.

Best efforts to me is. That's the key. And most people do not give their best efforts. They have an excuse, I'm too tired, the weather's not right, or whatever they want to say, and then they don't give their best efforts. And then they wonder why they can't get the success they're looking for.

I think especially now, given the mental health challenges of this day and time and the phones and everything else, I think your thoughts on therapy or the stigma involved with them might be antiquated or changing in that people are learning more. I found men are learning more to explore some of this stuff and figure things out with the help of professionals in human behavior. Do you know what led you down that path? Do you have something that sort of pushed you in that direction?

Not really. Mainly it was, I just like to be really good at what I do, and what I'm doing now is being alive and being a person, being a man, being a father. And so, like, how do I get better at those things? Well, let me talk to somebody that's an expert in that stuff. And so, you know, I would say it's like, okay, what are the qualities that make you a good father? And my kids have benefited a lot because they'll ask me questions about things and I will say this to them and go, you know what? I'm going to get back to you on that one. I'm going to talk to my, I say, I'm going to talk to my guy about that. And they go, please do. Please do. And then I come back to them and I go, okay, here is the consensus. And it always seems really common sense when I hear a really smart answer about something, because I'm never stuck in my ways. Never, never stuck in my ways about anything. I might have an opinion about something, but you could convince me, Dan, if you, if I said this about whatever, and you are totally opposite and you have a good argument, I can be changed.

You can convince me. So I would ask a question where I'm thinking, oh, you know, here's the answer, and I would hear something else. You know what? That's smarter. I'm going with that.

You've never been scared of change. Because I have some difficulties with that. I can get comfortable. I have done some learning about a lot of people. I'm not going to say it's human nature, but a lot of people will stay in unhappy circumstances just because they fear the change that would be required to get to happier ones.

Yeah, you just have to hear the right words. You have, somebody has to talk to you in the right way about that, you know, and also you have to be of a mind that's wanting to get better. Like, you have to want to improve. You know, let's say you want to get better at whatever you want to get better at. Like, for me, my, my big issue in my personality was I would, I was a guy that would withdraw because I felt like I was, I was right. So if somebody's being irrational to me and let's say somebody's yelling at me or telling me I'm doing this, or I'm a bad this, and I go, boy, they are so wrong. So I shut down and I just go off into my world, play my saxophone, go on the road, don't have to deal with it. So I had to learn to not withdraw, which meant I have to confront and talk and not necessarily get upset. So I had to learn how to do that, which was not what I was wired to do, but I wanted to get better. So the wanting to get better lets you begin the beginning.

Most people don't. They can't even get a start because they don't really want to change. I do want to change. I want to always get better. So that has to be in there. So you have to want to get better or you might have to just acquiesce to the fact that you're going to have a pretty good life. Or maybe you're not going to have a wonderful, amazing life. I think my life's gotten so much better because I'm willing to, you know, just the fact that I don't withdraw anymore is a huge deal. That took me a lot because my dad basically taught me that because he was. That was who he was. That way, my mom would be the. She would have a loud bark and she would yell at him about this and that, and my dad would just quietly just kind of look at me and, like, shake his shoulders. And I thought, oh, that's the way to be. That's the way to be. Don't let it. Don't let it worry you now. It's like, no, no. Somebody starts up with me, it's like, I'll go, my main thing is, is that the best thing that you can say to me right now?

And then people go, oh, I don't know how to respond to that.

I love the idea of a rabid, confrontational Kenny G. Like, just fangs out.

Fangs are out.

I don't even know. I don't. I think of you as your demeanor is so sweet. You are a man who gives off light.

Thank you.

It's a bit contagious, and I'm not going to say it's an envy, but I do want some of your secrets unhappy because you carry yourself with what feels like sunshine in your step.

Thank you. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I know that everything is going to work itself outside because the same with, it's kind of like the same thing. If I'm working on something that's hard to do, I know that time and practice will make it all great. So if something is really upsetting at the moment and you start to get all pissed off about it and you get depressed or you start to find yourself going down into a darker place, really, it's going to be fine. It really is. Unless it's something like, well, you've got a death sentence and you're going to die in the next 24 hours, which most people don't hear. So it's like, okay, everything's going to be fine. Great. I've experienced this before. I'm going to relax now and I'm going to give myself what I call. It's called the friendly mind. The friendly mind is you got to take care of yourself in the way that you wish somebody else would. For example, let's say you're mad about something and you go home and I know you're married, so let's say you would go to your wife and you say something like, you know, Matt was really crappy to me here at the office.

Every night I go home with that.

Yeah.

Matt was such shit today, and I.

Can'T get along with him. And he had made me do these things. And then what if she said to you something like, come on, Dan, get it together. Come on, just man up and deal with it. Okay. You would go, okay, but what if she said, here, come here, baby, put your head on my shoulder. You know what? I think you're wonderful. And I think, you know what? It's gonna be fine. Breathe. What? And so do that to yourself. I do that to myself. Not physically, obviously. I can't put my head on my own shoulder. Maybe I can.

Oh, but that's a secret. That's a secret to life, happiness. I mean, gratitude is on the pie chart, right? If you can figure out the ways to love yourself, that's right. Like, it's nice to have others love you as well. But if you can figure out the ways to make that something, that is one of the tools in your own toolbox, that's a special thing.

It's not easy because we mentioned are we're wired to like, come on, man, get it together. I can't believe you're still dealing with this thing after you've been trying. So, ah, man, like that kind of talk to yourself instead of going, hey, you know what? You are wired so hard in this direction. To change is so hard. I can see you're trying and you're not getting it yet, but I really commend you for trying. Great. That you're aware of what you want to fix. And, man, it's hard. But, boy, oh, boy, pat yourself on the back for trying because you're not going to get it together. You can mentally think that you've got it. Like, man, somebody tells you something like, you know what? From now on, cut out salmon. Cut out salmon from your diet. Let's say you just love salmon too much. And then you go to this restaurant next in the morning, and you go, I gotta have some salmon. And you eat it and go, oh, man, why did I do that? I can't get it together. It's like, it's gonna be hard to change, but you gotta give yourself that break of, hey, it's hard.

You're wired that way. It's going to take time, but your awareness is where it's at. You're aware that you want to change it. Good for you.

First step. Being conscious is the first step. You have two sons. Are they built like you?

Well, they're being built like me because I'm telling them these things. So they get to hear this from. From their dad? No, they're wired their own way. I've got my son Max, who's. He's 30, he's more. He beats himself up too much. He does. But the good thing about him is he tells me that. He goes, yeah, dad, you know, I did this. And then I got mad at myself for doing this. And I say, hey, good that you can talk to your dad about this. It's great. And I'm the perfect person to talk to you about. Talk about, because I already been through that. So here it is. And you won't get it right away, but let's keep talking about it. So, yeah, I try to help them both. Now, Noah's less of that. He doesn't beat himself up that much. And he's got his own little things that. It's like sometimes I feel with him, he doesn't feel like his own thoughts are smart enough or good enough. So he might just kind of acquiesce to somebody that tells him, hey, let's do this. And you go, okay. But really, he doesn't want to.

And so now he's getting a lot better at going, you know what? That's not going to work for me. In a good way. You have to say that in a good way.

I don't understand how you remain as motivated as you are, as successful as you are, and how it is that you still practice that hours a day, like every day. You don't go a day. When's the last? What happens if you go a day without doing that?

I'm on the edge of my chair just chomping for the alarm to go off. Not that I need it so I can wake up and start practicing the next day. Now, why wouldn't I practice one day? Because I'm traveling. I'm on a cross the world flight. That keeps me from having any hours to practice. So that would stop me from doing it. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

So how does this work? How do you stay this kind of motivated in your sixties with all of the success that you've had?

Again, I'm just wired that way. I'm wired to just love it. I love the challenge of it. It's like if you were like you were putting together a puzzle and there was a missing piece, I mean, I would just be scratching my head to find that piece. I wouldn't just let it sit there and go, okay, well, I did pretty good.

But have you found this to be common among other musicians that you've interacted with that are special musicians, successful musicians? You find that this is common ground.

I think it's common ground for, like, a musician, musician, an instrument player that, like, in any orchestra, like, if you, whatever, philharmonic orchestra. I think all of those people, I'm not sure about that now that I'm saying it out loud. They might just want to get good enough to just do their job and just, like, not want to get any better. I don't know.

I don't know either. But I think it's unusual. I think it's unusual to still be your level of inspired when you've already conquered. You seem just as hungry now as you were in high school.

Maybe more so. Maybe because I feel like there's, now I know there's so much more I have to learn. Maybe back then I thought, oh, I'll have this down in a few years. Yeah, maybe it is rare. So, you know, that's why there's not that many super, super successful musicians in the world, that maybe that's part of it. I'm just lucky that I'm wired that way because it's not forced. Like, I don't begrudgingly wake up in the morning and go, oh, I gotta put in my hours. I'm going, ooh wee, I can't wait. Let's see. What am I gonna work on today? What can I get together? Today's the day I'm gonna do this. Like, every time I play a gig, we played last night in Savannah, Georgia. And it was like I was just getting ready to start the show and I go, okay, tonight's the night. I'm gonna get this whatever thing I was working. I'm gonna do it. I don't think I got it last night. So whatever it was just so it could be a little tiny phrase in the middle of thousands of notes that I just wanted to do for me.

And so now I'm thinking about tomorrow night when we play here and play in Fort Lauderdale. I'm thinking, okay, that's the night I'm gonna get it. I've been saying that same thing for every single gig. So 4000 gigs plus every night. It's like, okay, tonight's the night. And he's never going to get it. Although I got to say this, there have been a handful of shows where I walked off thinking I played a perfect show. Maybe a handful, maybe five. And I remember one of them happened to be when I was doing a really intimate gig, and Jack Nicklaus was sitting in the front row and everybody and I had met Jack, and I didn't know him that well at that moment. This is one of my first gigs, and they talk about his blue eyes and his stare, and he was there doing it. And I thought to myself, I don't want to be intimidated by that. And then I said to myself, okay, you've already done a million shows. Not a million, whatever, so you don't have to worry about this. You got it. You can. But that doesn't mean you're going to do great.

It just means that I'm not going to let any fear paralyzed me from being my best. And I remember that night playing and just looking at him and just going, okay, I'm going to stare at you, stare for stare while I'm playing these melodies.

Stare at your fear. Stare, stare right at your fear.

Right at it. And when I stared at him, I could feel the softness in his face that maybe a lot of people don't see, because they just see a quick stare and then they look away. And it was a beautiful night. And I remember putting my sax, in my case, going, I hit every single note exactly the way I wanted. And then I remember I went out to some sushi restaurant in. It was. It was in Palm. I can't remember where it was, but Palm beach. It was in Palm beach. And I remember having food going, I gotta savor this moment, because tomorrow it starts all over again. But tonight I did a perfect show.

That's crazy to say that you've had the five. Like, you've had the four or five where you feel like you've reached the zone that you can't. You feel like you can't do it any better than that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a great. It's a wonderful feeling. It really is. And. But didn't. It didn't mean I woke up the next morning with any less motivation to work on stuff. But it's almost like, oh, man, what's gonna happen tonight? How am I gonna. How am I. It's like shooting, you know, a 59 on the golf course, and then you have to tee it up the next day. Well, what's gonna happen? You know, you're not gonna shoot a 59.

Are there any better or comparable feelings to that one, to the bliss of what you're describing elsewhere in performance, in performing, like, comparative to when you're talking about the blissful feeling of feeling for a night? I tamed this thing is there anything comparable to that in what it is that you can feel in your heart about art?

Well, I can actually feel it when I'm a pilot. I feel it in certain, certain circumstances in piloting, which would be, you know, I'm an instrument pilot, so I'm now trained, not now, but for a long time trained to fly in the clouds. When you fly in the clouds, it's a skill, very specific skill, of looking at your instruments and getting from your instruments where exactly you are. And your body sensation is going to tell you something else, because you're going to immediately have vertigo. Anybody that gets in the clouds, you have vertigo. And that's what kills a lot of pilots that aren't trained. So your vertigo means that you get in the clouds, you have no visual references, so you don't know what's left or right or up or down, and your body just has a sensation. And I would feel like I'm in a nose dive to the left. Feel that. I look at my instruments and says, I'm flying straight and level, so I have to believe that. So let's just say you're in the clouds for a long period of time, and air traffic control is giving you all these instructions, and they're telling you to go to this waypoint and this thing and do this and this, and you do it all, and then you break out into the sunshine and there's the Runway.

Same feeling.

What is the appeal of flight for you?

It's a hard skill that requires practice and dedication to get good at. And I like that. Those are things I like. I like doing those things. It gives me a sense of accomplishment, I guess, but more of a sense of, like, it's a discipline that has a reward. That's. And that. And I like that reward. And it's worth the dis. It's worth being uncomfortable.

I don't think that there's a lot of fulfillment that is possible unless it was hard. Right. Or the greatest fulfillments, anyway, require things to be hard. So.

Yeah. Golf. Yep. Sax sachs.

Flight. What else is like that where you just go out of your way to. I want to get good at a difficult thing. It's important to me to know that I can conquer a difficult thing.

I'm trying to learn French. Yeah, that's what, that's. That's what I'm doing right now.

So you know what my last name means, then?

Le Batar.

Le Batar, yes. Yes, that's right. Illegitimate son of the king, I prefer, but bastard is fine.

Tu parfaise I don't know.

I'm Cuban. But the earliest settlers in Cuba were French, so I can't speak it with you. But you just decided one day that you wanted to learn French.

Well, I took it in school, and lately I've. In the last, let's say, ten years, I've decided that I don't want to die not being able to really speak French. And I don't need to be at my sax level French. I need to be. I want to be at a fluent level. That's enough to where I can have a conversation. And if I sound to the french people like I'm an American with an accent, and I don't say things so perfectly, you know, I'm okay with that. But I want to be able to have an intelligent conversation. Right now, I'm. I think I'm more of like a 6th grader conversation when it comes to French. I'm getting better. I mean, I studied. This morning on the drive here, I was on my phone, Instagram, looking at the different french teachers learning how to say new things.

French wasn't where you got the b grade, was it?

It wasn't, actually, no, it was social studies, which I think is. I don't even know what social studies means. Does it means american history or one of those things? Yeah, hence the b.

Right. If you don't know what it means, you make it all the more difficult.

To get the a. I don't know. I mean, it's. Listen, the tests are tests I got. I was so good. I'm such a good test taker. Doesn't mean I even understood the material. I'm a very good test taker. Give me a multiple choice. I can probably do well with actually not even studying. I probably can pass, but if I study multiple choice, I'll get 100%.

Where and when do you have the memorable performances that make your heart swell with something that feels like. I'm deeply moved by whatever set of circumstances present themselves, whether you're feeling anything spiritually. I don't know where you go while doing this, but where. What can you itemize for me in terms of the most moving performances that you remember most specifically?

That's such a good question. Wow. Wow. That's a really good question, Dan. I think. I'm not sure how to answer it because it could be like. It could be the venue was so memorable, but I think you're asking more like, memorable. Like, if I start getting into that space where it's just music and I don't feel like I'm actually doing it. I'm not sure how. What you feel.

You feel like a vessel for the things that you love and you're feeling the gratitude of. I can't believe that I get to perform this in front of these people or whatever. There's some sort of emotion present for you in the room or around you, someone you love. I don't know what. The reason I'm asking the question is because I will never know that feeling as it applies to being able to perform this that well and have this give you the utopian things that you signed up for when you began practicing.

Wow. Well, I mean, that's such a deep question. I mean, you know, there. I mean, every night when we play, there's moments where I play certain notes and then they ring. What does that mean? I hear the sound bounce off the walls of the venue. Or maybe it's coming through my speakers in just the right way. And it's like. It just hits me. It's like, wow, what a sound. And I don't say that with any ego. I'm just saying as an objective observer. As I'm playing, I go, wow, that's so beautiful. And then I just melt away into it. And then all of a sudden something will catch my eye, like, you know, somebody will move in the audience. And then I go, okay, shit, I gotta remember. Where am I? What song are we playing again? Where am I? And.

Oh, so you're just one with the music you're lost in. I would imagine for a moment, the way that you're describing that I don't know how spiritual you are, but I would imagine that God's in there somewhere for you.

There's some sort of a. There's some sort of a spiritual part of it. I don't know what that is exactly, but it's there. Every night there's a moment. Well, we hope. Every night we hope. There's long moments. Some nights there's only little tiny moments. We played a gig the other night in Panama City, and we were on a. It was a jazz festival and we were headlining. We closed, and by the time we closed, the audience had been there all day. They were so tired. And it was such a disconnect that. I don't know, I think I had a couple moments of it, but it was hard to find those moments because when you're playing a concert, there's people out there. You're not just playing for yourself. So you get a vibe. There could be a vibe. It could be just a murmur of, like you hear people go, whoa. Or something happens and a note hits, and it's like, okay, it's hitting. I feel goosebumps. There it goes. I look and I see the look in the eyes of my guys in my band, and we're all going, something magical is happening right now, and we're just doing it.

It's super great. And that can happen.

How often do you get goosebumps performing?

Not that often, actually.

I mean, it would be hard to come by, I would think.

Yeah, not that often. It can be. Yeah, yeah, that would depend. It could be like if you're playing a certain concert in a certain country. Like recently, we played in Korea and played in a beautiful venue in Seoul. And it was really beautiful. And there were some beautiful moments there. I remember that concert thinking, well, this is pretty special tonight. And that happened. I got some goosebumps there. I can't remember since then.

Do you get them when listening to other artists?

No, no, I never do. No. When I'm listening to other artists, unfortunately, I'm like a mathematician. I'm tearing apart. Okay, wait, how did he play that b flat? Oh, that was a little. He was a little sharp on that one. He missed the tongueing on that. Oh, wait a minute. That was really good. I want to learn how to do that. And it's all calculated, so it's, for me, to listen to music is work. So I very rarely listen to music at home.

Do you wish you could just enjoy it as opposed to treating it like science in those instances?

I don't know if I do. I don't know if I wish that because I get enjoyment out of other things. Like, I watch movies. Movies, to me, that's. And when I'm watching the movies, the music is there, but I'm not calculating, I'm just letting it.

It's the accountant in you, not the artist. It's.

Yeah, yeah. But. But watching a movie I'm in, I'm more of the best, more of the artist. I'm just being moved by the movie. I love watching movies. That's fun to me.

Do you or have you ever been performing and cried?

Yeah, yeah, I did. I remember when it was, it was in Seattle. I played with the, with the Seattle symphony orchestra, which I've always wanted to do. And for, you know, for some reason, some orchestra, they just don't want me. And I don't know why, because I'm thinking like, okay, I'm an instrumentalist, for one thing, and we're going to do this whole thing together. And then some orchestras just not interested. And Seattle was that way for a long while. But for some reason, they agreed to let me play. And we played. And my dad had just passed away. And this was 2019, and he was 98, which was great. He had lived a long, long life. And the good thing about my dad was when he died, it was just, you just got to picture a car running out of gas. He was just running down the street and just ran out of gas. Like, he just sat. I mean, I wasn't there when he died. My sister was. She said that he was just kind of sitting, and then he just kind of closed his eyes, and there was no pain. It wasn't like something happened.

He just ran out of steam. And so at that concert, I wanted to play a special song, and I didn't have an orchestra arrangement. So at the end of the concert, the concert was finished. And I asked the audience, I said, can, do you mind? Would you. Now this is going to. I'm getting off on a tangent. When you play with an orchestra, it's very much of a meticulously timed gig. The orchestra musicians are on a union time schedule, which I hate that. Not that I hate unions. I just hate that. Can we go 30 seconds more? No. Okay. I just need 30 seconds more. No. If you go 30 seconds more, it's going to cost you $10,000. Okay, well, it's not worth that to me, but can I negotiate? Can I give you a thousand? No. So they will. Just one. One gig. I'll get back to the crying. One gig we played, it was with Dallas Symphony Orchestra. I have a clock next to my monitor, and I'm, you know, I'm an accounting guy. So I'm an artist. I'm an accounting guy. I'm watching the clock. I know that the second hand, when it hits a certain thing, they're done.

And I'm watching my clock. I got three more minutes, and I'm playing our last song of the night, and I'm hearing, it's beautiful. And the orchestra's back there. It's beautiful. I'm getting chills because I love playing with an orchestra. All of a sudden, it starts to sound different. Where did all the sound go? And I look around, and the guys are putting their instruments back in their cases. In the middle of the song, the audience is there, and the conductor is going like this to his watch. He's going, and he's a friend of mine, too. I go and I'm looking at my thing. So my clock was wrong. My clock was set wrong, so I didn't screw up. I just went, so anyway. And so, being a professional. So at the end of, I was pissed by this.

So how could you not be pissed?

So pissed off. I said, okay, forget about me. Do it for the audience. So I. The song ended, and then I said to the audience that, hey, you guys, I screwed up. You know, I should know better. I went over time. They told me not to, and I just took the whole heat. And I said, well, since you're still here, can we play a couple songs for you without the orchestra? So that's what reminded me of that. So in Seattle, I had the song that I had written. Beautiful. And it's a very jewish sounding song. And being jewish, I can say that and hopefully not offend anybody. And it's a very jewish song. Song. And it's just. Just. It's this heartfelt melody that you use.

Why would that offend anyone?

Well, you know, seriously, it could. Why are you saying that? You know, what do you think? What is a jewish stereotype? Okay, I know what jewish sounding songs sound like, and this is one of them. And I wrote the song with a melody that's right out of fiddler on the roof. I mean, it's like the violin will tear your heart apart. So I said to the audience, I said, listen, I've never played this song live. I'm never going to play it again. I don't have an orchestra chart, but I have the backing tracks with the beautiful orchestra that I record in the studio. I want to play this. I want to dedicate to my dad. I know he'll be really. I know if he's watching, if that exists, this is going to be really beautiful. I want to do it for my father. I wish he was here tonight. If he was here tonight, I would have done it for him. Can I do that for you? And of course, they said yes. And so I played the song, knowing I'll never, ever play it again. And I started to cry while I was playing it.

So there you go.

That's beautiful. You were retiring it there purposefully. And this may run counter to your belief system, or perhaps you're more logical than this, but did you feel him there?

I did. I did feel him there. I felt him there because we had a very good relationship up until the end, and that's a whole story in itself, but we had a great relationship my whole life. I could talk to him about anything. We had a bond, and he was super cool to me, and I could just remember all of those wonderful moments together and the way that we talked to each other, which was super great. And I did feel him while I was playing it.

Mister, do I overstep by asking you why at the end, it wasn't, the relationship wasn't as great as you would have liked it.

If you're interested, it had to do with the fact that he got. You've heard of elder abuse, elder fraud? You heard of elder fraud? There was somebody in his life where my dad was in 97. I was over at his house one day. We're just talking, and my dad, he loved the word paperwork. I said, dad, what are you doing today? I'm just doing paperwork. Oh, you're doing paperwork. Okay, paperwork. Can I see some of that paperwork? He goes, sure. So I see that he's written a check to somebody. Now, my dad, I have to say 50 years, 60 years, 70 years in the plumbing business. He was a plumbing wholesaler. His grandfather, his father was also a plumber. I know a lot about plumbing, by the way, as well. I can fix sinks and do all sorts of stuff like that. But my dad got rich 5% at a time. His overhead was he would mark up 5%. He was a wholesaler. He would sell, you know, Kohler toilets and stuff. I met Bill Kohler once. I said, bill Kohler? I've known your name my whole life, man. I know about Kohler toilets. My dad.

So my dad became a millionaire. But he was also mo Gorlick. Mo Gorlick does not spend money. I couldn't convince him to spend money. He was so tight with his money. All of a sudden I see he's written a check to somebody for $450,000. What is this, dad? Oh, I'm investing in. And it was this girl. This girl was the daughter of a lady that was taking care of my dad at his house. I said, what are you giving this money to her for? Oh, she's doing this thing with eyeglasses. Uh huh. I said, hey, dad, you know what? Would you let me be. Would you let me be in charge of this investment of yours? Sure, son. That would be great. Okay, I'll take it over. So I start to communicate with her, and I know immediately that she is trying to screw my dad over. So I get a lawyer involved, and in the meantime, he writes her more checks. And so my sister at the time had power of attorney. And I said to my sister, said, you need to let me take over. So I get power of attorney, and I freeze all the bank accounts.

And my dad is livid with me because he thinks that I'm keeping him from this business, and I get the police involved, and it's for sure. And we go to trial, and. But he passed away, sadly, before the trial, and the. And the trial was obvious, and the person was convicted and sent to jail. But my dad, for the last, like, a year and half of his life, hated me because he felt like I was. I took away this business that he wanted to invest in, and I sat in front of him, and while he was so mad at me, I said, dad, I love you. I'm protecting you. You have to trust me. And he just was so brainwashed that it tarnished our relationship at the end. It made me very, very sad about that. But I had to do the right thing. And the right thing was he would not have wanted all of his money, because she would have taken it all. And I managed to save a bunch.

I'm sorry. That sounds horrible.

It was horrible, you know, and I questioned myself at the time, going, wait a minute. Am I missing something here? And I was like, no, I'm not missing the police guy, you know, and the King county in Seattle, the King county prosecutor, they don't take all the cases. They took this case because they felt like this was for real. And then I had to go to trial. I had to go sit on the witness stand, and they'd do the whole thing. And it was then you get cross examined by this by some, you know, mean attorney that's trying to make me look shitty. And it was very interesting, but I held my own. And when the verdict came in, I was very relieved. I looked up and said, hey, dad, you know what? I took care of you. I took care of you, even though you don't know I did, but I did.

Even though you hated me for taking care of you. I did. I loved you the right way. Anyway, you have performed with a ton of people from Aretha Franklin to Kanye. Like, where. Where are the notable ones for you? I'm sure they're all notable, but when have you been performing and been like, holy shit, can you. I can't believe this is happening right now.

Oh, wow. That's God, man. Well, live I did with Whitney Houston, which was a wonderful experience. You know, we were on tour with Whitney Houston in 1987. My song songbird had come out, and I had had success. So I was selling millions of records, and Whitney was selling millions and millions of records. So we were the number one and number two artists on Arista records, and they put us out on tour together. Which was super cool. So we get to now we're playing stadiums. So this is big for me. I'm, I might have played for a couple of thousand people at the time, but not for 25,000. So now, first, gigantic. Whitney's tour manager, Tony. Tony's this big black guy. He's like 280 pounds, six foot something. Big, big guy. He comes to me and goes, listen, man, I know that you go in the audience when you play your shows. Can't do that tonight. Can't do that on this tour. I said, why not? Insurance isn't going to cover it. I said, okay. And also, when Whitney comes out of her dressing room, I don't want to see you or any of you guys in the hallway.

No, no eye contact with Whitney. I said, oh, okay, cool. I went back to the room and I saw my guys. Hey, guys, I want to let you know something. We're going to get fired after tonight's show. So we go out as soon as this downbeat. I'm out. I'm in the audience. I'm in the audience now. This is 25,000. I'm in the rafters playing for people. I'm walking everywhere. I pretty much played the whole show in the audience. Finished the show. Tony's glaring at me when we going to come off stage?

And you just ignored it totally.

And then I said, guys, whitney's about to come out of her dressing room. Everybody out in the hallway, let's wish her a great show. She comes out of the thing. What are you doing?

You're just a rebel.

I am. And Whitney's got two guys on her elbows, you know, basically carrying her down the stairs. I say, whitney, we warmed them up for you. Have a great show. So happy to be on tour with you. Go get him, Whitney. And then Tony's just like. And so then he goes on stage, he calls me into his office, and then he starts yelling at me and chewing me out and yell at me. I said, okay, tony, here, look at here. I want you to do this. You call Clive Davis, let him know that the number one in two artists can't possibly do a tour together because you won't let me go in the audience. So you let him know that why you're firing me and then let me know.

Gangster move by you just bullying poor Tony.

I did. And I said, let me know by the end of the night whether we should show up for tomorrow or not because we're ready to go home. And then he, and then he sends somebody, he goes, it's cool. It's cool. You're fine.

You, you were. You can say now that you were insulted by the idea. Don't look her in the eye. Come on.

I'm insult. You know what? I'm insulted. Listen, I don't. This. This is how I am with my music. It's been just like that. Same thing on Johnny Carson when they booked me in 1985 or 86 to play. This was my big break. And we had a vocal song that the record company was pushing at the time called what does it take to win your love? A junior Walker song. And the only reason I did it was because it had a big sack solo in it. And that was the whole philosophy, Kenny, you know, you can't just do instrumental music. I'm going, why? I'm an instrumentalist. Did anybody notice? No, no, no. We got to do vocals, do the sax solo. They'll be attracted to the vocal, you'll get your success and then they'll find out you're a sax player. I go, I hate that philosophy. But okay, so we do this song and it becomes kind of a hit. And Johnny Carson, they get booked on it and they say, okay, you can do two songs. You got to do your single. And then when he's going off the air at like one in the morning, I don't care what you play.

I say, well, I'm going to play my song songbird. We don't care. We don't even care what it's called. Okay, good. So then that knock on the door, hey, Johnny's running late, do the single. Okay, sure, sure. Gotcha. And I know it's a live show. It's a live show. Curtain goes up. I looked at my guys hit songbird, boom. We play songbird on national tv. And the guy that booked me is freaking livid. And I've never been on tv before, so I don't even know what to expect. I get out there, all I see is cameras and black space and the guy giving me the finger, giving me the finger and he's like this and he goes, fuck you, this and this and all this stuff. And I'm playing my little song with da da da da da. I'm playing my beautiful song at the same time thinking, oh, this guy's really pissed.

I didn't know you were such a rebel. Where'd this rebel streak come from?

It's always been that way when it comes to my music. Always? Well, not always. It came that way after a couple of albums. And then I just decided that I have to do it my way. So that's. That's what happened that way. And so that. Because of that thing on Johnny Carson, that's why songbird became a hit. That's why. Because that's why everything kind of happened because of that moment. So when I did that.

Because you rebelled in protection of your music.

That's correct. I wanted to play the song that I wanted to play that that was gonna show off what I do, not. Not a vocal song that the record company was gonna promote, and maybe it was gonna become a bigger hit. That song, songbird became such a hit because of that. And then, you know, everybody decided, oh, you can. We're going to put out instrumentals now. I said, good idea. Glad you figured that out. And then from then on, it's like I say no when I don't want to do something. And so the same thing with whitney. But finally, on the Whitney Houston tour, by the way, I had played a solo on a record, and I'm thinking every night, all sitting with whitney, and I said to the guys, hey, you're doing the song. That song called for the love of you, an Isley Brothers song, dum. But I played that solo. I said, let me do it. Okay. Sure. Didn't happen. 50 shows later didn't happen. Now they have a good sax player. But, you know, I played the solo. It's not me. Finally, we get to Madison Square garden, and of course, clive's coming that night.

And miraculously, Kenny, we want you to sit in tonight. I said, oh, wow, thanks. I'd be glad to. And I didn't give him any shit for it. But I got on stage, and I wasn't prepared for this because you asked me about moving moments. That's why it all comes. All this long story. And I'm on. It's a round. And so Whitney's up there, her band's off of the round, and so it's just Whitney. And I get on stage, and I'm sitting there playing this, and she starts looking at me and singing. I'm going, oh, my God. What? What? Wait. She's staring into my eyes, and she's literally six inches from me.

Don't look her in the eye.

I did, and I melted. And I thought, oh, my God, this is the most amazing experience. And I. And I don't even remember what I played. It was so wonderful. I go, oh, great. We're gonna do this over and over. We never did it again. But I had that moment, so that. That was a moving moment with another artist that I can tell you really special.

I don't know that you're gonna do much better than that, right? I don't know that the weekend or Patti Labelle. I don't know you're gonna. That's the top of the food chain. No knock on anybody else.

It's hard to do. It's hard to mirror that one. I guess one would be that when I sat in with Grover Washington Junior in the eighties, for me, he was my sacs hero. And I sat in with him in a club in Chicago called the Park west and played his famous song, mister Magic. So if any of you listening have no idea what I'm talking about, so check out Grover Washington Junior song, mister Magic. It was a huge instrumental hit. And to play that song with him, note for note, back and forth, that was unbelievably special. And I remember marking in my brain my hotel room that night. I said to myself, remember what you're etching in your brain? And I can remember what the hallway of the whole of the entrance way of my hotel room looked like. And there was a wall. I remember where the bed was because it meant so much to me to do.

You wanted a mental imprint of it to be forever.

Yeah. And it was unbelievable. And the. And I say this with no conceit. When I played with him, I said to myself, I'm his equal. I'm not just a kid playing with guy that was his hero. I am his equal playing with him, and I deserve to be out there with him.

I mean, that's part of the moving, right? Like, to I belong.

Yeah. Shit, yeah, that was cool. I mean, that made me feel. And then I, you know, had that even more confidence. And I say, and I say. I'm saying this not as an ego thing. It's like, you need to know, like, if you're out there doing stuff with the top people, you got to know yet you were. You. You deserve to be there. Like, there was this. Here's another great gig. Clive Davis was being honored at something at radio City music hall, and they asked me to come and play a song with earth, wind and fire. Okay? Like, with earth, wind and fire. And sit in with them and be part of earth, wind and fire, but featured. And I walked out there, and there's Verdean white, and there's Ralph, and there's Philip Bailey. And I'm like. I mean, I'm in high school listening to you guys, and here I am, and they're going, hey, Kenny. Hey, Kenny. They know my name. I belong here. And I'm going to be the featured artist with earth, wind fire. Come on. And I thought I actually sent some pictures of that to my high school friends. I said, hey, bro.

Hey, you fellas, how about this for your high school friend?

When didn't you belong? Like, a time that you remember being an outsider, it doesn't have to be an individual moment. It can be the time of your life, a time in your life, high school, whenever, whatever was an awkward phase for you.

Well, you know. Well, the first time I tried to make the high school jazz band, I didn't make it. I wasn't good enough. So I guess I kind of felt that way. But, you know, that never bothered me. I just get motivated. It's like, oh, these guys are better than me. Oh, I got to practice more. Okay, I'll do that. And the next year, I came back. I kicked everyone's ass. I was better than everybody. It's like, so I don't. I don't wallow in not feeling welcome. If I'm not welcome, I just turn around and go in the different direction.

Just like Michael Jordan being cut from his high school basketball team. That's what you did. You showed them.

Yeah, that's right. And when I listen to his interviews or Tiger woods or these guys, like, you guys are talking my story in my own way. I mean, I know I'm not an athlete like you guys, but it's the same thing as, like, okay, I'm gonna work really hard. I'm wired to get good at the saxophone, but I'm not gonna get great at it unless I put the time in. Like, they were wired to be great athletes, obviously, with golf and basketball. But if they didn't practice, they weren't gonna be the best in the world.

I've always admired on our show, and I'm pretty sure I could admit this to you now because I wouldn't be alone in this the first time that we had you on because I wasn't familiar enough with your music. You can be someone that's easy to poke at if you don't know anything. You've always been somebody who's been very strong in the face of criticism. It's almost something that. It doesn't seem to bother you very much. I don't know when it is that that started for you or how it is that you got there, but it's an amazing strength and amazing gift.

I agree. I agree. It is a good strength to have because, well, you have to know what you're capable of doing or what you do? So when I first came out, I played. I can give you a perfect example of how much nonsense the critics can be. Okay. So we played. Somewhere in Saratoga was a jazz festival. My song was, was big. So we were headlining and they had sold more tickets than they ever sold at this jazz festival. And I'm saying, I'm not saying it was because of me, but I'm not saying it wasn't because of me. Okay. So Dizzy Gillespie was on the two, on the thing. And there were a lot of jazz greats, like greats. But I was the headliner because of the success. And I'm not saying that I was better. I'm just saying that.

Okay, well, you were more successful.

I was more successful. It's quantifiable. So we were there playing and I checked out Dizzy's set and we played great. And we got a fantastic review from whatever the critics name was. Fresh music. Wow, what a powerhouse. And these virtuoso and blah, blah, blah. Cool. Next year we came back 6 million albums later having sold, come back, sold out again. Play the set pretty much kind of the same set because we got the same music out there. The same set in a jazz set means that you're basically playing the same outline but then you're still improvising and stuff. We played great that night. I would say I played better because I probably had about maybe a thousand more hours of sex practicing because let's say 3 hours a day times 365 days. So 1200 more hours of practicing. I'm going to be better than I was a year ago. And I was. And the review comes out so commercial, full of fluff, no substance to his music. You were the same guy that told me how fresh I was. Oh, I forgot. I sold all those records. So that's why. So that's what happens when you get these bad reviews.

You sell a lot of records and you can get bad reviews or somebody can hear your melody and think, ah, that's gonna put everybody to sleep. So then they make a comment like, well, we don't need novocaine in the dentist's office. Just put on Kenny's music, they'll put him to sleep. It's like, okay, that's kind of funny. I'll take that. Or they'll make fun of me.

It's just ignorance about not really understanding the depths or the expertise of what it is that you do.

Exactly. It's like you may not like the framework of what I do, but listen beyond that, how's the tone? How's the technique, how's the timing? How's the nuance of how I'm doing this? They don't think that they're just going, oh, that song's too simple. It's selling a lot of records. He's nothing. Okay, what's harder? What's harder? Playing a melody that makes people cry or playing 500 notes a minute? I'm not saying one is harder, but one is certainly not easier. You know, that's not easier. What I do, it's just a thing that I have that's God given. If you want to say whatever it is. It's like if I hear a melody that sounds good to my heart, the world seems to like it. So that's lucky for me, because I could have easily made my music, which I would do the same, and people could have listened to it and gone, no, we don't like that. That doesn't sound good to me at all. And I would have still kept making the same music.

I remember watching something on television. My guitar gently weeps. A bunch of Tom Petty's band members were playing, and Prince came out and just sort of blew everyone on the stage away in a way that made everyone on the stage watch how he was playing the guitar and be like, okay, that's better than what we do. And you could see the sort of lights come over their face. Have you ever been, when you say you belong, you feel like you belong? And you're not saying it with ego, with the dizzy gillespies of the world. Have you ever been in the presence of music where you've even. You have had to stand back and be like, oh, that, that person is blowing me away right now with what it is, with their level of expertise there that I am now a fan. It could be what Whitney Houston, you know, Whitney Houston singing into your eyes would certainly do something like that.

Well, yes, yes, I can say it for sure. You know, there's, there's amazing musicians in the world. For example, a friend of mine, a chinese piano player named Long Long, or we would say lang Lang, but it's really pronounced long long. So look him up, folks. He's amazing. That guy is unbelievable. So when I watch him play, I'm blown away. There was a sax player who's not alive today named Michael Brecker. When I watched him play, he would blow me away. Like, his technique was unbelievable, how his technique is. So there's. Yeah, there's players now that you look at and go, but it's just certain things. It's not like the whole thing like, I don't want to be another sax player, but there are sax players that can play other things that I can't play as well, and I can do things that they can't do as well. So we just kind of. You find your, you find your, your voice. And that's what I would say if anybody, you know, asks me, like, what, what direction to go, and it's like, do the direction that you are moved. But the problem, here's the problem today.

The problem today, and we were talking about when I asked you about where you felt like you were slowing down because of the, these phones and all the stuff that goes on. But there's a problem, I think, with all this stuff, and that is that. And I know it from my music world. Say somebody's trying to become a good sax player, well, they can just look everybody up. Now. I never had that chance. I didn't even know anything about anything. I was in my room practicing. Okay, I'm just gonna practice.

Would have been so much easier if you had that information, right? If you could learn from others that way.

It would have been easier in some ways, but it would have taken away my voice because I just developed my own thing in the vacuum of my own little space.

Self teaching.

Yeah, we didn't have. Well, there was no phones, no computers, there was no Internet, so I couldn't look up. Hey, what's. Who are the great sax players in the world? I just had to go to the record store and look in the jazz department. Oh, who's this guy? Oh, listen to him. Oh, I like some of that stuff. And there was only a few. So the problem is that today people are looking and they're seeing all the same stuff, so they're learning the same thing and they all sound the same, even though they're virtuosos, they kind of sound the same.

That's the death of heart right there.

Well, you can look at, you know, you can almost look at golfers in the same way. Not, this isn't a great analogy, but if you think about it, Tiger woods comes along and he's now in the fitness, and he's doing this thing and he's putting in and. Okay, so he's the first one that kind of did that. Now everybody does that. And you have a lot of golfers that are, like, super buffed, super strong, hit the ball perfectly. But maybe they're not working the ball in the same way with the same kind of finesse of the guy that figured out how to do that on his own, rather than just watching somebody and just knowing it can happen. It's like you got to develop your thing, not knowing where it's going to go, not knowing that there's an end result, hoping and thinking that you're doing the right things, and there's something in there, there's magic in there of discovering it and making it yourself and carving out yourself. And then somebody else looks at it and goes, oh, I didn't know Sachs could do that. Now I know. And then they just take it and go, sure, okay.

But there's going to be a limit to where you can go with that unless you find something in yourself.

I should tell the people that you can pre order his memoir, life in the key of g. It is out September 24. You could go to kennyg.com for tourism dates and tickets. He's got a new album, innocence. It's out now, and you can see him on tour. But the memoir, why? It's available wherever books are sold, and you can go to Barnes and noble online for signed copies. Why did you do this? Why did you decide? You seem to be taking some inventory of your life. You did a documentary on Max, and now you've decided to write a book. Why?

You know, honestly, my management suggested it, and I was thinking, I'm too young. And then they said, no, you're not. I'm thinking, oh, I guess I'm not. I feel young. I always look young.

You look young.

Well, thanks. Thanks. I still feel like I'm too young for this, but they convinced me that it's not a thing that you do when you're retiring. I thought, okay, when I'm all done, I'll write something, maybe. And also, I'm thinking, who's going to be interested in my story? Like, not everybody wants to play the saxophone. And they go, well, it's not really about that. It's a whole thing about your success and where you came from. And I said, okay, why don't we just kind of start and see if it starts, if it kind of comes into anything. So I started the process, and it started to be cool. Like, I read a few pages of what we had written, and it's like, oh, this actually is going to be pretty cool. And I think I tried to write it funny. I try to make it funny because I think I'm funny.

I think I am writing. Writing funny is the hardest kind of writing.

It's very hard to write funny. And it's easier for me to make.

Someone cry with my writing than it is to make them laugh. Seriously?

Yeah. Yeah. And that's not easy. And I had to laugh, and I'm not an easy one to laugh. So when I read it, if it's not written exactly right, words make a huge difference, the order of the words.

And you just seem to want order. You like to look at things and see what you define as order.

Yeah. Well, I can tell you the first line of the book. The first sentence is, I like jokes. That's the first line in the book. So you wouldn't expect that. But you open the book, the first line is, I like jokes. That's the first line.

It's like, what is that? M. Scott Peck's self help book of life is hard. Yours is, I like jokes. You're going a little more simple there. So that your management team asked you to do it. Was it, was there anything that was hard for you to cover or were you trying to make it a book that was light?

No, no, I wasn't trying to make a book that was light. When I say funny, I just mean that. I just want to make, make it funny. That doesn't mean it's light, just means that there's, there's, it's like, it's like when you're hanging out with him with a really good comedian. Like, George Lopez is a very good friend of mine.

You have a lot of comedian friends.

I do. I do have a lot of comedian friends. Ray Romano is a very good friend of mine. And those guys have this skill that we mortals don't have whenever they want to. They can make you laugh. You can be having a serious conversation about life's journeys, and they can just look at you and say something and you will laugh. So that's what I wanted. Not that I'm in their league, but I wanted to do that with my book, which means we're going to cover serious subjects. I'm going to talk about this, but whenever I want to, I want to throw in a line that's going to make you laugh. So that's what I mean by making it. I don't mean that it's light, but it was hard. It was really hard because I would read it and I go, I don't like the way, I don't like the way the words sound together. It doesn't sound like something I would actually say. And then, so working that out is hard. And then when I write it the way I want it to say, it sounds boring. So I have to find this fine line of making it sound maybe better than what I'd actually say out loud, but not untrue to who I am and what I would say.

So that's really hard. It was very hard, but I think we did a really good job on it.

You're talking hard, though. You're talking about the technical aspects of it. Was there anything hard in revisiting emotional aspects of it? Like how personal did you get?

I got very personal. I got personal when there's a part of the book where I got fired off of Arista records after 25 years. And that really hurt and I had to. And I looked at that situation and took ownership of why that happened. And it wasn't necessarily anyone's. It wasn't like I couldn't point my fingers and go, oh, the record company just screwed me over and fired me. I had to take responsibility for why. All of a sudden, after 25 years and 75 million records, me and Clive Davis got a divorce. Why did that have to happen? And I looked at it and went, oh, okay. I could have done some things better in that time. And I talk about what happened there in that way.

What could you have done better? Not to spoil anything, but what could you have done better?

Well, I let my manager do the talking for me at the time, and I didn't talk to Clive personally straight on. And if I would have done that, I know we would have talked and had the information exchange that was necessary to keep everything going. And it was a mistake for me to leave Arista records. That was a mistake. If I could go back and change it. You know how you say, oh, everything happened for a reason? I wish that I would have done that differently. Changing record companies was not good for my career. It was not the right move. And yet it happened. And I'm remorseful of it. But I'll tell you what, I did see Clive years later, let's say maybe, I don't know, three, four, five years ago, whatever, and I went to lunch with him and I said, clive, what happened? And then we talked about it. And that's when I found out that it would have changed if I would have just had the conversation with them.

It hurts to know.

Yeah, it hurts. All I needed to do was call you directly. I thought, my man, I thought we were, you know. And I'm not blaming management either. It was just the way it went, because I'm sure management was talking to maybe somebody a little underneath Clive, and they were having issues. It all came down to money. It came down to money. And I did not. I personally did not put that out there. That it has to do with money. I was just. It really was. I wanted to make an album of original material. Clive said no, he wanted it to be cover tunes. I felt like we'd done enough of those and that my original material is the reason we're here. Ladies and gentlemen, did you forget that all the songs that are the most popular ones that I wrote? Yeah, but you can't do that anymore. That time has passed for you. I don't agree, Clive. And I said I stood fast on I want to do original material, but it turned out it really wasn't all about that. And I didn't know that. That hurts me.

Do you have many other regrets? Things that you would articulate as regret?

No, not many, no. Because most of those are learning experiences. Oh, I learned a little bit from this, but I could have learned the same stuff with. And stayed with Clive. I mean, we were. It's like family. I'm like. And every time I see him, he always says, kenny, you're like family. And I go. And I'm thinking, like, well, I wish we would have just stayed together. But it never. And we couldn't get. And even after I said I wanted to go back and like, come on, let's figure it out. When it never worked out for some reason.

Is there anything about the life that makes love hard or marriage hard or relationships hard?

About my life? You mean the life I lead?

The life? The life. The life, all of it. That you're obsessive compulsive about practicing or that you're on the road all the time or whatever it is that might. Or that you love this thing more than you love anyone.

Well, those are all true statements, I think. Well, you know. Yeah, it can make it hard if you don't have good communication skills and you don't talk about things. So it can be, you know, if you go on the road and you don't communicate, sure, you're gonna go separate ways, you're gonna lose your connection. But I found it to be fine, you know, in terms of, you be around the people that understand, like the people in my life understand. When I wake up in the morning, I am going to practice for 3 hours. Everybody knows that. Nobody is saying, why do you have to practice this morning? I never hear that because it's not even in the cards. So I get my practicing and fine. And that's fine. Everybody knows that if I'm going on a vacation, everybody knows that at some point in the day at the hotel, I'm going to be going to the manager of the hotel saying, I need a room to practice. I can do it in my hotel room, but I don't think the neighbors are going to love hearing those exercises. Oh, well, we have a little ball, a boardroom.

I want to book that from twelve to three. You got it. And then I do that. And then that's what happens when I go on vacation, you know, and I'm happy, and I'm happy to do it. So that's what happens.

It's sort of like I've got a friend who is about 60, has very bad knees, but needs to run 8 miles every day, no matter what.

Wow, 8 miles. Yeah.

He's just a runner. And that's the thing. It's who he is, and he needs to do it all the time. It's not optional to you. Like, the calling comes in the morning. It is a siren, and you've got to go do it. And you feel withdrawal if you do not.

I do. And what about you? Do you have anything like that for.

You, I would just say work in general, just like the making of things is a bit of a compulsion that I don't like that. My wife says I'm a workaholic. I don't identify as a workaholic, but I think I'm lying to myself because I'm just often thinking about work in a way that I enjoy work. It's not unlike what you do if you find something. I think that many of the people in the world who are unhappy are marching to do something every day that they're spending a third of their day doing that they don't totally love.

And I would agree with that.

It's not great to keep you in a grateful, happier place. It makes life a good deal harder. I would say the popularity of our show is, at least in part, because we're keeping people company at jobs they don't like, and they spend three and 4 hours with us a day, and we make something just move a little faster for them.

I think that's a great way to look at it. I like that you're a workaholic, and I don't find that to be any kind of a criticism. Obviously, your wife knows that. I mean, when you. I know you recently got married, like, in the last bit of time, so you were already established, you already had a lifestyle, so she knows I had her.

Our first week of dating was a whirlwind of, you know, just parties. I was on vacation. I just made sure to tell her, this is not what it is. Oh, just know that it's not going to be this swirling helicopter ride of just pinballing all over Miami to the best places. Like, I'm going to retreat back into myself a little bit here, but you're getting something on the front end. That is quite the fireworks show. That is not. It's not generally where I live.

That's good that you say that, because what happens is the truth always comes out of who a person is and what they do. So you can put on your best face at the beginning of any kind of a courtship, but at the end of the day, you're gonna whatever you are and whatever you think and whatever you feel, and it's gonna come out, and then the other person's gonna go, wait a minute. You tricked me. You don't want to trick anybody.

That'll unravel over time.

No, I'm on the road this many times. I practice all the time. This is what I am. And if you know that and you still want to be with me, then great. Don't. Don't. Don't think it's gonna all change.

What's the difference between performing live and studio work in terms of what it is that it feeds you?

I love to perform live, and I do not like the studio. Don't like it? Nope, I don't.

Antiseptic.

I accept it.

No, I'm sorry. Antiseptic. Too antiseptic. You're not getting.

Oh, antiseptic. Oh, no, not at all. No, it's not that. Here's what it is. It's like what we're doing right now. Okay? We're recording something. Okay. It's permanent, so I would. Fortunately, it's your show. I don't have to worry so much. I'm still a little worried, by the way. Not a lot, but a little bit.

I appreciate your trust, and also, we will work hard to meet your standard.

No, I mean, in a perfect world, if I could have my way. Once we're done with this, you're gonna send it to me. I'm gonna. I am gonna edit it for content and viewer discretion.

Are you a bit of a control freak? You like?

I don't think so. I just wanna be in charge of every bit of everything that I do, so. I wouldn't say that.

So what is it like? What is it about you that what you think you. You think you can do it? You're confident in yourself and you can think. You think you want to make things better, you want to make yourself better, and you want to make things better.

I do. And I feel like if I took the show home, I would edit it and I would get the right questions in the right order. And if I didn't like my answer, I'd edit it and I'd do a voiceover. And I cut to, like, I cut to Matt while I changed my.

Are there any answers that you remember? You want me to re ask any questions now? And we'll just leave the question on that answer and so people can see what the better answer was to a question.

No, I'm worried about what I played. When you're opening thing with the sax I played. I'm worried about that. So fortunately, Matt has agreed to send that to me. And, folks, since you didn't see me and you hadn't seen my fingers moving, I may record a whole new intro from the comforts of my studio with my beautiful reverb. And it's going to sound so beautiful rather than what I played here. I don't know. I have to see.

But you were saying I wanted to get into the studio parts of it. It's just not. It doesn't feel the same to you?

Well, the problem is that it's permanent. Okay. I record and I know I'm good, of course. And I play and I listen back and it sounds good, and I go, okay, I don't like that note. I like that note. I can't hear this over and over for the rest of my life. Ugh. Okay, here we go. So it's. Now it's tweaking, tweaking, tweaking, tweaking. And then I listen down I go. I love everything except that. Tweak, tweak, fix that. Well, now that I fix that makes this other thing sound. Now let's fix that. So what happens is I have to go through a song 60, 70 times or so to listen back to where I go. Nothing bothered me. Okay, I'm done. I don't like doing that. It's hard on me because it'd be like looking yourself in the mirror in the morning, and let's just say you had the options with your tools to, like, I don't know, fix your face a little bit.

Fix the things you don't like.

Yeah, fix things you don't like. Like maybe your eyebrow. And then you, oh, I took too much off. Let me put. And you just sit there. I'd sit there for hours until I figured I had the face that I thought I wanted. And then you come back the next day and you go, oh, I don't like much of the stuff I did, even though I thought that was great. So it's a lot of work. That's what I don't like about the studio.

That's what I don't like about writing. It's very lonely, but it sounds. There's a piece of you that does like the craft of sculpting. Right? Just the general craft of sculpting.

I like making the. I like creating the music. I like creating the melody, but then recording it and having it. Okay, now you're going to have a concrete thing that represents what I've hear in my brain. So when I play live, I'm feeling. When I'm feeling it's there, it's out there, and I feel like it was. So I don't want to watch a live performance. Back to me. Hey, you want to see how you did last night? Nope. No, no. Don't show me. I have a memory of it, that it was great. I'm going to keep that. Like, if I play on shows, like, if I do whatever performance on some of the late shows and whatever I play a song, I really have to force myself to not, I mean, I have to force myself to watch it. Like, sometimes I go, I should just watch it just because maybe I'll learn. I don't want to falsely think I did great, then I'll just watch it. I'll be like this when I'm watching it on tv going, okay, that was pretty good, actually. I actually, okay. And I go, so relieved because it could just be one little note.

One little note that. A little out of tune. And maybe it's not really out of tune, maybe just sounds out of tune to me. So that's how I'm.

A lot of actors and comedians I've talked to who are wildly successful can't watch their stuff back because they're just noticing the things that they did wrong. They want to be better. I do some of that with what we do every day where if I go home and my wife will ask me how to go and it will otherwise have been great, I'll tell her the things that didn't feel good.

And will you fix those or that were wrong?

I will try to. Yes, I'll try. But I've said before on here that I do have some struggles with just generally in the moment, immediately processing failure as learning, like doing the gentle stuff so that it's not failure, so that it feels like, oh, I could just be grateful for that. Like, you seem to have a very healthy relationship with practice and improvement that. That you have refined over many, many thousands of hours.

Well, you know. Yes. And it does help to not think that of it as a failure. It feels. You feel like you're learning something. I mean, I would tell you you're great. I can give you feedback. You're great at what you do. I think your show is amazing.

Thank you, sir.

And you're very charismatic. And the way that you ask questions and the way that you talk is captivating. I can just tell you that. And I'm just objectively saying. I'm not saying that because I'm sitting next to you. So if you feel like you failed, I would look at you and I would go, I don't see anything wrong, but, you know, what you want to do or what you could have done better in your brain.

Oh, but the reason. I mean, I have this conversation with my most successful friends who sometimes ravage themselves.

Yeah.

I say to them, well, if everyone ravaged themselves with that kind of standard, then you wouldn't be allowed to be you.

Exactly.

Everybody would be you, because it's one of the things that makes you excellent, that you were bad for a year and you decided to kick everybody's ass, and you came back the next year and you were better than everybody because that's how you got to be who you are.

Yes, but that's true. But in this. In the. What's the word? In the journey of it all, you do certain things at certain points that are really good, like this good to maybe beat yourself up at the beginning, maybe a little bit, and work, really. But as you get more and more and more, then you got to change. You got to change your technique. So I would say at your level, you probably don't want to look at it as failure. You can look at it as learning. I can do the same thing. Maybe earlier on, maybe you might want to. You could look at it that way. But whatever techniques that you use along the way are not necessarily ones you want to stay with. You got to keep molding and keep getting better, keep massaging the way that you think about what you do. And, you know, like, the way I practice isn't the way I practiced earlier on. I practiced way differently. And so if I practiced the way I did before, maybe it wouldn't be as good for me now. So you got to keep moving along.

I want you to think for a second about the question that I'm asking you. And it doesn't have to be gifts, the way that one would define material gifts. What are the five best gifts that your life has gotten because of this instrument?

Wow. Okay, let's see. Well, I guess one would be the fact that I get a lot of amazing feedback from people wherever I go and not people I know. So airports, that would be the place where I would be around the public. I don't have a private jet, so I'm not secluded like that. So I'm in the airports, and at airports, I'm basically at. I'm a sitting duck, and I know that, so I'm not there going with sunglasses on and, you know, a wig.

You like it?

I don't like. No, I don't like it.

You don't like the feedback?

No, I like. I'm saying I like. I don't necessarily like the fact that people are coming up to me all the time in that sense, but what they say to me, I like. You know, your music has meant a lot to me. My father and I listened to it when he was alive. I wish I could take a picture. I've heard your songs my whole life. All those things are really beautiful. So that's a big gift.

All right, so gift number one, the saxes provided is by the cinnabon in terminal d. Number two.

Yeah. Number two would be the fact that this might sound ego ish, but the fact that people that I would look up to know me like, I'll give you an example. I did something with Morgan Freeman the other day. Morgan Freeman. I mean, come on. And hey, Kenny, it's like, okay, wow. I'm just walking up to you to say hi for the first time and you know my name. That's pretty.

Yeah. People you respect, people you admire, return it. It's a nice mirror.

That's a nice feeling to have. Like, wow, I've. I've earned the. Earned that. I've earned that. I'll just leave it in there.

Mutual respect. Ego soaked music. Ego soaked mutual respect of famous people.

Okay. Right? Yeah, there they go.

I could have said that better, number.

Yeah, you could have said that better.

Number three. Now I'll take that one home.

Yeah, that was edit. Yeah, but that's fair enough. That's fair enough. Because in some ways it's like, well, why does it matter that somebody like Morgan Freeman know you, knows you and not just somebody else? Why would that be more important? Well, you. You know why?

Because they're famous, Kenny.

Not because they're famous. Because there's, you figure that their lives are so busy and they're doing so many important things that if you're in their radar. That must mean something.

Oh, but no, the two that you mentioned, the idea that art created by you from nothing would traverse the world and imprint both important people and not important people. I mean, we don't make the art and put it in a drawer. That's true. You're doing something so that people can hear it, be moved by it, be touched by it. So those are two good answers.

That's two good answers. I think the third would be the fact that this instrument has allowed me to have a lifestyle of the fact that when I live my day by day, I get to practice this instrument, which is what I love to do. So it's something I love to do. I get to do it, and then I have the whole day when I'm not on the road to do what I love to do, which is? Which is exercise. So I get to do my practicing, my exercising, and that's pretty much my life.

The life you want. That instrument has given you the freedom to have the life of your choosing.

That's right. So that you could say, well, financially, that's allowed me to just do those things, and I don't have to worry that I'm not going to be able to afford the lifestyle that I have or pay my bills. So that's really, really great. The traveling has been another big plus. I get to see the world. I'm very proud of saying to people, oh, I've been there, I've been there, I've been there, I've been there. And also seeing the world is a big education. It's a big education to watch how the Japanese do stuff. I go to Japan all the time. I think I've been to Japan almost a hundred times since the eighties, because I go there a few times a year, and I've been doing this for 40 plus years. And to watch certain things that the way they do their things there, it's like, okay, that's really cool. I'm learning from that. And then you come back to the states and you implement some things in your lifestyle. And I would have not known how to do that had I not traveled to this country or that country.

Have you been in China when they're playing the closing time?

Yeah, I have. Yeah, I heard it when I was almost, I heard on a golf course when I went to the bathroom just peeing and I hear my song, I said, oh, I better quickly finish up and get out of here.

I love that you did the visual aid there for peeing.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I should wait, are you seeing this?

Oh, sure. You're really clutching that Kenny P with both hands.

Speaking of. Speaking of, since we're going down in that direction. The first time I was ever in Malaysia, which I think was in mid eighties, so now we. Everybody knows about these fancy toilets, the bidet toilets.

Everybody knows they're magical, magical warm delights.

That's a beautiful thing in the life if you haven't listen. And they're not super expensive anymore. I know Kohler makes some cheaper ones. Toto is very expensive, by the way, if you.

I did not have the sponsor getting the most attention in this particular pod being toilets. There's something special about that.

I know I don't get anything from any of this, but I was there and I. In the hotel room, and there was this toilet and it had some fancy stuff attached, some gadgets. I go, what the heck is this thing? And so I leaned over and I started pushing buttons and immediately got sprayed in the face by the water. And then I looked, it's like I looked in the, like, you know how you say, I looked into the camera and I went, hey. And I went, hey. So then I sit down on there to really experience it. And I would say like maybe 2 hours later, I got up.

Okay, so number four. Okay. Hot water up the ass. Number five. I don't know, choose one here. That's not quite material. Choose something that the sacks has brought you. And you did, you did make choices, seeing the world find, you know, freedom. But I would imagine that you have personality traits that are, I would imagine your confidence.

I see what you mean. Okay.

Wherever it is that it resides, must this, this must be an instrument for your confidence.

I see. Okay.

If you're identifying, and I'm not giving you that as an answer, but I'm looking for just something that you're appreciative or have gratitude about that this has given you that perhaps somebody hadn't considered, because it's just made your life better.

I see what you mean. Okay. No, that's a good way of looking at it. And I don't think about. I don't think like that so much, but now that you bring it up, I can think about it that way. So when you get really good at something, so the saxophone and, you know, I've gotten feedback from the world that, yeah, you're, you're good, you know, so I get that. So you, you do develop a certain sense that when you're really good at something, you can carry that with you as you walk around the world. So it does give me a. It does give me peace of mind when I'm, let's say, not great at something, or something's not going my way, or a flight gets canceled or a gig is not selling well, or somebody gives me some information that's bad news, or somebody says, hey, you suck, or I hate you or something. I go, oh, okay, I have this. I don't let that. It's like having armor in some way, like personal armor, to protect me from having to maybe feel really bad. I actually don't mind feeling bad about something either. It's a hard question.

That's a really hard question. I don't know how to answer it.

Is there anything bad about it? Is there anything. Is the saxophone brought anything bad into your life?

Nothing. Nothing bad? No, it's all good. It's, you know, being able to make music is, you know, just having that feeling of making music is really wonderful because, like. Yeah, sometimes think, well, okay, where did that come from? Why did I choose to play those notes? Why do I think that sounds good?

I have no idea what would happen if that instrument were broken or stolen or something. This one, the one that you've had since high school, the one like, what's the emotional attachment to it?

Just look what I'm doing right now. It can't. That can't happen. There's things, certain things that can't happen. Yeah. So I can't. There's no answer to that because that cannot happen. It's like flying an airplane. Well, what would happen if you crash into the mountain? No, that's not going to happen. We're just not going to crash into the mountain. This is not going to get broken. It's not going to get stolen. I doing everything. Is it possible that it could? I guess it is possible.

No, no, but it's an emotion. You have an absolute emotional attachment to this one.

That's correct. Okay, so this. This saxophone was born on March 17, 1959. And I know that because when I was in Paris, as you know, I'm on my quest to learn French. So I spend a lot of time in Paris these days, months and months of the year now. And so I went to the place that this is a french saxophone, and it was made, and I took it back to its home. I said, okay, come back home. Where? When was this fax made? So now they on the computer. The computer doesn't go back that far. So the guy goes up into the attic, he pulls out a book, literally blows the dust off. Page, page, page, page looks at his, finds the serial number. March 17, 1959.

You know, so two years after you were born.

Yes, a few years after.

65 years old.

65 years old. And I said, serial number. So now I look at the other saxophones that were made on that same day. You know, it's got to be. Got to be the same, right? So I remember seeing a saxophone in LA at a repair shop, and I noticed because it was in the case that this originally came in, which was a green rubber case. I said, what's in that green rubber case? Oh, somebody's getting their soprano sax fixed. Let me see. Let me see it. Opened it up. I look at the serial number. It's two off from this. So this is serial numbers. 81,612. It was 81,610. Oh, my God. Let me play it. First of all, I didn't like it because it smelled like smoke, so he was a smoker. I go, ah, shit. I want to play the saxophone. But anyway, this guy let me put my mouth, play that. I go, it doesn't sound anything like my saxophone. So that's how precious it is. That's how precious to find another one like this. I would be. I would be lost. I would be lost. It'd be like being married to somebody for, like, 65 years, and then they pass away.

And now you're left to live your life without that person you've been with your whole life. What do you do? Will I recover? I would recover. Would I find another saxophone? Yes. Would I figure out how to make it sound beautiful? Yes, but it would be a really big loss in my life that I would. It would never be filled. That hole would never be filled.

Have you ever played a show with. Not this saxophone.

One recently, in the last year. Okay, so I'm doing a sound check. No. Even before the soundcheck, I'm practicing back in my room. I haven't. So, blah, blah, blah. All of a sudden, it's not playing. What's happened? What happened? So look at it, folks, okay? There's a million things on here. There's little springs inside here. So first I had to figure out what. Okay, a spring broke. Okay, usually if a spring broke, you might be able to put a rubber band. No, not this one. So then I took a picture of it and sent it to my repair guy who lives in LA. His name is Jay. He's the best.

He's important.

He's very important. And he's a great sax player, too. I said, jay, can I fix this by myself? No, you need a sax repair guy to fix it, and it was 05:00 in the afternoon. Now, I have another saxophone that I found in Spain. Some guy brought a soprano sax to this press conference I was doing when I was playing in Spain. And he goes, I want you to see this. And I played it. It's like, oh, that sounds really close to mine. It's like a brother. I said, I want to buy it from you. So he let me buy it. So I have it, and it's actually silver, not brass. So it's made and it exists. It's on the road. So I had to grab it, and I had to play it that night for my gig. And it played completely different. All the nuances of this saxophone. For example, like, if you look at the saxophone, I don't know if you can see this, Dan, but it's, it's kind of, it's got a little bit of a bow in it, which is not how it was made. It's because it was in a case in, in the early years, and it was probably dropped.

Not before, not since I got it.

And it's. You've. No, no, it's never been dropped.

Never.

You have never dropped it?

No. No. Okay.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you.

Now, have you, have you ever driven your car and crashed it into a cement wall on purpose? No. There's things you just don't do, but it had the bend in it, so there's something about the saxophone. And so, yeah, there you go. And so I have played one show with it, and in some ways, the other sax had things that it did that I loved, and in a lot of ways it was, but it was pretty good. And the cool thing was it took the guys in my band a minute to figure out that I wasn't playing my saxophone. In fact, one of them said, hey, what's wrong? Is that I go, you noticed, in fact, that they didn't notice from the sound. Made me happy. That was a big no.

Did you feel a bit like you were cheating on a long time wife or something? Was there much discomfort in the hour and a half beforehand? Like, were you a little extra nervous because you didn't have your passive fire?

No, I wasn't. Here's why. Because I knew it could get fixed, so it wasn't permanent, and I was up for the challenge. It's like, okay, this is going to be fun tonight. Hey, fun. You get to try something different. And let's see what you can do with this saxophone. What can this saxophone do that yours can't. And there's certain notes that it would hit that would be clearer and more beautiful than this saxophone. And there's other things that it couldn't do as well. So I said, okay, do those things and see what you can come up with. So I played the gig, and it was like, that would. I actually played a really good show. That. And I remember it, too. I was like, whoa, that was. Good job, bro. Good job. You actually did it without the sax. I thought I'd never be able to play a show without the sax.

I'm going to tell the people again. New album, innocence. It's out now. You can see him on tour. You want to go to kennyg.com for tour dates and tickets? What do you want people to know about innocence? You're still making new work. When you make innocence, what are you going for?

That was a lullaby album. It was to do lullabies, which is kind of redundant, because, in fact, it's funny because a friend of mine who's a writer said that instead of the album being innocence, you should have called it redundant because your songs put people to sleep. Anyway, I said, that's very funny. He goes, can I say that? I said, yeah, yeah, write that. That's funny. So it's like, yeah, lullaby album. But I really wanted to do real lullabies, so I do some of, like, the real classic lullabies, you know, or ra da rai, do my way in beautiful string arrangements. And I think it's beautiful. I don't think it's for babies. I think it's for anybody that wants to relax to beautiful melodies that we've. That we've heard all our lives. And I wanted to do it. It was a challenge. I wrote some original ones that hopefully will be classic lullabies in 100 years. Maybe people will latch onto that. But it's a beautiful album. After listening to this interview, you know that I scratched my head and pulled my hair out to make sure every note was perfect. So there you go.

You can also pre order his memoir, life in the key of g. It's out September 24. It's available wherever books are sold. You can go to Barnes and Noble online for signed copies. I am positive that this has been a delight for our listeners. I know it's been a delight for me.

Wow. But where's my. Where's my buddy?

Stugatz is not here today. He did ask me to tell you that if you want to go see the Grateful Dead with him at the sphere in Vegas, he wanted me to.

Pass along with the invitation?

No, not tonight, I don't. I think he'd like to be there every night, but I think he wants you to go see the Grateful Dead with him at the sphere in Vegas. And he did ask me. I was going to forget to do that, but since you mentioned his. You got his personal record book for me. He did leave it to you. To you, with all of the wisdom that he's accrued over the entirety of his life is in those pages. You could show everybody.

I see. I see.

The first thing he's ever done that doesn't have any misspellings in it. He spelled.

He worked hard on this, didn't he? This is very funny. This is a fake book, right?

It is all his intellect in one place. You can find it all in one place.

Very funny. Oh, man. Yeah. I was looking forward to seeing him as well.

He will be very disappointed that you. That he did not get to see you.

Is there anything that I didn't cover that you wanted to.

If you want to take us out on a song of your choosing, whatever song that is, I don't. I will not tell you. I will not tell the artist what to do. But if there's anything that you want to give our audience at the end, we will take it. We will send it to you, and you can clean it up and edit.

Oh, we're definitely going to clean up and edit. First of all, the reed has got to get wet for a minute, so we need to talk for, like, two minutes. Okay.

That's okay. I'm happy to. I can. What needs to get wet? Explain to me what needs to happen.

There's a reed on here, folks. So, like, here's how a sacs work. So this is a mouthpiece. This piece here. There's a rubber pad on it that I put on there because over the years, my teeth have started to gouge out this mouthpiece, and I'm afraid that over time, I will bite through this precious mouthpiece. So I put a. This is just a bicycle patch. I don't get paid for this either, but it's a tip top bicycle patch, by the way, and on the other side of it is a reed. It's made out of bamboo or cane. And this reed needs to be wet in order to vibrate properly to.

And in order to do that, I have to talk to you so that you can have the kind of saliva that you need in your mouth, or you need me to talk. You need me to filibuster so that you can prepare your mouth for whatever it is that not the mouth.

The mouth is ready. It's the reed. The reed just needs some moisture on it. So now it's soaking it up right now and getting itself ready for. Ready to play. So it's working well enough. So, okay, I guess I'll play a melody of mine called forever in love. I'll play you a little, just a melody of it. And that way, when you send me this, I can edit it and make sure it's perfect. I'm sure this microphone is not going to sound anywhere near as good as the one I. Wait.

They are going to get blown away by how great this sounds. And we're going to pretend that it's just you doing it off the cuff here, and we're not going to get involved with how the magician makes the magic. We're just going to enjoy the magic together. I will tell you that however it is that you felt with Morgan Freeman is similar to what I felt. Having a maestro in our company do that with us, for us. Appreciate your companionship and your help over the years. We have fallen in love with you. You are easy to love. Thank you, Kenny, for spending this time with us.

Ditto on all of that. See you tomorrow.

Yes, sir.