Dan Karlsberg — The Playing Was Never the Problem

Dan Karlsberg has been playing Cincinnati for a long time — CCM (University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music) grad, seven albums, and teaches piano to students from age four to ninety-one. He just released a solo record called Rooms Without Walls, built in late-night sessions, mostly not knowing where it was going. By the second session, he did.

DAN'S NEW ALBUM >>>>

https://dankarlsberg.bandcamp.com/album/rooms-without-walls

Episode Crossword

We talk about what it actually feels like to gig — the driving, the parking, the day-of call you weren't ready for, and the internal voice that tells you mid-performance that you can't do this. We talk about why his gig floor has gone from a hundred dollars to now three or four hundred, why he shifted his income to teaching, and the anxiety he carried for twenty years before he had a name for it.

1:25 Who is Dan Karlsberg — the baseball card 

4:26 Life outside music — exploring, obsessing, Nadia Boulanger & Elvis 

7:04 Rooms Without Walls — making a solo piano record 

17:32 The gigging landscape — when the playing isn't the hard part 

19:04 Gigging rates flat since 1980 — the economics of working musicians 

22:01 My biggest challenge is myself 

26:03 Panic attacks, therapy, and finally understanding himself 

27:32 Teaching ages 4 to 91 — playing without hurting yourself 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

MoneyGigs is supported by trifloral.com, T R Y F L O R A L dot com forward slash the MoneyGigs to get your discount. Trifloral produces THD beverages. They come in 2.55 and 10 milligram varieties in all sorts of flavors. I have one prior to my gig, and everything is so smooth. Visit T R Y F L O R A L dot com forward slash the money gigs. That's trifloral.com forward slash the money gigs and get your discount. My guest today is Cincinnati jazz pianist, composer, and teacher who has been playing this city for a long time and doing it on his own terms, which is always the easiest thing to pull into. Dan Crossberg graduated from CTM, has 7 out of 2, teaches students from age 40 to 91, and just released a solid piano record called Rooms Without Walls. The first TV I thought of 15 years. And it's conversation we talked about what it actually feels like to play a gig, not the playing card, but everything around it. The driving, the parking, the day of call you are expecting. The anxiety that doesn't stop the moment you sit down at the instrument, the internal voice that tells you you can't do the performance and what you do about it. Dan also talks about what it took to strip everything down and make a record that sounds like nobody else. And we get into the money side of kicking. This is a real conversation between two working musicians. I hope it sounds like one.

Who is Dan

SPEAKER_00 1:25

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

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Well, I was obsessed with the piano and music in general. You know, my mom would say, like, I was like in the crib dancing to the Fisher Price radio. My sisters both took piano lessons, and I wanted to take piano lessons. And I think I was like three or four asking my parents for that. And the teacher that was teaching them wouldn't teach me. And I just was like, like, how dare they not give me lessons? Although today it's like completely understandable. Do you remember how you felt about that? It just felt wrong. Even when I when I first started, I believe I was five when I first started. It was hard for me to focus. But I I remember some things being really hard. And it's like, I'm like, I can't do this, I can't do this. And my teacher's like, oh, you can do it. Just here, just try the next note. And now when as a teacher, I find myself doing the same thing. You can do it, you can do it. It's just just it's just one note. So I like can imagine like that their head is doing similar things.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

So were you one of those kids? My kid is a is a musician, he goes SCPA. And he were you one of those kids like him. He he gets frustrated if he's not the master at something right away.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

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

SPEAKER_00 2:50

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

SPEAKER_02 3:01

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

SPEAKER_00 3:40

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

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Yep, I did four years.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

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

SPEAKER_02 3:49

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

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Was there anything you had to unlearn?

SPEAKER_02 4:12

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

Life outside music

SPEAKER_02 4:26

this.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

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

SPEAKER_02 4:34

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

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

But I'm fascinated with her as a teacher. I'm very curious. So I've been trying to read as much about her, but also her teaching methods, her philosophy. And so that's been fascinating to me as well. Do you cook? I know. Do you do you have a favorite food? Um, let's see. Well, I like I like vegetables and fruits a lot. Um I'm vegetarian. I'm not. I eat meat, but I you know, I don't have to eat meat at every meal. Like my favorite things to eat are usually like when I was younger, my parents would make dinner. Um, I liked all the sides. I would want more of that and not the main thing. And and again, exploration.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Yeah. Again, exploring different things. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

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

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Um you have that in common with Elvis.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Yeah, that's right.

Rooms Without Walls

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Uh Rooms Without Walls, uh, which is available on Dan Carlsberg dot bandcamp.com. Uh, I've listened to the whole thing and I purchased you are the first CD I've purchased in 15 years.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Oh my gosh. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

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

SPEAKER_02 7:24

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

SPEAKER_00 9:05

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

SPEAKER_02 9:09

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

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

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

SPEAKER_00 10:13

And Kim Pencil produced the album, right? He helps you do the recording, is that right?

SPEAKER_02 10:17

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

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

And then Kim did the mastering on this.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

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

SPEAKER_02 10:34

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

SPEAKER_00 10:54

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

SPEAKER_02 11:05

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

SPEAKER_00 11:29

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

SPEAKER_02 12:07

Well, the whole thing started from a recording that Bud did of It Never Entered My Mind. You should check that out because so Bud, it's a trio, but Bud plays the melody really slow and very simple, hymn-like, mostly triads, and very it's all it's very haunting. Well, actually, in the middle, there's like just just really dark dissonances clashes with what he's doing kind of a little bit throughout. And the very the end of the song, the last four notes he plays, or four things he plays, is that d-da-dee-da, which is the opening of this. It's in the key of F major, and he ends with this F major chord, but then in his left hand down low, he's playing an E, just really dark end, super clash, um, but like subtle at the same time. And so I had a dream where I the only thing I can remember is the end of the dream, and I was sitting in some weird dark room, and there's like a non-existing, like bell-like instrument that I was playing, and I was playing that that melody, that part, those last four chords of the Bub Powell song. And I like woke up, I'm like, man, actually, that would be really cool to build a song off of that.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

And so that was, I mean, that's where that came from. It's partially a tribute to Bud and his vibe and whatever's going on with him on that recording. I think you know, the best thing that I could say about that is just it had a huge impact on me. Hearing that, that very, very serious recording had a big impact. I think that's why that's the importance.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

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

SPEAKER_02 13:49

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

SPEAKER_00 14:55

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

SPEAKER_02 15:02

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

SPEAKER_00 16:24

That must have felt great.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Yeah, it did. It wasn't like um was it like an epiphany? I'm doing this, I'm not sure where I'm going, and then it real it dawned upon you, or it wasn't quite as much of an epiphany as like, oh, this is the vibe that's happening. You know, it wasn't like so amazing of a feeling because my hope was that would happen. It was just like, yeah, it's gonna it's gonna work out, even though I had no idea if it actually would or not.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Well, it certainly did, and and what a dynamic album. Everything from how you treated Antoinette at the end, which was so fun because the whole album was kind of complex and the Scott Joplin kind of lent to I I was comparing it to how Oscar Peterson sometimes ends his albums with something that's kind of a departure that has a sweetness to it, but there was um sort of a Charlie Chaplin smile, winsomeness about how you treated Antoinette. Um, but also elation, where you know, I think you're walking bass at some point with some bebop lines, just the diversity. So let's go into some practical things

The Gigging Landscape

SPEAKER_00 17:23

you were talking about before. So gigging, you know, what are the challenges that come to mind or thoughts and emotions that come up as you think about the gigging landscape?

SPEAKER_02 17:32

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

SPEAKER_00 19:04

I think a

Gigging rates & economics

SPEAKER_00 19:05

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

SPEAKER_02 19:39

I mean, I actually have noticed change, but um, so like the pay the the pandemic changed a lot. It's like you see like drastically increased my income, and I they did it knowing that we were all about to just leave because we were so far underpaid. Um, and they did it, they they knew the exact amount that they needed to raise it to keep us there. Um, that's another story. But gigs, like for me, it used to be like I won't do a gig unless it's a hundred dollars. I mean, depending on the type of gig. Like if it's at a coffee house or like a super fun, like the shortest point, like I I'm not so worried about how much I'm making there because it's just great play to play.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Great thing.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

But now for me, it's like I won't do the gig unless it's $200. And and that it's been doing that. I've been able to like that's kind of in certain situations, you know, the minimum pay. But now it's like, well, that's not enough anymore. It's like the cost of things is so much, it's like, and that just that change just happened in you know, a few years back. And now it's like, man, I don't want to do a gig for less than three or four hundred dollars because like I need to make money because everything's so expensive. Yeah, yeah. It's it's it's it's just kind of snuck up on me too. Like, I you know, you know, I I don't really, you know, I I'm playing a lot less for a couple reasons. One, I I have a partner, Elizabeth, that we're we're engaged now, which is awesome. Congrats. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

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

My biggest challenge is myself

SPEAKER_00 22:02

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

SPEAKER_02 22:08

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

SPEAKER_00 23:07

How often do you impart that sentiment to your students?

SPEAKER_02 23:10

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

SPEAKER_00 24:18

So then what better teacher to have than you? Maybe make different choices. You're you're scattered everywhere, clearly ADHD. And if only you would compartmentalize, that's always been my struggle, is compartmentalizing.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

I mean, I don't necessarily know how helpful I am, but I can at least let them know that they're definitely not alone and I can recognize it when someone's what when the anxiety is um you've been through it yourself, you can authentically see them. Yeah, I even had like I was able to record my teacher, my teacher Elaine, who was amazing. She never really wanted me to record my lessons with her, but I wanted to talk about how to teach, and she was fine with me recording that. But then I was also doing things, demonstrating things myself or asking her questions about myself. And at one point she's like, huh, I sense a lot of anxiety. I never I didn't remember hearing that at all or understanding that, but listening back to it now, I'm like, oh my God, she knew she could tell. I had no idea. Um, but now I can I can really recognize that, even in myself, which which is the one thing that's helpful.

Panic attacks

SPEAKER_02 26:03

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

SPEAKER_00 26:53

Um, it's important to have a safe space, and sometimes uh we can close off that safe space by being courteous to others we don't want to dump on them, yeah, uh on the ones we love and share. And so that prevents us sometimes from asking for help. So I've I've had many therapists over trying to figure me out. Uh so that's important. So that that's great. Um well, as you're teaching students who have their own aspirations in music, I'd be curious as to what gamut that runs. Um, are they there just because their parents dropped them off? Or, you know, I uh it sounds like your college students probably have higher aspirations, but how do you feel about that and and their future? What does their future look like for them?

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Um

Teaching ages 4 to 91

SPEAKER_02 27:32

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

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Holy cow, you and I could do a whole session on that. I I I took myself out of piano doing that. So uh me too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

And that's my teacher Elaine. That's why I went to her because she studied with Dorothy Talbman. And that was all about Dorothy Talbman developed a way of playing. You she studied anatomy, so that works with your body, so you should never like hurt it or have pain or anything. And I had to relearn how to play because I both wrists and elbows had tendinitis. And to this day, like I still, you know, will do something and will I I'll feel it. But now if I feel that I know exactly what I'm doing and I stop doing it. Uh all because of what Elaine helped me become aware of. Also, at college, a lot of my students are singer-songwriters or composers for like film. And I want to make sure they can play the piano without it being uncomfortable and hard because that just will discourage them. I want them to feel relaxed, not have to be fighting playing the instrument.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:04

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

SPEAKER_00 30:13

I really want to thank you uh for talking with me today. Dancarlsberg with a K.com. Um, people can go there and see uh all your work in addition to your seven albums, uh, the latest of which is Rooms Without Walls, featuring artwork on the front by our buddy uh Joshua Moore.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

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

SPEAKER_00 30:36

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

SPEAKER_02 30:42

But right now, I it's a little bit of a break before I like you know go into the next thing.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

Well, hopefully the the break will uh involve a few album sales of of the latest C D available on the You helped me with that.

SPEAKER_02 30:55

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Thanks for talking with me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

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

SPEAKER_00 31:01

That was Dan Carlsberg. His new silver piano album is called Rooms Without Walls. And I mean it when I say it, it's worth your time. You can find it at dancarlsberg.bancamp.com. That's e-a-n-k-ar-r-l-s-b-e-r-g dot van camp.com. And the full link is in the show notes. Buy it. He made it in one hour sessions at night across four months, mostly not knowing where it was going. But second section, that's the part I think about. If you're a game musician and you want to know what a fanny attack is musician, what it's a load of nightmare, that's what's the mic code for five pieces, four feet, fifty one is the code, that's a good one.