Sean Jones- The Trumpeter

On today's episode of Real Creative Humans, I sit down with Sean Jones.

Music and spirituality have always been intertwined in the artistic vision of trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and activist Sean Jones.

After a six-month stint with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis offered him a permanent position as lead trumpeter of the ensemble, a post he held from 2004 until 2010. In 2015, Jones was tapped to become a member of the SFJAZZ Collective.

Jones has been prominently featured in recordings and performances with many major figures in jazz, including Illinois Jacquet, Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster, Nancy Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Gerald Wilson and Marcus Miller. Jones is an internationally recognized educator.

He is president of the Jazz Education Network and holds the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair in Jazz Studies at the Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute in Baltimore. In addiiton, he is artistic director for the NYO JAZZ Program of Carnegie Hall. Previously, he served as chair of the brass department at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

To follow along with Sean, you can follow him on Instagram at @seanyboymusic.

 To find out more about me, your host, Audra Lee in addition to updates about the show you can follow me on Instagram at @audrajlee_.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to Real Creative Humans, a space for the makers, the dreamers, and the ones who see the world a little differently. Here we sit down with artists and creatives from all walks of life to explore the winding paths they've taken. The quiet doubts, the bold moves, the small sparks that become something bigger. These are real stories about what it means to show up for your work, your voice, and your vision. So whether you're deep in the grind or just finding your way, let these conversations be a light on your path. Hit follow. Join the journey, and remember you're not alone out here. We're all just real creative humans doing our best to make something that matters. On this episode of Real Creative Humans, I sit down with Sean Jones. Music and spirituality have always been intertwined in the artistic vision of trumpeter, band leader, composer, educator, and activist Sean Jones. After a six-month stint with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Winton Marcellus offered him a permanent position as lead trumpeter of the ensemble, a post he held from 2004 into 2010. In 2015, Jones was tapped to become a member of the SF Jazz Collective. Jones has been prominently featured in recordings and performances with many major figures in jazz, including Illinois Chocret, Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster, Nancy Wilson, Diane Reeves, Gerald Wilson, and Marcus Miller. Jones is an internationally recognized educator. He is president of the Jazz Education Network and holds the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair in Jazz Studies at the Johns Hopkins University's Peabody Institute in Baltimore. In addition, he is artistic director for the NYO Jazz Program Carnegie Hall. Previously, he served as chair of the Brass Department at Berkeley College of Music in Boston. Enjoy this episode with Sean. Sean, thank you for being here with me today.

SPEAKER_03 2:24

Great to be here with you too, sis. Yeah. It's been a long time.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yes. I was thinking, I was trying to think about the first time we met, and it was funny because I because you were so ingratiated in the culture in Pittsburgh, I thought you were from Pittsburgh for a long time. How did you end up in Pittsburgh?

SPEAKER_03 2:46

Oh my gosh. It's it's uh it's kind of a it's not actually it's not a long story at all. It's Fred Pugh.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Fred Pugh. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

Fred Pugh w worked at General Motors, I believe, in Lordstown, Ohio, which is like right over the border.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

From PA to um to Ohio. Um, and he would put on these shows in Warren, Ohio, right? These little jazz things, and he heard about me somehow. I'm not sure if it was through the church or somebody locally. He just heard that there's this young kid that was trying to do his things and he came out and saw me and he started to uh encourage me to you know spread my wings. And so I said, Well, help me do that. And he introduced me to the Crawford Grill on the Hill. Yeah, yeah. So he actually booked me a gig at the Crawford Grill Jazz Festival in this must be '98, maybe. Yeah, yeah, it must have been '98. And um I actually ended up playing the last gig that was done at the Crawford Grill. Wow. The very last one. Uh, I can't remember what date that is. I should look that up. But um, yeah, it was Spread Pew. He introduced me to Roger and Humphreys, he told me to come check out uh James Street and Roger was playing there, and I'll never forget because the vault the uh trumpet player's name was Volcano Choi. I should say is Volcano Choi. And um he actually eventually ended up moving out of Pittsburgh and moved to Hawaii, which is where he's from, and he's like a big star there, and I ended up taking his his position in that band when I when I eventually moved to Pittsburgh. But um I so since that first gig at Pittsburgh, I I kind of just grew an affinity for Pittsburgh and just fell in love with the town and its people. So even though I went to school in New Jersey and I kind of got on the scene in New York a little bit, I kind of just I I to be honest with you, I just knew that I wasn't gonna be in New York City long. I didn't like it.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Was it too big, too audacious? Like what was the thing that because that's what everybody tells you to do, right? Like it's like if you have any aspirations, go to New York.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

It didn't feel like a homey place to me. I was excited, I mean, I like the excitement of being around all these great musicians, and you know the pace was fast, and even when I had like big performance gigs like Jazz and Lincoln Center, I never really truly felt at home. But honestly, I I think it's because I was always longing for an internal home. And um, you know, I'm I'm sure we'll get more into that as we continue this discussion, but I just didn't like the city. It didn't feel like home, it didn't feel like a nurturing environment, it didn't feel like I could I you know I just didn't fit in, to be honest with you. And a lot that was largely because of my head. Like I didn't go to New York because I wanted to really contribute to the scene or any of that. I wanted to show everybody that I could do this, you know. It wasn't about contributing, it was about I'm gonna show you, you know.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

So I always talk about um the chip on the shoulder and how it can really drive you for such a long time in your life, it could really propel you, it could be everything, your motivation, you know, and then like as you start to heal, it's like what what do I replace that chip with? What do I replace that kind of um low vibration vibration frequency for to actually motivate me? And it's it's hard because I I I can resonate with that same feeling of like I'm gonna prove you wrong.

SPEAKER_03 7:09

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. What drove me into music in general was a chip.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

You know, say more about that.

SPEAKER_03 7:17

It was an escape. Music was an escape all of these years, and I'm just now over the past couple years facing it. You know, as I face, you know, my own addictions and face my own healing, finally, you know, that that chip, you know, became a weight. Right. It just got bigger and bigger and bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, and it just started choking me out, you know, because I didn't enjoy music anymore. I didn't enjoy any of the yes, that might sound crazy, but I didn't enjoy any of it. I didn't enjoy any of this life. So what did I do? I just numbed myself. Gotcha. Drink drinking, you know, lot multitudes of inappropriate relationships.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Right.

SPEAKER_03 8:02

You you name it. I mean, it was just whatever food, whatever I could do to numb the feeling of feeling just like I didn't belong or that I didn't want to be there. I just did it.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

What made you feel like you couldn't walk away?

SPEAKER_03 8:19

Um, something to prove. I actually do love music, you know. I love playing it, I love creating it, I love expressing, you know, I love expressing it in a very vulnerable way.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:34

Like, like I'll cry at the drop of a dime on stage. Like I just, you know, now I will. And um, you know, going back to childhood, you know, I now realize I never healed, never, you know, truly fully healed. I I tried to intellectualize the healing, you know, but I never fully healed from my father leaving when I was a kid. My mother wounds, which were much deeper than my father's wounds, which because my I put my mom on this pedestal. Right. It's like my mom is the bomb. But I realized that when I was growing up, my mom barely ever hugged me outside of church. She barely ever communicated with me outside of church. She was just working, you know. And so I realized like there's a lot of trauma from that. Um, being in a some uh, you know, an abusive household with brothers that would basically you know kick my ass on a daily basis just because I existed, you know, and you know, trying to make me man up because dad wasn't there. Man up.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Were you the youngest boy?

SPEAKER_03 9:40

Youngest. You were the ooh. Yeah, youngest boy in a household of four boys, two sisters. Wow. And they were all in middle school, high school. Gotcha. So they were going through what they were going through. Yeah. And they just largely just kind of took it out on me.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 9:56

Before they eventually split. Um, you know, that that all being said, I walked around with that big chip and I had something to prove. I I I literally told myself when I was in high school that I was going to be one of the greatest trumpet players that ever lived. It was not an option to be anything else, but it wasn't because I loved it so much.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 10:19

It was because I needed something to prove. I needed to create, I created the identity that is Sean Jones.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Of course, of course.

SPEAKER_03 10:27

And now I'm actively killing that dude.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

Ooh.

SPEAKER_03 10:30

Actively.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Sean, you are you are so now I I said, I was like, I'm not gonna go off script, but now, child, you done, you done opened up the floodgates. This no.

SPEAKER_03 10:41

Well, that's where I am right now in my life, you know. I feel that I am literally killing Sean Jones. I hear that.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Um, because you so I want to go back to you talking about the church, right? And I hear it put it play such a pivotal role because that's where you started playing music, right? That's when you Yeah. And and then, but then you talk about your mom and that being the that being the one area and the one place where you connect it. What what did the church mean for you? What does it mean for you in terms of your process musically in your relationship with your mom? All of it.

SPEAKER_03 11:20

Man, when when I tell you that's like the biggest open-ended question ever. The church and I have a love-hate relationship. I love the fact that I could express myself in church, you know, uh, the altar calls, you go and shout around, praise God. But I hated the rules, you know, because I knew the rules were manufactured. See, you know, I grew up and I mentioned to you, you know, a little while ago that you know, I've done a couple of screenings for autism, and they've all put me on a high level for autism. And um, you know, so I had this weird quirk when I was younger that I was like really intellectually driven.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:11

But I wasn't, I was, I felt like I was never understood. I was a weirdo.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Right.

SPEAKER_03 12:16

So when I was growing up, I would just read the Bible incessantly. I've read the Bible like three times front to back. And I have like, I don't know, maybe a couple hundred scriptures memorized.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

And so when I was younger, I would read these scriptures and I'd say, yeah, this is the opposite of what they're saying. This is the opposite, and I would get these feelings inside, you know? And I started really diving into the spiritual side of the Bible, not the religious side of it. And I would, I would live, well, I remember when I was 16, 17 years old, I would pray literally all night long. I would get home from wherever I was, and I would pray until I fell asleep, wake up, be on my knees on the side of the bed praying. And so I developed this sort of intellectual God conscious early on because I enjoyed the practice, but I didn't know how to deal with things. I didn't know how to cope. I didn't know how to deal with things that uh were trauma-based, you know.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Right.

SPEAKER_03 13:28

Because what they would tell you is just pray your way out of it. God knows, you know, all these things, pray your way out. Well, sometimes you need therapy. Sometimes you need to talk, you know, sometimes you need to talk to people, sometimes you get addicted to things. Sometimes you get addicted to people. Right. You know, and I I didn't realize that when I was in high school, I had deep abandonment issues from when I was younger. You know, I got everybody that I got close to left me. My dad, you know, I mom, although my mom was there, she was checked out. You know what I mean? Like friends would, you know, I would try to get close to people, and they seem like they would just use me and take my stuff. And you know, so then I found this trumpet and I hid behind that trumpet. Nobody could ever use me again. But I knew that I had this crazy longing for God.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:17

That never like that never left me over all of these years. I was like just there was some I knew that there was something there that I needed inside. Totally. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

And um, you know, without going too deep into that right now, with this particular discussion, you know, church did the job for a little while, but then I intellect started to intellectualize it even more.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:42

You know, if you look behind me, there's you know, there's books all over here, all on the wall, there's books all over here on the wall, books behind me. And I just read, you know, I read about the Quran, you know, I read the Quran, but the Baha'i Faith, you know, Jewish studies, you know, like um ancient, you know, just all of this reading it, trying to figure out like what to do. The power is now. You read all the scriptures.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Totally, totally.

SPEAKER_03 15:07

You know what I mean? Read all the stuff, and I'm like, where is God in my life? I'm praying, I'm thinking about God. I know all these scriptures, I know all this stuff, but why do I feel empty inside?

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 15:20

And it's and it took me crashing, literally, you know, this actually this past summer and a few years ago, crashing and realized that you know, I have a terminal disease that's called alcoholism. You know what I mean? I had to realize that, Sean, you never really truly had a relationship with God. You had an intellectual understanding that was through religious practices in Christianity, right? But you did not have a relationship. And so actually, through, you know, you know, through the people that I work with now, and you know, I found that relationship. And I realized that in that relationship, I have to literally get out of me. I was in the way the entire time. Yeah, my vision, my perception, all of that was in the way the entire time. And now I'm able to be quiet and just be in the presence of something that's greater than me that I can't even understand what it is. Totally, totally, and it finds me in a million different ways. But yeah, so that's kind of what church was like when I was when I was coming up. You know, it was wonderful. I was in church. I I make jokes say I was in church nine days a week, well, 497 days a year, but you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

I think the one so to to speak on the um you know, autism diagnosis, I in and we talked about this. I I'm 99% sure I'm on a spectrum too. And I think one of the things about um, you know, autism, and and again it's a spectrum, but like specifically in the ways that it shows up for you, I think also for me is um there is this incessant desire for knowledge, you know, and and it's such a beautiful thing, but it also is in ways a addiction, right? Intellectualism, it's like it's feeding me, right? I need I always needed mental stimulation. I'm like reading deep conversations, and if it was deep, I needed it to be deeper, you know. I'm like, tell me your deepest, darkest secret, and realizing that because uh most people don't understand what's happening internally, they believe that the the depth is coming from the intellectualism, and but you're devoid of actually feeling, you're devoid of actually connecting with yourself, right? And really with other people, you're not really connecting, and so um, but something about what you're talking about with the church sounds like it gave you in these moments permission to actually be in your body and feel it. Sounds like that happens with music too.

SPEAKER_03 18:16

It did, yeah, and it does. And you know, I would look for that feeling, even that physical feeling in other places later on. It became relationships, appropriate and inappropriate, you know, like I always needed to be around or with somebody, yeah, you know, especially with the mother wound, it always had to be a woman. It always had to be, and I, you know, and I would get in these deep situations, and always it was never deep enough. Yeah, you know, it was like physical the physical aspect of it. I had to go all the way, like we gotta try everything, sure. You know, we gotta do all of this, we have to, you know, I have to read all these books, I have to know about you. Tell me more about it. What are you thinking right now? What's going on? But it's interesting, like what you said, it's like you're still not connected to them. No, it's just an intellectual exercise, it's a pursuit. It's like, I'm going to know, I am going to know you. I am going to know what this is so that I can control it. Absolutely. So that I can understand it. Excuse me. And so I would do this over and over and over again, literally all over the world, creating pockets of lives all over the world. Totally. You know, and you know, of course, you can't you can't do that by being, you can't be, there's no integrity involved in that at all.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 19:47

Like it's this void of integrity completely.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Right, totally.

SPEAKER_03 19:51

You know, and so in order to not have integrity, you have to lie. So I just lied over and over again. And after a while, the lie, you just can't keep up with them. So lives fall apart. The terrible thing about it all is that I was Sean Jones. Sean Jones could just up and leave and go somewhere else. Anyone that's looking at my career can look at my career and say, Wow, you did all of that. Every time I look at my resume, I'm like, oh, that was an escape. That was an escape, that was an escape. That was an escape. I had to get out of there, I had to get out of there. You know? So all of these jobs and all of these gigs that I've had, yeah, I was leaving one thing because I wasn't comfortable in it anymore. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 20:40

You know, it no longer served me.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 20:43

It no longer served my ego.

unknown 20:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:46

I couldn't control it anymore. Right. So I would just say, okay, what story can I make up about what I'm about to do now?

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Was you what I imagine it wasn't that wasn't the conscious thing you told yourself at the time. I'm sure you made some excuse. What would you what reasons would you make to kind of it was all based on achievement.

SPEAKER_03 21:08

It was all based on being an example of someone that came from Warren, Ohio, that could do these amazing things, that could get the jobs at the schools that I didn't get into. You know, I didn't get into Oberlin Conservatory when I was younger, but I ended up teaching there. I didn't get in the Berkeley College of Music. I ended up chairing a department there. Peabody School of Music, forget about it. There's no way I was getting in there. Now I'm the head of the jazz program. I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna show the world that I can fix things. I'm gonna show the world that I'm a good guy, that I can do this, that I got power, that I know what to do.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Did you feel any of it? Like when you when you achieved it, did any of it get um someone asked me that the other day like, can you feel? Your achievements, and I was like, like, feel it, and you know, that's a hard one. So, did you feel any of it?

SPEAKER_03 22:08

Yes, okay. I, you know, multiple things could be true, excuse me, could be true at once. That's why you got that's why there's a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the same body. So, you know, I'm grateful for the lives that I've been able to influence positively, mainly people that are like you know, younger than me. Yeah, you know, I've because them I I secretly want to set all of them free. But I wanted to do it intellectually.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

You know, I wanted to say, hey, here's your problem, here's how to fix it. Totally. It was just with the trump at first, but then after a while, after growing in this and sort of understanding, then I would just say, Well, you gotta be yourself. Be yourself, forget what everybody says, and blah, blah, blah, blah, and all of that. Now, it's just like, look, you got to heal whatever whatever happened to you when you were a kid, heal it. But I couldn't do that until I took this journey that I'm on now of just being vulnerable. And and honestly, it's it's embarrassing. I mean, a lot of the times that I speak now, I'm like, damn, I'm letting this come out of my mouth. I'm embarrassed as shit. Even now, I'm like, man, I'm telling you about this stuff. You know, like it's embarrassing. I feel like I just want to crawl in a corner and be like, yeah, this is me. But I I realize at this point in time, like, that's needed now more on earth than anything. Oh my god, so much. Like, somebody has to stand up and say, Look, I'm a fuck up. I have been fucking up, right? And and that's what I've done, and I've hid behind this thing because society has allowed me to do that. Not only allowed me, rewarded me. Society has rewarded me for bad human behavior masked in accomplishment. You know, yeah, and so thank God for my mother in this respect, because it's like she's real. So I still know what it's like to be real. I know what it's like to want love and real relationships and to have real friends, you know what I mean, and real people that actually do care about me, which there are people. You know, I just took a lot, I just took most of it for granted.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 24:34

And so, you know, I want to teach, I want to show young people that now. It's like I want to I want them to actively see me healing.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

What do you um what was the point, the turning point for you where you decided to go? Because vulnerability is, I think is it's both free, but what you're talking about, in order to feel true love and true connection, you have to feel embarrassment, you have to feel then the nakedness. So what was the thing, the impetus for you to do that? I think it's working.

SPEAKER_03 25:07

I think it's a culmination of a few things. Um, I I I think it's a culmination of being with my wife. And and I'm not saying wife because she's mine, she's not mine, she's God's. Yeah, I'm she's on loan, and my job is to cover her. Now I I get that, you know, and being with somebody like that that has already healed themselves and has already gone through a bunch of BS in their life, he's extremely self-aware. Yeah, extremely self-aware, and I can't hide from her. There is no hiding from her, there is no running from her. There is no, it's like, look, dude, you see this, this is you, get it together, you know. And I'm just thankful that number one, I don't deserve her, you know. I just don't. And I'm thankful that she knows that there's something in me that is worth going through this process with, you know, like she is I could go on and on about this woman. Totally. This human being that is Renee Alley.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_03 26:25

You know, this total human being.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Sean, it's like um, again, I don't know if it's spiritual connection, I don't know if it's autism, but like I can see things, right? Like I can feel things. And um, I came to see you and uh at Manchester Craftsman Guild in move maybe a couple years ago. And this is the first time I've seen you play with um your wife. And I was like, what the fuck is that? Like it was like I was like, Sean, like it was I seen and I you know me, I'm always up clapping, and people are like, you can't do that at like a jazz customer. But I'm crying, I'm clapping, I'm crying because I could feel the transition. Something had happened, something had lifted off of you. You were not concerned with, and I and I understand this because I've done this too. You were not concerned with playing for people, you were playing for the enjoyment of yourself and being in the moment with the music and the process. And I was like, this is fascinating. Like, I was just so curious as to what prompted it because you could see the freedom.

SPEAKER_03 27:46

Well, I'm actually, you know, I'm putting out a record this year, it's called Return. And so I mentioned that there's seven things. One of them was meeting Brene, but before I met her eight years ago, ironically, I met her before that and don't even remember. I met her twice before that. Wow. One of those times I was with my first wife. Okay, and I don't even remember meeting Brene. So anyway, um, about it was 2017, I turned 39 years old, and I was miserable. When I tell you miserable, personally miserable, I had everything on the surface that anybody would want. I had a dream job at Berkeley College of Music. I had, I mean, I was on the top of the trumpet game, period, in the world. But you know, but I was miserable in my personal life, just miserable all the way around. It was just fake. Like nothing felt real about it. And so I told myself, I said, okay, maybe it's because I'm like overweight and I'm not feeling good. I need I'm turning 40, I gotta get my physical stuff together. So I started running and I started off, you know, one mile, turned into three, turned into six. Long story short, I ended up running 10 to 15 miles every other day. And I'm talking about in Boston in the winter time.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 29:14

On the Charles River, 20 degrees. I'll never forget, I ran 10 miles one time, 20 degrees on the river. But I started to hear the word return in my mind over and over and over and over again. You know, that runner's high you get? I'm like, return, what the hell? So finally I was in Philadelphia, December of 2017, and I ran, I just randomly got up, went for a run. Five miles in, it seemed like a voice was screaming in my head, return, return. And so I said, return to what? And it and it responded back, return to yourself. And I just broke down crying like a baby. And at that point, you know, I was going through a separation. I didn't realize I was, but I was going through a separation, getting ready to be divorced again. And um, you know, this was all in my mind. And I said, okay, whoever you are, whatever you are, you got to show me where you want me to go. So I became a consultant for Peabody. You know, they were trying to revamp their jazz program. And long story short, they offered me this job. I met and con met Brene around that same time. And she was just a great friend, you know, she was like good people. We're both from the Midwest, she's from Flint, Michigan.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Right.

SPEAKER_03 30:47

And um, you know, I said to myself, okay, God, you're doing some weird stuff. Long story short, going through the divorce, Peabody offers me the job. I take the job. Brene is like in transition in New York, and she just randomly says, you know what? Let's just be together. Let's just do this. And so I basically left my entire life behind in Boston. And just and and Brene has a daughter at that time, she was eight years old. I said, This woman is willing to just randomly be with me with her eight-year-old daughter, who has a TBI, by the way, traumatic brain injury. So this is like not some bull, you know. So I'm like, okay. And then this is where, you know, I'm still drinking like crazy around this time. I'm running. Let me tell you, I would I ran 15 miles one time and literally stopped at the liquor store and drank after this. Is how insane. But like half of me was on this spiritual journey. Right. So, you know, I know this is a long story, but long story short, we end up together in the Peabody and we're going through all of this stuff. 50% of me is showing up. 50% of me is not. All the way through a pandemic, all of that, through the pandemic, I mean, it just got my drinking got worse. I mean, it was just ridiculous. You know, I mean, a bottle a day, minimum. Gotcha. And so without diving too deeply into that, you know, at some point I just realized that this was unsustainable. And the point came where she had had enough. You know, my friends had had enough. And there was nowhere to run. Nowhere to run. I ran out of excuses, and I just remember sitting on my couch and saying, Sean, you got a problem. And I admitted to myself for the first time, January 10th of 2022. Man, you're getting a lot out of me today. Um, January 10th, 2022, I said that I'm I must be an alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic. And I said it out loud, and something just kind of just went when I did that.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:30

And so I started to go on this journey. I put myself in outpatient treatment. And this is what's crazy. At the around the same time, around that time, I got another job offer. That's amazing. To make more money at a different place. So the option to escape was there. Yet again, right, right. Yet again, I was like, okay. So, but I was like, nah, nah, I I got a family now, you know. I this woman is like, she like, there's like you can't make up any bullshit about her at all. Right. And so check this out. This is the craziest part of it all. I took the job offer into my current job at Peabody, took it into the two deans, and I put the job offer on the table, and I said, This is, you know, can you guys do something with this? Can you match it? And something just said, by the way, I'm an alcoholic. And I was nervous. Oh my god. I just told my freaking deans that I'm an alcoholic. It's over for me. They're about to fire me. It's done. You know what they did? They said, Wow, Sean, we're glad that you admitted that. Take some time off. Go on to outpatient treatment. And um, I did that. Two days later, they offered me a higher salary at Peabody. Higher salary. They um they gave me a grant. They did all of this stuff and were like, Can you stay? And I said, Okay, wow, I got another chance. But guess what? Still wasn't enough. Because I intellectually wanted to go through it. I read the books, you know, read all the books they told me to read now, paper chase treatment, did all of that, stopped drinking for several months. Then my mind started to want to control things again. And I went back into the same cycles. And so this past summer, it was just, it finally came to a head where, you know, it was either lose everything you got or really figure out what the hell is wrong with you. And and in this past summer, you know, and I I don't know, I maybe it's because it's the first of the year, you know, I'm just kind of just unapologetically telling this story now because like I was suicidal last summer. Gotcha. That's the first time I've ever said this in public, you know, on and admit it. Yeah, I wanted to figure out a way to be off this planet.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

Yeah. You were too much. I was like, I was exhausted. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

So I was like, I can't do this anymore. Like, I I I've already done like, okay, resume intact. You know, I'll just be the bad motherfucker that existed for this time period. And cool. I started to look at life insurance policies. Like, okay, like, you know, how can I look at how can I make this happen so that so that it looks like an accident?

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 36:52

And I looked at my wife, and she said, Sean, you need to believe that you have everything that you have. She was like, You're doing all this stuff, you just don't believe any of it. And that just rings in my head every day now. It's like believing is not an intellectual thing.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Right.

SPEAKER_03 37:17

Excuse me, knowing is not an intellectual thing. Carl Jung talks about this. When somebody asked Carl Jung, Carl said, Do you do you believe in God? And Carl Jung said, That's a complicated question. I don't believe I know. And so I'm at the point now where it's like, I don't need to believe I know because my eyes are open. You know, like I can actually see the world for what it is now. Like I don't have to hide behind things because I'm going through this process of healing, which is excruciating. Very, very excruciating. I literally want to escape my mind every day. Yeah. Like, here you go again. Like what those nutty ass thoughts, you know, but I'm thankful. I am so thankful, and I realize that part of me is dying. That persona is dying, you know, to the point where this album will be my last album is Sean Jones. This is it. No more Sean Jones albums. I'll do records, I'll do collaborations with people, I'll play with bands, we put them together. But Sean Jones, no, he has to go. Sean Jones stayed in 2025.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

What are you what are you noticing now that you're killing Sean Jones? What's what's there sans him?

SPEAKER_03 38:56

Joy, freedom, honesty. Uh, open-mindedness, the destruction of patriarchy.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

Love to hear that.

SPEAKER_03 39:12

See, I I just I'm I just finished reading this book by Bill Hooks called The Will to Change.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

Like, you know, me and my husband read that changed our lives.

SPEAKER_03 39:21

My yeah, my um one of my mentors gave me that, you know, a couple months ago. I was like, you need to read this book. And I'm reading this book realizing that I have been conditioned. And and through that conditioning, I have assimilated into a way of being that has been extremely toxic and extremely male. Right. And all of that was just a big hook and a big way of hiding who I truly am. I never, you know, I feel like a little boy again. Like I could be a little boy in a way. I could be this vulnerable kid and and I can express myself in ways that, you know, even this might sound crazy. It's like there were workouts that I wouldn't do because they look feminine.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

I hear that, and I get it. I mean, I remember somebody saying they went drinking up.

SPEAKER_03 40:13

You know, things like that because like like this, right? Like it looks well, love doing that shit. Right. I like moving, right? I love moving my body and feeling, and I guess that's why I've always been like attracted to dance, you know, because I love that expression, it's so open and so free. Like I start playing like that now, you know, and and so like you know, reading that book and going through this process, I'm just trying to kill all of that in me.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 40:47

And it's and it's beautiful. I can show up for my girls, you know, my daughters, I can show up for my community. Yeah, that's you know, I can admit like to people, like, yo, I was I'm I'm sorry, you know, I can make amends.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 41:03

You know, obviously, some people ain't gonna want to hear shit, and that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

How have people been responding to you in this like way where you're being more honest?

SPEAKER_03 41:13

Um it's a mix, it's 50-50, you know. Like some people, I wouldn't want to talk to me either. I wouldn't want to have nothing to do with me, you know, and and that's their right, and I understand that. But the vast majority of people are like, I'm really happy for you, Sean. Um it's inspiring. Keep going.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:36

You know, because this is a lifelong process. You know, one of the things people don't talk about is like addiction is lifelong. Once you become addicted to something, it never goes away. You know, they they said that alcohol is it in the 50s, early 50s, they deemed the American Psychiatric Association a deemed, they deemed alcoholism a terminal mental illness. You know, and you know, and it's kind of like I'm I don't know how much of this I'm supposed to be talking about because they call it Alcoholics Anonymous for a reason. But you know, like this doesn't feel good to talk about, you know. It's it's it's you know, it's it's embarrassing.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:16

Did you have a that I allowed myself to get that away? What's that?

SPEAKER_01 42:19

Did you have a consciousness about wanting to share this today, or does it is it just kind of coming to you?

SPEAKER_03 42:24

It's just coming out.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

It's beautiful, just coming out.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

Yeah, it's dope.

SPEAKER_03 42:29

It's dope because I've talked about Sean the trumpet player. Uh I mean it's like yeah, yeah, you know, everybody sees me with this thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

You know, I mean, whatever. Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

Do you think you'll uh will you change your name?

SPEAKER_03 42:51

No, I'll still be Sean. Okay. It just won't be Sean Jones. Gotcha. You know, I I mean maybe I will. I don't know. Maybe I will change my name. You know, I'm already telling you talking to my mom. Like, we're uh we're gonna hyphenate our names, we're gonna create a new line, and all of our our entire family will become Bradley Joneses. I love that, you know, yeah, and so you know, because I actually discovered several years ago that my last name really shouldn't be Jones, it should be Holly, but that's another story that's a whole nother so I'm not attached to that last name other than the persona that was created. Absolutely, I get that.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

Um you said that you do love music. What has this healing being more vulnerable done to your your relationship with music?

SPEAKER_03 43:49

I mean, I hear it constantly. You know, there was a time where I actually couldn't hear music outside of an intellectual exercise.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_03 44:00

Like if I needed to write a song, I would intellectualize it.

SPEAKER_01 44:03

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 44:03

You know, it would be like, okay. And then sometimes when I would have these moments of clarity, like briefly, when God would be there with me and I felt bad about something. You know, I was inside of my core humanity, something natural would come. But most of the time it was very cerebral. You know, especially when I was with certain bands like the SF Jazz Collective. A lot, most of that was very cerebral, with the exception of a song called The Hutchison Hug. You know, like I would just intellectualize these compositions because I was I knew what to do. And I'm playing with some of the greatest musicians on earth that could make it happen.

SPEAKER_02 44:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:44

So I would just write this really difficult shit. You know, just to show people that I could do it. Totally. Now I don't care about any of that at all. It's just like like I'm writing songs called Surrender. I wrote a song called Enough Is Enough Is Enough, based on what I call the three enoughs of life.

SPEAKER_01 45:04

Tell me about because um fleeting stillness, that's what is that's the name. Fleeting stillness, yeah. Oh my gosh. I and I heard that, and my husband said, because you know, I had told him about you, but he had never heard you play. And uh he was like, damn, that was so fire. I'm like, I know, but the fleeting stillness, what was that? What did that represent for you?

SPEAKER_03 45:31

That I I wrote that, you know, ironically, that was after we got the grant for you know to create the Baltimore Jazz Collective, and the pandemic happened, and um we were supposed to record, and I don't know how you felt like around April. We had just had a child, our baby was born March 12th, 2020. Ooh, that was the day they shut the NBA.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Wow, I remember that is wild.

SPEAKER_03 46:02

And Brene is such a man. She was she did a natural birth. We did like a in a birthing center, she didn't take not one med. She was in labor for 24 hours. Yeah, she's she's she's like an alien, but anyway. Um, so you know, the baby's there, newborn. I'm like, what the hell is gonna happen? Am I gonna, you know, I'm trying to figure out like how am I gonna sustain all this? And so I'm like moving a thousand miles an hour, but going nowhere. And so those moments where I was going nowhere, I would just try to be centered. So the song is you know, here it's crazy, and then it just stops and goes and then you're back and it's back again. And so I wanted to create a piece that you know mirrored that, and I assumed other people felt the same way.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Yeah, it's very it resonates, and it's not just I mean, the pandemic, but like just even understanding how to be still, like you know, like I I got um do you have an aura ring?

SPEAKER_03 47:06

Uh one of those.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

A aura ring? Oh my god, you would love this. It's really helpful to understand your stress levels and just it it I I find it um I you know again if you can if you're an intellectualizer, you could lie to yourself about feeling feeling right. So like I'm like, I'm so I feel so peaceful. And my ring is like, girl, you've been stressed for six hours. And and what's helpful about that is I can then now start to tap into what's happening for me because it's really hard to feel, you know, it's really hard for me to feel stress. Um, but if I can start to know I am, then it then it gives me permission to feel the stress. But when I heard that song, I'm like, that is my battle with stillness. That is my ever lasting battle with stillness.

SPEAKER_03 47:56

Yeah, it's really difficult for me to feel stress as well and to notice it. Yeah. I mean, I I feel it, but I don't notice it. Yeah, and I think that's largely because you know, I do believe that, you know, if I do further diagnosis, like I'm on the spectrum as well. Like I did those, you know, sort of screens. Yeah. But um a lot of that is assimilation. I remember when I was in elementary school, I would, they would, I would, and I'm that's the other thing. A lot of memories that I blocked out are now coming back.

SPEAKER_00 48:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:28

And so I remember when I was in elementary school, and I never man, you're getting a lot out of I I I I would go to the, you know, they would send people to the little trailer, and I was embarrassed to go to the little trailer because that's where all the special kids were.

SPEAKER_01 48:45

Oh, that was what okay.

SPEAKER_03 48:46

Yeah, and they would send me out to this little trailer, and I remember a couple of times they would put a helmet on me. Yeah, that really happened.

SPEAKER_01 48:54

I thought that was a myth.

SPEAKER_03 48:55

Yeah, it really happened. They would put a helmet on me and they would, yeah, I would do these tests. And I'm like, okay, now go back to class. Second grade, they told my mother, it's like, nah, he really should be a third grader. So they would put me in a third grade class. It's like a split class of a couple second graders, third graders. Got to third grade, they were like, we want to put you in the fourth grade.

SPEAKER_01 49:21

Stop it.

SPEAKER_03 49:22

Fourth grade, they wanted to put me in the sixth grade, and I don't think my mom was having it. So I knew that there was something weird about me.

SPEAKER_01 49:30

You know, you think that was a good thing? Because I hear you saying it as if I thought it was a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 49:36

I'm smart. Yeah, right. You know, but I really think that they were just like, okay, this kid is weird and he's hyper intellectual. Let's just put him in other grades. Gotcha. But I really think that I was, you know, that you know, like the spectrum thing was showing up.

SPEAKER_00 49:51

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 49:51

And I and I think that I was assimilated early because of trauma, you know, and and I was assimilated early because of the church. Gotcha. I was reading the Bible at age six. Wow. Reading it. Thou thus thee, you know, and all these crazy things. I still don't understand it. I still don't get it. I'm reading whole chapters, whole books of the Bible at six, seven years old. Thompson Chain reference Bibles when I'm in like fourth, fifth grade. So I was assimilated. And it's it's so deep for me to just like think back now and realize like I was trying to survive. Like I was literally like just trying to survive, like get through the day without feeling like a crazy ass, without feeling like I, you know, trying to belong some kind of way, sure. Trying to avoid my brothers getting beat the hell out of because you know, just all of that. Like, I just basically went. And I've been living that way as far back as I can remember, with very few, not I don't want to say very few because I actually don't know. I think that a lot of the beautiful moments that I experienced when I was a kid were just buried deep inside of me. I mean, buried so deep.

SPEAKER_01 51:18

I was I was watching this um this podcast or looking, yeah, watching this podcast about epigenetics, and I think that was the most fascinating thing that they talked about was um the recreation of joy just is not like if we're talking about what is transmuted in our you know in our um genetic lineage, like something that's joyful just does not last as long. It just does not carry over. And that was just so fascinating to me, right? Like that's what you're saying. You there are joyful things that happen in the midst of our traumas, they just don't rise to the um levels that we're associating trauma because we're just it's just not there's no need to be hyper-aware of joy, right?

SPEAKER_03 52:10

And trauma keeps you stuck where you are, right? You know, it makes a moment seem like it's forever. Like I actually tell people it's like life is not short. I mean, life is not short at all. You know, moments can be moments can be short, life is long, yeah. You know, the moments that are short are those joyful moments that seem like they just come and they're like, but when you sitting in trauma, that will feel like an eternity. When you're sitting in a lie, that will feel like forever because your ego is attached to it. You know, totally. Like I like what I heard one time. They were like, life is like a coin. You know, there's like one version of reality, another version of reality, and you're the thing in the middle that the coin actually rolls on. Like that's your life.

SPEAKER_00 53:04

I hear that.

SPEAKER_03 53:05

Like you're this, you're you're the part of that's that's the part of the you know, the coin that you're on, the one that actually can spin. Totally, totally. And so now I'm like, okay, looking at life a certain way, and I'm able to see the joy in everything, even when it sucks, even when I feel uncomfortable. Let's say somebody dies, everybody dies. Why do I feel like my life should be immune from tragedy? Why do I feel like I shouldn't feel loneliness? I shouldn't feel, you know, a sense of this or this or hunger or any of these things or angry, or it's how you act. And it's like, why are these things appearing in my life at this moment? Do I need to just practice stillness? Do I need to say that the acceptance is a part as a part of life? Find gratitude in the moment that although this person that may have passed on, I at least got a chance to know them. Perception because everything else is staying the same. That's the deepest thing about healing for me. Nothing changes but your perception.

SPEAKER_01 54:22

Absolutely, which is everything, which is everything, which is everything.

SPEAKER_03 54:29

It's so Jimi Hendrix said it best. Jimi Hendrix. I used to live in a room full of mirrors, and all I could see was me. Then I took my spirit and I crashed those mirrors. Now the whole world is there for me to see. I have limited options of being able to see. Lewis Armstrong said it is the same way, you know, while the country was dealing with like one of the most tumultuous periods it's ever dealing with. I see trees of green, red roses too. I see them bloom for me and for you. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. While people thought he were cooning, he was not. He was in his neighborhood in Queens, looking at the children playing outside, looking at his neighbors walk down, greeting each other. He decided that he was going to see the beauty in life.

SPEAKER_01 55:22

It's a decision. And that's it's funny you said cooning because I remember while I'm in trauma, while I'm in poverty, and seeing people who were like, it's a choice, right? And being like, who the hell do you think you are, right? Do you think you are? Understanding that um getting to a space where you can see that you have you always have choice, but getting to a space where you can see it is such a it's such a beautiful, privileged space to be in. Like you have you, you you almost have to be in a safe space to see that there's an option. Yeah, or just be vulnerable.

SPEAKER_03 56:04

That part vulnerability is the safest place I know now. Yeah, because things can happen to me. Yeah, things will continue to happen to me. They're not happening to me, they're happening. You see what I mean? How I flip that now?

SPEAKER_02 56:23

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 56:24

They're just happening. They're just happening. It's just happening. A new bill, okay? It happened. You know, somebody pissing me off. Okay, it happens. Totally happens. So somebody passes away, or somebody does something that hurts me so bad, it happened. It happened. What are you gonna do now, Sean? You're gonna forgive them? You were forgiven. The Lord's prayer. We skip over a lot of it. We don't really truly look at it, you know. Give first of all, you get to the second part. It says, give us this day, our daily bread. It doesn't say give us this year, it doesn't say give us this century or give us this next few months so I can do just give me the day, just help me to be in the moment, in the present. And then it says, What forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

SPEAKER_00 57:27

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 57:28

That's the healing that has to happen on earth right now. That's where we at. Yeah, you know, I've I've been doing a lot of stuff at Hawkins University, and I know I'm kind of just veering off a little bit here, but you know, we're talking about jazz and democracy a lot, and how jazz music is actually the greatest sonic reflection of democracy, ironically, born on the soil, you know, born in the United States. Jazz is, you know, one of my good friends, JB Dyer, says all the time, jazz is individual freedom, but with responsibility to the group. Well, I started working on this. Let me say it again. Individual freedom, but with responsibility to the group. So I started breaking that down like two things individual freedom. What does it truly mean to be free individually? Right. That means you got to heal. Absolutely. That means you got to do what Michael Jackson said. I'm starting with the man in the mirror. We all have to heal in our society. We are all walking around wounded, which we just big bags of trauma walking around. Totally. All you see it all on the street, you know, overuse of this, overuse of that. Sweets, you go into the hood. There's a reason there's no grocery store in the hood because they want you addicted to sugar and chips. You got a store like that, you got a liquor store on every corner in a bodega where you can get all the candy and chips you want. Right. To mess with your mind.

unknown 59:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:03

Right. So, individuality without going too deep into that. Freedom individually. But with respect to the group. If I am truly free individually, I will respect the group. I won't treat anyone a way that I don't want to be treated. Right, right. What has happened in this country, in my opinion, is that we have these two political parties that play on morality without truly dealing with what it takes to just be whole as a human. So it's like, okay, over here I'm gonna pick and choose morality. Over here, I'm gonna pick and choose these versions of morality, all the while intellectually fighting each other without truly dealing with what's inside.

SPEAKER_00 59:52

Totally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:54

There, um, I don't know if you know that I'm a licensed therapist. Do you know? Did you know that? I did not know that. So I I I don't always like to lead with it because it's you know, um, it creates a dynamic where people are like, oh, you're a therapist, right? But but in when what you're talking about um is something that I am constantly doing uh leading people in a process through my work is differentiation, right? This um have you ever heard of Bowenian family therapy? No. I think you really I mean it's it's intellectual as shit, so I it could be it could either help or it could perpetuate, but um one of the things I really love is this idea that we can exist. The Bowen believes that we exist as um molecule, like a system, right, right? And that some of the the uh pathology comes from us not really fully being able to be our fullest selves in in context of the system. So we break off pieces of ourselves to fit within the construct to maintain homeostasis, right? So it's like if I need to be the good good guy, that's what the fuck I rise up in. You know, if I have to be the the passive daughter or the strong woman, right? Like I become whatever the system needs from me. But I don't I don't fully get to be myself. If we can move towards, and that's the codependency, that's the enmeshment, if we can move towards differentiation, we're able to have a full self and still be in connection with the collective, and it is one of the hardest things to do because you you're saying like you gotta heal, but you gotta be honest, you have to be honest, you gotta be you can't be your fullest freeest self and being like I'm fine when you're not fine, completely, fully honest, completely honest.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:57

You will know the truth. Radically, radically, you will know the truth, and the truth will do what? Yeah, set you free. Right, right. That's the one thing that I that I didn't understand. You know, like you know, with the programs that I'm in now, one of them one of the acronyms they use is how you have to be honest, open-minded, and willing. Gotcha. Honesty, open-mindedness, and willing. And so, how this deals with jazz and democracy, like the group, the group is the band, that's the people you get with on stage. And so, in order for us to be able to actually play together, and I love the fact that they call it playing, right in a playground, right? So we're playing together, there's negotiation all the time. We agree upon a form, right? Something to play on. That's the constitution, right? Right? Play it on the form. What are the rules? Okay, well, these is the key. This is the tempo, this is the song, and then I could play whatever I want, but I gotta play it in that tempo, I gotta play it in that key, and I have to play it in negotiation with the other people that are making vibrations at the same time in order for it to work.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:14

That's well, so this is this is fascinating because I think about uh when you're talking about the chip and you're talking about the intellectualism, and and I wonder how did that show up in in cre in a band, in a group?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:30

Like how well you hear it all the time. I'm sure you go to concerts or especially jazz concerts. Jazz is one of the most revealing human experiences that anybody could go and participate in and observe. Because you go and you see five people or four people or even three people sometimes just making up shit. Right. You know, making up some stuff, and you can see, you could hear their ego. You can hear it, somebody up there just playing just fast all the time, you know, and like you know, ego, yeah. That's the same person that comes in the room that knows everything, right? That was me a lot of these times, gotcha, and they seem really great. A lot of times, like wow, that guy really knows what he's doing. After a while, it's like, okay, dude, like yeah, gotcha, you know. So, how that how does that play out in the group? You negotiate, all of those things happen. Yeah, when somebody starts to get off a little bit, you help them come back in. Yeah, maybe somebody misses a cue sins, you restore them, you figure out a way to bring them back in because the only thing that matters is the song. Right. See what I mean? Individual freedom, but with respect to the group. That cannot exist. The one thing that no one is talking about in this society right now, in terms of how it should heal, is spirit consciousness. There is no collective spirit consciousness in the United States of America that we can all get behind. It doesn't exist, it cannot be a religion.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:15

How do you define that?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:17

It's being connected to something bigger than us.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:21

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:22

Realizing that we are not the end. Individually, we are not the end.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:27

And some people might say, well, and especially in this country, Christianity is that, right? So what it what do you see as the distinction there?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:36

It can't Christianity as a philosophy can work. The notion that, you know, there was this individual named Jesus that lived at a certain time that came in and basically bucked the system. If we're honest about what it is. He came in and was like Nah, y'all like this is not the way to live. This is some bullshit. You know. And so they killed him for it. Killed him for it. But his story lived on. That's the resurrection. The resurrection is the story. You know, we don't know what's happening with that body. Like, you know, nobody knows. The story is what is what resurrected. And so we have that story of someone that was willing to put their entire life on the line to tell us a better way to live. Buddha did the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:32

I'm Buddhist, by the way. So yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:34

Oh, you well, you you and Ali, y'all gotta chant together. Yeah. Go Huntson is downstairs.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:43

So, you know, these different practices that we have are life philosophies that can get you out of self. Right. We all have to get out of self in the society. That is the biggest problem. We are all ego. I mean, this phone is called an iPhone. My email is sjonetrumpet at me dot com. Me. Self-help. Self-help. You know, I'm taking time for me. I'm I'm I'm uh what is it? You know, in my uh my uh self-care. Self. Everything is about individual. It should be the elimination of self. The further you get into yourself, the more pain you feel. You know, it's like how do I get out of this and recognize that this is I'm just energy trapped in a shell. Right, right, right, right, right, right. How does that energy reflect and and interact with all of the other energies that are also trapped by shells on the earth?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:53

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:54

Well, I guess the best way to do it is to just treat them the way I want to be treated. Be honest with them, be vulnerable, do all of these things, heal. Right. You know, but it's gonna have it's gonna happen where people in our generation, you know, people that are a little bit younger, we start really dealing with these babies. I mean, I'm talking about babies, not waiting until they like five or ten. You know, yeah, but like wrapping your arms around them when they're young, just every single little expression that they do, like, tell me about that. How do you feel? Right, what is this? You're not creating weak people, you're creating extremely strong people through vulnerability, yeah. Their ability to express exactly what's going on with them in that moment.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:58

When I watched you in relationship with your mentees for, you know, like but the people who who were kind of following your process, it feels like you did that, it feels like you showed up in a way that was loving and considerate and present in those moments. And I wonder if you felt if you felt that way.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:26

I appreciate you saying that because sometimes I wonder, you know. In all of my mentees, I could see myself. And if I'm being honest, all I really wanted to do when I got into education is just free people.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:48

That's really all I wanted to do. It's like, you don't have to live this way. I didn't realize I was trying to tell them you don't have to live this way. You know, I want I wanted them to understand that they could be their version of great. Like I would tell, especially trumpet players that were students, I'd be like, you don't try to be like me. You know, yeah, I can play all this crazy shit and do all of that. But I did that because I was hiding. You know, I did that because I wanted that to be what people saw and not this. You know? Absolutely. And so I just I wanted to find some saving grace for my life because I wasn't finding into my household ever up until recently, because I was the demon in the mirror. You know, it wasn't nobody else's. Every relationship I've ever been in, it was not their fault. None of them. It's all me. Now, does that mean that they were perfect? Absolutely not. But I know my manipulative ass. I wanted what I wanted. I wanted what I wanted. It's like, oh, I could get her, I could get her. What does this mean for me? You know, and even the stuff that I didn't like, I knew, you know, the things that I was like, oh, this is I don't know if I'm gonna deal with it. I just ignored it. Pride, false pride, excuse me, not pride, false pride.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:27

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:28

Okay, false pride. And and so, like with my students all along on this journey, you know, at Duquesne University, at Oberlin, at Berkeley, and even at Peabody, you know, it's like I would just see them and they trusted me. That's the thing that would get that's the thing that would mess me up. I would see in their eyes distrust them, like, oh my god, dude. Okay, put the bottle down, show up. Right. Get clarity right now, show up for this person.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:03

Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:04

And so I would like, you know, have a little bit of saving grace along the way.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:09

Yeah. I mean, I think you should definitely allow yourself to feel that because I I mean, I don't think you can fake that.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:16

No, you can't.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:17

That's I think that's um, and I imagine having having kids now that also you you feel that way. What what has been a fat being a father meant for you?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:30

The most insignificant thing is that I could finally live for someone other than Sean. Even in close relationships, I was never truly living for that individual, living to serve them, you know. My kids, it's all about serving them. They can't give, you know, I can't they can't feed my ego. Kids destroy your ego. They let you know real fast that you ain't shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:18

I believe it. I believe it.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:20

You know, when Phoebe was born, you know, first one of the first things she did was just spit up all over me. So to just love unconditionally in that way and learn what that is, and and they're mirrors, you know. Phoebe is Phoebe, Phoebe is me. I mean, like the way she operates and acts, it's like, you know, she looks exactly like her mama, but she acts like me.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:51

And so it's like fascinating, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:59

And I also noticed with her because she's autistic, you know, she is she is um, you know, and autism is not some disease either. You know, and that's one of the biggest stigmas that I want to work to for people to get over. There's actually this book that's called The Walt It's Multiple Intelligences some somewhere back here. But through assimilation, you know, and in United States specifically, it's like there's two ways to be. You're either gonna be white-collar or blue-collar. Right, right. And okay, you're an artist, go over there, but you're still gonna be white-collar or blue-collar. You're either gonna get that money or you're not. You're either gonna be Beyoncé, you know, or you're gonna be like some person just working whatever. Yeah. White collar, blue collar. Right. Beyonce is a white-collar artist. You know? Oh are you white-collar or blue-collar? I'm definitely white-collar.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:56

You know, I got the job, I got the, you know, right, the the status level, but do you not feel the the pull when you because you talk about coming from the Midwest, and you know, your Pittsburgh saying, Wait, you know, like, do you not feel playing in this existence of this white collar and but but where you're from and and what the chip is, the does it not feel like a way where you're kind of like, what the fuck am I? Am I wherego? Am I you know what I mean? Where where am I defining it?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:30

Yeah, the one thing that you know, when I'm dead and gone, and people look at my career if they choose to, they will see that I've always tried to go back to a community.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:41

Yeah, I can see that.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:43

I've like all like Pittsburgh, I love Pittsburgh, man. I owe Pittsburgh so much. I grew up in Pittsburgh, you know. Well, grew up, sort of, yeah, in Pittsburgh. You know, people let me fail a lot. I love Pittsburgh, I love the people of Pittsburgh. I owe a lot to Pittsburgh, I owe a lot of apologies in Pittsburgh. I owe so much to that city and the people in that city that just believed in this kid. I was a kid running shit. Right. A kid. And um I love that because you know, when I was in Pittsburgh, I would have people at my house, you know, I would go and be at the club, sitting at the bar, you know, try go to the grocery store, see my freak, my people. Hey, I like that. I didn't really have too much of that in Boston, you know. I I resented that about Boston. So that's I think that's one of the one of the one of the reasons that I didn't last long there because I did get a good sense of community outside of my job.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:50

Right. Are you getting that in Baltimore?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:54

Not only am I getting that in Baltimore, these people in Baltimore do not play around.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:59

Like they're amazing.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:01

They don't give a damn. I mean, they do not care. It was like, who are you? Oh, okay, great. Sit down. What you gonna do? Okay, you're gonna show up. We're gonna play together. Okay, we're gonna do all right, cool. Who are you again? Okay, great. Listen, that's how I feel in Baltimore. They do not give a shit. Sean Jones, who? I know take this room and sweep that corner up over there, dude. You see the trash over there in the corner, go sweep it up.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:34

It's so, it's so cozy for me. I love when I go to Baltimore, when I come to Baltimore, I'm like, that's what I mean though, right? About the blue collar versus white collar. I'm like, It's who I am. Right. I'm blue collar.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:48

Right. I'm blue collar in my court because exactly that's where I'm from. Yeah. But guess what? I'm gonna do I'm gonna use that. Okay, I got this job, this white-collar job. I'm gonna take every resource I possibly can from this white-collar situation, and I'm gonna put it in the blue-collar situation. Absolutely. Because the white-collar situation needs the intellect of the blue collar. I agree. It needs that, you know. So it's like in some weird way, because I'm like the fact that I'm healing now, I can actually take these two words, I could be whole, yeah, and I could take these two things and allow them to serve one another.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:30

Absolutely. I I think that's the best way.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:33

Yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm a communicator by trade. I mean, you see, I'm like just talking. You probably got more questions, but you know, I communicate.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:41

I I think um rigidity, getting too rigid about certain things just makes me I I can't do that. So when our conversation was flowing, I'm like, this is what it needed to be. This was this was better than any question I had. Um, so I'm thankful for this conversation. Um, I do want to know though, just uh to wrap up with this, like if you if you could speak to any other artist, any other musician, dead or alive, and you know, have dinner with them, converse with them, ask them something, who would it be and what would you t what would you ask them?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:23

Who would it be? Musician, dead or alive. Probably John Coltrane.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:36

Okay. Why?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:42

Love supreme. Like I would want to relate to what he found and just like get a deeper understanding from his point of view, what his quest was, you know, because John Coltrane was, you know, everybody knows at this point that he suffered with addiction, but he basically cold turkeyed himself into healing. Totally. And he was able to write a love supreme, yeah, which is four movements, you know, acknowledgement, accepting where you are, acknowledging this is where I am, acknowledging that I need something bigger, yeah, you know, resolution, made a decision to change, made a decision, right? Made a decision, not just acknowledge, not just say I'm a I'm this. No, you got to decide. And after you decide, there's the third movement, which is pursuance. You got to do something, you got to do some work, right? And the fourth, which is the song, which is a love supreme, which is that peace and serenity that you feel after you have gone through this process of transformation. That's what I want in my life. And I just want to ask John Coltrane, you know, like in your time, what was it? Like, I basically want to have a meeting with John Coltrane, just like a like a like from one addict to another. Right, totally. Like, tell me your story. Yeah, yeah. Because that's all we are as stories. I and I because I'm writing my own personal Love Supreme right now, yeah, which will be my final album, which is called Return. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:36

When is it?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:37

And it's all about the plan is for it to come out in the fall this year. Okay. You know, which it'll it'll be it'll be a um a series of letters written written to my daughters, and each one of those letters will be a song. Oh, that is so beautiful, you know, and my father-in-law is gonna be on there, and he's doing the artwork for it. Um my wife will be on there, wrote a song about her. It's called The Alchemist. Wow, because I call her The Alchemist. And um, I have some students on there, I have some friends, you know. I don't care if this album only sells one album, I mean sells one record. I it's it's I have to tell the story. Like there's an old, and maybe we could, you know, we we probably have to go here, I understand. But there is an old spiritual that I have I have really come to love and have a profound, um just a profound and deep relationship with it now. And it's a song called By and By. You know that song? You might have heard it in church the song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When the morning comes, you know, but the lyrics go like this by and by, when the morning comes, all the saints of God will be gathering home, we'll tell the story of how we've overcome and we'll understand it better. By and by our ancestors were talking about the key to human evolution in that song. Let's analyze it. By and by. What is by and by the great by and by that's eternity, all time. Next lyric says, in when the morning comes. What happens in the morning? You wake up, right? All the saints of God. Who is that? That's everybody on earth will be gathering home. Gathering home? Where's home? Yourself will return. And then we'll do what? We'll tell the story of how we've overcome. All we are are stories, and that's all we are. We get this bleak, quick moment of energy in this body to do things, and those things become a story. We'll tell the story of how we overcome, how we've healed, hopefully, how we've survived this lifetime. And then we'll do what? We'll understand it better by and by. I have to tell the story, right? Because this is how I live forever through the ages, but I gotta be honest about it, and I'm thankful for you, sis. I'm thankful for you because this is the first time I probably really told the bulk of my story to anybody. Wow, I feel honored, and it's appropriate because you've known me for a long time. You know what I mean? I know your father.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:58

Yeah, he's gonna be so happy to hear this episode. Oh, he's gonna like, I'm sure he's gonna be.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:04

Brilliant man.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:05

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:06

I I look back and I'm like, man, I was kept. But the all of this grace and gratitude that I feel now is nothing if I don't tell this story. Totally, absolutely. So so that's it, and that's what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life is tell the story.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:24

Thank you so much. This has been I I literally could not have even fathomed how dope this conversation would be. I appreciate your vulnerability. Um, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:35

My pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:38

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. If you've enjoyed this episode, please like, follow, and subscribe to the podcast. If you'd like to learn more about me, your host, Audra, you can check me out on Instagram at Audra J Lee underscore. Until next time.