B-Side Morning Brew w/ Bij & Niles

Niles
0:00:00
Good morning and welcome.

Bijon
0:00:08
You're listening to B-Side Morning Crew with Deej and Niles. Hot coffee, cool chatting, chilling on the corner of Lifestyle Lab and Music Street on

Niles
0:00:19
91.5 KUNV Jazz and More.

Chipmunk Voice
0:00:22
Let's start with our sip of coffee.

Bijon
0:00:25
Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Niles
0:00:28
Let's start with our sip of coffee.

Niles
0:00:30
Oh yeah, oh yeah. That's it. You know we should your your espresso machines will be there by the time I get you know, it's funny, brother I was I went I was on some errands and Christmas errands the other day I was I got one coming dude. I saw this this I walked through this coffee area just by accident And I started laughing people probably in the store, but I thought I was nuts because I literally laughed out loud I'm like that brother I'm like I laughed I'm like well his hearts in the right place and that's cool. That's all that mattered to me.

Bijon
0:01:17
No, dude, I told you what happened to the first one. Is that, you know, they didn't ship it because of backup, whatever, because it was a sale thing. I got it. OK, yeah. But they didn't have it. But I'm going to I'm going to send you a different one.

Niles
0:01:30
All right. I'm excited for it.

Bijon
0:01:32
I'm not going to change your crib until the espresso machine's there.

Niles
0:01:37
Fair enough. Yeah man. You know maybe we should, what's what's our favorite steak place? Not favorite, but where we did have a really good one.

Bijon
0:01:44
I think we should try a different one. Yeah we did we dig the, well the Cleaver's cool. I think we had a good time last time there, but that was that place we went to in New York, New York.

Niles
0:01:54
That's what I'm trying to remember. That's the name. You're better at names than I am. I can't remember the name of the place. We'll find someplace. I ain't worried about that. That's easy. Yeah. We may just go back to that place at Red Rock. They got great steaks too. That bar with the fireplace? Come on. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. It's true. But Cleavers, man, they got great cocktails too. So. Yeah, that's in a weird little zone, man. The vibe is weird over there. Strip malls and all that. All right, cool. Yeah, we'll figure it out.

Niles
0:02:22
We've got a lot to talk about. We do, man. We know, I think the end of the year suggests time for meditation, reflection. Well you know, you and I talked about this the other day about how normally we're always talking about end of the next year, what's a New Year's resolution, that kind of mindset, but how often do we really, really go into a year-end reflection, like add up all the things that went well or didn't go too well this past year.

Niles
0:02:51
You know what I mean? And I know that's part of a New Year's resolution, but looking at it from a different perspective, I think just kind of you look deeper into what just happened over the last 12 months, I think.

Bijon
0:03:02
Well, the reality is it's impossible to create resolutions if you haven't taken accountability or stock of what happened the year before. Right. I think too many times we make resolutions without taking

Niles
0:03:16
account for the past, so we don't recreate the same, you know, situation, mistakes or whatever you want to call

Bijon
0:03:32
them. Or be able to know what you did right to carry that into tomorrow to build on. Yeah, absolutely. We don't do enough meditation. And you know, meditation

Niles
0:04:00
has this connotation of you're just sitting there in silence. It's like, yeah, that's part of it. That's being still for sure. Well, that's one exercise form of it. You can do it in many different ways, really. Exactly. And I think it's important to realize that there's more ways to quote-unquote meditate, which I like to look at it as taking stock of or taking account for the positive and the negative and not ignoring one portion of that.

Niles
0:04:27
Well, that just, that kind of reminds me of my biggest thing lately. And we all know about this in general, but it's really about perspective, right? Everything's perspective. And I think there's a few podcasts I've been listening to

Niles
0:04:41
and watching on YouTube that have really helped transform that for me and really look at things differently. it's like, you know, spin doctoring your perception, right? So guys like, are you familiar with guys like Jay Shetty or Absolutely. Andrew Huberman. Yeah, he's great. Andrew Huberman's great for what he brings to the table and then you probably know of Dr. Joe Dispenza, which is talking about meditation and just being able to, what is it, when you're manifesting things in your life. Right. Which is another term that's

Niles
0:04:59
thrown around a little too much now. I know. Too much. And people don't really understand that people just think, oh thinking it will become. It's like, well yes, thinking of it is part of the process. That's step one. That's step one.

Bijon
0:05:13
Right.

Niles
0:05:14
But you have to take action.

Bijon
0:05:16
Faith without works is dead, from a biblical perspective. Well, that's what Joe... It's true philosophically as well.

Niles
0:05:24
It's true, man. And that's what Joe Dispenza talks about. If you're going to manifest it, yeah, that's part of it. But you have to take action. You have to exercise those elements. And then the other thing for me, just for positivity, man,

Niles
0:05:38
has been, I know everybody's familiar with Wim Hof, you know, and his breathing, you know, they can't sit in the Iceman, but for me, he's got these 11-minute breathing exercises in the morning I do, and it's just, it just, you know, it just oxygenates everything,

Niles
0:05:54
and you just feel better afterwards, just taking in how to breathe in a certain way during that exercise is so positive. It's made a huge difference for me, truth be told. I do it every morning.

Bijon
0:06:05
Well, the great deal of it is being conscious of your breath. Yeah. Conscious of your intake, conscious of your exhale. Yeah. When you spend time focusing on that in a conscious manner, your body responds to that and becomes centered and relaxed. And it doesn't take, it's not like you have to do it for hours on end. No. Five minutes, ten minutes. I have a seven minute thing I use on the calm app that's a breathing thing and yeah, there's a Tube there's so many possibilities and I think we shouldn't be afraid

Bijon
0:06:36
Okay, it's very easily to get drawn in several different directions, right? Yeah, so like Podcasts for instance, it's very easy to listen, you know, listen to several of them and I'm not knocking that obviously because in many ways we want people to listen to what we're doing but I think understanding like you said the perspective and being able to sift through that and have a supplement to that. The podcast that you listen to supplements something that you're reading or something that you're practicing at that time. And I think

Bijon
0:07:10
that's when it becomes really valuable and powerful.

Niles
0:07:14
It is.

Niles
0:07:15
Well, I mean, because things get thrown at us all the time. There's curveballs thrown at all of us all the time. And it really comes down to how do you navigate it, how do you move around it, how do you move through it. And it's those, going back to even seven minutes, it's being able to take at least a half moment for yourself

Niles
0:07:32
and sit down with something and just kind of be wherever that is for you so that you can get through it with a clear mind, so you're making good judgment, basically, you know.

Bijon
0:07:45
And building from that point, building a level of consistency as well. Sometimes you say, okay, I'm gonna do breathing exercises you know, every day. Yeah. If you pick 30 minute breathing exercise,

Bijon
0:07:57
you're not gonna do it every day.

Niles
0:07:58
No, it's not sustainable for someone who's, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you gotta bite off what you can chew. Yeah. Yeah.

Bijon
0:08:06
No, it's an excellent time to do that. I think we both look forward to the the holidays or this end of end of quarter.

Niles
0:08:13
Yeah, year-end to take stock and all that. Yeah, I mean, I love this time of the holiday. I mean I've been you know, just kind of getting ready to decorate the house a bit, you know, get a little Christmas chip.

Bijon
0:08:28
Wonderful time of the year.

Bijon
0:08:32
Finishing up at my first semester at Berkeley.

Bijon
0:08:35
Yeah, how is that? So how do you say?

Niles
0:08:38
OK, all right. All right.

Niles
0:08:40
Hold on, everybody. Let's buckle in for a second.

Niles
0:08:42
How are we feeling since you've been there? You know, I mean, because I know it's maybe a little bit

Bijon
0:08:51
more, maybe a little bit less than what you thought. Definitely more than what I thought only because you know I'm building them, building up class schedules, class pacing and curriculum and things like that. And you know we've got finals week coming up here right around the corner in the next two or three weeks. And what does that entail though? Like what do you have to give the final for the theory classes, but in the professional development classes it's just looking at projects and

Niles
0:09:21
grading, a lot of grading, a lot of grading going on. Yeah, well how many students are you working with? I have

Bijon
0:09:28
30 students between two sections of theory and then 45 students between two sections of professional development. That's all the papers to read.

Niles
0:09:40
So does that mean when you're saying you need to write papers, let's keep those down to maybe two papers instead of ten?

Bijon
0:09:47
I said, I told my students, I said, the more concise you are, the better grades you're going to get.

Niles
0:09:53
Let's just trim the fat, man. Like just truncate this. Keep me interested. In music, it's like, don't bore us, get us to the chorus.

Bijon
0:10:05
Entertain me. Yeah. So, that's exciting. And then I head to the Midwest Clinic, which is a conference that I go to.

Niles
0:10:13
That's in Chicago, right?

Bijon
0:10:15
Yeah, a band and orchestra conference.

Niles
0:10:17
December 20th? Are you doing, it's the 20th through the 22nd, right? Are you doing the whole time or are you just jumping in for a day?

Bijon
0:10:23
I'm just going to go for two days, two and a half days I'll be there.

Niles
0:10:26
Okay.

Niles
0:10:27
Are you going to see Kurt?

Bijon
0:10:29
Well, this is more, no I'm not actually. He's out of town. I'll go see some jazz at the jazz showcase there.

Niles
0:10:36
Sorry folks, who I was referring to is Kurt Elling.

Bijon
0:10:38
Kurt Elling, that's right. Our man, our brother, Kurt Elling. And then there's going to be a lot of seminars on running rehearsals and working with bands and orchestras and jazz bands and a lot of pedagogy education stuff. So I'll be going there as a representative of Berklee now. It'll be cool.

Bijon
0:11:01
I always have a good time there. I always end up rekindling relationships and booking opportunities to do masterclasses at the CliftonSchwerer School.

Niles
0:11:14
I figure that's mostly what all that's about anyway, right? In terms of...

Bijon
0:11:18
For the most part, yeah.

Niles
0:11:19
That's super cool, man. December is steak month.

Niles
0:11:23
I'm sorry, you know what? You know what's funny?

Niles
0:11:26
With that, I think about it. Every month there's something, I mean, there's something every month. There's three or four, there's something day. There's give this day, take away this day, do this day. It's like it's exercise day. Man, it's getting it's getting a little ridiculous as far as I'm concerned. It's a little over saturated.

Niles
0:11:48
It is. Yeah. I forget what it was like a month or so ago when I was at my Orange Theory class and in the morning, OK, today's I don't know, is that coffee Tuesday or something? What are you talking about? Just coffee Tuesday. What are we saying here? What's happening? Anyway, that's my little hang up.

Bijon
0:12:08
No, no problem.

Niles
0:12:09
There's a lot to fill in the calendar nowadays. So you don't work on any Christmas music right now? Or are you just like, what's going on with that? Anything?

Niles
0:12:16
Well, no.

Niles
0:12:16
Actually, no.

Niles
0:12:17
That stuff's recorded in June, generally, right? I mean, yeah.

Bijon
0:12:20
Christmas albums are recorded in July.

Niles
0:12:22
Yeah, I know. It's crazy.

Bijon
0:12:24
It's crazy. But, uh.

Niles
0:12:26
Well, let's hear something. I know you've been on numerous Christmas songs in the past, recordings. Yeah, so one of the more popular albums that I recorded on was Diana Kral's Christmas album

Bijon
0:12:40
that was recorded with the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra.

Niles
0:12:44
Nice.

Bijon
0:12:45
How about we play a tune off that album, Jingle Bells, featuring the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and Diana Kral and you're listening to B-Side Morning Brew on 91.5 KUNV Jazz and More

Niles
0:13:02
Dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh, o'er the fields we go laughing all the way Bells on bob-tail ring making spirits bright What fun it is to ride and sing a sleighing song tonight

Niles
0:13:26
Oh jingle bells, jingle bells jingle all the way Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh, what fun it is to ride on a one-horse open sleigh.

Niles
0:13:40
Now the ground is white, go it while you're young. Take the girls tonight and sing the sleighing song. Just a bit of bobtail bait, two-forty is his speed they'll hit you to an open sleigh and crack you'll take the lead No one will ever cheat on, no one on me, no! Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way

Niles
0:14:14
Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh. Hey! Jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.

Niles
0:14:36
Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle, jingle all the way. Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh. Jingle bells, all the way. Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh. Jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh, when slaves

Niles
0:15:40
I'm just crazy about horses Welcome back. You've been listening to B-side morning brew with B. Jean Niles here on 91.5 KUNV jazz and more that was Diana Krall Singing jingle bells featuring the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra with our boy B. Jean on the trumpet

Niles
0:16:02
Man, I was looking at the video of that footage it looks so cool what's you guys in Capitol Records is that where you guys are at recording? Capitol Studio A. Yeah man it looks so cool in there it's beautiful right? Yeah it was awesome. Great when they record it. Does it sound good in there like when you're in it you know I mean it's like how do you feel when you're in it?

Bijon
0:16:44
Amazing. You get just enough back it's warm but it's still got a vibe to it, a nice reverb, reverberance, you know the funny thing is, I mean behind the scenes, Christmas albums

Niles
0:17:04
are often recorded in July. So yeah, I was in the middle of July in California. So yeah. And you guys are all wearing like

Niles
0:17:20
white linen.

Niles
0:17:26
It's true. You know, it's funny though, it's um, but they

Bijon
0:17:16
Oh, yeah, bro, it was killer. Speaking of studio,

Niles
0:17:18
you and I are trying to figure out our timeline to start our, you know, collaboration, obviously. And because I know that we're looking forward to a good Jazz Republic 2024. And I know that before we even do the next show at the Smith Center, you know, it'd be great to have a couple of new songs for our listeners and our fans. And these next collection of songs will be a true collaboration of both you and I, which is very exciting. Yeah, man. Well, we've worked together for so long, but to actually write songs together,

Niles
0:17:55
we've actually never done that. So yeah, this is the next the evolution of the the combo of Niles Thomas and B. John Watts and the peanut butter and chocolate as it were. We're either gonna love it or we're gonna hate it. It's big too. Yeah. Either you're gonna hear a lot of music or you're gonna

Niles
0:18:34
hear no music. Well you know it's funny I don't know about your process but like when I'm writing it's I'm so used to It's going to be different for me to go, okay, don't worry about the next change and just give Bijon a couple bars, a couple of measures of an idea and see where he naturally takes it as opposed to where I would want to take it.

Niles
0:18:46
That's what I'm looking forward to letting go of because I've never done that. That'll be interesting for me personally. I don't know What do you think it'll be like for you? Oh, it's gonna be amazing. I just think

Bijon
0:18:56
We work better together than we realize. Yeah, it's never really taken it. I think so, too

Niles
0:19:01
Yeah, I think that's that's the key. So yeah, so for 2024 we were talking about a few different things obviously to perform You know get the calendar of events the live shows back up and running but I think I know we were talking about maybe trying to do some East Coast stuff Maybe some stuff in LA but in terms of Las Vegas for our Lovely listeners here. I think we're gonna work on getting another Smith show Smith Center show together in the spring I think we're talking about what end of March maybe top of April Yeah, the spring seems to work out best for us

Niles
0:19:32
So it does we'll do a spring fling and it gives us time to have those couple those new tunes in the can and it gets us that much more excited as well. I mean I love playing all of our tunes but you know as artists we like to we like the new stuff as well you know it just kind of gets it that it's much more exciting I think. With that in mind there's a couple other things we're talking about we got to launch the new Jazz Republic website so we're excited about that but for the time being we've got our new website for the radio show up and running, B-SideMorningBrew.com.

Niles
0:20:13
So if you'd like, feel free to check out B-SideMorningBrew.com to not only link and listen to our previous shows because that's always available to stream, but also we are relaunching... go ahead Beej, what's our what was our segment?

Niles
0:20:46
We're bringing it back. We're bringing back our amazing segment on Do Tell. Do Tell was a, for those of you who had not heard our previous shows last year, was basically having you, the listener, type in some of the questions that you'd like to get answered on our radio show. If you'd like, feel free to venture over hopefully you'll be selected to... we normally, what do we normally answer

Niles
0:21:01
about three questions right? Somewhere in there on the show. Absolutely. We love hearing from our audience. I can't

Bijon
0:21:14
believe we didn't bring it back sooner.

Niles
0:21:17
It's funny how we just thought about it

Niles
0:21:20
fairly recently. Like why aren't we doing Do Tell anymore? What happened there? And while we're bringing back the segment, I the Do Tell theme. Do Tell. What do you think? It's hilarious. We're back baby. Yeah so that's exciting we love to hear from you the listeners so we're

Niles
0:21:45
very much looking forward to reading your questions and but I would like to you know it's our favorite time of the year stuff, all the fixes. I would like to play a song. I love more haunting type Christmas songs, if you will. I'm a huge Sting fan, as everyone knows. Sting is my guy. And so I'd like to introduce this song he recorded years ago, but it's all him, but it sounds like he's just in this beautiful choir. The song is called Gabriel's Message by Sting off of

Niles
0:22:05
a very special Christmas album. You're listening to it here on B-Side Morning Brew with Bij and Niles on 91.5 KUNV Jazz and more.

Niles
0:22:18
Heaven came, His wings as drifted snow, His eyes as flame All hail, said He, the Holy, Made-in-Mary, Most highly favoured Lady For known a blessing on the Mount shall be Of generations great and long under thee Thy sons shall be exalted when thy sinners cast out Most highly favoured slave, Gloria

Niles
0:23:05
Gloria The gentle Mary lead me my love To be beheld in thee that God has saved My soul shall hold a magnified in His name Most highly favoured Lady, Gloria Of her Emmanuel Christ was born

Niles
0:23:42
At the altar of the greatest of souls As everyone throughout the world will ever say Welcome back.

Bijon
0:24:14
You're listening to B-Side Morning Brew with Beej and Niles on 91.5 KUNV Jazz and More. You just heard from Sting, a favorite of Niles and mine as well, and his holiday tune, Gabriel's Message. Of course, in the tradition of Niles Thomas, it definitely is a little more somber, more thought-provoking. But I think it's fitting terms of our theme of reflection and accountability and looking back and putting into action plans and for the future taking advantage of this time with family and friends and loved ones and or even by yourself and just taking

Bijon
0:25:04
time for yourself. Self-care is important as well emotionally, physically and don't

Niles
0:25:12
discount that as well it's very important. And don't be afraid to indulge in any of the delicious food, the holiday foods. You know it's funny, it's like it was during Thanksgiving, it's like you're training all year round and you can feel guilty. I purpose, I could have gone in to work out in Orange Theory on that Thursday

Niles
0:25:30
morning out of class. And I thought, you know what, it's okay. I don't mind getting fat and salted up for a couple days. It's not a problem. I'm going to enjoy and indulge in whatever I want and not feel guilty about it. I don't want to be hard on myself all the time. We do it for the whole year. It's okay to just let yourself go a little bit and enjoy.

Bijon
0:25:53
It's very important. I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of self-loathing as a result of indulgence. And, you know, don't. That's all we're going to say.

Niles
0:26:06
Just enjoy, enjoy and enjoy.

Bijon
0:26:08
But of course, at this time of the year, we always love to give thanks and thankful for all the people in our circle. As far as the B-Side Morning Brew is concerned, and on behalf of Niles and myself, we like to thank KUNV 91.5, Jazz and More for being an amazing partner with us uh... like thank high note roasters of course bring them good coffee sipping goodness to us at the end of the three-quarter

Bijon
0:26:35
that was supporting and we'd like to thank you the listener for sticking with us and uh... as we continue to grow this portion of our sharing with you sharing is caring if they say so uh... and we truly appreciate you

Bijon
0:26:51
sharing time with us. And we have a lot of great things in store for 2024. And we look forward to sharing them with you. And we look forward to sharing them with you.

Niles
0:27:00
Happy holidays, everybody. Enjoy your Sunday.