Speaker 1: It's nice Eyes with Dan Ray. I'm Doug you Eazy
Speaker 1: Boston's news Radio.
Speaker 2: My whole life has been a quest to understand the
Speaker 2: origins of rhythm, the force that connects us all through
Speaker 2: time and space. Rhythm is one of the ordering principles
Speaker 2: of the universe and one of its greatest mysteries. He
Speaker 2: who knows the rhythm.
Speaker 3: Knows the world.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 5: I get chills. I get chills when I hear that
Speaker 5: from the moment I heard it when I watched Toury
Speaker 5: Champagne's terrific film with Mickey Hart called Rhythm Masters a
Speaker 5: Mickey Heart Experience, a documentary showcasing Mickey's philosophy how music
Speaker 5: in sports you unite us all and it is a trip.
Speaker 5: And I'd like to introduce tour Champagne. He is an
Speaker 5: Emmy Award winner. He is one of the big ways
Speaker 5: at ESPN. He makes stuff happen. But without question, the
Speaker 5: most notable element on his resume is he was a
Speaker 5: Gary Tangling intern.
Speaker 3: This is true, this is true.
Speaker 5: That will be on the gravestone, that will be on
Speaker 5: the gravestone, that'll be it our Gary.
Speaker 4: I mean Gary, I I you know. My start in
Speaker 4: television was just getting you water and keeping you hydrated.
Speaker 4: That was that was the goal in the mission. And
Speaker 4: I hope I did a good job. I hope you, James.
Speaker 5: And now I'm at the stage of my life for
Speaker 5: on peeing every twenty minutes. And when you say getting
Speaker 5: me when you said getting me hydrated, I thought you
Speaker 5: were going to say getting me high, because that was
Speaker 5: you know, the Rhythm Masters and The Grateful Death. Okay,
Speaker 5: what we want to do here is this is a
Speaker 5: terrific film that is on ESPN Plus. Is this on
Speaker 5: ESPN as well? I know what premiered on ESPN? Can
Speaker 5: we still watch it?
Speaker 4: There? Premiered on ESPN, But that was on ESPN Plus,
Speaker 4: So it's streaming for anybody that has the ESPN Plus. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And Mickey Hart is one of the drummers of The
Speaker 5: Grateful Dead and he had this idea about rhythm and sports,
Speaker 5: and Tory worked with him on a couple of years.
Speaker 5: I mean, this project took a while to come together.
Speaker 5: You worked your ass off on this, and it is
Speaker 5: a film that involves Joe Montana, Bob Couzy, Mike Piazza,
Speaker 5: and just Jack Nicholas. I mean it just it's a
Speaker 5: tremendous film, and it just also kind of I think
Speaker 5: musicians like Mickey Hart, athletes like Bob Coosey and Jack Nicholas,
Speaker 5: they're on a different level than us. So I want
Speaker 5: you I want to start at the beginning, when they
Speaker 5: first came to an ESPN about this idea where the
Speaker 5: drummer of the Grateful Dead wanted to make a documentary
Speaker 5: with ESPN. What did you think, you.
Speaker 4: Know, when I first heard about it, it actually it
Speaker 4: was it was right Tom, who a lot of people
Speaker 4: know is a tremendous writer and a New York Times
Speaker 4: best selling author. He has a new book coming out
Speaker 4: called The Bar and I highly recommend people go check
Speaker 4: it out. You know, right Right has a long history
Speaker 4: of being a Grateful Dead fan. And he was speaking
Speaker 4: with Burke Magnus, who's the president of content, and Burke
Speaker 4: worked very closely with Bill Walton and was also a
Speaker 4: Grateful Dead fan. And Bill Walton invited Burke to dinner
Speaker 4: with Mickey Hart. So they have this dinner and over
Speaker 4: the course of dinner three years ago. Now, over the
Speaker 4: course of this dinner, they started talking about how rhythm
Speaker 4: and sports are connected. And you know, Walton has a thousand,
Speaker 4: you know, metaphors for sports and music and how it's
Speaker 4: all connected. And over the course of the dinner, Mickey
Speaker 4: and Bill kind of said we should make a film
Speaker 4: about this. So that kind of made its way back
Speaker 4: to me about two years ago, and they had kind
Speaker 4: of talked about it, and then they were like, can
Speaker 4: you make this a real thing that we can do this?
Speaker 4: And so I met with Mickey, I talked to Bill
Speaker 4: Walton at the time, and I basically started to develop
Speaker 4: an idea of what it could be, and it kind
Speaker 4: of presented it to Mickey into you know, the higher
Speaker 4: ups at ESPN because you know, my my regular job
Speaker 4: is more of a producer and you know, kind of
Speaker 4: helping shepherd other series. So I hadn't directed in a while,
Speaker 4: and we were just like, let's see if we can
Speaker 4: make this work. So flew out to Mickey's house and
Speaker 4: I spent a week with him, and we were already
Speaker 4: writing music. He was writing music. We were kind of
Speaker 4: getting ideas together, looking at footage and kind of really
Speaker 4: diving deep together. For you know, twelve hours a day,
Speaker 4: we'd be locked in his studio and really kind of
Speaker 4: watching everything from Babe Ruth to you know, the seventies
Speaker 4: Olympics to kind of get some ideas of like what
Speaker 4: are the things that are rhythmic in sports, and then
Speaker 4: he started to call up me music and by the
Speaker 4: time I left there at the first week, I was like,
Speaker 4: I think, I think we can make a film here.
Speaker 5: Well, I just love the opening of the film because
Speaker 5: there's a Boston Celtic jacket hanging on his chair in
Speaker 5: the studio, which, yeah, you know when when you think
Speaker 5: of Boston sports and you think of the typical Boston
Speaker 5: sports fan, you know, I'll give Sam Adams a plug
Speaker 5: in Boston, you know that, dude. Yep, And then you
Speaker 5: segue to the drummer of the Grateful Dead. It's an
Speaker 5: it's an odd relationship, you know.
Speaker 4: Well, well it's it's it's it seems odd if you're
Speaker 4: if you're not in that world. And I think what
Speaker 4: we tried to do very intentionally with the film was
Speaker 4: not alienate the non Grateful Dead fan, but at the
Speaker 4: same time place easter eggs throughout the film that really
Speaker 4: speak to kind of the lore and cool things that
Speaker 4: Grateful Dead fans would be like, oh my god, wow,
Speaker 4: so so Garry the jacket that Celtics jacket was the
Speaker 4: jacket that I don't know if everybody remembers the famous
Speaker 4: Touch of Gray music video from like nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty six when the Dead kind of researched and
Speaker 4: they had this famous music video where they were all skeletons,
Speaker 4: you know, playing instruments. That jacket is the actual jacket
Speaker 4: that Mick Elton was.
Speaker 3: Wearing in that music video.
Speaker 4: And he was a Celtics fan because as you know,
Speaker 4: for those that see the film or people know, you know,
Speaker 4: Bob Coosey was his hero growing up, so he always
Speaker 4: loved the Celtics, and then when he became friends with
Speaker 4: Bill Walton, he obviously you know, had that connection with
Speaker 4: the Celtics there. So this is this kind of secret
Speaker 4: connection to the Boston Celtics that has existed for Mickey
Speaker 4: his whole life. And for me, you know, that was
Speaker 4: one of the things that we clicked on right away
Speaker 4: because I had worked on the eighty six Celtics doc
Speaker 4: back when I worked in Boston at NBC Sports and
Speaker 4: you know, and I had a long tenure of working
Speaker 4: with the Celtics so on different projects. So it was
Speaker 4: it was it was cool for me that him and
Speaker 4: I kind of connected right away, and that was one
Speaker 4: of the big things about him talking about Bob Coozy
Speaker 4: was you know, this was this guy that he watched
Speaker 4: in black and white that was like he saw even
Speaker 4: back then, he saw him as.
Speaker 3: Kind of an artist.
Speaker 4: So one of the people we definitely went to and
Speaker 4: I drove out to Bob's house and asked him to
Speaker 4: be in the film, and he was great and he
Speaker 4: ended up, you know, talking to Mickey and being part.
Speaker 3: Of the film.
Speaker 4: So if he got to meet his hero in the process,
Speaker 4: which is very cool.
Speaker 5: If you pop a couple of gummies and you watch
Speaker 5: this film, that is really Bob Coosey in a Grateful
Speaker 5: Dead movie. We just wanted to be ready to know
Speaker 5: that it really is. It's just it's it's a terrific
Speaker 5: film and you need to watch it. If you're listening
Speaker 5: to us right now, you're probably thinking what and we're
Speaker 5: going to break it down for you, But once you
Speaker 5: watch it, you get it. And Tory did a great
Speaker 5: job with it. So we have a lot to break down.
Speaker 5: We want to talk about some of the guests. We're
Speaker 5: going to ask about, Oh, what it's like to live
Speaker 5: with a member of the Grateful Dead out there in
Speaker 5: the in the woods, which he did for a long while,
Speaker 5: and that's coming up next to WBZ.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: Nightside Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 5: This is what I was born to do.
Speaker 2: My whole life has been a quest to understand the
Speaker 2: origins of rhythm. The creation of the universe gave birth
Speaker 2: to these elements that only rhythm masters know how to harness,
Speaker 2: playing sports homes.
Speaker 5: That rhyver, and that is the man, that is the
Speaker 5: rhythm master. Mickey Hart and joining us is the director
Speaker 5: of the film Rhythm Masters and Mickey Hart Experience, a
Speaker 5: documentary you can watch on ESPN Plus, directed by my
Speaker 5: guest story Champagne. Boston. Guys doing great things at ESPN. So,
Speaker 5: how many days did you actually stay out there in
Speaker 5: on Mickey's plantation or ranch, if you will just tell
Speaker 5: us about that experience.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, so, you know, very early on, from
Speaker 4: a couple of conversations, you know, he was, you know,
Speaker 4: very much like a musician, like, hey, we need to jam,
Speaker 4: we need to jam on This was like his whole thing.
Speaker 3: So you know, over the course.
Speaker 4: Of I think, you know, in the course of a
Speaker 4: year of actual like filming, and then I think the
Speaker 4: thing to just always note is that it's not just
Speaker 4: a film that features Mickey's philosophies and the connection between
Speaker 4: rhythm and sports and the athletes talking. The score of
Speaker 4: the film is all original music that Mickey composed and
Speaker 4: wrote for the film. So there was a lot of
Speaker 4: work being done and there was a lot of you know,
Speaker 4: I was kind of honored that he kind of trusted
Speaker 4: me through that process to kind of you know, he's
Speaker 4: Mickey Hart from The Grateful Dead, He's had a sixty
Speaker 4: year career, He's in the.
Speaker 3: Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4: He's in the Rock and Hall Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 4: of Fame three times, I think, So, you know, it
Speaker 4: was a process. So you know, I think I spent
Speaker 4: anywhere from twenty to twenty five days living with him
Speaker 4: over the course of like a year, and we would
Speaker 4: kind of go for you know, three four days or
Speaker 4: five days at a time where and spend a lot
Speaker 4: of time on the score and interviewing the athletes. So
Speaker 4: it was this long process of spending a lot of
Speaker 4: time together. Like we would get started at around nine am.
Speaker 4: We'd come in the studio, we'd have coffee, we'd kind
Speaker 4: of talk about what we're going to do for the day.
Speaker 4: And the thing that was tricky was he was preparing
Speaker 4: at the time. People didn't know that The Grateful Dead
Speaker 4: was going to go play at the Spear, So while
Speaker 4: he was doing the film with us, he was also
Speaker 4: preparing to go play the Spear, So that required a
Speaker 4: lot of his attention. So there'd be times where he'd
Speaker 4: break away to go work on you know, take some
Speaker 4: calls about that, and come back. But it was this
Speaker 4: really intense process of you know, literally sitting in the
Speaker 4: control room of his studio and figuring out which pieces
Speaker 4: of music would flow together, kind of getting a rough idea, uh,
Speaker 4: putting it to picture, then figuring out which athlete we
Speaker 4: wanted to talk to. Uh. So, for instance, like with
Speaker 4: Joe Montana, that that piece of music came together very
Speaker 4: quickly and we really felt felt like that speaks to
Speaker 4: the idea of what we think Joe will talk about,
Speaker 4: which was timing and how a quarterback can get in
Speaker 4: rhythm and the steps that it takes, you know, with
Speaker 4: the three five seven step drop and that rhythm that
Speaker 4: you have to be in with another receiver, and how
Speaker 4: that's very similar to two drummers trying to sync up
Speaker 4: in rhythm like The Grateful Dead. So we were layering
Speaker 4: things in the studio. He was really putting his touch
Speaker 4: to it, and uh, yeah, it was. We spent a
Speaker 4: lot of time together. We eat meals together at night,
Speaker 4: we have dinner together every night, and I heard a
Speaker 4: lot of great stories and we got a lot of
Speaker 4: work done.
Speaker 5: Together, and probably stories that you cannot repeat on the air.
Speaker 5: But you mentioned Joe Montana and also I don't know
Speaker 5: if Francis sport copo stuff, but because I think he's
Speaker 5: like down the road and as you mentioned, and you
Speaker 5: reminded me that he also this is a guy that
Speaker 5: scored Apocalypse.
Speaker 4: Now, yeah, I mean, there's nothing more humbling as a director.
Speaker 4: And you know, I had a music career before I
Speaker 4: got into into you know.
Speaker 3: Directing and producing.
Speaker 4: There's nothing more humbling than Mickey Hart from The Grateful
Speaker 4: Dead turning around and looking at you and going Francis
Speaker 4: wouldn't do it that way, you know.
Speaker 6: So you know I was I was constantly competing with
Speaker 6: with this experience. Yes, yeah, yeah, like the greatest director
Speaker 6: of all time has you know, the only there's only
Speaker 6: been like three people that have ever really produced music
Speaker 6: with Mickey, and that's.
Speaker 4: Jerry Garcia, Francis Boyd Coppola. He scored The Twilight Zone
Speaker 4: for a while when that came around in the eighty
Speaker 4: and then Mickey Hart scores himself. So for me to
Speaker 4: be in the room with him and try to kind
Speaker 4: of impart what I felt directionally we needed to do
Speaker 4: to service the film, I was silly, reminded and humbled that,
Speaker 4: you know, Francis wouldn't do it that way, which was
Speaker 4: which was a way of him, you know, kind of
Speaker 4: jabbing me and kind of paying me a compliment.
Speaker 3: So it was fun.
Speaker 5: When you first mentioned this project to me, I was
Speaker 5: a little lost, and I'm not the musician you are
Speaker 5: by any stretch of the imagination, and I was thinking,
Speaker 5: how is he going to do this? How is this
Speaker 5: going to work? Because it's a little abstract and it's
Speaker 5: a little out there. But if you watch the film
Speaker 5: that you get it. It's even it's gotten. It's received
Speaker 5: terrific reviews. I think there was even one review. One
Speaker 5: reviewer said, the reason it's so great is because you
Speaker 5: do get a little lost, and that's the point of
Speaker 5: it all. Where athletes get to such a certain level,
Speaker 5: it's just an instinct. It's about the rhythm that takes
Speaker 5: over and they just play free, which is the case
Speaker 5: with musicians. And you mentioned Joe Montana. I want to
Speaker 5: play Joe Montana talking about the rhythm of the quarterback.
Speaker 5: Let's run that rock.
Speaker 7: The footwork was designed around the timing of the depth
Speaker 7: of the routes. When you first start doing it, did
Speaker 7: you count your steps? Three step, drop, five step, seventh
Speaker 7: step two and a half three seconds and the balls
Speaker 7: got it be gone?
Speaker 5: So you're watching Mickey and a lot of this was
Speaker 5: done over zooming, is the basis of all of it.
Speaker 5: Oh sorry, I didn't mean a step on the other Mickey.
Speaker 5: A lot of this was done over zoom because it
Speaker 5: was convenient that way for Mickey and Mickey's what eighty
Speaker 5: years old.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It actually we actually toyed with the idea of
Speaker 4: getting the musician, getting the athletes on camera, and what
Speaker 4: we ended up deciding and realizing was visually, we don't
Speaker 4: want to distract. You know, a typical documentary, you know,
Speaker 4: it's it's the archival, it's maybe some current footage, and
Speaker 4: then you're seeing a sit down interview. What we wanted
Speaker 4: it to do is to be more that's what we
Speaker 4: called it a Mickey Heart experience. We wanted the film
Speaker 4: to be more of an experiential thing where you do
Speaker 4: get lost in it and you're just seeing the visuals,
Speaker 4: you're hearing from the athlete directly about this topic, which
Speaker 4: in Joe's case was about timing and how it correlates
Speaker 4: to rhythmic you know, percussion and creating music and being
Speaker 4: in the zone and in a flow state and then
Speaker 4: trained and all these things and all these philosophies that
Speaker 4: making has. But we wanted people to just get lost,
Speaker 4: almost like a music video. So we decided to not
Speaker 4: break up the visuals so that what you're constantly being
Speaker 4: bombarded visually by what the athlete's saying. So that was
Speaker 4: that was like a conscious choice to go down that
Speaker 4: road and just do it through audio. I've seen other
Speaker 4: documentaries where they done it that way, and I just
Speaker 4: kind of Actually, Senna was a great documentary where they
Speaker 4: just used all archival and it was only the voices
Speaker 4: of the people. So there's been there was a little
Speaker 4: bit of a nod to that with this to try
Speaker 4: to really just make sure the audience was just dialed
Speaker 4: into what was being said and what was being presented
Speaker 4: visually with the athlete, and you just kind of getting
Speaker 4: lost in the music.
Speaker 5: Okay, Tory chat Painters, I guess the director of of
Speaker 5: the Mickey Hart experience We're the Masters, which is on
Speaker 5: the ESPN Plus. But you're a musician. You're also a
Speaker 5: sports fan, so you've played a number of instruments. You
Speaker 5: played high school football, so you know, one of the
Speaker 5: reasons I think you were the guy to do this.
Speaker 5: I don't think there was another person that could have
Speaker 5: done this film but you. And because of your experience
Speaker 5: with athletes in sports and also your music background. I mean,
Speaker 5: you toured with Incubiss, you're a real musician, and you've
Speaker 5: also worked with Tom Brady, you know, on Brady's Thing,
Speaker 5: so you know you've seen both sides of it. So
Speaker 5: and don't argue with me, I'm right on this. But
Speaker 5: what was it like to see you, Mickey Hart of
Speaker 5: The Grateful Dead, connecting with Joe Montana Because you wouldn't
Speaker 5: think these two guys would sit down and have lunch together,
Speaker 5: but yet when they have this conversation, you're witnessing it
Speaker 5: and they're on the same page. Same thing with Marshaan Lynch.
Speaker 5: That's another great thing about this. Marshawn Lynch is in this.
Speaker 5: He's fantastic, and Mickey Hart and Marshan Lynch are totally
Speaker 5: on the same page.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I'm gonna steal a line from right Thompson.
Speaker 4: We went to go interview Marshawn and we asked Marshon
Speaker 4: to do it. I think he was one of the first,
Speaker 4: like three or four people we interviewed, and we were
Speaker 4: really excited that he said yes, and we I think
Speaker 4: Wright's line was, this is either gonna be a disaster
Speaker 4: or it's gonna be the greatest social experiment of all time.
Speaker 4: And really what your point is or where you're going
Speaker 4: here is athletes and musicians are the same. They it's
Speaker 4: tons of preparation, it's hours upon hours of practice alone,
Speaker 4: and then you have to turn it on and go
Speaker 4: perform kind of out of body. You're not thinking anymore,
Speaker 4: you're just reacting. A musician's doing that, a drummer is
Speaker 4: using every limb at the same time. It's a very
Speaker 4: physical thing. So the whole element of performance and preparation
Speaker 4: and practice and taking care of your body, keeping your
Speaker 4: mind right, not getting distracted while you're on stage or
Speaker 4: on the field. Those things are all very similar, and
Speaker 4: that was kind of the point of the film was
Speaker 4: these people are performing at such a high level, and
Speaker 4: the greats are so great that it's really hard to
Speaker 4: understand because, like you said, you could play high school football,
Speaker 4: but you have no idea what it's like to play
Speaker 4: in an NFL game. You'll never understand that. It's just
Speaker 4: so different, it's just so extreme. The same thing as
Speaker 4: a musician. Yes, I've toured, I've been on big stages,
Speaker 4: I've been around a lot of really famous musicians, but
Speaker 4: I've never been nicky heart in the sphere, and you
Speaker 4: have to be a certain caliber of person, and you
Speaker 4: have to just have that talent and that innate ability,
Speaker 4: and it's really built upon years and years and years
Speaker 4: of preparation. So that was kind of the underpinning when
Speaker 4: Marshan and Mickey started talking together. It quickly got to
Speaker 4: that point, but then it took this next stage, which
Speaker 4: is kind of the spiritual level of how people prepare.
Speaker 3: Their minds and their soul.
Speaker 4: To go either get hit or go out on to
Speaker 4: a field and perform in front of eighteen thousand people.
Speaker 4: It's just there is a lot of parallels there.
Speaker 5: Just I don't want to give away too much of
Speaker 5: the documentary, but tell the quick story about Marshaw and
Speaker 5: how he prepares before every game.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The thing about marsh On you know, and I think
Speaker 4: people have a lot of you know, probably preconceived notion
Speaker 4: Sean Marshaan is is an amazing person and he's really thoughtful,
Speaker 4: and it came across in his interview. The interview was
Speaker 4: supposed to be about thirty minutes and ended up going
Speaker 4: for an hour and a half. Wow, And he did.
Speaker 3: He shares in the film.
Speaker 4: It was one of the one of the first things
Speaker 4: where you like, grab onto when we interviewed Marshaw and
Speaker 4: Mickey called me right after, He's like, we got to
Speaker 4: put that in the film, and he was.
Speaker 3: He was so right.
Speaker 4: Because Marshaw describes his pregame rituals and how he harnesses
Speaker 4: his power and he's careful about his power.
Speaker 3: Because his very first NFL game.
Speaker 4: When he was with the Bills, he witnessed a teammate
Speaker 4: on the opening kickoff get you know, hit so hard
Speaker 4: in a weird way that he was paralyzed from the
Speaker 4: neck down, and from that moment on, he started to
Speaker 4: before games. He never walked on the field. He always
Speaker 4: walks around the field, and he's preparing himself mentally to
Speaker 4: receive power to be hit, but also to harness his
Speaker 4: own so he doesn't hurt anybody. And he talks about
Speaker 4: that kind of mental preparation and kind of the you know,
Speaker 4: almost a spiritual experience before he came to kind of
Speaker 4: get his mind right. So it was again he kind
Speaker 4: of got glimpses of athletes. I think somebody said it.
Speaker 4: I don't know who said it along the way, but
Speaker 4: postgame interviews always kind of seemed generic because an athlete
Speaker 4: still in the moment and they're just not going to
Speaker 4: articulate how they really felt during the game because it
Speaker 4: all just happened. But in the course of this film,
Speaker 4: the athletes that we interviewed are you know, they're all champions,
Speaker 4: they're all elites. They've had time to reflect on it,
Speaker 4: so when we interviewed them, they started to give really
Speaker 4: different and interesting answers. And I think that that if
Speaker 4: you're a sports fan, if there's anything that's going to
Speaker 4: draw you to this film, you're definitely gonna hear from
Speaker 4: Joe Montana or Marshall Lynch for Bob Coosey or Bill Walton,
Speaker 4: Jack Nicholas in ways that you've never heard them speak before.
Speaker 5: Rhythm Masters, a Mickey Hart Experience documentary that you could
Speaker 5: see directed by Tory Champagne on ESPN. Plus What Bob
Speaker 5: Coozy Has in Common with The Grateful Dead is next
Speaker 5: on WBZ.
Speaker 4: Night Side.
Speaker 1: Dan Ray on WBZ Boston's news radio.
Speaker 5: We just got to get the Tiring Record. It's a
Speaker 5: whole rhythm and timing. How it's not just being.
Speaker 4: Must random work where mamw you.
Speaker 2: Can stay and still and still go fast, stay removing the.
Speaker 3: Focus.
Speaker 5: My toughest competitive was right here.
Speaker 2: The Grateful Day was an exchange sport.
Speaker 5: The Grateful Dead certainly was an extreme sport. And the
Speaker 5: director of Rhythm Masters and Mickey Hart Experience combining the
Speaker 5: rhythm of sports and the rhythm of music, Toy Chapagne
Speaker 5: with us from ESPN. I still love the quote when
Speaker 5: he says you can go fast while standing still. You know,
Speaker 5: I got to listen. I love you, but that's when
Speaker 5: I went, Okay, Mickey, if you say so, you know, okay,
Speaker 5: if you I mean there must have been some times
Speaker 5: when you're working with this dude and you had to
Speaker 5: think about what he was saying.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, I mean I had to get immersed
Speaker 4: in his world, right, And you know, I think it's easy, uh.
Speaker 4: I think for the common person that's adjacent to the
Speaker 4: grateful dead, right, if you're a dead dead, you can
Speaker 4: get it. If you're adjacent to it, you're like, I
Speaker 4: understand that they have a following, But being a them
Speaker 4: and being around him, what I what I came to
Speaker 4: know is this guy's been around the world a bunch, right,
Speaker 4: and he's he's literally literally like just traveled the world
Speaker 4: looking for sound. You know, he has stuff in the Smithsonian,
Speaker 4: he knows a million people that respect him. He's gotten
Speaker 4: to a point I think where he's seen so much,
Speaker 4: done so much, he actually is kind of just breaking it.
Speaker 4: He's always breaking things down into simple terms because it's
Speaker 4: almost got like a Buddha quality to the way he
Speaker 4: approaches life. He just kind of has this simple way
Speaker 4: of kind of expressing himself with a deeper meaning all
Speaker 4: the time. So yeah, there's some times where I had
Speaker 4: to check myself at the door and be like, wait,
Speaker 4: what did you just say?
Speaker 3: Because that sounds gibberish.
Speaker 4: But we would we'd talk over coffee in the morning
Speaker 4: and just kind of like he'd get very insightful and
Speaker 4: he'd talk about something for a really long time, very passionately,
Speaker 4: and at the end he would be like, yeah, man,
Speaker 4: so it's like, you know, you go fast in your mind,
Speaker 4: and he'd be like, I totally get it, you know.
Speaker 5: So I'm on board.
Speaker 3: I'm on board.
Speaker 4: You know. You just had to you really had to
Speaker 4: just kind of dive in deep with him.
Speaker 5: Okay, So you went out to Coosie's house and you
Speaker 5: explained to Bob, who's what ninety.
Speaker 3: What now ninety five of the time, I'm amazing six.
Speaker 3: Oh he's the best.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's his unbelievable. But you explain to him the
Speaker 5: premise and we're not going to say that the Coups
Speaker 5: is a Grateful Dead fan, but he said, absolutely he is.
Speaker 5: Now here's a guy that was an All star NBA
Speaker 5: player in nineteen fifty six and fifty seven and when
Speaker 5: NBA championships in the fifties and sixties, who is on
Speaker 5: board with the drummer of the Grateful Dead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean when I called Bob about it, you know.
Speaker 4: You know, I've worked with Bob a couple of times
Speaker 4: over the years, and he was really gracious. It's like, sure,
Speaker 4: I get what you're going for. He's like, I'm not
Speaker 4: a grateful dead fan, but I know enough about them,
Speaker 4: and he's.
Speaker 3: Like, you know, I was Walton. You know, he was
Speaker 3: from Walton.
Speaker 4: So when I got there, you know, we hung out
Speaker 4: for a little while and then we got the call
Speaker 4: going and it really became about art, like that's the
Speaker 4: way he perceived basketball, and that's the way he described
Speaker 4: it was. You know, he was very creative on the floor.
Speaker 4: You know that he was one of those guys that
Speaker 4: the behind the back pass and the no look passes,
Speaker 4: like he was that guy that broke that open in
Speaker 4: the NBA for people to see in a lot of ways,
Speaker 4: not the only one, but one of the kind of
Speaker 4: forefathers of that style of play. And that's what him
Speaker 4: and Mickey talked about, was they compared that creative vibe
Speaker 4: and that's what kind of led to the film, you know,
Speaker 4: And honestly, that the Bob Cusey of it all, like
Speaker 4: I said, came full circle for Mickey because that was
Speaker 4: his boyhood hero watching sports on television, So there was
Speaker 4: a meaningful moment there for him, Like, you know, he's
Speaker 4: eighty years old, he's you know, everybody except for his
Speaker 4: childhood sports hero, and he finally got to do it
Speaker 4: on this project. So it was it was really cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The thing that I take Tori, after covering and interviewing
Speaker 5: a million people when I was doing it, and also
Speaker 5: watching some of your work, you know, for example, Man
Speaker 5: in the Arena with Tom Brady, is you know, we
Speaker 5: can look at all the numbers, and we can look
Speaker 5: at all the stats, and we break it down, and
Speaker 5: sometimes it becomes very mathematical. Is that a word mathematical?
Speaker 5: I'll make one. Okay, sure, it becomes very rigid, you know,
Speaker 5: it becomes we look at we look at slots, so
Speaker 5: we want to put people in silos. But for the athlete,
Speaker 5: it's not like that at all. It's so many times
Speaker 5: I've seen it in press conferences where even Belichick or
Speaker 5: Brady or whoever it is, they go, you know, you'll
Speaker 5: bring up a stat and they go, I have no idea, man,
Speaker 5: I have no idea what you're talking about. I got
Speaker 5: to go look at the film. It's not the way
Speaker 5: I view it it's not the way I break it down.
Speaker 5: It's not the way I see it. And I was
Speaker 5: thinking about this as I was watching it and we
Speaker 5: were you know, Jack Nicholas, for example, you know you
Speaker 5: want to talk about a sport where rhythm is important,
Speaker 5: it's golf. I mean, you've got to have a flow
Speaker 5: going and it has to be smooth and it can't
Speaker 5: be interrupted mentally. The athletes who excel at such a
Speaker 5: high level see the game completely different from sports radio
Speaker 5: jackasses like us, they do. They do. Look, we could
Speaker 5: sit here at my boy Fealgar and maz or whatever.
Speaker 5: They can break it all down. The greats see it
Speaker 5: completely different.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that that's totally true. I mean, I,
Speaker 4: like you said it, Gary, like I've been super fortunate
Speaker 4: over the course of my career to come in contact
Speaker 4: or work directly with some of the best, you know,
Speaker 4: whether it was Tommy Hinsen and Bob Coosey or Russell
Speaker 4: or working with Tom Brady on on Man the Arena.
Speaker 4: And like I said, I think the point of the
Speaker 4: film at the end of all of it is the
Speaker 4: thing that's great about sports and the thing that's great
Speaker 4: about music is people get to enjoy it and they
Speaker 4: get to process it. Whether you're a die hard fan
Speaker 4: or you're a casual fan, but it moves you in
Speaker 4: some way, shape or form, and it kind of connects
Speaker 4: people and connects us in communities and relationships and you know,
Speaker 4: friendships and everything else. And I think that that's kind
Speaker 4: of what is being said in this film through all
Speaker 4: of these things. And to your point is, you don't
Speaker 4: know what it's really like until you've been on the
Speaker 4: road a long time with a band, and that's a
Speaker 4: tough life. And I've never done it for like extended
Speaker 4: periods of time, but I've done it enough to know
Speaker 4: that the glamour is not what it is. It's the
Speaker 4: passion to get on stage and perform. And it's the
Speaker 4: same thing with pro athletes. You know, you don't see
Speaker 4: them in the gym and you don't see them you
Speaker 4: know what they have to deal with away from the
Speaker 4: field or the court or whatever. And you know, I
Speaker 4: just have over the years, I've just had a deeper
Speaker 4: appreciation for the people that are really good at it
Speaker 4: and are still kind or still passionate about what they're doing.
Speaker 4: And working with Mickey definitely, you know, he's.
Speaker 3: Eighty years old and I had to keep up with him.
Speaker 4: So there's a guy right there that's just like an
Speaker 4: elite you know player.
Speaker 5: How many drums does he have in that studio? I
Speaker 5: mean when people see that, I mean he must have
Speaker 5: a million. He has drums and percussion from all over
Speaker 5: the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's been collecting since the you know, the Grateful Dead.
Speaker 4: He joined the Griffel Dead in sixty seven and they
Speaker 4: really started touring, you know, internationally in the seventies, and
Speaker 4: he did he made his mission all the time to
Speaker 4: kind of break away or go on extended trips to visit,
Speaker 4: you know, places that had really interesting cultures and rhythmic instruments,
Speaker 4: and and he's collected them from around the world.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's there.
Speaker 4: It is. There's probably a thousand pieces of drum equipment
Speaker 4: in that studio or more.
Speaker 5: I mean it is really yeah, I mean it is
Speaker 5: really insane. It's yeah, Okay, who is some of the
Speaker 5: other athletes, because what I liked about it is while
Speaker 5: they had you know, Jack Nicholas or Bob Coozi and
Speaker 5: you know Marshawn Lynch, and I love Lynch, you know,
Speaker 5: I love Lynch in this and I even because of
Speaker 5: seeing Marshaon Lynch had talked, the way he spoke and
Speaker 5: how he just opened up. I appreciate him even more
Speaker 5: for telling us media jackasses to go screw you know,
Speaker 5: I mean really, because Marshaon Lynch is so damn intelligent.
Speaker 5: You see it in this movie. I remember being at
Speaker 5: the Super Bowl and guys like me and you know,
Speaker 5: what do you think of your first out of numbers?
Speaker 5: And he's like, I can't deal with these idiots, you know,
Speaker 5: I can't deal with these morons. They don't even understand
Speaker 5: the game. They don't understand what we're going through. They're
Speaker 5: talking about third down conversions and it has nothing to
Speaker 5: do with my world. And that's what I really appreciated about,
Speaker 5: like seeing these athletes. So you had some very unique
Speaker 5: people also in here too, and just tell us about
Speaker 5: some of those.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we you know again, I think we
Speaker 4: kind of had like a mission statement on you know,
Speaker 4: don't go with the obvious, go with people that are
Speaker 4: also masters, right, Like it's right, Mickey's a rhythm master,
Speaker 4: Like who's a master? So for me, one of one
Speaker 4: of the most exciting ones was getting Jackie Joiner Cursey,
Speaker 4: you know she's just a legend, and you know, she's
Speaker 4: recently back in the you know, kind of a lexicon
Speaker 4: with the Olympics this past summer. Interestingly enough, but at
Speaker 4: the time when we interviewed her, everyone was like, when's
Speaker 4: the last time you heard from Jackie? Join her cursey
Speaker 4: and she's you know, multiple sport athletes, and so she
Speaker 4: had a lot to say in that context. You know,
Speaker 4: that was always really interesting. The other interesting thing was,
Speaker 4: you know, there's kind of a section you've played that
Speaker 4: clip there about The Grateful Dead being an extreme sport.
Speaker 4: You know, Mickey said that a long time ago, and
Speaker 4: then that sparked the idea of, well, let's have a
Speaker 4: section where we go with extreme sports athletes. So Alex Hanald,
Speaker 4: who people know from his documentary The Free Climber, Free Solo,
Speaker 4: Mikayla Schiffrin, who's a downhill skier, two time Olympian, So
Speaker 4: we kind of looks for people that fit into what
Speaker 4: Mickey was talking about, so we could specifically dial into
Speaker 4: the idea of how those athletes find a rhythm in
Speaker 4: extreme situations, because that's incredibly difficult, almost more difficult in
Speaker 4: life threatening actually, which was kind of the point because
Speaker 4: The Grateful Dead was an extreme sport. They lost six
Speaker 4: keyboard players the course of their career to you know,
Speaker 4: drugs and alcohol and endless touring, and you know a
Speaker 4: lot of the members are gone now. So there was
Speaker 4: this parallel there about, you know, taking on the challenge
Speaker 4: of your sport or your career as a musician.
Speaker 5: Toy Share Painter is a our guest producer at ESPN
Speaker 5: and the director of the film, A Mickey Hart Experienced
Speaker 5: Rhythm Masters that you could check out on ESPN Plus.
Speaker 5: I suggest you do it. It'll make you think, it'll
Speaker 5: make you wonder. It is not your typical sports doc
Speaker 5: and that's why I think it's tremendous. Coming up, I'm
Speaker 5: going to talk to Tory and with Liza Edwards sports
Speaker 5: content and what it was like to say it's either
Speaker 5: The Grateful Dead or Dead in Company in the Sphere
Speaker 5: on WBZ. That's next.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: Nice Sight Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'm gonna let you guys talk. I'm gonna unleash
Speaker 5: the phones. Coming up at eleven o'clock. I had a
Speaker 5: lot of things to say. We have a popery of
Speaker 5: things to discuss coming up at eleven o'clock right here
Speaker 5: on WBZ. Uh Toy Champanels our guest. He is the
Speaker 5: director of Rhythm Masters and Mickey Hart Experience. You can
Speaker 5: check outut on ESPN Plus. It's terrific. It's a different
Speaker 5: type of sports documentary, it really is, and it's extremely entertaining.
Speaker 5: So now I have to ask you what was it
Speaker 5: like to see Dead in Company, which is the surviving
Speaker 5: members of the Grateful Dead with John Mayer in the
Speaker 5: Sphere in Vegas?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 3: It was incredible?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, did you have a gummy Tory? Did
Speaker 5: you have a gummy.
Speaker 4: I was, I was technically on the work. So now
Speaker 4: now where everything's cop you know. We had the premiere
Speaker 4: for the film out in Vegas the night before, one
Speaker 4: of the last remaining Sphere shows for the run.
Speaker 3: So it was great.
Speaker 4: We had a great film premiere out in Vegas. The
Speaker 4: Walton family came, all of them were there. Luke was there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got to go check.
Speaker 4: Out the Sphere the next night and again I I'm
Speaker 4: really not trying to dial in Boston connection here, but
Speaker 4: we were joined that night by Wick Rosback. He he's
Speaker 4: a fan of the dad, Uh and came out with
Speaker 4: us to the show, and we actually had the opportunity
Speaker 4: to go backstage and and Vick and Mickey got to
Speaker 4: got to and Uh ended up just talking about Bob
Speaker 4: Coosey because he using the film So with the drummer,
Speaker 4: Yeah he is, so we Yeah, I talked to Wick
Speaker 4: for a while about music.
Speaker 3: He's playing guitar.
Speaker 4: Now in a band. He has a band called French Lecture,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 5: But yeah, woa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The name of the
Speaker 5: band is French Lick.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 5: Well, when you a great name, when when you're about
Speaker 5: to sell your team for two point five billion dollars
Speaker 5: and that's his share, by the way, you know, you
Speaker 5: can take guitar lessons, you know, Wicked we said he
Speaker 5: was a better drummer than me. I'm not so sure.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know me, I'm a kitchen sink drummer.
Speaker 4: But yes, yes, but no, but yeah, with Wick with
Speaker 4: with us for the show, it was amazing. It was incredible.
Speaker 4: If I think they're coming back. So if if you
Speaker 4: haven't gone to check it out and you make it
Speaker 4: to Vegas, it's a it's it's it's definitely one of
Speaker 4: the greatest shows I've ever seen for sure.
Speaker 5: Uh what was it like working with Brady when you
Speaker 5: did Man in the Arena? And how do you think
Speaker 5: you'll do in the booth?
Speaker 4: I mean, look, I mean I'll just I'm just gonna
Speaker 4: throw my new England Boston bias on the table. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's Tom Brady. You know, I grew up here. You know.
Speaker 4: The opportunity to you know, to able to work on
Speaker 4: that series is kind of like a dream project. And
Speaker 4: he was fantastic. I mean, he's everything that you hope
Speaker 4: he would be. I think he's he's more down to
Speaker 4: earth and more comfortable and more real than than people
Speaker 4: gave him credit for at first, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: because he was so Tom Brady the football player, and
Speaker 4: he kind of by the time we were doing the series,
Speaker 4: you know, he was you know, he literally was going
Speaker 4: through everything to go to Tampa while we were working
Speaker 4: on the series. It changed the course of the series actually,
Speaker 4: so we got to see a different side of him.
Speaker 4: But working with him, he's like, you know, I've had
Speaker 4: the opportunity to work with Peyton Manning on some scripted things,
Speaker 4: and Peyton, you know, I'll share that Peyton can like
Speaker 4: literally look at a script or look at a piece
Speaker 4: of paper and in five minutes were like, Okay, I
Speaker 4: got it, and he has it in his head. Mentally
Speaker 4: he's hilarious. But but Tom has the same thing. But
Speaker 4: I in a couple of instances when I've worked with Tom,
Speaker 4: he's so hell bent on just getting it right. Like
Speaker 4: whether it was a promo read for something or or
Speaker 4: or something about the film, he was engaged here. So
Speaker 4: as far as going into the booth goes like, I
Speaker 4: just can't see anything that Tom does where he doesn't
Speaker 4: put himself fully into it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I just feel like he will be a guy that
Speaker 4: will get in the booth and find his way, and
Speaker 4: I think he's gonna be really interesting and I think
Speaker 4: he's gonna break down the game what.
Speaker 3: You've never heard before.
Speaker 4: And I you know, I don't want to compare Romo
Speaker 4: because I think Romo is a guy that's you know,
Speaker 4: entertaining in his own way. I think Tom's analytical brain
Speaker 4: in the booth once he gets comfortable or I think
Speaker 4: it'd be great. I think he's gonna be great.
Speaker 5: I'm a big fan of Buck and Akman, you know
Speaker 5: which is on ESPN, and I think if he follows
Speaker 5: the Akman path, he'll be fantastic. What happened with Romo? Yeah,
Speaker 5: he was great the first year, but they got in
Speaker 5: his ear and all the TV guys started to say,
Speaker 5: you know, hey, you're funny. You know, go for the personality.
Speaker 5: And you and I both know in sports television you
Speaker 5: have to stick to the sports and if on the
Speaker 5: side you happen to be humorous, that that's great. But
Speaker 5: Romo tried to be a comedian. I think Brady's going
Speaker 5: to be great, much like Akeman, you know, if he
Speaker 5: finds if he follows like Appin and Buck, which is
Speaker 5: a Monday night football on ABC and ESPN, I think
Speaker 5: he'll be fine. Hey, Toy, we got to go. Man.
Speaker 5: I really appreciate you coming on. I'm really proud of
Speaker 5: this piece of work you've done. Rhythm Masters, a Mickey
Speaker 5: Heart experience on ESPN, plus Jack Nicholas is in it. Uh,
Speaker 5: you know, Joe Montana, Bob Coozy, Jackie, Jordan Kersey. I
Speaker 5: mean you just mentioned the list goes on and oh
Speaker 5: and Marshaun Lynch The Rhythm of Sports and uh, it's
Speaker 5: really something to see and it's well done. My friend.
Speaker 4: So congrats, thanks so much, thanks for having me me.
Speaker 3: It's good to catch.
Speaker 4: Up, all right.
Speaker 5: Tory Champagne. Yeah, and yes that's his real name. He
Speaker 5: gets that all the time, Toy Champagne of ESPN And
Speaker 5: again check that out. Rhythm Masters, a Mickey Heart Experience
Speaker 5: a documentary, and The Grateful Dead Grateful Dead Drummer and
Speaker 5: the Rhythm of Sports. All right, tis on's having two, five, four,
Speaker 5: ten thirty is the number. We're gonna open up the
Speaker 5: phone lines to you guys. Some of the things we're
Speaker 5: going to talk about. The globes, making predictions, patriot predictions.
Speaker 5: I'll touch on that, the Harris tax break. Eh hey again,
Speaker 5: when it comes to the election, I don't think it's
Speaker 5: Everybody says it's about the economy, and because of the
Speaker 5: personalities involved, I don't think it's about the economy. I don't.
Speaker 5: And Tim Walls the vice president, his family's not exactly
Speaker 5: behind him. I mean, is this like a Kennedy thing?
Speaker 5: And is Alexa pro Harris? Yes, I'm talking about that Alexa.
Speaker 5: I'm talking about Ai. I'm talking about Amazon that Alexa.
Speaker 5: Is she sticking with the VP? That's all coming up
Speaker 5: on WBC's night Side final hour Gary tangling for Denray