Playtime Podcast - New Adventures in Music

The first in a series of podcasts looking at the current state of the Scottish Jazz and Improvised music scenes and where they might be heading. Tom gives his personal view on three important exits from the scene in 2025 and looks at the wider implications of one of them. Then Tom interviews Nod Knowles about his Creative Scotland commissioned review of the Scottish Jazz and Improvised Music scenes called 'Now's The Time'. To take part in the surveys follow the links that apply to you: MusiciansOrganisersEducators. As part of the discussion Tom discusses three reports: 121 Stories by Una Monaghan available here and the BIT Collective report on Women Musicians’ Experiences of Sexual Violence and Harassment in Scottish Folk Music which is here.  Sarah Raine & Haftor Medboe Full Research Report from 2018-21 is here. Sarah Raine gives evidence to parliament on why gender imbalance in Scottish Jazz herePlease go and read them!

Tom, Marty, Graeme, and Mario get together to decide the Playtime awards for Best Gig, Best Solo, Best Guest, and the coveted Audience Member of the Year awards for 2025. There are big prizes and big debate and some really cool award music!

Tom interviews Stephen Henderson about living in a jazz community, being a drumming composer, and the incredible story of the Fergus McCreadie trio being asked to play on the score of a Spike Lee movie and how the whole thing panned out with a 97 piece orchestra in New York. The episode ends with a personal musical tribute to the great Brian Kellock.

The fab four reflect on another epic year and decide awards for: Best Gig, Best Guest, Audience Member of the Year, Best Crustacean Based Solo, and Outstanding Soloing Throughout Year Award. There are vigorous discussions for all these categories and new Award music (not composed by Graeme). Then we get a wonderful interview with London-based Scottish bass virtuoso Calum Gourlay about how he learnt to play jazz, moving to London, playing on autopilot,  'babysitter' drummers versus other kinds of drummers, being a 'big hug' bass playing master, and having a love of folk music (or not). And so another year ends ... and soon a new one will begin.

This is a special edition podcast about the very special Islay Jazz Festival - now in its 26th year. Tom is playing there by accident and explains why the festival is so special and talks about some of the gigs he sees and plays in, and interviews Laura MacDonald about the simultaneous worst and best gig of all time, chats to Jazz Scotland head Coralie Usmani about taking over the Islay Jazz Festival, chats with Playtime podcast legend Brian Palmer about being the only jazz drummer on the island (and al the other things he does), and talks about how the festival was first created with Islay Jazz Festival co-founder and ever present (and key figure in the Flak incident) Stuart Tod.  There is the hunt for the loser of £30 found on Bowmore High St, and you hear about the Flak incident. Part 2 is coming up ... with an interview with master bass play Calum Gourlay.

Episode 8:Sorry for the long gap. In this episode we explain "Where have we been?",We talk about the Jazz Bar Closing in edinburgh and what that means, Tom remembers  Bill Kyle, we talk about The 'Daves' on Facebook, and then we see the interview with the wonderful  Anoushka Nanguy.

In this episode we hear about the podcast's new sponsor - Paul Towndrow - saxophonist, composer, educator, musicians, international jazz life coach.  Tom and Mario discuss hat etiquette,  dancing cockatoos, and other stuff. We hear an audio narrated double drum duet between Tom & Stu Brown (nb you can see the video version here and the video version with audio narration v1 here v2 here v3 here). Then Tom interviews the absolutely lovely Ben MacDonald who talks about how he got into playing jazz guitar and is the first person to sit the 'Do Jazz Musicians Have Creative Minds? Test'. The episode finishes with a exclusive preview track from Playtime's upcoming album 'Morse Code Through The Lights' featuring Denys Baptiste. That is all.

In this drum-tastic episode Tom gets you up to date with the latest messages and news and stuff and then gets into the interview with fellow drummer Stu Brown who is joining Playtime for a double drum extravaganza known as - Drum-a-mi.They talk about drumming, double drumming, drum heroes, both of them having a lesson with great drummer Joey Baron,  listen to an excerpt from the great drum duo between Joey Baron and Robin Schulkowsky, the Scottish Jazz Scene in the 90's, the different experiences of Scottish Jazz gatekeepers when the gate is open vs it being closed,  Stu's route into the music business, going to Berklee, playing with Mario, playing drums with a lobster and a baby (toy), Stu's Dad and his record collection, and getting feedback from Scottish Jazz legends Fionna Duncan and Ronnie Rae Snr. THEN there is an exclusive preview from Playtime's upcoming album of a piece they played during lockdown over the internet with the amazing Laura Jurd on trumpet. That is all...

This episode features the review of the year by 4 out of 5 of the Playtime team discussing and then giving awards in nearly all the following categories - Gig of the Year, Solo of the Year,  Guest of the Year , Audience Member of the Year and Least Impactful Social Media Presence.  We hear/see the audience reaction at the last gig when some of these awards are announced especially the winner of Least Impactful Social Media Presence. Then we have the full interview with Mario Caribé discussing how he got into music and playing the bass and then how and why he came to Scotland. Finally we hear the track 'Golden Flowers' from the Scottish composer-drummer Corrie Dick with Marianna Sangita on vocals..

This is a very long podcast episode…. But when we listened to it... it is all great, so we thought “Let’s keep it all in”. We think the people who like this podcast… will like it all… The mistake  that was made was that Tom invited Mario to join him on the usual 5-7 min intro section - during which we set up what is coming and go through the messages, hoping it would then be 12-15 minutes long.  But it took 39 minutes to get through it…. Of course it did!  It was Tom & Mario - the digression kings. The fact is that 37% of the messages we have received (ie Walter) have asked for more Tom & Mario banter.. so we felt we needed to respect that - and we did. If it is too much - please let us know! The topics that were covered were:What a serious weapons-grade genius Matt Elliot is, How you say ‘Outhouse’ in a Scottish accent, and ‘The’ in a Yorkshire accent, and thus get to ‘TootHoose’,  Tom’s significant Yorkshire genetic heritage and his dark secret about how Scottish he actually is, Tom looking like a “Fat Gnome”, Mario’s love of Yorkshire Tea and  how to say ‘The Tea’ in a Yorkshire accent,.   Mario’s inability to multitask and consequent *surnaming* of a listener called Brian from Islay.  How far on the dark side is Graeme Stephen (answer: not) ? Should Tom stop making jokes for fear of legal action. Caroline was late…, How Mario gave up being the ‘best in the world on bass’,  “Hastie is a lefty’, Ewan Hastie’s amazing new bass and why he didn’t bring it to the gig, overthinking in Portuguese, exactamentaLALLY, the disgusting thing in Portuguese that Lolly McDolly thinks sounds romantic, what the world needs, ‘the best gig yet’,  what music does to the brain and who we need to get on the podcast to discuss that, Mario’s inability to go along with a teaser, plus other topics…AND THEN We hear Seonaid Aitken’s amazing life story & musical journey…. Ron Davis, Grit Orchestra, her multi-genre musical family, classical training, deciding to learn to play jazz, Disney Sea in Japan, Chasing Sakura and all the rest..If you want to jump Seonaid’s interview it starts at 39 minutes 23 seconds.The Playtime Podcast is supported by Creative Scotland.

In this episode there is an unplanned Sonny Rollins thread running through both interviews - the first one with the wonderful saxophonist Helena Kay - where we talk about how they got into jazz and saxophone, the role of Sonny Rollins in making them the saxophonist they are today, plus reasons for moving back to Scotland, awards and how much they want to win, plus how to regain top spot on the Scottish Jazz Power Couple Chart. and the second with Rob Cope from The Jazz Podcast telling us How to Jazz Podcast, what it was like interviewing Sonny Rollins and much more! 

Tom, Matt & Mario debrief  last week s first ever Playtime Livestream from the Outhouse with the amazing Fergus McCreadie on piano, and have a Listening Party where we listen to the final track of the gig and talk about it kinda like a directors cut on a DVD  but with music and audio. Then there is a great interview with the amazing George Burt, this feature a pinao solo by Marlyn Crispell from George's new album. Tom shows off his new hat, and tries out the new My Enormous D...  jingle there's some letters to read out and much more... 

This is our first go at a podcast. The first half is a discussion between 4 out of 5 Playtime Collective members _ Martin Kershaw, Mario Caribé, Matt Elliott , about our big news : ie our plans for this year. The second half is an interview with the wonderful Fergus McCreadie who is joining us live for our next concert this Thursday November 2nd. That will also be our first live-streamed gig this year so we talk about that as well. The conversation includes finding out what Fergus's name is backwards and introduces the Scottish Jazz Power Couple Chart.