Interview

Crashing On Couches To Talk To Musicians

Usually, it’s the musicians who go on tour, and the journalists who write about them for local publications. But one journalist is taking to the road to talk to musicians where they live.

Jason Crane produced 374 episodes of The Jazz Session, a podcast of interviews with top jazz musicians. Last week, he announced he was going on a “World Tour.”

He interviewed musicians in cities large and small throughout the eastern and southeastern United States, all the while reading and writing original poetry. (He hoped to eventually make the tour actually international, or at least to go west of the Mississippi River.) He had only a loose itinerary; he planned to buy a Greyhound bus pass and eventually end up in New Orleans, crashing on couches of friends, acquaintances and strangers.

Crane, 38, once supported himself as a working soprano saxophonist and later, as the station manager at Jazz90.1 in Rochester, N.Y. He recently moved to New York City in part to be closer to the jazz scene. So why is he taking to the road again? Over e-mail last week, I sent him a few questions to find out, and he was happy to respond: Continue reading