Interview with Coleman Hughes
Coleman Hughes is an American writer, musician, and the host of Conversations with Coleman.
Mingus Mm Hmm
Contents
Max Raskin: You have a lot of talents, and you do a lot of things — how do you decide on any given day what you're going to do?
Coleman Hughes: I have pretty unstructured life. I wake up and I usually have a set number of things I have to do on any day at some point. So for example, today, after this, I have to record a couple intros for my podcast. Other than that, I have a lot of freedom about what I'm going to do. I have to decide every day how to use my time, which is not the best way to live, but it is kind of the way I prefer to live.
MR: But how do you choose between making music, reading, philosophy, writing, podcasting? Is it just the spirit moves you that day?
CH: Pretty much.
MR: I want to first talk to you about music. So Charles Mingus — is he very important to you?
CH: Very, very much.
MR: And why?
CH: I don't know if someone else termed it this way, but Mingus sounds like Ellington on acid. And his music, it reminds me of the Alice in Wonderland story in the sense that there's something surreal about it and there's no one else who I feel I can compare his writing to. It almost seems like he just built a sonic and harmonic world of his own that is very uniquely branded as Mingus.
MR: Do you feel about the same way about Monk?
CH: Monk has been less important in my personal development, but yeah, Monk has that same quality of almost being like a self-governing island within the world of jazz. It's not that it's unrelated to other stuff, but it just seems like Monk and Mingus sprung somehow fully formed with a different thing.
MR: What do you think about getting too far in that direction…like Ornette Coleman?
CH: I've never much liked Ornette Coleman and that style.
MR: And what about Sun Ra?
CH: Sun Ra too. None of that has really spoken to me.
MR: It's interesting because it’s like there's this line between being on your own island and being in your own universe.
CH: All those guys you mentioned, they're all on their own island, but there’s something about Mingus…maybe it's the fact that he still has lush harmony, weird harmonies, but lush harmonies, whereas with a guy like Ornette Coleman, a lot of the songs are just lines, no underlying harmony, and somehow that's always not sat well with me. We all have different subjective tastes in music, but something that I've learned is key for me across all genres is for there to be a beautiful, lush harmony.
Musical Tops and Chops
MR: What were your top played songs on Spotify last year?
CH: I can see it from 2021 and 2022. So for 2021 my top song was "I'm Loving Nothing," by The Impressions. My second song was "My Woman’s Love" by the Impressions. And then my third song was, "Let's Stay Together," Al Green.
For 2022, top one is "What A Fool Believes" by The Doobie Brothers. Number two is "More Love" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. And then number three is "TSU" by Drake.
MR: I’m surprised it’s not either of the styles you play. Why do you think that is?
CH: I don't know. I love Motown. I love soul. I love that era, and I've ended up listening to a lot of that over the past few years.
MR: How do you keep your musical chops up?
CH: I don’t think I do. Unlike when I was a professional trombone player playing every day and my chops were always good, now I don't play every day, so every time I have a gig, it's just a bit of a struggle to make sure my chops are up to snuff.
MR: Do you still practice?
CH: I practice occasionally, but not every day.
MR: What will you practice when you practice?
CH: Almost entirely technique because I want to get the most bang for my buck in terms of time. If I only have 20 minutes to practice, I want to practice really rigorous things that are tough on my chops, like lots of lip slurs and lip trills because I want to get the quickest workout so that I'm ready for my gigs.
MR: What kind of trombone do you have?
CH: I have a Bach 36.
MR: Are you a feinschmecker of anything? Are you an aficionado or a connoisseur of anything where that you’re really particular about?
CH: No, actually.
MR: Nothing?
CH: I mean, I have whiskey preferences.
MR: What are your whiskey preferences?
CH: I like Jameson, which is not a particularly highbrow preference. I'm not very particular about most things.
But I am very particular about music, and I try not to be an ass with it ever in rehearsal situations, but I almost always have a strong opinion about what is better, one thing being better than another, even if it's a note or a chord.
Speed Round
MR: To that point, I’m going to do a speed round — I’m going to say two things and you got to say which one is better. I know it’s not going to be fair, but that just what this is.
Coltrane or Miles Davis?
CH: Coltrane.
MR: Coltrane or Sonny Rollins?
CH: Coltrane.
MR: Is Coltrane the best jazz musician?
CH: Probably. Probably the deepest. In other words, if you said, "I have five minutes to live, I can only listen to one thing," and it's in the jazz idiom, I would probably choose Coltrane.
MR: And what in particular?
CH: "Naima (Live)."
MR: Which one? The Village Vanguard one from '61?
CH: The version from Antibes in ’65.
MR: Jazz or hip hop?
CH: Jazz.
[Makes a face.]
MR: You're not happy about that?
CH: That's a tough one to choose. Jazz has had so much longer than hip hop. It's not a fair comparison because jazz has had since the 1930s or perhaps earlier to germinate and spawn little interesting subgenres, whereas hip hop has only had like 40 years, maybe 50.
MR: What about Freddie Hubbard or Miles Davis?
CH: Freddie Hubbard.
MR: Republican or Democrat?
CH: Neither.
MR: So that's the only one that you won't answer?
CH: I have a quite fierce dislike of both parties.
MR: And even if someone put a gun to your head?
CH: Look, I've only voted Democrats so far, but my only option on the other side has been Trump because I'm 27. So I wouldn't rule out voting for a Republican, but I'm an independent.
MR: Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong?
CH: Duke Ellington.
MR: Sidney Bechet or Louis Armstrong?
CH: Louis Armstrong.
MR: And then Django Reinhardt or Charlie Christian?
CH: That one I don't have an opinion on. I'm not so deep versed in that.
MR: What's a controversial music take you have?
CH: Controversial? It's hard for me to think in the abstract.
MR: So let me ask you this: Do you think modern jazz is good or bad?
CH: I think when it's good, it's great. But most of what I've heard is not.
MR: Do you mostly listen to new jazz, old jazz, new hip hop, or old hip hop?
CH: Jazz-wise, when I was in high school, I listened mostly to jazz from the '50s and early '60s, from say like 1950 to 1963 or '64. When I was a senior, I got really into modern jazz, and in particular, into Ben van Gelder and that kind of subgenre. Sam Harris, the piano player, not the philosopher.
And hip hop-wise, I've never really liked '80s hip hop. I've never really gotten into it. Even '90s hip hop, I've only gotten into particular flavors of, like very early Eminem and very early MF DOOM. So most of the hip hop that I like is from the 2010s.
MR: I forgot to just ask you this but last one: Coltrane or Bird?
CH: I guess Coltrane, but that's a tough one.
MR: Oh, thank you for playing. Thank you for playing, but you lost. You did really well up until now, but tell him what he's won…
CH: That's a very tough one.
Gear
MR: I want to ask you about some equipment stuff. You must have a really good microphone both for music and podcasting — what do you use?
CH: For my rap, I've used the U 87 from the German company.
MR: What's the place that you order from most in New York food-wise?
CH: Probably my local coffee and food shop. I'm a creature of habit, so I'm the kind of person that will go to the same coffee place six days in a row and get the exact same order six days in a row.
MR: What is your order?
CH: Currently, my order is the breakfast plate, which is two scrambled eggs, two great sausages, and some potatoes.
And iced coffee every single day, whether it's winter or summer.
MR: Do you have a workout routine?
CH: I've kind of fallen off, but I was going to the gym frequently. I often like to go for a 10-minute run, and then there's a park that has a pull-up bar, so I'll just go for a run to the park and then do pull-ups.
MR: Do you listen to music when you run?
CH: Often, yeah.
MR: Do you meditate?
CH: I used to every day, but I haven't in a very long time, and I used to go on meditation retreats.
MR: Do you have any religious belief? Any religious practice?
CH: No, but there's a part of me that envies people who do. Unfortunately, I can't bring myself to believe in anything on insufficient evidence, but I have a strong suspicion that kind of structure can be quite good for people.
MR: Do you believe in an afterlife?
CH: No. I'm not an optimist by nature. It'd be nice if there were one, but I'm always expecting the worst, and I think that's why I'm happy. I have actually quite low expectations.
MR: And so do you believe in God?
CH: No, no. I don't think one could be sure about any of these things. And there's great mystery in the world, primary among which is: Why the hell are we conscious to begin with? Science has no settled explanation for why there's something it's like to be these bodies.
Morning
MR: What does your media consumption look like in the morning? Your eyes open and then what?
CH: I'm kind of addicted to Instagram Reels as a way of waking up. I just scroll through Reels and laugh at a bunch of stuff, and then that gets me perked up enough to leave my bed and start doing.
MR: Do you naturally have a hard time getting out of bed?
CH: Yes, I do.
MR: Do you have depressive tendencies?
CH: I think so. I think only in that sense. I think the difficulty getting out of bed is a bit of a depressive tendency, and I do have that every day.
MR: Have you ever been to a therapist?
CH: I went to a therapist for two years after my mom died when I was 19.
MR: And was it helpful?
CH: It was helpful because I don't think I had ever been in the habit of talking about my feelings. I don't think that's something that comes automatically to everyone. So for me, the value of therapy was just having a person that I was supposed to talk about my emotions with, and I could feel like I could do that without bothering them.
MR: Have you considered going since?
CH: No.
Anti-Establishment Intellectuals
MR: Do you feel like you’re one of these people who lives his life online?
CH: No. I have a big presence online, but I feel very much like I live in the real world. I have a very rich, real world life that's much more rewarding than my online life.
MR: Do your friends know what you do?
CH: They do, yeah.
MR: Did you make any friends through this world of…what would you call this online community you exist in?
CH: I don't know. It's sort of a podcast, alternative media, politics, intellectual space.
It's kind of anti-establishment intellectuals. So establishment intellectuals would be your professors at Ivy League institutions that are very much in line with the ethos of such institutions, and then your rebel or anti-establishment intellectuals, they're either in those institutions but constantly precarious because of their views, or they're outside of them altogether and they have their own podcast and so forth.
MR: I'm assuming you make money doing this. Was there a moment when you realized, "Oh, I can support myself doing this?"
CH: Mm-hmm.
MR: When was that moment?
CH: I think it was during 2020. I had a podcast where I was talking about race and BLM in a way that I think a lot of people appreciated because you'll remember at that time, everyone and their mother had to be on board with every jot and tittle of Black Lives Matter, and the narrative that was being painted about racism and the police and white supremacy. I was taking a very skeptical look at that narrative and there was an extreme hunger for that. You can't really turn off the skeptical minds. You can intimidate people into not saying what they think or not questioning publicly, but you can't actually intimidate people into not thinking privately.
So people would look at my podcast, they would go to The Fifth Column as well, which is my friend's podcast, and get something that they weren't getting in their work or with their friends. They would get real, honest, probing questions about whether what BLM was saying is true, and that's when my podcast really exploded, and I began making enough money that I could support myself on the podcast alone.
MR: Did you ever buy yourself some luxury item like a watch or something?
CH: The only luxury, expensive luxury, I ever bought was a trombone.
MR: Was it that Bach 36?
CH: No, it was another one that I still have, but it turned out to be kind of a bad purchase.
MR: Really?
CH: It was a really sexy purchase, but it was a bad purchase. It looked great, but ended up not being great.
MR: What about clothes?
CH: Clothes? No, I've never been a clothes guy.
MR: Is there anything you've spent money on that you spent more money than you care to admit?
CH: Well, I spent more money than I care to admit on the music videos that I've released.
But no, never, I haven't bought any luxury items. I never had a watch. I don't get joy from those things.
MR: In 20 years do you think you’ll be known as a musician or a thinker?
CH: Probably thinker and writer more so. I think a lot of people who follow me don't really know that I'm a musician.
MR: What would you point them to? If you had to point them to one piece of music, what would it be?
CH: I guess my latest album.
MR: And which video?
CH: "Blasphemy."
MR: That was really well-produced.
CH: That was all my friend Ian Pons Jewell, who's incredible. Did the whole video.
Strong Urge to Floss
MR: Do you floss?
CH: Every single day, usually more than once.
MR: Really?
CH: It’s an anxious habit…kind of an anxious fixation that I have. When I'm anxious, I get a strong urge to floss.
MR: Do you floss, or do you use picks?
CH: I hate the picks.
I hate the picks passionately. They get so soiled and disgusting. I much prefer flossing the old-fashioned way.
MR: Does your dentist say you have good teeth?
CH: I haven't been to the dentist in years or the doctor.
MR: Really?
CH: Yeah, I really need to get on that. Probably 10 years.
MR: What about diet or vitamins? Do you have any weird food habits?
CH: No.
MR: Do you take any vitamins?
CH: No.
I eat fairly healthy just because I naturally don't have a sweet tooth at all. And so my vices are a steak and spinach, which is just never going to be bad for you. And I don't really go in for any of the kind of faddish health stuff. Not to say that it's all bullshit, but…
MR: You're a very nonplussed guy. You're very even-keeled. Do people comment on that a lot?
CH: Often, yeah.
MR: What do you think is behind that?
CH: I don't know. I think maybe I've been that way kind of since childhood, I'm told.
MR: Do you ever totally let go?
CH: Yeah, sometimes. If I'm drunk or if I'm in a silly mood.
MR: What gets you in a silly mood?
CH: Being around the right people or being really tired, or maybe being around children.
MR: Do you want to have children?
CH: Definitely.
MR: How do you date? Can you date on the apps?
CH: I have a girlfriend, but before I did, there's been some periods where I was single in the past five years. And yeah, it is weird because they do one of two things. They look you up before the first date, in which case they assume that I want to talk about politics on the first date, which couldn't be further from the truth. I'd much rather talk about the Kardashians and have a totally meaningless, fun conversation.
MR: That's not totally meaningless. That's very political.
CH: Fair enough. So either they do that, or they look me up after the first date and discover all my political views and then they have an opinion on it, and then the second date is like a referendum on my politics. It was horrible.
MR: Is your girlfriend religious?
CH: Yeah.
MR: What kind of life do you see yourself living? Do you want to live a suburban life, an urban life, a rural life? Are you tempted by any of the back-to-the-land stuff?
CH: Not really. I've been in New York now so long, I feel like I experience buildings as nature. Look, I think it's nice to go out into nature for small periods of time, and then when I get sick of it, come back to society.
The life I'd like to live is probably suburban — two or three kids — and me just continuing to work and make enough to support my family. That's my ideal.
MR: It's kind of funny. A lot of these intellectual dark web people — or whatever you want to call it — a lot of them live pretty conventional lives. Although some of them live very nonconventional lives.
CH: In what way?
MR: Some people have weird habits where they won’t eat seed oil, or they’ll only eat red meat or they’ll only drink milk right from the cow’s udder or something like that.
But then there’s Alex Berenson who says he eats at McDonald’s and shops at Wal Mart.
If an alien were to look at your life, would they be like, "Hey, he basically has the same life as every other schlub except instead of going into a cubicle, he's going into a studio and recording something, but when he leaves, he’s kind of doing the same stuff that everyone does?"
CH: I'm a pretty normal. Most of my habits are well within the norm in terms of what I eat, how I dress, how I spend my time.
The Powerful Game of Chess
MR: Do you have any hobbies?
CH: Chess is a real hobby.
MR: Do you play on chess.com?
CH: Yes.
MR: What’s your rating?
CH: I have very different ratings. So my slow-game rating (rapid) is like 1400.
MR: So we can play together!
CH: My blitz rating is much worse. It's like 900.
MR: I became friends with Bruce Pandolfini after I interviewed him and he’s my chess teacher now. Did you ever see the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer?
CH: Great movie.
MR: Ben Kingsley plays Bruce.
What’s your username?
CH: [Redacted].
MR: You're going to like mine. It’s [Clifford with some numbers after it]. Do you get the reference?
CH: Clifford Brown?
MR: Yeah!
CH: Why?
MR: He was a huge chess guy and probably my favorite jazz musician.
CH: I love Clifford Brown.
MR: He's unreal. And he's the only one who didn't get into junk. He played chess instead.
CH: He viewed that as an alternative to heroin?
MR: I don’t know, but he never got into heroin. But it makes me think…what am I playing around with here?
CH: It's a powerful game.
MR: It is, it is.
CH: I definitely felt that I was getting addicted to it during the pandemic. Then during the lockdown, there were some days where I was playing too much chess.
MR: What opening do you like?
CH: I played the Vienna for a long time.
MR: Me too!
CH: But now I kind of like not playing a specific opening, unless it's a slow game where I really want to win, then I will do my opening theory. But on blitz, I just like to not do anything.
MR: Did you ever study at all?
CH: Only YouTube. I learned the most from Daniel Naroditsky. I actually took one lesson from him, but mostly I've learned from watching his speed runs and he explains every move so well, and you just notice the patterns and so forth.
Lenses
MR: Is there anything you dread getting asked about?
CH: Well, I've done a bajillion interviews about race and reparations, for instance. So it's not that I dread it, I really don't dread it, but it's something I've done so many times, it's not necessarily likely to be exciting.
MR: Do you think about race more than religion?
CH: Probably, yes.
MR: Do you think about race more than economics?
CH: No, I don't think so.
MR: What is the primary lens through which you view the world? Is it a psychological one? Is it an economic one? What's your tool? If someone gives you an issue like gay marriage or the Fed, what’s your first default go to?
CH: Well, I think economics is a very powerful predictor of human behavior in the long run, so I would never analyze an issue without taking the economic lens. The economic lens is also just a subset of viewing humans as self-interested actors. So, for example, in public choice theory, it's applying the economic lens to politics; rather than seeing the FDA or the CDC as a group trying to make society better, you view them as a collection of individual, self-interested bureaucrats, and look at how their behavior might change if you model them that way.
I definitely think that that's a very powerful way of looking at the world. Also inherently cynical, but unfortunately, I think that that is one of the most powerful ways to predict human behavior. So I would definitely use an economic lens. I would also use a psychological lens and an ethical lens. What is right? What is the principle I believe here, and how do I apply it evenhandedly?