Wisconsin’s Leo Sidran Back for Concert at bar centro

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“I’ve lived in New York for almost 20 years, and I still feel like a Wisconsinite in exile. I think my Midwestern disposition has been with me the whole time,” Leo Sidran claims of the state where he was born. 

And though he called Madison home while he wasn’t “in exile,” Milwaukee musicians especially helped the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist hone his chops. 

“As a jazz musician, Milwaukee had a profound influence on my drumming and my approach to playing because Milwaukee always had such a strong swinging community of players. When I was coming up in my twenties and still living in Madison, whenever we could, we would try to play with musicians from Milwaukee and we learned so much from them,” Sidran offers. Jeff Hamann, Dave Bayles, and Manty Ellis and Mark Davis come first to mind among his favorite collaborators from the city. 

Sidran will be back in Milwaukee, stomping, swinging, swooning and more on the evening of Thursday, Aug. 22 at bar centro. He will lead a quartet composed of pianist Tim Whalen, bassist John Christensen and drummer Jamie Ryan. 

Audience Connection

“When you move to New York, sometimes it's easy to lose touch with the way music functions in a smaller community, how important it is to have venues where that music can take place, like bar centro, for the musicians to be able to express themselves,” Sidran observes, adding, “but also for the audiences to be able to connect, to have a place to go, not just to interact with the musicians, but also to interact with one other.” 

Interaction, and the communication in tandem with it, is a primary theme of recent Sidran albums like 2021’s The Art of Conversation and 2023’s What's trending. He gets much practice in the art of interacting with others on not only on performance stages and in studios. Arguably some of Sidran’s most empathetic public communication occurs in his role hosting his podcast, The Third Story. It is a forum to explore what Sidran calls “the space where lived experience overlaps with creative work.” Though musicians aren't his only interview subjects (I look forward catching up on Sidran’s conversation with stand-up comedian Nate Craig), it’s Sidran's main vocation that inspired his Story.

Getting the Story

“When I moved to New York from Madison nearly 20 years ago, I found myself working in a music studio in Soho where I had a chance to meet a lot of new musicians every week in various sessions,” he recalls. “I discovered that as much as I loved recording and working with them, I equally loved those first 25 minutes before we started working where we were getting to know one another.

“I thought that it would be a good idea to record those conversations and do something with them. So, the seed was planted long before I started the podcast,” Sidran declares. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his podcasting has impacted his songwriting 

“I’ve gleaned creative and technical ideas, and I’ve had plenty of ‘aha’ moments. But I think more than that, what I have been reminded of over and over again is that everybody has to find their way through the forest. Everybody has to develop their own sound and their own approach, their own way of working. Nearly all of the people I've talked to have suffered to some degree from imposter syndrome. And that is oddly reassuring,” Sidran notes. 

Going even further back than his move to New York, Sidran’s facility as an interviewer may have originated with his dad’s engagement in similar activity for public radio. “In fact, the seed was planted when I was a little boy because I watched my father, Ben, as he interviewed musicians for his radio show on NPR. I saw that it was something you could do that was complementary to being a musician.” Ben Sidran is not only a former broadcast host, but a jazz and rock keyboardist and songwriter whose still-active recording career began in the early 1970s. 

Second Generation

Now that career has a second-generation component, as the son produces the father's albums. “It is surprising how easy it is for us to work together,” the junior Sidran comments. “There is so much trust, so much shorthand between us, that we get work done very quickly and purposefully. It’s strange the think about it this way but considering I have produced his last five or six records, I suppose I have become his producer and helped to shape the sound of this stage in his career.” There are similarities Sidran appreciates in carrying a parental legacy; but he recognizes differences, too. “I am more specific in my approach to making music; he’s more savage and more willing to take risks. I am more technical about the way I work, he’s more instinctual. He is really a jazz man. I am a little more of a chameleon.” 

 And might the chameleonic Sidran be the middle link in a three-generation musical dynasty? The answer will be left to his daughter. She’s already following in her footsteps of her pop, who got his start as a recording artist working on a Steve Miller album his dad worked on. 

“My daughter is singing and playing piano. She’s also writing songs. And I can tell that she has been bitten by the bug, but she’s also taking her time and doing it in her own way. So, it’s too soon to predict what will happen. She’s 13 years old, and it could go either way. She did sing on a few songs on my last record, including the title track, ‘What’s trending,’ and if you listen to that record, it's clear that she has something very special.”

As for what the adults who spend the night at centro with Sidran and his accompanists can expect, he says, “I want them to feel that what they saw was both very intentional and also a response to that specific moment. I think part of the ‘jazz’ that happens in my concerts as a singer songwriter happens not specifically in the notes, but more in the approach and the attitude.”