Special Guest, Mike Steinel

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:01.226)
Mike Steinel, my old friend, man. It's so good to see you.

Mike Steinel (00:07.193)
Right back at you. It's good to see you too.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:09.462)
You know, it's so funny, Mike, because we've known each other for a long time. And just a couple weeks ago, just a couple weeks ago, Dr. Hildegard Froelich from the University of North Texas had a little shin dig up there in Denton, Texas celebrating her 50 years in Texas. And of course, she was my major professor during my doctoral days there at North Texas. And sure enough, man.

I go up, she invited me to the shindig, I go up there and dentin', and who do I see, who do I run into? Mike Steinehl. What a great blessing, man.

Mike Steinel (00:47.042)
There was a lot of cool people there from all different aspects of what she's, she's been a great influencer, researcher in music ed for years. She was actually a professor when I was a student in 1977. I believe so, yeah. And I could have taken one of her classes because I was, well,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:01.003)
Yeah. Oh man.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:05.755)
At UNT? Wow, yeah.

Mike Steinel (01:13.801)
I was music ed like you because when I went through North Texas, there was no jazz degree at the master's level. So I took a master's in music education with an emphasis in jazz, which is similar to what you took.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:18.36)
That's right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:31.294)
Isn't that funny, man? Well, yeah, because when I was there, they didn't have a doctorate degree in jazz at that time. They had a master's degree in jazz, but they didn't have the doctorate degree. And so, my whole doctorate was exactly that. It was a doctorate in music education, emphasis in jazz studies. And so, her classes, you know, it's interesting. That's what kind of got me intrigued with all that because there were classes like sociology of music.

Mike Steinel (01:37.274)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:59.466)
and psychology of music. And I was like, what? Psychology of music? What the heck is this all about? And it was fantastic. Yeah, very interesting. But then at North Texas, then this young stud came in. I'm there taking my graduate classes. This young stud comes in and teaches his first class in jazz pedagogy. Jazz pedagogy. I signed up for that class, man, right away. I said, jazz pedagogy, I'm all in. And I show up for class. And who's the teacher? You.

Mike Steinel (01:59.877)
Yeah, right.

Mike Steinel (02:06.657)
It's pretty interesting, actually.

Mike Steinel (02:20.617)
Ha ha!

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:29.33)
You, my friend. That was like your first year there as on faculty.

Mike Steinel (02:34.005)
Yeah, I'd been teaching eight years, but they told me the week before that class started, oh, by the way, we want you to teach pedagogy. I was, well, here's what it was. Rich Madison, my predecessor, had been gone for a year. So it hadn't been taught for a year. And there were people finishing up. And normally, I was expecting actually, that was always in, when I took it, it was always in the spring. But since.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:44.135)
Oh, yeah.

Right. He took the Florida job. Yeah.

Mike Steinel (03:02.561)
He had been gone, they hadn't offered it. And so Neil Slater, the chair at the time, said, yeah, we're going to offer it in the fall. I found out like maybe a week because a couple of people had come, hey, I'm leaving in January. I need this class. This is all I need, you know. And it might have been you actually, maybe. I don't know. But I tell you what, that first class, then I taught it at least 32 other times. And.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (03:19.624)
You're my...

Mike Steinel (03:30.785)
It changed over time quite a bit, but that first group was a really great group of students. It was, I remember the names, Charlie Gray and you and Chris Berg was in that. Let me see, Randy Ham, Tim Ishee, a bunch of guys.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (03:38.562)
Man, that was fun.

Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (03:46.098)
Yep, yep.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (03:51.326)
Randy Ham. Yeah. Yes. Man, it was a great class. I think I got an A. I think you gave me an A, man.

Mike Steinel (04:02.245)
Yeah, I think you did get an A. You worked really hard.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (04:04.754)
I think I got it in, yeah. So, okay, Mike, look, here's what I want to do before we get into all the jazz stuff and jazz studies and all the things that you're currently doing and working on, which are fabulous. I want you to wind back the clock a little bit for us and for all the listeners, jazz, piano skills listeners, share with us your childhood, your family life, how you got into music.

Mike Steinel (04:10.694)
Okay.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (04:30.706)
All that stuff. Give us your background. So my friend, the microphone is yours. Anxious to hear your story.

Mike Steinel (04:37.113)
Okay, I'm from the center of the United States. I was born in Smith Center, Kansas, which is actually quite near the geodesic center of the continent, not the continent, but the United States. And it's different than the geographic because it has something to do with Alaska and Hawaii not being in there. But anyway, from the center that, and grew up in small towns,

My parents were teachers, my dad was a band director, my band director, and he taught choir music at times and my mom was a high school librarian. We grew up in, I grew up in a town of a, finished high school in a town of about 2000, very small town, but one of the things about that is that I feel lucky because I was able to do a lot of things, a lot of different things. I was just thinking about a play that I was in.

I was in plays, I was in the choir, I was in, I wasn't very athletic, although in middle school or in junior high, I did go out for everything and enjoyed it. I wish I could have been more competitive, but anyway, that was the environment. My dad was my trumpet teacher for, I don't know, until I was a freshman in high school, and then.

He would drive me over to the college that I later went to, Emporia State University. It was called Kansas State Teachers at the time, for weekly trumpet lessons. Or every other week, I think it was. But, you know, before that, he gave me a trumpet when I was six. So I've been doing the trumpet thing a long, long time. And we did piano lessons, you know, until, until when I'm fifth grade, my parents, we moved to Wichita so my dad could get a master's degree.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (06:05.478)
Oh, yeah. Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (06:20.119)
Yeah.

Mike Steinel (06:28.829)
which taught state and that was a rough year financially because my mom went back to teaching, but you know, women's salaries were horrible and they still are. And anyway, I did have a trumpet long before that, but it was around that time, you know, that I really got interested in the trumpet, you know, as I realized that I was kind of good at it and just practiced and practiced a lot.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (06:59.283)
Was your dad a jazzer? Did he play jazz?

Mike Steinel (07:01.465)
No, he wasn't, not really. He played, the joke used to be, he played dance gigs, but he wasn't a good improviser. And his big joke was, oh yeah, I took a really hot solo on, what was it, he always sang the same tune. No, no, it was, the lady is, no, no. I can't remember, but, and then he would just sing the melody, he says, yeah, I took a really hot solo last night on.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:18.155)
Alley Cat.

Mike Steinel (07:30.833)
and he would just sing the melody. And I didn't even know what the tune was at the time, and I thought, well, that's kind of weird. But he was, you know, a big part of, in high school, even in like seventh grade, I started organizing bands. My first band was a band called Susan and the Bachelors. You know, we call them garage bands. We didn't really have guitars in the beginning, but later I played in a rock, some sort of rock band all the way through high school.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:35.02)
Yeah, you

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:52.81)
Yeah, right.

Mike Steinel (08:01.677)
running it and booking it. So I became kind of an entrepreneur early on and really liked that. And was more interested in some ways in doing that than necessarily playing the trumpet. Although I knew that ultimately I was gonna go to college and learn, you know, like, I wanted to be an orchestra trumpeter. But in high school I played guitar one year when we didn't have a guitarist. I played bass another year when we didn't have a bassist. I played piano another year when we didn't have a pianist.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (08:25.922)
All right.

Mike Steinel (08:31.121)
Oh, and I was gonna tell you, I quit piano in the fifth grade when we moved to Wichita and didn't have much money. And my parents said, now do you really wanna keep with the piano? You don't have to. And I think it was a sigh of relief when I said, nah, I don't wanna do it. Save some money. But it's a big regret because I'm a pretty good pianist. I would say just to be realistic, I'm better than what you'd call an arranger's piano. You know, I...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (08:42.83)
Yeah, they were like, yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (08:58.498)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, all you jazz horn players, man, y'all make me mad because y'all sit down and start playing changes and laying out voicings and, you know, and I'm.

Mike Steinel (09:09.073)
Well, you know, back before there was a lot of play along record, how's this song go? You'd have to bang it on the piano, you know.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:13.345)
Yeah.

Right, right, yeah. So.

Mike Steinel (09:17.489)
But anyway, so, yeah, so I played in high school and kept doing the rock band thing all the way through college. And at one...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:27.81)
So what were you playing, what were you playing, Michael? Like a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in Chicago stuff? Yeah, right, that's, yeah.

Mike Steinel (09:32.505)
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. Then I spent three years kind of on the road after college with different bands. One was playing disco, so we would do like, we did Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan was just hot, so we'd do Steely Dan, we would do Chicago, we'd do some Chicago, we'd do some Blood, Sweat, and Tears, we'd do some Earth, Wind, and Fire. It was horn bands mainly, but the last one I played in,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:47.346)
Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:53.71)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:59.947)
Yeah, right.

Mike Steinel (10:03.021)
before I started my own group out of that era was where I played keyboard. And they hired me because I could do trumpet and keyboard, often at the same time, a la Chuck Mangione. But that was my main interest. And then somewhere along the line, a friend of mine, I was running a band. We had a gig. We worked a lot.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (10:14.165)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike Steinel (10:29.329)
We were a trio that could be a quartet. By that I mean I played piano, I played keyboards, bass player drums, and then I would play trumpet. And we were doing, that was back in the days of Mr. Magic, I don't know if you remember that song, Grover Washington, and we were doing dance stuff, but we could also play jazz concerts, and I was booking us with, you know, in that thing. And a friend of mine...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (10:41.758)
Mm-hmm, right. Yeah, I should tell you.

Mike Steinel (10:54.937)
And it was hard, it was hard to make any money, you know, that's all the only income we had coming in. Friend of mine said, I'm going down to visit North Texas, and why don't you come along? That was in the fall of 76. And we visited on election day of 76, because that was the day Carter got elected. I remember that, which was a surprise. And can you still hear me? Okay, I'm getting a weird.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (11:07.938)
Hmm.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (11:14.328)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (11:21.353)
Yeah, oh yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (11:25.288)
Now you're coming through.

Mike Steinel (11:25.857)
Oh, it's just my tinnitus. That's all it is. It's really loud sometimes. No, too many rock gigs. But anyway, so yeah, and I went down there not expecting to be, I don't wanna go back to college. And I got down there and it was just, I heard the one o'clock band and I went like, wow, this is amazing. And then we went.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (11:28.821)
Hahaha!

Yeah

Dr. Bob Lawrence (11:34.977)
you know my career no man to be right here

Dr. Bob Lawrence (11:49.964)
Yeah.

Mike Steinel (11:52.845)
out and hung with some people and it was like, wow, these are really good musicians down here. And so I dropped everything and moved down in January, started school and then spent some time in the one o'clock and learning how to arrange and just getting better. And then I was very lucky that I got a job back in my, where I had grown up as a jazz artist in residence at Bethel College.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (31:28.325)
talk a little bit more about your North Texas experience. I want you to go back to, you were at, your dad took you to Emporia State University for trumpet lessons. Was this with a jazz guy there? Was this a jazz or that?

Mike Steinel (31:38.073)
Yeah.

Mike Steinel (31:42.669)
No, they had no jazz guy really. It was just a trumpet teacher. It was a very good trumpet teacher, Peter Churchak, who was very supportive of the jazz and they, I can't remember who, different people did the jazz band and eventually they turned one of the jazz bands over to me when I was a senior, you know, and which was kind of strange. But I remember Pete Churchak once, he said something interesting in a lesson, which was like,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (31:45.536)
Okay.

Mike Steinel (32:12.489)
I have to remind myself of how naive I was. And I was, said, yeah, I took a solo last, yesterday in the jazz band, I wasn't really happy with it, you know? And he goes, well, how are you working on your jazz, on your improvisation? And I'm going like, I said, how are you practicing your improvisation? I'm going like, what? I'm supposed to practice the improvisation? Up until then, I was just.

By the way, the thing that got me into it, I just assumed that I was gonna learn to play classical trumpet really good and get a job in a symphony, that would have been fine. Now I realized that would have never happened because I was not that good, you know, with that and that end of it. I always had trouble with my chops. It took years to work it out. But anyway, in the school, in my freshman year, there were two African American guys. One was later my roommate.

And he, a bass player, tuba player, bass player, really good bass player. And the other was a vet, Jimmy D. Staten. He was just gotten out of the army. He'd been in NAMM and he was a jazz pianist, you know? And they would jam in these little practice rooms. And so I would just stand outside and listen one day, what are you doing? Come on in. And then after about 15 minutes, the guy said, get your horn, come on, get your horn.

So I just tried to watch his left hand, see what he was doing, you know. And that was when I decided, oh, this is more fun. I was always doing the rock and roll thing, the rock band, you know, that was. And, but then we started, that's when we started to think that maybe, and that's when I started a band in college that was more like approaching a lot of original tunes, but they were jazz.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (33:43.03)
Yeah, right, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (33:52.385)
Yeah, right.

Mike Steinel (34:08.777)
approaching jazz tunes, you know. I can't remember what the models were. Maybe traffic might have been the model. So jam bands, you know. But not, at the time I thought like the swing, ding, ding stuff was kind of corny, you know. So later I came around, you know, to that. But then when I went to North, go ahead.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (34:08.853)
Yeah. Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (34:16.883)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (34:28.033)
Yeah, so yeah, so now okay, so now we're back at North Texas. You went down to North Texas to check it out. You're blown away. Great musicians as always, right?

Mike Steinel (34:39.588)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (34:44.996)
So you just went down there with a buddy down to North Texas to check it out?

Mike Steinel (34:51.533)
Yeah, we stayed a couple of days, then came back. And then I decided to, yeah, I want to go there. And I got accepted, like right at the last minute, to come in January, you know? And I just showed up and auditioned for band, made the five o'clock band. Later I moved and they moved me to the three, somebody left. Back then, the bands were, it was post, one of the secret to the success of

Dr. Bob Lawrence (34:54.211)
Yeah.

Mike Steinel (35:21.641)
North Texas was during the Vietnam War. The wars, first of all, World War II and the Korean War allowed a lot of musicians who were a little older to come back and use the GI Bill to go to school and they learned how to play and these were like working musicians, you know, like the first lab band had Herb Ellis was in the first lab band.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (35:35.646)
Ah, right. All right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (35:50.669)
Yeah.

Mike Steinel (35:51.397)
You know, and you know, then Jack Peterson, these were older guys. So it was always a really good band. And then the Vietnam war came. And what happened is just to keep their deferments, guys that would normally be leaving school to go with Buddy Rich or Stan Kenton or Woody or Woody or Woody or Woody or Woody or Woody or Woody or.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (36:18.329)
Did I go? Okay, okay, we're good.

Mike Steinel (36:19.651)
I'm good, I think. You know, like Lou Marini was there for eight years. And the band, so, but anyway, later on, by the time I got there, the people were coming in and out, like, leaving to go with Stan Kenton. Like the band I saw, the one o'clock I saw in the fall was completely different because three people went with Stan Kenton. You know, Bev Dahlke went with Stan Kenton.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (36:26.051)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (36:46.38)
Wow.

Mike Steinel (36:49.567)
I can't remember who else. But it was, it was, so anyway, so I moved up in mid semester. Anyway. Oh yeah, Leon, yeah, yeah. And we played a lot of, we played a lot of gigs that band and actually, you know, I was wondering if it was legal. We got paid, you know. We got paid.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (36:59.41)
And this was Leon Breeden days, right? Leon Breeden was directing One O'Clock. Yeah. That's fantastic.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (37:13.827)
Right.

Mike Steinel (37:14.947)
Matter of fact, Leon Breedon, the first day of the band rehearsal, he handed out the Union things, which I think is great. He says, we're going to do this right, you're going to be in the Union, because some of the gigs we're going to be able to pay you. And we did. We went to the Spoleto Jazz Festival and played as the house band, the first year I was in, the house band at the Spoleto Jazz Festival for three weeks, I think. And Clark Terry came and Zoot Synths came.

who The singer baritone Can't think of his name African American guy big guy Yeah, Joe Williams, yes and Who else the New York Jazz Quartet with Frank West and Tommy Flanagan, oh and the highlight of that was two nights with Ella Fitzgerald

Dr. Bob Lawrence (37:54.829)
Williams, Joe Williams? Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (38:11.778)
Oh my goodness.

Mike Steinel (38:13.115)
We got to play with Ella Fitzgerald. Tommy Flanagan was a pianist when they did the small stuff. And then Heath conducted the one o'clock. And then the second night was outdoors underneath the grotto there in University of South Carolina at Charleston and with a string orchestra. And Ella Fitzgerald, we did the rehearsal in a little building close to where we were going to play.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (38:36.194)
years.

Mike Steinel (38:43.683)
And she sat there with her big Coke bottle glasses, her eyes were bad, you know, diabetes, I think. And she knitted. Didn't even look at it. She just listened and knitted while we ran her, La Ptambé Flanagan ran through the show. And every now and then she would just put her hand to her ear and she'd sing something. But she just listened, you know, it was really lovely. I mean, she was pretty old by that time, you know, but she was healthy still.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (38:47.39)
Yeah, right.

Mike Steinel (39:12.239)
And she, unbelievable singing. Scat singing, and she did seven ballads in a row. I remember she did People. You know, People Who Need People. And it was just gorgeous. You know, anyway, that was a, that was a thrill. And those are the kinds of things you got to do if you were in the one o'clock back then.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (39:15.573)
Yeah, right. Oh my gosh.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (39:22.681)
people, yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (39:30.894)
Yeah, what?

Yeah, the North Texas experience, it's absolutely amazing. Okay, so you finished up at North, you got your bachelor's degree at North, no, master's degree at North Texas. Yeah, your master's. So after your master's degree, what happened?

Mike Steinel (39:39.583)
So, okay, so you finished up at North, you got your bachelor's, bachelor's degree, no, master's degree. Master's, yeah. Yeah, your master's. Well, after your master's.

What happened? I was very lucky. I think before we went out, I think we covered this a little bit. I was able to take a job near my hometown as an artist in residence. And I had three jobs. One was to tour with the group. And I did 10 tours in four, with people like Bill Evans, the tenor player, and Jared Baganzi.

I hired guest artists to come in. I did 10 tours during that time. And I also worked in the high schools in the area and I worked at the college. And it was funded by the National Endowment of the Arts. It was a great, perfect job for me because I didn't know if I really wanted to teach. Those four years taught me that I did want to teach and that I was kind of good at it. And it was my, I knew this area. I was coming back to these little...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (40:46.965)
Right, right, right.

Mike Steinel (40:47.519)
rural schools and I kind of knew how to go in there and work with them, knew what to expect. My boss took a sabbatical, he hired me, took a sabbatical and before he left he said, oh by the way there's one little wrinkle, he says it was a new program, it had gone one year. The guy that was here last year, the people didn't really like him, so the schools that need to buy in, five high schools had to buy into this thing.

and I would go to one each day of the week. And they were one fourth of my salary in the five high schools. He said, none of the schools really wanna commit until they know what you're like. So he said, just go around and do a bunch of clinics. I literally, I'm not sure. I think I did at least 20. I might've done 30. I might've gone to 30 schools. I could, I kind of remember. And that was, to little bitty schools where, you know, they were playing stocks and maybe they would have...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (41:41.369)
Yeah.

Mike Steinel (41:45.883)
you know, the garage band drummer. And that's where I kind of learned how to teach the rhythm section because a beginning rhythm section, which helped me later write the essential elements for jazz ensemble, which has a lot of stuff about drums and bass and piano and guitar. But anyway, that was a great experience. And, uh, so how did you do that? How did, was it from there?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (41:52.387)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (41:58.306)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (42:01.656)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (42:05.461)
Yeah. So how did you end up? How did was it from there then that you ended up directly joining the faculty at North Texas after that?

Mike Steinel (42:14.319)
No, I did four years at Northern Illinois University, which is a great school for music, very great school for music. They really do, they really do. And they didn't have a jazz degree while I was there. I wrote the jazz degree that they have. They've since changed it a lot, they tell me. Yeah, we didn't really use what you did. I had a guy tell me that. I said, you know, I wrote the degree, I think, when I was there. He said, oh yeah, we don't do it like that anymore.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (42:18.469)
okay you yeah that's got a they have a good jazz program do they not they northern elm yeah

Dr. Bob Lawrence (42:31.193)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (42:36.849)
Ha!

Dr. Bob Lawrence (42:45.682)
You're gone. You're gone.

Mike Steinel (42:46.499)
As you get older, get used to that. Yeah, we don't do that anymore. But anyway, that was a great experience because I was in Chicago. And that's when I started, I got together with a few people that I knew from before. One from my hometown, Jack Mouse from Emporia and three other guys, Frank Mantooth, Bill Sears and Kelly Sill. Two of them have passed away, but that was a Chicago jazz quintet. And we did a bunch of touring.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (42:51.592)
Oh, that's funny, man.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (42:57.341)
That's right.

Mike Steinel (43:15.223)
and recorded an album and that was really a great group of guys. I had a lot of fun with that group and I think it was a fine group. But then I got invited to come down and apply for the job at North Texas. So your job at North Texas, did you film with Madison? Yes I did. Florida? Yeah. And there was one year where there was an interim guy.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (43:17.218)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (43:22.297)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (43:30.165)
So your job then at North Texas, was it because Rich Matteson, did you field Rich Madison's spot then? It was when he went to Florida? Okay.

Mike Steinel (43:47.211)
great guy, Brett Savacheck. It's really funny, he had this, I got his desk. He was a very fine composer and arranger, you know? And everything was cleared out of the desk except these little pencils. That were too small to be, you know, he just, back in the day he wrote with pencils. There were like 12 little, yeah, and they were the nice, you know, the pencils you used to buy just for writing music.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (43:49.746)
Oh yeah, Brett, drum bonus.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (43:57.162)
Yes.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (44:02.619)
I'm sorry.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (44:15.489)
Yeah, right.

Mike Steinel (44:15.803)
I think they came from the same people that printed the music paper. And that was so funny. And most of them didn't have any eraser left. So that's the sign of a good composer, you know that. No eraser. No erasers.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (44:19.403)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (44:27.509)
Yeah, right. Yeah, no eraser. Yeah. You know, he's out east, is he? Is he not? I thought he was like...

Mike Steinel (44:34.475)
Oh yeah, he's in the New York school and I'm gonna, it'll come to me. A great New York school. Potsdam, exactly, yeah. Very fine music program there. He's retired since and really a neat guy. I wish I'd gotten to know him better.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (44:41.225)
Yeah. Pots. No. Yeah, pots damn. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (44:53.761)
He was a, yeah, he was a University of Iowa guy. He was University of Iowa before, then he came down to North Texas and, yeah, yeah.

Mike Steinel (45:04.541)
Oh, is that right? I was turning out a lot of great musicians.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (45:09.173)
Yeah, University of Iowa's got a good jazz program as well, yeah. I'm from Illinois, across the river, across the Mississippi River from Iowa though, yeah. So I grew, I grew up in the Midwest, see, so that's when I first met you. I knew you, I knew you, I knew you were a Midwest guy. I grew up in a, I grew up in a, in a town called Rock Island, you know, Johnny Cash, the Rock, the Rock Island Lines. Yeah.

Mike Steinel (45:11.987)
Are you from Iowa?

Oh, okay.

Yeah. I grew up in the Midwest. What town in Illinois? I knew you were going to say that.

I grew up in a town called Rock Island. Oh, I know Rock Island. Oh, yeah. The Rock Island ones. Yeah, I had one of the very interesting week playing at a club. You know, Rock Island is Quad Cities. And we didn't play in Rock Island. I think we played in Davenport. Okay, let me see. I'll get these. It's Rock Island, Davenport. There's a funny one.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (45:43.554)
That's right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (45:51.181)
Daven, yeah Daven.

Moline, Bettendorf, yeah.

Mike Steinel (45:57.927)
Bettendorf, yeah. And I think we played in, there was a club, it was a, you might have known this club, it was a Quonset hut. I think it was called the Cave or something. And we were warned about the girls from Bettendorf. We didn't pay any heed to it, but. You can bleep that out if you need to.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (46:07.269)
Huh. Oh yeah, right.

That was Rock Island, right? Ha ha!

Dr. Bob Lawrence (46:21.089)
Oh, that's too funny, man. That's too funny. Well, you want to know what? You know, hey, you know what's interesting? Rich Madison, the gentleman that you replaced, he went to Rock Island High School. He actually graduated from Rock Island High School with my mother. And what was funny, yeah, they were in the same class. And you know what, here's a funny story. I go down to North Texas.

Mike Steinel (46:31.545)
It's from that area.

Mike Steinel (46:36.243)
He actually graduated from Rock Island High School with his mother. Really? It was funny. Yeah. How cool. Here's the funny story.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (46:47.989)
And I'm back home and I'm talking to my mom and I said, oh man, I said, mom, yeah, it's going great. Love it, the improv class. And I said.

I'm learning, I'm studying with Rich Madison. And she goes, that's interesting, Rich Madison. She goes, I went to school with Rich Madison and he was a, she goes, and she said, he was a euphonium player. I said, that's the guy. And she goes, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? So she took a picture of her yearbook.

Mike Steinel (47:18.047)
Are you kidding me?

Mike Steinel (47:25.087)
A picture of a yearbook, a picture of Rich Madison in a yearbook, and he had a full head of hair. You know, Richard Walton. I always... Richard Walton. And he had a full head of hair.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (47:26.473)
a picture of Rich Madison in the yearbook and he had a full head of hair. You know, Rich was bald. I always just knew Rich as a bald guy and he had a full head of hair. And I came back with that picture and I showed Jack Peterson. Jack Peterson's like, I'll give you $25 for that picture right now. You know, he was going to do, he was going to do something with it. So anyway,

Mike Steinel (47:43.145)
Hahaha

Mike Steinel (47:49.724)
I tell you, Rich and Jack were really great mentors to me when I was a student. And Jack later when I was teaching, I got to teach with him for I think just a semester. He retired or he took a retirement and then went down and joined Rich in Florida. He was but he was in Florida, Arizona. Now he's, I've just heard he's in Columbus.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (47:56.163)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (48:05.675)
Yeah. Is he in Arizona now? Is he retired? Is he? He's

Mike Steinel (48:15.391)
I think is living with his daughter in Columbus.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (48:18.105)
Okay, all right. All right, so okay, so then you came to North Texas, you've been on North, you taught at North Texas for, oh my gosh, Mike, how long were you on faculty? 32 years teaching at the University of North Texas.

Mike Steinel (48:20.315)
Yeah. So, okay, so then you came to North Texas, and then you taught at North Texas for, oh my god, how long were you on? 32 years. Yeah, so 40 years total teaching. I thought that was a good round number. And luckily, I mean, just amazingly, I retired right before COVID. Cuz I know that the stress of teaching during those first

Dr. Bob Lawrence (48:34.625)
Wow. That's a great round.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (48:41.816)
Yeah.

Mike Steinel (48:47.087)
semesters of COVID was just amazing. Teaching remote, my wife continued to teach during that and it was not a good experience for the students. It's just, it's really, like, it was really a tremendous. And then of course, then our chairman, John Murphy, passed away or got sick that fall, 19. So there's a lot of upheaval and I just kind of.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (48:57.258)
Yeah, hard.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (49:13.341)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Steinel (49:16.975)
missed all that and they're doing great now. They've got a great crop of young people running the deal and Rob Parton is doing a great job as chair and yeah, it's doing great. So, okay, while I'm at my check list, you were pretty prolific with these advocates.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (49:18.229)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (49:23.285)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (49:29.249)
Yeah, it's rocking. It's rocking. So OK, while at North Texas, you were pretty prolific with your jazz education. I know you've put together some great materials and books. Let's talk about that a little bit. I remember you were working on what was the first book that you published there while on faculty?

Mike Steinel (49:41.183)
together some great materials and books. Let's talk about that a little bit. I remember you were working on, what was the first book that you published? Well, the first one's Building a Jazz Vocabulary, which is, in some ways, it's what an author shouldn't do. That book was written at a time when this is the, it was kind of like, that's a picture in how I was approaching

Dr. Bob Lawrence (49:52.867)
That was it.

Mike Steinel (50:09.787)
my own development at the time. It's a high level book basically in a lot of ways. And you know, it isn't appropriate. I'll be the first to admit it's not appropriate for a beginner at all, you know. But it is, I think I was very much interested and influenced at the time by the craft of composition by Hindemith. And the craft of composition, the thing about that is,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (50:11.493)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (50:22.338)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (50:33.145)
Hmm.

Mike Steinel (50:39.399)
The first volume builds a series of ways to evaluate music that are not bound to a genre or a style. In other words, how to evaluate harmony, objective ways to evaluate harmony, and you know, so it wasn't bound to a style. So in building a jazz vocabulary, what I tried to do was to try to build an objective way to practice music.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (50:51.393)
Yeah. Yeah, right.

Mike Steinel (51:08.935)
on, there's some licks in there, but it's really more about mastering the vocabulary that's possible, you know, like in any tonal environment. And I didn't, I actually didn't, I tried to not use the word scales, you know, or chords necessarily, just more like tonal environments, you know, you have. And there's, there's about, I think there's, you could probably boil it down to

Dr. Bob Lawrence (51:20.908)
right

Dr. Bob Lawrence (51:26.667)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (51:32.067)
Right.

Mike Steinel (51:40.315)
maybe six or seven tonal environments. And if you can move up and down melodically in skips and steps in any environment, then it frees you up just to play what's in your imagination. So that was that. 10 years later, or nine years later, we came out with a book for beginners, which is Essential Elements for Jazz Ensemble. And that's been a very successful book.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (51:43.544)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (51:50.713)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (51:54.401)
Right.

Mike Steinel (52:10.955)
and it's a band method. And in a lot of ways, it assumes the student knows nothing. And for me, that was a really difficult thing to do, to remember what it was like when I didn't even know what jazz was or what, because I've been doing it so long. And I grew up in a musical household. A lot of my students, I would ask,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (52:33.733)
Right? Right.

Mike Steinel (52:40.211)
Did your family play? Not really, you know. So it's, but I grew up listening to jazz. My dad had jazz records. He was not a jazz musician though. But not really knowing what was going on. I remember he took me to a lot of concerts. It was great. I remember a lot of memorable moments. They took me to a Doc Severinsen concert. And Doc played with the jazz band. No, he played with the concert band.

And then at the end he played with the jazz band. And in the middle, he played with just a combo. And I found out later, it was guys that I got to know in Wichita later who were older, they were just jazz cats, you know? And I asked my dad on the way home, you know, he played with the orchestra, he looked at music and he played with the jazz band, he looked at music. And then in the middle, they just played and played and played and they weren't looking at any music. How'd they do that? Did he have all that memorized?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:08.606)
Okay.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:22.211)
Yeah.

Mike Steinel (53:36.511)
That's a lot of, you know he played 20 minutes. My dad said, no he was improvising. Improvising. Oh interesting. And that's the first time it occurred to me that what I was doing, you know when I would sit at the keyboard and mess around or just mess around on the trumpet, that I was improvising. But anyway to get to that frame of mind where he didn't know anything about jazz and what

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:43.941)
You're right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:56.557)
Yeah.

Mike Steinel (54:05.987)
how we could build a method that would work, you know, and Hal Leonard was really good about showing me the vessel to put the information in. I had the information, but I didn't really have the vessel, you know, how to do it. So there's a second book of that, and there's all sorts of supplemental materials. But the book I'm most excited about is the latest one. This is my latest nonfiction book, is Running the Changes.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (54:18.785)
Yeah, right, yeah, yeah.

Mike Steinel (54:36.167)
which is kind of a, it's kind of an encapsulation of everything I taught at North Texas for 32 years. So, use that as a, everywhere. It's Howe Landard, but it's everywhere, anywhere where you can buy books. If you wanna support your, yeah, if you wanna support your local merchant, go to Pender's Music.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (54:45.289)
And where's that available?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (54:52.034)
Okay, runnin' the changes.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (54:57.441)
Yeah. There you go. So, okay. So, you're 40 years of teaching. You said a phrase earlier that I want to circle back around to, and then I want you to expound on it a little bit. You said that you had somebody asked you, I think it was a band, a private teacher or some teacher that you had through high school, asked you point blank.

Mike Steinel (55:00.319)
So, okay, so your 40 years.

Mike Steinel (55:11.647)
Okay?

Mike Steinel (55:23.831)
Ask you point blank, how are you practicing improvisation?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (55:25.241)
How are you, Mike, how are you practicing improvisation? And you went, what? It struck you odd, you know, practice improvisation. Okay, that's a really fantastic question. And with your 40 years of teaching, how would you now, how would you answer that question now and how would you encourage students

Mike Steinel (55:33.855)
This improvisation, okay, that's a really fantastic question. And if you're 40 years of teaching, how would you now, how would you answer that question now? And how would you encourage students getting into jazz?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (55:55.053)
getting into jazz and trying to figure things out, what would you say to them to help guide them in their effort to learn how to practice improvisation?

Mike Steinel (55:58.335)
figure things out. What would you say to them to help guide them in their effort to learn?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (57:51.802)
So, look, remember the cool. So, how would you, how would you do that? I think that's, you know, you said that that's an important question. And I think that question quite often, Mike, isn't asked enough. And students aren't, aren't required to answer that question enough.

Mike Steinel (57:58.067)
So how would you do that? I think that's, you know, you said that, that's an important question, and I think that question's quite awesome.

Mike Steinel (58:14.003)
Well, this may not be the answer that you expect, but I think that a lot of it depends on...

It depends on where the student is in terms of.

their imagination. Let me back up. I think that jazz improv, any sort of musical improvisation is a combination of a musical memory

Dr. Bob Lawrence (58:40.384)
Okay.

Mike Steinel (58:49.459)
a musical imagination, and you put those two together, and you have an improvisation. In other words, I imagine a memory, I imagine a melody. And most of this, for most people, this is a melodic thing. It can't be a harmonic thing, but I imagine something that I've heard, and I recreated my minds here, but I recreate it differently. Now, so you have...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (59:11.973)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Steinel (59:18.691)
inspiration, identification. In other words, you have to know a little bit of what it is and then you execute. Inspiration, this is from Kelly Sill, he is just his idea. Inspiration, identification, execution. And so where is your problem? So for some people it's inspiration or you know like

They just haven't been fed enough with jazz. It's like the sound of jazz. When I wasn't working, necessarily working on my jazz, I was listening to a lot of records, and I was to some degree playing along with it. And that counted actually. I should have said, well, I'm just playing along with records and that's how I was working on my, but that didn't seem like anything but just fun. So if you...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (59:49.824)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (59:57.145)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:00:01.236)
Right, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:00:11.97)
You're right, right.

Mike Steinel (01:00:16.291)
are wired so that first of all, if you have a lot of sounds in your head, you may not be able to do anything except just regurgitate them out. You know, some people have a problem with their imagination, the ability to imagine it differently. And that's a muscle I think that you have to, you know, you have to exercise. And for some classical players who have just been working on just playing something exactly the right way over and over and over again,

That's strange territory for them. And so they would have to do things, I think that you would have to say, okay, just try to play that differently. Then of course the execution. I think eventually most of what we get into is trying to develop the technical skills so we can execute our ideas. And that's scales, arpeggios, licks.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:00:47.845)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:01:10.245)
Mm-hmm. Right, right, right.

Mike Steinel (01:01:14.507)
and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, and like I say, it depends on what you're doing. For some of us, we are intuitively wired so that it's easy to play something and then play it differently, you know. Bach's son once asked him, Papa, where do all the melodies come from? He said, I can't get up without tripping over them. I can't get up in the morning without tripping over the melodies, you know.

And so he had to invent melodies, you know, for basically a cantata every Sunday. You know, so he, and there's a lot of sameness in those, just like there's a lot of sameness in bebop melodies. You know, you have cliche things that work together. So I think like back up and ask you, how do you work on it? I think you have to identify what you are. Are you?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:01:43.577)
Hmm.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:01:53.582)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:02:00.357)
Correct. Yeah, right, right.

Mike Steinel (01:02:12.371)
are intuitively gifted to be able to play with a melody, you know, fine. Then do you have enough melodies in your head? If not, you just need to learn melodies. You know, when I was first teaching, there was a guy who taught at a school. Well, I'll tell you his name because I have profound respect for him. Jerry Hawn. He's a guitar teacher. And he was a great guitar teacher and great

guitar and he taught improv at which I stayed. And the basic, his thing was you learn 100 tunes that you can play, you name. You learn 90, you get a B. You learn 80, you get a C. And at the time I thought, what's that about? But I realized that if you learn 100 tunes, like jazz tunes, you know, not like simple melodies, but jazz, 100 jazz tunes.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:03:07.373)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Mike Steinel (01:03:11.791)
You have a storehouse of vocabulary. Right. The only thing I would say that maybe a guitar player might not understand is that if you learn like this lick on guitar, but you can play it in 12 different keys just by, you know, so for a non guitar player, I say, okay, like let's do those melodies. Maybe let's not do a hundred, but let's do, let's do 10, but in all 12 keys.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:03:15.071)
No question about it, right? Right?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:03:29.289)
count. Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:03:39.524)
Yeah.

Mike Steinel (01:03:40.699)
And that was David Baker's thing. He used to have a class where the whole deal was, you learn these, you learn these, you know, there was a list, Pat Harbison would know the list, but it'd be like, I don't know, a yard bird suite, and it'd be like anthropology. Most of them were bop heads, but there might be a bunkhead. And then you would just assemble those licks into a solo.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:03:43.853)
Yeah, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:04:07.233)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Steinel (01:04:08.955)
I'm not sure that's the most creative thing, but there are jazz players and I do this, some of what we do is just assembling the vocabulary that we have. And as, yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:04:17.473)
Yeah, right. That's right, that's right. Yeah.

Absolutely not. You know, I used to have a teacher that used to say if what you play isn't worth repeating, then it probably wasn't worth saying the first time.

Mike Steinel (01:04:36.465)
Yeah, that's a great thing. That's a great model.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:04:39.365)
Right. So, repetition and having your vocabulary and your, I mean, come on. I mean, right, Mike, it's what defines players, you know. I can hear Oscar Peterson and say, well, that's Oscar Peterson. How do I know that's Oscar Peterson? Well, he's got a vocabulary and he's got a touch that that's Oscar Peterson, you know. And if everything he played was different all the time, we wouldn't be able to say, oh, that's very Oscar Peterson-ish.

Mike Steinel (01:04:56.531)
Well, he got a vocabulary. He's got a touch. That's obstaculacy. Yeah, yeah. And if everything he played was different all the time, he wouldn't be able to say, oh, that's very odd.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:05:09.025)
you know, it becomes associated with him, you know.

Mike Steinel (01:05:09.775)
Yeah. You know, one of the things I did, and I wrote about it in the novel, Saving Charlie Parker, just a side note, if you're to a listener who might not be aware of this, I've been writing fiction since the beginning of the pandemic. But one of the, and I wrote...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:05:29.737)
Yeah, I want you to talk about that because it's fascinating. Please share.

Mike Steinel (01:05:33.123)
Okay, well I'll back up in the story, which is about a jazz professor, retired jazz professor, who falls down the stairs, hits his head and wakes up in 1953 next to Charlie Parker. But one of the things, and it's not me, it's not me, but one of the things that I write that guy did during the pandemic is what I did during the pandemic, is I took the Omni Book, which is, I don't know, 108 pages of Charlie Parker solos.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:05:46.734)
I don't know.

Mike Steinel (01:06:02.655)
And I took every bar in those solos and played them in 12 keys. I spent two or three, I just, I got to the point where I had no gigs and I had nothing on the horizon. I said, I have to, and I would do my, you know, my routine to maintain something, but it was nothing like what I needed to do. So.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:06:02.712)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:06:10.799)
Wow.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:06:22.029)
Yeah.

Mike Steinel (01:06:28.743)
just out of boredom mainly, I said, I'm gonna do this. And I committed to do it. And I announced to people, I'm gonna do this. And I found it took about five, six months. But what I found was much of what Charlie Parker played was from lick to lick was very, very similar. You see these things, but he would change it. But no one would say, well, listen to Charlie Parker. Oh, that's...

just the same stuff over and over again, you know, because it always sounds fresh. And what he was doing, what he was reinventing the melodies in the spot to make them fresh. And it's rhythmic reinvention.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:07:16.822)
Ah, there you go. That's right.

Mike Steinel (01:07:18.823)
And by the way, that's just another one of my theories is that all improvisation is one of two things. You're either reinventing a melody or you're ornamenting a melody. Like I could reinvent how high the moon, ba dee, not add one extra pitch, but I could play completely different. Or I could play with the...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:07:44.677)
Correct, right.

Mike Steinel (01:07:47.183)
Ornithology, which is... Did you hear that? Oh, my piano's not on?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:07:51.683)
No.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:07:56.034)
I heard the clicking of the keys, which sounded really nice. Yeah, but I didn't hear any. Yeah. Yeah, you're on, man.

Mike Steinel (01:07:57.847)
Oh really? Oh, is this mic working?

I wonder if I'm going through this one. Hang on a second. No, no, I'm going through this one. OK. That sounds OK? OK. Anyway, that's the beginning of ornithology, which is an ornamentation of the melody to how high the moon. So those two things can come in there. And what he's doing is he's quoting melodies and reinventing them, and he's ornamenting them. So it's very dense.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:08:06.177)
Oh, maybe you are. Oh. It sounds fine.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:08:18.143)
Yep.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:08:23.799)
Right.

Mike Steinel (01:08:32.935)
But what I found was a lot of the same stuff happened over and over and over again. But playing it in 12 keys was a challenge for me, because it opened up my ears to really be synced up with my fingers a little bit better.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:08:45.457)
Yeah, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:08:51.085)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, okay, so talk about talk about your novels. How did this all come about? This is a this is fascinating.

Mike Steinel (01:09:00.495)
Okay, September of 2020, you know, we'd been in lockdown since March. My wife and I had moved her mother, my mother-in-law in with us, um, in April because we couldn't visit her in a retirement home, which was just across the street basically. So she started living with us and we were also fixing up, beginning to fix up a house that we own up in Kansas on a lake. There was the

my daughter, my daughter, my mother-in-law's home, where Beverly grew up. And we had, in order to fix up the bathroom in the back, we had to cut up a slab in the back of the house. And I kept joking, wouldn't it be funny if we found a dead body under that slab? So, and it was just a funny thing to say. And I started writing a story about that. That indeed happened, that we dug up the slab and there was a body. So I would go down, write.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:09:51.905)
Okay.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:09:55.693)
Right.

Mike Steinel (01:09:57.523)
few chapters, you know, just for fun. And I'd read it after dinner to the audience. The only audience I had was my wife and my mother-in-law. They were a great audience. And they said, what's next? What happens next? I said, I don't know. Let me write it tomorrow. So they would, they just urged me. And in three weeks I had a novel. And it's actually on, it's on MikeSteinel.com. If you go to the fiction button, you can see it's on YouTube. It's called The Lake House. The only problem with that title

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:10:05.861)
Yeah

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:10:17.662)
Oh, that's-

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:10:26.084)
Okay.

Mike Steinel (01:10:27.855)
is there are a myriad, there must be 12 different, there's a movie, The Lake House, you know, it's a creepy movie and there's a couple other things. But if you go Lake House, part one, two or three, Mike Steinel, you'll find it. But it's on my website too, I just put it up there. I did an audio book and put the music in it. And then I did a prequel of that story. Basically that becomes like a,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:10:29.666)
Yeah, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:10:42.262)
Okay.

Mike Steinel (01:10:57.523)
Cold Case story, you know, trying to figure out who this guy is. Turns out he's a sheriff from 19, who's been in there since 1947. He's been dead under the cement since 1947 in his cowboy shirt with the buttons. That's all that's left is the buttons, the pearl buttons. Anyway, that's a big thing. But anyway, and I wrote a prequel to that. And then I said, I got to do something with jazz. So.

I started writing this Saving Charlie Parker, which is the novel of a jazz musician, a retired jazz professor, falls down, hits his head, wakes up in 1953, and he is able to time travel through, eventually he has to use opioids to induce the time travel, but he does and he goes back and he's trying to save Charlie Parker.

Eventually, from the accident that he had in 1936 that led to his addiction to heroin, because he almost broke his back and he was laid up for months and they treated him with morphine and he got addicted at the age of 16. So for those who don't know who Charlie Parker was, he was the greatest saxophonist of the 20th century without a doubt, and his imprint on the vocabulary of bebop for certain and

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:12:15.214)
Right.

Mike Steinel (01:12:23.227)
later on was huge. But the next novel, it's not out yet, but it's written. It's a murder at Birdland. And it's time travel also. Hey, you wanna hear something kind of interesting?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:12:38.811)
Yeah, you know what, Mike? This is all your imagination. See, this is that imagination you're talking about coming to the surface in a different art form. So, yeah.

Mike Steinel (01:12:44.803)
Oh yeah, it's... A different art? Yeah. Anyway, so I decided to write this, Saving Charlie Parker, it's gonna be a retired jazz professor but he can't be from Denton, Texas. No, that's too close, people think it's me. So I start, I go in Oklahoma. So I get out of math and I go, Norman, no, I know people who teach jazz in Norman, I can't do that to them. Edmond, no, I know the people there.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:13:01.016)
I'm sorry.

Mike Steinel (01:13:14.779)
I know the people, there are all those little jazz schools, there are great jazz schools in Oklahoma, a ton of them. And I said, I just said, here's one over in the corner, McAllister, Oklahoma. So I just, okay. And I thought, I Googled it, there's a little college in McAllister. Okay, he teaches at Eastern, Northeastern, Southwest, Oklahoma State University, whatever. And so I'm writing. About six chapters into this, I'm rereading in Chuck Haddock's book,

some stuff about early life of Charlie Parker. And in there on page 27 is this little thing. It says, Charlie Parker's mother was a housemaid for a large family in McAlister, Oklahoma. No way. Yes, absolutely. So I went back. That's when I went back and figured out, oh, he's fixing up this house where Charlie Parker's mother had been. And that's why there's a time warm.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:14:00.242)
No way.

Mike Steinel (01:14:13.851)
That's why there's a wormhole in that house, because she was probably pregnant with Charlie Park at the time.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:14:19.853)
That's that's unbelievable. By the way, I've been through McAllister many times. So it's really this is really freaking me out, man.

Mike Steinel (01:14:27.207)
Yeah, it's a lovely town. I mean, Lake Ufala. And I write about going up to, he goes up to Fayetteville to see a professor who teaches, who's working on, he's an astrophysicist and he helps him with the time, figure out what's going on with the time travel. Anyway, everybody loves time travel, I think. I do.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:14:32.155)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:14:50.701)
Wow. So, okay, so time travel, that's it, man. So, okay, so this is like a whole new, this is a whole new branch of creativity for you, man. Writing these books, these novels, so do you have more of these jazz novels that are on the drawing board that you're planning on producing?

Mike Steinel (01:14:56.199)
So, okay, so this is like a whole.

Mike Steinel (01:15:14.971)
No, but I have an idea for something different.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:15:19.701)
Uh oh. Yeah, of course, man. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Steinel (01:15:20.347)
Wanna hear it? It's AI, AI. I'm sure somebody's doing this somewhere.

The guy loses his wife. It's three months later. There's a knock on the door.

Guy says, just hands him this box. And he finds out that his wife had signed up for this thing where she had been interviewed hours and hours. She knew she was dying. And she's put herself, her AI presence in this box. You know? And the guy's leery at first about what to do. And then...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:15:56.142)
Wow.

Mike Steinel (01:16:02.875)
I suppose it's kind of like that movie Her. I never saw that movie Her, but you know this, let me ask you something. This Beatles song, how do you feel about that Beatles song they did? You know about this?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:16:05.81)
Oh yeah, right, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:16:16.048)
Yeah, yeah. No, I do not know about this. Fill me in.

Mike Steinel (01:16:19.143)
Well, there's a new Beatles song.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:16:21.92)
Oh, I have heard about- I have heard about this.

Mike Steinel (01:16:22.471)
They took... I haven't heard it yet, and I'm afraid I'm going to like it. That's my problem. Yeah, because they took... It's my understanding they took a John Lennon demo. He was working on a song, and they were able to add through AI the rest of the band, the sounds from the rest of the band, you know?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:16:31.359)
I have...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:16:39.317)
Uh huh.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:16:50.349)
That's that it's pretty remarkable, right?

Mike Steinel (01:16:53.454)
It's very scary.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:16:56.69)
It's very scary. That's why I'm old school, man. I'm old school. I just sit here and practice the piano. I'm old school, man. I don't... I don't branch.

Mike Steinel (01:17:04.243)
Ha ha ha.

Mike Steinel (01:17:08.831)
I'm thinking that it's gonna eventually put the premium on people wanting to hear live music. Cause what can you trust?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:17:17.129)
Yeah, the pendulum was, that's right. There you go. What can you, yeah, what's real? Yeah, right. So, so, okay, so they can, listeners can go to your website. They can, they can get your, your books, your novels, your fictions, links to that are right there. And I'm assuming they can get your, your jazz education books as well that you've done over the years.

Mike Steinel (01:17:21.371)
What's real?

Mike Steinel (01:17:27.384)
So, okay, so they can get listeners to go to your watch, right? Yes. They can get... So, okay, so they can get listeners to go to your watch, right?

There's a store there they can order any all that stuff.

Mike Steinel (01:17:45.588)
There's two websites. There's MikeSteinel.com. The store is the same for both of them. And there's also SavingCharlieParker.com, which has a little bit more background about the making of that book. There's a really great cover on that book by an artist named Rudy Brown. And there's a little bit about him and there's a little bit about the books.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:17:51.854)
Okay.

Mike Steinel (01:18:10.899)
the resources that I used to, I did a lot of, I think if people know, even people that think they know a lot about Charlie Parker might find some new things in this book. Like the fact that in 1947, Charlie Parker, when he first got out of Camarillo, records at a studio on Western in LA and then goes to a party.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:18:23.391)
Yeah.

Mike Steinel (01:18:39.511)
at Lester Young's family home. And I'd read that in a book, Lester Young's family home. It turns out Lester Young was on the road, but he had a family. He was part of a large family and his brother was a drummer. And they had a party for Bird after that thing. It was like Bird's back party, you know, like a welcome back party. And there's a little notation in there in the source that I used, which was the

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:19:02.486)
Right, right, right.

Mike Steinel (01:19:08.723)
Charlie Parker Diary says, a jam session ensues and a young John Coltrane takes part. 1947. He's like 20. So I wrote this whole party scene of Bird playing with Coltrane or Coltrane getting to play with Bird. Yeah. Little things like that.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:19:23.137)
Oh, you, oh, that's awesome, man.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:19:29.793)
Yeah. So are you still doing it? Well, it's fascinating. I think it's so cool. I mean, you're opening, you're developing a whole new jazz genre here with your novels and your fiction, man. This is pretty cool stuff.

Mike Steinel (01:19:46.939)
Yeah, I enjoy doing it. It's as much fun making it as, you know, you're not gonna make a ton of money on this kind of stuff, any of it, in music. But I enjoy the writing while I'm doing it, as much as, in some ways, as much as writing a piece of music. It's very similar, you know? Trying to get a structure, and you know, like the...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:19:57.727)
Right, right, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:20:06.709)
Yeah, right, right. Very similar process, yeah.

Mike Steinel (01:20:14.571)
I work pretty hard. This last one, I really think has a good wordplay. I think the wordplay is good in it. And so it's fun to hear in your head. And I'll do an audio book for that too. I haven't got around to it. I'm trying to gear up. That's gruesome. So I'm definitely gonna...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:20:37.134)
Yeah, so I'm definitely going to check it out. I'm definitely going to read it, and I'm going to give you a little feedback. I'm going to let you know what I think of it after I read it. So, hey, Mike, are you still doing some teaching at North Texas? I know you're officially retired, but are...

Mike Steinel (01:20:43.908)
Okay. Welcome. No, I'm not. I'm doing no, I you know, they're nice enough not to even ask me. I guess that's the way I look at it. Oh, thanks for not asking me. You know,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:20:59.754)
Yeah

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:21:07.421)
So you know, you don't go up to campus and walk around the halls and have the kids ask who the hell is that old guy walking around here?

Mike Steinel (01:21:10.219)
campus and walk around the halls and have a good time. No, that's kind of painful. No, and I don't know anybody up there anymore except the teachers, and they're nice. But no, I've got a lot of stuff coming up. I'm doing an all-state band next spring. Next spring's pretty big. I'm doing a couple jazz festivals with my group. I'm doing Ohio Music Educators, two clinics, Kentucky Music Educators, two clinics.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:21:17.157)
I'm sorry.

Right.

Mike Steinel (01:21:36.571)
And then in between those I'm playing concerts in Cincinnati and Columbus and, you know, were you in school with Pete Mills? Remember that name, Pete Mills? We're doing a concert together and yeah, it should be fun. I'm looking forward to that trip and playing, like I say, some local gigs and also some jazz festivals and something up in Oklahoma.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:21:36.743)
Fantastic.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:21:44.917)
uh... yes

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:22:00.097)
Yeah. That's fantastic. Yeah. You know, something that you didn't mention, you used to do, didn't you do some of the Abersol clinics too? Weren't you part of? Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah. So you were you were part of that whole crew doing all the Abersol camps, you know, around

Mike Steinel (01:22:11.611)
Oh, I did those for years, yeah.

Mike Steinel (01:22:20.119)
I stopped doing them once I started running my own camp here. It just got to be too busy. I tried to do both, but I meant, you know Darla, remember Darla, her secretary? Just drive her nuts. Yeah, I saw her at something recently. But you know, like, you know, I'd be out of town the week before my camp's gonna start, and she'd be calling me night and day, like, with problems, fires to put out.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:22:25.337)
Yeah, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:22:30.577)
Oh yes! How she do- is she still- is she- ugh.

Mike Steinel (01:22:48.819)
just too much stress, so I said I'm just gonna do the camps. And I eventually had three camps that I did right here. I did a trumpet camp and a combo camp and a composers workshop, so, yeah. Well, I'm so glad that you're teaching more than acting, man. You're out there doing it. You're writing, you're doing, you know, camps, clinics, and it's fantastic, right? Yeah, I'm having a good time, you know, just.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:23:00.353)
Wow, it's fantastic. Well, I mean, I'm so glad that you're, you're keeping more than active, man. You're out there doing it. You're writing, you're doing these, you know, camps and clinics and it's fantastic, Mike.

Mike Steinel (01:23:18.023)
trying to stay healthy and keep on top of things. I got a lot of relaxing to do too, so that's good. It's a completely different world. I mean, in a way, retirement, retirement didn't exist for a long time. People had to work and work and work. And now with social security, it's a brilliant invention. Thank you, whoever thought of it.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:23:19.747)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:23:27.969)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:23:40.908)
Yeah, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:23:45.961)
Yeah

Mike Steinel (01:23:48.515)
You know? And we have a grandson. We have a grandson now to enjoy a little bit more. No, no, I have four kids. I obviously do.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:23:51.061)
That's awesome. No, no, my, I have four kids. My oldest is a junior in college right now, so, but no grandbabies, man. Oh, geez. I know, I'm just not ready to be called grandpa yet, man. Oh, I bet it is. I have no, I have no doubt, man. I have no doubt. So.

Mike Steinel (01:24:01.111)
Oh, that'll happen. Your odds are good with four. I know. I'm just not ready to be called grandpa yet. Oh, it's the greatest thing in the world, man. I'd better do.

Let me tell you something about being Grandpa. I experienced when I first came to North Texas, I was pretty young comparatively. I wasn't a whole lot older than you guys. At that age, you guys were pretty frisky. There was some pushback. And then I realized that what that was is, I was a little older.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:24:26.953)
Yeah. Right. I remember. I remember.

Mike Steinel (01:24:46.291)
So I was dad. You know, I wasn't your age, but I was dad. And you know, dad's never right about anything. But then eventually I became grandpa. And all of a sudden I went to, teachers would say, well, I'm having trouble with, oh, my students are great. They're so respectful, you know? And I realized, oh yeah, now I'm grandpa. And everybody likes grandpa. They don't wanna hurt grandpa. They don't, you know.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:24:54.262)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:25:09.361)
Yeah!

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:25:13.217)
Yeah, they don't want to be, nobody's gonna be mean to grandpa.

Mike Steinel (01:25:15.567)
Yeah, we're not gonna he's got oatmeal on his chin. We're not gonna say anything, you know So that's what happened and um, so anyway, uh, it was it's interesting I think Um It's I think it's really challenging right just to be real serious for musicians right now I think this is a very challenging time to try to figure out How you're gonna, um, you know make a viable living

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:25:22.401)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike Steinel (01:25:47.621)
It's really interesting all the different things that have changed and might be really changing in the last, in the next five years, you know, distribution. I haven't quite figured it out.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:25:58.293)
Right, right. Yeah, right, yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure anyone has yet, so.

Mike Steinel (01:26:06.931)
Well, you're doing good. Gotcha.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:26:08.397)
Well, man, I tell you what, I'm having fun. Dallas School of Music, we've been in business here now for 33 years, 34 years, and now I got this Jazz Panel Skills adventure going, which is really a blast because I'm reconnecting with great folks like yourself. I had Dan Hurley on Jazz Panel Skills a couple years ago. It was great. Jamie Abersoll's been...

Mike Steinel (01:26:22.094)
Yeah, that's fantastic.

great folks like yourself. Dan Hurley on jazz piano skills a couple weeks ago. He's great. Dean Wabersol's been a guest on jazz piano skills. And maybe Dias.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:26:37.005)
been a guest on Jazz Panel Skills, and JB Dias, you know, has been on. And I mean, just a lot of great folks. So it's been a lot of fun.

Mike Steinel (01:26:48.575)
just a lot of great folks. So it's been a lot of fun. Well, I enjoyed being on. I'm honored to be part of this. So I look forward to seeing it. Yeah. And I want to make sure that we get the, I'm going to post all your contact information and show notes here for all the listeners. I'd be able to get a hold of your resources, your educational

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:26:57.533)
Well, Mike, yeah, and I want to make sure that we get I'm going to post all your contact information and the show notes here for all the listeners to be able to get a hold of your resources, your educational resources, which are fantastic. Check out your novels and the fiction that you're doing now, which is so intriguing. I'm thrilled for you on that. I think that's awesome. And then

And then man, you gotta promise me that you'll come back on, man, and be great for us to maybe take a jazz topic and explore it together. Maybe some kind of improvisational concept or idea and be able to kick the can around a little bit with that idea and see what we come up with that would be helpful for jazz piano skills listeners. Especially you being a horn player. I always love having horn players on jazz piano skills because I tell piano students all the time that

Mike Steinel (01:27:24.299)
Then, man, you gotta promise me that you'll come back on, man, it'd be great for us to maybe take a jazz topic and explore it together. Maybe some kind of improvisational concept or idea and be able to keep the can around a little bit with that idea and see what we come up with. That would be helpful for jazz piano skills. Especially you being a horn player. I always love having horn players on jazz piano skills because I tell piano students all the time

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:27:53.725)
If you really want to improve your melodic playing as a pianist, start listening to horn players. You know, it's so important. So it would be great to have you back on and we can pick a topic and kind of do a deep dive together. That would be a lot of fun.

Mike Steinel (01:28:00.199)
Yeah. It's so important. So it would be great to have you back on and we can take a copy and kind of see a few guys together. That would be a lot of fun.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:28:11.797)
All right, Mike, thank you so much, man, for being part, carving time out of your day at jazz and being on Jazz Piano Skills. On behalf of all the listeners, man, thanks a ton. It's great to reconnect with you.

Mike Steinel (01:28:12.147)
Alright Mike, thank you so much man for being part of the carbon time out of your day and being on Jazz Piano Skills on behalf of all the listeners. Thank you son, it's great to be connected. It's been my pleasure, my pleasure. Thanks Mike. Bye bye.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:28:24.237)
Thanks, Mike.