Episode 5: Jeff Mann (Consider the Source | Eliot, Milioti & Mann)

Bub & Pop | Episode 5: Jeff Mann (recorded January 16, 2026)

Join host Matt Hoffman at the Boom Room in Fishtown, as he has a conversation with Jeff Mann, drummer from Consider the Source, about how he came to play with the band, as well as his background, influences, and a new trio with Anton Milioti. (Episode #3!)

An audio-first version of this podcast is available here.

Jeff Mann | Instagram | Consider the Source

Host: ⁠⁠⁠Matt Hoffman⁠⁠⁠ | Producer: ⁠⁠⁠Tedd Kanakaris | Location: The Boom Room

TRANSCRIPT (minimally QCed)

00:01:26:03 Matt Hoffman Jeff, happy to have you here. Thanks very much.

00:01:28:07 Jeff Mann I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

00:01:30:01 Matt Hoffman So my first question for you is where the hell did you come from as a drummer?

00:01:36:10 Matt Hoffman Right. Like I see you've

00:01:37:12 Matt Hoffman got two arms, two legs here. But tell

00:01:39:29 Matt Hoffman me about your kind of journey. Before joining, consider the source.

00:01:44:11 Jeff Mann Sure, sure. Drumming was always something I was really interested in. And my first instrument. So I never had the, like, young kid piano classes or anything like that. Just started with the drums, and, I think I started around, like, second or third grade age, whatever age that is.

00:02:04:07 Jeff Mann And, my parents and grandma pitched in and got me a drum set and started with some, like, local drum teachers and stuff. And I was really lucky, actually, to have a couple good teachers in the area, local, early on that were like, my very first teacher was funny because he was kind of like a little bit of everything, like guitar, piano, drums, bass, whatever.

00:02:28:19 Jeff Mann And I think drums was like the lowest on that totem pole. But after that drum, after that music teacher, I found some really great drum teachers in the area. And, they sent me kind of right as far as hitting some books and learning how to read and all that sort of stuff, and then gotten to playing in the school programs.

00:02:48:19 Jeff Mann But yeah, it kind of just started with like school stuff and at a certain age I started getting into, like, weirder music and listening to, just like less stuff that was other than what it was on the radio and getting really into just like drummer music kind of nerding out. And then I was like, okay, this is my thing, I love drums.

00:03:10:14 Jeff Mann I'm all in.

00:03:12:04 Matt Hoffman What, what have you been listening to and what was some of the weirder music, and what do you feel like? Was the bridge between the two?

00:03:19:13 Jeff Mann Well, it's funny, because I was just a kid. We were all kids. And when you're a kid, sometimes you just whatever's the music of kids. So, like, I wasn't a huge fan or I wasn't what I was into necessarily, but it was like, bop.

00:03:33:26 Jeff Mann Oh, sure. And Spice Girls

00:03:35:13 Jeff Mann and this was things that were happening

00:03:36:23 Jeff Mann and these were songs that were

00:03:37:23 Jeff Mann like, fun. And, you know, I didn't like, hate them because I was very young. And there was songs, but, I was really lucky to have my dad had a great record collection and listen to a lot of it. Interestingly enough, as a non musician, a lot of like fusion kind of music in addition to other stuff.

00:03:54:12 Jeff Mann So he had some records like by Lamela with like Steve got on drums and that was like before I even played drums, I was like listening to that music. His favorite band is Emerson, Lake and Palmer. So I was like running around in my underwear as a kid, like hearing like, Carl Palmer play drum solos and just freaking out.

00:04:13:23 Jeff Mann So I had some of that music in my life of like, not necessarily the radio stuff, but yeah, it was just kind of also like a regular kid and whatever kids liked or as popular. I was into, but yeah, once I, I grew up in that era, I think we grew up in the era of like Walkmans.

00:04:31:04 Matt Hoffman Yeah.

00:04:31:04 Jeff Mann And headphones.

00:04:32:23 Jeff Mann And it became a time where you had like a very if you were into music, you had a very personal relationship with

00:04:37:04 Jeff Mann your Walkman and your CD collection,

00:04:37:04 Matt Hoffman the tape player, the CD. Yeah, yeah, cassettes

00:04:41:04 Jeff Mann started with cassettes got the CDs. But when I started, I think, like buying my own music and then searching for things that that's when it kind of like I was like, I don't really need to

00:04:51:01 Jeff Mann like this song on the radio is cool, but I don't need the Spice Girls record.

00:04:53:28 Jeff Mann MTV was big. It was just whatever it was on, you know, I was I was not like I wasn't digging deep into those artists, but, you know, it was fine. But at a certain age, I think I started becoming a little more rebellious against of, like, all right, I'm at the age now where, like, I know what I like and I don't necessarily like, all the boy bands

00:05:13:15 Matt Hoffman that were also what, what was one of those first kind of off the beaten path bands that really grabbed you?

00:05:21:19 Jeff Mann Well, it's funny, the first concert that I went to that was like a real concert was like I said, my dad was, is really into Emerson Lake and Palmer, and they used to tour at the time, and he took me to an Emerson, Lake and Palmer concert.

00:05:35:11 Matt Hoffman Wow.

00:05:35:11 Jeff Mann think I was 12 years

00:05:37:00 Jeff Mann old. And the lineup, it was, Deep Purple was the headliner.

00:05:42:05 Jeff Mann Emerson, Lake and Palmer was the second of three. And Dream Theater was the first opening band. And, I had at the time, it was like one of my favorite things was I had a subscription to Modern Drummer magazine, and I used to get an issue in the month every, you know, missionary in the mail every month and come off the school bus.

00:06:02:11 Jeff Mann And those days you'd get the mail and be like, yes, Modern Drummer Day is amazing.

00:06:05:24 Jeff Mann And I had never really heard of Dream Theater, aside from, at the concert, recognizing there, like artwork in the merch, like, oh, I think I remember seeing that like advertised or like reviewed in the magazine or something. And I didn't even necessarily love their set.

00:06:20:23 Jeff Mann But, that summer, I was, I went to sleep away camp and I had a, a counselor from Brazil. We

00:06:26:20 Jeff Mann had like, a lot of international staff,

00:06:28:18 Jeff Mann and I was flipping through his CD book, and he had like a page of Dream Theater CDs, and I was like, oh, Dream Theater. I saw them, and he was just like, you saw Dream Theater?

00:06:39:04 Jeff Mann They never they never play where I'm from. This is how you know. And I was like, I. So I started borrowing his CDs. I was like, I listened to all these. And I just he had like, he had all these albums. That was like Iron Maiden, Dream Theater Queens or like, Metallica. And not everything was like necessarily, you know, what I was into, but it was cool to see an older person and get like this kind of hand-me-down collection.

00:07:05:06 Jeff Mann I started listening to Dream Theater, and then they had, a side project kind of thing called Liquid Tension Experiment that was like an instrumental version of that band. But I kind of became obsessed with that band for a couple of years. And a fun thing about what they did was, the drummer, Mike Portnoy, on his website.

00:07:23:01 Jeff Mann I don't know if it was the band. I think it was just his website. He had a page of, influences. He listed his favorite books, his favorite movies, and his favorite albums. And I would just be like, I never heard of this how this started. So let me check it out. I never that led me to like, I'd heard of Frank Zappa, but I never listen.

00:07:42:05 Jeff Mann Let me check out some Frank Zappa. And I was like, this is awesome. I'm digging. This is hilarious. The music is really like, high level. And I saw he had also, like, listed in Mr. Bungle. I was like, let me check out this this band, Mr. Bone Lasek, this is awesome. And, that stuff really excited me.

00:07:56:24 Jeff Mann Kind of like digging, digging into, a lot more of kind of like art, artsy music, I guess, for lack of better words.

00:08:05:06 Matt Hoffman And also. And how do you go about learning that as a kid, particularly pre YouTube?

00:08:12:25 Jeff Mann Well, that was the thing. It was cool like that. The internet was like, now I think when people myself, at least when you use the internet, you kind of have like your go to things.

00:08:23:06 Jeff Mann But like we had the term like surf

00:08:24:24 Jeff Mann the web.

00:08:24:24 Matt Hoffman Oh yeah.

00:08:24:24 Jeff Mann You would just kind of

00:08:26:12 Jeff Mann go on and like, like explore, look around. So it was totally like you didn't have as many distractions, as many things to do with your phone or that, you know, all that sort of stuff. So I would if I was an artist I liked, I would look it up, I would check out their influences, I would look it up, I would listen to stuff.

00:08:43:18 Jeff Mann I used to also just go to like the library near me. They had like a jazz collection of CDs and classical CDs and rock and pop CDs, and I would just, I had my library card. I would just if I heard of an artist like Thelonious Monk. I've heard that name. Let me check this out and take out CDs.

00:08:58:26 Jeff Mann And if it was cool, I'd rip it on my my laptop and start to get my own, like, iTunes music collection going. But yeah, it was really just like it was exciting for me to find new music, for sure. I used to love, flipping through CDs in a, in a CD store. And, you know, I've heard of this artist and I've this album, I've seen someone mentioned this and I never heard of them.

00:09:23:12 Jeff Mann Let me grab that. And like, I have a huge CD collection. I just love listening to lots of sorts of styles of music. Yeah, it's it's it's kind of been exciting for me to find stuff, especially in those earlier years when, as a young, like musician or music lover, like, a lot of stuff is new to you, you know what I mean?

00:09:43:15 Matt Hoffman Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. You know, like brand new. Yeah. Well, and that's the other cool thing about, you know, I mean, you could do it with like, Columbia houses, buy one, get 12 free deal. And then, my freshman year of college was when Napster first came out. And it's like sidestepping any IP considerations there. Oh, yeah, because that's a fraught issue.

00:10:05:24 Jeff Mann It was like, oh, wow, I can get anything and everything like this is awesome.

00:10:10:02 Jeff Mann Speaking of that, I remember like setting a couple of things to download before going to school because it'd be so slow going to school and all day being excited for like, I can't wait to go home and listen to this thing thats going to be done downloading, like, right.

00:10:23:21 Matt Hoffman But then like there were all the mislabeling. So it's like, oh, fish doing gin and juice that was a classic

00:10:28:15 Jeff Mann one. Of course. Yeah.

00:10:29:11 Matt Hoffman Yeah, exactly. But yeah, that was I mean, it was a great time to kind of get exposed to a lot of that stuff. What do you think kind of led you to the drums or maybe led your parents to, to, you know, encourage you to do that?

00:10:44:29 Jeff Mann You mentioning your dad isn't a musician, but he's a fan.

00:10:48:00 Jeff Mann Yeah. So I think he's a big part of it. It hasn't been like a huge part of, like, the, like, our family story or stuff I've heard about my dad, but, my grandma told me, and then he's. He's never really been to, like, like, forthcoming with it, I guess, but that he wanted to be a drummer, but they never had.

00:11:09:19 Jeff Mann They lived in an apartment, they never had space for it, etc., etc. I think, my grandma told me that at one point he had drum sticks and he used to like, keep them nearby, sometimes sleep with them. So he always loved the drums. Like I said, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, he loved. And he, Carl Palmer had this huge drum set and he was always excited about that.

00:11:27:25 Jeff Mann He loves a lot of other instruments too, but I think he had a special little something about him. He loved. He loved the drumming and stuff, but never played. And then, yeah, when he would play music in the house, I sometimes I did like a lot of classic stories. The pots and pans came out and wooden spoons and, you know, I think they got a little light bulb like, oh, this kid seems like he likes hitting stuff rhythmically or trying to at least, and then, a big part of the story, too, is my mom.

00:11:58:27 Jeff Mann I'll get I'll get her involved. She loves, shopping, buying things, but especially like deals, like finding things in, like, a flea market or like a garage sale and stuff like that. And she was flipping through the newspaper and saw an ad for a drum set for sale and thought, oh, this is a really good price. It's not it's not that bad.

00:12:17:18 Jeff Mann I want to say I was like 200 bucks or something, and then like hit on, my grandma was like, we'll throw 100, you throw a 100, let's get this boy some drums. It's amazing. Yeah. Wow. Well, and, it's funny that you mention that kind of online shopping aspect of it, because my understanding is that kind of looking around online was part of what led you to the gig, was considered the source?

00:12:38:22 Jeff Mann Absolutely, absolutely. Can you tell me about that? The old Craigslist. Craigslist. Thank you. Thank you. Craig. Yeah. So it's pretty it's pretty hilarious. But I, I knew about consider the source. From my time going to college, I went to school at Suny Oneonta in upstate New York, and that was one of the first, college towns or places outside of New York City.

00:13:04:28 Jeff Mann They started touring. They used to play in, like, Albany. And that, Oneonta is about like an hour and a half from Albany. So the from York City, they would do little trips here and there. And, I lived in a house in college that was two floors. And the, the friends of ours who lived upstairs booked the local venue, and, one day they came home late at night or the next morning and they said, he said, man, we had this band last night.

00:13:30:06 Jeff Mann Consider the source. There were amazing. There was so cool. I got a brand new CD. I got a copy of the CD. I gotta make you a copy. Made me copy this CD. I was like, oh, wow, this is really cool band. I have to try and check them out next time they're in town. They played they play in town again and I would, I would have something where I would be away and I couldn't see them or whatever, but I knew who they were.

00:13:52:00 Jeff Mann I checked out their CD and fast forward a couple of years after I graduated, I'm on Craigslist looking for gigs, doing like singer songwriter stuff, picking up wedding gigs, some original music. Just whatever. And I'm on Craigslist sing, seeing what the old the internet has to offer. And I see an ad that says something like instrumental band seeks like drummer.

00:14:16:05 Jeff Mann We play all the time rhythms. We've toured to Israel and like Turkey and, you know, we mix in world music with rock and jazz, like, whatever, but didn't say the band name. So I wrote back saying like, hey, my name is Jeff. I'm the drummer in new Jersey. Here's like the links to some stuff, blah, blah.

00:14:36:23 Jeff Mann By the way, is this consider the source.

00:14:41:21 Jeff Mann And then they wrote back saying like, yes it is. I was like, I know, I know, this is this can only sounds like one band. Yeah, it has to be. Consider the source. So yeah, that led me to, hitting them up for an audition and long story short, I was doing a little bit of touring at the time, and there there are weekends.

00:15:04:19 Jeff Mann They're auditioning like, I wasn't around for, so they kind of, like, scheduled me at the end. And when I went to that audition, they said, you know, it was really, really great meeting you. Great playing. Unfortunately, we have gigs that we had to fill a drummer for already on the calendar. Youre the very last drummer to audition, so weve already told someone to start learning the material, and weve going to have them playing because we just couldnt wait this long to to have someone learn the material.

00:15:34:13 Jeff Mann But we didn't want to blow you off and tell you not to come out. So, you know, thanks forever.

00:15:38:26 Jeff Mann And I was like, all right, that's all good. And also just a fun fact that audition was in Dopa Pods rehearsal studio.

00:15:47:28 Matt Hoffman Oh, wow.

00:15:47:28 Jeff Mann And okay, because consider the source didn't have a space and they're really good friends with Dopa pod, and they had just been borrowing friends spaces to audition drummers.

00:15:57:00 Jeff Mann So that was in the pods space. So I was like, all right, great to meet you guys. And I kind of like went with like, cool. I have this story about the time I got to audition with Jan, with Consider the Source, and I auditioned for them in the pod space. Like, that was really fun. That was really cool.

00:16:12:22 Jeff Mann And that was just it. I saw that new drummer and I was like, kind of seeing their tour dates. I was like, oh, awesome. Great for that guy. I'll, I'll keep an eye on them. I'll try and see them when they come around. Never expected. A couple months later they called me, and they're just like, hey, this guy's not really working out.

00:16:27:28 Jeff Mann We're going to do another round of auditions. Are you interested? Are you still available? You're still interested? And I was like, yeah. And then it came together.

00:16:33:26 Jeff Mann So for a minute there, it was just kind of like, got to jam with those guys once. It was really awesome. Didn't expect to be I think now playing with them like 13 years or so.

00:16:44:16 Matt Hoffman Yeah. Wow.

00:16:46:07 Matt Hoffman Now had you, had you been playing that style of music? I mean, it's almost like, how do you even define the style? But like, what kind of stuff had you been playing in bands prior to that?

00:16:55:17 Jeff Mann Yeah. So it's it's, pretty pretty like awesome how it all lined up. Because Consider the Source was kind of like the band I like dreamed of being in, but I was doing other stuff that was fun.

00:17:09:02 Jeff Mann But I always felt like there was, you know, like, this is cool, but I wish I could play something that was a little more challenging, a little more interesting, whatever. I had a drum teacher. One more thing I'll just mention about a drum teacher is, towards the end of high school, one of my other favorite bands, in addition to, like, Dream Theater, is this band called Symphony X, another, like prog rock metal band.

00:17:31:05 Jeff Mann And I found out just talking to a friend in school that her brother was taking drum lessons with their drummer. So I got to take John lessons with that drummer for a year and a half or two, and he definitely up my game on some of the just like he turned me down. He was like, I had already been playing for maybe 6 or 7 years, study with a bunch of teachers, you know, playing like the jazz band scores or stuff.

00:17:53:11 Jeff Mann And he was like, great, we're going to start from the beginning, like you all, you're six like this. We're going to change the way hold them, and we're going to start with relearning everything like this. And I was like, oh my God. And he he really taught me to make sure, I had good fundamentals and stuff. And then, pushed a lot of my abilities towards some more of that, like world music and Latin beats and progressive rock.

00:18:14:02 Jeff Mann Also. So that was really helpful, having a teacher that kind of took it to the next level. But as far as playing wise, I was always into like a lot of progressive music. So I was playing a lot of old time music. And, I had a band in high school that was called Omnia. That was like we were all like Dream Theater nerds and playing like progressive rock and metal kind of stuff.

00:18:38:23 Jeff Mann I was doing a lot of other stuff though, also. So my, my, the kind of music I really like playing and I'm really excited about a lot of times is like kind of more challenging technical music. Not not that it has to be, but I love like the challenge of, like overcoming, you know, something like, I couldn't do this in the drums and now I can.

00:18:58:12 Jeff Mann So I was really into that and like challenging music. And then I realized after college, like, there's not necessarily money or work all over the place doing that sort of thing. So I switched my focus from like, trying to do things that were more challenging to like really honing in on the basics, like playing to a metronome, making sure time was feeling good, all the all the stuff just, you know, tone dialing and tuning and drums, all this other like, other stuff that would be more applicable to playing like a singer songwriter situation or something.

00:19:34:06 Jeff Mann Like I was saying, after a while, though, I was kind of like yearning for more. And I found, a project through some friends we started it was a guitar player named Alexis, Pareja. I went to college with, for one year. And William Paterson, he's a guitar player in a band called the number 12. Looks like you.

00:19:51:17 Jeff Mann Who's crazy?

00:19:52:28 Jeff Mann Like metal band that would like, tour with, like, Dillinger Escape Plan.

00:19:56:14 Jeff Mann They're that kind of thing, like jumping off amps, running around, smashing stuff, whatever. And I had another friend at the time named Dave Reese, a bass player who was a roommate I was living with, and Alexis's band went on break. They were on hiatus, and we were all kind of wanted to do something different than like the other projects we were doing.

00:20:16:13 Jeff Mann So we got together and were like, every Sunday we're going to we're going to have writing sessions. We're not trying to like, learn songs and do a gig. We're not trying to like fill time. We just want to have a space to be creative and like, write. And we put together a band called, voyeurs, kaleidoscope, and we recorded an album all instrumental.

00:20:33:21 Jeff Mann And looking back on it, it's kind of the stepping stone between like less crazy music to like, consider the source. It kind of like Bridges the gap.

00:20:43:23 Jeff Mann We were doing some world music. There's some like there's some, like Indian sounding stuff on there, some some, time stuff. But it was kind of the first thing in a bunch of years that was not just like filling in, a hired gun kind of gig thing, you know what I mean?

00:21:03:06 Jeff Mann It was

00:21:03:13 Jeff Mann the first thing of like, oh, cool. I can be creative and, like, do some more. Like, off of, you know, some more interesting music or just try and be more creative. So that was really cool because it kind of like, if I hadn't done that, I maybe wouldn't have been in the right shape or mindset to like get jump into, consider the source.

00:21:22:10 Jeff Mann But that kind of like took me off the track of like just focusing on like timing and like playing simple, really well kind of thing, you know?

00:21:29:14 Matt Hoffman Yeah, yeah. Did you study music in college? And I did.

00:21:32:27 Jeff Mann I did a program that was, music industry.

00:21:35:15 Matt Hoffman Oh, cool

00:21:35:15 Jeff Mann And another

00:21:36:17 Jeff Mann thing actually, I'll mention that was really helpful there that I did a lot of, ensembles.

00:21:39:24 Jeff Mann I did like a funk band. I did the jazz ensemble, but they also have a Frank Zappa ensemble. So I took like, a year and a half for credits of, like, rehearsing Frank Zappa and, the professor, the teacher of that class, played the role of Frank Zappa.

00:21:56:07 Jeff Mann Wow.

00:21:56:07 Jeff Mann So he'd be like on stage saying all

00:21:57:24 Jeff Mann these lewd things like, this is my teacher.

00:21:59:05 Jeff Mann This is amazing.

00:02:02:09 Jeff Mann Who's up? Who's your favorite Zappa drummer? Oh,

00:22:04:21 Jeff Mann man, it's so funny when people ask me sometimes, like, who are you? Some of your biggest influences are just so like the Zappa drummers,

00:22:10:10 Jeff Mann because there's so many.

00:22:11:07 Jeff Mann But I love Terry Bozo. He was one of the first ones I got really excited about. He's incredibly technical and like, does all this crazy stuff, but it's a little more digestible

00:22:23:10 Jeff Mann than some of the others.

00:22:24:05 Jeff Mann Things like, I got really into Vinnie Kyle, you know? But some of his stuff I listen to and it's just like, where is the beat? What is happening? And it's all amazing, but I have to, like, listen to it over and over and over and over and like, break it down to understand some of what's happening. Terry Rozier stuff was a little more just like, this is cool.

00:22:41:10 Jeff Mann I can try and like replicate some of this now.

00:22:43:28 Matt Hoffman Yeah, I heard a rumor that, you know, like Zappa wrote the black page basically being like, try playing this fucker. Yeah. And I think Trey supposedly did the same thing with maybe Lem by Lem for Fishman. It's like, I'm going to program a beat that no human can play.

00:23:00:23 Jeff Mann I think I've heard that as well.

00:23:01:22 Matt Hoffman Yeah.

00:23:01:22 Jeff Mann And I've seen, Terry Bozo do like a drum clinic. I think he played. He played the black Page

00:23:05:06 Matt Hoffman Wow

00:23:06:21 Jeff Mann at it. It was hilarious.

00:23:07:24 Jeff Mann It was at, a Guitar Center in North Jersey. And, he had this crazy huge drum set, like, insane with, like, at least I think the two people building it and like, the building and tearing down and the drum set was, like, longer than the clinic

00:23:23:02 Jeff Mann because it was just so

00:23:23:28 Jeff Mann much.

00:23:25:23 Matt Hoffman Oh, yeah, like 70s and 80s. It was just like the answer was always yes to more drums. Right? Like. And I mean, my favorite band of all time is Van Halen.

00:23:34:22 Matt Hoffman And like, I

00:23:35:13 Matt Hoffman think it's easy to overlook Alex Van Halen, but he's a fucking bad ass drummer. Y'all having like 75 roto toms. He's like, I think there's a lot the there the

00:23:45:15 Jeff Mann hot for teacher drums and intro.

00:23:47:07 Jeff Mann There's still like I like like that's really hard to play.

00:23:50:15 Matt Hoffman Yeah.

00:23:50:15 Jeff Mann I never

00:23:51:27 Jeff Mann really like try to figure it out. And then I had a student, a couple years ago that was like. It was right when, Eddie Van Halen passed away and we went into, like, a little Van Halen mode.

00:24:00:16 Matt Hoffman Yeah

00:24:00:16 Jeff Mann I mean, like, worked on

00:24:01:17 Jeff Mann that together.

00:24:01:29 Jeff Mann And I was like, whoa, I never really dug into this is hard.

00:24:04:15 Matt Hoffman Yeah. Oh, I can't even. I mean, I'm a hack drummer on a good day, but I could not even conceptualize how to play that. Well, so in addition to consider the source, I know that you've got a Ween side project, or least have had it in the past.

00:24:18:18 Matt Hoffman Can you tell me about that?

00:24:19:17 Jeff Mann Sure. That's really special. It's, it's on hiatus right now, but hopefully comes back soon. It's a duo ween tribute. So we we. And the interesting thing in, like, my musical life, I never really got too into them. Younger. I never knew more than just a couple songs. But my wife is a huge ween fan.

00:24:41:27 Matt Hoffman Wow.

00:24:41:27 Jeff Mann And when we started dating got me more into their music and she had never seen them live. And the first we show we ever went to was at, was it on the Water Pen Festival pier? Festival pier? Yeah, that past Festival

00:24:58:04 Matt Hoffman 20. Well, I think it's 16, 2016.

00:25:00:28 Jeff Mann I was knocking I was gonna give you a chance to get excited talking

00:25:02:26 Jeff Mann about that show literally two days ago with friends.

00:25:05:12 Jeff Mann Yeah. So

00:25:05:20 Jeff Mann that was my first time seeing Ween and it was awesome. But I didn't like I didn't expect that they would play like 30 songs.

00:25:12:27 Jeff Mann So I'm going into it

00:25:14:06 Jeff Mann like, oh, cool. I know some weird songs. And then it's like almost all the songs, I don't know, and it's like I kind of felt like an outsider on the inside joke, but I was like, this is really cool.

00:25:25:25 Jeff Mann I'm digging this and then listen to more music. Saw them again. I'm like, Now I'm in. I'm hooked. So me and my wife, we went to Red rocks to see we've, we've, we've gone down some little road trips to see them, but it's kind of like a thing we have. So musically, I play some other instruments.

00:25:43:25 Jeff Mann Drums is the only instrument that I really take. Like, seriously, like in a really dedicated way of, like, working through books and like, you know, really, really trying to take that to that, like a pretty high level. But I have a bunch of other instruments. I play more of a hobbyist, which are just kind of a release for me and fun, and I'm chipping away, but I play some bass, I play some guitar and and becoming a fan of Ween, I was like, wow, these songs are like really, approachable as like a mediocre level guitar player.

00:26:14:26 Jeff Mann So I was like the first guitar solo I learned was like a Ween song. Like I started learning less, strumming their chords and stuff, and I'm like, cool. This is a band where I can, like, learn a lot of their songs as opposed to listening to other music. I like where it's like, I'm never going to learn how to show that solo.

00:26:27:13 Matt Hoffman Yeah, what to remember the solo or the two?

00:26:30:00 Jeff Mann I think it's don't shit where you eat.

00:26:36:03 Jeff Mann It's a really

00:26:36:20 Jeff Mann slow.

00:26:36:20 Matt Hoffman Yeah, yeah.

00:26:36:20 Jeff Mann Burden. Right,

00:26:40:01 Matt Hoffman I was good. It's not a tier for Eddie. I was like, maybe Joe, but I want

00:26:42:21 Jeff Mann to learn. I want to learn tier Freddie. Oh, yeah. So I started getting really into wine and, playing some of their music, and I moved to the area, down South Jersey.

00:26:51:26 Jeff Mann And I've been living there for, like, just a year or so or two. I don't even know. And, I'm just walking in the street and I see a sticker on the back of a stop sign or something that just says, learn to win. And in learning Win songs, I had discovered a YouTube channel called Learn to Ween.

00:27:10:27 Jeff Mann And it's this guy who has a really quirky, awesome personality, really well put together videos with like some tabs and some stuff and, makes it really, really fun and hilarious to learn Ween songs. So I just like screen. I take a picture of it, I tag it in this story on Instagram and I'm like, saw the new sticker in my town.

00:27:32:11 Jeff Mann Like, I've totally learned songs from this guy. So he wrote me back and said, like, where'd you see that? And I was like, on this street. And he's like, no way. I was like, yeah, I live right here. And it turns out he lives like around the corner from me. Less than five minutes away. Wow. So I'm like, we need to get together and jam some wine.

00:27:55:03 Jeff Mann So we get together and talk. But I kind of had this master plan going in where, like I said, I've been chipping away at some other instruments, and I have a looper pedal that I got and I started working with, and Ween is a full band. It's, two founding members, and then they have three other members that back out, like fill out the band, but originally it was just a duo and they would play the like, backing tracks kind of thing.

00:28:20:09 Jeff Mann And the drum machines. Yeah. So I was like, I have this idea that if we just do, the two of us and I loop, if you play guitar, then I can cover, like I can loop the drums and play bass and like, do some keys and we can do like a two man ween thing. Only catch is I don't sing.

00:28:37:24 Jeff Mann Do you sing?

00:28:38:21 Jeff Mann And he's like, I

00:28:39:13 Jeff Mann don't sing. I was hoping you sing. So anyway, it turns out he's a much better singer than me. So he became kind of like the lead singer. And I actually got pretty good singing. We got the group together and we did some shows in the area, and, had the crazy, just, like, kind of thing happen where we were really excited to go see Ween play the 30th anniversary show and Philly of Chocolate and cheese.

00:29:05:10 Jeff Mann Me and my wife had tickets.

00:29:06:15 Matt Hoffman I was set to review that for Jam Bass. He

00:29:08:14 Jeff Mann had tickets. We were all really excited and they canceled. For good reason due to Dina's need some little mental health break, but we scrambled and we were like, we have all these Ween fans that have hotel rooms. They're planning on coming to the area.

00:29:23:11 Jeff Mann They all have this date on their calendar. Can we put together, like, a big show and, like, kind of save, save the save the Ween fans, you know, calendar day don't have to go bowling or something instead. So we were able to scramble and we did. It was the the biggest show of our career, the biggest show will ever have.

00:29:40:06 Jeff Mann We played World

00:29:41:06 Jeff Mann Cafe live in Philly.

00:29:42:08 Matt Hoffman Wow.

00:29:42:08 Jeff Mann It was just the two

00:29:44:05 Jeff Mann of us and no opening bands.

00:29:46:02 Matt Hoffman Was that upstairs or down downstairs?

00:29:48:01 Jeff Mann I couldn't believe it.

00:29:49:05 Jeff Mann We we pulled it

00:29:50:25 Jeff Mann together last minute and, Yeah, it was that was the, that will forever be probably the highlight of our

00:29:56:06 Jeff Mann career. We had lots of Ween

00:29:57:28 Jeff Mann fans singing along and, yeah, it was a really cool vibe.

00:30:02:14 Jeff Mann We played some other shows, I think just maybe like two after that. And then we've just been on break since, but, that was really special and fun to me because I'm not playing any drumset. I have like the, the rolling sample electronic pad, and I'm just standing and playing that and standing and as a drummer, I've gotten very comfortable on stage, hiding behind my wall of drums and symbols and having a nice barrier between me and the people.

00:30:29:19 Jeff Mann And for the first time, I was like, standing up front and singing some background

00:30:34:18 Jeff Mann vocals and stuff. So it was really

00:30:36:09 Jeff Mann different for me. But also like really, really refreshing because after so many years of playing drums and drums and drums and drums, now it's the first time where I'm stage and I'm like playing more bass and drums and like doing some other stuff.

00:30:48:00 Jeff Mann So it's, it was, I'm really happy to be doing stuff like that. It's, it's a hobby that's kind of becoming a little more serious, but it's, it's a different relationship than I have with the drums, but also doing the Ween music, it's a different relationship. I have to consider the source music.

00:31:06:02 Jeff Mann Yeah. It's not

00:31:07:05 Jeff Mann nearly as serious.

00:31:07:28 Jeff Mann Yeah,

00:31:08:13 Matt Hoffman yeah, well, and like, there are so many ween is just such a perfect storm of, like, everything. I mean, first off, like the, God, when Satan, like, I mean, I didn't I didn't hear that probably till I was in my 30s, but like, I was a chocolate and cheese guy, too, as a teenager. I just remember the album cover as a teenager.

00:31:30:28 Jeff Mann Yeah.

00:31:30:28 Matt Hoffman But, yeah, it's like they go. They've always just been so uniquely themselves, going from like, two kids fucking around. Then you get to the mollusk and it's like, oh, wow. Yeah, these guys and Junior's got it. I mean, I could talk about, I could talk about them all day.

00:31:48:26 Jeff Mann Me too. But yeah, I appreciate their like, it's similar to, like Zappa in the sense of like, there's no, like, genre boundaries.

00:32:00:09 Jeff Mann It's just like, just make music go in any direction. It's really, like, all over the place.

00:32:05:28 Matt Hoffman What? I would ask, what's your favorite album? But if someone were to ask me that, I feel like the answer would change over time. What's your favorite album right now

00:32:14:24 Jeff Mann of Ween? I'd say The Mollusk.

00:32:16:19 Matt Hoffman Ah, that's the thing I've been listening, I think,

00:32:18:04 Jeff Mann is it's just, as a whole piece is just really nice.

00:32:21:17 Jeff Mann But I love a lot of the records. And, to what you were saying to is there's so much music of theirs that I'm always discovering new stuff, like there's there's some stuff that, I don't even know. I just discovered kind of the story behind the song. They have called Where the Cheese

00:32:35:18 Jeff Mann Go. You know

00:32:36:12 Jeff Mann about this?

00:32:36:23 Jeff Mann The

00:32:37:03 Jeff Mann Pizza Hut thing?

00:32:37:28 Jeff Mann Yeah. I didn't know about that

00:32:38:27 Jeff Mann was a Pizza Hut thing

Matt Hoffman in case, watch listeners don't know. You want to tell the story. Sure.

00:32:43:12 Jeff Mann So I guess it's that, Pizza Hut. Somebody's a Pizza Hut. Thought it was a good idea to hire wine to write, a commercial jingle for them

00:32:52:21 Matt Hoffman For their stuffed crust pizza.

00:32:53:23 Jeff Mann Yeah. So is pizza where I think what they did is it was. This was maybe even before stuffed crust. I think what they were doing was they were taking, like, pizza dough, right? Rolling out a whole pizza, putting layer of cheese and then another piece dough on top of it and then like the sauce. So their song was called Where the Cheese Go because it's like hidden between the bread.

00:33:11:09 Jeff Mann But basically legend has it that, they, they sent back like multiple versions. They got to like a fifth version of like here's, here's the song and they're like, no, it's not good. We need another version. And then they just basically sent back like that same version with just like adding like tons of curses. The motherfucking cherry, the motherfucking cheese.

00:33:30:12 Jeff Mann Go, hey, bitch, where the fuck cheese go? It's hilarious. But they were just like, we're done.

00:33:37:14 Matt Hoffman I love that stuff. And there's also, you know, the Mala SpongeBob connection. I

00:33:41:28 Jeff Mann do, and I didn't know about that until, seeing them in Philly. They did, like, a little tribute,

00:33:49:10 Jeff Mann where they played. They played, they spoke

00:33:50:27 Jeff Mann about, I just heard the name was, you know, the name of the creator, SpongeBob.

00:33:56:01 Matt Hoffman I know Tom Kenny is the voice, but I don't think yeah, I forget,

00:33:58:25 Jeff Mann I don't know, I just heard it like I was listening about this this week, but yeah, they they played in Philly and told the story about how he wrote them and said that their album, The Mollusk is all themed underwater, and he wants to do underwater themed, TV show.

00:34:14:11 Jeff Mann But yeah, they did, they did like a little, little tribute of, SpongeBob related songs.

00:34:19:27 Matt Hoffman That's super cool. Yeah, I was I was actually surprised. So, you know, iTunes gave me my like 20, 25 most listened to music. And when was the thing I listen to the most which like and it was not even close. Like the next closest thing was like half as much.

00:34:36:22 Jeff Mann Yeah.

00:34:36:22 Matt Hoffman And even that was a lot. I was like, wow, I, I guess I listened to like last year is a big, Quebec year for me.

00:34:45:07 Jeff Mann I love that one.

00:34:46:27 Matt Hoffman White Pepper is always in there. I mean, it's all just always in the rotation. Do you know Keith Kenny?

00:34:52:01 Jeff Mann Yes, I do,

00:34:52:01 Matt Hoffman so, Keith,

00:34:54:06 Matt Hoffman I while you were playing at, World Cafe, I was seeing Keith at John and Peter's who did the same exact thing you were talking about.

00:35:01:25 Jeff Mann Mean we were talking about maybe linking up for a show..

00:35:05:13 Matt Hoffman Oh, Keith, he's amazing.

00:35:05:13 Jeff Mann And I know Keith

00:35:06:26 Jeff Mann because we both are Jersey guys. We came up in central Jersey and we had a mutual friend, and I got to, like, jam at his house when I was like 20.

00:35:15:24 Matt Hoffman Oh wow.

00:35:15:24 Jeff Mann Something like that. Like, met

00:35:17:02 Jeff Mann him, like really young, like jam.

00:35:18:13 Jeff Mann Once we kind of kept an eye on him since.

00:35:20:20 Matt Hoffman Have you? So he put out an album last year with, a group called metal 6000 with a couple, a handful of other, like, new Hope musician guys. And it's basically all tunes that he wrote as a teenager in the 90s.

00:35:36:10 Jeff Mann Oh wow.

00:35:37:19 Matt Hoffman So like, just the lyrics hit me so hard and the music resonates so hard because I remember being like a perfectly normal suburban teenager who's just like, I don't know, angry with shit for no reason, like disaffected for no reason and whatever.

00:35:52:03 Matt Hoffman And like the lyrics, it's just like, it's amazing. I'll send you a link to it. Like, yeah,

00:35:56:11 Matt Hoffman it's really good.

00:35:56:11 Jeff Mann Yeah. Keith's amazing. He's he's incredibly talented. Yeah,

00:35:59:09 Matt Hoffman yeah. For sure. Well, and I know you're also working on a project now with, Anton Milioti. Yeah. More original music that you guys are doing. Is that right?

00:36:09:12 Jeff Mann Yeah.

00:36:10:05 Jeff Mann That's really cool. It's just, kind of started from this guitar player named Brian Elliott in the area. It was just a gig that they had together, Brian. It was just Brian Elliott Band, and Anton was playing bass and they needed a drummer, and I guess Anton recommended me. And it was one of those kind of cool instances where there was just a list of songs and just like, hey, here's the here's the date of the gig, here's the songs, and I'll see you there.

00:36:41:25 Jeff Mann And like, literally just like met Brian, like half an hour before playing like, hey, man, nice to meet you. You know, looking forward to playing. I'll set up over here. Is that cool? Yeah, yeah. You're good, you're good. And I played a couple times with Anton. Not a ton, but, a couple times with him. But, yeah, we just started playing, going through these tunes at the first gig, and it felt really good.

00:37:01:24 Jeff Mann That was all. Just, no originals at that point. It was just jazz funk kind of standards. Getting some Medeski Martin and Wood and Soul live and all that good stuff, which is also a really big influence on me. But we did a couple. We've only done a couple of gigs, but quickly into it we started to talk like, let's get some originals in the mix.

00:37:23:19 Jeff Mann You know, it's cool doing these funk stuff, standards. But let's, let's see if we can write some stuff. If everyone kind of contributes a little, we can start to do that. So, we had our first rehearsal this week. We've just been kind of getting together and playing a couple gigs, but now we're starting to work on stuff.

00:37:39:28 Jeff Mann So we had a rehearsal called People Brought tunes to the table and, worked on some ideas and, yeah, we got we have a gig coming up. I don't know, they're probably already passed by the time this is released, but we're going to start playing those songs and then plan to get some recordings going. Oh.

00:37:57:28 Matt Hoffman Super cool.

00:37:58:14 Matt Hoffman What what is. Have you brought tunes or kind of parts to that?

00:38:03:09 Jeff Mann I haven't brought tunes. I it's funny because I, I've always wanted to write and I've only ever really written like, ideas, of still, every year it's kind of like a New Year's resolution of, like, write a song. But I think with this group, it might might be the time.

00:38:20:01 Jeff Mann Yeah. Try and try and bring some stuff to the mix. All instrumental. Yeah. It's all so far. It's all instrumental. Some of the covers. Brian singing and Brian has a really, really beautiful voice. He's a really good singer. I've played in a bunch of groups where people were singing, kind of just to check off the box of having vocals.

00:38:41:15 Jeff Mann But Brian's. Brian's more than that. He's a really, really talented singer. And, we haven't done anything with vocals yet originally, but we've done some songs with some of the covers and, yeah, I'm I'm open to it. I think we're probably gonna dabble in some mix mixing some vocals in. Yeah,

00:38:56:10 Matt Hoffman that's super cool. Yeah. I've never been a songwriter either.

00:39:00:09 Matt Hoffman Like, guitar is my main instrument, and I'm just sort of like a flourish and flair guy, you know?

00:39:05:05 Matt Hoffman It's like, I'm not going to make

00:39:06:16 Matt Hoffman you cry with my lead work. I might make you cry with my singing.

00:39:11:10 Matt Hoffman But,

00:39:12:04 Matt Hoffman not for the right reason. But you know, yeah, I'll sort of add a little kind of shimmer to the whole thing.

00:39:17:26 Matt Hoffman That's, that's what I go for. So, yeah, I any time I've played in bands, it's like someone else will kind of handle the songwriting duties and hopefully, you know, do a passable job.

00:39:27:20 Jeff Mann Yeah.

00:39:29:06 Matt Hoffman What else haven't we talked about? Anything else you want to talk about? For now, I feel like we can talk a lot more.

00:39:34:06 Matt Hoffman So I would like to have you back at some point. Well, I'll

00:39:37:00 Jeff Mann share, an interesting thing that's kind of new for me,

00:39:39:27 Matt Hoffman please.

00:39:40:29 Jeff Mann my newest thing that I'm doing is, I just started, a two year program to get certified as a music therapist.

00:39:50:04 Matt Hoffman Woah.

00:39:51:12 Jeff Mann So I'm doing this over at Rowan University.

00:39:53:15 Matt Hoffman Oh cool.

00:39:53:27 Jeff Mann This is my my new jam

00:39:54:22 Matt Hoffman How did that come to to happen?

00:39:57:27 Jeff Mann It's been something I've been interested in, and I applied and got accepted in 2021. But, the program is like a mix of online and in person. And at the time, I wasn't available enough to be there. It was a little too busy. A lot of stuff going on.

00:40:14:24 Jeff Mann And now, a couple of years since then, things have slowed down. Consider the source. We're still touring, but, basically, since Covid, we've slowed down and we're not doing like month long tours anymore. We're doing a lot of weekend runs and stuff. So I relooked at my schedule and stuff and talk to the band and everyone else. And I was like, I think I can make this work now and still fit everything in.

00:40:37:12 Jeff Mann But it's been really exciting. I took a, I just finished a semester of piano class, a semester of guitar class, and then some other, like, therapy related classes and stuff like that. But yeah, it's it's really fun. It's exciting to have something new in the mix.

00:40:52:26 Matt Hoffman That's really cool.

00:40:53:21 Jeff Mann Yeah.

00:40:54:29 Matt Hoffman When you say music therapy, I'm not totally.

00:40:58:26 Matt Hoffman I have a lot of different ideas, for

00:41:00:04 Matt Hoffman sure. I mean, what

00:41:01:01 Matt Hoffman how would you summarize it for someone who's not familiar? Yeah.

00:41:03:20 Jeff Mann So basically, it's sort of using music to meet nonmusical goals that are like in some way health related, physically or mentally. So it could be, somebody who had a stroke and they're working on regaining, you know, movement skills and stuff like that.

00:41:23:17 Jeff Mann You might use certain instruments to have them move in certain directions or use their body or a certain size of their body or, I think looks like I'm going to be one of the parts of the program is, getting a lot of clinical hours.

00:41:38:01 Jeff Mann So it looks like I'm going to be placed in a school for, children with autism and doing mostly percussion based music with them, I think.

00:41:45:00 Jeff Mann Yeah.

00:41:45:00 Jeff Mann So a lot of like, behavior and like direction listening and stuff like that, but also, just the benefits of music. There's tons of benefits. One thing that's really interesting, I, I've been learning about it and it's really new to me. So I'm like, I could regurgitate all the things I've learned, but some of the things I've learned that have been cool were like, in the NICU, playing music to premature births of birth children to, help slow their heart rate down because they're so small and so tiny.

00:42:14:14 Jeff Mann When they move or cry or become agitated, they'll just burn more calories and they kind of can afford. So they'll have someone come in and, like, sing for them softly and play guitar or something like music. And you can see their heart rate going down and they're calming the baby down. A lot of people who can't communicate if they're, nonverbal, they can use music to kind of communicate or to have like kind of more activities they can do.

00:42:39:17 Jeff Mann There's tons of there's I could keep talking about songs, but I'm excited to, to get into it. The program is a mix of classes and working, so I'm about to start being placed in this school one day a week, to work a little bit. But, it's been great balancing all with a band. We've been able to do shows on the weekends, and the schoolwork is all kind of Monday to Thursday.

00:43:01:18 Jeff Mann And it's the program is built for people who already have a degree and are professionals. So it's kind of like it's it's, you know, have to be on campus every day kind of thing. But I absolutely loved being forced or not forced, but have the opportunity to, to be going through a program for like guitar and piano because like I said, I've been chipping away on those instruments on my own at a very slow rate.

00:43:26:28 Jeff Mann And then I jumped into these classes, and now it's like, I've been going, I've been going like this, and now we're going to go like this.

00:43:35:10 Matt Hoffman Nice, the hockey stick.

00:43:37:00 Jeff Mann Yeah, this this is what I needed. This is what I needed a push.

00:43:39:10 Matt Hoffman That's super cool.

00:43:40:02 Jeff Mann So that's been really, really fun and new. And I hope to incorporate like, all those skills in my own, like, music, I do some like looping and stuff.

00:43:42:11 Jeff Mann So now hopefully I have more stuff to say on the piano and

00:43:46:07 Matt Hoffman Yeah, oh that's amazing. I there's so much more I want to talk about, but I don't think we have the time to. Would love to have you back on in another at another point.

00:43:54:10 Jeff Mann Yeah.

00:43:55:08 Matt Hoffman dude, thanks so much.

00:43:55:08 Jeff Mann Thanks Matt.

00:43:55:08 Matt Hoffman This was great. I

00:43:56:27 Matt Hoffman really enjoyed talking to you