Marcus Miller & Alonzo Bodden: Bass Lines, Punchlines, and Bombing

A Revealing Give-and-Take Between Friends Recorded live during the inaugural Journey of Jazz cruise, this episode features a unique "double interview" between longtime friends and colleagues Alonzo Bodden and Marcus Miller, with Alonzo asking Marcus about music and Marcus asking Alonzo about comedy.. From the hilarious pitfalls of bombing on stage to the technical reasons why bass players make the best conductors, nothing is off-limits in this wide-ranging conversation introduced by Music Director Eric Marienthal.

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Key Takeaways

• The "Jazz" of Comedy: Comedian Alonzo Bodden explains that "crowd work"—improvising based on audience interaction—is essentially jazz because it requires creating and reacting in the moment.

• Rehearsal vs. "Working it Out": While musicians can rehearse in a studio, comics must practice in front of a live audience to know if a joke works, a process they call "working it out".

• Song Evolution: Marcus Miller describes a studio recording as the "baby" version of a song, while the live performance after a year of touring becomes the "adult" version.

• The Cruelty of Comics: Bodden reveals a "cruel" aspect of the comedy fraternity: there is nothing more fun for a comic than watching a fellow friend "bomb" or "die a slow death" on stage.

• Legendary Bailouts: The duo discusses legendary moments of stage mastery, such as Bill Burr attacking a hostile Philly crowd and Bernie Mac’s fearless 1990s Def Jam set where he famously declared, "I ain't scared of you".

• Bassist as Conductor: Marcus explains that bass players make natural music directors because their role requires them to keep their "heads up," connecting rhythm to harmony while listening to the entire sound of the ensemble.

• The Joe Sample Incident: Miller and Bodden reminisce about a famous "unfiltered" moment on a cruise where the late Joe Sample cussed out his band and the audience for singing "Street Lights" instead of his hit "Street Life".

• Musical Lineage: Marcus reflects on his responsibility to pass down stories of legends like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie to younger musicians who never had the chance to meet them.

• Electric vs. Upright: Miller explains why he primarily expresses himself through the electric bass, noting that while the acoustic bass is beautiful, he came up during the "glory era" of the bass guitar in the 1970s

• Listen to more episodes of Jazz Cruises Conversations on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. The back catalog contains more than a hundred interviews from past sailings.
• Theme Music: Provided by Marcus Miller from his song "High Life" on his album Afrodeezia on Blue Note.

Transcript

Lee Mergner: Hi, welcome to Jazz Cruis's Conversations. I'm your host, Lee Mergner. This week's episode is number 102 in a series of talks from the sailings of our jazz cruises. We just came back from the inaugural sailing of the Journey of Jazz Cruise on the West Coast and I'm happy to report that we now have a whole bunch of engaging talks from that cruise to share with you on this podcast.

The first one is this conversation between longtime friends and colleagues Alonzo Bodden and Marcus Miller. They each agreed to take turns interviewing the other and the result was a revealing give and take as well as lots of laughs. Just as an example, Marcus asked Alonzo about bombing as a comic and Alonzo asked Marcus about why basists make great conductors and music directors. Then there were the Joe Sample stories, so nothing is off the table with these two. The introduction is by our own Eric Marienthal, the incredible music director for all of our jazz cruise programs. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

Eric Marienthal: Hello. Hello everyone. How are you this morning? Are you having a fun cruise so far? Are you sure you're having a fun cruise so far? Well, I sure hope so. I was thinking this morning as I woke up, I was thinking, "Wow, you know, the musicians, we are having a great time". And so, we're hoping that you're having as much fun listening to us as we are having fun playing for you.

Um, okay. I'm gonna bring up two dear friends and geniuses in their own right. Um we were talking backstage and apparently they've been rehearsing and writing their script for what you're about to hear for weeks and I think they were up until about 3:30 last night, you know, kind of perfecting the script so they know exactly what to say. So it's like not off the cuff whatsoever. Please welcome two amazing people and incredible talents: Alonzo Bodden and Marcus Miller.

Marcus Miller: Rehearsing for weeks, right? We just met backstage. How's everybody doing? All right. So, Alonzo, this is what I think. I'm gonna interview you first, okay? And then you can interview me. All right?

Alonzo Bodden: Okay. Is that all right? I actually have a music question to ask you this time. Cuz I know I never asked you about music.

Marcus Miller: Okay. Well, I'm going to ask you. When was your first music cruise?

Alonzo Bodden: Uh, so I don't remember, but I want to say it was '07 with Warren Hill.

Marcus Miller: So what I want to know, a couple of things. One is you know so much more about music and musicians now—

Alonzo Bodden: —thanks to you.

Marcus Miller: —on the music part.

Alonzo Bodden: On the music part. The musicians I just watch them.

Marcus Miller: What's the similarity and what's the difference between like comedy and music?

Alonzo Bodden: So the one thing and this was incredibly flattering and Patty Austin was the first to say it. When I do crowd work she yelled down from the booth, "You're like that's jazz. That's jazz". Cuz you know, I'm improving in the moment. The biggest difference, two big differences. One, comics always have to have new material. I joke with you about that all the time, like you love "So What?" and I'm like, "Marcus, Miles Davis wrote that in 1959. You ain't write that". But, um, that's one. And the other is we can't rehearse in a studio, right? We have to practice in front of people. Like when you're a new comic, you memorize your stuff at home because you have to, but you never know if a joke's going to work until you do it in front of people.

Marcus Miller: So, tell people about how you rehearse because it's a whole culture of comics needing to rehearse their material in front of people.

Alonzo Bodden: Well, we don't call it rehearsal. We call it "working it out". You're working it out. And what you do is what I do, I'll have an idea. I use notes on my iPhone. I'll have an idea and I'll write it down, something I think is funny. And then I go up somewhere. If I have a regular show, I'll just work the idea into the set and I'll see if it works. I might change the wording. But the most fun is when I go somewhere like one of my homes like the Laugh Factory in Hollywood and I just go on stage with new ideas and start talking. I'll see if it gets a response and then I'll do something.

Marcus Miller: Right.

Alonzo Bodden: I'll write down after the show, "Okay, change it". But a lot of times it's just mentally I'm going over it. But there are definitely times when I'm on stage and I'll just yell, "Write that down"! Cuz I'll say something and it's funny and I'm like, "Write that down!" And some friend, another comic will write it down for me.

Marcus Miller: Oh, wow.

Alonzo Bodden: Yeah. A lot of people record their sets, which I don't. I stopped recording my sets because honestly I wasn't listening to them.

Marcus Miller: So, one joke can be honed over a period of time.

Alonzo Bodden: Oh yeah. Jokes are honed over a period of time. Jokes become routines. You add to it. It becomes longer and longer. Other times I had one it was probably three years between the idea and the joke and it killed when I did it. I'm sure you do that with music. You might hear a melody in the back of your head and it just percolates back there and then it comes out over time.

Marcus Miller: Well, the tough part about music is you write a piece of music and then you go in the studio and you record it. Sometimes the musicians have only played it two days because we had rehearsal. Then we go on the road and perform it and the song evolves like one of your jokes. You go, "Oh, that part's not so necessary, is it?" I can feel the audience, but it's too late because the recording is out already.

Alonzo Bodden: Yeah. So, that happens when you do a comedy special because after it's done, you have this period of "How much of the stuff that they've already heard am I going to do versus how much new?" And there's definitely times when three months after you did it, you're like, "Oh man, now it's funny. Now I got it".

Marcus Miller: So, what we do is we do a live album to show—the studio version is like the baby and then the live album after like a year of touring is like the adult version of the song.

Alonzo Bodden: I don't know that. Now, big-name comics do they'll do a tour like that and record something, but guys on my level out here grinding, we don't really do that. And also, I think comics are always most excited about the new material. People will ask me to do something from five years ago, and I'm like, "How did it go?" because I don't even remember that anymore.

Marcus Miller: What about the camaraderie between you guys? You guys have your own fraternity. It turns out before you divide yourselves with styles, you guys worked the clubs where you tried your stuff out. Like Eddie Murphy and Seinfeld, I would have never thought those two would have so much in common, but they're great buddies.

Alonzo Bodden: Well, you're funny cuz when you say you came up at Caroline's—no, we worked a long time before we got to Caroline's. We remember the Kenoga bowling alley where we did the Wednesday night open mic. In between the pins crashing, you try to get laughs. We're friends that way.

And as your career progresses, you see your friends less and less. I've had that where you have an opener or a feature, but then they move up. Now they're headlining. But you're happy for them just like it happened with me. I was a feature in the '90s. I would open for guys like Tommy Davidson and Damon Wayans. And the other huge thing is: are you funny, right? You could be a famous multi-millionaire or a touring middle act, but in the green room, all that matters is if you're funny; there's no ego beyond that.

Marcus Miller: You guys are pretty cruel with each other though because you told me that you guys love to see each other bomb.

Alonzo Bodden: There is nothing more fun than watching your friend die a slow death.

Marcus Miller: That's so mean.

Alonzo Bodden: She said that's not nice. We're not nice. We're comics. We love each other's failures. No, it's just because we've all done it. You watch somebody do something that's just wrong for the room. Usually, once you're a pro, you know you can make the audience laugh. Sometimes you try something in front of a room and it ain't working and we're at the back. Say you have a 20-minute set; at 18 minutes, you'll see a red light in the back telling you to wrap up. When someone's dying, we're like, "Don't light them. Don't light them. Let's see what happens".

Marcus Miller: That's so wrong, man.

Alonzo Bodden: But you know what's brilliant? Watching a comic get out of it. And they do. The most famous one is Bill Burr in Philly. Philly was just mad that night and every comic that came up, they were booing. Burr went up and he was like, "Shut up, you idiot". And he just attacked Philly; he was just destroying the city. He said, "Your football team hasn't won a championship since they had leather helmets". The crowd loved it.

And the other one—probably the greatest five-minute set in my opinion. You're going to have to forgive the language because I'm quoting what he said. Bernie Mac was doing Def Jam. The crowd had been getting on the comics. Bernie went to Kid Capri and he said, "Be ready every time I say hit it". Bernie came out and just walked on stage, "I ain't scared of you m************. Hit it"! And by the third time, people are falling out of the chairs. It was fearless; he walks out and dominated the room in five minutes.

Marcus Miller: Classic. Okay, so give me one example of you realizing you're in a really difficult situation. Stuff's not working.

Alonzo Bodden: "Do you want one where I bailed out or you want the story where I bombed"?

Marcus Miller: I want the one that you bombed first.

Alonzo Bodden: Okay. And you'll relate to this cuz—you'll watch why you'll relate to this. This is my brother. He knows me all my life. He knows when I'm on stage if I'm thinking or working. So, first time I got the Apollo Comedy Hour. And I'm an LA comic. Even though I grew up in New York, my comedy career is LA. So, I go to New York for the first time. The New York comics were like, "Oh, you doing Apollo? We're gonna take you around". Now, the Apollo Comedy Hour is a TV show, so you have to work clean. This is 1993, 1994 when Def Jam is huge and black comics are not working clean. So, they took me to Manhattan Proper on Lynden Boulevard in the neighborhood.

Marcus Miller: Yeah, we're both from the same neighborhood. So, of course.

Alonzo Bodden: I go in there 15 minutes from the house I grew up in and I start this clean comedy act. They didn't just boo me off stage. They literally followed me out to the lobby and booed me back to Lynen Boulevard. It was hilar-traumatic.

Marcus Miller: Yeah, sure.

Alonzo Bodden: But absolutely hilarious. But here was the comeback. A couple of nights later, you go to the Apollo. To anyone who hasn't been, it is much smaller than you think. And they don't tell you who's next; they come to the top of the stairs and yell a comic's name. They told us, "Look, you got 30 seconds. If they ain't laughing in 30 seconds, they gonna boo you off stage".

Marcus Miller: Legendary.

Alonzo Bodden: I went out and I said, "Man, I was born in New York. I live in LA. If I was a rapper, I'd have to shoot myself". And the crowd went—

Marcus Miller: —"Got him".

Alonzo Bodden: And that was it. But yeah, the Manhattan Proper I never conquered.

Marcus Miller: That leaves a scar, don't it? Now, you guys know what he means by crowd work, right? Where he picks somebody and just asks a question that seems innocent and the next thing you know that person has been skewered. Patty Austin said that's jazz because it's not like just pick on somebody; you collect all this information. We don't realize you're storing it and half an hour later you're relating what they said. It's just brilliant to watch.

Alonzo Bodden: Thank you. Crowdwork is really interesting because it's always been around. And in the past about five years, maybe since the pandemic, it's become a thing where these young comics and fans are like, "Wow, he's just doing crowd work". And we're looking at it like that's the laziest thing we do. That's easier than writing. This one comic, Matt Rife, he's become a big superstar doing crowd work and his fans think he invented it. I love doing it because it keeps your mind sharp. We don't pick you. You rise to the surface. It's not like you're wearing a funny hat. It's just something that we see. Or you see the person not laughing and you're going to crack that person. When you start out, you want to make everyone laugh.

Marcus Miller: Right.

Alonzo Bodden: And then you learn: who cares about that one? I got 99 people laughing. There was a study scientists did of the brain of performers and they used jazz musicians and freestyle rappers. They didn't use comics because we get no respect, but they showed the brain activity when you're doing a solo. There's a part of your brain that says "no" or "don't do this". That part of their brain shuts down. And it's the same way with a comic; when we're in improv mode, there's nothing in my brain saying "this ain't funny". I'm just doing it.

Marcus Miller: Yeah. That phenomenon—Quincy Jones said to me, "If you've been sleeping and you half wake up, those ideas that come to you then are golden". He said it's like you got two people on your shoulder: the creative person and the one who says "that'll never work". This guy wakes up an hour later than the creative guy. So you're in that free-thinking state up until your shower, then right after your shower, this guy wakes up and goes, "Man, what are you thinking? That melody is worthless". Being in that state is common among artists.

Alonzo Bodden: Yeah, and it's great when you have that ability to not shut it off. Dave Chappelle's brain operates in a way that we're like, "Where did that come from?" When he got his Kennedy award he was talking about how his mother told him when he was eight years old that he was a griot, which was from Africa—the oral historian. Most people it's like, "Yeah, get a job. Stop telling jokes". His mom was like, "You're born to be a storyteller". It's beautiful. For creative people, especially those of us who don't come from—I come from a working world—there's no one telling you to be creative. But I do like not having a day job. That brain said, "Listen, man. You a comic. You only got to work 45 minutes a day. Let's work on this".

Marcus Miller: Okay. You mentioned Dave Chappelle. Give me three more top—so it'll become your top four.

Alonzo Bodden: Dave, Chris Rock, Lewis Black—and I'm just naming because the list is so much longer. The guy who's never discussed when they talk about goats: Damon Wayans. Damon is another one like—"What planet do you come from?" I watched Damon and he just went on and he hit—and I was with Dana Gould.

Marcus Miller: Right.

Alonzo Bodden: And Dana and I are looking at him like, "How does he do this?" It was after the slap, after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, and Damon had a whole thing on it and we knew he hadn't been workshop-ing it. He just was up there freestyling. He should be more respected. Damon carries the family, cuz only about half the Wayans are really funny. There are a hell of a lot of Wayans, but they ain't all funny. 

Marcus Miller: Hey, um, we got some time for questions?

Alonzo Bodden: No, for—this ain't my interview. This is both of us. So, now we're flipping because this was very interesting to me. So when you guys did—for those who don't know, he does a show called the "Black Movie Soundtrack" at the Hollywood Bowl—this year your orchestra conductor was Derrick Hodge. I've seen you conduct orchestras. John Clayton, Christian McBride. What is it about bass players that they're the conductors? Is there something? I don't see the saxophone player conducting. But I've seen all you great bass players as conductors.

Marcus Miller: Well, I always think of the bass as the person who connects the rhythm to the rest of the band because we play it with rhythm, but we also are playing the fundamental part of the notes also. So, we have to listen. We play with our head up. Our job is to listen to the whole sound. I produce records. Usually, in the studio, we'll do about four "takes" of the songs to see which one is the best. At the end, I'll ask the musicians, "Which one do you think is the best?" The opinions I value the most are the drummer because he's also got his head up and is responsible for keeping everything together. I'll never ask the saxophone player or the guitar player because they're just going to tell you the take that they played the best on.

I think that applies to keeping an orchestra together. You have everybody's part written and you've got to keep everybody together. I did an orchestral date in Prague in the Czech Republic. I don't have the language. So, I found one person in each section—the violin, cello, trumpet—who spoke English. And I would say, "We're starting at bar 54". I had in my notes things that were necessary: "Bar 75, make a signal to the second French horn player to wake the first French horn player up because he's about to come in in two bars". You're responsible for keeping everything together and I think being a bass player really helps you do that.

Alonzo Bodden: Is that natural or learned?

Marcus Miller: I think the bass players who become successful are successful because they're good at keeping everybody together. They usually have the most calm temperament. John Clayton—no one's going to get mad at him. He knows how to tell you you're playing wrong and you don't even realize he insulted you until the next day.

Alonzo Bodden: Wait, did he—? So, so I think that's the thing. When everyone comes on stage, Marcus isn't playing; he's pointing to them where to go, lining them up in sections, and it seems like your natural thing.

Marcus Miller: Yeah, I was the guy—13 years old in Jamaica, Queens when we were coming up, every block had a band, right? All the homes had basements. And the parents were happy to buy instruments for the kids so they could keep an eye on the kid. If they hear the music, that means the kid's not in the street doing something crazy.

Alonzo Bodden: Hold on. How many people knew that that's what parents were doing? I did not know to this moment.

Marcus Miller: Yeah.

Alonzo Bodden: That's how your parents kept you out the streets, man! I bet my mom wishes your mom had talked to her.

Marcus Miller: No, it was true. And, you know, I had a band. I was 13. I was by far the youngest guy. But I began to realize that I understood music on another level. I'd start telling them, "Play this, play that". And it started sounding right. I realized it was because my dad, who was a musician—he played the piano and the organ—taught me all my harmony early on. So I've always had that kind of leading, telling the guys what to do, but I was always the youngest guy, so I had to find a real subtle way to do it. You can't just tell a 17-year-old what to do if you're 13.

Alonzo Bodden: When did that change? When did it change when other musicians just started listening to you or it was obvious you knew something they don't in spite of age or experience?

Marcus Miller: For most of my life, I've been the youngest by at least 10 years, with Luther and Miles and Joe Sample.

Alonzo Bodden: I know you ain't tell Joe Sample what to do.

Marcus Miller: Yeah, nobody tells Joe Sample what to do. But you know what happened is that I started having my own band and I'll be on the tour bus and relate a story and I'm realizing I'm talking about musicians and things that they'll never get to experience. I'll tell a story about Miles Davis and they're looking at me—I'm going, "Wow, these guys will never have the opportunity to meet him". It struck me then that it's a big responsibility because I used to love to hear the stories that Miles told me or Dizzy Gillespie. I realized that's part of a tradition and you have a responsibility to pass that down.

Alonzo Bodden: Well, and I know a lot of young musicians, like Derrick Hodge, you're one of his heroes. When did you start telling the older guys what to do and they listened based on your talent?

Marcus Miller: I actually told Joe Sample a couple of times what to do. I ducked after I told him. Once I started having hit records—Luther and I kind of started together—the older guys appreciated it; they were proud. Miles was proud because I started in his band at 21, then I left and came back as a composer and arranger. The first time he walked in with me producing, he was like, "Gone, Marcus". He was proud. Joe Sample was proud.

Alonzo Bodden: Who's the next you? Not someone who plays like you, but the talent that they saw in you? 21 years old and Miles Davis calls? Who is that guy or woman that you see that spark, that talent that gets it?

Marcus Miller: There's a bass player named MonoNeon. You familiar with him?

Alonzo Bodden: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Marcus Miller: I met him when he was 14 or 15 and he's very introverted, but when he plays that bass, oh my goodness—he found a way to express himself with his bass. I'm very impressed by him. I was thinking that about Robert Glasper. When I first heard him, his ears—and we were at the White House doing Herbie Hancock's Jazz Day—Robert Glasper would say, "Hey, man, why don't we do this?" If you have a good idea inside you, the fact that you're the youngest guy doesn't occur to you.

When I was working with Miles, I'd record the track and then have him add his trumpet. The first time I was very intimidated and he stopped. He said, "When are you going to tell me what to play?" I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "You wrote this. Tell me what you want". So I said, "Well, okay, Chief, you might want to consider playing like this".

Alonzo Bodden: Joe Sample never said that to you.

Marcus Miller: No, no. The reason we joke about Joe Sample is because famously one year on the Smooth Jazz Cruise—

Alonzo Bodden: —who was there?

Marcus Miller: Joe started cussing out his band. He stopped the song in the midst of the show. Joe cussed out the audience because the audience was singing "street light" instead of "street life". Joe wasn't having it. Joe stopped it and said, "Why the f would I write a song about street lights?"

Alonzo Bodden: Remember that?

Marcus Miller: Oh yeah. He stopped the music and said, "Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. These young musicians when I count off a specific tempo, I require them..." And the audience is like, "Is this part of the act?" So, I go to dinner with Alonzo and I said, "Hey, man. Let's go catch the second show" cuz Joe cursed the audience out.

Alonzo Bodden: He said, "Let's go. You got to see this. Let's go".

Marcus Miller: So, when we walked in, Joe had just stopped the band again and he was going in on them, man. These young guys were like—! My job was to play one song with him later. I walk past Jay the drummer. He says, "I don't know, man; this guy's counting one tempo with his hand and another with his feet". I walk over to Joe's piano and the "iced tea" that he's drinking is not iced tea. It had a little Long Island in it, right?

So, David Sanborn is there witnessing all of this. The next night we do a late night show with Sanborn, Joe Sample, and myself, and we're going to do a Beatles song that Joe loves. We finish song number one, and Joe jumps into the Beatles song. David Sanborn goes, "Wait a minute. Stop. Stop. Ladies and gentlemen, when we require a certain song..." Everybody starts dying.

Alonzo Bodden: He said, "So, everyone's cracking up." So, Joe just said, "All right, Sanborn, you keep that life jacket on at all times cuz you don't know when I'm coming".

Marcus Miller: Can we take a couple of questions?

Audience Member 1: First of all, about Damon Wayans. Robert Glasper, Christian McBride, Monty Alexander, Patty Austin, Dee Dee Bridgewater. Some of the funniest jazz musicians out there. Who are some other ones?

Alonzo Bodden: Marcus. Marcus is what I call unintentionally funny because he just says things and you don't even realize how funny it is what you're saying. Joe Sample was definitely funny because he's totally unfiltered. Sanborn was funny. Jay Williams the drummer is super funny. What they don't understand is they're not as funny as us. They still talk too much. I'm kidding. But musically you do a joke. They'll play something and it's not when they're playing "funny music". They'll do something like one night when you were playing with another artist and Larry Braggs leaned over to me and said, "Marcus is playing Flashlight". The other guy's doing this jazz thing and Marcus is just playing Funkadelic. We started laughing our ass off back then.

Audience Member 2: Brooklyn is in the house. I love what you said about being a bass player and the relevance it has towards the orchestral experiences because I often think about the bass player metaphorically like the catcher in a baseball game. Everybody thinks the pitcher is the man, but the catcher knows the pitch count, what the batter is doing. He's watching and positioning the fielders. I'm so grateful for you guys always wanting to share that with another generation in terms of the education process. And as a final thought—the relationship between music and mathematics. Music and math all speak a language. Once you know the elements of the language, then you can speak it and understand it.

Alonzo Bodden: Thank you very much.

Marcus Miller: Do you have time for any more questions?

Alonzo Bodden: We'll do a couple more, right? We got to prepare for the game show. Band feud.

Marcus Miller: We're going to try to take their heads off.

Audience Member 3: Marcus. I'm a bass player and I play upright mostly. You seem to have made your reputation with a electric bass instead of a standup. Why?

Marcus Miller: I came up in the '70s, which was the glory era for the bass guitar. I'm talking James Jamerson, Larry Graham, Stanley Clarke, Bootsy, Sting. That's what made your jazz sound modern. I thought the acoustic bass was just what Snoopy plays on the Peanuts cartoons. Then jazz went into a conservative period and Christian McBride and all these guys came and their job was to bring jazz back to its roots and they were playing the upright bass. For me, I play the acoustic bass all the time at home when I compose movie scores. It is a beautiful instrument. But I can really express myself on the electric bass. So, I decided to stay that way.

Alonzo Bodden: Can we get a question from a woman? And then I just want to tell you this is what it's like hanging out with Marcus—how humble he is. "When we was at the White House, when I'm composing movie scores..." I'm at the Podunk Alabama Chuckle Hut on Friday night.

Audience Member 4: Thank you so much for doing this. This is a carryover question from yesterday—we saw someone taking a Peloton to the penthouse. Who got the Peloton?

Marcus Miller: It wasn't me.

Alonzo Bodden: It wasn't us. I wonder if I can get one in the room for Brenda and me. Michael Lazaroff tells all the artists it's about the passengers having the greatest experience. So if there's a Peloton and a passenger wants it, me and Marcus are in the gym on the public Peloton.

Marcus Miller: Yeah, the public Peloton.

Alonzo Bodden: Okay, they're giving us the cut off. Let's do one more question and then we have to go.

Audience Member 5: Coach Marcus, you are the genius. With regards to a young person coming up who might be the next Marcus, what about the young brother who is the musical director for Candy Dulfer?

Marcus Miller: Chance Howard.

Alonzo Bodden: Ivan sings, but Chance Howard was a key player.

Audience Member 5: He seemed like a fairly young guy.

Alonzo Bodden: I've been 61 years old. He just real healthy. He drinks oat milk. Hey guys, thank you very much for hanging out with us.

Marcus Miller: Give it up for Alonzo Bodden, guys, and Marcus Miller. We'll see you at the band feud.

Lee Mergner: Well, that was fun, right? I hope you enjoyed that talk with Alonzo and Marcus. Alonzo will be sailing on all of our jazz programs in 2026, including Chris McBride's World at Sea, which sails to the Caribbean January 20th through the 27th on the Celebrity Summit. Among the artists Christian is presenting during his cruise are Lalah Hathaway, Angelique Kidjo, Samara Joy, Cecile McLorin Salvant, Jose James, Melissa Walker, and so many more. And because it's McBride's world, you'll hear Christian with his various ensembles, including his big band, Inside Straight, Ursa Major, and his remembering Ray Brown project with Benny Green and Gregory Hutchinson. Hey, providing the laughs in addition to Alonzo is his friend, the comic giant George Wallace.

Go to mcbridesworldatsea.com to learn more. Our theme music is by Marcus Miller from his song "High Life" on his album Afrodeezia on Blue Note. Thanks to Brian Ratchkco and his production team for capturing this and so many talks from the sailings. You can subscribe to Jazz Cruis's Conversations on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast so you won't miss a single episode. You can also listen to our back catalog of interviews from the past sailings. Thanks for listening.