Nate Smith: "Jazz is the Biggest Four-Letter Word in the English Language"
Wong Notes
Premier Guitar
4.9 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fresh off winning two Grammys and being named artistic director of the Newport Jazz Festival, drum legend Nate Smith sits down with host and bandmate Cory Wong to chart his career journey on this new episode of Wong Notes.
Smith details his rise from playing with jazz giants like Dave Holland and Chris Potter's Underground to the viral visibility of the Fearless Flyers. A particularly cool gem that he shares is the fax-era story of how a beat tape led to him receiving a songwriting credit on Michael Jackson's Invincible: “I made my Michael Jackson songwriter deal at Kinko’s, brother!” Smith says.
The conversation turns to the essential, irreplaceable muscle of live performance, the importance of artistic concept over chops, and the need for new leaders to steward the future of jazz. Nate also teases his upcoming trio run with J3PO and Cartoons, and the long-demanded reunion with Cory and Victor Wooten. Tune in to the episode to get all the goods.
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Produced by Jason Shadrick and Cory Wong
Presented by DistroKid
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What's happening? Welcome to Wong Notes podcast. I'm your host, Corey Wong. I'm very excited today because we have on the show, the legendary Nate Smith. You might know Nate from a band that we have together called The Fearless Flyers. You might know him from his band Kinfolk or his solo records. |
| 0:25.6 | You might know him as the drummer for the likes of Dave Holland, Chris Potter Underground, |
| 0:27.7 | Britney Howard, Jose James. |
| 0:29.0 | The list goes on. |
| 0:33.4 | He also makes very cool solo drum set albums. |
| 0:34.9 | You got to check them out. |
| 0:36.2 | Pocket change. |
| 0:37.0 | Oh, yeah. |
| 0:45.4 | Actually, you know, now that I'm thinking about it, we did a solo drum set master class with Nate and Steve Gould at last year's syncopated summer camp, basically talking about composing and |
| 0:53.2 | performing on the drum set, where it's just drum set. |
| 0:57.0 | How to treat the drum set like a melodic and motif driven instrument. |
| 1:03.8 | Very cool masterclass, really fun. |
| 1:05.8 | Actually, we have a video of that. |
| 1:08.3 | I'm going to put that on my YouTube either this week or next week. |
| 1:11.3 | On my YouTube. It feels like an old man saying it. I will post it on my YouTube channel. |
| 1:17.8 | And also speaking of the camp, Nate and I are both going to be, well, of course, I'm going to be at my camp this year because I am hosting the darn thing. |
| 1:25.9 | But the syncopated summer camp is happening. |
| 1:29.0 | August at the Fairmont, San Francisco. Fearless Flyers are going to be there. Nate's going to be |
| 1:35.1 | there. We talk about Victor Wooten in this podcast because Nate and Vic and I did a little trio. |
| 1:42.8 | One-time event, the Montreal Jazz Festival a couple years ago. |
| 1:47.3 | We still get asked about it all the time because it was insane. |
| 1:50.2 | And during this interview, you hear us realize, |
... |
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