Bestselling author James Patterson on the voices that keep him up at night

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest, James Patterson, has sold over 400 million copies of his many books. Those books include the "Alex Cross" detective series, the "Women's Murder Club" series, and "Maximum Ride." "Alex Cross" was spun off into three films, two starring Morgan Freeman and another starring Tyler Perry. An Amazon Prime video series called "Cross" has been renewed for a second season. Patterson has co-authored books with Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton. His second collaboration with Clinton will be published this summer.

GROSS: Patterson's also written nonfiction books about the Kennedys, John Lennon, Muhammad Ali and Jeffrey Epstein, as well as books for children and young adults. His new book, "The #1 Dad Book," is addressed to new fathers who need some advice. Back when Patterson was starting to write, he took a job as a junior copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. He rose to the top, becoming CEO and then head of the agency's North America division. If you're wondering how he's managed to do all this, he typically works with collaborators. Patterson writes an elaborate outline of the story. The collaborators write the sentences. He describes this in more detail in his 2022 memoir called "James Patterson By James Patterson."

I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention that he's now collaborating on a thriller with the star YouTuber and influencer known as MrBeast. As you can guess, Patterson is pretty rich. He's also a generous philanthropist, donating over $7 million to schools and classroom libraries around the country, establishing over 400 teacher and writer education scholarships at 21 colleges and universities, and giving over $2 million to independent bookstores. In recognition of his work, on May 14, James Patterson received the Lifelong Learning Award from WHYY, the public radio and TV station where FRESH AIR is produced. That was the occasion for our interview, which we recorded in front of an audience.

(APPLAUSE)

JAMES PATTERSON: Hi, I'm Stephen King.

(LAUGHTER)

PATTERSON: I'm here to honor James. I love the guy. What can I tell you?

GROSS: First of all, congratulations, and...

PATTERSON: Thank you.

GROSS: ...Thank you for doing this interview.

PATTERSON: I am not worthy. I am not worthy.

GROSS: (Laughter) So in your memoir, you describe how you hear voices in your head, basically telling you stories. I'd really like to know what that feels like, what that experience is like.

PATTERSON: No, you don't. You think you do.

GROSS: No, I do.

PATTERSON: Until the voices won't stop and they keep you up at night. You know, it's an interesting thing. You talk about voice. All these books have a different voice. The father book has a voice. The autobiography has a voice. Alex Cross is a different kind of voice. The kids' books - different voices. I've learned not to, like, get up in the middle of the night anymore.

GROSS: And start writing?

PATTERSON: I just - yeah, pretty much. Sometimes I do write, too.

GROSS: So another thing that I learned from your memoir, which I found really fascinating because it's so different from the work that you do and from the stories that keep coming to you in your head. When you were young, before you became a writer, when you first became really interested in reading, you read a lot of Thomas Merton, who - wasn't he, like, the now-famous Trappist monk...

PATTERSON: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Who wrote the bestseller "Seven Storey Mountain," which was kind of required reading for a lot of people in college, like in the '60s and '70s. But anyway, you actually went to the...

PATTERSON: Gethsemani.

GROSS: ...Monastery...

PATTERSON: Yes.

GROSS: Yeah.

PATTERSON: In Kentucky, yes.

GROSS: ...That he lived in for many years. And I think you seriously considered becoming a Trappist monk.

PATTERSON: No, I didn't do that, but I was in graduate school. I was at Vanderbilt. And I was kind of wandering around thinking about what I - it was during Vietnam, so it was a scary time for anybody in school or not in school. And I decided to go up there to - and I just kind of showed up. It's kind of interesting because the Trappist monks, you know, they don't - they're not supposed to really talk. But they have one...

GROSS: Yeah, they don't talk. It's silence

PATTERSON: ...They have one priest or brother...

GROSS: ...And work and prayer.

PATTERSON: ...Who will greet people that come in. And (laughter) I remember I talked to - he said, well, why are you here? And I said, well, you know, I'm doing a little too many drugs and, you know, whatever. And I just need to kind of straighten my life out a little bit. And he said, James, you know, life is like a football - a game of football. And you run down the field, but if you step out of bounds, you know, the score doesn't count. And at that point, I just wished that he had maintained the silence rather than giving that.

GROSS: (Laughter) Yeah.

PATTERSON: But they did let me stay. They let me stay for about 10 days. And I left there saying, OK, if I want to be a writer, I have to do certain things, and I'm going to do this somehow. I'm going to try to do it. But I needed that 10 days to really sort of think it through and focus on it. And focusing is a big thing. You mentioned the autobiography. And especially at my age, I think it's semi-interest - interesting to me, anyway. And I wrote it during COVID. But I became a better writer writing that autobiography. I concentrated on the sentences more than I had in a while, which is really important for me.

GROSS: One of the things I find interesting about spending 10 days in the Trappist...

PATTERSON: Yeah

GROSS: ...Monastery is because they practice silence, and because you're always hearing stories and voices in your head.

PATTERSON: Yeah.

GROSS: And both the silence and the need to, like, write, to always have, like, more words and more stories, seems so kind of opposite from, like, the attention to silence in the monastery. So it seemed so different from what your nature is.

PATTERSON: I just wanted to think - and I mean, they're not totally in totally - I mean, they sing. It's a fascinating life. I mean, they go to bed at, like, 7:30. They get up at 3 or so. They have a mass or whatever, and they sing a lot. And they're all very healthy. At least they were in those days. And then they go out in the fields, and they - and then they come back and have these very Spartan meals. And I just found it was a time to really put my mind at peace and ease, and think things through. Yeah.

GROSS: You mentioned you were doing too many drugs.

PATTERSON: Yeah.

GROSS: How did being an usher at the Fillmore East figure into that (laughter)? And for anyone who doesn't know the Fillmore East, that was the East Coast equivalent of the Fillmore West, which is where they had all of the, like, psychedelic concerts, you know, whether it was the Grateful Dead or the Jefferson Airplane.

PATTERSON: Right.

GROSS: I think they were there.

PATTERSON: And Jimi Hendrix. The Doors. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GROSS: Yeah, and The Doors.

PATTERSON: Yeah.

GROSS: Yeah.

PATTERSON: No, I - well, no, my job there was not to take drugs (laughter). And it wasn't that I was a massive drug user, and I pretty much always had things in control. But it just seemed to me that if I really - and my grades were always good, but I needed to just focus more, was the main thing. But at the Fillmore East - I also was at Woodstock. Now, everybody I know my age says they were there, but they weren't 'cause I looked around and...

(LAUGHTER)

PATTERSON: But the Fillmore East, I did that for a couple of years. And actually, Robert Mapplethorpe was one of the ushers.

GROSS: You're kidding. Really?

PATTERSON: Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew him a little bit back then. And actually, one of the stories in the book, which was so great, after The Doors - after one of their shows. And they were all sitting in the front. I think there was two shows that night, and they were sitting there with Graham, who ran Fillmore East and Fillmore West. And a bunch of the ushers, we were sitting behind them a few rows. And Jim Morrison, he looked - it was a three-story theater. And he looked up, and all these lights were hanging over the seats in the front. He said, Bill, that's really dangerous. Those lights would come down and kill people. And Graham's going, Jim, just relax. The lights are not coming down. You know, it's - we're going to be fine. And then Morrison just stormed off. And about 10 minutes later, we hear this voice, and somebody screaming. You look up there - and this is a true story - and Morrison is hanging from the lights. He goes, you're right, Bill. It's OK. These lights are all good (ph) (laughter).

GROSS: So people are always wondering, like, how do you do it? How do you write so many books?

PATTERSON: Yeah.

GROSS: And the answer is you collaborate.

PATTERSON: Well, that's part of the answer.

GROSS: It's part of the answer, yeah.

PATTERSON: And part of it is you love to do it. I - somebody said you're lucky if you find something you like to do, and then it's a miracle if somebody will pay you to do it. But even before people were paying me to do it, I just loved - and actually, it was working at McLean, the hospital, which is when I started writing. I would go into Cambridge and buy. I went to a Catholic high school, and they just gave us a lot of books that none of us liked. But when I moved up there, I started reading a lot of stuff, the kind of stuff I hadn't read before. And I was loving - a lot of plays, short stories, you know, and a lot of novels. And then I started scribbling, and I loved it. I just loved telling stories. And I grew up in the woods. And I used to - as a little kid, I would go out in the woods and tell myself stories, story after story after story after story. And I think that - and I remember actually, when I used to go down to Vanderbilt, I would drive down there from Massachusetts. It would take, like, 26 hours or whatever. And they used to write Broadway musicals in my head driving down, you know, and sing the songs. It was crazy. But, you know, you might notice a pattern here.

GROSS: The music and lyrics?

PATTERSON: Well, yeah. I mean, sort of the music, yes. Yeah, yeah, I would always put a tune to it, whatever I was, you know - and the storyline, whatever the heck it was. And I would just, you know, I don't know. But it was fun. I liked it.

GROSS: We're listening to the interview I recorded with the prolific and bestselling author James Patterson. We spoke onstage at WHYY, where FRESH AIR is produced. There's more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE HADEN AND ROSANNE CASH SONG, "WILDWOOD FLOWER")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded May 14 with James Patterson, who sold more than 400 million books. They include the Alex Cross detective series, the Women's Murder Club series and "Maximum Ride." He's coauthored bestsellers with Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton and is now collaborating with YouTube star MrBeast. We spoke onstage at WHYY.

At what point in your writing career did you think that it would be helpful or a good idea or more productive or whatever to work with collaborators? And then maybe you can explain your process for doing that.

PATTERSON: Yeah, you know, I don't know why people find it so extraordinary. First of all, in advertising, which I hate to go back to that prison, but in my mind, it's very collaborative. And generally, you work with an art director and maybe a producer. And two or three of you will sit in a room, and you create these little stories - little films, usually. And that is collaborative. You know, the Sistine Chapel, all these, you know, some famous, doing this thing on, you know, 5, 10, whatever number - collaborative. My own theory is if we're going to save the world, we'll have to somehow figure out how to be collaborative or AI will probably figure it out for us.

(LAUGHTER)

PATTERSON: And either save us or destroy us depending on, you know, the mood that day. It just seemed a natural thing to me. And the first one actually was a little golf book, and it's a guy that I knew from the advertising days. And after we played golf, we just started chatting about a story that I had. And we said, well, let's just try this. And we wrote "Miracle On The 17th Green." And then after that I just said, you know, I can do this. This will be an interesting thing. And I don't remember the first one. It might've been Women's Murder Club where I collaborated, the second or the third book - Andy Gross, wonderful guy who just died. It was so tragic.

GROSS: Yeah, I read the obit.

PATTERSON: Oh, my God. You know, and such a healthy-looking man, you know, and a wonderful person. At any rate, that was very sad for us, and obviously it's tragic for his family.

GROSS: You describe yourself as being like the storyteller, but you enjoy telling the stories.

PATTERSON: Yeah.

GROSS: You know, coming up with the stories...

PATTERSON: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Doing, like, a very elaborate 30-, 50- or 60-page...

PATTERSON: Thirty-, 40-, 50-page, yeah, outlines. Yeah.

GROSS: ...Outline and then doing several drafts.

PATTERSON: No, I mean, on this tour, I'm working on three outlines.

GROSS: Yeah.

PATTERSON: Oh, man.

GROSS: But then you leave the actual sentences in the book...

PATTERSON: Wait till you see what happens to Alex Cross, I got to tell you.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: But you leave the sentences in the book to the person you're collaborating with. At what point did you think that you'd stick to the stories and leave the sentences to someone else? Correct me if I'm getting that wrong.

PATTERSON: Well, no. Yeah, no, I didn't. I mean, a lot of times, especially in the beginning...

GROSS: Am I compartmentalizing too much?

PATTERSON: No, I would go in and do two or three drafts in the beginning. Not as much now because most of the people I'm working with, they kind of know the - but I'll still come in and rewrite. I mean, the most insane thing was when I did the BookShots, which were novellas, which I still think was a very valuable thing to do. So the stores would have these - you could read these books in a couple of hours, like a movie. They're only novellas, a hundred pages, 100-whatever the heck. And I think it's a useful thing. The publishers were afraid of it because, oh, my God, people are going to buy these $7 books, and they won't buy - well, they will buy longer books. But you're just going to have more people, and some of them, that's all they have time for.

They have a couple of hours, and they want to, you know - it's like a movie, you know? But the year I did that, I wrote 2,400 pages of outlines in addition to two full books. And that's one of the things that people are looking at, you know, what I do, and they go like, well - and they always project their own situation. You know, people are sort of funny that way. Like, with the dad book, how to be, you know, a better dad in one hour, I'll talk to these various, you know, people who interview you. And they say, what's the one idea? And I go, there isn't one idea. The whole idea of this book is there's so many things dads can work on, and they just need to figure out the things that pertain to them. And the reason it's one hour is because most dads will not read the 400-page book.

(LAUGHTER)

PATTERSON: So what I did is just try to - and that's not a joke, but it's serious. I mean, because I wanted to be pragmatic about it. And what I've heard - and I've never had this experience before, but especially women who read the book, and they say, I'm giving this quite seriously to my husband, quite seriously to my dad, and quite seriously to my two goofy brothers who are dads and really need help. And guys do. Guys need help right now.

GROSS: Are these things that your father did or did not do for you?

PATTERSON: My dad, the only time - and this isn't totally true, but my only hug I ever got from my dad was on his deathbed. And he apologized and he cried, which he never did, never died.

GROSS: He apologized for not hugging you or for something else?

PATTERSON: He apologized for just not being as close as he thought he should've been. And I just said you're a great dad, you're a great dad.

GROSS: Was he?

PATTERSON: Look, he grew up in the Newburgh poorhouse. It was called a pogey. His mother was a charwoman there. His father had disappeared. He never knew his father, and he didn't have the experience to be a dad, you know? So, you know, that's fine. And I did therapy for one year, and I got in touch with - and I just don't blame him. It was fine. He did the best he could. I have a friend. His whole thing is doing the best you can religion. You're doing the best you can? OK, that's good. God bless you. You're doing the best you can, OK.

GROSS: What did your father end up doing to make a living?

PATTERSON: Well, the last thing he did after he retired - he retired at 60, 61 - he actually wrote a novel. It didn't get published, but it was pretty good, it was pretty good. And that's what he wanted to do. He went to Hamilton, which is - to go from where he was, the poorhouse, and to get into Hamilton, leap, unbelievable leap.

GROSS: Sure.

PATTERSON: He was a bright guy. He didn't have a lot of confidence. You know, he just didn't think he could. He sold insurance, and then he actually did well. He worked for Prudential. He did well in the insurance stuff, but he didn't have the confidence. And he didn't instill confidence in myself and my sisters either, which was unfortunate. But my grandmother (laughter), she was the one. She said, listen, going to be real about this stuff. You're not going to play in the NBA, so forget about that.

(LAUGHTER)

PATTERSON: You don't go to your left very well. You're good. I could dunk in high school. Here's a little white guy that could dunk. But you're not going to make it. So - but you are going to be able to do stuff. And she had one of the lines, which I use it in - on Substack - is, hungry dogs run faster. That was one of her things. And the other thing was, just go out and chop wood. Do it. Do it. Don't - you know, stop talking about writing your book. Go write the damn book. Seriously.

GROSS: So I want to ask you about your "Alex Cross" series, which is, like, your longest-running series of books.

PATTERSON: Yeah.

GROSS: Did you know that you'd be capable of writing mysteries and thrillers?

PATTERSON: No. And I - somewhere in there - I think it was when I were at Vanderbilt - I read - and I didn't read a lot of commercial novels at that point, but I read "Day Of The Jackal" and "The Exorcist," and I went, oh, these are cool. I like these. And maybe I could write something like that. The novel that had knocked me out - "Hundred Years Of Solitude" - and I said, I'm not capable of that. I thought I could write a literary - you know, an OK - you know. But I said, I don't want to do that. I don't want to write for those people, honestly. I'm not interested in those kinds of stories. But I said, well, I could - maybe I could do something like "Day Of The Jackal," maybe. But I can't do a "Hundred Years Of Solitude." I don't have it in me. And that's what I'd like to do, but I - you know, it's like, you know you're not gonna play in the NBA.

GROSS: (Laughter).

PATTERSON: Sorry.

GROSS: Yeah.

PATTERSON: I didn't have the confidence, you know? And that's a big deal. That's - and fortunately, down there, there was a professor, and I took one writing course, and he said, you have it. You have that. And he was a real conservative, Southern guy. And I was the hippie with the long hair and the whole whatever. I wish I had the long hair now, but you know - and that was a big confidence builder. That was huge for me - huge - to have a professor, to have a published novelist say, you have - Peter Taylor was another one. Peter Taylor - he read some of my stuff, that - you have it. A really good short story writer who was at the University of Virginia.

GROSS: So another question about religion - you know, we talked a little about the Trappist monastery...

PATTERSON: Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: ...That you spent 10 days in and how it helped you decide to be a writer.

PATTERSON: Yeah.

GROSS: Do you maintain any form of religion in your life? - if that's not too personal to ask.

PATTERSON: Yeah, no, you know, yeah, something, something, some connection that, you know - certainly the idea that things are bigger than me, which, I think - that isn't necessarily religious, but I think - it's - I think it probably has its basis back in growing up Catholic. And there are things more important than you, you know? And whether that's a society or whatever the heck it is or your family - so I've always had that.

GROSS: You were an altar boy.

PATTERSON: I was. I served mass every day for, like, two -years in a row. This is when - I don't know how old I was - 9, 10 years old. Yeah.

GROSS: What did it mean to you?

PATTERSON: Well, I think in those days - and I think, like, a lot of kids, I - you know, I thought about, maybe I'll be a priest. That might be an interesting thing to do. I certainly respected the priests and the brothers and the nuns. And my mother taught in the school. We had, you know, priests and brothers in our house all the time. They wrecked two of our cars (laughter).

GROSS: Oh, really?

PATTERSON: A little too much wine, whatever. I don't know.

(LAUGHTER)

PATTERSON: No, yeah, honestly, you know? Oh, he hit a fire hydrant. OK, that's OK, Father. No problem.

(LAUGHTER)

PATTERSON: And we didn't have money, either. I mean, that was the other - like, oh, no. And my father was not Catholic, so he was especially not keen on that.

GROSS: So, you know, I just really appreciate, like, I think so many, many, many people do, all the philanthropy you've done - the support of literacy, the support of independent bookstores, scholarships...

PATTERSON: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Funding school libraries. One thing I find especially endearing which you've done is giving bonuses to independent booksellers. And...

PATTERSON: And librarians a little bit, too, yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: Yeah, that's such a nice touch because I'm sure they're all not paid very well. And it's such a personal thing to do. It's like acknowledging not just the institution or an abstract thing like loving reading. It's honoring the individuals who do the work.

PATTERSON: Yeah, and...

GROSS: How did you come up with that?

PATTERSON: I don't know. But you know, the - but the other piece of it, which just to your point - no, no, no - to your point is, I get the nicest notes from people. Of all the things I do, they'll send these notes. And they'll - yeah, and some of them, you know, like, for the first time in three years, I gave my parents presents this year because - or I went to the dentist because of the - you know what I mean? And it's real, and it's honest, and they're so appreciative. And so that's a nice thing.

GROSS: James Patterson, I want to thank you for this, and congratulations on the Lifelong Learning Award.

PATTERSON: Thank you, thank you, thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

GROSS: James Patterson's latest book is "The #1 Dad Book." The new novel he wrote with Bill Clinton will be published later this summer. Our thanks to WHYYs Nancy Stuski, Ali L'Esperance and Yvette Murray.

Coming up, if you think accordion is a corny and out-of-date instrument, stay tuned for some music that I think will change your mind. Jazz critic Martin Johnson will review the new solo accordion album by Will Holshouser and will feature my interview with him. He brought his accordion and played. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The music of Will Holshouser defies easy categorization. Streaming services have variously filed his albums as jazz, folk, even easy listening. There's more than a grain of truth to these classifications, but adjectives like elegant, ebullient and saucy fit much better, and maybe ambitious. Holshouser is an accordionist, and his new recording, "The Lone Wild Bird," is a solo effort, a rarity for a virtuoso on his instrument. Martin Johnson has this review, and after Martin's review, we'll hear my interview with Holshouser. He brought his accordion and played.

(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "THE LONE WILD BIRD")

MARTIN JOHNSON: Accordionist Will Holshouser has played in a wide variety of bands - from violinist Regina Carter's jazz hybrid group Reverse Thread to singer/songwriters like Suzanne Vega and Rufus Wainwright, to klezmer bands, to his own trio, Musette Explosion. On his latest recording, "Lone Wild Bird," he goes it alone, solo. The austere setting allows Holshouser to really showcase the sound of his instrument and its versatility. In the hymn-like track that we just heard, it can be solemn and pensive, but it can also be boisterous and joyful.

(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "OURO PRETO")

JOHNSON: The setting also allows us to hear the inner workings of his instrument. Underneath the accordion sound are grunts and huffs from the air that gets pumped inside of it. On the track Avery, he shakes the bellows on the instrument to create a rhythmic underpinning for the tune, almost as if he was accompanied by someone on the washboard.

(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "AVIARY")

JOHNSON: Holshouser grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the son of two ministers, so hymns were an early part of his musical diet. He was studying jazz piano and turned to accordion when a college pal gave him one as a gift. He was fascinated by the mechanics of the instrument and its versatility. It was a cornerstone in folk musics from New Orleans to Madagascar. And Holshouser, who is 56, was finding his way through his instrument's range at a time when exotic music was rapidly becoming more accessible via the recording boom of the '80s and '90s and the rise of the internet shortly thereafter. It is this variety of music that is reflected on "Lone Wild Bird." Holshouser's original "Three Glasses" is a minor key and intimate tribute to composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "THREE GLASSES")

JOHNSON: Holshouser's jazz roots are a prominent part of the program. "Blue Waters" reflects his interest in counterpoint, and it has a bluesy feel. It's a tribute to jazz organ great Jimmy Smith. You might not get the collard greens and cornbread that Smith's music often evoked, but you can feel the soulful grit.

(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "BLUE WATERS")

JOHNSON: Holshouser's jazz interest also led him to the traditional hymn "Abide With Me." The music dates back to the 19th century, but legendary jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk recorded an all-horns arrangement. It made the accordionist ponder, what would it have sounded like if Monk played the piano on the track? You can hear some of this idea here.

(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "ABIDE WITH ME")

JOHNSON: For many music fans, the accordion will bring to mind the music of the Celtic punk rockers The Pogues, and Holshouser touches on the Irish traditions on "Reel To Reel," a tune written in part by his brother-in-law, who makes violins and played in a band with his father, a first-generation Irish immigrant.

(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "REEL TO REEL")

JOHNSON: There aren't many rules for what you can and cannot do on a solo accordion recording, but it seems essential to address the Cajun tradition, and Holshouser covers the New Orleans waltz "Chez Seychelles" in tandem with "Balfa Waltz" to close out the stellar recording.

(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "CHEZ SEYCHELLES / BALFA WALTZ")

GROSS: Martin Johnson writes about jazz for the Wall Street Journal and DownBeat. He reviewed "The Lone Wild Bird" by Will Holshouser. I recorded an interview with Holshouser a few years ago, during which he played his accordion. We'll hear that after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Now that we've heard Martin Johnson's enthusiastic review of the new solo album "The Lone Wild Bird," by accordion player Will Holshouser, let's hear from Holshouser. I spoke with him in 2014 when his album "Introducing Musette Explosion" was released. It features French waltzes and dances, as well as original songs in the musette style. He brought his accordion to the studio and played.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: Since I think most people don't have an accordion at home and don't get to see accordion very much, I'm assuming a lot of people aren't really familiar with what an accordion can really do and how it works. So give us a little tour of your very beautiful accordion.

WILL HOLSHOUSER: Well, sure. Well, on the right side, there's a keyboard. It looks like a piano keyboard. And these keys - when you push a key, it opens a valve in the accordion, and that allows air to pass over metal reeds, which are inside the box. So...

(SOUNDBITE OF ACCORDION WHOOSHING)

HOLSHOUSER: The nickname for it - one nickname for it is the squeezebox. So as you move the bellows back and forth, that generates the air. And then when you push the keys on the right hand or the buttons on the left hand, that lets the air through, and the reeds sound. So my accordion has four sets of reeds. It can play very low notes on the right hand...

(Playing accordion).

...Or very high notes if you hit a - there's these register switches. You can change the reed bank that's activated.

(Playing accordion).

And then there are two middle sets of reeds, which are slightly detuned.

(Playing accordion).

And you can also play all four sets together.

(Playing accordion).

And then the left hand has buttons, which in the standard accordion system are bass notes and chords.

(Playing accordion).

And this was made, invented in the 19th century to play music that did that...

(Playing accordion).

...European music. And it's all based, of course, around the European tonal system. That system is called Stradella. There's a town in Italy called Stradella where it was invented. So it's a lot of fun. It's a very versatile instrument with a very wide range and wide dynamics. The dynamics come from the bellows, which - it's often said the bellows in the accordion is like the bow of a violin. That's where you get dynamics, expression and a whole host of other effects.

GROSS: So manipulate the bellows differently to give us a sense of how the tone changes depending on how you're - what's the verb for what you do with the bellows (laughter)? What's the right verb?

HOLSHOUSER: Bellowing

GROSS: Bellowing, all right (laughter).

HOLSHOUSER: I suppose, but yeah. Well, you know, it's mostly dynamics. But you can - the sound of the note does change as you change the air pressure.

(Playing accordion).

GROSS: So that's going from slow to fast, in terms of what you're doing with the bellows?

HOLSHOUSER: Yeah, as you push harder, it gets louder, as you push more air across the reed. And there's some special effects. If you open the valve halfway and push the air really hard, it can bend the pitch.

(Playing accordion).

GROSS: Wow.

HOLSHOUSER: (Laughter).

GROSS: I didn't know you could bend notes on accordion. To bend notes on a keyboard instrument...

HOLSHOUSER: Yeah.

GROSS: ...That's not a synthesizer, that's pretty (laughter)...

HOLSHOUSER: Right.

GROSS: Pretty good. So I should ask you to play a song for us.

HOLSHOUSER: OK.

GROSS: And your new album, "Introducing Musette Explosion," is all musette, which is a type of French song. Tell us what the genre is.

HOLSHOUSER: Well, it's basically French dance hall music from the first half of the 20th century. And it's lead - accordion is the lead instrument. Guitar is also very important. And one of the standard forms in this type of music is the waltz, and to us as Americans, it sounds iconically French. But then if you look beneath the surface, it actually has a very multicultural family tree.

So it began with French peasants in Paris playing an instrument called the musette, which was actually a little bagpipe. And then around 1900, there was a wave of Italian immigrants who brought the accordion and a lot of their music to Paris. And they kind of took over the dance halls. The accordion became the lead instrument. The bagpipe was forgotten but left its name to the genre, musette. And there were also a large Roma Gypsy population in France, and they contributed a lot of their style to this genre also. Some people say that Roma guitarists were the first ones to write waltzes in minor keys, which became a classic musette sound.

GROSS: In the tradition that Django Reinhardt was from?

HOLSHOUSER: Exactly. His first gig was playing banjo in musette dance bands.

GROSS: Banjo? Wow.

HOLSHOUSER: Yeah.

GROSS: Oh. You have banjo - your guitar player, Matt Munisteri, plays banjo on some of the tracks.

HOLSHOUSER: That's right.

GROSS: On your album. Oh, OK, OK.

HOLSHOUSER: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: So you should play one of the musettes from your album for us. Do you want to do "Swing Valse"?

HOLSHOUSER: Sure. That sounds great.

(SOUNDBITE OF ACCORDION CLICKING)

GROSS: What are you doing to your accordion (laughter)?

HOLSHOUSER: Oh, I was just making sure that I had the right register on.

GROSS: OK.

HOLSHOUSER: Because you can - depending on which register you have, you can get, you know, in a different octave. Each one has a sort of different sound or a different flavor.

GROSS: OK. And this is my guest, Will Holshouser.

HOLSHOUSER: All right. This is "Swing Valse," written by Baro Ferret and Gus Viseur.

(Playing accordion).

GROSS: That's great. That's just so beautiful.

HOLSHOUSER: Thank you.

GROSS: So how were you first introduced to the songs known as musette?

HOLSHOUSER: Through reissues that came out in the 1990s - there's a great label in France called Fremeaux And Associates. So I heard them, and I was struck by this music and kind of blown away by - how do they get these sounds out of the accordion? And Matt Munisteri, my friend, felt the same way. And that's sort of how we started playing together. We were both interested in French musette. And it's so expressive, virtuosic. It's an unusual type of some of these tunes, especially swing valse, are hybrids of jazz and French music. So when some of these French musette musicians fell in love with jazz in the '20s and '30s, they began to write these hybrid tunes that were - and hence the name swing valse - inspired by the American records that they were crazy about.

GROSS: We'll hear more of my interview with Will Holshouser, and he'll play more music, after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with accordion player Will Holshouser in 2014, after the release of his album "Introducing Musette Explosion." He has a new solo album called "The Lone Wild Bird."

There's something very old-fashioned and avant-garde about the accordion, and me - so if I can explain that (ph), it seems old-fashioned because in this era of, like, digital instruments and everything, like, you're physically pumping air into it, you know? You're doing it manually to get the air over the reeds to create the sound. But there's something kind of avant-garde about it because you can get all these really unusual overtones through this array of buttons, almost as if it was some kind of either synthesizer or organ where you're - you know, you're just creating unusual harmonics.

HOLSHOUSER: It's true. And especially, yeah, dissonance on the accordion, playing notes very close together, can bring out those overtones. And there's a whole range of effects you can get.

GROSS: Go, show us some effects you can get.

HOLSHOUSER: All right, well, here's a - here's some very high notes with special overtones.

(Playing accordion).

And if you shake the bellows, you can make it...

(Playing accordion).

...Shimmer like that. You can do these bending notes, like I showed you before.

(Playing accordion).

There's sort of cluster - nice clusters you can get.

(Playing accordion).

Let your hand...

GROSS: I like that.

(LAUGHTER)

HOLSHOUSER: ...Flop around on the keyboard like a fish. There's rhythmic things you can do with the bellows.

(Playing accordion).

Sometimes, when I play for my daughter's class, I'll do a train effect, and the kids like that.

(Playing accordion).

GROSS: I like that, too.

HOLSHOUSER: (Playing accordion).

GROSS: (Laughter).

HOLSHOUSER: Anyway, so yeah, that's - and that's done by shaking the bellows back and forth. So yeah, there are all kinds of things. You can do - you know, you can use the breath, the breathing sound.

(Playing accordion).

And you just heard the bellows kind of squeezing, flopping together. So yeah, there's a whole bunch of effects you can get.

GROSS: I love it. I love it. There's an original song I'm going to ask you to play that you do on your new album "The Musette Explosion." And this is an original song in the style of a French musette. And it's called "Chanson Pop," which translates to pop song.

HOLSHOUSER: Yes.

GROSS: So would you talk about composing it? And there's two different parts to the song. It's, like, a six-minute piece on the recording. I'm going to ask you to play an excerpt of the opening melody, and then we'll talk about that, and then we'll play an excerpt. I'm going to ask you to play an excerpt from deeper in.

HOLSHOUSER: OK.

GROSS: So - but give us an overview of this piece and writing it and what your intention was.

HOLSHOUSER: Well, one of the kinds of work that I've really enjoyed doing as an accordionist in New York over the last, you know, 20 years or so is accompanying singers, and I've had great pleasure to accompany some singers that do French repertoire from the chanson tradition, which, of course, just means song. But it's - for example, the most famous exponent of the Chanson tradition is Edith Piaf.

And for a while, I was playing with a great singer from France named Michel Ermont (ph), and I was the only accompanist. It was really fun because I was - it was just vocals and accordion, so I was the entire backdrop. And he would - he was very good at coaching me in developing these accompaniments. And he said, a song - one of these songs is like a movie. So this verse is one scene, and you need to create a backdrop. Maybe it's, like, a sunny day or something. Then the next verse or the next part of the song is totally different. Create a different backdrop.

So to me, learning about that tradition - which is a little different from the musette tradition. The musette tradition is more the waltzes, the dances, the dance music, and the chanson tradition is more the poetic songwriting. There's some overlap, but this piece, I was thinking of some of those Piaf songs and not really trying to imitate them but sort of trying to tap into the wonderful grandiosity of some of those pieces. So I'll play the opening melody first.

GROSS: Perfect. Yes.

HOLSHOUSER: OK.

(Playing accordion).

GROSS: Oh that's beautiful. And that's Will Holshouser in our studio, playing the opening of his song "Chanson Pop." And I know you said that that's based on, like, chanson, French song. To me, it sounds like it's also based on hymns.

HOLSHOUSER: OK.

GROSS: And I know that your father was a minister.

HOLSHOUSER: That's right.

GROSS: And I imagine you heard a lot of hymns growing up. Do you hear a little hymn-like quality in that piece?

HOLSHOUSER: You're a very perceptive listener.

GROSS: Aren't I?

HOLSHOUSER: Yes (laughter), absolutely. And that's really - for me, that's almost the beginning - very beginning of my musical life, my interest in music, is going to church as a kid and hearing these hymns and feeling something stirring inside me that I couldn't describe - you know, feeling almost, like, a kind of truth or something that was a very direct experience and that I really couldn't put into words.

GROSS: Was it a combination of beautiful music in a sacred place?

HOLSHOUSER: I think so, yeah. It was, you know, clearly people coming together to be quiet and to think about serious things. And the - my first music teacher was the artist in residence at our church, and he wrote jazz for the services. His name is Douglas Cook (ph), and he wrote very beautiful, very dissonant, meditative jazz that would be in the services. So for me, that's the beginning of a lot of my - what I like about music is the hymns, the music that Doug wrote in our service. And to me, it's - music - that's what's great about music is it's this internal language that we can all share. It's accessible to everybody.

GROSS: My interview with Will Holshouser was recorded in 2014. He has a new solo accordion album called "The Lone Wild Bird." Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, we'll talk about how JD Vance rose from a struggling Ohio steel town to Yale Law School to Venture Capital and now the vice presidency. Along the way, he shed old convictions and adopted new ones, some deeply divisive. We'll talk with Atlantic magazine staffwriter George Packer about Vance's transformation and what it reveals about the future of American politics. I hope you'll join us.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR'S executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering today from Adam Staniszewski. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson (ph). Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.