Lev Tahor "LTV" Z Report Interview With Yossi Zweig 3/15/17

with this via telephone should be three town the gentlemen that as far as facebook has shown us they have grown up throughout the years together they've experienced music they have brought it to us and after 10 years hiatus they're back please welcome to the show ellie schwabel ari sucker and gotti fuchs you thanks for having us this interview is like 10 years in the making literally well we are uh we've uh i don't think it was 10 years in the making with it's 30 years in the making uh we've been together we've been together for 30 33 years right now since little kids so we're just uh we're just doing what we do what we love to do and we're we're happy to finally be back and show you something that we spent we put two years of hard work into i got to tell you i don't know if you remember ellie but when i had my magazine 11 years ago 10 years ago today i interviewed you guys with later volume 4. we had a big splash we got the design work from from narciano we had the flames in the bottom of the page you guys remember that or not as as you're speaking about it i'm remembering it yes together wow it's been a long time you guys you guys you know what's funny you know a lot of albums come out and you never know if the material is going to match the graphics or if the marketing is going to work but over here it fitted so seamlessly you know the graphic on the cover it's not overpowering but it's it's vibrant and it gives you that fresh look which is funny because it's all integrated and it all comes from i think i think it comes from all of us but i think a lot of that's driven by ellie and ellie demands from us um and everything that we do in the production the music production the vocals post-production lyric art it's got to be up to standard and it has to make sense so he really put us very very hard and you know it absolutely you hit it on the head because that's what people tell us across the board well i think it's yeah i think it's smart because i mean i've been following you guys since 2001 i mean that that's how far we're going back ellie i don't know if you remember this the first time i heard your first album was before pesach i was driving on 17th avenue bar park i was on my way to my in-laws house that friday i went to marine park i used to rollerblade from boro park to marine park and i believe you guys used to play basketball there yeah yeah yeah wow for sure so i remember meeting you guys at that point because you stopped me because i was blasting it from my car and you wanted to know what i thought of the album so i'm a long time fan besides the radio gig you know that what's your fault let me ask you something what's your favorite song i have to tell you um i don't know if you i don't know if you i i you know four years before i tell you this tell me what your favorite song on the album is um it's kind of hard to say obviously but i'm a big fan of okay so that's again you want to talk about what local id was for you like just to tell them like well you know what uh the honesty first of all thanks for having us again and uh this really is a labor of love out there you know we're just three but three guys from brooklyn grew up as best friends from elementary school to camp to israel we always saying we love to sing this is you know we're doing what we love and what but we have a process of song selection you know i i wrote a couple songs and ellie wrote a couple songs you know i don't come to the guys and say hey guys here i have 12 songs let's do it you know and it's like we have checks and balances you know say you know gotti i like this one but this one's not so great or ellie i love this one but i don't like that one and this way it's really all about the music there's no ego it's all about delivering the best products for all of all the jewish music listeners you know and a song like you know we've gotten already countless text messages and and whatsapps and phone calls about how this song has touched people in in a in a in a beautiful way already you know people who may have not had experienced service in a while and how this song is putting the fire back in their hearts and back into their into their minds of shabbos and it's just really it's and you know it's really been a privilege being you know being a part of this album like like i already mentioned you know there's no way this album would have been able to be been released without ellie's production and ellie's production since his own solo album you know ellie's uh his heart's mind which was very successful you know we were and then the combination with our album our sounds plus ellie's know-how and his brilliance you know production is really that is what people are loving about this you know it's fresh but it still has this sense of familiarity you know people people love it and people are very excited and and just a note a note about favorite songs yes c and ellie and gotti so you know you mentioned lethal doty for us the best compliments we get is we have you know dozens of emails and every one of those and and every person across the board like and love a different song so we have you know 20 people who love this adobe twenty people love gum zoo 20 people that love mr tanner and that means to us that people are listening to every song and we really really hit the range we wanted to there are no fillers on this album and we did on purpose and that's why it took so long and gotti talked about fine-tuning the process to chew song we even took songs that gotti wrote and we tried to fine-tune the you know the low part high part of bridges to make it perfect perfect perfect so everyone's got a different favorite song and for us that's the best compliment and yeah and and if to understand the dynamic over here is is that you know like i did my solo album production wise you know i produced it and it took me five years of understanding production and a very deep level basically without ari and gotti giving the bird's eye view for me there's no way that i would have been able to make the changes and the edits necessary to really really take it to the next level i probably would have done things that were a little too artsy and out there and because and and i think ari and gotti really grounded me to make sure that everything i was doing was uh was was in line with the lave to heart sound in line with making sure everything got there was enough of a dynamic between all of us together on the album that it was even and smooth it was you know that without that i would not there's no way ellie let me ask you a question because it's been 10 years did the dynamic between the three of you change it all of course we got i think we got i think first of all we grew up you know so we all of us in our own ways and ari and gotti are families but i traveled the world i i met so many different types of people learned so many different types of music and as people i think we dropped our egos at the door like i still i had some flare-ups during the album like just because being in production and crazy i definitely got a little crazy at certain points but i think and and you know we had like one or two like little little like bumps but i don't think i think for the most part it was an enjoyable wonderful process and our relationship really blossomed because of it like yeah even closer than ever yeah you don't yasie you know like you said you know we've all been you know best friends for 30 years and the fact that we were together for two years once or twice a week in the studio and which is ellie's apartment it was just it it was beautiful and i'm so happy that that we had that opportunity i mean to be together i mean we're always facetiming and we have a chat together but just to spend the time you know together like that is just an incredible journey and i'll i'll always cherish that you know i i got to tell you guys thinking about it i i can't decide if i even have one friend that i've kept in touch with for 30 years let alone three that that in itself is like a big feat you know what yeah all right go ahead no i gotta go ahead no i was saying that like you know that that we all reached a point in our relationship that we're not just best friends we're we're basically brothers that's where we are you know and and but there's no doubt that you can go through everyday life and be best friends and you don't necessarily can't see you know every single friend all the time this helps you know this this the process and go until i gotti said it was so much fun it's just so amazing to just do something you love in a fun way with best friends you know a lot of people and you hear people talk about it's a business it's you know it's much more i go to the studio saying an hour of vocals and then the production was happening no we did everything together so it just makes it that much more right and right you know what you see about that you know our vision was always okay guys we're putting a new album but this isn't just going to be late start five this isn't just gonna be oh let's let's try to just do what we did last time he said it's got to be different it's got to be special if we're doing this if we if we're doing this it's got to be you know sort of a reboot of what led to her is and reminds everyone all of our fans but also of it's been it's been 11 years it's uh that's a whole new generation of jewish music listeners that don't know who lay star is and and we're really just rebooting the franchise if you call it right right and i'll tell you that um it's funny because the one thing i i didn't want was uh was to end up doing the vegas five and it's basically six um and like in that type of uh and that's what i learned from what i learned from the past from from like from abey and loving it listen journeys 4 was unbelievable was beautiful but i felt that vegas 5 and vegas 6 i just i didn't want to end up just coasting which is a beautiful album i loved them but it didn't evolve musically and i wanted to make sure that we evolve as a group musically that i demand one i demand guardian ari to live their vocals inside and out goddy and ahri must have resanged their vocals i don't know 10 15 times to make sure that every single vocal that we had on this album was from the heart was was clear was was their best possible take where they loved every second of that vocal and they lived every second of that vocal and i think that really comes through and i think people don't know why they love this album but i do i know why they love it yeah yeah i i think i think i think they know why but there are underlying happenings that they don't realize some of them right they don't realize how much they run into this you know is there is there something in the future uh kind of behind the scenes video or something to give them a little introspective into the production of ltv you know it's so funny i talked to ahri about doing this and we have cute videos of us in the studio and things like that but you know you know what it's like it's like it's just a grind man there's a lot of fun but it's a lot of work you know what i'm saying it's like it's just it's it's watching a guy in his craft sitting there editing thinking working thinking again it's it's it's work it's hard labor labor of love but to sit there and get all the like to try to capture the magic we have some moments on video but you know like i can't possibly give over the magnitude of the work three days straight 36 it's very hard to give that over yeah i'm sitting there i'm sitting here three days straight just like you hours a night upstate in a in a barn dog you understand so right you know what you know what and also i i could say that one difference one major difference where we've all matured versus in our past albums is that that if i wrote a song in the past and say okay guys here's the song okay fine boom that's a song and now you look at it like how is that a song you have to you have to you have to you have to tweak it you have to rewrite it and rewrite it again there's no bridge and there's no ending and you need a or or you thought it was great and you started production and it needs a little more and you go back to the drawing board and you push it and you know we sit around and we just we jam it out and then it gets tweaked exactly and production wise you know what you know like the songs we have some songs let's see on godzilla tobor and hallelujah the songs are great four versions ago ellie just kept pushing and make it better and better and better and that gives an overall incredible experience that we're just making it tighter better more enjoyable so basically what you guys are telling me is those moving gifs of you guys asking ellie if he's remixing it again and him saying yes that's reality that that's not part of the marketing that was the intent exactly that was that was we have to think we have to thank morty morty silver um from uh from bad strategies morty morty approached us as a as a friend through a through a friend of ours yamiche there you have it introduced morty to us and morty really took this campaign and created a campaign for us that that really got to the core of our relationship and was able to try to he was able he took that and put that on as a campaign and said this is who you guys are i'm going to share who you guys are within this campaign and i want to say really thank you to morty for that um publicly and also thank you to management who created the unbelievable art assets that we were able to use uh for the cover menachem did a gorgeous job i actually have to send him an album i forgot that he did ladies and gentlemen later with me via telephone arizuka gotti fuchs ellie schwabel discussing ltv uh gotti and ari being that the last time you guys worked on your last album it was just the three of you and now ellie brought in a co-producer a soft specter what was this like for you and how did it work better or worse what was the dynamic work with somebody else that you've never worked with before uh well so so so first of all i i have to let you know so as being you know best friends so we we we have a language that when ellie and i talk to each other we understand each other musically and everything we could talk in line or whatever it is we have a language musical language that we understand and when i see ellie and asi interacting i see that they have their own language as well and i was so happy to see that magic you know that that we have and that they have together and it is just it was it was mind-blowing yeah and and also he's a genius and ellie's a genius and aussie is very much his own person in his own brain but in regards to this album he's also an extension of valley so we worked amazing you know we don't we didn't sit on all these sessions with aussie but we spent hours on face time just having fun or just talking through like just concepts we want to be or we wanted this beat so we gotta we all get along amazingly well right you know exactly it's like it's there's a couple there's a simple thing you know like on suvi um just just the way to take just simple beat that we were able to like switch from the verse to the chorus if you notice you'll understand there's kind of like a uh there's the core of of a bo diddly beat where is it we use that in honolulu and we used it in suvi as well and i used it on yoga right but we'll slowed it down into different vpns but the bow diddly beat is like kind of like the george michael faith beat and um and the guys and the guys were kind of like sitting on it and saying you know i like i want to hear double time over here do you like just the kick do you want to hear the kick and the snare in in in one two which is um or do you want to hear just four on the floor and we're sitting there and we're going back and forth and the guys are weighing in and and that's kind of that's the kind of what the discussion is like with asi with assy sitting there we're actually laying down the drums live as we speak so it's like we're playing all the parts in studio and if we all didn't just actually work well and fell it worked really well with aussie then it wouldn't work you know so we spent a ton of time you know i don't know how many weeks we spend i like somebody we spent uh you know almost 300 hours per song that's you know that's that's a lot of hours for every single 300 wow 300 hours there's another point that we don't talk about that we you know we are in this for the love of music for the art of music we understand the jewish marketplace is not a place to make you know a gazillion dollars in music um but you know a lot of other artists they really can't afford to put into time just just not a good it's not a there's no return on that investment we made a decision that we want this to be the best possible production out there and we invested that much time yeah i got an email here from listener yehuda daenerys sorel he says please tell elevetar i love their music i have all their previous albums and i live them all unfortunately something happened to the sec album and we didn't have it anymore so he's saying he lost it i love this new one i haven't bought it yet but i'm planning on do so at some point yakapella is great i think it is worth it to buy the album just for that song wow he says also love simple spaceship and other great songs make it a perfect album i doubt it could have been any better and thank you that's amazing that i think is a really good uh comment over there ellie you tell me uh i mean aries uh shared with me some uh screen captures and some of the messages he's been getting uh ellie and gotti what are some of the feedback you've been getting from some fans and i guess some new fans who have never heard left are now being introduced to them for the first time uh yeah so i got i i got a lot of messages um i just got i got messages that people saying that that this that this album is just uh it just it's like a friend of mine just called me and he said ellie your music helped me i had the hardest week of my life and this new album of yours really just got me through it like i just had it just now but the messages we're getting for shabbis they have never experienced javis guys who are not from guys who are not religious at all saying they never thought about shabbos in a long time they heard kodaidhi they started thinking about shabbos again we had we have to get it's really important yeah that song reminds me you know that and bring back the memories of the earlier life to heart that i've known and loved right and it's interesting because i uh we we're we weren't sure like i knew that there's no way i'm doing this album unless i can unless i can progress like i can't get i told the boys we can't we gotta take us to the next level but it's funny because there's because it's gonna take time for certain for for the old fans of ours to adjust to what it means to be the new life tahar because the old lady was was was less progressive in that it didn't it wasn't really competing with modern day pop right it was trying this is actually competing with modern day pop meaning if you put this against the radio on if you put this on the radio on z100 it will compete hallelujah would compete gamsula provo will compete um i think some of the fans will say like you said the old later the one i know and love i i it's going to take an adjustment period but i think they'll get there in about you know pretty soon if not there already oh of course i've heard from tons of people even even the ones who were fans in the past they love it they love the direction that we're taking this you know and not whether it's on puppets it's it's it's real emotions we we only want to do songs the songs that were hebrew words for example that weren't just hebrew words with the tune it was joined together the night and the words the made sense together with the music that that with hebrew words i understand what is happening in the song i understand it lyrically musically what the definition is and that's something extremely important what we wanted is to touch people's hearts lyrically even on the hebrew songs that wouldn't that they were touched and i'll i'll give you an example of that okay yes ellie and the on the motif so i've noticed i use the vocoder in the production and it sounds like there's a there's like harmony that's very robotic on the verses and behind it it's called the vocoder okay and i was trying to give off that uh understanding of of what it means to be an evidence that you're you're kind of locked into a certain skill set a certain body a certain mind a certain type of heart a certain personality that that is already kind of locked in and there's a certain thing that you're going to love doing a certain thing you're going to want to do and there's certain types you're going to have in certain things that are going to drive you and you don't have control over that and there's kind of like that robotic experience of being an absolute robot where you don't have control of it but the but the the skill there's a yearning in it and there's a beautiful music and melody in there even within those constraints and i tried to give i think gotti's writing i wrote the third part i think that was a really the best stuff for me is when there's a real combination of gotti and me of me kind of taking gotti's melody and taking it to the next level so like i really enjoyed that process for me and the album and that's just one example of a small thing that nobody would think about that was important to me on an artistic level to give over and yeah you might not think about it you might not hear it but i'm going to read you something from a guy who sent me some who sent me a message i'm not going to say his name hi how are you we met we have met a couple times in passing and we have a bunch of mutual friends i just want to let you know i bought the cd today the whole thing is absolutely fantastic but song number seven is really special my two-year-old is going for a big surgery thursday this week as you can imagine emotions are running very high when i heard that song i closed my eyes and just listened and uh my wife and i both got very emotional and looked at each other afterwards and said everything will be okay the power of your music and especially that song is beyond words from the bottom of my heart thank you and keep up the good work wow wow but that is the fact that that is the power of music yeah and for us that's just the cherry on top that that if we're enjoying ourselves and we love making music and we're able to pierce the hearts of others and to give them joy and hope through our music that's just that's just a beautiful that's the cherry on top yes i wish we could have you guys on the phone for an hour but everybody has to get back to work late tomorrow with us via telephone first off i want to thank you guys for the album as a fan second off i want to thank you guys as somebody who plays music to have something of quality to play in today's day and age you know with all the albums coming out not every album is is quality be it production be it lyrics be it music so this is a well-rounded product and we appreciate it thank you thank you i also want to thank you guys for a brand new lifeto heart.com a full-fledged website with some great pictures some great stories and video interactive with lyrics i mean why did this take so long oh yeah you told us the website yes oh yeah i mean we just we just we just threw something together nah it's a really really uh big job that we wanted we just wanted people to have the experience online because that's where everything's going today so we spent a lot of time working on that making sure that uh i have a great i have a great designer who's done a lot of work for me in the past and she really worked on it we also had this really great photographer named anika yeah very good the pictures were amazing who's uh who really who photographed a couple of friends of mine who are like big rock stars big rock stars in the world big you know keyboard players lauren hills keyboard player and some of the big uh i don't know if you know a woman named layla hathaway from snarky puppy so she she he photographed all those people shot in love with her work actually on instagram to a friend of mine and i just i just called her up and she's amazing whoever check her out danica dp on instagram later by telephone brand new album is in stores now on itunes it was on itunes world genre number one for what was it ellie a week or more than a week yeah close to two weeks that's amazing and then some uh yeah saint patty's day they uh booted us up ellie the one question i'm getting for the three of you this comes from este and lakewood i believe she's contacted me several times in the last 12 years you'll see with the chalce and leave to her concert that was supposed to take place for like israel hammerstein ballroom ever happened uh i think at this point i spoke to you talk about it he's uh i was at his house like i think a month or two ago with his in-laws uh i don't i just don't think it's going to happen only because of logistics um like logistically i don't think it's going to happen because uh next day never about the end but you never know you never know never never know no i'm not saying you never know i'm just saying like we spoke about it and it's just like everybody's busy you know you have to realize to put a show together it's it's it's a it's a it's an avoid to do it right it's a real avoidance it's months of work really that's what it is okay guys with ltv out now what's next are we talking another album music videos what's next for life to heart right now guys i think we're gonna ahri yeah i mean i i i think i think a next album is a little early for that i think we're still getting over and living and enjoying um the release and the feedback um we are looking at some options for for some music videos um you know phase one we went to phase one you know album was released about a month ago right um and you know i think i think over the next few months as we get to the summer after sierra we're going to do something for one or two of the songs we have some great ideas some great partners we might deal with we're working through that but something definitely is coming well i'm definitely excited you know with a new album 2017 the best way to you know release it to get the public awareness and to have more fun and showing your personalities besides your marketing campaign is obviously a music video believe it or not i've played a couple songs off the album this one i did not get to so i'm playing you guys off with one of my favorite which i i you can ask ellie i thought this was an aby rottenberg song i was shocked when i learned that this was a previously released secular artist song i i was blown away song is entitled mr tanner you boys have anything you want to tell us about the song i was introduced to this song about 15 years ago my dad showed me he's a guy you gotta listen to the song mr tanner it's a song that really it's our mantra is that music is our light it is not our livelihood it just it shows the journey about someone who loves music that no matter what happened and i think it's a great lesson for everyone out there is that if there's something that you love to do whether it be art whether it be anything music you know exercising if it's something that you love to do and it makes you feel happy and it makes you feel good and it makes you feel whole and you should definitely do that and keep on doing that doing what makes you love it and that's what's special about this song no appreciate yeah yeah to talk to talk a little bit about what we did is we definitely laid to harass the song and i one thing one thing that uh that i got back uh some feedback was that this was better than the original wow i i think that that's that that's the biggest compliment we could see we did we did tweak the melody so we actually changed some of the melody to uh by it i've actually been wondering and i've been trying to get the time to listen to the original to compare but i haven't gotten it yet and i'm enjoying this version so why bother and ruin it right ellie schwabel gotti fuchs already soaked i'd like to thank you guys for coming on today i want to wish you out sloka please don't make me wait another 10 years i will do it again soon guys i'm jumping off great if i jump off everyone jumps off so we are jumping off with this okay ladies and gentlemen bye goodbye everybody until next time no problem take care