Jumping to more recent endeavors, last week you were part of a Prince tribute in Denver. You played a similar show in May. How did those come about?

The week after Prince died, Mike Greenfield called me up and told me about this Prince tribute thing that was coming together in Brooklyn. He mentioned the musicians that had been confirmed so far and asked if I wanted to do it. I was very much on the fence. I always liked Prince and I wasn’t afraid of doing the work but I was not familiar with the scope of his music. Then a few days later he said to me, “I’m not going to twist your arm, but it’s either yes or no.” And I thought, “Sure! I’ll learn some Prince songs, we’ll drive up together, my friend Mike Greenfield and myself, and there we go…”

We basically had 24 hours to learn 15-20 Prince songs, some of which I’d never heard before. I had a good time with it. It was really cool digging into a catalog that I wasn’t altogether familiar with and being impressed. Obviously it’s Prince, I always liked him but I discovered that he made a lot of cool and unexpected choices. He often wouldn’t use what someone would think of as the common funk keys. I also found a lot of the harmonic movements to be real interesting.

So I drove up to New York, I didn’t know all of the other musicians, we didn’t really have any soundcheck—the first time that we played these songs was pretty much at the show—and it was so much fun. I had an absolute blast. So I went from one side of “I don’t know if this is something I want to do” to “Wow, that was so much fun. We need to do this in Denver.” [laughs]

I became the person saying “Denver needs this show” because Denver is just such a petri dish of music-loving fans, why wouldn’t we bring it to Denver? Then the conversation became “Is this too late? We don’t want to drive this into the ground.” It’s one thing to do a tribute show the week of his death, but two months, three months after his death is it still appropriate? And the answer is “Yeah, it’s awesome music. It’s fun to dance to, you’re honoring an amazing musician and you’re in bringing other cool musicians. So, of course.”

Another reason I wanted to commit to it is that I made a conscious decision in the last year and a half, maybe two years, since I started doing the Billy and the Kids thing, to push myself out of my immediate comfort zone. Even still, the Billy and the Kids stuff is kind of in my comfort zone because I’m passionate about the music of the Grateful Dead but it’s also out of my comfort zone because I’ve never played it. Growing up I was never in a Grateful Dead cover band. The Biscuits played a couple Dead tunes, but that was it. So although I knew all these songs so well in my head, it was the first time that I was really having to learn them.

And at the same period of time I was doing some shows, Matt Butler would call me up to do an Everyone Orchestra show, which I’m only able to do every now and again when the stars align. It was a run of shows and that pushed me out of my comfort zone. I was playing with musicians that I didn’t necessarily know. And by getting out of my comfort zone I’m able to have these realizations about myself. I’m able to find myself playing in another genre, find myself playing musical tennis with another tennis partner and figuring out that their moves are different than the moves of the people that I usually play tennis with. That was particularly cool to me and I definitely had a little bit of an epiphany with that kind of mentality.

Lately I’ve been asked to do a solo piano gig or a jazz trio or something like that. That’s how I grew up, playing jazz, but it’s not something that I’ve done in literally 20 years. So while I might have an immediate resistance, what I always find is when I get out of that comfort zone and I just do it—sometimes it takes learning and preparation and practice—that like anything in life, I’m always rewarded by it.

So when presented with an opportunity to do this Prince thing or another Everyone Orchestra show or any of these other opportunities, I’ve started to commit to them because I realize, “It’ll work itself out because it always end up being a learning experience, which is usually rewarding.” That’s how that whole Prince thing came about.

You hit on something that I was about to ask. Back when you were a high school student, you played what I’ve always thought of as cocktail jazz gigs in Philadelphia. Is that a fair characterization?

Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what it was. When I was in high school I realized I had a passion for playing jazz. I quit piano when I was maybe 10 years old and then picked it back up again when I was 13. A teacher by the name of Peter Simpkins introduced me to jazz and I immediately dropped my classical studying with him and wanted to pursue the study of jazz with him. Once I discovered that I liked it, then all of a sudden I was fully immersed in it. Three years later a teacher named Michael Frank introduced me to the Philadelphia jazz scene and he threw me gigs every now and again that he couldn’t make. They were both killer players and incredibly influential in my life as instructors.

I liked the scene, especially when I realized I could get paid 300 bucks by doing a private party. Or I would go down and play the local jazz club. I made my jazz contacts with other high school kids and kids in college. That’s the reason I stayed in Philadelphia to go to college, which is where I met the Disco Biscuits. I’ve felt, “Of course this is how life should go”—I met this piano teacher who introduced me to jazz so that I could be introduced to the other jazz players in Philly so that I made the decision to stay in Philadelphia to maintain my jazz contacts so that I could go to the University of Pennsylvania so that I could meet the other members of the Disco Biscuits.

What would my life be like if I had decided to go to school somewhere else? Would I have met other musicians and have another band that’s been as successful, when it comes to longevity, at least? I don’t know. Or would I be a professional in some other field…

[Speaking of the Biscuits’ career span, Aron wanted everyone to know that the group is finally releasing a vinyl version of its debut album, 1996’s Encephalous Crime, and intends to take pre-orders at this year’s Camp Bisco].

Have you been tempted in recent years to play jazz in a live setting once again?

In the same way I made that conscious decision to push myself out of my comfort zone with the realization that I’m a better, more rounded individual and musician once I get to that point, I’ve had the realization, “Why can’t I go down to like the local clubs? I don’t even need to assemble the Aron Magner Trio. It doesn’t have to be that. I could go play some jazz with friends that I have who I know are going to be down there, and just sit in. Or maybe at an open mic night at a jazz club where people might not even know who I am—that’s even kind of cooler for me.

I’ve had a recent resurgence of that motivation. When the Biscuits did a few shows with horns, I worked with a young horn player who was charting the arrangements by the name of Sam Greenfield. He’s an incredible player and that’s what he does, what any jazz musician in their early 20’s should be doing, which is playing at any opportunity. And he’s good enough that he has his own music with his own amazing arrangements, and his own network of the next generation of young jazz musicians from Philadelphia. He’s doing these shows all the time, playing Club Time every Thursday and that type of thing. That’s the type of motivation that I feel like I need in order to get me out, where I could still be somewhat in my comfort zone because I know the sax player [laughs]. But yeah, I think about it often.

Last question: What can tell everyone about the current state of the Disco Biscuits and what the four of you have planned for later this and next?

I feel like over the past 12 months the Disco Biscuits have been having a lot more fun with our music. The 12 months prior to that it was definitely starting to build but definitely over the past 12 months there’s been a fun resurgence of playing music together on stage. I feel like part of that is the comfort level that we have, not with each other necessarily, although that definitely plays into it but more so I feel like we’re comfortable being who we are as the Disco Biscuits.

We might have lost focus a little bit in 2011, 2012, maybe 2013 too, during the height of the DJ as the biggest pop star on the planet. There was a resurgence of electronic music, and that was good because envelopes are finally being pushed in the electronic world. I think that, number one, we felt like black sheep because we play our instruments. But we also may have felt, whether we acknowledged it or not, that we wanted to see whether we could emulate the type of power that DJ’s have, with preprogrammed music. Without going into the conversation of button-pushers or anything like that, when you spend the time to preprogram music in the studio, it can be really powerful and you might not be able to replicate that with a band. But we were trying and it wasn’t necessarily our own voice.

I think because of that, we lost focus of who the Disco Biscuits really were. Then somehow in the last 12 months or 24 months, we kind of regained our focus and became comfortable with what we do and that allowed us to take the necessary musical risks that we take and the comfort level that made us realize that it’s okay to be the Disco Biscuits. And once we realized Of course it’s okay to be the Disco Biscuits, this is who we are, the music became really good and we became comfortable doing whatever it is that we wanted to do.

The music became better and because of that we’ve been enjoying it more and looking forward to it more because we want to create music together. That’s pretty much how the Disco Biscuits formed in the first place. We were musicians in a band playing music that we wanted to hear. And it just so happened that there was an audience out there that also wanted to hear the type of music that we were creating. So that was the genesis. It was the type of music we wanted to play and luckily there were other ears that agreed with us and that’s helped us have a career.

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