Posts by James Newcomb

I highly recommend watching a documentary called “Harvard Beats Yale 29–29.” If you haven’t seen it, I just checked and if you search for it on YouTube, it’s available in its entirety. The crux of the story is that the Harvard and Yale football teams were both undefeated in the 1968 football season. Yale was…

I’m sure by now you’ve heard of this thing called AI. You know, short for “artificial intelligence”? Not even 12 months ago, I had barely heard of it. It seemed like the product of a distant land that I only heard about once or twice a year when there was a terrorist attack, or some…

Last night, the Minnesota Twins were eliminated from the baseball playoffs. Terrible for them, but you might be asking, “What does this have to do with you?” I’m asking myself the same thing. I grew up in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and always rooted for the Twins. They even won a…

When I awoke yesterday, I didn’t know exactly what was in store for the day. I knew there were a few things to get done related to my business, need to get in a good practice session on the horn, and beyond that I wasn’t 100% sure. My wife Sana has her days off on…

One thing I found particularly interesting in my interview with Chris Botti, which I published on the Trumpet Dynamics podcast last week, was how he had aspirations to be known as a great jazz trumpeter – yet the first album he published was a pop album. In fact, hardly anyone today knows him as a…

Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to meet the great Chris Botti in person and interview him for my Trumpet Dynamics podcast. You can listen to the interview here: https://trumpetdynamics.com/botti This was actually my second time interviewing Chris. The first time was when I was a wet-behind-the-ears podcaster and through a mutual connection was able to meet…

I’ve been recording and publishing interviews for nearly 9 years. And in that amount of time, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve published a video version of the interview. I’m not referring to a video with a graphic and the interview playing on YouTube, I’m talking about the two people…

Something Vinnie Ciesielski, my recent guest on the Trumpet Dynamics podcast said multiple times is along the lines of he has been given a tiny amount of talent by his Creator, and he has “worked it, kneaded it, repurposed it for everything it’s worth.” That’s not a verbatim quote, but that’s the gist of it.…

I just released a massive two-part podcast featuring trumpeter, composer and entrepreneur Vinnie Ciesielski. Vinnie is a longtime stalwart of the Nashville music scene. His playing can be heard on countless recordings, commercials, soundtracks, symphony concerts, and the list goes on and on. Vinnie is also founder of a group called Vinnie And the Hitmen,…

This morning I received a completely unsolicited email from someone I’ve never met, will likely never meet, and quite frankly am glad for it. The person said he had “examined my website” and found it to be… A Not good design. He then proceeded to list the things that go into a great website design:…