Episode 004: Paul Frields

Adam Pippert (00:00)
Welcome everybody to another episode of Text and Plugs and Rock and Roll. You guys know me, I'm Adam. I have with me a coworker. So for many of these episodes, I'm trying to reach out to other people in the community that I've worked with in my past or that I've gone to school with or folks that I know from outside of Red Hat. But this is actually the first episode that I've recorded with somebody that I work with today. So I have with me Paul Frielts. So Paul, go ahead and introduce yourself. Let the audience know.

how we know each other, and then maybe go into a little bit of background about your work at Red Hat, how you've gotten to where you go. So I'll leave it up to you. Have fun.

Paul Frields (00:35)
Yeah. Certainly. Yeah. So my name is Paul Frields. I'm a director of software engineering at Red Hat, and that's how I know Adam. We've kind of corresponded a few times, and we've got some great cultural dimensions, I guess, at Red Hat that include, because we try and bring our full selves to work, we've got...

some shared channels where we've got a lot of music makers that sort of hang out together during the day. And we talk about the things that turn us on in our musical lives outside work. I've been at Red Hat for 16 years as of this February we just passed. And I started there as kind of a community project lead in the open source community.

But I went on to work on product after that and then later went on to manage one of the engineering teams that worked in the community area. And then that's kind of expanded over time to the point now where I've got a group called Platform Foundations that covers basically a lot of foundational technologies and enabling technologies from the upstream open source community.

all the way through to our core kernel groups and our core libraries and tools that go into our enterprise product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Adam Pippert (02:07)
Yeah, so for those of you who didn't understand anything that Paul just said, he's in charge of the important stuff at Red Hat. So there are technologies that are just sort of pie in the sky and then there are technologies that actually matter, that sit underneath everything. And Paul's in charge of all the stuff that like actually matters. So his job is very, very important. I have great respect for Paul and for the teams that work under him. No joke. I mean, I work on the Ansible side now, but in the past I had worked with Rell, I'd worked with OpenShift.

Paul Frields (02:15)
Really important, right?

I'll see you soon.

Adam Pippert (02:37)
and worked with things that were even more core to the Linux experience. And Paul's teams are where it's at. They're doing great work. So thank you, Paul. What was life like before Red Hat? Yeah. What was life like before Red Hat? I don't even know. Did you?

Paul Frields (02:48)
Yeah, just, uh, it is. Right.

Oh, yeah. So my, and I'm sorry, there's a bit of a lag here. So I'm sorry if I ended up speaking over you. Yeah. So before I came to Red Hat, I had almost 18 years, about 18 years that I worked for the federal government. I did a few different kinds of jobs there that were, you know, technical in nature. I started as kind of an analyst doing like planning.

Adam Pippert (03:04)
It's fine. Yeah.

Paul Frields (03:24)
budget and operations and things like that. And then later I was a forensic examiner and working, basically doing analysis of computer media. And this is back in the days when that was still just a very fledgling kind of science and a fledgling practice. We established actually quite a lot of the operating procedures that, you know, were

They were new and kind of revolutionary in those days. But they're kind of the way a lot of people operate nowadays. There are whole commercial enterprises that have spun up to do forensic analysis and media analysis for commercial customers or for government customers or whoever. So it was really cool being in kind of the forefront. And that's actually one of the ways I ended up working for Red Hat.

So I did that sort of thing and also some technical kind of technical field operations as well. And a lot of it was, you know, a lot of it was work that was, you know, using open source code, using open source products, putting those to work in the field for, you know, for specialists and things like that. So we would be kind of writing some of the things that they would use or coming up with integrations and solutions that they would use.

You know, all throughout that time, I've been a musician. I've been a musician since I was a kid, since starting in middle school, in the chorus, and then in the band. And then, you know, all through my time as a professional, I was doing something musical on the side for all of those years in one fashion or another. And that's continued through to today.

Adam Pippert (05:15)
Yeah, that's very cool. And did you have a degree in computer science or mathematics or what? I don't know what the landscape was like back then because I know you went to UVA, but they didn't have a computer science program until like the 90s. So what was your major?

Paul Frields (05:31)
Yeah, it was, it was, it was, thankfully, like, there was a CS program when I was there, but it was definitely not what I think you would call competitive. So University of Virginia, as you mentioned, that's where I went. That the CS program that they had, they were teaching things that I feel like they were probably they were already on their way out. I was a student. So I graduated from there with a bachelor's in 1991.

Adam Pippert (05:38)
Eh.

Mm-hmm.

Paul Frields (05:57)
Their computer science program consisted of things like teaching Fortran and Pascal and things like that still, you know, even when like C and C++ were kind of all the rage. And I did, you know, I did kind of take some CS courses here and there, but that was not my degree. My degree was in political science or what they call it was it was US government or studies. That was my bachelor's degree. But basically it was poli sci.

to be honest, well, I try to be honest all the time, but to be candid, I took that degree because it meant I wasn't going to have to write a senior thesis. And so I had a lot of time to take other things that I thought were complimentary and kind of would help me be a well-rounded individual. So I took some classes in music. I took some classes in like cinema and jazz as art forms or astronomy or whatever floated my boat.

Adam Pippert (06:35)
Hehehe

Paul Frields (06:56)
history, things like that. So, you know, I was a liberal arts major. And that definitely puts me I think out of step with the average engineering manager at Red Hat, where I am now. So I have to say we don't have any liberal arts majors or anything like that. But it's not, I think by and large, that's not the story that most people.

Adam Pippert (07:15)
More on the sales side, like where I am in pre-sales, we actually have quite a number of people. And interestingly, I would say some of the more successful ones in pre-sales, like even in sales engineering, are ones that have some sort of liberal arts background.

Paul Frields (07:30)
Kids don't let anybody tell you that a liberal arts degree is no good. From my standpoint, some of the big thinkers, well-rounded, kind of the folks who can be really resilient and sort of go with the flow and find solutions, I feel like you can find that very easily with people who come out of that background, just as much as people who are great solutions builders who are engineers.

Adam Pippert (07:58)
Absolutely. Yeah, and there is some commonality to many creative fields and technology in that the best people are the ones that can focus for long periods of time and that can focus on a specific problem rather than just sort of managing things 10 or 20 minutes at a time. You know what I mean?

Paul Frields (08:19)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, so that's, yeah, that was kind of my, my school, I guess, my, my background school days. And I was doing music, you know, while in college, I had a, had a band, my last couple of years there, I would, you know, wasn't very, you know, wasn't very successful, didn't go anywhere, but it was a great way to kind of learn what it means to be in a band, how, you know,

how people work together, the personalities and so forth. And just trying to learn some very basic applications of like, not just playing the instrument, but how does the ensemble work together? How do I use this like gizmo that I got to put my bass guitar into? But also on the side of that, I was doing a pit orchestra for a couple of different musical theater companies. So there was one for the first year players, which was all the freshmen.

They couldn't be in the upper class, more professional theater groups. This was a way for them to cut their teeth. And so I was in the pit orchestra for that for almost the entire time I was at university. There was another theater group I worked in as well that did a couple musicals. I loved that. And it was also a way that I could apply my skills because I could read music. I'd come up reading music, had a great high school band director.

who was like your typical, I think, person who pushes you maybe further than you go, but that's the person that you always learn from. That's where you get your best life lessons, is those challenges. And I love my band director. And thankfully, thanks to the work that he had done, I really came out kind of knowing how to put those skills to use in those situations. It was a lot of fun.

Adam Pippert (09:48)
Mm-hmm.

Nice. Did you grow up in Virginia?

Paul Frields (10:10)
I did for most of my life. When I was a tiny baby, can't remember any of this, moved around a bit. My dad was an FBI agent. But we settled in Maryland when I was two, two and a half, but then we moved to Virginia when I was nine. So I have some memories of my living in Maryland, but almost all my life that matters, like the formative part, Virginia. I still live in Virginia now. In fact, not far from where I grew up.

Adam Pippert (10:15)
Yeah.

Cool.

Mm-hmm.

Paul Frields (10:40)
My wife and I, we've moved around different parts of Virginia, but we settled here, I'm sorry to say this, but literally over a quarter century ago. Yeah, we've been in the same house since then.

Adam Pippert (10:47)
Hehehehe

Yeah, and Virginia just in general, because that's where I grew up, right? I feel like the music scene and just sort of the academic opportunities are very unique. They're very distinct. I mean, we've talked about this before, like the fact that all the Chapman stick players that I know are all former students of Greg Howard, right? And there's this very like world music kind of centric.

Paul Frields (11:09)
Yeah.

Adam Pippert (11:13)
scene that doesn't seem to exist anywhere else. Like you think about bands like Everything and Dave Matthews Band, players like John Dirth, like a lot of these, a lot of those guys have this very like world music focus, even if, even if they apply it outside of world music. And it's, I don't see that in many other places.

Paul Frields (11:23)
Yeah, very exciting.

Yeah, it's, it is. It's very, it's very eclectic. I think very like, I call it like jazz adjacent, maybe is a good way to think of it. Yeah. And you know, and at the same time, I think, you know, it there's sort of this, there's this sort of contiguous slide into like the DC scene as well. You know, I, I

Adam Pippert (11:40)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a great term for it. It's a great term for it.

Paul Frields (11:56)
I don't live that close to what would have been considered historically the Northern Virginia area, which really bleeds the DC scene quite a bit. I know a lot of people who are really active around the area. There is definitely a lot going on. Some really good songwriters around this area. I've been lucky enough to work a few times with people like John Carroll and...

Adam Pippert (12:01)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Paul Frields (12:21)
who we thinking of. Sorry, the name is escaping me. There are some folks I've worked with around here. There's a studio in my area that does a lot of recording. Oh my gosh, I can't believe the name is, this is what happens to folks if you use the alternative, but you know, this is what you get. I'm thinking of like Keller Williams, his touring band. I

Adam Pippert (12:35)
Yeah, it's all good.

Paul Frields (12:42)
of the folks that are in that group. And yeah, it's been a it's been it's been really interesting kind of putting roots down in this area where I am because I think a lot more of it is more about folk and bluegrass, I think, you know, down in my area of Virginia, it starts to really become more like that. And there, there are definitely some incredibly talented folks down in this area.

the Starling family comes to mind. There's some great talent down here. Also, I would say in Fredericksburg, where I live, there's also a decent amount of the scene is still, it's kind of like blues and southern rock and both kinds of music here.

Adam Pippert (13:25)
Yeah, yeah, you can't avoid that anywhere in the South, but especially, I mean, in Virginia, it's obvious, right? But it is interesting that the Blue Ridge mountain range definitely divides Virginia culturally in a lot of ways. And I would say, well, I grew up in Harrisonburg, so it was essentially like the micro Charlottesville in a lot of ways, because a lot of kids that wanted to get into UVA and couldn't ended up at JMU.

Paul Frields (13:31)
Yeah.

Adam Pippert (13:53)
Harrisonberg's scene very specifically was essentially Charlottesville just sort of copied. But the rest, yeah. Yeah.

Paul Frields (13:59)
JMU are like, music school, JMU, like that was the place to be. I mean, honestly, that's the, I did some, you know, I did take some classes and do some things with the UVA music department and it was, it was, it definitely leaned way towards the theoretical side. I mean, of course she had some great players like John Dirth was there, for example. I think he's a great example. Just I mean, amazing, amazing player. There were some great players.

Adam Pippert (14:25)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Paul Frields (14:29)
but the department kind of lean really theoretical and it feels to me like JMU, yes, great music department and they have all that but also very like, they take the practical side also very seriously and a lot of opportunities there.

Adam Pippert (14:43)
Yeah, and they have a killer marching band program, always have. I did drum major camp at JMU for my senior year. They let me lead people, which is interesting. But yeah, and that camp was very well regarded. And just that whole program, that marching band program, has always been very well regarded. So I always felt like Harrisonburg was kind of its own little island.

Paul Frields (14:46)
off. Yeah, bye, see you next time. Bye!

Adam Pippert (15:09)
in Western Virginia, but the rest of the state very much culturally more like that blues and Southern rock thing. Huge, huge. I went to school at Roanoke college. So down the road, like in Salem, so about two hours from Harrisonburg, but it felt like night and day, like the difference between hanging out in Harrisonburg and hearing JMU grads and people play and bands like everything.

Paul Frields (15:28)
Yeah.

Adam Pippert (15:35)
those kind of groups versus being in Salem and like every concert you go to is all 12 bar blues all the time and nothing else. It was very, very different. And that area is also where a lot of country music got started. So you see a lot of the like proto country, the kinds of things that today we would think about being like Mumford and Sons and Old Crow Medicine Show and groups like that, who Old Crow like half those guys are from Harrison

Yeah, so that kind of scene, back when I was a kid, that's where that happened. That wasn't really like, let's go all be hipsters and drink $10 coffees and go listen to Memphren and Sons. It was very much like, you know, very different, more working class, more blue collar kind of stuff. So yeah. But so Paul, you're a bass player. I'm a bass player. What do you have with you? What's in your room right now?

Paul Frields (16:15)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, what do I have in the room with me? Okay. That's a, I'm in the smallest room in my house right now. Just where my project studio. Yeah, I, I do. I've got, well, I don't have to bring on a camera, but I've got a, you know, if you're going to have one bass in the room that you're going to record with, it's a Fender Precision flats. And it's got a, a custom shop, a 1962 wound.

Adam Pippert (16:26)
Yeah.

Okay, okay, but there's a base in that room, I would assume. Okay.

Yeah.

Paul Frields (16:50)
pickups in it. It's a newer body and neck etc. But it's old, old stall pickups in it. And it's just it's the bee's knees for recording. So if I'm going to lay that apart, that's that that's the thing.

Adam Pippert (16:53)
Mm-hmm.

You said pickups plural, so I'm assuming it's like a PJ setup.

Paul Frields (17:05)
Oh, sorry. No, I just mean the split. Sorry.

Adam Pippert (17:08)
Oh, okay, I was like, wait a minute, hold on. I've got a Made in Mexico jazz right behind me that just kind of sits up here because I think the Rickenbacker, if I had it in here, I'm sure the child would destroy it. So I've got, my kids are real young and they like to come in while I'm working and come play with things and I wouldn't want them to be messing with something really nice, so that stays downstairs. But.

Paul Frields (17:14)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, my kids are, my kids are, you know, they're kind of, you know, they're grown to this point. I've got one still here doing, doing school and work, but I've got another one who, you know, she graduated school, moved, moved out a year ago and they were always very respectful. But I remember that age, like it was always like, get done, put it in the case because, you know, God forbid the accidents happen. I've got a, like, I've got an arsenal of like, there's a lot of instruments here. There is a

Adam Pippert (17:36)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Paul Frields (17:58)
instruments in this house. Like the, I'm not going to run out of bases anytime soon. It's not one for all, but

Adam Pippert (18:05)
That's good. And did you give your kids instruments like that? I'm assuming when you were younger or when they were younger, you tried to get them started.

Paul Frields (18:13)
I mean, yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, so for example, I have a, had I should say, cause I passed on, I had a, like a, a Fender, you know, one of the Korean Fender, Giddy Lee jazz basses. My daughter has that she played on it in high school in jazz band. Um, I've got a set of, got a couple of sets of drums here. My son was the drummer in the family or is he's very good, very good drummer.

Adam Pippert (18:27)
Nice.

Paul Frields (18:42)
took lessons from Toby Fairchild who drums for Keller Williams and a bunch of other acts. Toby lives in this area, is a fantastic dude and just a great teacher too, like takes it really seriously but also just a super, super cool guy. And so my son was kind of the drummer. We had a piano around the house, not a real one because we didn't really have space for that but a digital piano that I got early on when the kids took lessons.

Yeah, definitely pass that on and, you know, got them instruments. My daughter seemed like she was the person who more gravitated towards doing music. So my son actually went into chorus. That was his thing. He sang bass in the high school chorus. My daughter, she was kind of the instrumentalist. So she did mallets and percussion, but she also could play, you know, beautiful piano, great voice and play bass and stuff.

She would kind of like, you know, really kind of that the music bug would bite her that she would, you know, be writing and composing and stuff. That hasn't, I guess it hasn't really happened yet. But it was something I never leaned too far into because I didn't want it to be like uncool. Like, if dad wants this, I'm definitely not going to do that. I didn't want that to happen. So we'll see. The idea of like doing it for like on my own.

Adam Pippert (20:00)
Right, exactly.

Paul Frields (20:09)
like not an ensemble just as a player of a large orchestra or something like that. The bug to do that stuff didn't really hit me until I was in my 20s when I really started doing bands and recording and stuff.

Adam Pippert (20:23)
Yeah. So you were in a band in college, right? What kind of music was it? Was it like rock? Was it jazz, combo? Like what stuff were you playing?

Paul Frields (20:33)
It was basically what I consider now to be like, it's the band that everybody should have and it's also the band that you should never still be doing by the time you're serious, which is it's eclectic, man. It was like a little something for everyone. It's like that is really, with very few exceptions, not a great idea for a band professionally. So you know.

Adam Pippert (20:55)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Frields (20:56)
We played at fraternity parties and things like that, but it was like it's span, like it spanned the whole gamut. We were playing like, we're playing Pixies and we were playing Depeche Mode. We were playing B-52s. We were playing Delight. We were playing Parliament Funkadelic. We were playing Rush. It was like the, it was the worst.

like amalgamation of all this and I'm sure we were not good because you know We're a lot of us like we were decent players, but as a band it's not the same thing, right?

Adam Pippert (21:29)
Right, and it's a great way to cut your teeth and get skills, but it's not a great way to actually progress as a musician. That makes sense.

Paul Frields (21:36)
Yeah, but it was it was fun. I don't regret it. I mean, I don't regret it all. I look back on it super fondly. And, and it was a lot of fun. And you also learn about like the drama of being in a band when everybody is like different, you know, different personalities that has that mesh together. And how do you portray that on stage and learning all that was fun too. We're called the chronics. And that should like tell you right away. Like what I mean, come on.

Adam Pippert (22:04)
Well, yeah, right. I don't even want to tell you the name of my college band. Actually, I will. I will. We'll, we'll put this on camera. So the band that I was in college, um, we were actually a band put together by a songwriter, uh, and his name was Dave. And Dave today is a librarian in Homer, Alaska, but any, and I think he still makes music, but Dave was, I guess he was kind of trying to be sort of like Alan Sherman.

Paul Frields (22:04)
What were we thinking?

You

Adam Pippert (22:32)
like acoustic player, but really witty lyrics, and although his own music, not like parodies where you take whatever, but Dave decided that he wanted to have like essentially a backup band. So, but the backup band, we were all like hard rock guys. So it was us trying to turn these parody song, oh, like, I guess not parody, but like these humorous comedic acoustic songs into, you know, like Radiohead or something.

Paul Frields (22:59)
Yeah.

Adam Pippert (22:59)
So it actually worked really well, but people were just sort of in Roanoke. They were just sort of off-put by this. Like, who are these people that are coming out here with a dude with an acoustic guitar and suddenly being so loud that we have to tell them to turn their amps down? Like, we don't get it. Like, it just didn't make sense. But it was fun. It was a really great group to be in. We won a battle of the bands and won 10 hours worth of studio time. So we got to go do...

recording at a studio in Salem that's called Flat Five and they're really a mastering house. They're really not like a huge studio. So obviously the recordings turned out like the recording part didn't turn out as well as we would hope with 10 hours worth of work for four tracks. It's like nothing that's like super fast breeze through. But the mastering itself was actually really great. So he made us sound really, really good despite the fact that we really rushed through the recording and it was, you know.

haphazard at best. In fact, I still have the stickers. So the band was called Dave Bernard and Resurrected Sausage. So this was our little sausage guy. That's the sticker. Yeah. Yep. And I actually have a pile of them if you want me to send you like 20, I can. Yeah. But that was the, yeah. I mean, we like pressed our own CDs. We did shows around. We took it like relatively seriously. We have a live album.

Paul Frields (24:01)
I love it.

Please.

Adam Pippert (24:19)
weirdly enough, but yeah, but it was a good experience. And all of us knew that none of us were ever gonna be like professional musicians. The one guitarist guy actually is a professional trumpet player in New York City. Like he was sort of like Flea where he had the two instruments that he was primary at and had to make a choice and he decided to go with trumpet instead of guitar. So he plays in, I think he lives in like Long Island City and plays up in New York.

and he's actually a professional musician, his wife's a vet. But the rest of us, we all kind of had other careers that we already knew we were gonna end up in. So none of us really took it that seriously after school.

Paul Frields (24:59)
Yeah. I, you know, after school, I think, you know, there is definitely a big change because, you know, when you, if music is not going to be your whole, like if you haven't, if you haven't made the decision that that's the thing you're going to do by the time you get out of school, like if you get out of school voluntarily, what I mean is like, if you leave it, clearly you've made your choice. If you decide to go to the whole, the whole distance with school, uh, I found

Adam Pippert (25:12)
Hehehe

Paul Frields (25:24)
It's very few people haven't made the choice by then. But if you haven't done it like really quickly after you leave school, you typically know which way it's going to go. I think for a lot of people. And I felt the same way. Like it didn't seem for me like it was a feasible thing. And maybe it was because, you know, neither of my parents were like creative types. I was kind of the black sheep of the family in that way that like there were no other musicians in my family. The closest person I know in.

Adam Pippert (25:31)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Frields (25:52)
in my family who was a musician was like my aunt who married in, right? And the only person I knew of was like my great granddad, I think who he used to be able to pick up any instrument and play it. And so my mom always told me that might have been where for me that came from, which like, you know, immediately just like getting and figuring it out and, you know, just being able to like play things by ear and stuff. So

Adam Pippert (25:56)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Paul Frields (26:19)
But regardless, it just didn't seem feasible to me. And so, you know, after school, it was kind of like, well, I want to find something to do now that I've got, you know, it's been five or six months, my job is under my belt now, I know what I'm doing there. Maybe I should look at doing something on the side. And it was basically another like, it was kind of a sort of a crummy garage band where I was like, I'm not going to get challenges here, but it was something to do.

And thankfully it was only a few months and I ended up getting kind of recruited for a band that had some mutual friends in that band. And they were looking for a bass player because their bass player was, he was getting out, he was having a kid and some other stuff and he just felt like he couldn't really do that. And that band was like, they actually had aspirations to, you know, to do big things, at least a few of the people in the band did.

Adam Pippert (27:15)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Frields (27:17)
I didn't really, I still didn't see that really as feasible, but I was like, I was definitely all in for like, look, I'm going to, if I've got to measure up and do what's needed in this band, I will do that. So like, you know, put on the costume, like what the, the put on the, the gear that they want on stage by the right kind of instrument, you know, put in the right kind of energy on stage, you know, be able to play in a certain style. I was like, I'm in.

Adam Pippert (27:27)
Yeah.

Paul Frields (27:43)
And it was very successful. That was a band that like, you know, we played, we never had an empty gig. It was like always packed, hugely popular around that area, the Northern Virginia area. And then a bunch of folks were like, hey, we're going to actually move out to LA. And I was like, have fun. Not for me. You guys will totally do great. And they had some, I think they had some...

Adam Pippert (28:01)
Yeah.

Paul Frields (28:07)
They kind of like had that scraping the bottom of the level kind of success where, you know, they had a song that got on MTV, was used in one of the TV soundtracks. The guy who fronted that band was kind of the songwriter, Mastermind. He actually, he died about, gosh, it was about a decade ago now, I think. And great, great dude. He was definitely driven. If you can imagine like the human equivalent of Johnny Bravo.

Adam Pippert (28:18)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Frields (28:37)
That's literally like I do not. I'll, I know I can find pictures on the internet and send them to you. His name was Danny Blitz and he was a wonderful human being. Also demanding as a band leader, there was not a lot that got by him that was like second rate. It was a great way to learn. And I will always be very grateful for that, that opportunity, because it was, it was formative.

Adam Pippert (28:38)
Wow.

I'm sorry.

Cool, cool. That's awesome. I don't think any of my bands ever quite that popular, but yeah. And being a bass player in particular, I always feel like you have more flexibility and opportunity to go to other groups because stylistically there are differences obviously in bass styles across different genres, but I feel like there's a little bit more liberty because you're kind of sitting at the bottom end.

that to stretch yourself out into other genres. Whereas a guitarist, there's a lot of skills that you have to learn in order to just blend in with one style. And it's very difficult to switch.

Paul Frields (29:36)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think I definitely think that's true. I kind of I simplify this a lot because I always say to, I always joke to people like, how hard can it be? You only got to play one note at a time, you know, and it was, you know, not to not to be disparaging. I, you know, I love playing bass. And of course, there are plenty of players who are doing way more than that stuff. But, you know, it's hard. I guess the thing is, I don't know, I was trying to keep

keep an even keel about it, right? And never get a big head, which I think is just good in life in general, and especially kind of a band situation. And a lot of bass players I know seem to be like pretty grounded in that way, which I think, I don't know, maybe it like, there may be some, maybe there's some truth to like how, you know, the instruments, you know, different roles in a band attract different personalities. And I feel like that's one that

Adam Pippert (30:10)
Yeah.

Paul Frields (30:28)
If you're comfortable being a sideman, like you're comfortable not living in the limelight and you're comfortable just sort of holding it down, like there's endless opportunities for that when you're a bass player, right? And I really enjoy that about the instrument. I enjoy that about the role. And yeah, I think that's kind of come out in the things that I've done, whether it was that group or...

working with various singer songwriters, things like that. That's where I really get off on creating something that is somebody has a vision for it and I'm there to help fulfill what that is and figure it out is a great process. I love that process. Hopefully it's something cool, something original, but also is true to what they want. That for me as a sideman, I think is super fulfilling.

Adam Pippert (31:06)
Yeah.

But you also do music on your own as well, right?

Paul Frields (31:24)
Yeah, yeah, I do some, I do some music myself too. And so, you know, sometimes if I'm that person, like, you know, I, it'll be my vision or whatever. But, uh, and I do a lot of things nowadays that are, I might not even be playing bass at all. Like I got really into, uh, synthesizers during COVID. Like I never learned, like I never learned like...

What is a VCA? What is an LFO? Blah, blah, blah. All those things were just three letter acronyms. And I understood none of them for many years because a lot of the bands I was in, they were like, they were rock bands, no synthesizers, or, you know, they had a keyboard player at one of those like, uh, you know, as a cover band that had guy at a digital unit that made a bunch of sounds, whatever, all good stuff. But that wasn't an opportunity for me to learn. But when COVID happened, I was like,

Adam Pippert (31:48)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Paul Frields (32:13)
I've always wanted to understand this. And, you know, thank God for YouTube. I can't, it's unfathomable to me that like, how much we missed at my age, like growing up when you didn't have any of those resources. And I think it's like the fact that, you know, kids coming up nowadays and younger bands, like they've come up in that age where there's so much information out there that you can easily get your hands on and people demonstrate it to you live and...

easy to go from concept to practice. And I finally like, you know, it's like having like the two watt light bulb that was like, like went on this tiny little over my head. I was like, I could probably go learn this. And so I did I like, you know, I pulled out like a soft synthesizer, you know, instrument that I had on my computer and just watch some YouTube channels. I'm like, Oh my god, this is how this works.

Adam Pippert (32:50)
Hmm.

Paul Frields (33:08)
And I just got really deep into that and started doing sound design and, and making like different kinds of synth music. And, and that was sort of how I stayed sane over the year and a half or whatever that like gigs were really hard to come by. Nobody was really doing much live stuff. And I was not in a, I was not in a place where I felt like I wasn't driven to write songs right then. Like it wasn't in that place.

Adam Pippert (33:35)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Frields (33:37)
And this gave me something to do. And it really started becoming, I think, more of a sound designer and composer and that sort of stuff. That's somewhere where I always felt very comfortable from having just the education and a classical background. And it really gave me a place to put all that. And I came out of that with sort of a whole bunch of

you know, mishmash of creations. I mean, you know, I finished last year finished an album of synth music. First time I ever put out like a whole album at one time. And it was like, it's just such a liberating experience that I definitely want to repeat, right.

Adam Pippert (34:18)
Yeah. Yeah, that's really cool that you got into that. And I think it makes sense as a bass player and as a classical musician because you are used to creating music in context with others. Like there are a lot of people that I know that would struggle with that. My brother's a great example of that. His musical experience is almost entirely solo piano. So trying to get him involved in something collaborative, he always has piano players as easy struggles with keeping in time. You know, he

will look at something as his vision and not like the vision of the whole group. And he just oftentimes struggles when he ends up in these musical situations. Whereas somebody like me, like I almost everything that I've done has been in a group context, whether it's been being in a jazz chorus or a rock band or whatever. Like I've been doing these things as a member in a larger context. And so I feel like I have maybe a little bit more of that mentality. I've never gone down the road.

the rabbit hole of doing like sound design per se. I've messed around with software synthesizers a ton, just trying to understand how it all works and fitting it together almost like a software problem, like taking the different pieces and sort of putting them together and seeing what different problems each tool solves and then seeing how you can put those together. That's how I came to it and thought about it.

Probably because I happened to have been playing with software synthesizers roughly the same time I was taking CS classes. So even though I was a music major, I actually started off as a double major in college and then decided to drop the CS because I was like, I'm not gonna go back to school to get a music degree. Like nobody does that. But plenty of people go back to school to get a computer science degree or a computer engineering. So I actually went back for computer engineering first and then realized that

Paul Frields (35:43)
Bye.

Adam Pippert (36:07)
It was going to A, take me forever because I was going to an actual school that wanted me to show up all the time and I was working at Intel full time. So I was like, I can't do this. And secondly, the Oregon State came out with a second degree program that made it really easy to get a CS degree. So I just jumped schools and went and did that. But I've always, I guess it depends on what time of my life I was in as to whether I was exposed to computer concepts or not. But

some things that I've learned over time with music, I feel like I've picked up certain ways of thinking about the problem, because I was forced to do so in other aspects of my life, like in writing software or in taking a RAM chip and going and trying to write to different registers. Like having to come up with ways to break down a problem into smaller pieces. Oftentimes in music, that is something that we have to do, in orchestration and whatever.

Paul Frields (37:02)
Yeah, yeah. Certainly like when you're, you know, anything, anytime that you're trying to learn a piece or you know, if you're, you know, this happens, it happens in, you know, I think it happens in composing and sound design too, where you're, you know, you can, there's elements that have come together and there are elements that aren't coming together and trying to figure out like what's going to work here properly is, you know, that's kind of where you invest a lot of the time, like, oh, great. You got your, maybe you got your theme or your motif together. That was like, great. That's.

75% of the problem solved, but then the 25% that takes the 75% of the work is, you know, is the rest of it.

Adam Pippert (37:36)
Yeah. So for any of your music groups, were you ever the bandleader or have you just mostly joined other groups? I would assume you probably have at some point, right?

Paul Frields (37:46)
I've done band, I mean I have a band now, it's a cover band but kind of like an event band. So we do a lot of weddings and corporate things like that. I am the bandleader for that because I think just ended up de facto that way because I was like, I think I'm probably more organized than some of the people in the group, which that is such a frightening thing to say.

based on like how disorganized a person I always felt myself to be for many years. And I feel like my professional career has kind of demanded me to grow in that area. Now I go back and turn it around and I apply that in my, you know, off work life. I can apply those skills, like skills I've learned as a manager for like how to have a conversation with somebody that's really tough.

Where they need to relate something to them, but you want to do it only for the purposes of helping them and making them better, not to make them upset or send them away. You want to honor them and respect them. Coaching, things like that. Kind of looking at what can we do as a team? How can we solve this problem? How can people be put to use in their best capacity to do this or that?

Those kind of things have really come together. I think some of the organizational skills and the fact that like, okay, I'm good with technology, maybe not as good as some of the people I work with, maybe not as good as most of the people I work with. When you compare me to like the average human being, I'm really good with technology. I can apply those things to the band situation.

the business side, making sure the taxes are filed on time everybody gets their statements, liaising with venue owners or a client. Those are things that I'm trying to spread out nowadays and bring more of the team members in to do that. But then that also is imparting the experience to them, helping coach them on here's your objective.

Here's some of the things you want to keep in mind as you talk through this with them, right? And getting them to a place where they're comfortable with that. So that's nowadays more kind of the thing that I'm bringing in more and more. But yeah, with this, anyway, not to walk too far afield, but I'm still leading this particular band and, you know, so I end up, you know, kind of do the managing and the sound and stuff like that for that group.

Adam Pippert (40:12)
Cool. So, because usually when I'm talking to people about their relationship with their tech career versus music, it's these are the things that I learned as a musician that have translated to skills that I have in technology that have helped advance my career. And it seems like you have the opposite approach where it's I actually build those skills in my tech career and then I'm applying those things back to the music that I'm doing today. So it's interesting. I mean, it definitely works either way, for sure.

Paul Frields (40:39)
Totally, totally. Yeah, 100%. And there's definitely some things from, I think things from music. Something I think that's just fundamental in music is, of course you could be a great solo artist and be amazing. And there are lessons you bring in from that, like the value of practice, right? The value of sticking to it, right? Going through challenges. There are...

Like there's any number of pursuits that that's like kind of universal to and you know, being a soloist, I think you can bring those same things in together just like achievement in any area will bring the same lessons and you can apply that to your whole life. Music I think is, you know, it's probably music and sports are probably the two areas where you know, when you, you're trying to do something like you have a goal.

That goal is not achievable just because everybody showed up. You know, that, yes, showing up is half the battle, but the other half of the battle is really hard too, right? Like how do you win that game? Or if you're in a band, how do you carry off this performance in a way that inspires people, that makes them happy, you know, gets them up out of their chair where they could just as comfortably sit if they felt like it. You're trying to make, achieve that. And it takes the whole team agreeing on.

Like, how are we going to pursue that? How do we want to work together to make this performance great? And maybe I should back up, not to say music, but the arts and sports are kind of special in that way. And so that is a lesson of the value of the team is definitely something I brought into my – I feel like I brought that into my career, but the career has given so much back that I've used now.

in the band.

Adam Pippert (42:33)
Yeah, and just curious, how did you decide to go down that path of becoming a manager and becoming a director versus just living in individual contributor land? Do you think that the fact that you had this experience with music and being forced in those situations helped you feel comfortable to make that move?

Paul Frields (42:53)
That's a great question. I actually think it was kind of my... I felt it was not... It wasn't really like the skill part bringing in. It was actually kind of the opposite. Like I felt so overwhelmed by the technical expertise that other people had around me. Red Hat was like extremely daunting. And I was like, well, there's two ways I could go about this. Like I could either...

So thinking back, sorry, I think I'm resetting my timeline here. Thinking back to those days when I kind of made that change, I had put a lot of time and energy into Red Hat, probably more than was healthy. Like I was doing very, very long days in a way that was probably like it was, well, it wasn't probably. It was definitely like impacting my family and my marriage, things like that.

I definitely achieved a lot and I felt like I learned a lot, but I was still so far behind all of these technical practitioners. Every day there's more to learn, there's more to do. It's like the world is changing at an accelerating rate around us. It's true, just as true today as it was when I became a manager over 10 years ago. I just felt like I could go one of two ways. Either I could grind myself into oblivion and try to learn as much as I can to...

like transition into being less of a like a operational person or a community lead person and become more of a technical individual so I can be more of a fully empowered engineer. Or I could change the game. And I kind of went for the latter. I thought, you know, I actually got looking around me. There are many amazing technical people. But I also hear from my

my leaders, my managers, the skills that I have that I bring to the table that are non-technical and that they say they depend on me for they can't get from other people on the team. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to lean into that. What can I do that can put those skills more to use? And so for me, that was managing. I could actually help other people. I can empower them. I could bring them together as a team. I could coach people. I could solve problems that are more social than technical. Right?

And those were the things that I decided to do. So that's, that's how I got on the track of being a manager, I think was just understanding like my limitations here exceed, they exceed my available time. And energy to surmount. And so you have to know, I think you got to pick your battles. And that was where I definitely picked a battle. I'm like, that is not a battle I can win, but I can win if the game that I play is instead about helping and

and empowering other people and sort of helping the people around me be the best that they can be.

Adam Pippert (45:37)
Yeah, I think it's definitely easy to get technically exhausted. I feel like that, especially with AI, like just that whole, the fact that now there's this whole body of technical knowledge that is adjacent to kind of lives on the side of everything that we know. Um, but that the good news is that I feel like AI these days, um, because it's.

Paul Frields (45:49)
Niema.

Adam Pippert (45:58)
know how to describe this, but it's essentially architected in the same way that software is architected, but all the AI practitioners haven't quite seen it yet. We have a lot of things that Red Hat in particular can offer to the table that's like, we solved these problems 20 years ago. You're just coming up with new names and new concepts for this, but this architecturally is the exact same thing that we figured out a long time ago. Just use this. And people are just...

Paul Frields (46:11)
you're still that angel.

Adam Pippert (46:25)
like, no, but this is new and exciting and we want to invent things. It's like, well, just use these principles. Just do this. So there's a lot of that.

Paul Frields (46:31)
Yeah, yeah, this, this may be, yeah, this may be a little low, this might be a little, a little low level in terms of like the, the AI stack. And I don't know if this is going to, I don't know if this is going to resonate for, for your listeners, but there's a lot going on in the hardware race and the, the kind of the enablement race around AI. And I heard somebody describe this to me as like, this is kind of the, this is the equivalent of like the.

Adam Pippert (46:52)
Yeah.

Paul Frields (47:00)
wild west days of like, look at where graphics, graphics accelerators were back in like the, you know, the 90s, the early 90s. And we had this like kind of crazy world where everybody's trying to outspeed each other in terms of the graphics they can provide. But it was hell if you were software developers, because there were all these competing, you know, architectures to work with.

Finally, we got to a place where we had like, oh, there's OpenGL now and there's DirectX, things like that. And now, and then now, we can actually differentiate ourselves, you know, as game developers or whatever based on the strength of our story or the engine or whatever it is that we're doing on top of that stuff. I feel like that's probably that's where we're that's where we have an opportunity, I think, to do something as a standard.

you know, a bearer of standards, a purveyor of standards, and a company that's like, we've tried to help, you know, I think kind of smooth that path, where it's very easy, it's easy to move your easy to move your, your workload footprints. It's, it's easy to, you know, negotiate how, like, how are you going to deal with application development that's going to work the same everywhere? Like, those are the areas where we've done really well. This feels like

hey, this is something we can and must do, right? To get to a better place in the next five to 10 years, kind of have that sort of level of, I don't know if I want to call it abstraction, but like mediation or simplification that makes it easier for businesses to get what they want out of their AI investments.

Adam Pippert (48:45)
Yeah, there's a reason you have a P bass in your office. Because it's the exact same thing. I know it sounds a little weird, but for those of you who aren't bass players, yeah, for those of you in the audience that are not bass players, a P bass is pretty much the standard thing that you would go to when you're not sure what bass to play. And there are lots of good reasons for it. One, it's really simple. You've got one pickup. So the tonal changes that you make, you would make that with your fingers or maybe with a volume knob.

Paul Frields (48:49)
Yeah, yeah, it's like it's a one trick. It's one trick, but it's a really good trick.

Adam Pippert (49:14)
or a single tone knob. It's very simple. So you're not, you're not overcomplicating things by having like a bunch of pickups and switches and options and stuff. This isn't a bit.

Paul Frields (49:22)
Yeah, it's like bright. Yeah, it's like, because you can have bright or mellow and you can be loud or quiet and that's about it. It's like, it's the, the P base is like, it's, it's a, I always, I always tell people it's a one trick pony, but it's a really good trick.

Adam Pippert (49:31)
Yeah.

Yeah, I say that about my Rickenbacker too, but it's a different trick, right? But the thing about a P-bass is that its resonant frequencies are mostly on the low end, which is why you would want a bass player. It doesn't get in the way of a lot of other instruments. And I feel like a lot of people kind of want to deny their role. They want to be everything to everyone rather than being really good at the one thing that they want to do.

Paul Frields (49:40)
Thank you.

Adam Pippert (50:02)
I see a lot of that in the AI landscape. I see a lot of that in software development. I see a lot of that in music. People sort of denying the fact that they've made this choice about what role they wanna play. And I think the P-Base forces you into that role. It's like, okay, there are only certain things I can do. I can still be creative. I can still enjoy what I'm doing, but I know my role and I'm not afraid to say it. Like I'm the guy with the 63 reissue P-Base.

That's me. That's where I fit. So I think that that's...

Paul Frields (50:32)
Yeah.

Yep. It's like, you know, you kind of pick a lane, like pick that lane and just, and negotiate the curves in that lane really, really well. Right. And that's, I feel like that's better than, you know, trying to, you know, like you said, be all things to all people. Like I, you know, for example, like as a bass player, I'm not, you know, I'm not somebody who is, I'm not going to go out there and play like, you know, Victor Wooten or somebody who's like

Adam Pippert (51:01)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Frields (51:03)
Maybe their thing is they do a lot of tapping and they're multi-tamber or they're counterparting their own lines on the one instrument, something like that. I understand it. I understand what they're doing, but that's not a place that I feel invested in. And so what I like is I really like...

Adam Pippert (51:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Paul Frields (51:28)
James Jamerson, you know, Pino Palladino, Marcus Miller, like people who like, they're folks who are like, Tony Levin is another one of his. These folks, they know how to play for the song. And that's for me, the most important thing is not my part or what I'm getting out of the instrument in terms of my learning or enrichment. It's really about is this doing what it needs for the song? Is that-

Adam Pippert (51:38)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Frields (51:54)
the vision for like what this song will be, how is it going to connect with somebody? How is it going to get them like to hear it and like, just think, wow, that is a really well put together song. Like if they notice the bass part first, I'm like, I failed. Like that is a failure in my mind.

Adam Pippert (52:10)
Yeah. And none of those players that you mentioned are folks that people would consider bad bass players. Like a lot of them, even within our community, are some of the best players that we've heard of. But they also know how to be tasteful. And that's, I once upon a time, I had an issue of Bass Player Magazine and there was a page in it that was like different people that had been interviewed in the magazine and their favorite bass licks. And there was one from Michael Manring that was all like,

Paul Frields (52:19)
They're incredible.

Adam Pippert (52:38)
16th notes and he was like, I use such and such tuning on my bass, but he's got the zones that have the keys where you can like change the tuning in the middle of a riff kind of thing. And that's like, yeah, the hyper bass, he had his own hyper bass. And he was talking about how this riff was like, you know, 16th notes or whatever. And then there was somebody else that was like, oh, James Jamerson is great. And they did. They just was like, this is a riff from my girl. And then the next one was two blank measures. And it was Victor Wooten. And he said,

Paul Frields (52:46)
of hyperlinks.

Adam Pippert (53:06)
sometimes this is the hardest riff to play. And it was just like, that is just, that is like an encapsulation of everything I think about Victor Ruten in a nutshell. Is it, yeah.

Paul Frields (53:14)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's like, that stuff I think has become, that sort of thinking has become such, like being able to practice more of that, especially as a, like, you know, in the studio and as more of like a producer nowadays. And as a, and in that bandleader concept of like, what's going on in the rest of the band, not just what I'm doing. That

has really become such a great bedrock to rest on as a musician for me. In composing, or if I'm producing something for somebody else in the studio, or if leaving the band, we're like, hey, let's bring it back here because we just finished the first chorus of this thing that we're doing. Let's bring it back because now we're in the second verse and we need somewhere to go. We can't just keep going up the hill.

bring it forward. There's got to be some, you want some dynamics in the song. And those things of the concept of contrast, right? And just bringing in a holistic sense of what people are doing. I feel that can be, it's such a great principle to have if you are—

any part of a team, like knowing when to lean in and knowing when to lean out, whether it's at work or it's doing music or whatever your and whatever your role is. I mean, you could be a drummer or a guitar player or a singer. And you could literally think about those same things. Like not just like, how do I, how do I do this, this and that, but like, maybe if you just did three of those five things and, and they're like, it makes those three more impactful, right?

and makes the whole of the experience more meaningful to somebody who's watching it from the outside.

Adam Pippert (55:10)
Agreed, agreed. Awesome, this has been an amazing conversation, Paul. I would expect nothing less from you, but I very much enjoyed this. And I've said this every time I've recorded one of these, but getting to talk to coworkers and people with a lot of experience and people that I know resonate with me because we play the same instruments and have a lot of things in common, this has been fantastic. So I wanna thank you for taking an hour out of your Friday think time or whatever, however you divide up your week.

to come and chat because I think this is a really great way to sort of think about what you've done, think about who you are and where you want to go next, right? Like having these conversations, that's every time I'm talking to somebody, I'm just like, there's all these new options in a career or in music that I'm thinking about and things that are suddenly opened up to me because I just dared to ask, right? So thank you. Where can people find you?

other than LinkedIn, like what other means to find your music or conversations or whatever.

Paul Frields (56:11)
Yeah. Oh yeah. Thanks for the plug. Yeah. What do you have going on today? So there's a couple of places people can find me. I'm not hard to find online, but my synth alter ego is called Stickster, S-T-I-C-K-S-T-E-R. You can find me on Bandcamp and socials and all that sort of stuff. I also have a pretty well-outfitted project studio at home where I will do like...

I lay down parts for people, contribute, whether it's keys, guitar, bass, beats, whatever, is 5th Dominion Studios, and that's 5th,

Adam Pippert (56:51)
Cool, awesome. Well, Paul, thanks so much. Have a great afternoon. And for everybody that is viewing this podcast, you have a great afternoon as well, or evening or morning or whenever you're listening to us. And we'll catch up again later. Thanks. Yeah.

Paul Frields (57:06)
Thanks a lot for having me, Adam.