This is 63: "Modern Sounds" Radio Host Cliff Chenfeld Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire

"I am still wearing the same basic uniform of T shirts, jeans and converse all stars, that I have since the Nixon administration."

From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”

Here, Modern Sounds radio host and former indie music label chief Cliff Chenfeld responds. -Sari Botton

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Cliff Chenfeld at Burning Man in 2022

Cliff Chenfeld co-founded and was co-CEO of Razor & Tie, an independent music company that included a label, a music publishing company and the kids’ audio brand Kidz Bop. Razor + Tie had numerous Gold and Platinum records and was one of the largest independently owned music companies in the United States. Chenfeld and his partner Craig Balsam sold Razor + Tie in 2018. He is the host of the radio show Modern Sounds on which he plays and speaks about new music for busy listeners who are looking for help in discovering new artists. Chenfeld also curates the Modern Sounds playlist on Spotify which he updates regularly with new music. Chenfeld is partner in several music festivals including WonderBus (Columbus, Ohio) and WonderWorks (Pittsburgh). He has also been the executive producer of a number of films including Joan Baez: How Sweet The Sound, Serious Moonlight and Concussion. Chenfeld grew up in Columbus, Ohio, graduated from Ohio State and NYU Law School, and practiced law for five years before starting Razor & Tie. Find him on Instagram at @cchenfeld.

How old are you?

63

Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think? 

I don’t usually think of myself as 63 but I also don’t think of myself as a different age. On a day-to-day basis, I don’t have a number that I identify with. It not that I feel ageless, I’m aware that I have a lot of miles on me, but my age doesn’t really factor into my consciousness very often.

Around five years ago, I moved to this stage of my life in which I no longer work full time, my kids are adults, I am fortunate enough to be in good physical shape and I can explore what interests me. So I’m in that phase, it doesn’t feel like 63 and it doesn’t feel like 40, its just now. I think it is the phase of being not old and not young.

Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?

I guess my 60s feel younger than I thought they would, although I didn’t give much thought to the topic in the past. But to the extent that I looked to my father or older generations, I certainly feel considerably younger than I perceived them to be at the time. I am ten years older than Archie Bunker was supposed to be on All in the Family and I still think I am closer in age to the Meathead. I’m also somewhat delusional in the sense that I spend a good amount of time with folks who are younger than me, sometimes significantly younger, and am sometimes of the belief that they are my peers until my wife reminds me that some of them were born when I was already an adult. As to my actual peers, I guess it depends.

I have many friends who are close to my age who have a great appetite for fun, adventure, and exploration and when I’m hanging with them, I certainly feel that we are on the same page. They are not going to go quietly into the night and they see no reason to rein in their ambitions and experiences and I’m clearly in that camp. There are others who seem to have moved to the next phase of their lives where they are going at a different speed and are a little more settled down in how they are living. I guess compared to those 60 somethings, I feel a little younger.  

Its still hard to believe that we can hear virtually any music ever recorded with a single click. That’s a miracle. I am certainly romantic about the days of vinyl and immersive listening to select albums, but the access and discovery possibilities are almost incomprehensible.

What do you like about being your age?

My age coincides with a lifestyle that I very much enjoy so if I’m going to be 63 when it is happening, then I really like being 63. I like the fact that I am living my life with the perspective and knowledge that I have accumulated over the years, which makes today’s experiences and encounters more meaningful than ever. I also have a sense of urgency to get to the things that I care about and not take much for granted. I think I’ve always been inclined to live this way but as I get older, this becomes more imperative. I also hope that I have a deeper context in which to analyze things and hopefully things that seem dark and sad can be received with a little more perspective than when I was younger. 

Chenfeld at 17.

I feel fortunate to be part of a group of people who are at a certain stage of their lives (not 35 but not 80) who are very passionate about community, experiences, and adventures, and I like meeting them and experiencing life with them. I also find that it is very rewarding and invigorating to make new friends at this stage of my life, to develop new relationships with people who are compatible with the person that you have evolved into. Sometimes they can be more in alignment with you than some of your oldest friends.

With the virtual and digital developments in our society over the last twenty-fivce years, there is an increasing hunger for connection and community and that presents lots of opportunities to facilitate fun, camaraderie and discovery.

I feel fortunate that I had plenty of gas left in the tank when I arrived at this point.  I am in shape to do nearly anything I want and can accompany that freedom and autonomy with a good deal of curiosity, exploration and energy. 

I am lucky to be at an age where I have witnessed and continue to witness the technological changes that are transforming our life, that we often take for granted.  Just watching the changes in how we listen to music over the last twenty years. Its still hard to believe that we can hear virtually any music ever recorded with a single click.  That’s a miracle. I am certainly romantic about the days of vinyl and immersive listening to select albums but the access and discovery possibilities are almost incomprehensible. I am continuously amazed at the ability to access information, to immerse yourself in any topic, to connect with folks who might share those interests and passions. Despite the political environment of recent years, we are still in a considerably freer and more open society than we were 25 years ago and I’m glad to be here to witness it.

Chenfeld’s “Modern Sounds” Spotify Play List is below: (You can also listen to his Modern Sounds radio show, dedicated to helping busy listeners discover new music.)

What is difficult about being your age?

Well I can’t be oblivious to actuarial tables. I don’t see an infinite runway anymore.  As Keith Richards says, “It’s good to be here, it’s good to be anywhere.”

When I play sports, go to a show, read a book, whatever, I’m not thinking that I’m 63 and this is harder or less fun.  It’s not really part of my consciousness in any meaningful way.

It comes up more on a prospective level. It hits me when I’m reading about some project in the future, say a new building project in NYC and they announce the anticipated completion date as 2038 and I think, oof, I’m likely to be in a very different phase when that gets done, if I’m in any phase at all. Or that all of these new right wing Supreme Court Justices are younger than me and it just may be that it’s going to be a right wing court for the rest of my life. I’ve always been under the illusion that things would always get better eventually in my lifetime. Some things may not. Things are happening that I won’t be part of. I’m not going to read all of the books that I thought I’d get to, go to all of the places that I haven’t been to. No one does, but this realization has become more predominant recently. So being conscious of those realities has increased the pressure that I put on myself to get to the things I want to do while still trying to being chill enough to appreciate serendipity and calm. Not always an easy balance for me.

I have to acknowledge that it is harder to learn new skills at this age. I’ve taken up piano recently and my learning curve compared to when I learned how to play guitar as a kid is night and day. And how nice it was to have those skills as part of your hard wiring when you were younger. It takes a lot more effort to accomplish a fraction of the results at this point.

I can’t pretend that seeing some of the changes in the US in recent years, mostly connected to the rise of Trump and his followers, does not cause an extra layer of sadness because of my age. Until the end of the 90s, I believed that we as a society, as a world, were on a positive trajectory, more cooperation, more tolerance, more understanding and obviously that belief turned out to be flawed in many ways. So to sit here now at 63, to see many of the backward steps that society has taken, is even more disappointing when you had hoped the world would be on to a better place and that you were going to see it become a better place. As the t shirt says, “I can’t believe we still have to protest this shit.”

I know that is the classic cliché of person goes to Burning Man and thinks they have found the answer, but having that experience expanded my sense of my own identity. I had a few more gears than I thought and if you had told me about that experience in 2005, when I was in the middle of building my business and raising my family, I wouldn’t have considered it; my identify was far more narrowly defined. 

What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?

While I probably hadn’t given it much thought, I suspect I would have believed that folks my age would today be considerably more disenfranchised on a cultural and personal level than we appear to be. I’m not sure if it’s our generation’s insistence, often probably to an annoying level, on taking more than our fair share of the oxygen, or because many of our cultural landmarks (Music from the 60s to 90s, Seinfeld, etc) continue to have resilient currency, but the world is very open to people our age, in ways that it wasn’t to my father’s generation. 

I’m also fascinated by the perception of songs from the past today. We used to think certain songs were cool, certain ones mattered, others were disposable. Now it’s all been flattened.

Chenfeld at 20.

No one I know would have predicted in 1982 that Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” would practically become the national anthem in 2023. That was sort of just a cheeseball arena rock power ballad when it came out. Yeah, I know The Sopranos finale helped, but its way beyond that. Now its more popular than just about any from that era ,including songs by the Rolling Stones, Prince, Pink Floyd, U2, etc. 

I thought I would have figured out more at this point. But as I get older, I become less certain about many topics. We just read Issac Bashevisinger’s Enemies, a Love Story in our book group of four married couples our age (yes, we have a couples’ book group, something else I didn’t anticipate being involved with at this point in my life, and which I love) and he has a great line: “Those who doubt everything are also capable of believing everything.” I’m more and more somewhere in between doubting everything and believing everything. It all seems possible. Life seems increasingly wonderous.

What has aging given you? Taken away from you?

Age has given me the pleasure of rediscovery. An experience, a book or piece of music, I can now revisit through my current self and see it through a different lens, sometimes deeper, sometimes clearer. It has made me increasingly appreciative of the wonder of life and the fact that most people are trying their best and deserve the benefit of the doubt. It has made me much more focused on people, activities and ideas that bring me joy and caused me to impose a more rigorous set of criteria before I commit time to something.

It has given me the opportunity to watch NYC reinvent itself over forty years in miraculous ways, to watch my kids grow into amazing adults, and to share this world with them, to build a life with my wife since we were in our 20s and watch that morph and grow remarkable, unfathomable roots and branches. What has it taken away from me? Certainty, egg creams, knee bends.  

My mother encouraged me to keep a journal when I was younger, and I have certain years in which I wrote nearly every day. The amount of information I have from my life in those periods is staggering compared to how little I may remember from years when I didn’t write anything. All that lost information from the years where I didn’t write as much is very difficult to access, its circulating somewhere in my brain, but having access to it is mostly a mystery. Our understanding of how our brains can retrieve much of that information is growing, so perhaps there is hope.

But as those years recede, I suspect more will get lost. If I can’t remember it, does it matter if it happened?

How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?

I think it has expanded it. When you are building your career, raising a family, going 24/7, you are often on cruise control, automatic pilot, pushing towards a goal, keeping your eye on the prize, you often lack perspective, get into a rut, neglect aspects of your life. I think I have better sense of what makes me happy, who I want to spend time with, how I want to spend that time. I hope it has also made me more empathetic.  People are complicated, life is hard and its good to cut people some slack. As I get older, I think I do more of that. On the other hand, I know what I like so I don’t want to spend too much time with folks who don’t make me laugh or excite me.   

In this phase of my life, without the burden of working full time, I can spend more time connecting to things that I really care about and want to engage in. There is more intention than there was when I was younger. There is also more room for serendipity, for something unexpected to happen that can open up an entirely new experience. Seven or eight years ago, I attended a conference, met a business acquaintance, we became friends, stayed in touch, in 2019, he asked me to join him at Burning Man and the experience was transformative. At least it seemed so for a few days. 

And yes, I know that is the classic cliché of person goes to Burning Man and thinks they have found the answer, but having that experience expanded my sense of my own identity. I had a few more gears than I thought and if you had told me about that experience in 2005, when I was in the middle of building my business and raising my family, I wouldn’t have considered it; my identify was far more narrowly defined.  Today, much more is possible. 

Listen to Chenfeld’s radio show, Modern Sounds.

It’s interesting to me how quickly our sense of identity changes. I was the co-founder and co-CEO of a music company for almost 28 years and it was a huge part of who I was.  We sold our company in 2018 and a few months later, it was almost as if that role had been occupied by someone else. Life often feels less like a continuum to me and more like a group of almost discrete chapters.

On some level, my identity has been connected to my generation, particularly on the business side. We started our company by creating music compilations celebrating the hits of the 1970s in the early 90s as our peers were hitting their 30s and growing nostalgic about their youth. We created Kidz Bop when we were young parents and thought that there was a void in the market for parents who were worried about explicit new music and kids who had grown too sophisticated for Barney. Today with my Modern Sounds radio show and playlist, I’m responding to the desire of many of our generation to hear new music and get exposed to contemporary culture. So part of my identity continues to be providing some curatorial services for my peers as we age and go through different phases.

…to sit here now at 63, to see many of the backward steps that society has taken, is even more disappointing when you had hoped the world would be on to a better place and that you were going to see it become a better place. As the t shirt says, “I can’t believe we still have to protest this shit.”

What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?

At this point, I’m not sure what age-related milestones there are to be had. A notable birthday or anniversary?  I’m not really focused on those.  I did try to have a good time on the 50^th anniversary of my bar mitzvah and succeeded. Does that count? Maybe I’ll celebrate that anniversary each year, which also coincides with my grand-dog’s birthday. Sounds like a very promising mash-up.

Ok, I have one—my oldest son is getting married next year to a wonderful woman and I’m very much looking forward to it, and if and when they have kids, I will be so in.

What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?

I cant say I have a favorite age. Almost every one of them has been memorable and each time I think that this is the year that is best, the next one comes around and I think it is even better. I would have thought that when my kids were younger and we were immersed in family 24/7 was my favorite age but I am thrilled to be hanging with my sons as adults and wouldn’t trade it for anything.

When I look back on my past and think of myself at each previous phase, I always feel that I’ve learned a lot or had experiences since then that I treasure and that I was lucky to be there.

But would I like to go back to another age? Sure, all of them! I’d like to re-experience every age I’ve ever been. I’d like to viscerally feel all that I was experiencing, both for the first time and from my current perspective

I loved being a kid and the first music I heard other than my mom and dad singing to me was probably the Beatles. I’d love to experience the wonder again of hearing that for the first time.

There are thousands of amazing moments in your life, who wouldn’t want to relive them?

Left, Chenfeld with his family at a Springsteen concert in 2016; Right, with his 88-year-old mother.

So we do the best we can to keep the memories alive and to make them a living part of us as we continue our journey. I have no problem living in the present and trying to celebrate and feel the past as much as I can.

Would I like to go back to a previous age and make some different decisions? I don’t really think that way; it’s not an option so I don’t see what the point is other than to make sure that if I made some decisions in the past that weren’t the best, I learn from them and don’t repeat the flawed reasoning that led to those decisions. People say that they have no regrets but I think everyone has them, it’s just a matter of the place that they play in your life. When people say they have no regrets, I think they mean that while they may have made some decisions that they would have liked to reverse, they are satisfied and comfortable with where their lives are and that they are not dwelling on those irreversible decisions or using them as a crutch to explain aspects of their lives that haven’t worked out as well as they’d like. Under that interpretation, I have no regrets.

Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?

Its always inspiring to go to a concert and see one of your long time favorites perform at a very high level. I recently saw Bruce Springsteen at 73 put on some fabulous shows, and watching him almost 50 years after having first seen him live, still vital, still passionate, still powerful makes you feel good about where you are and what can happen to you. My mother is hugely inspiring to me. She is 88 years old, still working, still trying to improve the world, completely independent, creative, open to new experiences, and steady in her optimism and positivity. Mel Brooks has maintained his irreverent perspective no matter how old, continues to write, create, engage as he approaches 97. I’m in awe of folks who are very far down the road in their life and find purpose, joy and engagement on a regular basis. Elderly folks who have minimized existential angst are role models.

What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?

I have very little style and have done nothing to maintain whatever beauty I may or may not have.

I am still wearing the same basic uniform of T shirts, jeans and converse all stars, that I have since the Nixon administration. I lost a good amount of my hair and it turned grey a while ago and I took no measures to reverse that. However, in recent years, I have realized that festive and outlandish attire at the right occasion can very much enhance the event, so I have tried to do my part when such occasions arise. Reviews have been mixed at best.

On the health front, I need to sleep more and eat less than when I was younger. 

I’ve also had numerous injuries in my life, mostly from sports and now when I have a more serious one and have to take time off, I sometimes wonder what percentage of my remaining quality athletic life am losing by having to sit out. Then I meditate or something like that, activities that I didn’t do when I was younger, and stop worrying about it.

I’m more and more somewhere in between doubting everything and believing everything. It all seems possible. Life seems increasingly wonderous.

What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?

Well I suppose I could color my hair, add some hair, wear more grown up clothes, stop listening to new music or go to loud concerts, tell everyone that things were better in the old days, make fun of things that I don’t understand, get a fancy sports car, play golf or vote Republican, but I don’t seem ready for any of that. Well, maybe I should stop playing basketball. I really suck.

What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?

I was planning a very big 60^th birthday celebration in March of 2020 and as you can imagine, circumstances beyond my control, significantly altered those plans. Rather than reschedule a big party, I’ve had a bunch of micro-parties over the last few years and feel like I made up for it. I try to have as many experiences as possible that seem like they would be fit for a birthday so when the actual date comes, it is just an opportunity for another one.