Kushner Cos. Band Debuts on Spotify

A walk through the glossy Kushner Cos. offices atop the General Motors building on Fifth Avenue oozes real estate aptitude and savoir-faire.

But there is more than meet's the eye— the company's French-born chief executive Laurent Morali is also working on the next hit for Local Law, a rock band made entirely by current and former members of the firm.

Morali carries the melody tickling the strings of his electric guitar, while former head of design Karen Zabarsky takes over the mic (she also writes the lyrics for their original songs). Acquisitions associate Michael Lehmann plays the drums and Morris Harary, also a former member of the firm is on bass.

I sat down for an exclusive interview with Morali to discuss Local Law's recent Spotify debut: a six-track album dubbed Eight.

How did you get into music?

LM: It started very early because my mother was a piano teacher at home. There was always something going on either her playing or her students.

When I was getting into music, my mom told me I should play the flute. So I started playing the flute, but I was listening to Black Sabbath and Metallica. And I was like, "Where is the flute? I need a guitar."

And so I said I want an electric guitar and I quit the flute. I had so much pent up demand to start playing guitar that every day I would play one or two hours a day, it was crazy. And I learned by myself. But at the time you didn't have YouTube or any of this stuff, so I just bought a book to teach you how to play guitar.

Have you played in bands before?

I went to Toulouse to study in business school and I joined a band there. Then I moved to South Korea for a year and a half and I also joined a band, which is cool because music is kind of universal. I didn't speak Korean, but we could play with them. And then I came to America in 22 years ago, October 28 2001.

What was it like to travel here a month after Sept. 11?

There was no one on the plane. My wife was six months pregnant with our first son and, and my boss in Paris wanted us to go to New York. When 9/11 happened wanted to come even more. I came by myself. October 11, just to find a place and she joined me three weeks later. I had found our first apartment on the Upper West Side and we never left the Upper West Side.

How did you form Local Law?

I was very happy in New York, but the one thing that was missing in my life was a band. I needed to play more music. It's in me, I need it. It's my shrink.

We were at a company event in 2015 and Karen was singing karaoke. And I told her I play guitar and that I was looking for a band. And literally next to us was Mikey Lehmann who told us he played the drums. And I said, "This is it. We're starting a band." We rented a studio in Midtown and we started jamming. The chemistry was there immediately.

Do you perform together publicly?

Yes. The same year we started the band we performed on stage in 2016. Morris joined in 2017 three months before we performed at Real Estate Rockers because we needed a bass player. I taught him how to play everything before the show—he never played bass before that.

I called him into my office one day and I said, "Morris, how you doing?" He said, "I'm doing good." I said, "Morris, you're going to be our bass player."

After Morris left Kushner, I needed a new bass player who was actually Robin who's my assistant. I said, "I want a new assistant but the criteria is she's got to play bass." Turns out that she plays the bass so it's perfect (it wasn't real criteria).

How did you define your style of music?

Of the six songs on the album there are two covers and four originals. The two covers, "Feeling Good" and "Jesus Just Left Chicago" are classic blues songs, and we turn them into our special sauce, which is more rock. Morris and Robin also have the same taste, and Karen has the capacity to sing all types of genres. It turned out that she loved the style of music that we were putting together so it worked out perfectly.

Listen to the album