Driving hard on a grand piano and Yamaha Motif 8 with the help of Gary Meek (sax), Dave Weckl (drums), and Brian Bromberg (bass), Jeff introduced the Long Beach, California, crowd to burning tunes from his newest album, He Had a Hat. Stylistically diverse, the album travels from the gospel-infused “Anthem for a New America” to the grooving funk of “Burn Brightly,” the swinging “BC Bop” to the mellow “Requiem for Gandalf,” a tracked named in fact for a much-loved, now-deceased feline. Playful, inventive, and challenging at all times, He Had a Hat makes it clear just how accomplished Jeff is in every aspect of his creative process. We hung with the man — and his adorable cats — at his home studio to find out more.
Can you tell me the background behind He Had a Hat?
Even though I produce a lot of other artists, I like to hire producers when I make my own records. Doing it by myself isn’t much fun, for one thing, and also I really enjoy the process of bringing in one of my peers who can help me find some new stylistic areas to explore. One of the main things about this album was working with Bobby Colomby, who is the producer and co-wrote most of the music. I’ve been following his career for years. He was the founder and drummer of Blood, Sweat and Tears, and he also produced Jaco Pastorius’ debut album, which is one of the greatest jazz albums ever.
So he pushed me to explore some areas that I hadn’t really delved into before. There’s some straight-ahead stuff. Pretty much every song is harmonically interesting — there aren’t one- or two-chord vamps anywhere. That’s the one thing that carries through the whole album, since there are a lot of different stylistic areas on there.
Are you going to continue to gig with the quartet you played with at Vault 350?
I like those musicians. Generally speaking, a quartet seems to be good for me because it’s the minimum amount of guys that I can get to really express my music. It’s something new to have an acoustic bass player instead of an electric bass player and to play acoustic piano myself, so I’m just experimenting with it. Brian Bromberg is such a monster, and he brings so much to the band. Having guys like him and Dave Weckl is like having a couple extra musicians onstage because they’re so phenomenal.
I have some gigs on the east coast coming up later and I’ll probably use an electric bass player. So I take situations as they come and try different things to experiment and see what works.
What’s the rehearsal process like for your live shows? Do you give the players charts and/or recordings?
I’m learning Sibelius right now. That’s something I want to get better at, but to be honest, most of the stuff I’ve been doing is handwritten. Having FTP sites like iDisk and YouSendIt.com — they’re fantastic tools to help you communicate with musicians. Ideally, when you rehearse, you want everyone to walk in and know what they’re doing so you’re just fine-tuning, rather than starting from scratch.
So everybody had music, everybody had MP3s or ACC files of the album versions of the tunes and, in some cases, some live versions. And in this case, I even had a little sheet that I had prepared for the show that had a list of each tune, who takes the first solo, the form of each song and how it was going to go down, and the set list. So I had that in advance. The more organized you can be, the better it is. That’s for sure.
Are the arrangements you play live the same as the arrangements that you play on the album?
No, we extend things live. Most of the solo sections are open — the people that are soloing can play as long as they want. When you make a record, you generally don’t extend things as much as you would live. Live, people really want to hear musicians explore the material and see what they can do with it. The recorded medium and the live medium are really different. Live, you’re interacting directly with the audience and getting feedback from them. You can get away with taking an eight-minute solo if you’re really inspired. There are records where people do that, but it could seem very self-indulgent and excessive [to put that in a track].
As a result of working in pop music, I’m really conscious of form, and that’s something I’m changing my opinion about. I’m starting to feel like the solos should be longer. One song on the record that I wish had a longer solo is “BC Bop.” It seems really short. After the fact now, I wish it had at least one more chorus.
You just have to find that happy medium. I’m moving in the direction where I think I’m going to be including longer improvisational sections.
On the album, many of the solos seem to be in 8- or 16-bar chunks. It was cool to hear the group stretch out more at the Vault 350 show.
Yeah, on “Anthem for a New America,” I wrote an entirely new section. As much as I like the song the way it is on the album, when I started to play it live, I wasn’t happy soloing over it. So I came up with this elaborate coda thing that we jammed on and Dave soloed over it for a bit. I actually spent a couple of days on that. It’s one of the things that you discover when you make a record and then you try to play it live.
And another song we played, “Hudson,” which is one of my favorites on the album, I felt like I needed to do a bit more work to make that more effective in a live situation. The music’s brand new and this was one of the first time’s we’ve performed it, so we’re just learning. You try it out, learn the hard way, and see how it goes over when you’re up there.
Speaking of “Anthem For a New America,” and many other tunes on this album, the song titles are quirky and interesting. What’s behind them?
“Anthem for a New America” — when we were working on the record in November, the last election was going on. We were right in the middle of it while we were writing. Obviously the voters in that election made a pretty big statement that they’d like to see America move in a different direction. I certainly feel that way. The song has that kind of Aaron Copland-esque triadic wide-open-spaces quality to it, so it seemed to fit.
“Super Fusion Unit” has a funny story behind it. When Brian, Dave, Gary, and I went over to Japan to play, they billed us as the Super Fusion Unit, and we didn’t even know! We’re the Super Fusion Unit? It was hilarious.
There’s a very interesting syncopated keyboard section that opens the song and reoccurs on “He Had a Hat.”
It’s essentially a cycle of fourths playing minor-eleventh chords with some slight variations. I have an iTunes file where I have instrumental versions of a lot of the songs I play in my band so I can jam over them. On that song, I did an edit where that section lasts for about five minutes, so I can just work on trying to play over the changes, because it’s pretty challenging. I was trying to come up with something that would be almost as hard as playing on “Giant Steps.”
Was there any particular inspiration for that progression?
Overall, I was just trying to push myself to write and produce music that would really be challenging, music that would make me work and develop my own ability to improvise. I wanted to push my own envelope as much as I could. The rest of the song is a little more normal and funky — a medium tempo, contemporary jazz groove. I like the early days of fusion with Weather Report, Return to Forever, and John McLaughlin, musicians who were more apt to juxtapose different sections of the song to make big contrasts. They would go from one thing to another — [the sections] didn’t necessarily have anything to do with each other, but it was be cool anyway.
How long does it take you to go from the seed of a tune — a progression, section, or whatever — to a finished song that you’re happy with?
Usually, if I spend a full day in the studio, like an eight to ten hour day, I get a very complete-sounding track going. Sometimes it takes longer. People ask me, do you ever have trouble writing music? I think it’s really easy to write music. It’s really hard to write good music. [Laughs.]
So how do you know when a piece is done?
I think I have this adding machine in my brain that’s always keeping track of aspects of a production — the groove and the form, the orchestration and the performances. Everything has to be in the black at some point. You have to get that critical mass where it’s working and you’re happy with it.
One thing that I’ve been working on over the last couple years, especially working with Steve Dubin on the three records that I did with him, is trying to not overdo things and not to put elements in that aren’t necessary — just use essential ingredients and don’t overdo it. Space is really important because that allows you to really hear all the elements. If you have too many parts, then you lose the ability to hear what’s really nice about the song.
So ideally, you can do a great production with very few elements. But all those elements have to be right. I think Steely Dan is a great example, albums like Aja and Gaucho. On those records, there were no unnecessary elements. Everything there was a fantastic performance, and it all worked brilliantly together. I try to use that kind of that thing as my model.
Uncluttered arranging is one thing I like about good hip-hop production.
Yeah, it’s really, really sparse — too sparse sometimes. [Laughs.] When they’re paying attention to lyrics and vocals, the rest of the track becomes less important, but when you’re dealing with instrumental music, you don’t have that. So I think the elements of the track — with the drums and bass and nuances — become more central.
As a producer, how do you decide who to produce?
Usually, the phone rings. As far contemporary jazz, I’ve been doing it for so long, I have certain people I work with over and over again, like Michael Franks, Eric Marienthal, and Gerald Albright. When those guys are making records, it’s not unusual for them to call me to produce, co-write, or a little bit of both. Sometimes it’s just a matter of running into somebody by chance and finding out they’re recording. I love to write music, so a lot of times, I’ll have a bunch of different things that I’m working on and I’ll send a bunch of MP3s out. Or if someone’s making a record, they call me up and say, “Do you have any funky tracks lying around?”
Honestly, I prefer when I write stuff specifically for a project. To me, that’s more satisfying because you really tailor something exactly for that artist. I like to get together with the artist and hang out — “Who’re your favorite players? What records do you love? Do you like this direction or that direction?” You really get into it and try to find some inspiration.
As a producer, you get to know someone’s artistry, what they’re capable of, and what they’re playing, and you want to put them in the best situation you can. You want to allow them to express their strengths and, if they have any weaknesses, try to figure out how to minimize those. It’s all generalities, but basically, you want to work with someone where you feel you’re on the same wavelength. There are a billion little decisions that you make in the course of producing a record — what key you’re playing in, how fast a tune is, the form, how [the artist] plays on it — and you have to be in sync to make sure everything’s going in the right direction.
Being an experienced producer yourself, are you a tough artist for other people to produce?
I can usually solve musical problems — “We need a B section,” or “We need to make it sound more powerful.” Where I generally need help is focussing on what kind of record to make. When I was working with Steve Dubin, on at least one of the records, we were listening to Joe Sample and Incognito. We were like, “Let’s do something that has that slightly Euro Incognito sound, but has Joe Sample’s great melodies and chord changes.” So Steve helped me focus stylistically.
With Bobby, it was all over the place. But we didn’t try to have a unified style for the album at all. That’s what I really look for as a co-producer. [Working with] tools and skill set that I have, should we go in this direction or that direction? It’s nice to have somebody to help you figure that out and fine tune your work.
There were a few times where he would suggest things and I didn’t necessarily buy it at first. You come into those areas of conflict sometimes. If you’re hiring somebody to produce you, you’re paying them, and you’re doing it because you really respect that person’s opinion. So it would be in your best interest to take their advice. That goes with me both being produced and also being hired as a producer. But hey man, it’s all about having fun just making music in the studio!
For more tips, tricks, and insight from Jeff Lorber, check out the streaming video clips at keyboardmag.tv!