Very rarely does an artist come “out of nowhere” to make an impressive debut. At age 39, when most singers are just finding their groove, Gregory Porter surprised everyone with a stunning debut Water. So many people were impressed that it even got a Grammy nomination, and his mini tour of the West Coast the past few weeks has been getting standing ovations. We caught up with Mr. Porter after his recent gig at Catalina’s Jazz Club.
Where he’s been all these years, and what got him into singing-
I haven’t been hiding. I’ve just been doing my thing in theatre. Wherever I could do music. I’ve been singing for more than a couple of years at St. Nick’s Pub and a few spots in Brooklyn, where I live. It’s hard to get noticed, sometimes.
My mother was a minister (at Church of God in Christ), and she had me sing. I’ve always been inspired to sing, even at a young age. You find something that you do well, and you get going at it. It was another way to please my mom. I was a momma’s boy, you know, and singing a beautiful gospel song to her was paramount to a foot massage when she’d come home from work.I grew up going to church. She was a missionary; she would feed, clothe and house people, so we had a bunch of little storefront churches. Sometimes I’d be singing by myself, sometimes with an out of tune piano. When we did go to larger churches, I would hear a lot of gospel music. Her favorite was Mahalia Jackson. All the great mass choirs as well. When I was growing up in Los Angeles, Mount Calvary was a large church, but most of my church experience was in my mom’s small church. (My faith) not a thing that I trumpet, it’s more like if you’re leading by example. It’s my life. I don’t beat anybody over the head with it; I just do it, and hopefully they can feel it. Sometimes they don’t know where it’s coming from, and then it will hit them and then they’ll ask, “what was THAT?” and I’ll say, “You’ll find out!”
I’ve always enjoyed singing. I have 5 brothers and three girls in my family, so we used singing to entertain ourselves. I visit churches still. I don’t have a church home right now. Denominations don’t matter that much to me as much as before. I’ll visit any church denomination where the Word is preached. The foundation of my acting was our church plays. We started there, and then some Shakespeare in theatre classes in high school. Then in college there was a small theatre group called We Shall Not Be Moved, taken from that old gospel song. That really got my theatre juices going, so after San Diego State University I jumped into professional theatre with the San Diego Rep.
My mother enjoyed that I was expressing myself in a musical way. I remember asking her when I was a little boy if it was ok for her if I sang “love” songs. She said, “Baby, God MADE love, so it’s okay to sing love songs.” I asked her this because I didn’t know if I wanted to be a gospel singer, but she was fine with it. She knows that everything that I do would have the spirit connection, even if it were a love song. The emotional content of my music is really coming from a spiritual place that developed in the church.
What the impetus was to finally put out a recording
It was finally time. With the economics of the music business, yes, I could have gone to a friend’s house and recorded an album on somebody’s computer and press it up for $1.50, and then sell it out of a bag. But, I felt that I wanted to go through a record company that had the resources that I needed to record it properly, and to do proper promotion and distribution, and Motema offered me that. Once I had all things in place, I started to collect all my songs and put them together. The title and the theme also came about organically; it wasn’t pre-planned like, “let me have a group of songs that would be connected on the theme of water.” It just came about organically. I’m a songwriter, and I have written a couple of musicals thus far. I have no problems writing songs and expressing my musical ideas.
I tried to have an organic approach in terms of the writing of the record. The thing that will come into my heart. “Water,” the title track is really not a gospel song per se. But water is very symbolic in the Bible of cleansing, renewing, regrowing. The themes of the songs are baptismal in a way. Washing the troubles of your life away. It came up again in the song “Wisdom.” At the very end of the song, I go through the traditional song “Wade In The Water.” That just happened in the studio-I didn’t plan on doing that, it just happened. But the conversation I’m having in the song is with the wise elders, kind of showing the younger people in thegroup which way to go to make their life easier, and their musical journey easier. I’m not specific about which journey I’m talking about, but that’s what I’m talking about. The elders are paving the way for us, wading in ahead. The water in that song the elders are going ahead for us.
What was your reaction to your recording when you first heard it?
I thought it was strong. I was feeling pretty good about the way things were sounding. Sometimes, when I’m singing a song, I’m going to an emotional place. Then, after the song is done, I won’t remember the place that I went to. So, listening to the recording was like, “Ok, I was feeling it then!” It was a great experience with the band in one big room where we could all look at each other with no real separation. The way the songs came across on the record were the way they came out in the studio from top to bottom. There were no overdubs, no splicing. I wanted to have a live feeling, and I think it does. Just an honest sound. No disrespect to anyone, and I expect in the future to do an album the is sonically perfect and very clean as well. I want to do that also. But, everything is so “perfect” in the music industry today that I wanted to do a record that was just “me.”
How did you first learn of your Grammy nomination?
I was walking in Lower Manhattan and I got a facebook message on my phone. But, I thought it was a general message, which said, “Congratulations on your Grammy Nomination.” I figured it wasn’t for me, so I put my phone away. Then, I got a personal message from a friend at about 10:30 at night with the same message, so then I started to run around in a circle and jump up and down. I wanted to do some sort of celebration, so I went into a hotel, but the doorman at the hotel wouldn’t let me in, telling me , “We’re closed.” But they finally let me in. It was a complete surprise.
How has the mini tour gone with the band and Hubie Laws sitting in
His response has been very strong. I got a standing ovation in Catalina’s and in Portland as well. I think they’re responding to my honesty, that I’m coming from a real place. Some of the songs that I do, and even some of the originals that I’ve written that aren’t on the record, the audience feels that they’re coming from an honest place. I wrote a song about my mother, and I have a couple of broken hearted songs that people have responded to. It’s been cool.
(My mom, who’s in heaven now) is included in that group of people that get me across the river; the song I performed in dedication to her at Catalina’s was called “Mother’s Song.” I did it for my brothers and sisters in the audience. I wrote it for them, and that was the first time I performed it for them, so I broke down a bit. It really hit me. Having them there brought the lyrics home for me.
I recorded with Hubert several years ago, on a tribute to Nat King Cole. I sang the very last song on the cd, “Smile.” That was our first meeting, and I got on that record by “accident.” A friend of mine was producing that record for him. He told Hubert, “Listen to my friend sing “Smile.”I honestly thought that they were just playing the song back, and I was simply singing to myself over his flute lines. Hubert heard it and said, “Wow. That’s pretty good; we gotta set the mike up and get it recorded.” That’s how we did it. I was just there just to hang out. That was a great musical collaboration.
So, when I was coming to Catalina’s, I called Hubert and his sister and told them and they gladly agreed to come. I knew that if he comes to hear music, he’ll normally come with his horn. He was great. The song, doing “Skylark” the way that we did, we really got down and into it.
Last, but not least, what’s with the ubiquitous hat?
Laughs. I’ve had some surgery on my skin, so this has been my look for a little while and will continue to be for awhile longer. People recognize me by it now. It is what it is.