Coming out of the studio world lately, he’s released an exciting new album, and is backing it up with a tour. We’ve caught up with the Angeleno between trips to Europe.
YOUR LATEST DISC IS THE MOST CONSISTENT IN THAT IT’S THE MOST UNIFIED IN SOUND AND CONCEPT
That was really my mission on this one. I’ve been playing with this group of young musicians that I really dig, and I was enjoying the sound that we had as a group. A lot of my previous records were about the studio. You know, I was a “studio rat” for so many years that my records were records were studio projects. I’d be three months in the studio on a project, and I’d be adding this or changing that. With this record, we spent just seven, eight days in the studio and that was it. We just recorded the tracks to get a more organic sound, and that was about it for this one.
AT THIS STAGE IN YOUR CAREER, YOU’RE WELL ESTABLISHED IN THE MUSIC STUDIO INDUSTRY. YOU DON’T HAVE TO TOUR, BUT YOU’VE BEEN DOING IT A LOT LATELY? WHAT’S THE MOTIVATION? WHAT CHANGED?
Well, I just started playing more with people and started feeling that this was the next era for me. I’m turning a page, and finding myself finally playing in front of the people that I’ve been making music for, for so long. It’s incredible. After a show, you meet someone who says that they’ve been listening to your music for 30 years, and that this song did this and that for them and it means so much to them. It’s a beautiful experience, and so I think that this is my era for taking the music to the people.
SO, YOUR WIFE DIDN’T SAY SHE WAS TIRED OF YOU HANGING AROUND AND KICKED YOU OUT FOR AWHILE!
(Laughs) No, but our kids are all grown up, so, it’s not as difficult to leave the house like it used to be.
WHAT WAS THE MOTIVATION AND IMPETUS FOR YOUR TOUR WITH STANLEY CLARKE AND VICTOR WOOTEN?
Bass Player Magazine asked me and Victor to present Stanley with a Lifetime Achievement Award. They have an event every year. It was called Bass Day. Victor and I gave speeches and told everyone how important and incredibly influential Stanley Clarke has been over the years. And then we jammed together, just the three of us. We had talked before about getting together and doing something like this, but with our different schedules and doing our own things we just never got around to doing it, until that night.
It was so easy and comfortable, and the people enjoyed it so much that we said to each other, “We’ve really got to do this.” And that’s how it got started. It ended up being kind of popular with two tours. We were having such a good time that we stayed with it. Everyone got along together and the people in the audience were just tripping with it. Half of the people came to see each of us play and the other half just came to see if it could even work! We made it work very well.
STANLEY CLARKE HAD BEEN HIDING IN THE STUDIOS FOR A LONG TIME, AND THIS TOUR BROUGHT HIM BACK OUT IN THE FLESH
Stanley was doing like I was. Doing film scores and such so that you don’t have to travel too much. But, we started to feel this new energy and a desire to get back out there.
YOU GREW UP WITH ALL TYPES OF MUSIC. WHAT WAS THE FIRST MUSIC THAT INFLUENCED YOU?
My father was a pianist and organist. The first music I heard was Episcopal Church music and classical music, because that’s what he was playing at home. When he wasn’t dominating the house with his music, my mom would play Ray Charles records! That was my earliest introduction to music.
Because my father was a piano player, the first instrument that I played was also the piano. I’d listen to whatever was on the radio at the time in the mid sixties. I first got real serious about music when I first heard The Jackson Five. I got really excited about music; they were about my age, so I got excited about them. From them, they used to do covers by other bands. They’d do songs by other Motown artists and guys like Sly and the Family Stone, so I got turned on to another acts from them. What they used to do on those old Motown albums was to have a formula where they’d have about three “hits” on the album, and the rest would be covers. So, I got introduced to all different things like The Stylistics and Elvis Presley. They used to do all sorts of different songs. I got really into funk and R&B in the 70s, and then I got introduced to jazz when I was about 14, and got equally into that. By that time I was just playing funk and jazz and absorbing everything that you could possibly hear when you grow up in New York. That meant Caribbean music, Latin music, Salsa was big, and so was Afro Cuban. I was even p laying some African music, but funk and jazz is and has always been at my core.
WHEN YOU WENT INTO THE MUSIC WORLD, DID YOUR PARENTS, SINCE THEY CAME FROM A RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND , GET CONCERNED AND GIVE YOU ANY WARNINGS?
Yeah. My dad ‘s cousin was Wynton Kelly, who played with Miles Davis, Diz and Wes Montgomery. He was one of the most swinging piano players out there in all of jazz. He also died at the age of 39> My family was like, ”Look, we’re really concerned about you. We really want you to finish high school.” The things that parents would say. But they also had first hand experience with the jazz life, so I took it to heart.
ALMOST ALL OF YOUR OWN RECORDS EITHER HAVE A NOTE DEDICATING THE MUSIC TO GOD, OR A SONG ABOUT YOUR FAITH, LIKE “REDEMPTION” ON THIS LATEST ONE. DID YOU HAVE A SPIRITUAL AWAKENING AT SOME POINT IN YOUR LIFE?
From day one I never questioned the Christian faith that I grew up in. My grandfather was the minister. It was called the African Orthodox Episcopal Church, which was started by Marcus Garvey, actually. It was kind of West Indian based, because my father’s back
ground is from the West Indies. Jamaica was a British colony for awhile, so you’ve got the Episcopal part, but after awhile they wanted to make it their own, so they created this African version of it. It was still basically the same thing, with hymns and all of that stuff. But in terms of God, it was just always important to me and my family, as I grew up with that.
DID YOU COME TO ANY CONFLICTS IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY WITH TESTS OF YOUR FAITH?
No, because everybody has to come to this stuff on their own. When I was young, I just lived how I thought I should live, and as I’ve gotten older, people started watching me, and taking their examples from me, by how I live. Even now, I’ve got a bunch of young cats in my band, and I’m trying to lead by example.
LIKE THE STORY OF JOSEPH IN THE BIBLE, PEOPLE SEE GOD’S FAVOR IN YOU AND THAT GIVES YOU A RESPONSIBILITY.
I think so. I mean, I’ve been given some incredible opportunities, beginning with my parents. They were my biggest blessing. They were there, they were engaged, and they were expecting great things from me. They were talking about the great things I was going to achieve, and when you start talking about it, there it goes. I realized that a lot of kids don’t grow up with that. I went into music; my dad was a musician, and he was encouraging, so that was a great blessing.
WHAT ADVICE DID YOUR PARENTS GIVE YOU?
I know that there were things that they told me, but the biggest lessons I learned were just from watching them. They were dedicated to their family, and building it up to make it strong. They were dedicated to my brother and me. Those were the biggest lessons. I know that parents can do a lot of talking (laughs), but what kids really key in on is what they see. My dad was an organist, so what he was hoping to be was as successful in music as his cousin Wynton. He had a family, though, and so he had to make a decision, and he made the decision to stay local and help raise a family. What better decision is there than that?
Even in my own career, I make it a priority to have that connection with my family. It’s very important to me. We go to church together when we can, when I’m not in Bulgaria half the time!!
WHAT DID YOU LEARN WHEN YOU PLAYED WITH DAVID SANBORN?
There are a number of people that I’ve worked with who have had ridiculously distinctive voices on their instrument, and David Sanborn was one of them. To have the ability to write a piece of music, and to know that one of the most distinctive voices on the saxophone is going to play that tune really inspires you to write something. I wrote a lot of material for Sanborn, and it was wonderful knowing I was writing for that lead voice. It was the same with Miles, and it was the same with Luther Vandross. All three of those guys were the most distinctive voices in their respective fields.
I was very fortunate, and it inspired me to find my own voice on the bass. The guys I was playing with would say to me, “Hey, man, unless you have a distinctive voice, you’re not doing anything.” I just happened to be in that kind of realm, so I worked on my own voice. I’d play, and then listen to what I was playing to see what was unique and key in on that and try to accent it. I learned that from Sanborn
Also persistence. David Sanborn is a very persistent individual. He doesn’t give up. If there’s a challenge, a song or something in it that he’s having trouble getting his head around, he works on it and works on it until he has it.
DID YOU EVER ASK HIM WHY HE HIRED YOU?
It never occurred to me (laughs). When I started working with him, I was so young, so those kind of questions didn’t come into my head; I was just having fun!
We met in the Saturday Night Live band and had some gigs. He asked me if I could make these gigs during the week as our weekends were taken up with SNL. During the week, we would play together, and I then started playing him cassette tapes of some of my tunes and the relationship just grew. The first record that I wrote music for Sanborn was one called Voyeur, and it became very successful. When he called me and said, “Hey, we’ve got to do this again,” it made a lot of sense to me.
WERE YOU SURPRISED THAT MILES CALLED YOU
I very was surprised that he was even around, that he was even making music, because he had been in retirement 5-6 years. No one had even heard a note from him, so it was pretty crazy.
DID YOU FEEL INTIMIDATED AROUND HIM
No, I got relaxed around him, and we had a cool relationship. At first he was crazy and intimidating, but that didn’t last very long. I learned a lot from him just hanging around him and watching him with his guard down. It was a very beautiful thing to see.
WHAT DID YOU NOTICE ABOUT MILES THAT MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ABOUT HIM?
He’s very, very funny. His sense of humor was incredible. He would give you one liners that would make you laugh for hours afterwards. He was also very interested in people. He would look at you and check out the way you walked, your clothes, your haircut, your whole style. He’d want to know what kind of car you drove; he was very observant. A real student of life.
WAS HE THE ONE WHO TOLD YOU TO WEAR THE HAT?
No. I just fell into the hat. I first wore it in 1993. I was going to Arsenio Hall’s show to sit in and jam with the band, and I stopped by this store and saw a hat and thought, “hey, man, this is cool. Sort of like Lester Young.” So I wore it, and I then wore it on my album cover, then my second album cover, and if you wear it on three album covers, it’s a lock. I dig it because when I take it off and walk around, I feel like I’m sort of like Clark Kent. Nobody knows who I am, so that’s kind of cool.
DID YOU EVER TALK ABOUT SPIRITUAL THINGS WITH MILES?
No. But I watched him and watched the trajectory of the 10 last years of his life, and I believe that he was slowly coming to a spiritual calm about himself. He never liked to look back. He was always looking forward. In August of ’91, he did a retrospective concert with Quincy Jones. He took a look back at his old music, and then I think it’s very interesting that he passed away just a month later. It was like he was finally looking back to see what he had achieved musically and what his life was all about. So, he was starting to get there.
WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO PASS ON TO YOUR BAND?
I try to lead by example, but what I want them to pick up is that it’s really important to have your own point of view as a musician. A lot of musicians pride themselves on being able to play a little bit of every style, and it’s cool for them. Some musicians are very successful at doing that. But, these guys are so talented that I’m urging them to find their own voice. It’s not easy to do. Also, to try to stay on your course and not get distracted by things that in the long run are not necessary. And the test is that if something is taking you off your game, and distracting you from doing what you’re supposed to be doing, will you be able to tell someone 10 years from now that the reason why you couldn’t get something done was a legitimate reason? Or is it going to be “I don’t even remember what the problem was”? Make sure you stay on your course, or that the things that take you off the course are worth it.
IT’S ENCOURAGING TO SEE SUCH AN IMPORTANT ARTIST AS MILLER STAY GROUNDED IN HIS CALLING AS A FAITHFUL HUSBAND, FATHER, MUSICIAN AND FOLLOWER OF GOD. IN A TIME WHERE SO FEW PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO BE ROLE MODELS, IT’S REFRESHING TO HAVE SOMEONE IN LOS ANGELES WHO CAN INSPIRE US ON A PLETHORA OF LEVELS. CHECK OUT MILLER’S NEW DISC, AND SEE HIM NEXT TIME HE COMES TO TOWN, AND GET INSPIRED YOURSELF.