“Instruct a wise man, and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man, and he will increase his learning”
Proverbs 9:9
RARE IS THE ARTIST THAT RE-ASSESS HIS CRAFT DURING THE ASCENT OF HIS CAREER, BUT THAT IS WHAT TENOR SAXIST WALTER SMITTH III HAS DONE. DURING THE EARLY DAYS OF HIS CAREER, WITH ALBUMS LIKE LIVE IN PARIS AND CASUALLY INTRODUCING, SMITH HIT THE GROUND RUNNING WITH AN ASSERTIVE AND BOLD APPROACH TO HIS PLAYING AND COMPOSING.
HIS LATEST ALBUMS,HOWEVER, HAVE REVEALED A SOFTER, MORE LYRICAL AND PALPABLY MELLOWER APPROACH. HIS RECENT ALBUM,TWIO, IN WHICH HE RE-INTERPRETS STANDARDS, AS WELL AS HIS HOT OFF THE PRESS IN COMMON (WHICH HAS HIM DELIVERING ORIGINAL MATERIAL) ARE BOTH THE CREATION OF AN ARTIST THAT HAS TAKEN THE COURAGE TO CHANGE DIRECTION.
BALANCING THE CAREER OF BOTH PERFORMER AND TEACHER, SMITH IS STILL A STUDENT AT HEART, AND HE PASSES ON HIS OWN LESSONS TO HIS STUDENTS.
WE HAD A CHANCE TO CATCH UP WITH SMITH AND DELVE INTO HIS THEORY AND PRACTICE OF ART AND CRAFT
YOUR CAREER STARTED WITH A SCHOLARSHIP. HOW DID YOU GET THAT?
I’m from Houston, Texas. Berklee College of Music has this thing called The Scholarship Tour where you go all around the country and world, hosting local auditions.
They came to Austin, so a bunch of my buddies and I drove there. Drummer Kendrick Scott and bass player Mark Kelly and I went there. Just through that audition we got to play some songs and they test your knowledge on theory. All that kind of stuff with a couple Berklee professors, one of which was (tenor saxist) Bill, who became one of my main mentors.
They make suggestions on who should get what, and I got a scholarship to go.
YOU WENT ALL THE WAY TO GET A MASTERS DEGREE. WHAT IS THE BENEFIT OF THAT AS A MUSICIAN?
It just depends upon what you want your career path to be. My undergraduate degree is in Music Education. My plans were to get into a college position and become a professor somewhere. In order to do that, there are a certain amount of qualifications to have, just like with any other job. A Master’s Degree was a means to an end in that respect. These days people are going for DMAs (Doctor of Musical Arts) as well.
ARE YOU DOING A LOT OF TEACING HOW
The last three years I’ve taught in Indiana, commuting back and forth to LA. Next year I’ll be starting at Berklee College of Music as the Chairman of the Woodwind Department.
WHAT IS THE MAJOR THING YOU TRY TO EMPHASIZE TO YOUR STUDENTS?333
****Be creative, and you have to be yourself despite what anyone may tell you about what they think of your playing. You can’t judge and base your future on decisions both musically or professionally on what other people tell you. You can take their advice, but ultimately you have to forge your own path and be confident in the decisions that you make.
THERE’S THE OLD JOKE “THOSE THAT CAN’T, TEACH.” THE FACT THAT YOU DO BOTH GIVES CREDIBILTY TO EACH PART OF YOUR CAREER. YOUR PLAYING GIVES BACKBONE TO WHAT YOU’RE SAYING IN CLASS.
That’s always been an important thing to me. It’s good for everybody; it’s good for me because I’m active and thinking about all of the stuff I’m talking about. For the students, they get excited about what you’re doing, so there’s a back and forth energy cycle.
Last week I played at the Blue Note in New York with Robert Glasper for a few nights, and one of my students is obsessed with his band. He was all excited, “What was it like?!? Etc” so it’s fun for them as well as for me.
YOU SPENT SOME TIME WITH ERIC REED AND ROY HAYNES IN YOUR EARLY YEARS. WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM THEM?
From Roy Haynes I learned to pay a lot of attention to melody. He taught to think about how specifically the melody is to be played.
I also made some of my earlies “road” mistakes with him. Like oversleeping, and he’s not the guy that’s going to wait for you or call your room. I was about ten minutes late and I came running downstairs and they were just about to leave for the airport. You assume that it’s all going to be cool, but no, I had to learn to be a lot more professional about it.
Playing with him I also learned that I’m really bad at playing soprano saxophone (laughs)
As for Eric Reed, I didn’t play with him too much. He called me for my first gig in New York, and it was a “sink or swim” thing.
He called for this gig; it was in one hour. He gave me a list of something like thirty songs that I needed to know for the gig, and they were all hard. I had never even heard of a lot of them!
Trumpet player Mike Rodriguez was on the gig, so we just got together for a number of days and played through them as quickly as possible. It was like “if you’re going to be hear, and it’s going to work for you, you’ve got to be serious and know as much as you can.
A GENERATION AGO, A MUSICIAN LIKE YOURSELF STARTED A CAREER AS A SIDEMAN IN A BIG BAND OR SMALL GROUP FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS BEFORE GOING OUT ON HIS OWN. YOU SEEM TO HAVE SPENT A LOT OF TIME TEAMING WITH FELLOW NEWCOMBERS AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE AND ERIC HARLAND . WAS THAT OUT OF CHOICE; IS THAT THE WAY NEWER ARTISTS GET INTO THE SCENE THESE DAYS?
It’s kind of both these days. It’s nice to spend some time with guys that are older, but the reality of the situation is that there aren’t as many of those gigs around as there used to be twenty years ago.
I think it’s because the “Young Lions” changed the scope of the scene. What you had was Josh Redman and Roy Hargrove who played with older musicians, but are mostly known as bandleaders. That transferred into our generation with everyone coming into New York writing their own music and putting their own band together. There was a big importance on being established so others know who you are, and that would be the reason to get hired by the older generation of musicians. It’s kind of backwards now.
A BIG CHANGE HAS COME OVER YOUR PLAYING THE PAST FEW ALBUMS. YOUR TONE IS MUCH CALMER, SOFTER AND MORE FLUFFY. IS THIS A MATTER OF AGING, BEING A TEACHER OR ATTRITION?
It was something deliberate. Not until two albums ago could I even listen to I even listen to myself on a record. It was just too wild and out of control,
There are things that I look back on from the early stuff where I can appreciate what I was going for, the energy and the attitude. But as you change as a person and get older, you want to refine a little bit. I’ve wanted to get closer 1022 to that feeling of “this is something I can enjoy” whether I am looking at it as a musician or as a normal listener who’s not thinking about whether or not it’s a minor seventh and stuff like that.
SO YOU CONSCIOUSLY WORKED ON ROUNDING OF THE EDGES
I’ve been working with my equipment and listening very critically to myself. I then make myself a promise “I’m never going to do that again (laughs).
Once you get really comfortable with how you play and with certain decisions you make in the moment, and put roadblocks in front of some of the things you don’t like, you can lead yourself to something else even if you don’t know what it is. It’s an “anything but that” kind of move.
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when you’re really young, you think “I don’t want to sound like any of those older guys. I don’t want this; I don’t want that.” But as you get older, it’s kind of like the ONLY thing I want to sound like.
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AFTER LISTENING TO THESE LAST FEW ALBUMS, I THOUGHT “SOMEONE TOOK HIS LESTER YOUNG PILLS THIS WEEK!”
(laughs) Sometimes, like me, when you’re really young, you think “I don’t want to sound like any of those older guys. I don’t want this; I don’t want that.” But as you get older, it’s kind of like the ONLY thing I want to sound like.
YOUR GENERATION ALSO SEEMS TO ALWAYS PUSH THE MUSIC AND BOUNDARIES FORWARD WITH MIXES OF ROCK AND HIP HOP. IS THERE ANY THOUGHT OF GOING MORE TRADITIONAL AND DO STANDARDS?
I think that the attitude of pushing forward is about writing your own music and bringing in other elements to whatever the music is. If it’s a different groove or a rhythm or certain type of chord progression…all of that music that you want to put in there to define a sound that is unique.
As people say, it’s not necessarily anything that is “new,” but you use certain combinations to help you suit the way that you play.
I think that just by the fact that you’re playing older music and standards you’re going to push it forward a little bit. We don’t base our decisions on records we’ve necessarily heard before, but more on how you write and what other bands you have played with.
If you play in a small band that only plays standards, it’s going to sound more traditional. But if you think about someone like Ambrose and who he’s played with, if he sits down to play “Stella By Starlight” it’s not going to be like Miles Davis. It will be totally different just because of who he’s played with and how he hears music. It will be a familiar song, but what’s going to come out of his horn, but it could be even different from his own material as you’ll hear elements of the song, but with things that are not expected.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not trying to push. We need all of those different aspects. My last album was a trio record just playing standards. For that whole thing I sat down and wrote arrangements, reharmonized them and when I then played through them for some people, it felt like “Why did I do that? I’m not even playing the tunes anymore.”
That was my first thought; if I’m going to do standards I’m going to make them my own. But I then had this conversation with myself that I’m going to play these songs and just let our influences and how we play be what directs the song.
So, if you listen to them, they are now still familiar, and in 4/4 and swing, but they’re coming from a different perspective at all times, so they are still nudging towards being forward thinking.
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“I then had this conversation with myself that I’m going to play these songs and just let our influences and how we play be what directs the song.”
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YOU’RE ALSO ON TWO NEW ALBUMS, BILL STEWART’S BAND MENU AND REUNITED WITH MARCUS GILMORE ON IN COMMON. HOW MUCH DO THESE TWO DIFFERENT TYPES OF DRUMMERS AFFECT YOUR SOLOING AND PLAYING?
If you’re really listening and playing in the moment, whatever someone is doing will have a real effect on how you play. With Stewart, he has played with so many people like John Scofield and Maceo Parker. He’s incredible; he wrote those songs after we had done a week at the Vanguard, thinking what might work well with the group. When we did the recording, it was like a run-through of all of that music. But we just did another run at the Vanguard, and the music wasn’t mellow at all. Everybody was more comfortable with the music, and it went a lot of different places that it doesn’t do on the album, which is great and always the sign of a song being a good vehicle for improvisation.
He’s very conscious of not making everything about the soloing for as much or as long as you can, and I fall in line with this as well. It’s more about hearing the song and letting it develop, with the solo being a bonus and not the main part of the song.
YOU DO THE SAME THING WITH YOUR OWN COMPOSITION ON THE ALBUM, “APOLLO.” YOU GIVE A LOT OF SPACE TO BILL, AND TO LARRY GRENADIER.
Look, when you’re not the smartest person in the room, shut up! (laughs)
PLAYING THE MELODY PERFECTLY AND DOING JUST A COUPLE OF CHORUSES WILL ALWAYS ENDEAR YOU TO THE AUDIENCE AND OTHER MUSICIANS
If you go down to Small’s any night and Roy Hargrove is in town, he’s going to come in and play. There will be some jam session with a lot of cats trying to be discovered, so they’re playing their hearts out doing 5-6 choruses. Roy walks in and he’ll play only one chorus or a half chorus, and it’s incredible. It was short and we loved it, and he just walks off.
FOR THE IN COMMON ALBUM, THERE’S A DIFFERENT REPORT WITH GILMORE.
Gilmore has a way of playing that feels like the second anything starts to happen he has been setting that thing up. You don’t even realize that he was getting ready for that the whole time, and you think that you just did it, but he was pushing you towards that same mark.
He’s also played with a lot of people, so the time feel is there; it’s loose but exact and you can fall into a lot of those little cracks so it feels very freeing.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A LEADER, WITH YOUR CHANGED TONE AND WRITING SKILLS?
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“Look, when you’re not the smartest person in the room, shut up!”
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There are about five albums coming out in the next few weeks recordings with other artists. As far as my own projects. As far as my own material, I have some ideas but I haven’t fleshed them out yet.
YOU ALSO HAVE A FAMILY. HOW DO YOU WORK OUT THE BALANCE BETWEEN RECORDING, TEACHING, AND PERFORMING WITH SOME SEMBLANCE OF A STABLE FAMILY?
It’s always a work in progress, as there are times when you’re really killing it as far as family time, and other times as playing. The balance is in trying to make home time the priority, while realizing that in order for home time to exist you need to be working hard.
We’re getting ready to move to Boston to do this Berklee thing, so now with teaching, the home side of things will be more stable in one place instead of three. That was our reasoning; I’ll be home, go to Berklee and come back home so only during gigs will I be leaving.
WHAT KEEPS YOU GROUNDED IN ALL OF THESE THINGS; YOU SEEM TO HAVE A BALANCED VIEW OF LIFE.
I wouldn’t say anything specific, but just a general way of going through life to be kind and be positive about everything. Not just “because,” but because I think it’s really healthy for someone that’s in something like the music world.
If you see people that are really negative about everything, it can be a very isolating way of life. It doesn’t serve anyone. On the other side, I have friends all over because I stay positive, and I can go play in whatever country and people will come out, hang and go to dinner or something.
That is just based on relationships with people. When you sit down and write music, it comes out in the writing; when you practice it comes out, as you don’t get frustrated the same way. You just say to yourself, “I’ll get it,” and when I do, I know that there will be something else I will try to get to.
So, you can never really feel like you’ve accomplished anything, but when you look back on what you’ve done, you can see that there are things you’ve done, but you don’t rest on that. There are still people that I want to play with. There are still things I need to learn and do, and time is limited; I’m 38 and half way done!
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“The balance is in trying to make home time the priority, while realizing that in order for home time to exist you need to be working hard.”
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THAT’S A GREAT ATTITUDE. YOU DIDN’T GET IT FROM A SPECIFIC FRIEND OR FAMILY MEMBER?
It’s something I’ve learned along the way. I remember getting to college, and the piano player Aaron Goldberg came down to a gig where I was playing. I was maybe 17 at this point.
I loved the record that he had out at the time, and I told him how amazing it was, blah, blah, blah. He asked me, “Have you ever heard of this album? You should check it out.” He was trying to get me off of just new music and check out some older stuff.
I would say, “I really don’t like that. It sucks. That’s not cool, either. ” He just stops me and says “In the last five minutes you’ve just dissed the entire catalogue of the jazz that everybody loves.”
So I started thinking, “Why am I thinking that way?” and it was just because a defensive thing. I hadn’t actually listened to any of those guys, so I did that so I wouldn’t be embarrassed not knowing about it. It was all because I was insecure.
I then realized that if I’m going to do this I need get serious; I’m going to have to study it, practice it and learn it and listen to what other people that are smarter are telling me.
That was just one person, but you see people along the way and how they make you feel when you’re around them. Jimmy Greene is one of those people. Just that vibe, and I just prefer “this” to “that.”
I want to be the guy like the people who give me that feeling, and not the ones that I’m with and feel depressed.
ONE OF THE GREATEST IMPEDIMENTS TO GROWING AS A MUSICIAN, AS WELL AS A HUMAN, IS PRIDE. IT PREVENTS US FROM HUMBLY EVALUATING OURSELVES, AND TAKING ADVICE FROM OTHERS IN ORDER FOR US TO BE THE PEOPLE THAT GOD CREATED US TO BE.
IN THIS DAY OF SELF-EXALTATION, IT’S REFRESHING TO COME ACROSS A PILGRIM SUCH AS WALTER SMITH III, WHO HAS LEARNED THE VALUE OF HUMBLE SELF EXAMINATION AND BE WILLING TO CHANGE DIRECTION. AS THE BIBLE SAYS, “HE WHO EXALTS HIMSELF WILL BE HUMBLED, AND HE WHO HUMBLES HIMSELF WILL BE EXALTED.”
AS A TEACHER, IT IS A GIFT THAT WILL BE APPRECIATED FROM HIS STUDENTS, BOTH IN THE CLASS ROOM AND IN THE JAZZ NIGHTCLUB.