Guitarist Brian Hughes has just released his much anticipated new album "Along the Way" on A440 Music Group label. The CD features Saxophonist Eric Mareinthal on many tracks and trumpet player Chris Botti. The sound reflects his usual smooth guitar style plus expect few surprises including a two ballads and some world music tempos. We chatted with Brian Hughes about the new release and his early days playing small gigs in Edmonton.

John Beaudin - Hi Brian. How are you doing?

Brian Hughes - Hi John. I'm doing fine thanks.

John - I'm excited about the new album. You have to tell me all about it.

Brian - (laughing) Yeah at last everything is done.

John - How long did it take to record this record?

Brian - Well, we started at the beginning of March. It was mastered on the 22nd of April but we weren't working straight through the whole time though. There was a studio that I really wanted to work in but it wasn't available so we had to wait. We kind of had to work around that for the month of March. It was like we would cut the beds on one weekend and did some overdubs the following weekend. It was that kind of thing. As you can tell it wasn't peddle to the metal. It was kind of a leisurely pace.

John - When is the album in stores?

Brian - The actual release date is July 8th.

John - Is that both Canada and the U.S.?

Brian - Right now that date is for just the U.S. The label is sorting out their Canadian distribution so I'm not sure if the releases will be simultaneous.

John - Brian, Canadian's will be able to order it on your website right? (www.brianhughes.com )

Brian - Definitely on my website or on Amazon.

John - Smooth Jazz is fairly new to a lot of Canadians so a lot of this stuff is not stocked in record stores so a lot of folks just order from websites. Tell me about the sound of the album.

Brian - It sounds like me. (Laughing) The album is called "Along the Way" and it has a travel theme to it even though it's loosely knit. It has some of that breezy Brian Hughes melodic stuff. It has a few different surprises with trumpet player Chris Botti is guesting on one tune that's quite funky. Eric Marienthal, a great sax player plays on a couple of tunes.

John - I've been playing Eric Marienthal on radio almost as long as I've been playing your stuff.

Brian - Oh yeah. He's great.

John - Tell me more about the album?

Brian - Well, there's a few different things on there. There's one song on there that I really wouldn't call a ballad but it's almost country-esque, it's very Americana that's called "Omaha Inbound" and it's pretty much unlike anything I've ever done before. There are a couple of Latin tunes and one is very Cuban sounding so that's kind of different for me. So it's kind of a mix from those kinds of things. Expect the Pop/Jazz thing and some of the Latin stuff with a ballad or two thrown in the mix.

John - You're last album "Shakin' Not Stirred" was my favorite album. It sounds like you wanted to shake things up with this new one?

Brian - Yeah, you know things are different with the move to California from Toronto. It's sort of a travelogue on that. I'd say this new album "Along the Way" is probably happier, uplifting or joyful than the last one in sound.

John - Well, I'm happy then because I really like the positive feel of "Shakin Not Stirred."

Brian - Well the new one is a really nice record. I like it a lot.

John - Had you known Chris Botti and Eric Marienthal before the making on this album?

Brian - Chris I had just met once and the same for Eric. I did a benefit at a club in Hollywood called the Garden of Eden last September. It was a September 11th benefit for the Wave in L.A. and Eric was hosting that so I met him there. So a couple of the tunes seem to dictate that they wanted to have another voice on them so I thought of those guys and they agreed to do it.

John - Chris has had a skyrocketing career in the last few years. He was on the Caroline Rhea show for a while and his albums have done so well. Have you heard his Christmas album from last year?

Brian - No, I didn't hear the Christmas album.

John - It was one of my favorite albums from last year. It had sort of a Smooth Jazz, New Age Feel. He had a real moodiness to the way he plays his instrument.

Brian - He certainly does and it's really great. I really like his style.

John - Any plans on coming back to Canada to play?

Brian - I don't think this summer but maybe in the fall. We were in Toronto and Montreal last fall so that might happen this year.

John - You grew up in Edmonton. What was that like for you?

Brian - Cold. (laughing) I really did enjoy growing up in Edmonton. It's nothing that you think about very much because it just is what it is. It was a great place to grow up with lots of activities.

John - And one of those activities was hockey.

Brian - Yeah, I definitely had a lot of hockey in my life from a pretty young age until I was sixteen or seventeen. That was kind of the winter activity.

John - So did you come close to the big time?

Brian - Not really. I sort of tried out for junior when I was about fifteen for the Edmonton Oil Kings and interestingly that process brought me to the crossroads of either going to school or go on the road and play hockey. I think it was probably a prudent decision to go to school.

John - I hear you. What position did you play?

Brian - Defense.

John - I belonged to that defense department also. I was a goalie and I quit around the same time you did around seventeen. I think hockey drop out rates are pretty high at that age. It's a time when you or someone else decides if you're good enough to go on or even if you are it doesn't mean that you necessarily want to.

Brian - Yeah, exactly.

John - What's the latest on Loreena McKennitt? Is she still in retirement?

Brian - Actually, I just performed with her a few weeks ago in her hometown of Morden, Manitoba and they had a Loreena day and she got an honorary plaque from the Mayor. So I went up and we played about five tunes for the crowd and it was a pretty nice event. As far as long term recording well she's thinking about it but there isn't anything really planned at then moment.

John - Well the last album "Book of Secrets" did so well and that kind of financial and creative success usually makes artists get back on the horse quicker. So she's not really retired as some of rumors suggest.

Brian - Yeah. It's hard to say that she's retired. She's been actually really busy but she's been focusing her attention in some other areas.

John - She bought that school.

Brian - Yeah, it's a family care centre and she's working on a few other causes and she's just doing the business thing. So no she's definitely not thinking of retiring from music.

John - Let's talk about Smooth Jazz radio. The last time we talked you'd mentioned that you wished there was a little more variety in the format and I agree with you there. How do you feel now?

Brian - Quite honestly I don't listen to it all that much. (Laughing) So it's not something I have a total eye on. I don't think too much has changed on my feeling on it. Sure, I still think there was more variety there and less emphasis on cover tunes and less emphasis on pop vocal tunes but that's just the way it is. I guess the people programming it know what their doing to get their market share. I think it's more a function of that as opposed to anything else.

John - Even though it's overstating the obvious radio in any format is about selling advertising it's not primarily about the music. That's a secondary thing of course you need the music to get the audience to sell the adds but if you keep your eye on the ball it's about making money. I enjoyed my 13-14 years of having almost total creative control on my Smooth Jazz programming but the only reason I had that freedom was because those shows were always successful but one bad book and I knew the consultant's would of moved in.

Brian - Yeah, it's a different world. Maybe AM radio was about the music at one point at least public radio is more about the music but yeah by and large most of the FM stations have gone that way. For an artist I think it's important to make music that you enjoy and with any sort of luck it'll actually fit some kind of format out there but unfortunately that doesn't always happen.

John - Our Artist of the Month a few months ago was Jeff Lorber and he mentioned something similar in the way that yeah you want to record something that you like and believe in and then just send it out and hope that it finds an audience.

Brian - You know what I don't think a lot of artist's want to say a lot of bad things about the format myself included in fear of being boycotted. (Laughing) I will say I've heard from other artists as well as PD's (Program Director's) and MD's (Music Director's) that there is a fair amount of frustration about it.

John - To me you are not a specific Smooth Jazz artist. You have some Smooth Jazz tunes in there but you also have a nice fusion Jazz feel in your stuff as well as world rhythms. You don't really encounter any of the snobbery in Jazz do you?

Brian - Yeah, I wouldn't consider myself a Smooth Jazz artist and I've been around doing what I'm doing before that label was even thought up. Of course some of my music fits in that category. I think what I do is kind of like Jazz with a kind of pop world beat leaning to it or melodic Jazz or whatever you want to call it. It's by no definition straight ahead Jazz or bebop or anything like that. You know I don't directly encounter a lot of snobbery about it and certainly anyone who comes up and checks out the band play live would be converted. We have a really smokin' group. I know the snobbery exists but it's not in my world so it doesn't bother me in any way, shape or form.

John - Who's in your touring band right now?

Brian - I've got Tim Landers playing bass and he's played with just about everybody like Al Demeola, Billy Cobham and Mike Stern. He's played with a host of pop people too like Stevie Nicks and Tracy Chapman and he's a founding member of the group Vital Information with Steve Smith. I've got a great drummer from the U.K. who just moved to L.A. a year or so ago and again he's one of the top session players this time from London and he's played with Paul McCartney to Van Morrison and Gil Evans and Average White Band. My Percussionist Jason Hann also plays with Isaac Hayes and Ricky Lee Jones and I have Les Portelli, a pianist who's played on every album except the first one and he moved down here about a year after I moved.

John - So you moved to California primarily for your career right?

Brian - Yeah. The focus for me was for more airplay and touring for me to a certain extent has been in the States for many years. It just seemed it was kind of the time to be more in the scene down here in California. There are obviously a lot more opportunities to play and the radio support is down here and really the fan base is here also.

John - Well we can tell by the hits on our Smooth Jazz Now.com website that still 70% of the hits come from the U.S.

Brian - Well I'm not surprised. Smooth Jazz or Jazz or anything related to that is fairly well known as an art form and it is truly a great American art form and so there's more of an awareness about it.

John - Tell me about the first song you ever wrote?

Brian - (laughing) Wow.

John - It wasn't a Jazz song was it? (Laughing)

Brian - (laughing) I don't think so. I probably wrote some really dumb songs a long time before anything I would really consider a real song.

John - Like the "Roses are Red" kind of tunes?

Brian - Yeah, probably sillier pop kind of songs like that. For me kind of the beginning of doing what I do now would really go back a long way. I'd have to say there was a song that actually did appear on one of my albums that was called "The Lakes" from my first CD and that I probably wrote in 1979.

John - How old were you when you first picked up that guitar?

Brian - I started playing in my teens but that was more of the three chord Bob Dylan songs guitar playing and back then it was pretty recreational in that regard. I started getting really serious about it a seventeen or eighteen which was my last year of high school. It was the same time I got into picking up licks of albums by Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix and stuff like that. I remember hearing Wes Montgomery and Grant Green on the radio one day and I quickly got into that sort of thing and then I started taking some lessons.

John - It never seizes to amaze on how many guitarists I talk to who mention Wes Montgomery.

Brian - I think really with Wes and Grant Green and maybe even Kenny Burrell to a certain degree is all of those guys are pretty much based out of the blues. If your coming from a background of growing up with Led Zeppelin or Eric Clapton and you her Wes play you can kind of relate to it. So there's a bit of a connection there.

John - That first Zeppelin album was probably my first exposure to Blues that I liked. I'm not a big blues fan but with Zeppelin it was so popular everyone listened to it because it was great and hip.

Brian - Yeah exactly. The first couple of albums are pretty blues based.

John - Do you remember the first time you played in front of people?

Brian - Oh, (laughing) I think it was an early gig in Edmonton when I was studying at Grant McEwen College and I put together a little trio. When we learned enough tunes I got us a gig at a place called the Hot Box or something like that. It was kind of a coffee house and I was probably really nervous. I later got a house gig at a place called the Boiler Lounge in Edmonton and maybe the first couple of times was nerve racking but we played five nights a week so that makes you pretty much at ease fast and we did that gig for a year and a half. I learned a lot of stuff playing that gig.

John - Obviously as a broadcaster I'm in front of people in a different capacity than you are. When I MC something I'm up there for thirty seconds and it's usually really easy and comfortable. I much to my surprise learned very early on in my career that for the most part most people in audiences are really nice. If you screw up a word they won't rush the stage. (Laughing) On a primal level I can understand why folks get nervous because it's just you up there with hundreds and sometimes thousands of eyes just on you.

Brian - For sure. I think for me initially it was just the pressure of having maybe your peers in the audience. There could be people at the same level as you but you got the gig and they didn't so they'd be checking you out to see if you're that good. For me it was never the aspect of being too scared to be up there. Now of course years later it doesn't affect me and I really enjoy performing. So, nothing really fazes me at all unless some bad technical thing happens and then you're really more pissed off. (Laughing) About a year and a half ago I did a concert with this gypsy artist and there was a crowd of seventy five thousand people in the audience so that didn't faze me at all.

John - You mentioned peers in the audience. Has there ever been a big guitar star of yours in the audience that's made you nervous?

Brian - I think for the most part unless someone tells me I don't know who's in the audience and besides I've never really had that happen.

John - If it did happen you might not know.

Brian - Yeah, it could have happened but usually I wouldn't know at all. Sometimes you're doing a festival and all the other players are there but I don't really think about it.

John - Does your family get what you do?

Brian - Oh Yeah, definitely but initially it took a while. I don't think it was the career choice that my father had planned out for me but he certainly gets it now.

John - What was the first concert you ever went to?

Brian - My Parents had a cabin at Sylvan Lake when I was a kid and on Sunday afternoons they would have a big band jam thing with PJ Perry. I think it was his father's band at the time and I wasn't really into Jazz back then. The real actual concert in my teens was Captain Beefheart, Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Velvet Underground playing at the Edmonton Gardens.

John - What was the best live show you've ever experienced?

Brian - I'd have to say German bassist Eberhard Weber with Jan Garbarek on Saxophone and Rainer Bruninghaus on keyboards and Jon Christensen on drums at the Diamond Club in Toronto. I think it was 1988 or 1989.

John - Jan Garbarek to me is one of the most gifted musicians on the planet and Eberhard Weber brought me back into Jazz when I was getting bored. I like his ambient approach to Jazz. "Fluid Rustle" is a must for anyone craving more.

Brian - Yeah, Garbarek is fantastic.

John - These guys put me in a trance. Tell me Brian, what's the craziest thing you've ever done?

Brian - What me crazy? (laughing)

John - (laughing) What was I thinking? Do you have a favorite album of all time?

Brian - (laughing) Well there's a lot of those but there is one that I love a lot and that's Stanley Turrentine's "Salt Song." That one is always enjoyable. I don't like the newer CD version because they stuck an extra outtake song on it and that kind of ruins it. That's a big question because how can you leave out the Beatles and some of the rock stuff and more early Jazz things. Everything has a memory or a touch tone to it.

John - What's your biggest pet peeve?

Brian - It's those big Bass bins (Boom Boxes) in peoples trunks and when they pull up to a gas station they leave their stereos on. It's something we've all experienced when you're sitting at a traffic light and all of a sudden your car starts shaking. (laughing) You know it's bad when the car pulls up to a driveway three blocks away and you can feel it.

John - Hey, you live in California and that kind of shaking can freak anyone out. Is it a tremor or a car. (laughing)

Brian - Yeah, no kidding.

John - How did you meet your wife Pamela?

Brian - We met in Toronto not long after I moved there. She was a vocalist in a band from Calgary called 'The Slip' which was a pop band and they were looking for a guitar player and I ended joining the band for a while.

John - Brian, thanks for taking the time to chat again. I think this has been the fifth interview that we've done. We did two when I was in Edmonton in the eighties then we chatted twice when I was programming this stuff in the nineties and here I am in Calgary.

Brian - Wow! You know John I was in the site the other day and it looks great. Its fantastic all the work that you do with keeping everything up to date with my tour schedule and everyone else's. I think it's a great service to the musicians.

John - Thanks Brian.

Brian - Thank you, John

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