Jeff Lorber - Thank you!

John - I mean you can't go wrong with an album with some food on the cover! (Laughing) Whose idea was that?

Jeff - (laughing) That was my idea because I grew up in Philadelphia and pretzels are the national pastime in Philadelphia to eat soft pretzels with mustard actually.

John - And a damn good looking pretzel it is!

Jeff - (laughing)The art department at Narada bought a number of pretzels and photographed them on numerous different conditions to come up with just the right one. So, we wanted to make sure that this pretzel was just the most delicious, lovely pretzel we could find!

John - Those Narada guys in Milwaukee are all heart!

Jeff - (Laughing) yeah, that's right.

John - Narada has now gone into it with Warren(Hill) and with Joyce Cooling. How long have you been with them, this is the first album, right?

Jeff - It is brand new and you are practically the first person I have talked to that has heard it so I'm glad you like it.

John - Well, I like the funkiness of it and I think that in Smooth Jazz sometimes in the genre some of the stuff can sound the same and I think that mixing things up a little bit making it funky will make your music accessible to a lot of different formats and I think the urban people who play Smooth Jazz will just love this album.

Jeff - We just go in and we try to make good music that we like and I think naturally this record is sort of about collaboration mostly between me and Steve Dubin who co-wrote and who co-produced the record.

John - And the 'Philadelphia boy' too, right?

Jeff - Exactly right and that is part of where the title comes from. The really ironic thing is that we went to the same high school and we grew up just a few miles from each other but we really didn't get to know each other until recently, over the last few years. Our careers have followed very parallel paths in a lot of ways. I think our natural inclination tends to be somewhat commercial in some ways. We like live music we like funky music and we like to put that jazzy flavor in too and I definitely don't go after trying to make every song sound like a hit single. There are a couple on there that I hope could be radio tracks but we want to create an entertaining experience to listen to the whole album kind of really take a trip and go different places and have a chance for me as an artist to really express myself in different settings.

John - When I was driving in today and yesterday, I am bobbing my head and I'm like groovin' to this and I am thinking this has been a while since I have had an album consistently do that with every track for me.

Jeff - Wow.

John - To me you are one of those guys that really paved the way to this genre. You were doing it when it necessarily wasn't hip. You were doing it in the 70's.

Jeff - No, you got it all wrong I was doing it when it was hip. (laughing)

John - (laughing)Back then what was the terrain like releasing your first album in the 70's?

Jeff - It is funny because my career as a recording artist to a small extent was a little bit of an accident. I was living in Portland teaching at a little college there and teaching some music classes at a pretty young age in fact and I had a chance to go into a recording studio and it was actually one of my students that were doing some kind of demo. When I got into the studio I had an immediate real knack for helping these people get organized who were having some trouble getting things off the ground. The engineer that was there noticed my knack for this and asked me to come and join him and we could record some of my songs. So I did a demo and ended up getting a record deal and I really wasn't looking for it particularly. The second record that I made was by a small label called Inner City and it had 'Chick Corea' on it and a song called 'Katherine' which did very well nationally and back in those days the radio landscape was totally different. It was actually easier to get my stuff on the radio because there was so little oversight of these (radio) programmers so they could kind of play whatever the heck they wanted too. Things have changed a lot and all I can say is that I am really grateful I've had a chance to play music all these years and do what I love doing and that is really a blessing.

John - Is it true that you actually helped discover Dave Koz?

Jeff - Oh yeah!

John - You're setting the pace from the background my friend! What is going on (laughing)?

Jeff - (laughing) Dave is actually a good buddy of mine and I have been working with him on almost all of his records including working a little bit recently on some new stuff. When I heard Dave he came over to audition for my band in 1985 or 1986 and he impressed me right away. I knew what was going to happen instantly and he thought I was out of my mind for telling him that I would help him get a record deal and that I was hiring him after only hearing him play for about a minute. Things worked out pretty well for him. Dave played with Bobby Caldwell and then toured with me for a few years and the same guy that was managing me also managed Richard Marx and so Dave toured with Richard Marx for a while. The after he made his own albums he did some touring with Phil Perry and he did some opening up for Michael Bolton.

John - I truly believe that you helped shape this genre of music!

Jeff - That is so kind of you to say that. When I think about it, when I was starting the people that I looked up to were Miles Davis, Herbie (Hancock), Chick (Corea) and Joe Henderson. I look up to those musicians tremendously and I listen to all kinds of stuff but I have to defer to that kind of Jazz myself a little bit and those were the guys that played so wonderfully. I am glad that people like what I am doing and I can contribute and help create a style that some people are having some success with now and I have made a little contribution there.

John - Well, you are very gracious. Let's go back to the album and what was your mind set going into the studio with this one?

Jeff - The last album 'Kicking it' was quite successful and there were a couple of hits on that with 'Ain't Nobody' and 'Snake bite.' So, basically why mess up a good thing and I decided to keep on that same track and I hired the same co-producer and co-writer, Steve Dubin and we know each other much better now so we didn't have to go through that getting to know you stage. We were able to jump right in and we kind of knew what each had to contribute and what directions that we liked.

John - The opening track (Under Wraps) does what any opening track should do It brings you in. Is there anything that you can tell me about it?

Jeff - We do have some more energetic songs on the record than that one but we didn't want to hit people over the head right away and sort of ease you into it and on the second track that is where it kind of hits you a little harder.

John - The first track is one of my favorites on the whole album that brings you in and makes you stare at the speakers and 'Under Wraps' does that.

Jeff - Yes, it has some interesting sonic things and another thing that is quite interesting about it is as far as the idea of the title 'Philly Style,' there are some musical flourishes in that song that are very much like some Gamble and Huff tunes and one especially called ' Hurry up this Way Again' by the Stylistics. If you ever hear that song at the end of it there is sort of a turn around that we use and under wraps so we tied that in a little bit.

John - Your music has been sampled by Lil' Kim and Erika Badu! Thats pretty cool!

Jeff - Oh yeah! Thank goodness, it helps pay the rent! The thing that is funny about it is that I made those records back in the early 80's and they were relatively successful back then. The 'Water Sign' album sold about maybe one hundred thousand units which for a jazz album is great. It is just amazing for a piece of music like that to have a new life and then all of a sudden become in the year 2000 become a hit again but this time with an audience of millions! It is totally unexpected and it is pretty cool I got to say.

John - So where did the long hair go?

Jeff - Well, when you get to be a certain age and you keep your hair long like that then you start to look like Ben Franklin.(laughing) You actually start looking younger when you have short hair I think.

John - (laughing)I did the same thing and I had long hair like that and it was half way down my back and at one point I looked in the mirror and I thought that it's just not working for my anymore and you kind of move on. Enough about hair, How much time did you spend making Philly Style?

Jeff - We had a chance to spend a lot more time recording the basic tracks and less record we actually did. All the recording of the seven songs the band played were all done in one evening actually. This time we had 3 and a half days in the studio to really make sure we had great performances and we recorded to tape also which is sort of unusual in this day and age. We transferred it from tape into a digital medium afterwards.

John - Why did you do that? For Sound?

Jeff - It is suppose to sound a little bit better and there is something really warm and something very special about what happens when sound hits tape and it creates a type of compression which is very pleasant to listen to. The real reason that we did it is that I didn't want to chance losing anything and the digital recording even though it is pretty reliable tape is a little more reliable and I just wanted to make sure that anything I recorded with that band wasn't going anywhere. It is a little bit more expensive because you have to buy these reels of tape but I think it is worth it. Hey, you must know my friend Alexander Zonjic, a flute player who lives in Windsor.

John - No, I've never met him.

Jeff - He is on the 'Heads Up' label. He is not one of the big stars of the format but in the Detroit area he is on the radio there and he also plays concerts in that area non-stop. He has toured with Bob James and has made a number of albums on his own on Warner Brothers. So, that is one Canadian artist that I have worked with.

John - I should look him up. I also want to talk to you about 'Soul food,' can you tell me about that song I just love that song.

Jeff - You know what I did was that I used the chorus from a rap record called 'Soul Food' by a group called the Goodie Mob, which is a group out of Atlanta that features a rapper called Cee-lo who's had a little bit of success on his own also. I think it's something that came out in 1995-96 and I just happened to have that MTV-2 channel on in the background and I heard the song and it really grabbed me. I'm a big blues fan and that had a blues element which really attracted me a lot. I recorded it right off the TV set and transferred it into my computer and started playing with it and built a whole song around this chorus. So, there you have it! (Laughing)

John - To me, that's one of those songs that make you stare at the speakers!

Jeff - I love it when that happens.

John - Did your parents make you play piano?

Jeff - Well, my mom was actually quite an accomplished classical piano player she went to music school herself growing up in Manhattan. I remember as a child going to sleep and my mom would be playing the piano in the background so that's a really nice memory. I had two older sisters who were taking lessons they didn't stick with it but there was just a lot of music around the house and we had a nice grand piano, so for me it was just a natural thing to do and to want to learn how to play that thing. I had a cousin who was a number of years older than I was that sort of turned me on to Jazz at an early age. He gave me four records and one of them was a Thelonious Monk record and another was a McCoy Tyner record. I hadn't heard much Jazz besides that up until that time so I kinda wore those records out. When I got into high school was when I started getting much more interested in Jazz and then I ended up going to Berklee College of Music. That's where I thoroughly immersed myself into Jazz history, the history of Jazz piano. I then started to explore Herbie (Hancock) and Chick (Corea) and some of the predecessors like Horace Silver who was really the first guy that I ever listened to where I could really understand what he was doing that wasn't way over my head. So I started learning a lot of Horace Silver music and eventually I started getting into Red Garland, who's one of my favorites and then there's Bill Evans and McCoy. I started understanding what Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock were doing.

John - Bill Evans did it for me and I guess Keith Jarrett. I was such a closet Jazz lover thinking that my friends would kick me out if I liked this stuff. Bill Evans made it ok for me especially.

Jeff - It's funny that you should say that because I remember when I first started getting into Jazz that's exactly what I was feeling was wow, I can listen to this Jazz record and every time I hear it I can sort of get into it more and hear more things that really interests me and really engage me. Some of the rock records I loved and I was really into them but I really didn't have that feeling about them. Once I heard the rock stuff that was pretty much it I couldn't continuously listen to rock over and over and discover more things all the time the way I could with Miles Davis or some of the other Jazz things. As far as Herbie, you were talking about funk, Herbie is such a consummate musician in so many ways but the records that he made in the 80's were so funk. There's still hardly any thing out there that's funkier than that.

John - So, you were involved in the memorial concert for Art Porter's kids.

Jeff - Yes I was. I was glad to participate in that.

John - I remember being so sad when I hear about the boating accident and him dying in Thailand.

Jeff - I was actually there in Bangkok. I wasn't there to actually witness what happened to him but I'd spent the day with him, the day before this accident happened, it really hit. I mean all the musicians in that festival over there were all deeply affected by that and it was a very sad experience. He was such a great guy and such a tremendous talent.

John - I keep hearing that over and over and to make it even more tragic with his wife dying shortly after. I felt so bad for the kids!

Jeff - It was so incredibly sad.

John - Tell me about the two sides of Jeff Lorber, the producer and the artist?

Jeff - Well, as a producer you don't get the feedback and it's not the rush that performing is but it's very rewarding. I love writing, I love the creative process in the studio and I love working with gifted musicians and watching them perform. I think both parts of it can really help each other. If you just spend all your time in the studio you'll never see what a real audience is like and so you could lose touch with reality a little bit. By the same token it's wonderful to get into the studio and write and create new things and that kind of gives you fuel to go out and perform, so it's all part of the job and hopefully I can keep doing this for a while. (laughing)

John - What was it like working with Herb Alpert?

Jeff - That was very enjoyable. He's a terrific guy and very talented. Running A&M records he was involved with so many different projects over the years. He interacted with so many musicians on so many levels. His knowledge of music is sort of Encyclopedic and then there's his knowledge of melody. It was fun to collaborate with him. I just talked to him recently and we might get together and do something again sometime.

John - I hear he's a really, really nice incredibly rich guy! (Laughing)

Jeff - (laughing) That is true. He is very rich!

John - Carol Archer of R&R magazine and I were talking quite a while ago about the lacking of crazy ego's in Smooth Jazz.

Jeff - Have you talked to Boney James lately? (Laughing) Just kidding! (laughing) I think the truth of the matter is that most of the people in this format really had to work to pay their dues and to learn their instrument and it's not easy you know. It's sort of like the equivalent in getting a degree in medicine or being a lawyer or something like that. To learn a world class musician and learn your instrument and to practice like that to get to that level it's not easy. I think for some people who get to that level well they have matured and they have a different attitude about life and about interacting with other people more so than some of these pop artists. That whole pop thing has a completely different energy to it. I think people are about the music. People love it that do it because they are not doing it for the money really because it's not a tremendously lucrative situation for most of us. It's about the music.

John - How do you feel about Smooth Jazz radio? Do you think it will evolve?

Jeff - You know it's hard to tell. It's always changing. It's always evolving. Radio is about selling advertisement and getting the best ratings possible and that isn't always what's best for the artist. What the radio station is going after and what the artist is going after as a creative entity and as someone's who's trying to push the envelope, it's not always the same goal in mind unfortunately. Rather than rag on the situation and it's easy to do and to point fingers and to say I wish they'd play more exciting music or not play so much old songs that I'm sick of all the time. This is what it is. This is the reality and I try to make the best out of it and I try to have a positive attitude as much as I can.

John - Let's get back to the new album Philly Style. Listen, if this album isn't successful well heads are gonna role. (Laughing)

Jeff - (laughing) Well we worked very hard on it and we're proud of it and we hope it does well. You know after we make it we certainly hope for the best and we hope other people get a chance to enjoy it but it's a little bit of the role of the dice and I hope they role the right way.

John - Jeff, I really appreciate the talk.

Jeff - It's been a pleasure talking to you John. You're very well informed and it's been a lot of fun.