- Biography - Discography - Email - Interviews - Latest News - Official Site - Photos - Quotes - Reviews - Tour Dates

Jesse Cook, Very Afraid of Boredom
April 21, 2005 - Jesse Cook has a lot to be happy about. First there was the birth of his first child, a boy, earlier this year. His latest album "Montreal" a live greatest hits set brought the guitarist major satisfaction and he was just nominated for Guitarist of the Year at the very first Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards. One thing Cook is not interested in is boredom, "As an artist you want to chase your muse a bit, you want to go with things that work for you," He told Smooth Jazz now that he wants to keep evolving too and he wants to make sure his fans don't get bored. How does Jesse Cook get inspired? His favorite guitarist is Vicente Amigo, "I lived in Spain for three months last year and we took a special trip to Jerez to hear him play and it was the greatest concert I've ever attended. When I'm sitting down with my guitar and doing my Arpeggios and my scales it's that concert that I'm thinking of and just trying to get his sound. Read our new interview with Jesse Cook from April 2005.

John Beaudin - Hi Jesse. It's been a few years since we've last talked. Let's start off with the new live album "Montreal" this has a lot of my favorites on there. Did you change the set list to get everything on the album?

Jesse Cook - Yes, we did actually. We had just finished a tour of Canada before we recorded the live album "Montreal" and yes we completely changed the set list. We wanted it to be a "best of" album, we wanted to hit all the songs that people liked and it meant pulling some songs out of the closet and dusting them off. Tunes like "Luna Llena" we haven't played live in years but it had been a good one live years before, we really thought it belonged on the record plus it rounded off the whole project nicely. We also tried to have songs from each album on there we didn't want it to be too skewed towards the more recent records or one particular album. In the end we recorded two shows back to back and we had way more music than we were actually able to use. I almost wished it could have been a double album because we could have got more tunes on there. It was hard.

Jesse Cook at the Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards with co-chair/co-creators Mary Kirk from the Wave in Hamilton and John Beaudin President of Smooth Jazz Now.

John - Did you have to play shorter versions of the songs?

Jesse - Yeah, we had to cut some songs down because some of those songs in their original format were about ten minutes.

John - I'm glad you have "Mario Takes a Walk" on there. You've been playing that one all along though, right?

Jesse - Oh yeah, that one is a favorite and we usually end our shows with that one and at times we started the shows with it but it's been a favorite all along.

John - It's about Mario one of your drummers but he's not a full time drummer for you, right?

Jesse - That's right but he does play from time to time. He stopped touring with us after the "Gravity" record but he continued to record with me on subsequent albums. I think "Nomad" might have been the first time I didn't use Mario. We're certainly good friends and he's even done a few shows with me from time to time.

John - I remember when one of my business partners Wyatt Cavanaugh and I were shooting this Smooth Jazz TV pilot with you in I think it would have been 1999 or 2000 I can't even remember but Mario was there with you and we found him quite entertaining. I remember one day we were waiting for you to set up on stage and Mario kept us entertained with his different drums and his funny stories. I'm pretty sure Wyatt has it all on film. I remember thinking at the time that he should have his own TV show.

Jesse - (laughing) Yeah, that guy is crazy. Back in the days when we would travel across the country in a van having Mario in there was like traveling with Robin Williams. He would be doing non stop bits the whole way. (laughing) At the beginning of the tour it was all hilarious but by the end of the tour it drove you a little bit nuts but he's great. I love Mario he's an amazing guy and a great player.

John - Was it like a marriage when what drives you to the person in the beginning is what breaks you up?

Jesse - (laughing) Well, you know what it was. It's not Mario but the twelve hour drives across the prairies where it's field after field and we would drive it both ways because we couldn't afford to fly home in those days. The first time across the prairies it's nice but the second time you're telling yourself "Wow, this is a big

Jesse Cook at the Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards with Liz Rivard (contributing editor) and Shannon Edwards (editor) of Smooth Jazz Now.

country."

John - I think the last place where I saw you live was Granville Island in Vancouver. I introduced you on stage at the show that night and I remember looking out onto the audience at the various demo's out there. You had as many grandmothers groovin' to your tunes as twenty year olds!

Jesse - Well, our demographic is all over the map and it certainly makes it difficult for advertisers to target who likes us. I get letters from people telling me their two year olds just loves my music and as you said there are people in their seventies at our concerts and everything in between. I think that speaks more about Flamenco music that there is more of a universal appeal. It's not particularly current it's just a timeless music. Flamenco has been around hundreds of years and it worked in the eighteen hundreds, it works today and it will probably work two hundred years from now. You don't need to be sixteen to get it. It has a certain kind of emotional content that somehow everyone can relate to.

John - My kids like your music too.

Jesse - I've heard that kind of thing over and over again. I'm thinking if my career doesn't work out I can always repackage it as Raffi type music. (laughing) My sister had that also after she gave birth to my nephew, for the first few years he would only listen to my records which initially I thought was cute but after a while it kind of drove them nuts because they didn't want to only listen to my records. He was always saying "put on Uncle Jesse" but my sister finally had enough and she said, "Listen, today we're going to listen to your auntie Billie Holliday." (Laughing)

John - I have to admit I became a bigger fan when you moved into the Middle Eastern side of your music. I love the sense of mystery that the sound has almost foreboding. When I first listened to "Montreal" and the beginning to "Beloved" I though yeah, that's the side of Jesse I really love.

Jesse - (laughing) Well, that's great and it's nice to know that because it's one of those things that polarize my audience. Personally, I love that stuff too that Middle Eastern flavor that explores the Moorish roots of Flamenco has been something that I've always loved but I also realize that it's not for everybody. "Nomad" had a lot more of that Moorish content and some people loved it and other people wrote these scathing reviews saying things like, "I used to love Jesse Cook and now I hate him, I wish he'd go back and do the old stuff" (laughing) As an artist you want to chase your muse a bit, you want to go with things that work for you and yeah not everyone loves that stuff but I'm glad you like it John.

John - I have to tell you that when I first put "Nomad" in my CD player I was thinking will he sell out with this one? I've often thought that with the wrong people around you they might make you do things that were not pure to the core for you.

Jesse - Yeah, I know what you mean.

John - Have managers or the label ever wanted you to do something that you thought was selling out?

Jesse - Well, I don't know, the industry has always been and will continue to be a mystery to me. My area is the music and I'm lucky that I have a team of people around me who just take care of the business for me and that gives me the freedom to do the stuff that I really like which is playing live and the writing and recording of the music. As for the record company, at times they have asked me to do things that I wasn't necessarily comfortable with and for the most part I didn't do them. Sometimes to try to appease them I'd do a demo of something that they were hoping that I would do and I'd come in with it and tell them, "See, it doesn't sound too good does it?" I think in the end you have to write for yourself you can't start second guessing on what your audience will like. You have to do the kind of music that you personally believe in and hope that people will dig it also.

Jesse Cook at the Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards with Rik Emmett (left) and John Beaudin of Smooth Jazz Now.

John - I don't know if you know Mike Vasquez the Program Director of KIFM in San Diego, he's a great guy and he says you certainly have an audience down there.

Jesse - Oh yes.

John - How's the audience for you in the U.S.?

Jesse - Well, it's a huge country and the population of California is sort of on par with Canada. I always think of it as many different countries. I have a certain Pop following in the south west. That's in Arizona, California and in Texas mostly places where's there's a Mexican connection, Latin American Connection. We have a very small following in the north east but of course we do well in places like New York. It's vastly different from state to state.

John - Are you working on any new material?

Jesse - I am actually but it's difficult I've just become a father. My first son was born about a week and a half ago.

John - Jesse, Congratulations!

Jesse - Thank you. So, up to the point when he was born I was writing like crazy. I had taken some time off to make sure I was present at the birth and while we were waiting I was writing away like a madman so I have a lot of new music just sitting in my computer. Since the little guy showed up of course I've become in charge of waste management! (laughing)

John - (laughing)

Jesse - So basically I'm on diaper duty so I've just started practicing again trying to figure out how to do it with the baby. I'll put him in the pram, sit him next to me and I practice for him which means I have to practice softly and with all this happy lullaby type practicing. I'm thinking that if everyday I get a little more aggressive he'll just come along with me and get used to the sound of a Rumba guitar.

John - Well, welcome to the club! I have a sixteen month old right now and yeah it's an interesting journey, isn't it?

Jesse - Sure is, it's amazing.

John - Did you feel that miraculous sense that comes with a child birth? The sense that this is so much bigger than us?

Jesse - Oh absolutely. All my life I've worked on becoming a guitarist, becoming an artist and making albums and I've always felt that my greatest accomplishments were my records but then along comes a baby and you suddenly realize all the stuff that happened before was nothing. This is as incredible as it gets. You know I sort of forgot about him during the whole birth process because I was so worried about my wife and making sure that she was ok and at the end they hand you this baby. I was looking down at this beautiful little thing. My father passed away a few years ago and I'm looking down and I see my father's nose and his eyes - it's just miraculous.

John - I have four children and each time they were born I worried about the mother until I actually saw the child.

Jesse - Exactly, it's crazy.

John - As you know we are giving George Benson a Lifetime Achievement Award and I'm looking more closely at the origins of Smooth Jazz. Do you go back a long way with the Smooth Jazz side of music?

Jesse - Well, I don't claim to be an expert on the development of Smooth Jazz but the first time I heard that sound of funk groove with great Jazz playing on top of it, that smooth sound was George Benson. Am I right?

John - Well, it was down on some variations before that but George brought it to the people of course, Wes Montgomery was doing it before that. Hey, the last time I talked to Holly Cole she was bitching about you being so busy. She told me the last time she saw you was when you two recorded 'Fragile'.

Jesse - (laughing) I guess.

John - Don't you two live close together in Toronto?

Jesse - We live on the same street actually. We live about a block and a half away. You know she says that but I think it's her because there were a few times when we called her up to come to a concert and sing with us but of course she'd be off in Germany. I think there's no one busier than Holly, she's in Japan half the time and Europe the other half so yes, she has an address on this street but she's seldom there.

John - I don't know if you know but Holly has turned into a handy woman now?

Jesse - Has she really?

John - Oh yeah, she bought a miter saw, she knows her screwdrivers, she's cooking with gas!

Jesse - That is good.

John - So can you do any of that stuff?

Jesse - Oh yeah, I built my first studio years ago. I did my own electrical.

John - Did you teach yourself?

Jesse - I taught myself a bit of it and also I had some friends who knew and I hired a carpenter as a consultant to come in and teach me how to do drywall and then go away because I couldn't afford to keep him there the whole time. This would have been about fifteen years ago. Since then I do lots of carpentry and it's more of a hobby and I just think it's great.

John - I understand that your album "Nomad" was the laptop album. It was all done on there as you travelled. Did you find that going out into the world and going to the musicians instead of them coming to you made it harder or easier?

Jesse - A little of both. If you look at the release dates of my albums you'll notice that "Gravity" came out exactly a year after "Tempest" came out which meant that I had to produce it in a very short time, record it, mix it and just be done with it and make sure the record company had enough time to release it all in a one year span. By the time we got to "Nomad" well it took me about two and a half years to make that record. The fact that I had that freedom to travel all over the world with my laptop and record people meant that I also could get lost in it. I could go off to London and meet someone who says, "You know what you have to go off to Cairo." So the next thing you know I'm in Cairo and the people at the office are saying, "Do you think you'll ever finish this record?" It was that sort of thing so it kind of became an adventure and fortunately all I had to do was bring my laptop around with me and I could record the whole tale. I think that's what that album ended up being, more of a travelogue, a musical journal. I love that record and musical things happened on that record where I almost thought I was an audience member on my own production. It wasn't me designing a master scheme it was just the byproduct of all these musicians from different parts of the world all collaborating on one project.

John - Congrats at being nominated Guitarist of the year at the Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards.

Jesse - Thank you and I'd officially like to go on record to thank you guys. You know I've never considered myself as Jazz and I'm not particularly smooth. (laughing) I'd like to be smoother but you kind of have to go with what you are. But you have supported my records right from the beginning of the format here in Canada. They also figured out I wasn't Smooth Jazz in the states but they played me anyway and I'm so thankful for that. When you're a Rumba, Flamenco Guitar player there are not a lot of outlets for you and for the most part what I do doesn't really fit a format. So within Smooth Jazz I feel there were enough renegade programmers that decided to play me anyway even though I didn't fit the format. I think eventually we've become part of the format. There are a lot of guys as you said earlier that you're playing like Robert Michaels, Johannes Linstead and you've kind of embraced the world music sound. It's terrific for all of us.

John - Do you know Johannes?

Jesse - Yeah, I met him at a Paco de Lucia concert.

John - Paco is one of George Benson's favorite guitarists.

Jesse - Well, Paco is the guy, he's the man! He's probably the most important Flamenco guitarist of this century. He's not my favorite guitarist right now although he certainly has been at different points in my life. For me the greatest guitarist of the world is still Paco just because of what he's done. He's been a trailblazer for so long so you can't deny his importance certainly to my genre.

John - We've all heard the cliché of the guitarist in that one guy will play a lick and the next guy wants to play it faster. The greats don't tell you they're great they walk it instead.

Jesse - You know what, I don't think there are any great musicians who think they're great. I heard an interview with Paco De Lucia and he was talking about how he feels like he's a big failure and how he's always trying to get better because he doesn't feel like he's deserving and yet if you ask certain people within my genre who is the best most people will say he is.

John - What drives you Jesse? What drives you to get better?

Jesse - My favorite guitarist in the world is a guy names Vicente Amigo and he's what drives me. As a composer though there are all sorts of people who inspire me. I lived in Spain for three months last year and we took a special trip to Jerez to hear him play and it was the greatest concert I've ever attended. When I'm sitting down with my guitar and doing my Arpeggio and my scales it's that concert that I'm thinking of and just trying to get his sound. I think everyone has their heroes and as a musician your heroes are very important to you they are the people that motivate you to try to go beyond.

John - George Benson said something interesting when I talked to him, he says in Jazz people expect you to be spectacular.

Jesse - Yeah and you have to keep moving forward you can practice and practice and get somewhere, you get to a particular sound but nobody is happy just sitting there and soon you'll get bored of your own sound. I think you have to want to keep exploring new territory and pushing the boundaries. That's how music evolves.

John - Will there be any baby inspiration of your son on the next album?

Jesse - (laughing) God, I hope not!

John - (laughing) No Flamenco lullaby music on the way?

Jesse - No! (laughing) When I hear music from people who've just had a child all the songs sound like lullabies and have titles like "The Sun in His Eyes" I just think, oh no! I think it's an amazing wonderful experience but I have to somehow keep it separate from my life as an artist.

John - Jesse, go change some diapers now.

Jesse - (laughing) Yeah, I will. Thanks again John for everything.

John - Take care buddy.