Jim Brickman - Wow, thank you!

John - The new album is called "Peace." It's your second Christmas album.

Jim - Yeah, I'm really proud of this record. It's a labor of love. You know I love writing music but what I love better is playing holiday music. The hymns and the music of Christmas are some of my real favorites to play.

John - Your music can bring the listener to a quiet place or sometimes an inspiration driving place and both of those feelings are also quite prevalent in Christmas music.

Jim - I think it is. You know there are a lot of Christmas albums out there but there aren't a lot of instrumental Christmas albums. You can do some things with instrumentals with some of the hymns and popular Christmas songs that you can't really do with vocals and that is one of the reasons that I really enjoy playing "God Rest You Merry Gentleman." It's something that you wouldn't usually hear a vocal rendition of unless it was a choir.

John - It was odd listening to your album in the car today.

Jim - (Laughing)

John - I liked what you did to "Rejoice." You gave it a very tranquil, peaceful spin.

Jim - It's a wonderful song and I think you're right, peaceful is a wonderful name for it. I chose sort of a choir approach and it's a combination of some original music along with the song "Oh, Come Emmanuel" which is basically what I call "Rejoice" on this album.

John - I chatted with Chip Davis of Mannheim Steamroller fame a few years ago and I asked him if it was hard to pick Christmas songs to fit the continuity of a particular album and he said it took a lot of research on his part. How did you pick the song for Peace?

Jim - Well, I picked tunes that were primarily the hymns and classic carols so right off the bat I kind of scratched off a lot of the pop songs like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "The Christmas Song." I wanted things that were instrumental and would sound good once I Brickmanized. (laughing) You know my style of playing these songs that really felt the most comfortable on my hands to play. Like I said before when you're most used to writing your own songs interpreting other people's music has to feel like it has your style on it other wise you're just doing covers. You have to have your own style, your own unique style or other wise people have no real reason to buy the record.

John - When I was talking to a label mate of yours, George Winston, he mentioned that he was trying to record Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is" but he just couldn't bring something new to it or rather couldn't quite make them work as piano solos. He wanted them to also be a George Winston song I'm sure and why not.

Jim - Exactly and that's one of the reasons to take the carols because in their form a song like "God Rest You Merry Gentleman" or "Hark The Harold Angels Sing" have such a basic melodic form in those carols and you really have a lot of room to interpret them so it's easier. When you take a song with a vocal like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" it's hard to make anything about that really unique. I think when you start with the core of hymns and carols it's easier to do that.

John - You had the Blind Boys of Alabama on "Let It Snow" that sounded great.

Jim - That was also the one exception about the rule about the Pop song. I love their work and I think they're so good. (Laughing) They have certain criteria on things they will or won't sing and they are a Gospel group that's been together since 1948 and so they won't sing about anything that has anything to do with kissing or anything to do with love so we had to pick specific songs that were appropriate. That song is all about nostalgia to me and it represents the feeling of what Christmas is all about. It goes back in time with that cozy Christmas feeling that take us back.

John - And you gave it a nice retro feel.

Jim - Yeah, I'm very happy with that song.

John - Tracy Silverman from the Windham Hill label was also back on this one.

Jim - You know Tracy's been on my concert tour for many years. I think he's been with me for four years in concert and he will be with me this year as well as we tour primarily in the U.S. As you'll remember he was with the Windham Hill group with the Turtle Island String Quartet.

John - Yeah, I remember him in that with Darol Anger.

Jim - He plays electric violin and plays a number of the cuts on the album.

John - I know you were watching the footage of the U.S. soldiers going off to war when you wrote "Sending You A little Christmas."

Jim - Well, it's not so much completely about that but watching that did spark the idea. It was really about the nuclear family and how at times so many people are not home for the holidays. They celebrate with their friends and they are not with the core of their family. I thought of how it would make an impact emotionally if you took a book and took all the stuff that you know that person loved about the holidays and basically sent them Christmas literally I guess so that is where the inspiration for the song came from.

John - Jim when you put the album together you must have had a flashback of being a kid again?

Jim - Oh Yeah and its very nostalgic to play holiday music. You know what's funny there are a lot of these songs that I've never actually played and I can still sit down at the piano and just play them because they're so familiar and that will always take you back. That's the power of music to take you to that emotional place.

John - Was Christmas a big deal for your family?

Jim - It was certainly family time but I wouldn't say that it was over the top because I just have a younger brother and it was just the four of us so we certainly celebrated it but it wasn't a month long celebration. I did love every moment of it.

John - How did you connect with Christy Starling? Did you see her first on TV's Today show like the rest of us?

Jim - Yeah, I saw her on the Today show on NBC so you get the Today show, right?

John - Yeah, I saw the talent thing.

Jim - Yeah, she was the first runner up but she was the one that really stood out to them. She had such a glorious voice. She's actually going out on the tour with me also and the next round of the Today show Talent contest I'm actually hosting. So, look for that on NBC at the end of October I'll be hosting the superstar competition.

John - That's got to be very exciting.

Jim - Very much so and it's a wonderful opportunity and also a challenge because not only am I hosting but I'm also playing for every contestant so I'm going to be accompanying all the contestants live.

John - Do you consider it all part of the package? Sure you're a musician but you're also a performer. Is that a natural segue for you?

Jim - Well, to a certain extent it's about a personality or branding you know. When you're sitting on a stage you become more of a personality especially when you're a soloist because there's nobody else for me to talk to (laughing) onstage except the audience. So for the most part I play solo. Sometimes I've gone out with Amy Sky or Michelle Wright or someone like that but for the most part it's a solo so you develop into a personality because of it. You know I enjoy that side of it because it's better rounded and especially if you're going to have a long career or a long career arc you have to keep growing musically but not alienating your audience either by doing things that go off in a funky direction.

John - In ten years what if you have a block and what if you don't want to do music for a while then you can do this other side of the business.

Jim - I hope so. You go in and out of those phases and my career is fairly new. I'll be celebrating ten years of my recording career next year which is a milestone in the recording business but really it's not that long to be doing it.

Part Two Posted November 28, 2003

John - I hear you liked Bruce Hornsby's sound on piano.

Jim - I used to be in the jingle business and actually one of the things that inspired me to do the debut album in the first place was one day I was at the piano at this particular studio and the engineer asked me "How'd you like the piano?" and I really liked it because it's very edgy and it's a Yamaha and it was very bright and the engineer said " I recorded all of Bruce Hornsby's piano albums on this." So this was the piano from "The Way It Is" and all the others so I started working with that engineer, his name is Eddie King and my first three albums are on that piano.

John - I had no idea.

Jim - Yeah it's an unusual sounding piano and if you go back and listen to my first albums you'll hear that it's very bright and it's actually a C6 piano which is smaller that what most people record on. It's smaller that what I would play on stage or even at home but it just had this sound that was wonderful. It made an edgy kind of sound and I wanted the albums to have more a pop sensibility and not a concert Steinway kind of sensibility. I wanted them to sound like pop songs because they were Pop sounds. I've never met Bruce Hornsby though we were on the same record label RCA for many years.

John - And he was almost on Windham Hill, Will (Ackerman) almost signed him.

Jim - Yeah that's right so we had a lot of things in common but no I've never met him but that happens a lot I run into people that I admire who know who I am and I didn't know that they would know me but then you become friends and things like that.

John - Jim have you spent time with, met or interviewed anyone who intimidate you or at least made you feel like a little kid? Like when you worked with Olivia Newton John?

Jim - Oh yeah of course because no matter how you slice it I had Olivia Newton John's poster on my bedroom wall growing up so of course you're going to feel that way. I felt that way about Donny Osmond, Carly Simon, Kenny Loggins.

John - It must change when you start to actually work with them?

Jim - Yeah you start working with them and it becomes a different type of relationship but there's still those moments where you're sitting on the piano bench and with Olivia and you're going Oh my gosh how did this happen to me! It's more of a self point of view you go how did this happen to me rather than I can't believe that they're talking to me!

John - You know it's one of my favorite questions to ask because as I always say on this website the audience forgets that you're a fan also.

Jim - You know especially when someone you admire says something to you like "Oh my gosh I have all your albums and I love your work," and you just go "are you serious?"(laughing)

John - So Olivia told you that right?

Jim - Oh Yeah and because when you end up working with somebody for the most part they end up wanting to work with you because they are a fan. You know strange things happen like people who are newly famous like Clay Aiken for example who bought the karaoke version of my song "Love of My Life" from my website and used that to try to get on American Idol. I thought that was nice a little weird but flattering and wonderful.

John - I always find when I meet some person that I admire and they treat me like I'm part of their club it's sort of a rites of passage.

Jim - Oh Yeah It is. That's absolutely true and if nothing else having nothing to do with your fame and fortune and having more to do with your personal growth and what you may have anticipated would happen to you in life you know a level of success in your career so it's sort of a mark of a certain success personally speaking.