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Joyce Cooling - 'Artist of the Month' For June
June 1, 2004 - Joyce Cooling doesn't know if it was a weird twist of fate or simply bad luck that her last album 'Third Wish' was released on one of the darkest days in recent memory - 9/11. Living in San Francisco the former New Yorker could only think about her family that day, "I was terrified," says Cooling "I was glued to the TV like everyone else and I forgot all about the CD being released." The guitarist told Smooth Jazz Now that the period following the World Trade Center attacks had her contemplating leaving the music industry all together. Cooling says, "I felt like a big pink puffy wad of cotton candy like what am I going to do play guitar?" Well, that's exactly what she did but not before a lot of soul searching. "You come right back home to where you started realizing that you know what? This is what I love, this is something I have to do. It's in my bone marrow." The result is her new album with a title that describes an artist with fortified conviction, 'This Girls Got To Play." Joyce Cooling is the Smooth Jazz Now 'Artist of the Month.' Read our interview from April, 28th 2004.

John Beaudin - Well, hello Joyce.

Joyce Cooling - Hi John.

John - You know we'd love to have you come to Canada to perform.

Joyce - That is so awesome we would just love to come to Canada.

John - The whole Smooth Jazz thing here in Canada has been a real slow process. First we have the Wave in Hamilton that went on the air in 2000, then there's the Breeze here in Calgary that I work for, then Cool FM came on board with a more traditional Jazz spin and just last labor day Clear FM came on the air.

Joyce - Well, bless your heart.

John - So Joyce don't worry I won't give up on you. I'll keep Smooth Jazz going one way or another in Canada. (laughing)

Joyce - (laughing) Oh man, that's awesome. Then you're Mr. Smooth Jazz in Canada. I love it! (laughing)

John - I was just talking to a friend who told me that you're a Chris Botti fan. He was just our 'Artist of the Month' last month. He is such an amazing musician.

Joyce - He is. He's a musician's musician. He and his band live wow! I just love him.

John - I've never seen him live.

Joyce - He's awesome.

John - So Joyce you have this new album 'This Girl's Got To Play.' You've worked on it a long time, hopefully you're happy with it. Now the P.R. machine has to kick off. You have to tell people about it. How do you feel about the P.R. side of the music industry?

Joyce - You know I don't mind the P.R. side of it at all. It's about getting the word out to the people and if you don't get the word out to the people you don't get to play and if you don't get to play then Joyce is a crazy woman. Remember the title of the CD is 'This girls Got To Play.'

John - Obviously with the P.R. machine you have to talk to a lot of different people. Does it get confusing?

Joyce - What I'll get sometimes is detail meld like name meld or confusion on where I'm going next but I remember every gig and every city so that I remember it clearly. So, it's just kind of the little details that get a little fussy.

John - Musicians and athletes sometimes have amazing recall on certain facts about an event. A hockey player may remember specific details on a goal he scored in 1976 or a musician will have vivid memories of a guy in the front row wearing a blue cap.

Joyce - But check it out likewise I talk to a lot of people so do you.

John - Yeah.

Joyce - How many musicians are you talking to maybe once in a while you mess up but you get who everybody is. You know Chris Botti plays Trumpet, Peter White Plays this kind of guitar.

John - So from your end that happens because of passion?

Joyce - Yes. Absolutely and again the details will meld together but not the actual experiences. I think you're right it's because of the passion. The passion supplies that life juice to it and that's what electrifies it and solidifies it in your mind.

John - When you met your partner Jay Wagner were you two on the same page right away musically?

Joyce - Right away in a second. The way Jay and I met was on the Brazilian Jazz circuit believe it or not. This is way before he had a Smooth Jazz CD. The term Smooth Jazz had not been coined yet. This was back in the eighties. I think 1985.

John - So how did you meet Jay?

Joyce - There was a woman from Caracas Venezuela and she was putting together a Brazilian band of all things. She was from Caracas but she was putting together a Brazilian band and Jay at the time was playing with a very popular San Francisco band Viva Brazil. So this woman's husband was going around rounding up musicians for her project. I was doing a Brazilian Jazz club and so he got me and he got Jay and so we all showed up for the rehearsal and I heard two chords out of Jay. He was just warming up and I thought awe this is going to be great. From then on it was just right away!

John - So beyond any attraction you two may or may not have had in the beginning you had that musical chemistry right away.

Joyce - It was easy as can be. It's so funny he grew up in San Francisco and I grew up between New York and New Jersey my whole life. I was born in Jersey and grew up between there and Manhattan and Queens and all that and so the two of us three thousand miles away had almost the identical record collection. This sounds really corny, I know. It was really kind of musical soul mates if there is such a thing.

John - How could you argue with that!

Joyce - Yeah! Even down to like three notes in a twenty minute John Coltrane solo we could pick out each others favorites notes. So we could slam dunk each time pick out each others little measure in music that were the other's favorite. One time we were suppose to be working on this album for another vocalist and to be honest with you we weren't too into the project. She was sort of driving us nuts so we started playing hooky basically so here we were trying to write her charts. He was at the piano and played a couple of chords with a little melody and within a half an hour we had written our first song. It was our first song to get played here in the Bay Area and it ended up on our first CD. It flowed and it was meant to be.

John - Is that the 'Cameo' album that you just re-released?

Joyce - No not 'Cameo' well actually that song was on 'Cameo' you're correct.

John - I like the look of 'Cameo' It's very retro. You look like you're in high school on there. That's the original cover art right?

Joyce - It's the original cover art. Yeah, the original black and white.

John - It has to be a good feeling re-releasing that first album and the fact that fans want it. It has to be validating?

Joyce - You know John I hadn't thought of it like that but you're right. I would of never come up with that feeling but ...

John - I know as a music fan if I really love an artist I want everything they have done and I want to know what they sounded like even before I'd ever heard of them.

Joyce - Yeah, kind of like your humble beginnings. That album of course was first released on vinyl so there are actually very few LP's of that album and the whole thing was recorded in Jay's parent's basement. I swear to God. (laughing) His dad who is the infamous 'Daddy O' that we wrote a song for. His dad has this thing called the Tiki bar it's down in the basement and it is a bar. It's like a grass hut with turtle shells. (laughing) It's hysterical, it's really funny.

John - So the whole band was at the Tiki bar?

Joyce - We set the whole band up in there. The drummer, bass player and the guest vocalist were all from Brazil. The engineer is down there on his hands and knees, there was no baffling and we didn't have click track so we hand taped a metronome to the drummers ear. (laughing) We had no reverb so the guitar amp went in the bathtub. It was really funky. (laughing)

John - Really funky? (laughing) You taped a metronome to a drummer's ear? I've never heard of that.

Joyce - (laughing) You know that CD is really honest! We went in and did it and it's done. We did some overdubs but not a lot. It was done on an old eight track can you believe it? We did the whole thing ourselves and it was just the blind leading the blind.

John - But that first album got you some radio play right?

Joyce - You know it actually got some west coast radio play. You know a good little start.

John - Well, speaking of starts the new album is getting a pretty good start with the single 'Expression' from 'This Girls Got To Play.' With that single I have to say it's the first time in a while that the company picked one of the best tracks for the lead off single. I felt the same way about Peter White's latest 'Talkin' Bout Love' but do you know what I mean?

Joyce - Oh yeah, I know. Me too.

John - You know 'No More Blues' is probably my favorite song on the album but we'll get to that one in a second.

Joyce - Oh, mine too. John, I'm so glad to hear that. That's my personal favorite track too.

John - Well, you're really in a nice zone on that one but lets talk about 'Expression' first, it's one of my favorite tunes since it's great for driving.

Joyce - It was just a quick little tune to write and again it's more about the energy and it was uplifting. I don't know if you know how the CD came about?

John - How your last CD was released on 9/11 leading up to this? Yes, please tell that story.

Joyce - Ok. Well, the way this whole thing turned out is that our last CD 'Third Wish' was released on 9/11. Literally on September 11th, 2001 and about a half hour before the planes went through the World Trade Centre. So, I'm in California, in San Francisco.

John - And of course you have a lot of family in the east coast.

Joyce - You got it. So when those planes went through the first tower I'm thinking one cousin is a CNN guy with a video camera on his back and he works down there. There's another cousin who doesn't live far from there and there's a lot of family that live right there and work right there. I was terrified. I was glued to the TV like everyone else and I forgot all about the CD being released. The CD 'Third Wish' that we worked so hard on and actually John, I didn't care. I couldn't get a hold of my family I was thinking are they alive, are they hurt and where are they and these kinds of things. So in the upcoming months I started feeling like leaving the music business. I started feeling very insignificant, I'm watching people being rescued out of rubble and fire crews and medical people saving lives. I felt like a big puffy pink wad of cotton candy like what am I going to do play guitar?

John - When 'Third Wish' was released in spite of what was happening in the world you didn't do any promo for it?

Joyce - Everything kind of halted. The record just froze. It was non existent almost but I didn't care I just went flat period. One thing in retrospect I did realize is that point of impact of the disaster music, art, the theatre; the arts in general are pretty useless. You need rescue people but when music and the arts become essential and really crucial is in the healing process. That's when you need music to heal all the holes and tears in your soul so number one that started coming back in me. Also Jay and I talked very seriously about getting out of the music business all together. We were just flat about the whole thing. Flat about the CD, flat about the whole business.

John - I'm sure you throwing around ideas and looking at your options but what would you have done?

Joyce - (laughing) We talked about a lot of ideas but first of all I can't even type. One thing we talked about was maybe we would open the hippest Cafe' in San Francisco where artists could hang their art and photographers could hang their photos and sell their work. We'd have a music room with the best sound system in the city. People could go into the music room and we'd play totally hip stuff and we'd have rooms with different artists playing and selling their CD's so we thought of having an art centre.

John - But Joyce here you are surrounded by art. Great place, great sound system, great city. How long would it take before someone would come up to you and say come on get up on the stage?

Joyce - (laughing) You bet we did talk about that. This is how the title 'This Girl's Got To Play' came about, this is no joke. We lost a lot of sleep over this and we were talking and I said, "I don't know about you but this girls got to play!"

John - (laughing)

Joyce - So, we wrote a song of the same title and so tying this into the song 'Expression' well when you almost abandon what you do and what you love and then you come 360 degrees John and you come right back home to where you started realizing that you know what? This is what I love, this is something I have to do. It's in my bone marrow. You come back with renewed vigor and strength and joy and conviction.

Part two posted June 9, 2004

John - So 'This Girls Got To Play' isn't a début album of course but it's a new Joyce Cooling. It's like a debut but with the experience.

Joyce - Exactly. God you're good, that's it exactly.

John - (laughing) I do what I can!

Joyce - No, you're good you're doing good. That's exactly right and so we were like "this is so great we're back in music." You know I love this job this is what I have to do so the song 'Expression' was just jubilance, just a joyous kind of thing. On the original version there was a vocal that just said find your own expression whatever it is just do it. Do it like no ones there. That vocal didn't end up on the CD but who knows maybe it'll pop up on the internet or on some overseas release who knows. Maybe with a little bongo solo by Peter Michael Escovedo.

John - I hear you've spent some time in Canada.

Joyce - Canada is totally near and dear to my heart. I was there when I was just a kid and a little nuts. Myself, a girlfriend and just another friend of ours who was a guy but not a boyfriend well we got together and hitchhiked across Canada.

John - How old were you?

Joyce - (laughing) We were just kids.

John - Oh, I get it you don't want to tell me how old you were. Am I going to get you into trouble here? (laughing)

Joyce - (laughing) No, I'm not trying to be illusive here it's just that I'm terrible at this stuff. We were in high school. How old are you in high school? We were sixteen or seventeen. Our parents to this day had no idea. I told my mom I was just going to my friend's house.

John - Meanwhile you're doing what's probably a parent's worse nightmare skipping town. (laughing)

Joyce - Oh, we had a ball and remember there was a guy with us so I think we were safe but we were nuts and I would never do that today and if I had a daughter I would be terrified by this. We just went right up to Canada and hitchhiked right through the country to Montreal and my friend had a brother living in Toronto so we visited him and we went to Calgary but we didn't get to Vancouver. I think we ran out of money but the other thing is her brother who ended up moving to Toronto was the guy who really got me into Jazz and he had hundreds of straight ahead Jazz LP's.

John - Oh, these are the albums that you kind of inherited?

Joyce - Yes because he was moving to Toronto. So I've had this thing with Canada plus I used to live in Montpellier Vermont which is close and I have hundreds of relatives in Buffalo, New York. So you know Niagara Falls is not too far away so we were always in Canada. I just have this affinity with Canada. (laughing)

John - You've never played here right?

Joyce - I'm never played there no so I really want to come.

John - You know Ray White right at KKSF in San Fran?

Joyce - Oh, I love Ray. I just saw him on Saturday and we just did a gig with KKSF.

John - Well, you know every month on the website we have the 'Behind the Mic' feature which is an interview feature with a Smooth Jazz broadcaster and I tell you Ray has good stories, I could have talked to him for days.

Joyce - He is the smartest, funniest, most well read informed guy. He's just so interesting. I love Ray White. I adore him and Jay too he adores him.

John - Ray represents the audience really well as a former Rock Jock and that's where all the Smooth Jazzers came from whether they're a musician or a listener and Ray has the juicy stories to back it up. (laughing)

Part three posted June 15, 2004

Joyce - Of course I just had Pink Floyd to a volume of twelve. Good music is simply good music, it doesn't need boundaries. I think that's a major complaint of a lot of artists. What ever happened to the days of Bill Graham presents where on the same bill you'd have Joe Henderson, Janis Joplin and Ravi Shankar. Music from around the world all mixed in together and the audience loved it. They went from one band to the next seamlessly and dug it all. I don't think we give people enough credit you know?

John - Are you comfortable with the world that Smooth Jazz musicians have to live in right now?

Joyce - It's funny it seems like sometimes what's happening a little bit is that instead of musicians creating the music and that being the thing that creates a category it seems like it's the other way around where the categories are so strong and powerful that the categories create what the musicians end up writing. We're in a danger zone there.

John - Yeah, Chuck Loeb and I went into it a little bit about that. Chuck's been doing it so long that he's felt a lot of changes.

Joyce - Chuck Loeb is the real deal. He's a scary good guitarist. Chuck Loeb is brilliantly good. He's one of my favorites. How about his feel he's got that swing. Chuck has that swing in his phrasing and not only does he play great notes but the feel is so swinging, he's a hip player.

John - Ok, let me throw out the compliments to you. I love your voice. Girl, I didn't know you had it in you.

Joyce - (laughing) Thank you John.

John - On the title song 'This Girls Got To Play' it's sounds very autobiographical.

Joyce - It is. It's a fun tongue and cheek song about my very first gigs. John, one of my first gigs was in this smarmy dive. (laughing) I was new at playing and I wasn't very good and the only reason that I got the gig was this smarmy guy thought if he had a chick on stage he could sell more drinks. Once he got really angry with me because someone offered to buy me a drink and I accepted and asked for an orange juice. He wanted me to order alcohol but if I even touched alcohol while playing I wouldn't have even known my name let alone play the guitar. So this guy told me to order the most expensive drinks on the menu and he gave me a list of drinks. (laughing) Then he made them virgin ripping off his customers. (laughing) This guy was so tacky just to make a few extra dollars. He also wanted me to wear short skirts and sing torch songs. So that's where I got that song. One of the verses is "When I finally got a nightclub gig they said put down your guitar and sing. Just look real cute and entertain, sorry honey it ain't my thing, what I can say this girls got to play." So this guy didn't even want me to play guitar he wanted me to sing these cornball love songs in a tight skirt. (laughing)

John - Smooth Jazz is not a genre with a lot of woman playing the instruments. Mindi Abair is doing well and Candy Dulfer has been around for a little while now. Do you know Candy?

Joyce - Oh, Candy is awesome.

John - Smooth Jazz is kind of a boys club.

Joyce - It is John but I have to be honest with you I think the only reason I got signed was because I'm female. It did not work against me. If I was a guy that first CD would have never happened. Being female in Smooth Jazz lets face it is a marketing hook and that's ok, I could care less. All I know is I have to play. I could care less about gender or image. When I go see someone play I don't care if it's a man or a woman or what nationality or what clothes or make-up they wear but it seems the world is obsessed with that. Especially in America where we are very shallow. Just look at all this American Idol stuff where everybody wants to be a star. We've gotten so away from the music. So as far as being a woman in Smooth Jazz well I'm not going to cry in my milk. I think it was an advantage being a woman. I can't speak for Candy but in all sorts of music you see the girl thing going on and it's very valid but then some is not so valid it's just too cutesy. You know cutesy women getting by on other stuff.

Part four posted July 13, 2004

John - I remember you saying, "I was no cheerleader in high school."

Joyce - (laughing)

John - Correct me if I'm wrong but were you not doing pretty much straight ahead Jazz in high school?

Joyce - Yeah, that's what I was listening to. I wasn't really playing then I had a guitar and I dabbled around but when I inherited that record collection, I just disappeared. John, I didn't even hang out with my friends.

John - Wow, it affected you that much, huh?

Joyce - It just knocked me over! I was discovering Bill Evans and Thelonius Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, Jim Hall, Miles Davis and Coltrane. So I was discovering all these people and going crazy. I basically did the bare minimum to scrap through school. All I wanted to do was listen to these albums. I also didn't go to the prom. The song 'This Girls Got To Play' kind of pokes fun at all of this. I didn't go to any high school dances but no one asked me anyway. (laughing) At graduation night I was at an Ahmad Jamal concert at the Village Gate. It was me and a few of my goofy eclective friends. I was never about image and straight ahead Jazz was never about the circus of entertainment it was about music.

John - It was never about dancing with a microphone around your ear and belting out "Mrs. Jackson if you're nasty."

Joyce - (laughing) Well, you know we have to be careful in Smooth Jazz that we don't have entertainment take over the music. To me the music is the passionate part. If I go to a concert and the music is really secondary then I'll leave.

John - I'm curious if you could meet yourself in grade eleven today knowing what you know now what would you say?

Joyce - (laughing) Wow! I'd say you go girl! I would say it's really ok to be a little geekier in school. I was not like the popular kid or anything in school. I wasn't hated or anything but I was a little on the fringe. I was kind of awkward. I always loved art in general and I had my moms Metropolitan Museum of Art book with me at all times.

John - Your mom was a big classical music fan, right?

Joyce - Yes, she was and not only into music but also visual art. She could have killed me because I wall papered my room with her Metropolitan Art book that she saved up all her school teaching money to buy and I used masking tape to put these pages to my wall. (laughing) She kind of gulped and said, "Well, the kid loves art so let her go." Thank God for her. You know no matter what your passion is go for it and that's what 'This Girls Got To Play' means. Play can mean designing computer software, dancing or whatever makes you play.

John - One more question about this younger Joyce Cooling. When you had all these Jazz albums and you hibernated and just listened to them all were you a little worried that you were missing the real world?

Joyce - Oh God, no! I Didn't even think about it. I was taken over like I was in a trance. I was nuts about it John, just nuts. I also lived right in New York so I could go see all these people. I'd hear Bill Evans on vinyl and then I'd go see Bill Evans. You know if I could ever find the club owners I'd love to say thank you. I owe them so much. I'm sure some of them may be dead now but for instance bartenders and door people at the Village Vanguard or at the Village Gate both the top and bottom. I was under aged at the time and some of these clubs wouldn't let you in. They knew I was under aged but they let me sit on the steps and listen because they could see just how crazy I was about it. Some would let us in after hours just to watch and these were the people that truly understood. If anyone is reading this and remembers me then listen, a big thank you goes out to you!!

John - What about San Francisco, do you have those kinds of memories when you first got there?

Joyce - Oh yeah, the same thing goes for San Francisco. These are not stories about being underage but when I was a younger struggling musician I didn't have the money for the cover charge. I remember Keystone Corner and listening to George Benson in the pouring rain. I was in front of these double doors watching him in the crack of the door this was when George was doing a bit more straight ahead Jazz. After the second set one of the door guys nodded me in.

Part five posted September 15, 2004

John - Ok, Lets talk about 'No More Blues" my favorite song on the album. It's not a commercial tune but I love it.

Joyce - Well, I'll tell you that you're blowing my mind because it isn't a commercial tune. It's not filled with little hooks here and there.

John - It's my kind of tune though once I heard it I kept singing it in my head.

Joyce - Well, it's the most sophisticated tune on the CD. It has a lot of chord changes and a lot of Smooth Jazz now basically stays in one key and I don't mean it like a put-down but it's a fact. The chords may move around but it's all in one key and most of the solos are in one key. With 'No More Blues' it just moves around and to be commercial you can't really modulate, meaning change keys a lot within a song so this one would never get radio play. Thanks John for saying you like it because as I mentioned it's my personal favorite on the album too. It was one of those easy tunes for us, easy to write, easy to record, it just kind of flowed and at the end of the day we had the song in the can. Again that song went with the whole theme of the album after the 9/11 thing we almost left the music business and sometimes when you have to shed your own skin there are a lot of roadblocks. Have you ever had it where you wanted to change but the people around you, the people you love the most are the last people to let you change?

John - Oh sure, they've invested a lot in us but the version of us that makes them feel safe. We're creatures of habit!

Joyce - That's it, you got it and when you change you want to take people with you but if they can't do it sometimes you have to let them go. The lyric in 'No More Blues' goes "Come with me, life's brighter now I hope you can go. If you don't agree, I'll be in Mexico." So John I had a lot of old skin I needed to shed.

John - On 'Green Impala' your guitar sounds like it's talking. I don't know if it's your touch or what but that tune also sticks to the bone.

Joyce - (laughing) Well, that's a compliment to me. When you say it sounds like it's talking to you it means that it was human to you so that's a good thing.

John - That's a good way of putting it.

Joyce - Hey John, if I ever need an ego boost can I call you? (laughing)

John - (laughing) Yeah sure but I'm in radio so we'll have to get that ego boost sponsored.

Joyce - (laughing) Hey, sure why not!

John - So did you have a Green Impala?

Joyce - Yeah I did! It was the first car that I drove cross country. I've driven across the country from New York to San Francisco many times. It was a big old boat and after the cross-country trip I drove it down to Mexico.

John - If that car could talk. (laughing)

Joyce - (laughing) Oh, we did all kinds of things in that car! We lived in that car for months, we had no money for hotel rooms so yes we lived, really lived in that car.

John - Tell me something about Jay (Wagner) that people may be surprised in knowing about him like what you're wearing on the album cover you borrowed from him?

Joyce - (long laugh) You're nuts! Well, you know he's an interesting ball of wax.

John - Is he a complicated guy?

Joyce - Yes and no. What blows my mind about him is that one part of him is very simple. I don't mean like a simpleton but it's a part that's uncomplicated. Jay doesn't need a lot, he just needs peace to be happy. He doesn't have a lot of complicated emotions or ups and downs, he's very much a steady eddy kind of guy. I'm very different I'm up and down and all over the place. It's a good combination, he cools me off and I light a fire under him. (laughing) So that part of him is very peaceful and uncomplicated but the music the guy writes is amazing. He produced all our albums and his chord voicings are uncanny he's just so incredibly deep. He should be an eccentric wacky artist type but he's not.

John - I think what you wrote in the album was touching the fact that the nice things you wrote might embarrass him.

Joyce - He hides his light he will not be in the front he wants to be in the background. With a guy like that sometimes only the musicians get it. They know he's special but he's just a shy guy. He loves Laurel and Hardy and the three stooges' and loves that simple type of humor but musically he's so deep.