John Beaudin - Hi Mindi, welcome to Smooth Jazz Now! How are you?

Mindi Abair - I'm doing great!

John - There's a few more of the vocal things on the new album "Come As You Are." I especially like "I'll Remember."

Mindi - Thank you so much that means a lot to me especially concerning that song. It's nice to hear because you write a song from a place in your heart from something that happened to you and just hearing that it got through. You felt something from it and that's awesome, thank you.

John - I was watching the EPK (electronic press kit) on your site and found out it was about your manager who passed on. Was this an exercise in making grief work for you or using it as an exercise to get over it?

Mindi - I don't know. I know that some people make it work for them and certainly all of us have to deal with losing a loved one but to me it's almost larger than trying to make it work for you because I certainly didn't. I was kind of lost but I think at some point these things come out in one way or another and a song is a really great way to get it out of your system. It's just a great catharsis to write a song about something like this and so you can look at it and with that one I didn't quite know what it was about when I first started writing it but it sure is evident on what it's about now. It was pretty wild.

John - Will it ever be a single?

Mindi - You know I would love it to be a single and I'll push for it. I think the next single will be "Every Time" which is another vocal off the CD. "Every Time" is actually the favorite song off the album for the president of my label. So I think that will probably be the next one.

John - Well, it's appropriate since that was the first vocal you wrote for the album, right?

Mindi - Yeah, that's the first vocal that I wrote for this CD. It's kind of groovy and fun and I thought it had a nice spirit to start the CD off with.

John - I see you're touring again with Peter White and Rick Braun. You have to watch that Peter White he's nuts. (laughing)

Mindi - (laughing) I love Peter White I did the Christmas tour with him last year and it was just Peter and me and it was a blast and he joked that we were the Regis and Kelly of Jazz. (laughing)

John - (laughing) Trust me you could never be as obnoxious as Kelly Ripa even if you went to school and studied for it. Peter is a fun guy every time I talk to him I always forget that I'm doing an interview. He's very funny.

Mindi - He has this dry wit and I have a very quirky side so we have so much fun together and to add Rick Braun to the mix is wonderful. I toured with Rick as a saxophonist in his band for a while so it's going to be great.

John - Peter is one of the people responsible for keeping our site going, he and probably Daryl Stuermer of Genesis and the Phil Collins band. Two and a half years ago I was ready to give up on the site, it was way too much work putting interviews up on the site from start to finish it takes 10 hours and while I was spending all this time promoting this type of music I noticed a few Canadian artists that I'd worked hard to promote through the years advertising on other sites so I was really discouraged. I was simply feeling sorry for myself (laughing) and one day Peter just emailed me and said some real nice things about the site. We set up an interview after that and he served as a lifeline for me - he was a breath of fresh air. I'll always appreciate him doing that. I'd do anything for that guy.

Mindi - John you have so championed Smooth Jazz in Canada and Peter White made you not give it up that is so cool! Peter is a great man and such a great musician.

John - I guess when you tour with someone you really get to know them big time and hey he said some pretty amazing things about you last time we talked so I'm sure you'll have fun.

Mindi - When you do go on tour with someone you're basically living with them. You get to know their quirks and you really find out fast if they're good people. (laughing) You find out what they're like when they're under pressure or really tired. You just get to see so much of the person and hopefully through it all you form a bond with the person.

John - Tell me about the Josh Groban tour?

Mindi - Well, I opened up for him for a month and it was unbelievable and we really had so much fun and I didn't really know what to expect. I knew he did the opera thing and he was very trained so I thought maybe he's be a stuffy guy but he'd be out playing catch after the sound check and goofing around or going on roller coasters before the show. He was a lot of fun to be around and here's this incredibly respected musician. To see him in action was just great.

John - He has such vulnerability, certain tenderness to what he does on record.

Mindi - Yes, he does. He's so talented in so many ways he plays drums, piano and he sings so constantly night after night. When you tour with people you also see how consistent they are, you might have three hours of sleep and have an overnight drive somewhere and when you get there you have to sing and perform. For some people that's not so easy but for him well he can do it and at that level. Peter White is the same way, he can get no sleep but still perform at that high level. When he is on stage he's in his element and loving every second of it. I really love that about him. For me you live for those couple of hours that you're on stage, I love that energy it's such a great thing and he has that.

John - Does Matthew Hagar your producer ever come by for normal things like does he borrow sugar?

Mindi - (laughing) I know what you mean he lives across the street from me. It makes it easier to work on the CD's as you know he co-wrote most of the album with me. He came over today with his guitar and his little sun glasses and some crazy cap and we went over a few songs. It was just the two of us so it was acoustic guitar and sax with a little singing in there. We're actually going to do a couple of shows like that with the stripped down sound. We may even do it without a microphone we'll do it in a smaller room and it should be fun. I really like playing with other people and for he and I it's really fun since we both wrote the songs and it kind of shows what the song sounded like when we were writing them.

John - That was my first though when the unplugged thing became popular the fact that this could be a piece of what the creative process sounded like when the song was coming to fruition.

Mindi - Exactly. Matthew and I will sit down on his porch and write a song and it's so down home feeling. We'll actually leave a message for each other and play a tune in the phone. (Laughing)

John - Did you feel any pressure on this album considering how big the last one was?

Mindi - Well you know I'm not one for that sophomore jinx. With my first CD if I would have been really worried about what people thought it probably would have been a very different CD. I'm such a fan of artists who just go out and do their own thing, the artist who don't worry if radio will play it. If you look at people like Ricky Lee Jones who really did her own thing and she was brilliant. Miles Davis for instance took so much flack because lots of his records were so different. I think it's important to play it the way that you hear it and if people like it that's awesome. So I thought that way on my first record and I certainly thought that way on my second CD.

John - You showed a little more of yourself on this one.

Mindi - Yeah, I stretched it out a bit more and that's what's great about second albums so we'll see how it does, huh? (laughing)

John - My first thought when I first got the new album "Come As You Are" was will she have another vocal harmonizing tune like "Lucy's" or a heavy tune like "Flirt" but you didn't repeat yourself. You really seemed to have dug deeper on this one.

Mindi - Well thank you and it's true I didn't want to repeat myself and I see artists who get a chance to make a second CD and basically they make the same album over again and that's no fun for me. I want to see someone dig deeper and express where they're at that year. Your life changes and your music should change at least a little bit so I doubt I'll ever be the person to make the same record over and over. You'll always get something a little bit different from the time before. Hopefully, you won't hear me repeat myself too much.

Part two posted December 15, 2004

John - When I heard the single "Come As You Are" my first thought was here's a happy artist.

Mindi -Oh definitely. I'm the most happy go lucky person you've ever met probably. (laughing)

John - The tune has a 'life is good' kind of feel.

Mindi - Hey, I always love hearing that and "Come As You Are" was the first song that we wrote after the first CD came out. I think that it's kind of reminiscent of my first CD and it has that happy, summer kind of vibe.

John - Do people screw up your name a lot?

Mindi - Oh yes, all the time. I've gotten Aburr or 'ah bear' but as you know it's pronounced "A" (as in the letter A) bear.

John - When we first started playing "Lucy's" everyone came up to me for a pronunciation since I was the only person with a history of this music on staff and I had no idea since you were a new artist to us, so we all said it wrong until Universal told us otherwise.

Mindi - You know no one knew how to say my name at first and at a certain point we were all laughing about it because absolutely no one got it right. (laughing) So people at the label decided to send out a press release and phonetically tell people how to pronounce it and it worked.

John - Yeah, we actually got something from the label or Broadcast Architecture and then of course we all felt like dork-asses. So "Every Time" is going to be released as a single?

Mindi - I hope so but of course nothing is done until it's done but when you release an album you kind of have it in your head what you would like as a single.

John - I read the lyrics of the tune so was there someone that got away in Mindi Abair's life?

Mindi - No, not really. I think "Every Time" is just a light hearted song about just falling in love, embracing it and having fun with it. It's kind of fun to be in love sometimes but that song is not too serious.

John - I look at "Head Over Heels" as being a big Smooth Jazz single.

Mindi - One of my other neighbors who lives across the street loved that song. We actually had a demo of that song for my first CD because I'd written it a couple of years ago and it didn't make it on "It Just Happened That Way." It was one of the last songs to be cut off the album. I wrote about 30 songs for that first CD and my next door neighbor had all the demos, she's one of my best friends and she kept playing the demo even after the actual CD came out and she came up to me and said, "You have to have this song on the CD, it's my best driving song." I had a couple of other friends say the same thing to me about that song so it absolutely had to make the second album. I hope it could be released as a single.

John - You sound like a little girl on "You'll Never Know" there's vulnerability in your voice that really works.

Mindi - Thanks John. I thought that "You'll Never Know" was this kind of a fairy tale type song, cute light hearted song about obsession. (laughing) So it's about all these deep things but it's portrayed in this very simple almost childlike way.

John - It's all in the delivery girl, ten people can tell you a joke but only one will have the timing to really make it funny. Of course you are not trying to make this funny but the delivery is perfect.

Mindi - Well, you'll never want me to tell you a joke because I'll screw it up but after I can sing to you and make it better. (laughing)

John - I noticed on your site you shared the bill with Joyce Cooling. That woman is a fireball.

Mindi - Yeah, she's great. We've shared the bill a couple of time this year and I always think it's fun and it's like girls night out.

John - Joyce and I were only going to talk for 30 minutes or so and it ended up being an almost two hour interview. She was so much fun to talk to and I'm not surprised that both of you would get along.

Mindi - (laughing) That's so cool isn't it? I think it's so much fun for the artist in Contemporary Jazz to meet people like you who are so much into it and pour so much time into it.

John - Were you ever overwhelmed with the mayhem of touring with people like the Backstreet Boys?

Mindi - You know after that tour was done I went home to Florida, didn't tell anyone I was home, rented a little beach shack with no phone or no TV and spent a week there. Maybe I said three words that whole week. I think the Backstreet Boys tour was such an overwhelming experience you couldn't help but be caught up in it and you couldn't help but live in it and having a great time with it but boy when it was over I just couldn't talk to anyone. I just needed to get back to myself a little bit. That tour was 24 hour pandemonium.

John - I've talked to people who have toured with artists like the Backstreet Boys and many have said it's like being in a storm, you just hold on and it's not so bad it just all happens at once.

Mindi - Touring with the Backstreet Boys was such a life experience and it was an unbelievable way to spend a year and everyone should have the opportunity to do that because like you said it's such a wild, wild ride. You become just a part of this huge machine that's just taking over the world and I was with them for the pinnacle of their career which was so much fun so I have some great memories of that and made some great friends. Every once in a while someone will come up to me at one of my concerts and say, "I first saw you at a Backstreet Boys concert."

John - Well, my wife Shannon first saw you at a Backstreet boys concert.

Mindi - (laughing) There you go.

John - She was very impressed by the way.

Mindi - Thank you. Was she asking who's the girl with the pink hair? (laughing) Unlike the guys in Smooth Jazz I've gone through a lot of different looks from pink to red to blue hair. Now it's black and blonde but hopefully you'll see me and recognize me but it will probably be a different look every time.(laughing)

John - (laughing) Were you ever a fan to some pop bands like the fans you saw idolize the Backstreet Boys?

Mindi - I really wasn't. I was never that girl that sat out or camped out for a concert in the rain.

John - Was it because you were a musician or because you came from a musicians family?

Mindi - Well yeah, I grew up on the road with my dad's band so I was always in situations that were the so called backstage scene so I was always with the musicians so that mystique was lost at a young age. I already knew what happened backstage so I didn't want to go backstage so I didn't have that idol worship that a lot of people have. But I certainly understood it on a certain level and I was a normal music fan growing up we would dance in the garage to whoever was hot at the time like U2, Duran Duran and the Go Go's.

John - Speaking of your dad "New Shoes" features your dad. He must be incredibly proud of you.

Mindi - My dad is so proud. He's awesome. Growing up he obviously played a lot so I was around a lot of bands he played with but you don't really play with your dad too much. He had his own stuff going on and I'd be in the school band so you both play but it's not like you do it together. He had actually sat in with me at a few clubs that I played at but it's been a while so this year was actually the first time I got him to sit in with my band. It was at a festival in Vegas. It was so cool when he came out the audience freaked. I didn't know what to expect and even the guys in my band didn't know what to expect but he came on and just rocked because he's basically an old rocker. He was up there waiving his knees around, running around the stage playing these high notes and growling. (laughing) I think the audience saw how I got a lot of my thought on how the instrument should be.

John - When I was talking to Brian Culbertson he said a very similar thing that the crowd went nuts when his dad went on stage. I think it's also heartwarming that you musicians still love and respect your parent and want to perform with them.

Mindi - Yeah, I know what you mean. My father said something to me when I was in college. He said that he didn't quite know how to relate to me when I was younger. He said, "You were this girly girl and you'd go shopping with your mom and I didn't quite know what to say" but he said, "Now we have music in common and its fun because I can sit and talk shop with you. Now it's like were pals and its great."

John - Two songs on the album have that traditional Jazz feel, the tune with your dad "New Shoes" and the hidden track with Russell Ferrante. Let's start with the former, how did it come about?

Mindi - Well, Mathew was just sitting there with the bass and he started playing this line so we just started playing together and this song just came out. I thought it kind of sounded like "Pink Panther" and I love the Pink Panther and I love Henry Mancini so I thought we had to do something with it but at that point it was only bass and sax. So, I actually called my college roommate to help me arrange it for big band. I thought lets go completely over the top, lets get crazy and my old roommate majored in Jazz composition and she would sit up every night and write big band charts. So we did it and my dad played tenor sax and we had fun. It was such a great family atmosphere so "New Shoes" is a very special song for me.

John - It must have been great recording the hidden track with Russell Ferrante?

Mindi - Yeah, that was a great song to record and we were all in the room at the same time and to see Russell Ferrante there with the grand piano was amazing. I've been a huge fan of the Yellowjackets for so many years. I think the first time I saw them live I was ten years old.

John - They got a lot of people into this type of music.

Mindi - Yes, they did and I'm one of them. I remember I told someone during my first year of college that I liked the Yellowjackets and the person said, "Oh really? But their sellouts, they're not traditional Jazz." I was like then call me a sell-out because I love how they put elements of pop and R&B and Jazz together. I basically cold called Russell Ferrante and said, "Hi, you don't know who I am but I'm a huge fan and would you write a song with me?"(laughing)

John - Come on, he knew who you were, right?

Mindi - No he had no clue and he was the nicest guy he just said, "Sure, why don't you come over to my house." I went over there and we actually wrote a couple of songs but I used this one because I thought it was a nice mix of our characters that I wanted to put it on the CD.

Watch for part three of our interview with Mindi Abair - coming soon