Sometime in the wee small hours of November 1, 2004, I uploaded the last file to the very first SmoothViews magazine.  We were live!  We were excited, scared, nervous, and proud all at the same time.  I’m not sure any of us would have guess we’d still be publishing eight years later, but here we are! 

On this occasion, we thought we’d all share what these eight years has meant to us.  So here we go!

It’s been a remarkable eight years.  There have been so many changes in the way we find and even listen to music in the last eight years.  Radio was struggling then, but there were still a lot of smooth jazz stations around.  Big record labels were struggling then, but the big names were still the main players in the smooth jazz world.  And in we walk with an internet magazine.  A what?  Why would anyone want to publish an internet magazine?  We probably all had slightly different reasons for banding together for this endeavor, but the overriding reason was that we all loved the music and wanted to reach out and share it with as many people as we could.  Eight years later, that is still the overriding reason we do this. 

Things have definitely changed, some for the better, some not so much!  We’ve all made lots of new friends and heard a ton of new music in venues we didn’t even image at the time – like cruises… I’ve been on four smooth jazz cruises!  And it may take more effort and a lot more ingenuity for our favorite artists to get their music to us, but they have more freedom now to write what they want to write, and I think that is exciting.  And as long as they are making that extra effort to get that music to us, we’ll be here sharing it with as many of you as we can find.  - Elizabeth Ware

Back in the day, artists were discovering new ways to reach their fans using the latest computer technology.  Everyone had a message board.  It was a place for fans to gather and discuss music, post messages to the artists, and to each other.  It was through the music message boards that I first met the people who would not only become the founding members of SmoothViews, but also my friends.    We shared a love of smooth and contemporary jazz music.  Some of us got our feet wet writing things for other web sites until we decided to take that love of the music and turn it into something of our own making.  We brainstormed and laid out a blueprint for what we wanted our website to be.  A lot of thought and detail went into the creation of SmoothViews.  We discussed everything; what it would be called, the format, the content, the timing, the logo, the slogan, our policies, etc.  The initial issue of Smoothviews launched in November 2004.  Each month, we proudly present our readers with something that we ourselves would want to read. I work in a non-music related field, so, for me, Smoothviews is not my job, it’s my passion.  It has allowed me to connect to the smooth/contemporary jazz world in ways I could not even imagine when we began this journey eight years ago.  I’ve gone places, I’ve seen things, and I’ve met wonderful people: artist musicians, managers, promoters, publicists, sound and production people, festival and concert organizers, cruise organizers, other music writers and bloggers, photographers, and especially, other music fans. 

When we first started, it was all about the record labels and radio stations.  Eight years later, the smooth jazz music world is a much different place.  Artists are still discovering new ways to reach their fans using the latest technology.  Message boards have evolved into social media sites, downloading music is the way to go, and when people do listen to the radio, it’s through internet or satellite.  What record labels that remain do not spend a lot of time or money on promotion, so its groups like SmoothViews that help fill in the gaps.  I like to think that we are a part of a larger community of people who promote the music from the ground up; the aforementioned promoters, publicists, organizers, photographers, writers and bloggers who devote our time to promote and share the music we love. 
As the industry goes through its changes, we hope that Smoothviews will continue to be a part of it.  We want you to love it as much as we do, so we’ll do our best to wow you every month.  This is a promise we’ll make as long as we publish.  Thanks to everyone for eight great years.  - Mary Bentely

It is hard to believe that it has been eight years since we had the idea for a smooth jazz web site that was based on fun, no financial support, and a love of a genre that we are all fans of. I’d like to thank Elizabeth Ware who has been the back bone and web master of the site since day one. She has put up with a lot in the last eight years as we have worked to hit our monthly deadlines while putting together a really awesome site. Thanks goes to our families who have endured the hours of writing and time at concerts and interviews during this period as well. I thank God for being able to hear this great music and be able to express what I hear into a written format. It hasn’t been easy while working two jobs for the past seven plus years, but I’ve loved it and treasured the experiences. Somehow we got it done every month.

I’ve had the opportunity to interview so many of my heroes. I was so nervous with Rick Braun as he was my first, and it turned out really well. There was the time I interviewed Michael Lington during a lightning storm at my home that ran in my house and knocked out some of my electronics. It was talking to Joyce Cooling about mental health, and how emotional she became because of her brother. I interviewed Jay Beckenstein just after he had made his last recording at the home he raised his daughter in and the memories attached to it. It was chatting with Dave Koz as he walked the streets of New York and discussed his Hello Tomorrow album. The fun interviews with Euge Groove, Peter White, Jeff Kashiwa and Warren Hill or the ones with rising stars such as Vincent Ingala, Cindy Bradley, Marcus Anderson or Matt Marshak. Was in awe of interviewing Russ Freeman as well as Richard Elliot, who as a fan was on cloud nine that day. There was the time when I couldn’t make the international call, and Candy Dulfer called me at home. (still a claim to fame….ha!)  I still treasure the recordings I have of my interviews with Wayman Tisdale as he drove to pick up his children or was at home with them in the background. He always made them fun and personable and I’m glad I had that time with him before his passing.

There were so many concerts and festivals over the past eight years and I have loved them all. Many of those have been in the Charlotte area and can thank Tammy Greene for her hard work to get them there. Seabreeze has been a special one and love what they have grown into. There are a lot of special memories there as well. The east coast has had their share of great shows and the meet and greets were always a good time to share with the artists. I’ve loved going to the mail box and finding the latest recordings to review with fans whom I have met from coast to coast.  Without these hard working artists, we would not have any of this. So to ALL of you, I thank you for the opportunity to do what we do, and love what you do as well.  – Harvey Cline

Back in 2004, when seven smooth jazz fans, who had occasionally written for other publications, came together to talk about starting our own web-based monthly magazine, it was exciting and puzzling all at the same time.  Who would want to read what we had to write about?  What artists would take us seriously as a start up publication?  So, starting with people we knew personally and asking them to have faith in us, we launched SmoothViews.  I was scared to death.  The first interview I scheduled was with Nick Colionne.  Nick made me feel that I could do this with others, that I was asking the right questions, that I knew my music.  It built up my confidence, and I thank him for that.  It helped me have to the will to go outside of my comfort zone and interview people like Jeff Lorber, or to talk with someone like Michael Franks, who I have admired for years.  SmoothViews has allowed me to forge relationships with so many artists, some which have turned into true, deep friendships on a personal level and will always remain close to my heart.

What amazed me was that people came to read what we had written about.  And they are still coming back month after month.  I have learned so much about the smooth/contemporary jazz/instrumental genre and the music industry as a whole.  I have seen the changes, the ups and downs, and the struggles that these artists have in getting their music out there.  Now, eight years later, would I change anything?  Would I give up this labor of love job?  Not a chance! – Bonnie Schendell

Career, job, or calling? This has been a recurring theme for most of us as we navigate a constantly evolving music industry business model that has been characterized by downsizing, scaling down or flat out shutting down. Legitimacy? Credibility? These things probably meant more to people like me who had worked within the traditional framework than to those who had always done it for love. In 2004 smooth jazz music was still alive, and by all appearances, well, in the corporate framework. If you wanted to play on this field the call letters on your resume still mattered, as did the appearance of your publication on the magazine rack at Borders or Barnes and Noble. I was clinging to radio like the kitten in those “hang in there” posters. Still with a major corporate cluster but my brunch show had been cancelled and I was only on the air virtually and not in real time – “voicetracking” had taken over and that's what I did. I read scripts that were inserted between the songs, often several days in advance. It was a job, but not what I signed up for. What could I do to keep the flame alive?  Around that time author/intuitive Caroline Myss very emphatically pointed out that a job is not a calling. A job may have nothing to do with a calling. Do your job, but pursue your calling and let it take you where you need to go. Then, during our first interview Al Jarreau said the same thing – that you had to do what you love, do what fuels you, even when the going got tough in other areas of your life.

Here was a chance to do just that. To say that if other doors were closing we could build a new room and paint it the colors we liked. It is hard to believe that it was such new territory then. Internet radio stations and online publications were still considered insignificant fringe at best and musicians on independent labels were thought to lack credibility.  Then the ball of string unraveled.  We at SmoothViews, and other independent media became a critical part of the mix when it came to promoting and exposing the music. Now, the name of the game is to come up with stuff and do it. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won't and you'll have to rethink. When it is a calling, though, you keep moving forward doing your thing – often imperfectly and not to the extent that you would like because real life throws rocks in the road.

My part of this adventure started by candle light, doing interviews on a battery run mini-disc recorder (remember those?) in a hot humid room during a series of hurricane driven power outages. It was a starry-eyed time though, we had a vision and we were going to dig in and chase it. Like my partners in crime here, the bumps in the road have included layoffs turning into new jobs that suck the life out of you, health challenges, care for and loss of aging parents, the usual life stuff. But because of SmoothViews it has also included live music experiences that are both healing and transcendent, the joy of discovering music and being able to share it, and conversations with some of the most thoughtful, perceptive people one could hope to encounter – people who happen to also create music that inspires and delights. I haven't been able to do everything I feel like I should do, much  less everything that needs to be done, but what matters is that each of us do what we can. The cumulative effect of that is the beautiful thing. Will the next eight years bring about changes that are as dramatic as the first eight, which have shaken the industry down to the roots, or are we growing new branches and getting ready to bloom? I think that's it. Here's to continuing to create this brave new world. – Shannon West