Two-time Grammy winner Paul Brown was already a successful producer before embarking on a solo career as a smooth jazz guitarist in 2005. Brown, known for his funky electric guitar, teamed this past year with classically-trained, nylon-string guitarist Marc Antoine to write and record the new CD Foreign Exchange. One review likened this collaboration to pairing Elton John and Billy Joel together. Paul recently spoke with SmoothViews about Foreign Exchange and his career.

SmoothViews (SV): What first made you want to work with Marc Antoine?
Paul Brown (PB):Well, we’d been doing this Guitar Night for the last year and a half, Marc and I and Kenny Rankin. Marc and I go back like 20 years, we used to play guitars out up in Laurel Canyon and he was working with this rock and roll band, and I was producing and engineering some stuff for this production company that his band was signed with, so we go way back, pre-smooth jazz, when he was just doing his rock thing. Then we sort of played together from time to time over the years, and we’ve got a real chemistry when we play together, and the sound of a nylon string guitar with the electric guitar is a nice blend, you know? And the Earl Klugh – George Benson album was one that we sort of modeled it after.

SV: What was your favorite song on the CD to record?
PB: I really like “Flight of the Conchords” because it’s challenging for me. Marc is much more accustomed to playing through jazz chord changes, and my stuff is generally more bluesy, and that song was a good opportunity to do some more sort of straight-ahead jazz and Brazilian style and all that. He’s a virtuoso, so for me, I really had to push my game up a lot to complement what he was doing.

SV: One of my favorite tracks on the CD is “Brother Earl.” What’s the story behind that song?
PB: I was a drummer first, and one of my drum heroes was Earl Palmer, and Earl played on just a jillion records and was constantly in the studio, and he actually passed during the making of the record, so we dedicated that song to him.

SV: I understand that the second song on the CD, “Wine Night,” has its roots in wine evenings you host for some of your friends. What are those evenings like?
PB: We’ve been doing this for, like, three years now, with a couple of buddies of mine on Monday nights at my house, and we’re all French wine enthusiasts and basically musicians. We each bring a bottle of wine and sample some stuff, and there’s usually a guest, like every other week there’ll be somebody coming in, someone I’m working with or another friend of mine who’s into wine, so we sort of rotate. Marc attended about three or four of them during the making of the record, and he’s really into wine as well. It was actually his idea to do the song called “Wine Night.”

SV: We’re also interviewing Marc Antoine for this month’s edition of SmoothViews. Do you have any good tour stories about him that you’d like to share?
PB: Actually, you know, he’s been basically living with me while we were making the record [since] I have my studio at my house. We spent a lot of time together, and we really do get along amazingly well. He’s a really cool dude, and he’s a family man like me, and he’s passionate about this and that. When we drink on the road, though, it does get a little crazy. We have some fun.

SV: You’ve collaborated with so many smooth jazz artists. Who have you not collaborated with yet that you’d like to?
PB: Oh, yeah. I’ve always wanted to work with Joe Sample. There’s a lot. A lot of the singers I really would like to work with, like Norah Jones, Sade, someone like that.

SV: For our readers who are just discovering you and not familiar with your background, would you tell us when and why you first started playing guitar, and why you chose smooth jazz as your genre?
PB: I was a drummer from, like, age 5, then I started professionally playing around 16, and basically played up until my early 20s as a professional drummer. I also played guitar all along, from, like, 7 on, but I was basically playing the drums in bands, and I was writing music on guitar. I was always sort of the one who was arranging the songs and we had these original bands that we were trying to get off the ground, and one thing sort of led to another, and I got into production and recording, so I became a mixing engineer and producer, and started producing a lot of jazz albums. I write on guitar, and I was writing some songs for some other artists, like, well, Boney [James] or Kirk Whalum or somebody, and I played the song back, and it was the first time I ever went “Wow, that really sounds like a finished record,” and that was me playing on “24/7,” which was kind of my first single and also the first song that I ever did that I considered a solo type of thing. I played it for some people, and they were like “Wow, who’s this?” And I said, “Well, it’s me,” and they said, “You should try to do a couple more songs,” so that’s what I did, and kind of put it together from there.

SV: What’s next on the agenda for you career-wise?
PB: I’ve been writing a lot lately for pop artists and for R&B artists and that sort of thing. I’m constantly writing, and that seems to be the best outlet for creativity. I’m still producing; I just finished Jessy J’s second record, and I’m doing Euge Groove’s next record, which starts next month, and so I’m still doing some production in the smooth jazz world. I’ll make another record of my solo stuff probably either late in the year or early next year, so there are some things in the works.