Interviewed by Shannon West
March 2007
It’s been over 20 years since Greg Carmichael and Nick Webb played their way across the ocean on Virgin Airlines' experiment with using live in-flight music. While they were here they shopped a demo that landed them a record deal and began their journey towards becoming one of the most influential and original acts in the contemporary/smooth jazz genre. They have survived and thrived as a guitar-oriented act in a sax driven world and continually pushed the boundaries of what one would expect from two acoustic guitarists. They also survived the loss of Webb to cancer in 1998. Inspired by fans telling them how much the music meant to them, the band reconfigured with Miles Gilderdale taking over on steel string guitar and continued to create a series of inspired and innovative recordings. This Way, which will be released in June, continues on that path with some stylistic departures that compare to what they did on Against the Grain. There are horn arrangements, more improvisation, and some genre-stretching songwriting.
We caught up with Greg Carmichael right before he jumped on a bus during the first of several US tours they will be doing this year.
SmoothViews (SV): I have to say that even as a long time fan you guys really outdid yourselves with this one. This Way breaks a lot of new ground without losing your essential sound.
Greg Carmichael (GC): I think it does sound great. You do the recording, you finish it, then you master it and listen to it that final time before you hand it over and I thought it was a good piece of work. Miles and I have been working on it for almost two years on and off. We had six tracks done in England and we recorded five in Germany, then two were mixed by an American over here, Steve Hodge. It's quite a mix. I hope it gets a reaction. Whether that translates into sales I’m not sure but I’m really pleased with it as a piece of work.
SV: It makes a statement from the first notes of the first song in that it’s going to be a little bit different.
GC: I guess you could say it’s probably the usual kind of different styles and different feels that Acoustic Alchemy always does but yeah, I think it feels a little different.
SV: Starting out with a horn section and a vocal chorus is not standard fare.
GC: Yes (laughs). The running order is always something that we think about very, very carefully. I know nowadays people might put it into their computer and put it on shuffle or just pick out some of the tracks they like but we take the order of the songs very seriously. I always like to put out a CD that is a complete thing from the first track to the last track. It's as if you were a DJ and you would choose which track follows which and think about the moods. I felt that opening with that track, “Love is All There Is,” was an interesting move because it does sound very different. It’s an old Miles Gilderdale track from before he came to Acoustic Alchemy. We reworked it and kind of rewrote bits and pieces of it.
SV: Was it something he had recorded?
GC: No, he had it stuck away in his file. Whenever I meet up with Miles, before we actually start writing, we always check to see if either of us has anything that we’ve had kicking around for some time that might be worth working on. He had this track that he did a long time ago and we worked it up. That's one reason I think that it's such an interesting opening track.
SV: It’s got a sweet pop hook that states flat out that this is going to go beyond being two acoustic guitars. You guys never put out a series of CDs that sound alike but your last two were more organic and acoustic, this one seems to kind of continue where AArt left off.
GC: Definitely. If I can divorce myself from it and just listen to it as a listener, what I notice and like about it is that it sounds so open. There’s a lot more soloing going on. We’re stretching out a lot more. I think that really comes across and I really like that aspect of it. We are really songwriters. We’re instrumental songwriters. That is our main focus - to have the first verse, second verse, a little soloing, then repeat verse one and stay in that structure to the end. We’ve still worked in that framework here but I think we’ve really stretched out more than normal too.
SV: That’s an interesting point. I’ve always felt like Acoustic Alchemy songs were melodies where you were able to fill in the words with your imagination because the songs were structured like pop songs with invisible lyrics and the instrumental leads were really emotional. Songwriting seems to be a lost art, especially in smooth jazz, because the emphasis is so more on groove and mood.
GC: That’s the one thing I noticed, that the emphasis has switched to groove. I kind of remember when that happened. Suddenly Nick and I saw that there was this groove thing going on that we really weren’t about. I think that changed the contemporary jazz thing a lot because the groove element became important.
SV: But if you don’t have a melody to anchor that groove it’s hard for listeners to get a grip on the song.
GC: Exactly. We’ve always treated melody as a very important thing. That’s all we know how to do really.
SV: In this one the parts where the guys stretch out and improvise are within the framework of songs that do have that Acoustic Alchemy feel.
GC: There were some beautiful performances. On “Carlos The King” that’s Rick Braun playing flugelhorn. I was really pleased that he agreed to do that because we don’t have guests that often. We’re based in England so we we’re not in that circle or in the loop much here. I always liked Rick’s playing. He’s so melodic and he’s got such a sweet tone. I think that solo is just really fantastic. When you’re asked to do a solo and you’re given this space to improvise it’s easy to panic and start cramming in a lot of note. The way he paced that solo is wonderful.
SV: How did you end up getting Rick to play?
GC: We had this idea of what we wanted it to sound like, and we thought of Rick. I think he’s got such a distinctive sound. When you hear him, you know it’s him. We contacted him through his management and asked him if he’d be interested in doing it.
SV: You’ve been working with Jeff Kashiwa a lot since AArt came out and he’s on this one. How did you end up working with him?
GC: Nick and I had known Jeff for a long time. We kept crossing paths with each other at a time when the sax started to be really crucial. We hardly ever had sax back then and we thought we would try it out. Jeff was the obvious choice because we knew him and we liked his sound.
SV: He’s really versatile too. I saw him with Richard Smith and Freddie Ravel and he got to really cut loose there.
GC: We did a track on the CD he’s working on. This is quite scary for me, because it’s not really my thing. A lot of these guys do a lot of sessions and play on each other’s albums and it’s not that I don’t want to, it just not something I do a lot. It came out really well. We’re good friends actually. He comes to England and we work together.
SV: You've got horn sections too, which is kind of a new thing.
GC: We’ve got trombones, we’ve got all sorts of things going on, and on that third track “Who Knows” Fred is playing trumpet.
SV: That song kind of reminds me of Incognito’s “L’arc En Ciel de Miles.” Parts of it sound like an inversion of that hook. Then you go back to the fact that Fred has worked with Neil Cowley, Neil Cowley has worked with Incognito. It’s like six degrees of separation.
GC: There’s lots of stuff going on and lots of different people stretching out and doing their thing.
SV: That’s a departure for you too. You’ve mostly recorded with a core group of people.
GC: I think that’s why this whole thing took us such a long time. It took us quite a long time to write it and recording it took forever. When American/English came out two years ago we were already writing for this one.
SV: Was there an intention to do something different from the start?
GC: It evolved that way. It's like if you started a painting you might not know what you want to paint and it just develops along the way. This one very much did that. It was a question of building it and adding things in as we were working on it.
SV: My favorite song on it is “Egg.”
GC: “Egg” was actually supposed to go on the last one.
SV: Really? It doesn’t sound like the last one at all.
GC: That’s why it didn’t go on. We had kind of half written it and needed to develop it more.
SV: It’s got kind of a jam band meets fusion flavor, especially that keyboard solo.
GC: I’m really excited to hear all these guys playing like that. “Egg” reminds me of the days when I was in music college and going to a pub called The Bull, that was a famous jazz pub. I used to go down there and watch all these British jazz guys playing all the fusion. The vibe on that was to me very British jazz.
SV: Miles really tears it up on electric guitar too, and he did the horn arrangements, which will surprise a lot of fans because we haven’t seen him play anything but guitar with the band.
GC: He actually studied French horn in college and that’s where he started doing horn arrangements. Our producer, Richard Bull, kind of tweaked some of them but in essence it’s Miles.
SV: How did this start? There weren’t exactly a lot of guitar duos out there when you and Nick got together.
GC: It actually started with Nick and another nylon string guitarist in the early 80's but they never went beyond playing in pubs. That’s why Simon left. He got frustrated and wanted to go to Spain and study Flamenco guitar. Nick wanted to keep the combination of steel string and nylon string guitar going. There weren’t that many people playing jazz/pop type music on nylon string guitar. He saw me playing in one of the many bands in London and liked what he heard. He came up afterwards and said something about Acoustic Alchemy. I’d never heard of it. I was intrigued by what he was doing. We carried on doing what he had been doing with Simon, who was playing in little pubs and wine bars in London and writing together. It wasn’t until we did that famous trip across the pond on Virgin Atlantic where we played our way over that we got to New York with our demos. The deal was that we would get a return flight even though we only had to play on the way over.
SV: It was a one-time thing?
GC: Yes. Richard Branson was just starting up Virgin airlines and he wanted something quirky to attract customers so rather than passengers having dinner and watching a movie he wanted to have live entertainment on these flights. Obviously it had to be acoustic. We couldn’t set up equipment.
SV: What was it like playing for a captive audience?
GC: They were quite bemused actually. It was quite a new thing. They enjoyed it. I don’t know if they could hear us properly because of the noise on the plane. We got to New York then we went to Nashville. We went there first because I had a friend we could stay with, a bass player I had worked with who had moved back to the states. When we played the demo for him he told us that they called music like that “New Age” and it was really popular. We’d never heard that term. It was just stuff Nick and I had been writing. He got us in touch with Tony Brown, who was doing the MCA Master Series. He was looking for one more act because he was putting out six albums. He already had five and obviously he hadn’t thought of getting someone from England. It was mostly American instrumentalists like Larry Carlton. He liked the tape but wasn’t sure and it wasn’t until we got back to England that he called us and said he wanted to sign us. It was amazing. It was all about taking a chance, a lot of luck, and just being in the right place at the right time. We got our record deal and as you know “Mr. Chow” got played a lot on the radio. When the second album came out people knew us well enough that we were able to fly over and do a tour. That was 20 years ago and we’ve been doing it ever since.
SV: In the states they called it “New Age” but I know Nick was influenced a lot by some of those great British guitarists like the guys in Pentangle and Nick Drake that were progressive folk and acoustic rock artists if you had to categorize.
GC: The term sounded kind of flaky to us. I didn’t know where it came from or who started it. We were so pleased to have a record deal and the audience that we felt like they could call it whatever they liked.
SV: You weren’t expecting Red Dust and Spanish Lace to go over like it did?
GC: Not at all. We were just amazed. We were just a couple of guys who had written this stuff. We loved it and believed in it but we didn’t think it would go over so well. We were still playing songs like “Stone Circle” and “Mr. Chow” in restaurants in England and being ignored. It was just background music over there. It was very exciting to come over here and have all that attention and media focus on us. It was fantastic.
SV: What was that first tour like?
GC: (laughs) We were very green! I’d been to America before, going around backpacking and hitchhiking when we were students. It’s funny but if I could have thought I’d be coming back every year I wouldn’t have believed it. Everything was new. We must have seemed silly really because of the differences between English and American culture. I thought it was wonderful here. Our first gig was in Dallas and the audience was so loud and they’d cheer and make a lot of noise, where English audiences tended not to do that.
SV: I remember reading in an old interview that one of you said you looked forward to the day when somebody would get up and dance to your music. Now it’s hard to sit down during your concerts. Looking over the years there has been a constant evolution and it seems to spike every once in a while too. Like between Blue Chip and Reference Point, and between New Edge and Against the Grain, which were probably as diametrically contrasting as any two sequential albums. How do you not get stuck, especially after over 20 years?
GC: I don’t know actually. I suppose there’s the desire to keep it fresh, which sounds like a cliché. You just don’t want to repeat yourself. Every year is different. You feel different. I’ve listened to a lot of music in my time and I suppose all those influences are in there and they just kind of come out. When Miles and I sit down to start working on a project we are aware of not wanting to make a CD that sounds like the one we made last time. But it’s not like a deliberate thing where we say we have to be different for the sake of being different. Maybe it's the feeling that if we sat down tomorrow and started writing the next one and we thought it was just more of the same it might be time to scrap it. Perhaps it would be time to stop.
SV: You used loops and electronica on Against the Grain which was way ahead of its time then you turned around and did the live in the studio thing with Arcanum.
GC: Keep moving on I suppose. For me I’m a pretty average guy in my day-to-day life. I don’t do a lot of wild things.
SV: So you take it out on your albums. (laughs) I love that!
GC: In the music is where I like to let go of it.
SV: In the interview you did with us when American/English came out you touched on the impact that Nick’s death had on the band. Weren’t you in the middle of recording an album when his condition started to deteriorate?
GC: We found out before we recorded the album that turned out to be Positive Thinking. We found out when we were about to start writing it. He was diagnosed in early ’97 and he died in February ’98 so we had that year for writing and getting together when he felt up to it. It was a weird thing. There would be days when he would seem to be just fine then other days he was totally drained. I guess that tied in with his therapy. We all thought that this was something he would work his way through and come out the other side of, and everything would be fine - that we'd be back to square one. We never really thought that it would beat him. At the time we felt like it was something like the flu that you get over and then carry on. We spent that year writing it and towards the end of the year we set up in this place that was sort of an old manor house. We used it because it had a nice big room where we could set up our studio, and it wasn’t very far from where he was living. It was only a short journey for him to make when he felt up to it. We still hadn’t actually recorded anything and he was getting pretty bad around Christmas that year. We wanted to start recording in January so we went back to the studio. He would come in and he looked pretty awful but we still didn’t consider the idea that he might not make it. We were literally due to start recording the next day when we got the phone call that he had passed away in the night. It was really kind of weird. We didn’t quite know what to do. We were set up and ready to go.
SV: I get teary just thinking about that.
GC: Yeah, it was terrible to see him go like that. He was such a character and such a great guy. He still had his spirit right up to the end.
SV: He was still involved in the process of creating music.
GC: I think for him that was one of the things he thought would get him through, to keep going.
SV: What did you do after that?
GC: I remember we got the phone call from GRP with their condolences. The question came up about what to do with the album. I just remember thinking we would carry on and get someone else in to play Nick’s guitar parts and finish the CD because we got so far and Nick had spent all that year writing. We couldn’t just abandon it. When you’re in one of those situations your mind goes a bit blank. John Parsons came over from Germany for the funeral and when that was done we started recording. He played Nicks’ parts. That was it. It was kind of strange.
SV: I didn’t know he had passed right before the songs were recorded. How did Miles come into the picture?
GC: Miles was in the band already as the electric guitarist. When we did Arcanum one of the things we did was left out the keyboards and brought in John Parsons to play electric guitar. It would be a three-guitar band, two acoustics, one electric, and bass and drums. John did the recording but couldn’t do all the touring so we auditioned electric guitarists. Miles showed up at the audition and we immediately really liked him. He joined the band in ’97 so he was already there.
SV: One of the things you said in the press release was that you had gotten to the point collaboratively with Miles that you mesh and you connect. Did you ever think you’d meet another musician that you could have such a creative connection with?
GC: I didn’t look that far ahead. I was just taking things day by day. John played Nick's parts and came out on that tour. He was doing the steel string guitar parts with Miles playing electric. I knew John didn’t want to take on the job full time. It seemed like a normal progression that Miles would try the steel string. He hadn’t played steel string before. He was an electric guitarist. People think they are similar but they are not, especially at this level. He picked up the steel string and spent a long time practicing.
SV: That had to be rather daunting. He does something similar to what Craig Chaquico, who also switched from electric to acoustic, does as far as bringing that powerful rock type of playing.
GC: You can hear it that that’s where he comes from stylistically. I’m really pleased that we are still going and that I’m with Miles because he is also a great character and so great with the audience. Nick was like that too and I need that on stage.
SV: You seem to prefer playing and letting someone else be the chatty one.
GC: For me being chatty doesn’t work. I just get into playing guitar. But it’s very important to have someone doing that.
SV: There had to be a juncture where you were thinking about whether or not to go forward. What made you decide to go forward?
GC: That juncture was when we decided after making Positive Thinking. Do we say that’s it, that we had fulfilled one obligation to Nick? That was finishing the CD so that his year of writing had been fulfilled. That was the point where we asked if it was the end or would we tour. That made me really nervous because the idea of touring without Nick was quite daunting. I didn’t know what to expect. We decided to give it a go with John Parsons on steel string and Miles on electric but very much in the background. It was the reaction from the fans that made me think we should keep it going. They were saying, “Look, you mustn’t give up this music. We love this music and we’d really be upset if you didn’t come back and play it.” It was that general vibe that made me think we should keep it going. At that point Miles picked up the steel string and it has carried on and developed since then.
SV: With The Beautiful Game there was a shift toward more of a full band sound and a pop rock influence. That’s when Fred came in with his background being along those lines.
GC: Fred was a real young lad then. Now he must be knocking on the door of 30. He’s still a young lad to us. It’s a good team and we all get on pretty well.
SV: A lot of musicians change managers fairly often. You’ve had this working partnership with your manager for as long as I can remember.
GC: He’s been with us from the beginning. He’s a very good manager. If you’ve seen “Curb Your Enthusiasm” he’s a bit like Jeff on that show. He doesn’t get flustered. He’s been in the business a long time. I trust him, and I like him, and we’ve just stuck together. There have been times when he probably got other offers but he’s always done it and he enjoys it. He enjoys coming out on tour.
SV: He’s one of the most fan-friendly managers I’ve ever seen too. Even when the artists are interactive it’s really rare to see a manager step in and actually share some of that process with the fans or let them get as involved as both he and the band do.
GC: We play music. We’re just people. We’re not special. I know that sounds corny.
SV: You have attained a level of success where you could become less approachable.
GC: I supposed that living in England where we are not that well known it’s never an issue.
SV: I had heard that and I was surprised because you’ve been so popular here since that first major release on MCA.
GC: I suppose it’s because we had a lot of exposure on the radio during those early days. People would hear it and like it. Then they would buy the CD and come to the concert. If they like it they would come again and tell their friends. We were less known in England. We do play in England because London had a smooth jazz station called Jazz FM that was really the first one. A lot of people would tune in who had never heard this type of music before and they loved hearing it. They would come to gigs and enjoy it. That station is gone now, they changed to a different format, and we don’t get much play here. A lot of people were really disappointed, they had tuned in, and kind of felt like they had discovered it and it was their own. It was a bit of an adventure for them, the DJs were playing stuff that a lot of them wouldn’t have listened to otherwise and it was a journey for them. Then the plug got pulled. Because we were on for that period people did get to hear us and we built a following. It comes down to radio. It comes down to exposure. Someone asked me the other day what I thought about fame and the whole thing of being famous. That doesn’t matter to me but one of the things I’d really like to see is that I just think there are more people out there who would like Acoustic Alchemy’s music but they never get a chance to hear it. You’re talking about 18 CDs now and you just keep putting the music out and maybe one day it might become more popular because somehow more people will get to hear it.
SV: There’s the big issue and I think it’s so salient with this album because you’ve got something that could theoretically bring new fans in because it’s on that turf between pop jazz and rock, especially in parts. How do artists like you get heard in the post-airplay era? Do you even think about that?
GC: I think about it but my job is to create the music. It should be up to the record company to take care of all those things. There’s nothing Miles or I can do except make music and hope it will break through somehow.
SV: To clarify for your American fans who would like for you to tour endlessly here, don’t you have to go through some work visa type stuff to come play for us?
GC: We get a visa called a P1 that lasts for about a year. You have to keep renewing it every year by going to the American embassy in London, standing in line and going through an interview so they can make sure you're all right and everything (laughs). It's an ongoing thing which can be annoying for a lot of musicians who might not live in London because they have to travel here and spend the night; you have to get in line really early in the morning. I'm fortunate that I do live in London.
SV: Is there a time frame for how long you have to stay over here or is that tour routing?
GC: I suppose we could stay here for a year.
SV: We would love that but your families would miss you, and a year of buses and hotels would be a bit much.
GC: They'd get a bit upset. Actually the routing and the length of time all have to make financial sense because you have to fill up as many of the days with gigs as you can. You're paying for the bus, the hotel rooms, the other musicians, and everything whether you're gigging or not. What we're doing this year is rather than coming for two five-week tours we're coming over for four or five shorter tours. That works out better. You're not hanging around spending money.
SV: Do you get to cover more cities.
GC: Possibly. I don't have anything to do with that part of it. I get the tour schedule and go where it says to go.
SV: People who have never been behind the scenes think touring is glamorous.
GC: Well, it isn't. But I do enjoy it. If I didn't I wouldn't do it. It can get tiring but there are lots of things that get tiring. For me it's a suitable lifestyle. I couldn't do other jobs. When I travel out to the airport and I see all the traffic coming into town in the morning I think of how glad I am that I'm not doing that and I don't have to get up early and get in a car and sit in traffic to go to an office.
SV: We're glad you're doing it too. Thank you for talking to us. Hopefully our readers will get to see you on one of your several trips to the states this year!
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