SmoothViews - Keeping Smooth Jazz in Sight!

I first heard Acoustic Alchemy when I was at a radio convention right after Red Dust and Spanish Lace came out. It was playing continually in the lobby of the gorgeously funky hotel where I was staying. Nobody knew what it was. I got home, went to work and it was sitting on my desk. I fell in love. Almost 25 years later they have released Roseland and taken another step forward in the evolution of their innovative and purely original sound.

I talked to Greg Carmichael a few years ago when This Way came out so this time around Miles Gilderdale was gracious enough to do a conversation from England almost before he had his bags unpacked following their recent U.S. Tour. I wish there were sound files to accompany this because he is both brilliant and witty but a lot of it is the inflection of the way things are said. Thus, you will see “laughs” quite a bit here from both of us. We talked about the band, the business, growing, evolving and hanging in there and of course, the new album. Which you should buy and listen to as you read along.

Smoothviews (SV): I think this is the longest period the band has had between albums, it's been four years so let's catch up. What has the band been up to during that time.
Miles Gilderdale (MG): I guess for the first two we played live a lot and let the previous album run its course. Then we started thinking about what to do next. This Way was our last album with record company support, it was the last one where we had a record deal. The process was that we would record an album, it would come out, we would go on tour to promote it, do a lot of live gigs and get help from the record company promoting it. An album lasts about a year or two so we focused on that. We knew we didn't have a record company so we started thinking “now what?” The hard work really started when we decided to put the next one out ourselves.

SV: What did that involve?
MG: I had already built a studio at my house that was equipped for songwriting and working on demos but I had to buy some more gear for it to be set up for recording an album at the quality we wanted. It had to sound as good as the other ones in the sonic sense. That was a real investment financially. It took us a long time to write and record because we were writing and recording at the same time. We didn't have budget constraints because we weren't paying for studio time and that made a big difference, not all of it good (laughs.) Constraint can be a good thing because you know you have to get things done. We found ourselves doing lots and lots of takes and huge amounts of recording but not coming to any firm decisions about what to use and what to finish. It was a lot of hedging. We had to get more disciplined about what we did record and having some focus. It allowed us to experiment, which is good, but to experiment limitlessly, which can get excessive unless you're a rock band from the 70's (laughs).

SV: Like Boston and Todd Rundgren and those guys back then taking months to tweak and polish a track to perfection, then working on it more while the fans waited for a new one that seemed to never come out.
MG: It was good to have room to try stuff out, though. In the end we got some things recorded that we know we wouldn't have tried in previous situations because of the cost of studio time and because the record company was involved.

SV: How did you reach that point where you got beyond playing with the freedom and harnessed it with some discipline so you could get on with the project?
MG: We started thinking about the really good producers and engineers we worked with before and how they worked, and we emulated that. Then it all started to make sense. We work with Klaus Genuit a lot – he's brilliant, a Grammy winning engineer – and we looked at how he worked. He would have us record a take, then maybe one or two more then ask us which one we wanted. If we started asking him to move stuff around, take part of this one and part of that one and such, he would just put his foot down and make us make a concrete choice before we moved on. Limitless possibilities sound good at first but you really don't want that. You want a consistent, good take and then move forward.

SV: With the creativity and skill that you guys the limitless possibilities could keep you in the studio for several years just doing interesting stuff without finishing the album. On the other hand this band has been putting out albums since 1987 and through all the trend changes and lineup reconfigurations you are still coming up with stuff that is different and very original.
MG: That part of it never gets any easier. The first album is easy because that's the one where you have your life's work, you have things you have been working on for years. Then you get one or two years between albums and you are constantly aware of what you've done before and you don't want to repeat it. Greg and I hate the idea of retracing territory we have been to before. If we feel like we are we will abandon it and start something new.

SV: And yet the configuration of what you guys do and the instrumentation and songwriting are so different from anybody else that that is like saying how do you keep from repeating originality. There are some musicians who are getting back to their musical identities after making formula music for years but this band never really did format music.
MG: It's purely selfish. It's only because we don't want to. When we are writing we are doing it to please ourselves. If you're not pleased with it how will anyone else be. First and foremost you're making music that you want to hear so you are setting high standards. When you are writing you go back and listen to things over and over and if you start getting bored with it it's not going to come to any fruition so you continually tweak to make it excite you. When you start writing you don't really know how the finished object is going to sound. It's continual invention. You can lose it at any point too, anywhere from recording it to mixing it.

SV: You and Greg did the recording and mixing didn't you?
MG: We did almost all the recording. Ricky Petersen recorded his parts at his studio and sent them to us but for the most part we did. We did most of the mixing with Klaus and three tracks were mixed with Richard Bull. We didn't mix them at my studio because we wanted to work with people we had worked before in studios that were bigger and had less limitations. These are guys we trust that when we play them our work they will completely get how it is supposed to sound.

SV: When This Way came out did you know that you would be without a label after that release?
MG: Not at the moment it came out. We had a good idea because around that time so many labels were falling off the map but nobody had officially said to us that they were not going to renew the option. It was actually over a year afterward.

SV: When you got that news was there a sense of fear or freedom?
MG: Greg felt it the most because he had never been without a label before.

SV: Really? The band has been on so many labels that folded. Not to say it was because y'all were on them (laughs).
MG: That's true but he was always passed along, still intact as it were.

SV: Like a FedEx package? (laughing again, how could you not)
MG: He wasn't without a current deal at any time. It felt very strange for him. I had joined the band in 1996 and I had done some other things before and been signed and dropped. I was used to that feeling. It was new to him though and for a while he was wondering whether it was worth recording anything ever again. We were looking out there and seeing how CD sales had dropped, where piracy was taking chunks of income from musicians, now from where we are there is just no way you can make a living from the recorded side of things. You have to hit the road.

SV: It's kind of a vicious circle because it takes revenue to tour but you don't have that revenue from selling CDs or from a label giving you tour support. But if you don't tour and aren't in front of people a lot you won't be on their minds and they will literally forget to buy your music.
MG: You have to tour on a shoestring, really scale it down. The funny side of it is that the touring side is the part of music that has been around forever. If you were a musician you performed in a hall or in the corner of a pub just to earn your meal. That part will remain. People still want to see live music performances, even if it is on a very local level.

SV: I think they like it better when it isn't so large scale. It's more enjoyable to be in a smaller room and be able to see and hear the musicians than get herded into some huge, packed arena and watch a video screen because you're so far from the stage you can't see.
MG: Personally, I like playing the smaller rooms. We still occasionally get a large theatre but I feel most at home
when I can actually see the people in the audience and there is not that big gap between me and the people. One of the nice things right now is the shift to smaller concerts. We are still in the early part of this new era, we don't know what technologies are around the corner or how they are going to reshape the way we do things.
One thing we are doing that kind of runs counter to all the technology is we are releasing some vinyl because there has been a resurgence of interest in that, at least here in England. It's a nice format. You listen to it in a different way. There is something about getting a record out of its sleeve, putting it on a turntable and putting the needle in the grooves that makes you sit and pay attention to it. Music has become so disposable and it becomes wallpaper for whatever you're doing. People are starting to really listen again.

SV: That ties in with something either you or Greg said in the publicity for this album – that you wanted the music to take the listener on a journey.
MG:That's been the Alchemy ethos since day one really, so it was probably Greg who said that. We want it to be a journey, not necessarily an epic journey (laughs), some more than others. That also has to do with the way we write because we look at at the structures of the songs as we are putting them together, we don't just work around riffs.

SV: Since there is a new album out it's safe to assume that Greg's faith was restored. All you really had to do was look out at the crowd to see that you had fans who loved the band.
MG: We did get a lot from that and we both love doing the live shows. We love touring and we love writing. Recording is the hard part. Writing is the creative side, recording is getting in there and trying to make something sound possibly better than you are. And it's forever. Once you get it finished and it's released it's out there and you can't take it back and change it. You want people to hear you at your best so that is the hardest part. Getting
out and being on stage with our band – our friends who are killer players – and playing for people is when we really have fun.

SV: You do this transcontinentally more than anyone else I can think of. Lots of people fly to an overseas festival or do a few dates but you do several fairly long tours here every year. Does that ever get disorienting?
MG: It does but when you've been doing it a while you learn when to grab some sleep and how to stay on top of things. There's some discipline involved. You can't do all the partying and drinking because then the gig the next day is simply off. When you're younger you can do a bit more of that.

SV: Or you think you can (laughs.)
MG: You have to pace yourself. The other thing is doing all the organizing and we have a great team helping us with that too.

SV: One thing I love about Roseland is that it sounds very cohesive and has a very identifiable sound but none of the songs sound alike.
MG: It goes to a lot of different places doesn't it? That's what we try to do but you can't set out to do it. You really don't know where you are going to go with 13 tunes but when you get then done you hope they will hang together.

SV: To me there was a sense of freedom in these songs that I hadn't heard for a while. Was that just me or was it really there.
MG: It was really there. We tried stuff this time that we simply never would have tried otherwise and that's what you hear. Also, we decided to just write for writing's sake and not think about what people might be expecting. There's no traditional radio out there now. When there was we did have to think about trying to please them a bit.
If you didn't they wouldn't play it, it wouldn't get heard, then it wouldn't sell and you couldn't put together a tour so you did have to think about that. With this we decided to just make ourselves happy and have fun doing this.

SV: What you've come up with can't be pigeonholed. I would call it adult alternative instrumental, it could be like a jam band but with shorter more structured songs and some jazz flavor. It's a great experience for the listener but it goes way past the realm of “smooth jazz” and getting it heard by a larger crowd is the tough part.
MG: We've really always been like that. Think back to “Mr. Chow” from the first CD. What was it? A reggae song with Asian overtones and jazzy chords played by two guitars.

SV: That album was strikingly different even at a time when there was a lot more individuality across the board.
MG: That element is coming back and it is making it quite exciting again. For us to have these boundaries drop away is a nice thing. The tricky part is wondering where we actually belong. Radio had boundaries and got you labeled one specific way but it was where you could go to be heard.

SV: I got this question from another interview, I don't even recall where I read it but it's a great question for a band with over 20 years of recording under their belt. How do you think Acoustic Alchemy as evolved over the years?
MG: It has evolved in two ways. One is the evolution of the personnel because people drive a band either consciously or unconsciously just by being a part of it. We've got a very groovy rhythm section now, which is great. That wasn't really important during the earlier days when it was mostly the two guitars. And, obviously, I play very differently than Nick. He was brilliant and he had such a gift for melody and interpretation. I am more of an improviser and obviously I play electric guitar and we have added more of that. The writing has changed because the people writing the songs has changed from Greg and Nick to Greg and Me. And the other guys in the rhythm section are contributing to that too. Frank Felix brought a different sound when he was part of the band, Fred White (keyboards) brings in a different approach. His style has evolved so much over the last ten years too. Greg and Gary Grainger are amazing, they have played with so many really big people and put out their own albums and we are thrilled that they are with us now. But we haven't evolved into being unrecognizable, which can happen over the years and with so many changes. That is because the guitars have always been the focal point, in a way almost beyond the characters who play them. The sound of nylon and steel string acoustic guitars and the electric guitar. The guitars have got to be the star. They are the voices of the band. We have always held to that principle and through all of this evolution.

SV: And that is why this band has always had such an identity and such an original sound. As a fan and a media person I am so glad that you can pursue that even more. Acoustic Alchemy has always been wonderful and will continue to delight even more fans as Roseland get more exposure. Thanks so much for the conversation and the continually fabulous music!