Euge Groove launched his career seven albums ago with a group of songs that he wrote, recorded, and produced himself. They caught the ears of listeners on an early MP3 sales website, and that led the first-call session player into career as a solo recording artist. His new release, S7ven Large, has him back in that mode as the sole songwriter and producer for most of the album. He immersed himself in the process of creating this music in his home studio over a five-month period, bringing in most of the musicians who have delivered performances on his last two albums that set them apart from the smooth jazz pack. The resulting album is excellent from start to finish, with so much going on musically and sonically that you won't be able to play it in the background. You're going to want to listen close and repeatedly for a long time to come. He's one of the brightest and most thoughtful human beings out there, too.  Conversations with him are always a joy.

SmoothViews (SV): I love this album. It has kind of become my “go-to” sax album for just listening to around the house. I've always loved a lot of songs on your CDs but this one has a brighter sound to it.
Euge Groove (EG):I was kind of tired of making the darker sounding records and I've brought in other people early on as engineers and stuff. This time I would get to the point where I was going to bring in someone else and I would realize I was really digging the way things were going and keep putting it off. Before I knew it, it was mix down time. That's why I say I kept my hand in it more than I did before. I just didn't call on the people that I normally work with at the stages where I usually did, so in that way it became kind of a different project for me.

SV: They weren't available or because you had gotten this far into it and wanted to continue in that direction?
EG: That's exactly what it was. I had gotten this far into it. Normally I'll do the writing and then I'll hook up with Paul Brown or somebody else and will come in and do some arrangements with me. I kind of struggled over it. I did the songwriting then did the demos to the point where they were really full blown and I was getting into where it was going sonically. Normally I'll start out and I'll know what I need to do to get the end result. I kept doing it and it kept coming out the way I wanted it to so I didn't want to break that trend. I did that up to the mix down point but when you are working digital you're always mixing so I had been mixing for five months. I ended up bringing in Paul Brown for the last three or four days and he helped me tweak my mixes and clean them up a little but basically it was done by that point.

SV: Paul has done some really good stuff but he sculpted this sound that became the sound of smooth jazz as a format that had more to do with mood and texture than tempo and moving away from that sound does give a song or an album a different vibe.
EG: That's kind of where I came from. We did Sunday Morning and I pretty much gave it to Paul as far as shaping the sound. He had a pretty clear cut idea of what he wanted to do with it and it wasn't exactly what I wanted but I felt like we had been working together for a long time and I should just give him the reins. I like the way the album sounds but it is kind of dark. It has a "thuddier" kind of old school sound to it. I wanted something different for this one, to give it a little more energy. I left the saxes very bright and up in your face and the drums are clean and crisp.

SV: I think that's why even though in terms of tempo and the R&B lean it could be in the realm of smooth jazz it sounds more like true contemporary jazz album to me. The stuff that would have to be edited out to make it smooth is still in the mix. A very good thing!
EG: Yeah. The writing and performance are still me. It's what I always do, maybe growing a little bit. I did try to match it more to things that I was listening to in the Gospel world and with neo-soul. That's what I was trying to do. I learned so much from Paul Brown, I love him and I think he is brilliant so this isn't a knock against him, I'm one of his biggest fans but there are things like the electric guitar solo on track two that would not have made the cut with Paul (laughs) he would have talked me out of that as many ways as he could. I had a couple of other people tell me that too but I told them I wanted it in there. If I was live on stage that's what it would sound like, and that's how I wanted it on the record.

SV: Considering that people into their 60s and beyond grew up with rock and lots of guitar solos I never understood that mentality and the radio format that required cutting guitar solos, horn sections and other stuff is pretty much gone so why do it for them?
EG: I've never thought about fitting the music in a format, though. I guess I always had enough other people doing that - saying radio was not going to like something. This time I didn't think about that at all. All the songs have hard starts and hard endings like they would at a live show. I tried to approach it that way. I couldn't layer my background saxes in a live show so I didn't do that this time. If I felt like a guitar solo was going to come screaming at that spot then that's what I put there.

SV: There's one song on the album, "Gimmie Six,” that has this chilled out Soul Ballet kind of groove going on in the background then out of the blue this big horn section blasts through. It sounds so fresh and original and takes the song to another level.
EG: That's Rick Braun. I had this sample of these horns that I had built the demo with. I sent it to Rick and asked him if he could do something with it and he did his own thing. It's a simple groove; it's got a little swing to it. It's kind of a Maxwell-type groove.

SV: A lot of neo-soul to me sounds kind of clunky, probably because it's mellow with a lot of old school overtones but this one has more of a gliding sound to me. How's that for intangible (laughs)?
EG: It's crisp. That's from working five months on this album and keeping it completely in the box - where once you record it in the computer you never take it out. Once it becomes digital information it doesn't go out to analog mixing gear or anything else that would change the sound. You're tweaking the entire time. If you hear something that sounds off you fix it as you go. It's like doing a five month mix of an album.

SV: I have to tell you, the press release for this one freaked me out. It was really well written and really, really in depth. It had all this stuff about, like, “dominant minor seventh chords” in it. I bailed on piano lessons about three years in and didn't know whether to be intimidated by my inability to analyze it that way or to just shut up and enjoy. 
EG: It's supposed to be enjoyed. You're not supposed to be technically analyzing stuff. I have a lot of friends and associates that over analyze stuff; it comes from being in the business. I over analyze stuff but at some point you have to step back and enjoy the forest instead of counting the trees. When I'm done I always play the mixes very quietly in the background and if I enjoy it I feel like I've done a good job. You can't listen under a magnifying glass all the time.

SV: Tell me more about the process. It said that you basically just holed up for the five months you took to create this and went into total immersion.
EG: That's the deal. I think I started in mid-October last year. Every time I start an album there is a certain amount of panic - when you ask yourself if you'll be able to write, pull the songs together and all that. I had written some songs that I was going to stockpile for my next project and I ended up giving them to other artists, figuring I could always write more songs. So then it's time to start working on the new one and I sit down and think "am I going to be able to come up with 10 songs?"  There's a tremendous amount of panic in that. Another thing I know from past history is that it is such a difficult process doing the writing. It's very fatiguing emotionally and mentally for me. Maybe other people find it easier but for me it's very all in. Once I start I don't want to stop because if I write eight songs then stop and I need 10 songs it's like pulling teeth to get those last two songs. I wanted to knock it out. I sat down in mid-October and started writing. The first song came out pretty easily and I just wanted to continue on this path and not be interrupted. I'd lock my studio door and work from about ten in the morning until two the next morning. I would come out to eat and spend time with the family then go back in. I feel like my most productive hours were between ten and two in the morning, which is where the title of that track comes from.
I just didn't stop. I took a little break around Christmas and I was so paranoid about getting out of the flow that I went right back into it. It was dark, the winter gets dark, and I’m not eating or doing the things I should be doing. I was just 100% living this album, which is actually kind of a psychotic state to be in for five months.

SV: Do you find that when you do that you are kind of running on creative adrenaline but it drains you physically?
EG: That's what I meant by it being a dark period for me. I would still get out and do my running. I do about 30 miles a week and that was my one salvation during the day, but keeping those hours and having a diet of just this creative side isn't healthy for the mind, I don't think, and when the mind starts to go the body follows. But it's just that way when you're so into the process.

SV: You have 10 really strong songs. Most albums have one or two then a lot of fill. Do you do all the songs then have other people come in and fill them out, or do you do your sax parts, When you're doing everything how do you put it together?
EG: What has been working for me is that I had written everything in order  I'll write track one through track ten and record them in that order. This time there is a cover, it's the eighth track on the CD, and there is a song I wrote with Ross Bolton that is the fifth track, so those two songs were not in the original order. I had written two other songs and after I had the whole thing complete it just didn't feel right to me. I was actually going to deliver this album to the label earlier than I did but I told them I needed to do two more songs because what I heard did not feel right.

SV: Your cover of “Love Won't Let Me Wait” is exactly what a cover should be. You took it and styled it to make it sound like a Euge Groove instrumental that happened to have a familiar melody. A melody that fit the album too, and Tracy Carter's keyboard work is breathtaking.
EG: Tracy Carter is just crazy, he's a brilliant player. Those were the last two songs and I had to fire everyone up to get back in there. I always wanted to do a cover of that song because when I was writing, a lot of my chord structures are similar to that style, with a lot of the diminished chords and things that are in the song. I wanted to do a real sparse arrangement, kind of like a Diana Krall arrangement with the brush drums and an almost straight-ahead feel but it worked out differently. It's very minimalistic with the drums and orchestration behind but none of the synth-y bells and whistles. Tracy is on all 10 tracks. I go into these songs hearing the way he is going to play them. This is the third album we've done together. I know how he's going to play. I know his voicings so much so that my demos had a lot of his influence and he even commented on that.

SV: You've used a lot of these musicians on your last few albums and the chemistry is really noticeable.
EG:  And most of them are coming from being church musicians as well as session musicians.  It's a gospel church language and that's where so much of this connection is coming from. The solo Tracy takes on the title track is just crazy. It's a much longer solo than most smooth jazz albums allow anyway and he just nails it, and he just did that live.

SV: Did you have all these guys in there together? Because it does have a live feel to it?
EG: I cut the bass, drums, and keyboards together, they were in there, which has advantages and disadvantages because it's hard to focus on yourself and three other people at the same time when you are recording. This time I had the programmed drums and cut the bass and keyboards, and then I cut the live drums and brought the guitar in so there were three separate sessions with the players.

SV: The songs don't all sound alike but there is a continuity that makes you want to put it on and play it through and kind of makes you anticipate what is coming next. And you do a lot of solos that are produced so well and so disciplined that it grabs the ear that you are playing that many notes, that range, or at that speed. 
EG: One of the advantages of doing everything myself in my own studio is that there is a sonic continuity in the process, so no matter what I do it will flow in a way that you can't get with multiple producers or sessions being done at different places. I had all of this stuff laid in and I could play what I wanted to on the sax and weave around it. Sometimes it was fast and furious and sometimes it was long and sustained like it is in "Love Won't Let Me Wait." 

SV: These song titles spin around numbers, as does the title of the album. It freaked me at first because I was uploading it into the computer and the first track came out titled Track 1, which is how any track with no information on it comes up. Then I went to the cover to see if there was some glitch with the computer reading the title and there was the title – “Track 1.”
EG: (laughs) That's it. It's Track 1. Once I started writing this I didn't want to take time away from writing so getting titles for the songs was not foremost in my mind. I waited until I finished the record to do the titles, unless something came to mind. I ended up with all these tracks that were called 7.1, 7.2, and so on because it was my seventh album. I was looking at that and started thinking that maybe there was something about the meaning of the number seven. I got online and looked up "meaning of number seven" and I got all these historical references. It was really a powerful number. So then I started counting up. What is the meaning of one, or two? And so on. I decided to go with the number thing. Track 1 was typical of the way I start a track so that's how it was titled. "The Funky Bunch" doesn't have a number. I was just listening and thinking about how the guys on the track are a bunch of funky players. The title cut, "S7ven Large" reminded me of Livin' Large. Then "Prayer4Peace," which was my homage to all our service people over in the Middle East because I was writing around Christmas time and thinking about how much they must be missing their families and the places that were familiar to them. It had these ominous chords and I put the little sitar thing in. I kept envisioning the soldiers who were there and wanted to come home. "Days of Soul" reminded me of an old school soul thing. “Gimmie 6" was track 6, "The Journey" felt like I was a journeyman traveling all over the place.  Track 8 was "Love Won't Let Me Wait."

SV: Wait rhymes with eight.
EG: Yeah, and "To The Nines" was next. "10 to 2" came from the feeling that my most prolific and creative time while I was doing this was between 10 at night and 2 in the morning.

SV: That's my creative time too, which doesn't really mix with having to be at work early in the morning.
EG: I agree. I had a lot of help from my family. They were very tolerant of my idiosyncrasies and weird schedule while I was doing this.

SV: They're pretty used to this by now aren't they?
EG: Yeah, but not on this schedule. This was really crazy, it truly was. I didn't want to stop to do anything. I was on a mission that I had to get it finished. It weighed heavy on me and when it was done, mixed, and finished it was like a big sigh of relief. You can really seclude yourself too much, I would go out and do something and feel like I was coming out of this cave and it felt weird to be around people. My mind had been clicking on its own thing for so long.

SV: I've always loved your liner notes because you always say something that makes the reader think or is really inspiring and encouraging. This time you said “It's been a very volatile five months by every definition of the word.”
EG: It has You see all these things that are going on in the world and it's kind of stunning. When I went in to work on the album I wasn't paying much attention to what was going on outside. Then I came out and there was all this craziness going on and it was probably more of a shock to me because I was away from watching the news and keeping up. It hit me more after being away from it than it would if you kept up with it every day. I'm sure it's no more volatile than any other time in our history but it seems more intense. Everyone is fighting and arguing with each other, wars are escalating, it's crazy. Add to that the business side of music is crazy and radio is crazier than ever. All of that is what I mean by volatile. Things are changing fast and changing all the time.
SV: While you were holed up with the music KIFM even phased out most of their instrumental music and most of us thought they were going to be one of the last holdouts. The radio stations just pulled too much of what made the music exciting and compelling out of the mix and the listeners started going elsewhere but get them in a live setting and they go crazy over the version of the music that isn't toned down.
EG: We all saw that coming. Some of my favorite artists - guys that are not struggling to make it, the ones who are already there as far as being top sellers and concert draws - would come up with an album and not get any airplay on really quality stuff. It showed how much of a disconnect there is. Radio seemed to be dictating what the listeners should be hearing instead of the listeners leading the radio stations into playing what they wanted to hear and what the artists want to express. How can you not give, say, someone like Kirk Whalum the latitude to play what he wants to play when he is such an artist and people connect with what he is playing when they see him live or get to hear his whole CD?

SV: There is so much going happening on the internet right now. It's going to be a matter of teaching the generation that grew up with radio to shift to streaming media but it's getting easier with all the mobile apps. There are so many outlets that it's harder for the artists and labels to promote the music. Instead of one station with a million listeners you have 500 stations with anywhere from 50 listeners to thousands of listeners.
EG: I think Shanachie is doing a great job of servicing everyone as much as they can.
It's changing so rapidly. The record company has the people that they go to. I don't necessarily know who that is and I don't completely understand the process. I've got some really good people with my new management team at Chapman. I told them I want to do some promo, I want to get out and do some listener appreciation parties at the stations that are still in the format. A couple of them have taken us up on it and some of them have said they didn't even really care, which I thought was interesting. I've been reaching out on the networking sites, especially Facebook and Twitter, to let people know what I'm doing. I took the initiative to put a couple of full length versions of songs from the album up on my Facebook page and YouTube. People are creating these playlists on YouTube. I see it with my daughter, she will be in her room doing her homework and she has a YouTube playlist of songs that she likes just playing in the background. I learn a lot from watching my kids about how they discover their music and listen to it.

SV: I think that is the best way for artists who grew up with a different business model to see how the new business models work best, watch the “kids.” The hard part is cutting through the clutter because there is so much music online.
EG: I'm very fortunate to already have a fan base, to already be established enough that when people see the name they are more likely to check it out. It is perplexing though. I've always believed that you control the things that you can control, like the quality of the music and what I do on stage, and let go of the things you can't control because there really isn't any point in being preoccupied with them.

SV: That's so true. It's really redesigning the way artists and labels have to work to get the music heard and the change has been at hyper speed. And we're not anywhere near done yet. You've been one of the ones who is really great about being accessible to all these new media outlets and being willing to get face-to-face with your fans.
EG: One of my favorite quotes is the one from Homer Simpson - "All those jazz people are just making that stuff up."  That really applies here, we are all kind of making it up as we go along and that is exciting in its own right. If things had stayed status quo, if it was like it was 10 years ago, would I have made the same record I just finished? Probably not, so it's tough to navigate sometimes but it's good in the long run.

SV: I think it is going to be good to hear musicians feeling their way back into their own grooves. The day after I got yours I got Andy Snitzer's new one, then I got Paul Taylor's new one. All three sound totally different from each other but they are not as restrained as the albums that had been coming from artists on the smooth jazz field.

EG:  Through adversity you can either run in the corner and hide or you can try harder and push a little harder. That's what I'm doing. I've always thought I put tons of effort into every project I've done but this was like a psychotic level.

SV:  The result is a real gift to your fans and future fans, and when you do live gigs you can herd them right over to the merchandise table, hook them up with this one and send them home happy.