On stage Euge Groove is a rock star, an entertainer who can fire up a crowd or take them into a deep, passionate groove. He has managed to create an identifiable sound in a genre that is loaded with sound-alikes, and he has managed to climb the airplay charts with a series of songs that don't fit any preconceived mold.  This time around he has delved deeper into the sound he started to explore on his last CD.  It's heartfelt, authentic, and brings an original twist to the sound of the genre.  You've got to go deep to do that, and he's not afraid to go deep. Talking to him is like talking to your most levelheaded friend - the one who has lots of common sense.  He goes through stuff just like the rest of us, and he's willing to share that both in conversation and in the music he creates. That's something to be grateful for.  

SmoothViews (SV): I'm really loving this music.  There's something that comes through on it that is really tangible.  There is a lot of really good music out there that is more about a high gloss surface.  This one has a really emotional undercurrent and, weird as it may sound, it's really comforting.  It has this really warm vibe to it.  
Euge Groove (EG): It was definitely an emotional time making the record, and a completely different experience on a couple of different levels.  I think I've been a little bit nervous about how people are going to react to this one because it is very organic.  It still sounds like me.  I think no matter what I do you hear my writing come through and the sound of the sax that is identifiable with me, so those smooth jazz elements are always going to be there.

SV: I was actually surprised that you had a new one in the works.  It was time for one, but you still have a song on the charts from the last one, and it seems like I heard you were working on it one day and about a week later it had a release date.
EG: We wanted to get this one out.  It's a new label; it's been over two years since Born 2 Groove so I wanted to get it out.  Shanachie wanted it to come out this year in time for the holiday season, and they felt like they could do a good job with it at retail.  It didn't matter that much that there was already a single on the chart, and that might stall something from this one getting airplay.  I'm already getting played at radio, so my music is already in front of that audience, whether it's this album or the last one.  They felt like they could build the sales from a number of platforms beyond that.  They are really connected at retail, not just the Internet, but the smaller specialty stores and the big box stores like Best Buy.

SV: Was there pressure to get it finished and out?
EG: Not to get it finished.  They are just really quick with the turnaround.  I worked on this disc for a year, which is what I always do.  It's pretty much a year process between doing the writing and getting it finished.  Then we were right off into release.  I just finished it in the middle of September, and here it is a month and a half later.  That's unheard of with any other label.  It's usually three or four months out front.  The relevance of it, getting it done, then having it out that fast, is really appealing to me.

SV: The bio that came with the CD was really interesting.  It said that you did this long series of dates with Tina Turner, then a smaller tour on your own, took a little bit of family time, then headed overseas for another leg of Tina's tour, and the writing process was almost your connection with home.
EG:  That's how it came about.  I started writing and working on the songs to take my mind off being so far away for such a long time.  I wanted to be home.  I missed my family.  I was homesick from the time I got on the plane.  I was thinking of what I could do to occupy my mind.  We would play then have two or three days off sometimes, or we'd be in the same city for two weeks at a time.  It wasn't that fast paced, moving from city to city every night thing that most tours are. There was a lot of alone time.  I chose to go the healthy route with the down time.  I worked out every day and I buried myself in the writing.  

SV: Do you think that being in that kind of emotional isolation tank affected the writing toward different directions or deeper directions?
EG: I certainly had more time to crunch on it.  There were no interruptions.  I would literally have three days at a time where I didn't even have to leave the hotel room.  Having the time with no distractions gave me a chance to really immerse myself into it, but I was definitely melancholy, so a lot of the tracks may reflect that.  Do you hear that melancholy in some of the writing?

SV: To my ear it's more like an introspection.  What a lot of these tracks remind me of is what the title says - Sunday Mornings. Kind of that whole gathering in the churchyard before and after services when you've left the everyday stuff behind for a while.  Then cross-pollinate that with a good jazz brunch show on the radio that takes you away from the everyday stuff too.
EG: That comes through because I buried myself in the spiritual side as well while I was there.  My listening tastes have been drawn more and more to Gospel and Contemporary Christian and more of the religious music.  There are some amazing artists out there, and the music that they are playing is incredible.  It's some of my favorite stuff to listen to.  Even message aside the music itself is deep.  That was the approach I hinted at with Born 2 Groove, but it's really where this one came from.  That's why it's called Sunday Morning. There are definitely a few tracks on there that are straight up with that kind of church thing.

SV: You have songs on here where there is a little bridge or melodic theme that is very gospel but it's still got a contemporary jazz foundation the songs shift from one to the other so smoothly. I've never seen somebody write like that.
 EG: That was the challenge, and that's what I was trying to bring to it - especially the title cut.  You have these really contemporary jazz type chords running through it - a lot of gospel music is very jazz influenced anyway - then you get the hook of the song and it's straight up church.  It's like it comes out of nowhere.

SV: A lot of what we connect with is not on the surface.  There's something about this music that goes straight to gut level as far as communicating what you were feeling when you wrote it.  That had to be hard to translate from writing, through the studio, and the final mixing, but it came out pure.
EG: There's no programming.  It's all about finding the right group of musicians, and I had an absolutely stellar group of musicians to work with.  They just opened the songs up and brought their heart and soul into it.  There were a couple of times when Tracy Carter would play something on the piano, and I would have to run into the piano booth and get down on my knees and start bowing to the guy!  He's just a monstrous player, and what I really love about him is not just his technique and timing, but the way he listens to the melody.  All these melodies were done and he'd listen a few times, and what he came up with was really deep.  I've never worked with someone who can play around the melody and accentuate the melody like he does. You take that kind of players - that caliber of musicianship - and they are able to bring something so fresh to the demos I had.  When I went back and did my final sax performances, it was so inspiring.  I cut my sax in record time because I was so inspired by the rhythm section tracks.

SV: I didn't have liner notes at all when I first heard the album and there were all these places where I wanted to be able to run look at the CD cover and see who was playing something.
EG: Isn't that incredible.  On the song "The Gospel Truth," it's absolutely nuts.  We were cutting that song with a four-piece rhythm section, and at one point we said, "let's stop and keep this where it is, this is going to be bass, drums, piano and sax."  That's how we cut that song, and it was just the communication between the four people. It's 6-1/2 minutes long, but it doesn't feel like it, because there is so much communication going on between everyone.  Philippe Saisse did a beautiful job of arranging strings for it, and it's one of my favorite cuts that I've ever done.

SV: This is mostly the same lineup of musicians that you used on Born 2 Groove.
EG: The only change in the rhythm section was Oscar Seaton on drums., I chose him because I've done a lot of gigs with him since the last album, and we had so much fun, such great chemistry out on the road.  He has a different kind of energy that he brings to it.  He's from Chicago, and he has that Chicago church vibe that I've always loved. He came in and did a different thing with it.  Philippe Saisse did the string arrangements.  We cut it at a different studio but still did in super HD again.  The album has a different sound to it, a more organic sound for some reason.

SV: I read an interview somewhere about the last album, where you called the sound you were putting together for that one "West Coast Church." Obviously you've gotten deeper into this theme.  How did that come about?
EG: I think it was kind of two-fold.  When I finished Born 2 Groove I was the happiest I had been with any of my discs.  I felt like it was my own, that it was where I had been trying to get for the last five CDs.  I was very happy from that point of view, and the fans that came out to the shows were talking about how much they relate to certain songs.  They were asking me to please do the next album like that.  I had so much fun doing it.  I feel like that is where I have evolved, and where I have my identity, so I wanted to keep with that feeling and submerge even more into it.

SV: Yeah, I think that night I dropped you a note after your team beat mine, you said you were so immersed in working on the album that you didn't watch the game, and that you felt like you finally grew up with this one.
EG: (laughs) That's true.  I wasn't concerned with sticking to the book in terms of how I played, and I think the playing is a little freer.  It's not so pattern-oriented, and it has more of an open feel to it.  I cut these saxes in half the time I usually take.  I'm always worried about perfection and making everything absolutely perfect, and this time it was about the feel and being more free in playing.

SV: It does sound very free, and because of that, it has a real jazz sensibility. The other thing that comes to mind is that it is deceptively subdued, because compared to your live performances, it comes across as being laid back, but it really isn't because there is so much going on.
EG:   When Born 2 Groove came out, I heard a lot of people saying that it was a lot mellower than the other CDs. I was kind of taken aback by that and thinking maybe it's the HD thing, because it's sounds so clean. I think this one is more laid back than that, but when you analyze it the tempos are up there.  It should have more energy than some of the past stuff, but I think a lot of it is the calm and the maturity.  I don't feel like I have to beat anyone over the head with it.  I can let the music play out the way I feel it.

SV: I think Born 2 Groove was more up than some of your early stuff.  What is interesting to me is that you've always been able to find a hook and just nail it, and that has transitioned into these melodic themes that are really different from what was going on in the first albums.
EG:  I think anyone who writes is influenced by what you are listening to at the time, and I've been listening to so much of the Gospel music that it took me more into that direction. I have been lucky at radio with doing up-tempo songs like "Mr. Groove" or "Get' 'Em Goin'."

SV: I don't think anyone but you could have put out something as wild and funky as "Get Em Goin'" and gotten it played.
EG: I couldn't believe it.  I was surprised when the label picked it as the first single, and then radio jumped all over it together.  I thought it was going to be a really hard sell.  Maybe that preconceived notion that radio doesn't want energy isn't really locked in.

SV: Did you just start listening to more of this gospel flavored stuff recently?  How did you get into this?
EG: I was just kind of exploring and finding new things.  I remember a Sunday morning years ago when I was going to the airport, the driver had one of the Satellite stations on, it was the Gospel channel, and I was thinking that this was really cool (laughs).  That's when I started really checking into it.  A lot of the guys in the band were going back to do their church gigs, so I asked them who I should listen to, and I started getting into it.  Then you find more recommendations, and that leads to finding other people, and that's how I got into it.

SV: You've worked with Paul Brown on all your CDs, and he's been with you as you've shifted toward a live, less programmed approach.  Was this an adaptation for him, because he's got some solos on this that don't sound like he usually sounds?
EG: He plays a lot of guitar on it.  He finally picked up a Strat on the track "On Your Knees," and I was going "What are you doing with a Strat?"  Then after he did his solos I'm going, "Don't ever play another guitar than that Strat."  He totally blew me away.  He sounded so comfortable with it.  He's always done that jazz hollow-body thing, and he really came to the party with this.  He grew up being an engineer recording a lot of more organic stuff in the 70s and 80s, so it's not like this is unfamiliar territory for him.  We went in with what I liked off Born 2 Groove, and I think six of those 10 tracks were live, not programmed.  Radio picked the ones that were live.  They will play it if we record it in a contemporary way, and that's the challenge - to get those live recordings to sound natural and contemporary.

SV: You're a bit of a sound geek, to say the least, and he's an engineer, so if anyone could make it work the two of you would be the team to do it.
EG: We bump heads from time to time, but we complement each other, and that's what being a co-producer is all about. There are certain things that he's going to fight for, and there are certain things that I'm going to fight for, and hopefully we come out in the middle somewhere, and it's all good.

SV: What about Dax Reynosa, the vocalist on "Yes"?
EG: He's somebody Paul has been writing with that we brought in.

SV: At first I thought it was an alias for your son 'cause his name is Dax too.
EG: Yeah, we were talking about that at the session.  You don't meet many people named Dax.  He's a real talented singer and songwriter, and Paul has been working with him writing some R&B based stuff.  It's a beautiful track, and again we did it live in the studio, and the guys gave it this kind of Philly soul vibe.

SV: It's been 10 years since you put out your first album.  You've been with three different record companies, but that's just because of the way the business is.
EG: I keep putting them outta business.

SV: You're a sax playing typhoid Mary, it's all you.  But besides that you've had the same manager, you've worked with the same producer, and pretty much the same group of musicians while a lot of artists are frantically hopping through producers, managers, agents, and changing styles even. You've pretty much stayed the course, and let it come to you.
EG: Yeah.  It's really hard to be patient.  Especially in a genre that moves at a snail's pace.  It's not like the pop format where an album will sell for six months or so.  It's triple that with this music.  Radio will hold onto a single for almost a year if it's a hit.  I think a lot of guys come in thinking that they had a one number one song at radio and should be out there headlining every festival.  It's not like that.  This is my sixth album in 10 years.  You just have to stay the course and be patient.  I've had all the success as far as airplay that anyone could ask for, and it's still a struggle to get gigs.  I still feel like the new kid on the block sometimes.  It's constantly a grind, so for guys to come out and expect everything to happen fast and all at once is just not realistic.  But if things don't happen fast they start thinking they need a new manager or a new agent.  Give them time to do their job and listen to what they say.  You have to get feedback and keep bringing up the level of your game.  It's a learning process and it's tough.  Especially now, because there isn't any much artist development, and there aren't A&R guys around who, a few years ago, would have told a musician they weren't ready yet, or what they needed to do to get there.  It comes down to management companies, and sometimes they don't want to get real with a musician if it means losing a client.  It's all about patience.  I look back at some of the shows I did when I first started out solo and it's almost embarrassing.

SV: Oh, come on.  You've always brought it and blown the crowds away.
EG: There's so much to it that I didn't have down at the start.  You have to pick the right songs, the flow has to be right.  There's such a big difference between really putting on a show and just going out and playing a bunch of songs.  It's a hands-on learning process.

SV: Your liner notes just blew me away.  You talk about humility, and how it has been such a part of your life recently.  And I'm thinking here's a guy who has this talent and has built a solid career off it.  A lot of us go through that process where we get overconfident and get this big fat humility lesson in the process.
EG: That's the biggest gift.  People say that God doesn't speak to you.  I think that's the one time he speaks.  You're just not listening if you don't get that.  It teaches us our lessons.  I learned so much from humility.  You've got to remain humble through this stuff, because we are all so fragile.  You could be on top of it one day, then the next day you're down.  This has been such a challenging year for many people.  Look at the unemployment rates. I've been unemployed for periods of time, and I know how painful that is.  My success - doing these gigs with Tina Turner, and the songs doing well on the radio and things, is amazing, but in the back of my mind is this knowing that it's going to end.  It's not a question of if it is going to stop, because there's going to be a moment where this is going to stop, and you better have the rest of the stuff in your life in order, because if you don't you're going to be left with nothing.  That's the humility part of it.  That lesson really came home to me this year when I was in Europe and so homesick.  It's like I came off having one of the most phenomenal years of my life in 2008 between family and my album and touring and rushing from one thing to the other, and I got on that plane and nothing mattered to me but wanting to be home with my family.  So there was that lesson.  You can celebrate the joy of your business successes, but it doesn't mean anything if you don't have your family and your health and all the things that truly, really, matter.  That was the lesson that God was trying to teach me, and I know it, and I had lots of time to be introspective and think about it - get the priorities straight.

SV: On a more delicious side, you've been really tearing it up with Guitars and Saxes. This is one of the best tours I've seen of that particular package.
EG: It was a lot of fun, and what sad is, that by the end, we were really comfortable. The last several dates that we were doing had such a great flow, and the chemistry between everybody was really cool. Now we only have a few more shows.  I think the last dates we are doing are in December, and that's gonna be it.

SV: What have you got on the agenda now that that is winding down and this CD is about to take off?
EG: This is a mellow time of the year for me as far as touring, but I've got some pretty exciting things going.  I'm going to Hawaii to do the series Michael Paulo has been hosting in Honolulu, and I've got Jammin' In Jamaica with Warren Hill in November.  I'm doing a week at Jazz Alley in Seattle, which is one of my favorite clubs in the world. I've got some promo stuff for the new record, and I'm already booking for next year.  It's going to be all solo stuff next year.

SV: I hear that's tough to do right now because of the cost of touring.
EG: It has been tough for the last several years.  Most promoters want more bang for the buck, but we've been really diligent about it.  Other than doing Guitars and Saxes in 2004, and this year I haven"t done any package tours.  I know guys who have only done the packages.  Maybe I'm just earlier in my career, than some of these guys are.

SV: And you've been one who is willing to take some risks too.  The whole "Livin Large" thing.
EG: Yeah.  I'm not looking at gigs from the bottom line either, which I probably should be (laughs).  Doing a good gig is more important to me than the amount of the paycheck.  I could do a package and probably take home more money, but I wouldn't get to get up and play for 90 minutes.  With a package, you do maybe five or six songs, and putting together this show with a whole set list of my own I'm still thinking "what do I drop?"  A lot of these songs are radio songs that people want to hear, and there is still this limited time, so working with a more limited time is that much harder.  Now if you could go out with a package where everyone got to get up and play for an hour...

SV: We could have grand time at an all night concert and call in sick to work the next day. Do you have your backup band set yet?
EG: I do.  Marcus Coleman has been traveling with me.  Daryl Williams, another church guy, has been playing with me.  He did Guitars and Saxes and has a really good CD of his own out.  Ross Bolton has been playing guitar, and Oscar will be with me.


Whenever someone starts talking about music that is influencing them I always get curios about what they are listening to so I asked Euge to recommend some of the Gospel artists he has been listening to so his fans could check it out.  I discovered this music pretty much the same way he did.  I would be in the car on Sunday morning and inevitably find myself listening to the Gospel show on our local Urban A/C station.  Then you go to iTunes or Amazon, or type a name into a Pandora or Slacker player ,and start following the recommendation threads. Here are some of the ones Euge recommended: Donnie McClurkin, Isreal and the New Breed, Annoited, Marvin Sapp, Smokie Norful, Rye Tribbett, Yolanda Adams, and Mary Mary.  And he said that if you have XM turn it one notch down from their WaterColors channel and check out the music on 71.