February 21, 2005
Interview by Harvey Cline

After a ten year stint as the sax man for the Rippington's, Jeff Kashiwa has been busy with a solo career over the past few years. Always busy with a new release or touring schedule, Kashiwa took time recently to stop by Smoothviews to let us know what's happening, reflect, and tell us what we can look forward to over this summer. 

SmoothViews (SV):Hi Jeff and welcome to Smooth Views.com. How are you doing today?
Jeff Kashiwa (JK): Thank you. I’m doing great today.

SV:I understand you’re between tours right now.
JK: Yeah, we’re preparing for a big show, the Java Jazz Festival in Jakarta, Indonesia. It’s a three-day festival with all kinds of music. James Brown’s going to be there, George Duke and on and on. It’s going to be a great show. I’m going to take my band out there.

SV:How did you get involved with this?
JK: I know the promoter; he brought me out there as a solo act. I played with some local Indonesian musicians last October. It went so well, he invited me back to the Java Jazz Festival and I asked to bring my band this time. We’ve got a full horn section! It’s going to be a lot of fun. The first day of the festival the proceeds go the Tsunami Relief Fund.

I’m going to go to L.A. in a couple of days to rehearse the band. Michael Palo will be part of the horn section, and will also do his own thing. And Eric Benet, a great vocalist, is going to be there. I’m going to back him on a song or two.

SV:It sounds like a great, great show. We wish you the best, and hope you raise a lot of money for those poor victims out there. I’ve been listening to “Peace Of Mind” for the past couple of days. How’s that been going for you and which are your favorite songs to play?
JK: Oh, [it has been selling] very well. I’m really happy with that CD and it seems to be well received by the fans out there. So basically I’m thankful for that. I like to play “Wait and See” because it’s a high energy thing, but I also enjoy playing “Ecstasy” because it’s got a nice vibe to it.

SV:I was listening to the track “Homeward Bound” this morning and it sounds very acoustic. Can you give us some background on it?
JK: It’s funny, I didn’t originally intend for that to be a song on the CD. Although I’m not really a piano player, I use the piano to write with. So, when it comes time to write music, I sit at the piano all day, and that song with its’ sort of… for the musicians out there… open fifth that I play with my right hand, a B flat, F… it has a very, sort of acoustic, almost like a Charlie Brown thing. That’s what gives it that sound. And I would warm up with that sort of riff and play it over and over again. So I said that’s enough of that and time to start writing music for the album. And this didn’t even dawn on me until it just started and the song sort of wrote itself.

SV:Is that the way it happens a lot of times?
JK: Yeah, I think the ones like you said are organic-sounding are the ones that come out that way. Sure.

SV:Tell us a little about the title track “Peace of Mind.” It sounds almost mechanical.
JK: Yeah, it’s definitely got a strict rock beat to it… the rhythm part. What I like about it is what they call the release or the bridge is very melodic, and pretty sounding. Pretty chords. But I wrote that song at four in the morning when I was in L.A. I was sleepless. There was a fire alarm and lights blinking in my hotel room. There’s a lot on my mind… like everyone has a lot on their mind… got this to do tomorrow, and that to do, etc. So I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and cracked open my laptop computer and my portable keyboard and wrote that song and it did give me piece of mind.

SV:You mentioned “My Fantasy” and I think you’ve got Russ Freeman playing on that one. Who wrote the guitar part?
JK: I wrote the melody for that one, but Russ did a beautiful job playing it. I talk to him a couple of times a year, but I see him at least once a year. We do a benefit for the Girls and Boys Club in South Broward County, Florida .We do a benefit concert and have great fun.

SV: “Stride” is another great song on the disc that’s very upbeat and reminds me of the first song. Any background on that one?
JK: Although it sounds nothing like it, that song was inspired by Kim Waters “Waterfall.” I really like that song…the way Kim plays it, the energy of it. It has such a high energy, but smooth if that makes sense.

SV: I understand what you’re saying. You mentioned Kim and I understand you’ve been on the road with him, Steve Cole and Sax Pack. How did that evolve?
JK: It’s funny, it started off as a joke because [of] my friend Miles Gilderdale , who’s a guitarist for Acoustic Alchemy. I was playing with them and we were backstage watching HBO at Humphrey’s, before we were going on stage. We were just sitting there, kicking back watching HBO and there was a remake of the “Rat Pack.” I love those days. I love the Rat Pack and the fun they had on stage and the camaraderie. And it comes to me, that’s it, the Sax Pack. It was a joke, but I thought… you know what? I’m going to run with this. Two days later I picked up the phone and called some of my buddies and said “Let’s do this. Let’s put something together that features just sax. Instead of guitars and sax, it’s sax and sax. So I called Steve and Kim and off we went. It was just absolutely wonderful the first year. This year we’ve upped the ante, and got even more shows already booked throughout the year. Steve is actually going to do a different show. He’s going to do “Guitars and Saxes” this year. We got Marion Meadows on board and Kim Waters [and we’ll] be going out in a couple of weeks actually.

SV: Let’s talk about the Rippingtons for just a moment. Do you ever look back on those years with the Rippingtons and just go, “Wow, that was pretty special!”?
JK: Absolutely. Yeah. I gotta say, I get a lot of fan mail and a lot of fans say, “Hey, I remember you from the Rippingtons days!”… a lot of email. And the thing that they comment on is how much they miss the group. And I understand what they’re saying. In other words, the group effort. It really was with the group. Russ wrote the records and he wrote the music and was the creative force behind it. I think when it came to the live show we pulled together, and together worked as a group. That’s the chemistry that people liked so much. That’s sort of half the reason I want to do Sax Pack. Go back to the group format.

SV: You’re with Native Language label now. How did that come about?
JK: My friend Steve Oliver had signed with them. He was their first artist. He said, “Hey, I’m with this new label, and the guy’s really a nice guy, a real straight shooter, and you should talk to him. It was an extremely fast tempo. And I met Joe Sherbanee and he came to one of our concerts. It was a Rippingtons concerts, I believe. And we talked about doing an album. It was pretty simple. The thing about Joe and Native Language though that I like so much…and I just got off the phone with him… over the four years, is that we see eye-to-eye creatively. He used to play drums and now he runs a record label. But he is a very creative person and he gets musicians because he is a musician. Although he’s a business man and wants to sell CDs and everything, he also balances out well with music integrity, and I try to do the same. We see eye-to-eye on that level.

SV: Can you believe it’s been ten years since your first solo disc? I was just looking though all of them and wondering what has been the progression of your music through those five discs?
JK: Has it really? I would say… you know I’m finishing the Jakarta show and we have a horn section and I’m going back to the old songs from the first album… we’re going to play two songs from that album. So, I can actually listen to the early works. And I would say it’s more refined now, certainly technically speaking everything has gotten better. There’s better equipment, and a little more budget to record it profitably as opposed to doing it in your garage. But I think what I do like is the differences are good, in that it’s more refined and it’s a better higher quality recording, etc. But I think what is the same is the sound. I thought about that just days ago. You know, I give a lot of clinics and students always ask about sound. It’s a funny thing. You can get different saxophones… there’s a million kinds out there… and reeds, and mouth pieces, and you always end up sounding like yourself. Do you know what I mean? So, in other words I guess what I’m getting at, I’m happy that my sound is evolved a little bit, but is still much the same. I’m still the same, and the sax is still the same if that makes any sense.

SV: It makes a lot of sense. You can almost tell what sax player is playing just by that sound. No mater if you know who that song is by, you can tell by their stylistic signature or the style in general who they are.
JK: Philosophical the sound of anything but particularly saxophone does not come from the reed and the mouth piece. All of those things are there to assist you. The sound is in your head. That’s why, no matter what saxophone you play, you sound like you. Because you’re going through the sound you hear in your head.

SV: Interesting. I play sax, so I’ll have to remember that. Which two songs are you playing from “Catalina”?
JK: We’re going to do “Coastal Access” because that’s one that features the entire band and “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love?” which is one of the cover songs, and I think I did En Vogue’s “Never Gonna Get It” with Sax Pack. Those are the only two covers I’ve ever done.

SV: I was just listening to “Catalina” a few minutes ago. “I Will Come Back To You” is one of my favorites on there.
JK: Oh, thank you.

SV: You talked about playing just a few minutes ago and the emotional side. So many of your songs seem to be uplifting and go to that “next note up.” Where do you get your inspiration for that emotional side of playing?
JK: Life. I think the thing about music is that when you give yourself to it, you give part of yourself back and more. It becomes a companion along the way. A lot of times though, it’s a great life… you have people screaming. How many jobs do you get to go where you make a comfortable living and people are screaming for you when you go to work? My wife reminds me of this quite often. I am extremely lucky and extremely fortunate. But there’s another side of music that’s very solitaire. And that’s in the practice room or when you’re composing by the piano or guitar. It’s sort of alone time, and that gives you the opportunity to search inside yourself and find out ways. So from that place a lot of times its gratitude and joy [that] comes out or a lot of times sorrow. And you wish you [could] get to a couple other avenues of feelings and express through your music. And it keeps all of us sane.

SV: It’s always a good outlet. You said something about teaching and some clinics. Are you still working with the Disney College Band program?
JK: I used to, they discontinued that program unfortunately. That’s really a shame. Hopefully they’re going to re-instate it. They’ve stopped doing that, but I’ve been doing different things with middle schools and colleges. I just did a clinic for a middle school in Florida and I go back there in April. And I do one for my old high school, a fund raiser.

You have to get into some of the heads of these students. I especially like it when a student is frustrated or like I say is “stopped.” They try to get to the next level, but they can’t figure out how. The best news we can tell them is that it’s normal and everybody feels that way. It happens to professional musicians as well.

SV: That’s good advice for those young kids. Let’s talk about “Simple Truth” for just a moment. That was a great disc that I really enjoyed and it had a lot of good music on there. One of those was “Three Day Weekend.” How did that one come about?
JK: That was co-written by Dave Kochanski. He’s a wonderfully talented keyboard player and composer. His latest claim to fame is that he was on the road with Brittany Spears and he was having the time of his life. But he is a great writer. He sent that demo to me and I wrote the melody to that song and off we went with it. We decided to add a horn section later. That’s actually a distinctive part of the sound now.

SV: “Voices” is another favorite on there, I love that one.
JK: Thanks. Same thing, Dave wrote the tracks for that and I wrote the melody. Interesting enough for all the melodies on “Simple Truth” and actually for the new one “Peace of Mind,” I write with my piano and I don’t write with my saxophone. The saxophone sits on the stand and I’m playing the chords with my piano and singing a la Lionel Ritchie or something like that because it gets me to thinking melody and rhythm of words. I write words to everything… not that I will perform them, but that gives me a mood and a rhythm of the melody.

SV: I think “Something About You” is one of my favorites on there. Did he write that one also?
JK: I wrote that one.

SV: “Thanks To You”… you close with that one. Is that a song for anyone in particular?
JK: That was written by Dave Kochanski as well. I meant to ask him about that. I think that might be interpretive of his relationship with God.

SV: It almost sounds like an anthem the way it’s written. It’s great!
JK: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s one of those wonderful power ballads that’s just about gratitude.

SV: That’s where you get back to that emotional side again. Jeff, thanks so much for your time today. I just want to wish you all the luck as you travel overseas.
JK: Thank you.

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