At the Rippingtons concert a few weeks ago, I was totally surprised to hear Jeff Kashiwa announce from the stage that he had a new album coming out in mid-February.  It was already mid-February and I hadn't heard anything about it being released.  He played one song from it for an extremely appreciative audience and after the show; he was gracious enough to set up an interview in time for this month's deadline.  He was headed downstate for a smooth jazz cruise with the Rippingtons and Paul Taylor, then going through the Carolinas to do some CD release party concerts.  He lives in Seattle but this time he was in my time zone, wide-awake and ready to talk about a multiple projects and tour dates.  Including starting off the year by recording a new album and getting it out in a little over a month.

SV: First of all congratulations on the Sax Pack song sitting at the top of the charts for a good part of last year.
JK: It was wonderful.  We enjoyed 10 weeks up there.  And thank you, thank you to the radio stations and the fans for putting us there.

SV: You've got an album coming out, you're on the Rippingtons new one that's coming out, the Sax Pack had a #1 song and that CD is still on the charts.  You're doing Sax Pack, Rippingtons, and solo live gigs.  You've been a busy guy.
JK: Yeah, knock on wood.  I'm very happy with the way things are going.  Usually the winter months are my months to tighten the belt buckle because I don't work as much but this winter I spent my off-road time working on a new CD.  We did it in January and it's called Back In The Day.

SV: It's mid-February and I have a copy of it in my hand.  That was quick!
JK: It was very quick.  I had a lot of help.  Because of the time crunch I turned to some very talented people I've worked with a lot who have been in my band like Melvin Davis and Allen Hinds and Dave Kochanski.  A new guy is really involved too, a New York musician named Chris Parks.  I've never met him, I've only known him from his music, and we've been e-mailing back and forth.  When I was on Native Language, he would submit songs and I'd like them but for whatever reason they would never make it onto the CD.  This time around, I'm with Shanachie.  They told me I had free creative reins, which is so rare, and I got to work with him. 

SV: This is your first album, at least as a solo artist, on Shanachie.  How did this deal come about?
JK: I was kind of a free agent for a couple of years because my contract with Native Language was up and I wasn't really worried about it.  I just thought I would focus on whatever was next in front of me.  We worked on the Sax Pack CD and the label was pretty happy with the success that one has had so they offered me a solo deal.

SV: Wow, they really gave you that kind of control?
JK: Yeah, I've been working with a guy named Danny Weiss.  I asked him when he wanted the master and he gave me a date and said he wanted 10 songs and said, “I trust you” (laughs).
I called Chris.  He's not really known in the smooth jazz world, I think he's worked with Najee and a few others but he mostly has been producing R&B vocalists.  He played bass, guitar, keyboards, programmed the drums, and mixed it.  He did everything except play sax.  What he brought to it was a really distinct R&B flavor.

SV: And you did it in a month.  Did you have much preparation time before this?  Usually when people are getting ready to work on a new one word leaks out but this one caught everyone by surprise. 
JK: Shanachie doesn't do a bunch of promotion.  I think for a number of reasons.  One of their major vendors has filed for bankruptcy.  That's a shame because that was one of the major electronic retail stores and they carried Shanachie's catalog.  Tower is gone. 

SV: That's just the shift in the business model.  There isn't much music retail left except for the big box stores like Target and Wal-mart that just do a small group of pop hits and the labels have cut back their promotion staffs.  Marketing and promotion have kind of dropped into the hands of the artists now.
JK: Yeah, and for me that's what I'm doing right now with you and with other websites and radio stations. 

SV: Yes, and that's what we are here to help you with.  It's a matter of getting the word out by a whole bunch of different sources.
JK: I'm banging my own drum, like hey people, I have a new CD out.


SV: Once again.  Hey, people!  Jeff's got a new CD out.  Here's the review.  We'll even link the review right in the interview to make it even more convenient.  It's a lot of work for the artist now.  You have to create the CD like you always did, but now you have to do a lot more.  It's kind of a culture shock for some of the people who came up back when labels had big staffs and there was such a thing as a record store.  It's work.
JK: It is.  It's something that I'm completely used to and I'm totally OK with it.  Everyone's got a job to do and I'll do my job.  If it means giving up a little sleep and getting up early to do an interview or go to a radio station, or staying around after a show to sign CDs, I'm happy to do it.  I'm happy to be working at all.  For me it's not as if I was one of the established stars whose sales are off the charts and they are on a major label and get placement in the big stores.  For someone in that situation it may be a fall in terms of straight up numbers because of the changing market but I never sold a mega-mega amount of CDs.  My sales have always been pretty modest in comparison.  For me it's more like falling out of a one-story  building.  It's like "oh well."

SV: That's what Will Donato said a few months ago when I talked to him.  He put out his first solo album right when the whole industry thing was starting to crash.  This is a wonderful CD too, so we've got to get word out about it.  You called it Back In The Day.  When you said that onstage, I was afraid it was going to be another cover project but the irony is that there are no covers on it, which is really bucking a trend in itself. 
JK: Actually, with the exception of the Sax Pack CD I haven't done any covers except that one on my first album.  ("Could it Be I'm Falling In Love" from Remember Catalina)  When I first started this project, I started thinking about what I wanted to say with it.  I wanted to keep it real and do what was in me, what was in my heart.  What's in my heart, what I still listen to today, is all the wonderful groups from the 70s like Earth, Wind and Fire, Chicago, The Spinners, Tower of Power, Average White Band...all that music has meant so much to me and it's all still playing on my iPod.  That's where the title came from.  Even though there are no covers on this CD, I feel like a lot of it has the vibe of old soul and R&B.

SV: The interesting thing about that is how you managed to translate that flavor into a sound that is definitely 2009, a contemporary pop instrumental sax album that is influenced by that heritage but not stuck in the past.
JK:  I think things should go maybe in kind of a helix shape, that DNA shape.  If you're imitating something from the past, you're just going in a loop and repeating.  I think to be influenced by the past but adding your own spin to it is creating an outward spiral, a forward momentum.  You still return to what inspired you but you have your own thing in there to make it different, so it's not just recycling.  For example, Chris Parks would set up a track and we'd be really groovin' and it would be time for me to finalize the melody.  I had an idea of what I was going to play but it was not specific yet.  I was going to let it finalize when the mic was in front of me.  I rarely write on sax.  I just noodle around when I do that so I almost always sing instead.  Especially on a melody, on a project like this where it is really pop instrumental.  Believe it or not, I turn on the mic and I sing into it.  Like I'll pretend I'm the lead singer for the Spinners.  I think about how he would sing the song.  How would he phrase it?  And I sing the melody.

SV: OK, I want the outtakes.
JK: Believe me, as soon as I get the melody right I put on the sax and hit delete.  It would not be pretty, you would understand why I play saxophone.  They serve as a guide track.  What I have learned is that If I'm experimenting with the melody on my sax I end up being the noodling saxophone guy doing saxophone licks and I don't want to do that.  I want to do a memorable solid melody so I sing it.  I actually sing lyrics too, to get the rhythm of the melody and to get the emotional content.  In the middle of "Back In The Day" there's a breakdown section where the horns come in and I was singing that line when I wrote it - "Back in the day, back in the day..."  I can sing the rhythm and the harmony and everything.  Or "Baby Come Over" goes "Baby come over, come over, come over..."  They just come together in this way that I can sing them.

SV: That's interesting because when you first said that you just sit down with a track and start playing I was wondering how you come up with those really strong melodies.
JK: Something happens when the sax is in my hand and it takes a shift in my brain to have a more vocal approach, a more pure melodic approach instead of playing licks. 

SV: I think that may be one reason why the radio trend has been toward covers and instrumentalists have been choosing to do covers.  Those are songs that are written for a vocalist.  They have a structure and they have a hook instead of being based on licks.  But when an instrumentalist can do something like what you do, which is to write instrumentals that have that same structure, then we get the type of strong pop instrumental songs that can hold their own in comparison to the more familiar cover songs.
JK: That's true, but don't get me wrong.  There's a lot of blowing on this CD.

SV: Yes!  That's what makes it even cooler.  You've got these strong melodies then you cut loose instrumentally inside of them.  You definitely get the licks in too. 
JK: There's a time and a place for the blowing but you need to address the melody first to establish the song.  Then you can cut loose and improvise on top of that later.

SV: That being said there is a lot more on this one than there is on most smooth jazz releases.
JK: There's this whole thing about wanting to get things on the radio and I understand all that,

SV: (rudely interrupting) but there's really just that one big station left...
JK: (laughs and continues) It's almost like back in the day, like when the Crusaders would do a song that was 10 minutes long.  I loved all that stuff.  I think the listener might feel shortchanged if the song is only three minutes long.  If you're going to put it on the radio then edit it afterwards but in terms of the statement for the album you should let it play through.  A lot of times Danny at Shanachie suggested that maybe some of these songs should be faded and I said I was going to keep on playing until I was done saying what I need to say. 

SV: You do it right because you're a disciplined soloist.  You show your chops but you don't get excessive and self-indulgent, and you don't lose the song,  which means you don't lose the so-called casual listener.
JK: It's a challenge.  With this one I did full takes as much as I could to get the flow going.  Even if I made a mistake or hit a bad note I just kept on going.  That in itself is a discipline.  Everyone wants to stop and be perfect instantly and you'll never get there if you are constantly editing and judging yourself.  You have to establish a flow.

SV: That goes for everything anyone does, really.
JK: It does.  The flow is l like a river you're jumping into.  It's not going to be pretty and sometimes you are going to hit some rocks but eventually you'll find some buoyancy and some navigation and you'll be able to ride it.  That's what being a jazz musician is.

SV: That's interesting, because the gift of technology has been the ability to tweak something to a state of perfection but the drawback has been that you can polish something to a really high gloss and make it emotionally sterile in the process. 
JK: I learned a great deal from working with the Sax Pack.  Steve Cole and I have similar approaches to working in the studio.  Our attitude is to keep doing takes until you get it perfect.  This really hard working ethic where you're almost going “this one note took me 14 hours.”  Kim is
exactly the opposite.  If he doesn't get it in a few takes he moves on because otherwise it doesn't sound natural.  He is so right, he is speaking of being unattached to the outcome.  It's so easy to get attached to outcome.  You start thinking, “I want to sound like X or I'm a failure.”  Kim's approach is that there is a whole alphabet there.  Use other letters.

SV: Remember the stories about Todd Rundgren and Tom Scholz of Boston, how they would spend years making one album because they obsessed with every note, almost to the point that you just brought up.  It was like this legendary technology driven insanity.
JK: You definitely have the tools now to go that far.  During this Rippingtons reunion tour I went back and listened to some of the old recordings to review the songs and hear how they sounded and there is this one place, speaking of one note.  It just pops up.  It's an octave jump.  I had a horn that was not up to snuff or maybe it was me that was not up to snuff but I could not get that note.  It was either sharp or flat and it was almost to the point of being in tears over not being able to get it.  But listening to it now it sounds absolutely perfect because we kept on going.  I think about that now and it brings back more humor than pain.  And now I can hit the note whenever I want to. 

SV: It sounds like the songwriting process was part of the studio process so was this part of the one month recording binge too?
JK: Chris Parks is so talented and we were working on demos that he sent me, which are simplified versions of what you hear on the album.  Then we picked the songs we were going to work on and he added a lot of stuff and produced them properly.  I gave him my melodies and the next thing I knew it sounded like an album

SV: Were you in the studio together or did you do it by technology.
JK: We did it with technology but there was a lot of interaction in terms of going back and forth with comments and changing things.  I recorded my stuff at my home studio and uploaded it to Chris in New York, Kochanski in LA and everybody. 

SV: Some producers and writers get really stylized, but the songs you did with him all sound different from each other.  "Back in the Day" has this real deep gospel funk and "Free Flyer" is really bright and kind of Euro poppy. 
JK: That song really resonated with me because it was really different.

SV: That one and “Honesty” are my favorites.  “Honesty has such a shift in texture from the rest of the album.  You did two songs with Kim too.
JK: Kim is great in the studio.  He's so relaxed.  It's fun to watch him create stuff.  When he was working on the title track we were listening to the rhythm track and just taking turns singing melodies and not quite getting it.  Then he starts nodding his head and spins around in the chair with this big smile and starts singing this melody line and we just looked at each other and went, “yes!”  He's got this balance between being really simple and really memorable.

SV: How about Rodney Lee.  He's something of a new face.
JK: He gave me a demo and I just loved it.  He's a keyboard player from Texas who is living in LA now.  You've probably seen him onstage with Mindi Abair.  I like the way the song came out.  It's got this driving funky thing on the bottom then it's really clean on top.

SV: You are the sax player on all the songs on the new Rippingtons CD.  Were you finished with that one when you started on this one.
JK:  Yeah, we finished that one in August.  They took their time on that one too.  It was a big project with me playing on a lot of songs.

SV: People are already starting this Internet buzz about whether you are back with the band.
JK: The way I feel is that once you are a Rippington you're always a Rippington no matter where you are because it's in your blood.  I was fully committed to working on the CD and I'm really happy with it.  I think it's one of his best CDs in terms of composition, production, etc.

SV: I love what I've heard of it.  It kind of goes back to the sound that so many of us got into back when we discovered the band, but updated with some new layers added in.  Was the recording process for that one different from the way you did yours.
JK: Actually it was very similar.  What was weird about it was that I recorded my parts really early in the process.  I was playing with a lot of demo keyboard parts but he did give me some final guitar tracks.  It's always nice to have another human on the tracks.  The thing is that we have played together for so long that I know how he wants to phrase things and get things feeling just right.  I'm really happy with the way it came out.

SV: You really pulled a lot of intuitive stuff out of yourself to be playing your final takes over the demo tracks. 
JK: I've been working with Russ for a really long time and there is not a better melody writer than Russ Freeman.  He's always got good melodies that are really interesting.  That makes his songs exciting and fun to play for me.  They have shape.  Even with the temp tracks I could be emotional because the music is so good. 

SV: Your last few albums have all sounded totally different from each other.  Peace Of Mind was very organic and mellow, Play had some jazzy complexity and an up-tempo Rippingtons vibe, This one has an R&B lean and a lot more programming on it.  Were these different approaches a conscious decision?
JK: It was.  On this one when I started talking to the guys about what kind of tracks I wanted what came out was sexy, funky, and melodic.  That's the kind of tracks they gave me.

SV: You used a lot of tenor on this.  Usually when people do that type of song they go to soprano and having this deep tone shape shifts the music and gives it a lot of substance.
JK: I love all the horns.  For this one I was going to do all tenor but some of the songs, like “Free Flyer” didn't sound right that way.  They needed a different sound so that's when I went to soprano.  And “Honesty” was really different.  It was like “A Quiet Goodbye.”  It just came out, and Dave Kochanski did a beautiful arrangement. 

SV: We've got to talk about Sax Pack.  Your onstage act so much fun and so different.  You've got this whole improv humor thing going on and you're not afraid to make fun of yourselves or of some of those smooth jazz stage clichés.
JK: Believe me, there is rarely a serious moment with the three of us except when we are actually playing.  I think the group works on all these different levels.  We really enjoy each other's company.  We have a real respect for each other's playing and we work well as a team.
Our onstage thing I think comes from who we are and the way we work together.  I think people do take themselves way too seriously.  We even have our Sax Pack mission statement – if it feels like work stop doing it.  The whole point of this thing is to have fun and to share that fun with the audience.  If you take it too seriously it won't work.  It won't get off the ground.  We love to make fun our ourselves and each other.  If you go behind stage with most bands there is a lot of laughter before the show, a lot of pre-game energy and camaraderie.  That's what makes the music work on stage.  Our concept is to take it to the stage and invite the audience. 

SV: I know you've got the new CD, the Rippingtons project, and all these gigs coming up.  Anything else on the horizon?
JK: Actually we're going into the studio to do the next Sax Pack CD in March.

SV: You just got out and now you're going back in.
JK: We're going to do it like the last one, as a team.  That will probably go into April.  Lots of touring, too.  People can go to the websites for the tour dates and just keep an eye out for the new CDs.

SV: We're looking forward to it, and thank you for the conversation and the music.