Dave Koz is one of our biggest stars, riding the ups and downs of the music business and thriving with a series of albums full of irresistible songs, the highest level of musicianship, and the rare ability to be a true entertainer without compromising authenticity or the quality of the music. As an artist he always goes for the highest common denominator. That's why the release of his "Greatest Hits" CD is so timely. With the image of the music we call "smooth jazz" taking some credibility hits these days, these songs are a reminder of just how good it can get when you combine solid songwriting and the ability to get to the heart of a song with no need for words. He has always been a high profile advocate and supporter of this music as well as a performer, adding layers of experience over the years as a radio personality, record company executive, host of a star studded smooth jazz cruise, and through his involvement with industry organizations like the Grammy Foundation and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS).

The first time I met him was in the early 90s at a radio convention right before "You Make Me Smile" became a multi-format smash. He was the only instrumentalist who attended the Adult Contemporary sessions as well as the ones for contemporary jazz, and was both gracious and enthusiastic. The last time I saw him was at the Jacksonville Jazz Festival where he gave it all he had for over an hour, putting on a show that had aerobic-level energy then sitting at the signing booth and talking to fans for almost two hours. That's Dave Koz. He's one of the good guys. Needless to say, it was a delight to get the opportunity to chat about music and the issues that are surrounding it on the business side because he has seen it from multiple perspectives. He was again warm and gracious, even when I warmed up the hot seat a tad. What he has to say will give you hope, rekindle your enthusiasm if it has been waning, and make you think. Three things that are very important right now.

SmoothViews (SV): In the liner notes you say that the tempo and the vibe of the song "Life In The Fast Lane" reminded you of the pace your life has taken over the last 20 years. You do write, record, tour, work with other artists, do the weekday airshift and weekend radio show, you do a lot of charity work, and you still make time for your fans and the media. How do you do it all and still stay balanced and take the downtime you need to sustain your own creativity?
DaveKoz (DK): It's something I've been doing for a long time. I've had a lot of practice in being able to juggle. I thrive on it. I think it's that way for most people who love what they are doing. If I didn't love all the different aspects of what I do I wouldn't be able to do it and I would burn out. Occasionally I do try to take breaks, and when I get around to doing that I try to unplug fully and completely. It's hard to do but those are the things that give me the energy to go on through the rest of this year.

SV: That’s true but even when you love what you do challenges come up and it can feel like a struggle. Probably even more because when you love what you do you care more?
DK: Well, that's the dance. If it was all easy the rewards would not be as sweet when they came.
I'm dealing with challenges every single day. It can really be tough sometimes but at the end of the day when I put my head on the pillow I know I did the best I could. Usually the problems are never as complex or insurmountable as they might seem at a certain time.

SV: One of the challenges you and your business partners faced this year was the decision to sell the label you started, Rendezvous, to Mack Avenue. What led to that decision?
DK: I think that the business that we got into six or seven years ago is no longer. Unfortunately the reality of the music business has changed so dramatically that it's hardly recognizable.  It's not the business we originally got into. As a new company we were experiencing the same things as the established companies, the huge ones that had been doing it for years, but we didn't have the catalog to rest. Catalog is what drives most of the record companies. They may not be selling as much new and front line product but the catalog can keep them afloat. We had only been around a couple of years so we didn't have much along those lines. The business model didn't make any sense anymore. It was very important to my partners and I that we made sure our artists were taken care of. We were looking for a company that understood what we stood for. We found that with Mack Avenue. They are totally dedicated to this music and they have the resources to sustain it in this business climate. It seemed like the best decision for all parties at the time. These are unprecedented times in the music business. It's a total sea change.

SV: Adult oriented music and musicians have really been overwhelmed by these changes, especially boomers. They grew up with this structure where you relied on radio for music then went to a record store and bought it. That model doesn't exist in reality but it seems like both musicians and record company people targeting this audience are trying to cling to the old ways and find some way to bring them back and make it work rather than adapting to the changes and moving forward.
DK: Adults are the hardest to get on a new bandwagon. We're not as nimble as the young kids who take on new things and jump and go for it. I'm kind of like that too. I usually try to throw my computer out the window at least once a day (laughs) but it really does represent the way people use and consume music and it's going to continue to evolve. The problem is that there is no real solution in sight. It's kind of a no man's land at this moment. It's sort of like a plane looking for a landing strip and there's no landing strip in sight. There's a lot of turbulence too. That landing strip comes when everybody is confident and comfortable with a more definite concept of how it's going to be version 2.0. What's interesting to see is how people use music in their lives. Music is still very popular and incredibly important to people. They're just not necessarily buying it. They're still going to concerts but they still are not buying CDs.

SV: You've always been one of the biggest supporters, advocates and nurturers of contemporary instrumental music. Right now we are at a juncture where radio stations and record companies are bailing out on it and there is a lot of doom and gloom conversation in the air. The music itself still has a lot of fans, a lot of potential, and there is some excellent stuff being released. What are your thoughts on how we as a community can get this thing back on track?
DK: The last person to say they are the spokesperson and ambassador is me. I merely do what I do. I love the artists and I love celebrating the music so that comes from a very authentic and natural place for me. If people construe that as being a flag waver that's great. I'm happy to do it. There can't be too much pressure on artists to hold up an entire format, though, especially when so much of it is out of our control. There needs to be a healthy dialog between the fans, the musicians, the radio stations, and promoters. We need to work together to try to keep it alive. Everything changes and morphs. We are in the midst of a morphing and I'm not one to plant my feet in and try to keep it as it is. It is in the process of changing and I don't know where it's going.  I'm not sure how much of a role instrumental music is going to play in people's lives in the future. I hope it will continue to but it's about everybody working together. It starts with the music. We're living in a very vocal world, right? There are not a lot of music programs bringing instrumentals up, so the excitement and panache of playing an instrument is not there like it was when I was growing up. There is so much competing for kids' attention so I don't know what's going to happen.

SV: There has always been a history of people enjoying instrumental music, look at how many instrumentals used to cross over and become popular with pop music fans, several of the songs on your compilation as a matter of fact. It might be that right now the instrumentals that are getting exposure are too slow and not very catchy, or they are covers of older songs which are not very exciting for a larger fan base. The good stuff is out there but people aren't getting to hear it.
DK: I think there will always be a place for people to enjoy instrumentals, but they do have to hear them first. Right now there are not a lot of places for people to be exposed to instrumental music or buy it. We have to look at finding paths to get to people. That's something I think about pretty much on a daily basis. How do I get my music to people? How do I get it to people who have never heard of me? I've been doing this for 20 years but the vast majority of human beings have never heard the name Dave Koz (laughs) so how do we get to them? That's what I think about and that's something all artists need to think about.

SV: You've represented yourself and the genre beautifully with this collection. When you are looking at a body of work that includes so many strong songs how did you decide which ones to include?
DK: I've never made a greatest hits, this was my first shot and it is coming out 18 years after my first record came out, almost to the day. The way I did it was to ask the fans. I like to incorporate our fans as much as possible so when we first came up with this idea I asked them what songs they would want to hear on this CD and we took a vote.  The top eight from that voting went straight on. I put one song in that was not a big hit because it was one of those songs that I just love. When people release an album there is usually a favorite of theirs that doesn't get the most attention. It's a sleeper song that people don't usually know about. They don't get to see it played live or hear it on the radio. I had to have one of those songs on this one for me to feel like it was complete. That song is "Lullaby For A Rainy Night" from the Off The Beaten Path CD. There's something about that song that out of all the songs I've written, every time I hear it I feel like it is really a special song for me. So I had to include that one.

SV: Greatest Hits collections usually have one new song, maybe two. You've got four really solid ones here.
DK: We wanted to put some new songs on there and I wrote the four new pieces. "Life In the Fast Lane" is the song we released to radio. I wrote it with Darren Rahn who is out of Denver. He's doing a lot of music right now and he's really talented. He's a great sax player too. I've never written a song with another sax player so that was fun. It was very collaborative and I'm happy that that song is on its way to being a new hit. BeBe Winans sings "I Can," a very inspiring song that we wrote for a friend Chris Gardener. He was the subject of the movie "The Pursuit of Happyness."  I've known him for about 10 years and kind of went through the whole thing with him of this movie idea coming to him and Will Smith playing him on screen. It was such an inspiring story that BeBe and I wrote the song for him. I feel like even though we have all heard this message many times it is a message that always bears repeating.

SV: Especially now when so many people are so discouraged on so many levels.
DK: We all need to put our feet firmly on the floor and know that we're going to be OK. That's what that song is about. No matter how hard it gets, you can find that inner strength. I've had to do that repeated times in my life even though on paper my life looks pretty charmed. I've got no complaints whatsoever but there have been plenty of times when I had to pick myself up and charge ahead. There's another song that features Jeff Golub called "Bada Bing" and doing that one was a total blast, We are both huge Sopranos fans. Tony Soprano specifically, we both imitate him all the time. We got in the studio and got this little groove goin'. It sounded like a Tony Soprano song and we couldn't call it "Tony Soprano" so we chose the next best thing, which is "Bada-Bing."

SV: It's going to be so much fun seeing you and Golub together on the Christmas show. You both know how to really move a crowd and you don't play it safe.
DK: This is our first tour together and I'm really excited about it. I'm also excited because Jeff Golub and Jonathan Butler are going to be on and they are both great friends and total characters so thankfully we will have Keiko Matsui on stage with us to kind of keep order. (laughs)

SV: I've seen Keiko and I don't think keeping order is what she does. Keeping a certain beautiful energy, yes, but not necessarily order.
DK: It's going to be very high energy, very musical Christmas show. I'm quite excited about that.

SV: That's a different lineup for you. You've been doing the Christmas shows for quite a few years.
DK: You have to change. You have to make it new for the people on stage. You have to make it new for the audience. This will be our 12th year of doing it and after twelve years you've got to keep it fresh. So I'm excited about it.

SV: When we asked for comments from artists about the state of the music and the industry right now I was blown away by what you said. You said these times call not for panic but for further commitment to what we are doing. It of course starts with the music and I feel this may be the time to open the musical floodgates without restriction of a format roadmap and let creativity put us in the driver’s seat. Do you think that is possible?
DK: I think it's absolutely possible but I don't know if it would come from me. It could come from me or from another established artist. It will probably come from a new source. A new fresh approach will probably come from someone we don't know about yet. Out of left field and I think that's what we are all kind of waiting for. Especially when you've been doing this for as long as a lot of us have. To do real change on an album is difficult because the fans may say they want you to do something different, in the end most people want the comfort that comes in knowing that if you get a Dave Koz record, what you have in your mind about Dave Koz is what you are going to get. There is always this fine line. How much does an artist change with each record, how much do they keep the same. You want to change but you want to do well and sell records too so that's the fine line.
That's one reason that change is probably going to be coming from somebody that we don't know about. When that appears it will re energize and reinvigorate. When that person shows up and has success it will inspire people to do the same. We had it almost with Praful a few years ago. It was such a different sound and a great breath of fresh air.

SV: I'm going to play counterpoint here. Chill doesn't have much melody. It's very technological and groove oriented. There are not songs that people can latch onto.
DK: They latched onto that song.

SV: That particular song had a chill effects and production but it had a strong melody. A lot of the songs that people jumped on when they tried to recreate the effect that that song had were all riff, groove and computer generated sounds. When everyone jumped on that bandwagon it was like an effort to look really hard for something then force the first blip in the radar into a full-fledged trend rather than letting change come about naturally. It's like if all the top 40 stations had gone "all chant all the time" when Enigma had the hit with the song that sampled Gregorian Chant.
DK: Maybe, but what I take from that whole thing is that a new sound was exposed, it was fresh and yes, it was often imitated and often imitated not so well. And in the end it didn't make it, probably because people still like melodies. What I like about that instance is that somebody came with a completely new sound and it energized our format. It didn't work ultimately but it energized our format. That's what I feel is necessary or needed right now.

SV: One thing that has struck me is how musicians in this genre refer to the music as "the format." I've worked with a lot of different types of music and if you talk to someone who plays country, rock, folk, hip-hop or whatever they will say "the music." If musicians are conceptualizing their music as a "format" isn't that self-restricting?
DK: Yeah, I think that's a point. We have focused a lot on radio airplay because that's where we get exposure. When you talk about country music there are a lot of places for people to discover it besides radio and it's the most popular music in America. With smooth jazz, exposure is pretty much driven by radio.

SV: And now we've got to learn from our kids and follow our friends in adult alternative and indie music and learn how to build an audience that way.
DK: I'm ready and willing. I'm invigorated every day. I find success stories that make me happy. I love the fact that at least artists and their fans are getting more of a one-on-one buy in relationship. We have 35 or 40,000 people on our list that I constantly talk to and constantly have messages going to them trying to incorporate them into my world. You are going to see more and more of that kind of relationship that is independent of radio stations and record companies.

SV: It has to be that way. Not to throw you in the role model seat again but you have done such a fabulous job with being interactive and have an up-to-date active Internet presence. You've also managed to maintain a relationship with your fans without letting it eat your life, which could be an issue when you are talking about interactivity with so many thousands of people.
DK: I have some great people who help me with that, they do a lot of the work, they protect me and encourage me and they definitely are not a bunch of yes-men and women. I get the real deal every day and I thrive on that too. I am dedicated to the fans, they are the people who have given me a career and I want to do whatever I can. It's also like the way you find people on our cruise, for example, They are mostly hardcore fans on these cruises but there is never anything that's uncomfortable because I think most of the fans of this music understand and respect the artists and give them space too. I've always felt that whatever you give you get. If you're relaxed and warm and comfortable then that's the way everyone around you is going to be. I

SV: Going back to the subject we touched on before about your role as a high profile smooth jazz musician - you are right about not wanting to dump too much on any one person's lap, especially a working musician. But you are on the radio, you get media coverage, you are very fan-friendly so you touch a lot of people's lives even on a day-to-basis. You said once that you had moments of serendipity when a project you were working on came together Now here is an instrumental CD that has such accessible, “real people” friendly songs on it by an artist who does have some visibility outside our little circle. Maybe there is some serendipity at work here as far as people discovering and rediscovering this music through these songs.
DK: I'm excited about this release and I think the statute of limitations as far as putting out a Greatest Hits album is running out. We are pretty much at the end of that being relevant because people can make their own greatest hits album in their bedroom anytime they want. I think having it done by the artist themselves with new material is still kind of special, though. I learned a lot in this process, I guess I sort of got into the whole magnitude of a career because I had to put it together and go back and look at everything and listen to everything. I revisited songs I haven't heard in years. I was able to look at it and go “wow, that's not bad!”  It's a pride moment for me and I'm happy and honored to share it with the fans as a thank you for giving me 20 years of doing this and I also think it's very much a jumping off point for the future.

SV: It's a perfect retrospective with some fine new tunes thrown into the mix and we all look forward to the future that we share, and the influence you will have on it! Thank you so much!