SV: This new album is really amazing, you cover so much territory on it. On one hand it's a departure from more recognizable songs on the recent Special EFX projects and your own solo albums, on the other side it takes a lot of what you did on the deeper tracks and the sound of the pre-smooth stuff and brings that side of the music upfront. How did this come about?
CM:  I wanted to do a 25th anniversary CD for a long time. My plan was to record a few songs with the band then try to get a record company to sponsor the rest of it. What ended up happening is that once I cracked that door open and started writing and producing, it never closed. I could have kept going to song number 25. I just got so into it that it was almost like taking a bite of good pasta and not being able to stop eating. I ended up recording six songs with the band initially and started writing a lot of music through most of last fall. I had all these different ideas and went back into the studio to work them up and have people do overdubs. Some of it was cut completely live with the band and some of it was done with them recording their tracks then overdubbing and mixing them. It ended up being a really nice collection of different styles of music. Some of them were styles I had done before and some of them were new. Some of it represented the soundtrack style that I like to do and wanted people to hear. There was some stuff that featured my vocalist Phillip (Hamilton) in some styles we hadn't touched on before. The whole plan was to represent what I'm into this year and show what my life is about right now. There are also some songs from our older records that I've rearranged and rewritten. It ended up having 15 or 16 brand new pieces of music and then I got even more ambitious and decided to put out a DVD. It hasn't come out yet because we're still tying up some things on the legal side but it will be out soon.

SV: You have the audio from one of the songs on your website don't you?
CM: There is one up there to listen to. The video is just great, it's from the show we did in Asia last year. The the third thing I wanted to do was to write a book. I stalled out on that part and ended up just doing as a booklet that comes with the CD. It's quite a booklet though.

SV: I read it, and it's funny that you said that because while I was reading it I was thinking that it would make a great book.
CM: It became an ambitious project. I wanted to represent the fact that this band has been around for a long time and we've had great successes in our life as a band, but we've basically been on a low burn since the beginning and we're still around and still touring. I don't think the band has sounded as good as we do right now.

SV: After hearing this one I'm with you on that. You are one of those artists who can write and play a lot of styles of music and it looks like  you wrote a group of songs in succession that cover pretty much every style of contemporary jazz and instrumental adult alternative. How do you come up with it?
CM: I don't know how to answer that. Most of the people I know who write a lot of music write all kinds of stuff. When I was growing up, I think I must have absorbed too much stuff because I was pretty much a sponge when it came to hearing music and absorbing the influences. I was encouraged by my dad to write with a free hand - with no editing or censorship. I remember he once said to me that the best music I wrote was from when I was in college and didn't have a record contract. I would get confused because here I was signed to a record company and you do have to sort of tip your hat to them. When they sponsor you year after year  you want to give them something that is going to be successful for them. You have a certain amount of tools at your disposal, there's a certain amount of luck mixed in and a lot of hard work but there's no doubt that the Special EFX albums and my solo CD's have a lot of eclectic influences and styles that criss-cross each other, where people will take left and right turns when they listen. That's the kind of album that I like to listen to and that's what I wanted to do with this one.

SV: The hardest thing is for someone to analyze and verbalize that process but that's what we music writers end up trying to get you to do (laughs) and it really doesn't work because it is music, it's not supposed to be verbalized.
CM: Yeah, I'll give you an example. I'm doing an acoustic guitar project with another producer. It's just me writing, playing, and recording. The other day we were getting toward the end of the day and I was getting tired. He said "could you just pretend you're at a cocktail party and you're playing a solo jazz guitar piece?" I'm thinking "Come on, you want me to write this thing now?" I picked up the acoustic guitar and started improvising a kind of schlocky cocktail jazz piece for about three or four minutes. I've listened to it a number of times since we did it and it works. That song was written as it was played and it was done. That's what improvisation is. It's just creating something on the spot. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. but when it does work it's magical. The trick is to just keep the channel open and give it a try. I originally didn't want to do it but I went in the booth and played the piece and something good came out that he responded to on an emotional level. That's how it is with producing a record.

SV: Where did the idea for re-doing some of the older material come from?
CM: My manager suggested that I take a couple of Special EFX classics and rearrange them and I thought it was a cool idea.  I picked a few songs and reworked them, then I ended up doing more because I really was enjoying it. One of them was "Ballerina" which was a big single for us. It was a softer song I wrote for my daughter when she was a kid, and I decided that this time around I wanted to approach it like it was the intro music to a rock concert. I did a demo of the new version, we rehearsed it, and it has worked out great. It's called “Ballerina Rocks.” We've been doing it at the shows and getting really good response.

SV: And there's "You Make Me Blue" which is a new take on "Love Your Smile," one of my favorites from Play.
CM: I felt like that song should not have been put on that record.

SV: Really? I loved it. That was the one I played the most on the radio shows.
CM: When I studied composition with this one guy he said we tend to go towards the familiar and you might find yourself writing the same piece of music over and over in disguise. When I look back at it I think it was a good piece of music, I like the melody, the core of the piece always pleased me but I didn't think it was arranged and produced as well as it could have been. The new version is much more in the pocket. 

SV: Somehow the Sweet Surrender CD, which was your most recent solo project, flew completely under my radar so I had never heard the title track which was the original of “HushABye”, the vocal song that I've really fallen in love with on this CD.
CM: Sweet Surrender was another really eclectic record, I'm still really proud of that one. The singer on it is Will Brock, who plays with Marion Meadows and Gerald Veasley and a lot of others.
When I met him we really hit it off. We teamed up and wrote about a dozen pop songs for the show “Guiding Light.”  They wanted some pop songs to use in club scenes and things, and they loved what we gave them. That show is off the air but at the end of that I asked him if he would
write something with me and he went ahead and put those lyrics to “Sweet Surrender” and kind of redid the song. It's a completely different point of view of the same song.

SV: You mentioned the booklet in the CD. It's really fascinating because it is literally a little book that tells the story of the band, its evolution, and a lot of the stuff that the band went through including some revealing things about lineup changes, record companies and how the business side and industry politics affect the people who create the music. Did you have any reservations about revealing as much as you did here?
CM: When I decided to write the book my plan was to do a short book that would be about 50 pages. I wasn't sure how we would sell that though. Would we do a package with the CD, DVD, and the book? Doing the book was going to get into a lot of expenses and one of my friends who is an editor was telling me that I wasn't going to want to make it that long anyway. Especially if it was going to be in the CD. That's when I decided to edit it down. The original manuscript is much more interesting because I love the idea of a tell-all, not to air out dirty laundry but just for entertainment's sake.  I wanted people to know what it was like and what really happened. The beauty of the music business is that most people think you have this really great life where you play and get paid and travel and see the world. That's the image that entertainment is supposed to have. It's supposed to look easy. When I started writing the story of the band, I thought the behind the scenes stuff was too good and that people would find it interesting. Some of the craziest stuff didn't make the final cut because there is a point where you have to be discrete.

SV: Or else become a late night reality show (laughs). Without You is coming out on your own label but before this you've always had a contract with a record company. You were talking earlier about writing songs for this one and kind of going with the flow and letting the songs come out as they did. When you were with a label did you have the feeling they were  looking over your shoulder and did that cause you to self-edit?
CM: Yeah. It was things like the time someone from a label told me I should shorten the intro and get to the melody of a song right away. I was OK with that because it did actually make the song stronger and more to the point, but then there were times when someone would suggest something like adding a sax part just because that was what was popular. That was crossing the line because I didn't want that sound, I didn't want to change the sound just because that everyone else was doing. If the melody sounded good on the sax I would do it, but not if it didn't fit. I did want to see my record label do well. I was grateful to them and if I could do anything to support them I was willing to do it because they fronted the money and promoted the music. When we went #1 with the song “Cruise Control” I felt good for them too.

SV: One of the things that I've always loved about your CD's is that even when you were with Shanachie at the height of the smooth jazz thing, when they had a very stylized sound, as you got into the deeper tracks you got away from that sound and did all the other stuff – the jazz, world music, rock, ambient.  Most artists just quit recording anything out of the box like that.
CM: My approach was that if we could snag them with the single they would buy the CD and once they had the CD we could turn them on to all this other stuff we do as they got to hear the deeper tracks.

SV: And they will get into it too, especially when they are kind of gently led into it and the music is strong.
CM: We were also thinking about the listening stations that used to be in the music stores. You wanted the first few songs on the album to be in the style that your target audience likes and identifies with you. We would sequence the CD so it targeted the audience that would most likely buy it.

SV: One of my all time favorites of yours is “Without You,” which is the title of the new album and would fit perfectly on it but it's not on it. What's up with that?
CM: When I was trying to come up with a title for this CD I made a mistake and started asking people what I should call it, and of course they all had their ideas but none of them really felt right. Then I looked at the titles of the songs and I didn't find any that fit the whole concept of the album. I also had this wonderful cover art that Betty Miner had done. It was so striking and colorful that I wanted to come up with a title that would make it real personal. A lot of people think it is because this is the anniversary album and George Jinda is not here to play on it.

SV: That was the first place my brain went.
CM: He's alive and well in my thoughts and in my life, and in this music.

SV: The Jinda-Minucci partnership was integral to the band that a lot of us grew up with, but after  George Jinda passed the band continued with a pretty consistent lineup. You've also done your solo projects. What is the difference between a Special EFX album and a Chieli Minucci album?
CM: There is none. But the way it came about was that there was a point where George and I wanted to rule the world. We wanted to release a Special EFX CD and a solo CD each every year. We wanted to have our music on the radio at all times (laughs). When we switched from GRP to JVC they gave us that opportunity. When we were doing Catwalk I was doing Jewels and Renaissance and George did two solo albums too. There was a lot of music going on there.
When George fell ill he never really came back to the point where he was able to do anything so I went ahead and made Masterpiece as a Special EFX album at the same time I was doing Sweet On You. Shanachie gave me two record contracts, which was amazing. The concept was that the solo records would be more guitar oriented and the Special EFX CD's would have a different sound. The whole idea behind the Party album was to make Dave Mann famous.

SV: Which should have happened.
CM: The idea was to make a record that wasn't really smooth jazz but was more just great party jam music with sax all over the place. Overall we wanted to let Special EFX become kind of a home base band to develop artists like that. I wanted to produce different artists and use Special EFX as a platform and get my own career going more towards guitar and my own style which  has actually worked. I play shows as Chieli Minucci with Special EFX and I also work with other artists as special guests. A lot of people know me now from my solo work and are surprised to learn that I am the leader and one of the founders of this band. Now the band is called Chieli Minucci and Special EFX. .

SV: This album is under Chieli Minucci and Special EFX and you've got some really strong guests like Karen Briggs and Lao Tizer and you have that core group that I don't think a lot of people know have been with you for a really long time. And you've been doing some gigs with Bernie Williams.
CM: After I had played a few gigs with Bernie where he was playing lead we were described as the Allman Brothers of smooth jazz.

SV: It doesn't get any better than that. A lot of people got into instrumental music because of the Allman Brothers.
CM: I grew up with Live At The Fillmore. He just blew me away. The band that his music director put together is a nine piece band and they are incredible. When I got my hands on his CD I was thinking “forget about the baseball!” I wrote him and his manager and said it was a shame that he didn't come around 10 years earlier because it's a standout, different sounding record and the business situation was better back then. After we did the three shows in April I invited him to play with Special EFX and he played in New York City as my guest and he played some of my songs too. I just came off the road doing three more shows with him.

SV: And you've done a lot of work with Lao Tizer.
CM: Lao is interesting on another level because he started out when he was really young and was already doing gigs at Universal and some other places.  I helped him make his first CD and I was the co-producer on his last one. He invited me to be a guest in his band on a regular basis so I'm actually touring with him. We're doing four shows in July.

SV: I saw you with him in Jacksonville last year and the band was stunning. It seems like a symbiotic thing because your styles really compliment each other and you've started sharing some musicians. He and Karen Briggs are on your CD.
CM: Karen is doing some shows with Special EFX now too. I'm doing some shows with Lao, it's like a family. The band Tizer is Lao, Karen and me, and the focus is on Lao's music.  Lao is a very important force in music right now. I think he's on the edge of becoming a lot bigger. The thing about Lao that's nice is that it is a very concerted effort to be more of an instrumental rock band than a jazz or smooth jazz band. Jeff Kollman, his guitarist, is a maniac on guitar and when the two of us are playing together it's a big fat rock sound.

SV: Starting your record company. Why now and how is it different?
CM: There were three choices. One was to go the traditional route and find a record company, or I could find a distributor which I'm still considering, and the third choice is what I've been doing for the last two months – going independent with online distribution. In other words my website is my record company. That's what I'm doing. The good part of that is that I can sell directly through iTunes, CDBaby and the other online stores. There aren't any more record store chains, there are a few individual stores but I don't think signing a distribution deal to get the CD into those few stores is worth it right now. Not enough people would go to those stores and when they did it wouldn't be visible and it wouldn't be marketed It would cost me more money to make it visible. I think most artists have come to terms with the fact that we aren't going to sell as many copies of a CD as we used to.  That's OK with me because for me the name of the game is getting out there and doing shows. I like to travel and do shows. The other advantage is having complete control. That's fun because I've done this and I'm familiar with what is going on. The down side is that when I send a record out to radio or music writers I'm fine with following up with a call to see if they got it but I'm not a promotion person, I'm not comfortable with calling every week to check up on it. What it comes down to, though, is what is the reason I'm doing this.  That's a question I asked Lao Tizer a while ago. Do you want to conquer the world with your music? Do you want to change the world? Do you want to make money? Is it for the ego trip? Meet women? Travel the world? Probably the answer is a little bit of all of the above and there's nothing wrong with that. It is nice to make a living as a musician. It's a real gift that I appreciate. I can't imagine doing it any other way.

SV: Well,  you have Special EFX, your solo gigs, the Tizer band, and gigs with other musicians, and you're starting a label from the ground up so becoming a promotion person will just be another feather in  your hat and when media people hear this they will do that work for you just like I'm doing right now.