January 19, 2007
Interviewed by Shannon West

Welcome to 2007. Over the last few years everything about how music is promoted, marketed, exposed and recorded has changed. Who better to start the year with than an artist who is getting creative and exploiting these changes. Ken Navarro has been in the genre since the beginning as a musician, producer and owner of an independent label that has survived for 16 years. That experience and the insight it brings have motivated him to stretch out and explore new strategies for getting his music out there, including adding extensive content to his website and becoming one of the most interactive artists on the web. He’s stretching out and exploring musically too. On his new CD, The Meeting Place, he brought back a lot of the elements that have been phased out over the years. If you’re going to make innovative music you have to be equally innovative to get it heard. We talked about the music, the internet, the changing face of smooth jazz and the facelift it can get when we go back to our roots and bring some of those influences into updated settings.

SmoothViews (SV): When you talked to us two years ago you had just released Love Coloured Soul and you talked about exploring new options for promoting the CD, especially using the internet.
Ken Navarro (KN):  That was my first record back on my own label after the two I did for Shanachie, so there was quite a break in time since I was involved the way I had been before. This one is kind of a continuation of that. The web is a miracle as far as I'm concerned because it allows me to reach out to fans of my music in so many new and different ways.  From the "behind the scenes" video and audio I can create and share, to my blog, to the complete music sample section from all 17 of my CDs, to the latest tour dates and news, to my Podcast, I feel a connection to visitors at my website that goes way beyond just the music I make.  I even taught myself how to use Dreamweaver and Flash so that I can do almost anything I dream up at my site!

SV: Now The Meeting Place is out and again you’re working on different ways to get the music exposed. There have been so many changes both within the industry and with the way people consume music, which makes the things you talked about then even more important now.
KN:  The amount of people who are accessing the internet to purchase and to learn about the music they’re interested in has probably at least doubled since then. One of the things I did with Love Coloured Soul was give people a chance to watch videos as the album was being made. I didn’t know anybody who was doing anything like that in smooth jazz. Since then a lot of people have adapted and you’re seeing those kinds of additions to their websites and record labels are starting to think that way. To me, I still don’t see enough innovation with it. I can’t help but be expectant of the musicians to take it on their shoulders to do these kinds of things. I feel like it’s a necessary part of being creative. Being creative doesn’t stop when the recording sessions stop. The internet is so conducive to being creative and finding new ways to get the message of your music out.

SV: It seems like a lot of musicians, especially the ones that had active careers before the internet, are so used to the process of finishing the record then handing it over to the record company and not being proactive after that. I don’t think you can survive that way in this climate.
KN: It’s not realistic to expect that from a label now. I also think it’s a very shortsighted way to look at it. And it’s ignoring of all kinds of possibilities that didn’t exist before. I remember when you didn’t have these choices. The only way to have your music heard was to get it on the radio somehow and the only way people could buy it was to have it in a Best Buy type store. For a long time, artists have looked at record labels with kind of a fairy godmother attitude. They expect somebody to come along and just tap their project and all the stores will have it, it will be on the radio, and all the right articles will be written about it. Having my own record label, I was always aware that these things didn’t happen easily, and it was difficult for independent labels and artists to get that kind of attention at radio, retail, and so on. I can’t help but get more excited as the internet gets into more and more places, For some people it might make them feel like they are less of an artist, but for me it’s all about creativity and I get excited when I have a great marketing idea. The worldwide implication of it is really exciting, too. I have a store on my website and I’ll get up in the morning and see orders from all these other countries where people were awake while I was asleep. I had orders from Singapore and England when I woke up this morning because it’s a store that’s open 24 hours worldwide.

SV: Smooth jazz fans are going to enjoy The Meeting Place, but it also has the potential to reach a wider audience, including the fans who have kind of fallen by the wayside because they want a more foreground approach. It’s going to take some creativity to make sure that these listeners hear it.
KN: This album does present a new challenge for me that way because with this record I purposefully decided it was time for me to really step out and do some of the things that 
I’ve wanted to do for a while. This is not just for one record either. It’s the first step in the direction I want to go. From a marketing standpoint and business standpoint, it means that regardless of what happens in radio, I really have to work hard to make sure that people find out about it, and that they find out that it’s more than another smooth jazz record. With someone like me who has a pretty deep catalog, there are people who are just discovering you and there are people who own a dozen of your CDs and they expect to hear something new. They don’t need to hear another one that’s just like what they already have. I want to make sure that the message gets out there. So more than ever I’m trying to be creative in the aftermath of the making of the music. I want to find as many new ways as possible to help people discover it, especially the ones who might not normally find it, or might not think that they would like a record of mine because they associate me with this thing we know as smooth jazz.

SV: That’s another perspective on career longevity that I think we’ve all fallen victim of sometimes. When you like an artist a lot, but they’ve been around for a long time, tour a lot, and put out a CD every year or two. You start to take them for granted and not get excited about seeking out their new stuff. Then you hear their new music or see a live gig and it just rekindles the excitement. But you have to get off that longevity induced apathy.
KN: The other thing that happens, and I’ve fallen into this as a fan too, is that you want the artists that you love the most to continue to do again what you loved before. It’s taken me a while with some artists to be open when they go in a different direction. I certainly had a fear with The Meeting Place that I might have been going too far for some of my audience. Especially following Love Coloured Soul because that was such a gentle, healing kind of CD. That was what I was trying to do with that one. It was influenced by John Klemmer’s Touch  album.

SV: I love it! That was a really pivotal record for a lot of us that were starting out, and for the evolution of a more melodic textured side of contemporary jazz.
KN: It really was and I was into straightahead jazz when it came out and in spite of that bias I knew that record had something special. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t Charlie Parker or that it didn’t swing. It was a real turning point for me. It got me back into embracing all the good things that I liked about music when I was growing up and getting out of that “jazz police” attitude that happens when you discover jazz in a big way. I rediscovered it literally on vinyl the winter before I started writing the music for Love Coloured Soul. My concern was that some of the fans that I had gotten from that record would find The Meeting Place too edgy, but I’ve been so happy to see that that isn’t the case at all. The melodic elements and warmth that are inherent in what I do must carry people through to listen to other kinds of rhythms and energies.

SV: Also, your audience grew up with rock, and we grew up with a lot of musical variety on the radio. People who like melodic and peaceful music like to rock out, too. What struck me about this album is that there is a disparity between what the industry wants from a smooth jazz artist and what the audience wants and responds to. You delivered an audience oriented album. What motivated you to go ahead and do that?
KN:  Believe it or not I think it was the broad base success of Love Coloured Soul. I thought about what the chances were of me having a radio hit like that again when it is so hard to do that. I felt very fortunate and I was really glad for the new listeners it brought in, but it got me to thinking that, yes, I could keep trying to produce things that would replicate that, but I just didn’t believe in that. I don’t even think that’s how radio hits happen. When I did that album my motivation was not for it to get on the radio. That was the record where I said that this is what really moves me and I’m not going to think about it. This is the first record where I stopped thinking about radio and lo and behold, I have a hit.

SV: When you don’t try to force it things fall into place.
KN: I think so because you need to believe in it yourself. That album reflected the mood I was in when I wrote that music. The mood that I was in when I did this one is what came out here. I had also gotten very involved in trying to improve myself as an improviser and I was studying new composition techniques. When you’re trying to better yourself at whatever it is you’ve chosen to put the majority of your effort into, actually making the record is kind of like the final exam for whatever point I’m at. It’s going to be influenced by the fact that you’re striving and you’ve put the bar higher for yourself both as a player and as a composer. So naturally you’re going to tackle something like “Lakes” by Pat Metheny (laughs) and some really challenging things. Hence, that song title “The Challenge” because it’s sort of a multi-meaning term. It’s a challenge to me but it’s also a challenge to the listener and to the playing field where it finds itself in general. Being in a position where you feel like you’ve done a lot of things and broken through in certain ways, it becomes a matter of following your instincts and being true to what you think is right. That’s always going to be your strongest card. The bottom line for me is that something inspires me, I take it and try to make it my own, that leads me to something else, That’s how the writing process works so by the time you’re at the end of it, you’re so deep into it that you don’t even remember how you got from point A to point C. When you’re totally involved, that’s when your truest and best work comes out. I think a lot of labels tend to look at stuff from the perspective of figuring out  how they can analyze the marketplace.

SV:  The rock element of this music has been filtered out over the years and you brought it back beautifully especially in “Did You Hear That” and “The Challenge.” You’ve always kept a little thread of that in your albums but did you feel like you were shaking off some rust when you started to do those two songs?
KN: Yeah, (laughs) I did but I knew right away. “Did You Hear That” was written early on. It might have even been the first one I wrote. I knew right away I wanted that one near the front of the record, that this was going  to stamp this album as one that wasn’t like some of my others where there was one song like that buried in the back. I knew it was going to be part of the theme of the record and not a little side path. When I play live that part of me comes out, so I knew it was in me as a player. But even for the whole band, when they were recording it they had to be coaxed a little bit to give me that extra thing. I think when people go into a studio they unconsciously get a little safer. On that song, it was a matter of saying that it has to sound like we’re playing on a stage. I tried to let that attitude carry through the whole record. “The Challenge” was actually the last thing I wrote. It’s just coincidence that it was the last song. I realized I wanted to have a strong exclamation to what I was trying to do at the end of the CD. All of that tune was going to be leading to that go-for-it electric solo that I play at the end. That solo owes as much to Steve Lukather as to Santana or Buzz Feiten. There’s no question that “Did You Hear That” was about going for the kind of playing that Buzzy is the master of. On “The Challenge” I had so much fun playing and I tried not to do too many takes. I didn’t want to get into a thing where I started to over polish it.

SV: It’s really easy to do that with the studio technology, especially if the studio is at your house and you can go in anytime and start tweaking.
KN: If I chose to nitpick every single note everybody played I could definitely do that, but part of the concept of The Meeting Place was to not do that. The rhythm section guys -Gary Grainger, Jay Rowe, Blues Webb and Kevin Prince - came in and did all their main tracks in three days. Part of that is preparation, making sure everyone is ready to play when they come into the studio. Nobody was learning the songs by then, but we never did more than three takes. Sometimes what you hear is the first or second take. I think that’s critical because if you start beating it up, where you end up working on the same song for hours and you’re getting up to 12 or 15 takes, there is no way those players are giving you the spirit of what it was like when they first started playing the song. You’ve lost it by that point. You lose the flow of what it’s like when someone is speaking through an instrument. You lose something far more perceptible to people and that’s the spirit and connectivity of it, and that’s what’s important to me.

SV: That vibe is all over these songs. Jay just goes off on some solos, too. He has what I think is a career defining one on “The Challenge” and really gets past the usual acoustic piano  boundaries on some other songs too.
KN: He’s a remarkable player and at this point he’s my longest running musical partner. He and I have been working together for 12 years. I was determined for there to be room for Jay. He has two extended piano solos and a really retro synth solo on “No Other Way.”

SV: That one blew me away because it did remind me of that sound people like Neil Larsen and Seawind had back when I was a college radio baby, but done in a 2007 kinda way (laughs)
KN: Jay knew that music because he’s like an encyclopedia with jazz and pop music, but I made him some tapes and said that was the sound I was going for. He did totally, but he also made me feel like I was hearing some of the best work that somebody like Neil Larsen or even Chick Corea were doing back then. I had this idea of putting a clear cut fusion influenced solo inside something that has more acoustic and even mellow elements.

SV: There was a lot of that in the early fusion stuff. The image is that it was all speed freak and in your face, but there was a lot of texture and melody in there, too.
KN: That combination of “sweet and sours,” so to speak, is something I think is wonderful and it’s what attracted me to the music that we called early contemporary jazz.

SV: You took Metheny’s “Lakes,” which is a really complex song to tackle and came up with an arrangement that takes an icon song by an icon artist and makes it yours, but keeps the spirit of it being tribute to him.
KN: Even Pat has been quoted as saying that it’s one of the hardest songs he’s written. Part of the reason I wanted to record it was because what I love about so much about everything he has done is all there in a straightforward jazz tune. It’s beautiful, it’s exciting, and intellectually it will stimulate you all that you want as a musician because it’s excruciatingly difficult to solo to. I worked on it for months, so when it came time to record it I could just play freely on it and not have to think.  If you have to think when you’re trying to solo to those chord changes, you will fall down in the first four bars. It takes a lot of patience to take that kind of time with anything. I just said I love this, I know this makes sense on this record. It falls right into the concept and I saw that nobody else had done it. The rhythm section is so different from that dreamy ECM approach that was on the original. Blues and Gary are very funky and sophisticated at the same time.

SV: You have an interesting perspective on all the changes that Smooth Jazz has been through since you started your own record company and put out your first CD in 1990 when things were really open and localized. You’ve released an album a year for most of this period, then you went to another record company and came back. It has to have given you quite a perspective.
KN: It has. I’m glad for it because it’s a backdrop that fits well when you make a musical choice about what you’re going to do, as well as choices about how you’re going to get the music out there. I think the time I spent with Shanachie was good economically and I was fine with the records I did with them, but I felt like it was sideways artistically. With the exception of that time and those records, I felt like there was a constant evolution and having that long perspective makes it easier to see how you’re fitting into the big picture. When you’re making the music, you’ve got to be lost in the moment, but it’s really helpful to have experienced that 16 years. The excitement around the music back then was the reason I started a record company and began to sign other artists. The possibilities seemed wide open but, like anything, it has to change. I guess I’ve changed with it but I’ve always thought that you have to be doing what you believe in so I’ve looked for whatever intersection there was and focused on that until the last few years where I just said if I err on any side, I’ve got to err to the side of following your soul and that’s that. I feel lucky that I was part of the format both with radio and the retail side when it was such an exciting time.

SV: At that point in time, the major labels were supporting this music and songs were crossing over to the pop charts. Koz was on Capitol, Kenny G obviously with Arista, Warren Hill and Candy Dulfer were on big labels. And you still decided to go at it on your own.
KN: I recorded my first album on my own and took it to some labels and got some interest, but I could tell right away that once it left my hands, this thing that I brought up like a child would be out of my control, and who knew what would happen with it. I did some research and figured out what it would take to do it myself. And I was probably inspired by the newness of it all and that there were other successful small labels back then that were doing well and getting hits on the charts. I’m glad I did it, but if I’d known what I was stepping into and known how much work it was going to be who knows if I would have really done it.

SV: You were signing other artists. When you have a Gregg Karukas or Brandon Fields do  you feel like you have their fate kind of in your hands?
KN: Oh yeah, and I took that responsibility very seriously because I believed in those talents. There’s all kinds of production, some you are hands-on up to your elbows, but some you just keep your distance and make sure everything is proceeding the way it should be and that they have what they need to do a great job. Unfortunately, now the idea of bringing in someone, unless they are really established, is something I don’t feel like I could do right now. It is so difficult and it takes so much financially to break new artists in this field. I wouldn’t want to take on somebody’s career in music unless I could completely do it justice and, unfortunately, it is not the same climate it was in 1991.
 
SV: The good thing is that within the shakedown that is happening right now there are artists who are willing to bring their ideas and creativity, and be role models for the ones who are a little bit more gun-shy. Thank you for being on the frontlines and for giving  us some insight into the process!