It seems like a long time has passed but it was just a little over two years ago when Ken Navarro released The Grace of Summer Light.  It was different from anything he had ever done – a shift from catchy smooth jazz hits that were well written and quite enjoyable listening to a set of songs that were longer, more complex, and more challenging to perform but maintained his strong sense of melody and warmth. A lot of critics and fans considered it one of the best, if not the best album released in 2008. This month he is releasing the follow-up, Dreaming of Trains, which expands on the ideas he developed on Grace while taking a significant leap forward and bringing even more styles and influences into the fold. This kind of artistic growth is even more impressive when you consider the nature of the music business today – the “play it safe and don't rock the boat” attitude. When you hear something like this the first question that comes to mind is “how did he do that?” and that's what I set out to find out.

SmoothViews (SV): "Grace of Summer Light" was your first full scale venture into doing a different style of music. How did it do as far as audience acceptance, sales and any other feedback you got?
Ken Navarro (KN): As far as the acceptance and enthusiasm it did very well. It was very close to what I hoped. There were many people who had never heard of me before or who associated me with smooth jazz and didn't see themselves as fans of that style who got into this music and sent me emails and messages to let me know that. When you feel like you've done your best work, getting that type of validation makes you feel really good. I knew it wasn't going to be the kind of record that would get a lot of airplay so I focused on a much larger audience both in terms of musical taste and geography. Now that people overseas could buy the music online I put a lot of energy into reaching them - going beyond the US market and radio audiences. The sales situation got caught up in the way retail outlets were closing up or shrinking down. We didn't sell as many CDs as some of my previous releases but we did sell a lot of downloads from all over the world so I felt like my efforts to court a new audience and an international audience were paying off. I was glad to see that most of my smooth base came with me. I'm sure there were some of them who wanted to hear more of the "Smooth Sensation" type things but I knew I had turned a corner and I wasn't going back. I'm already seeing the advantages of breaking ground because now I have an audience that is waiting for a record that sounds like Dreaming of Trains.

SV: If you listen to your body of work there are a lot of hints that you could move in this direction. It really came out on The Meeting Place but even going back to Island Life or to the live album there were songs that were more complex or had more of a rock influence than standard smooth jazz chart fare.
KN: The Meeting Place was a transitional record. Anyone who had been following me could hear that the hints were all there. The other thing is that I just wasn't ready as a musician and a composer to step off completely until I did the Grace of Summer Light record. I'm thankful that I've literally had a lifetime to pursue this so I could get good enough as a composer and arranger, and as a player, to do it at the level where it had to be done if I was going to take that step. I think that was part of my reluctance before. I knew that if I was going to do it I needed to be able to do it as good as the people who are already doing it. If  you are going to proclaim it as a real concept that has a lot of depth and substance then you have to be able to raise the bar to the level of something like Pat Metheny's Secret Story. I knew that was what I was going to be shooting for so I had to wait and even then it was a leap.

SV: With Grace you really set the expectation level so now you come into the studio to follow it up. Isn't it scary to have this expectation for yourself that you have to take it to an even higher level.
KN: The challenge was asking myself "can I do that?"  It took me 18 years of making records to get to the place where I could make Grace so now what? I honestly felt like that was the first album of a new story. After 17 albums here's the first one again and now it's time for the follow up. It's all about the writing in the end. We moved about a year ago and I had to relocate the studio after making albums for myself and other people for 18 years in that one place. I got it set up and it was a good impetus to start writing. I was apprehensive because I knew I really needed to do better and I had to do different. I just dug in and spent three months writing.

SV: This is going to be kind of a bombastic set of statements that I would apply to this. One is that it is moving into the realm of Secret Story and The Way Up. The other is that I think it basically defines a place this genre needs to go because it was one of the paths that was developing before the smooth thing happened but then pretty much everything you do on this album was phased out. The term that keeps coming to me is Instrumental Oriented Adult Alternative.
KN: It's tough to define it. It kind of harks back to the early '90s when we had three different charts with three different names and a lot of different types of music fell under that umbrella and got heard.

SV: Yeah, we had Progressive A/C, Adult Alternative, and Contemporary Jazz, I think. It was basically being seen as an Adult Alternative to top 40 and Lite.
KN: On one hand it is easy to just listen to what you already know, I even see that tendency in myself. But I also see people within my age group - people between 40 and 60 or so - that are saying they don't have anything to listen to. They are tired of oldies and they want to hear something new but aren't sure how to find it or what is out there. Hopefully these new ways of discovering music will work.

SV: Did you go in with anything in mind when you started doing this writing?
KN: I knew I wanted to continue with a certain amount of the kind of long form writing that Grace was focused on. I wanted to expand further on some of the modern classical influences that were an increasing part of what I was listening to. A big part of preparing to write is to do a lot of listening - to let influences kind of gel and move together. I listen to a lot of new music and some older stuff and let them kind of join together. I was listening to a lot of Van Morrison, not specifically for the songs but the heart that was in them. There was something there that was kind of a barometer for whether I was writing from the heart or not. Did what I was writing make me feel like those songs did? I wanted some of the modern classical things like Steve Reich and Phillip Glass to come through too.

SV: Then there's the process and discipline of doing the writing. How do you stay on focus?
KN: In the end writing is really about keeping one foot going after the other so whatever gets you to keep writing is really all that matters. I remember one day where I had a breakthrough with the song that ended up being called "Self Propelled." For that one day I felt like I could do anything because the song came together after days of trying to find a direction for it. Its great to feel that way but then I'm going to have to write a new thing from scratch and feel just as challenged going through the process to get to that place again. It's hard, at least for me. The flow happens but it only happens after you go through the drudgery of getting a piece put together and suddenly the inspiration can really take hold. Whatever keeps you just putting one foot in front of the other is what will get you to that point, at least that's what my experience has been.

SV: When you first revealed the title of the CD, I think it was on FaceBook, my first impression was two titles "Last Train Home" and  Different Trains. The Metheny song, of course, and the composition Steve Reich did that had a piece with Metheny playing a bunch of guitar parts that were layered in really inventive ways. I hear a lot of that influence in the title track and I'm assuming that that was on purpose.
KN: It was. I wanted to see if I could write something that had up to a dozen or so completely distinct sections  and not worry about them transitioning perfectly into each other. In fact, abrupt transitions were going to part of the composition. That was certainly influenced by some elements of Different Trains. I wanted to use that to create a train-like quality where it accelerates then it slows down. It made it real challenging for the players. It's hard to play something that goes along then suddenly goes into a different gear as if nothing happened.

SV: The trick you pulled off is you make it not hard to listen to. The Reich piece might be a little challenging for people who don't seek out experimental or avant garde stuff but this is actually comfortable because it all meshes and it's fun to just put the headphones on and hear how it plays out.
KN: There's a place where there are four guitars playing repetitive lines but they keep changing like a kaleidoscope rotating. Then other guitar parts start to add on until there are ten of them, then a whole other meter and tempo is played against it with the keyboard and the drums until it comes to a head and bursts into the extended group improvisation at the end. I wanted the listener to feel like it is beautiful, which is a challenge with all of that going on. When I finished it I didn't know if I had succeeded at what I was doing with it because was so different than anything I had ever written. I put it aside and fortunately my long time pianist, Jay Rowe, heard it and said he thought it was one  of the best things I've ever written. After he told me that I was able to listen and recognize that it was working. I was afraid that some of those abrupt changes were too self-conscious. Even though I worked hard to make sure they weren't coming from a place of trying to show off musical technique you wonder because you know what went into it.

SV: Actually my first reaction was I was pretty amazed that someone I know wrote that. I don't know Pat Metheny so that is awe from a distance but you're someone I've talked to and seen live in more casual settings and you're on the social networking pages. It's like someone who cooks lasagna and shovels snow also goes into a studio and gets this out of himself.
KN: That's a good way to put it, actually. It is that -getting something out of yourself. Once the flow starts happening it's a joy. I don't want to sound like it's a grind because there is such joy to it, but you don't get to experience that unless you pay the proper discipline. Writing like that requires a lot of discipline and a lot of ability to have some perspective about what is and isn't working.


SV: You had to push yourself and trust yourself and you had to trust that the musicians that were going to be playing it with you would get it. I've gotta ask how Joel (Rosenblatt - drummer) reacted because these songs require so much more than keeping a beat.
KN: Joel's main concern, like any good player, is how he is going to play it and make it work. I want the musicians  to be themselves and turn it into what they would play, and what they think would make it better – to bring their individuality into it. I record his parts in his studio in New York. When we were done with one of the sections where two rhythms are pitted against each other then it transitions into a completely different section he asked me "Are we going to have to do this live?" (laughs)  They are looking at how to make it happen and how to do it live.

SV: "Dream So Real" doesn't sound like anything you've ever done. It reminds me of the mood of the opening track on Secret Story. Not as a sound alike but it has that same feeling like the door is being opened to the concept of the project.
KN: There was an album that used jazz musicians backing a classical type of voice and it caught my ear. A lot of writing comes from asking myself if I can do a specific thing. In this case it was "Can I write a piece that is improvisatory and sounds like something a jazz player would do but involves a classical voice?”  I've known Ann Sacks for 30 years, since music school in Wisconsin. We've been friends that long and she ended up marrying one of my best friends from high school. We've never done anything together musically though. She's become the cantor at her synagogue and she's really involved in that.

SV: Not that you say that,  it  sheds some light on the strong spiritual presence in that song Not one that is specific to a given religion. More like a chant or an invocation.
KN: Ann came over when I was doing the demos because I wanted to start to get a feel for whether it was going to work early on, and she  got it immediately. She even came up with some French lyrics that were about dreaming that she sings later in the song. She put some of herself into it too.

SV: The cool thing is that the way it is laid out the lyrics catch you off guard and at first it doesn't feel like a specific language, you can feel that they express something without knowing what it specifically says.
KN: That's why I resisted the temptation to put the translation in the liner notes.

SV: Good, let them use their imagination and fill in the spaces with what it makes them feel.
KN: Exactly, because then you have people looking for it instead of listening to the sound of the language. I wanted to get a dreamlike spiritual vibe. You get lucky with these things sometimes and they just come together. That whole piece started with one keyboard sound that inspired a feeling I wanted it to have, then built on that quality in Ann's voice that comes from her career teaching and chanting as well as her training and the Asian theme. Sometimes you get lucky and influences come together like that.

V: The middle of "Everything Being is Dancing" reminds me of the Allman Bros Band when they were really big and were doing a lot of extended instrumental parts. Was that an intentional influence?
KN: It wasn't in the forefront but I had recently been listening to that music a lot. Their Live At The Fillmore East album was one that I had recommended to a guitar student because it bridges the worlds of rock and jazz and here is an album that captures a couple of nights when this band was doing a lot of jazz type improvisation as a blues-rock band. There are so many influences. I'm more prone to think of people like Steve Reich because he's a newer influence but influences like the Allman Bros during that period are embedded. Allowing those influences to flow is what is going to make anyone unique. It's almost subliminal.

SV: You basically used the same group of musicians for this one that you used for Grace.
KN: They are amazing and I should say a few words about each of them because it may start with the writing and my playing but first and foremost there is Jay Rowe, who has been playing with me for 15 years now. He came in and came up with parts that had to be there. I had the parts that were on the demo so it didn't need more parts for the sake of having more parts. It needed the parts that had to be there - that once you heard them you couldn't hear the song with them missing. His acoustic piano work is stunning. I don't know of anyone who could have done for me and my music what he has done. Tom Kennedy is very well known for playing with Mike Stern and Dave Weckl. He's known as an electric bass player but he's a phenomenal acoustic player too and that's mostly what he does on this album. He got this music big time and that's a big compliment coming from somebody of that caliber. I recorded him here, we spent several days recording his parts and we already talked about Joel, who is mostly known for his work with Spyro Gyra but he has played with pretty much everybody. He is so good with colors and textures and bringing this open quality to the sound.

SV: We're talking now about people who work in the more progressive realm of contemporary jazz and what is loosely called fusion. These two albums you've done fall into that realm but your name recognition is still connected to the smooth jazz genre. Do you ever feel like there are fans of these musicians and the kind of music they usually do who would get into what you are doing but may be hesitant to listen because of the smooth jazz association?
KN: Oh yeah. It's one of the big challenges on my plate - to make sure the album is heard by an audience that might not otherwise hear it unless I find ways to get it in front of them. There are more ways now but it's a tricky line because people do tend to go back to the music they know. When we were coming up the new types of music coming into our lives were things like progressive rock, then maybe Miles Davis or Weather Report or Jeff Beck. One of the biggest things in my life was the emergence of the Pat Metheny Group. That happened when we were in our early twenties. Now the people who followed him from the start are in their late forties to sixties. I don't want to go to that group and say I'm another Pat Metheny because I'm not, but that is an audience that may think only one person does that. How do I get them to listen to other musicians like myself, with other things to say that would appeal to them too?

SV: When you did the preview listening party on FaceBook one of the people who heard it said that listening to it transported her to a different place and I saw other people saying similar things. That's the effect that really brings people to music. What is important about this is that it is new music that affects people the way the music they grew up with did. The big reason people go back to older music is to recreate an experience and a mood they associate with hearing it when it was new. What if a new piece of music could affect them that way and it's about living it now instead of reliving something?
KN: And hopefully it takes you some places that relate to where you are in this point in time, not as a nostalgia thing. Where if it is nostalgic it is a continuation of something from your past and brings that theme into the present.

SV: That something from the past could be a reminder of where music can take you, and when people say it affects them that way it is a reminder that music that comes out now can affect you the same way and in the now.
KN: As a musician I feel like I have no choice but to keep growing so it's also a statement from me that we all can keep growing no matter what age we are. It would be a lot easier for me to reiterate at this point - just do what I always did and polish it up and change it around a little. This is a lot harder on every level. Writing it, recording it and then going out and playing it live.

SV: Which was the next question because those of us who loved "Grace" really wanted to hear it live. I was lucky enough to get a taste of it when I heard you do a few songs with most of the guys you recorded with and it would be amazing to experience a whole show based on these two albums.
KN: It's difficult to finance a group tour right now. It costs a lot to travel, then you've got to think about accommodations, staging, lighting, sound. The economy has affected concert attendance and that affects bookings. How can we do justice to the music within a reasonable budget. The other challenge is that it takes a high caliber of musician to recreate this music and do it with freshness, not just memorizing the parts. Those players are constantly working because they have bills to pay so I get my "A list" band together as often as I can but it's not easy to mesh their schedules. Recreating this would take out a larger group and that wouldn't be expedient so I am looking at ways to use technology to fill in some of those places without compromising the live elements, changing the context, or being a distraction.

SV: You have done some innovative things to get the music heard, both with the last one and this one, like an online listening party you just did.
KN: I used FaceBook and set up a period of time and people could send me a message and I would give them the secret link where they could hear the entire album streaming. At one point I had over 200 people listening at the same time. I got a bunch of sales that day but that wasn't what it was about. It was a wonderful way to have people listen live, and for them to be listening together even though they weren't in the same place. I got emails and messages from people saying it was so cool to think they were listening while all these other people were listening.  I found that really interesting because I wanted to create some sense of excitement about it. That's mostly what the secret link thing and doing it at a specific time were about.

SV: But you didn't really think about turning that little corner of cyberspace into one big living room.
KN: Which is what a lot of them seemed to be feeling. I could even follow who was in the "listening room" and a lot of them were communicating with me at the same time.

SV: The idea of people considering themselves a part of a community that is built around music is really exciting to me because the shared experience is so different from listening by yourself and so important. We are so scattered geographically and so busy we can't do the thing we did when we were in school where you got together and shared music. It takes a certain kind of work to inspire this reaction though because it has to touch people, not execute a formula. Thanks for being willing to step out and not only create the music but come up with new ways to get it heard and create that type of community. This is one of those albums that is going to be significant for a long time. Thank you for sharing the part of the creative process that could be verbalized with us.