With the release of his third CD, 3D, Steve Oliver takes another giant step toward becoming one of the star attractions of Smooth Jazz. His musicianship, personality, and electrifying performances have caught the eyes and ears of everyone from passers-by at outdoor concerts to some of the most professionally jaded industry insiders. Each new release has added another level of musical innovation, production values, and maturity. He writes unabashedly catchy instrumental pop songs that never fall into formula or cliche, underscored by his totally original approach to scatting and vocalese.

His first high visibility gig was as guitarist for Steve Reid’s Bamboo Forest when the band was mostly composed of musicians from the Rippingtons. He wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on their excellent but underrated CD Mysteries. Bamboo Forest toured Florida often, so my friends and I got to see the effect Steve had on a crowd early on and spend some time hanging out with him and his wife, Gisela. His debut CD, First View, was released with very little fanfare but sold well and charted. It was nominated for an AIFM (Association for Independent Music) "Indie" award, and Smooth Jazz News chose him as "Debut Artist of The Year." The follow up, Positive Energy, featured "High Noon", which stayed on the Radio and Records Smooth Jazz chart for most of the year and climbed to #3. He was also nominated for Guitarist of the year and best New Artist at the Smooth Jazz Awards. For the new project he called Tom Schuman, the keyboardist and founding member of Spyro Gyra, who also plays on all of the tracks. The result is one of the best and most original sounding Smooth Jazz releases to come out in a long time.

Talking to Steve Oliver is like polishing off a Red Bull/Mountain Dew cocktail with an expresso chaser. Seeing him is even better. As you can tell from this conversation, he loves his fans, he  loves to play and he tours a lot. He's road trip worthy, don't miss him! For updates go to his website www.steveolivermusic.com.

SmoothViews (SV): How did you end up working with Tom Schuman on the new CD? 

Steve Oliver (SO): Tom played on Positive Energy, and I’ve been such a fan of his playing and his musicality and his ears. I like to have a second set of ears, somebody to listen to demos and maybe add their personality to it. I called him on a whim and just asked him, and you know what?? He’s never been asked!  I also knew it would help Tom to be seen in a different way because he’s not known as a producer. He’s a jazz guy, and he’s amazing. I could sit and listen to him play all day. He has a grand piano at his house, and we would just start jamming. He’s so musical, and it was so great. His wife, Yvonne, was there, and we were just playing and having a blast. He’s such an amazing player, and he’s one of the easiest guys to work with. He just seemed to me to be a good call.
 

SO: He’s very focused, and his attention to detail is staggering. I learned all this as we were going. We actually talked more about life and everything. I learned a lot about him as a human being. We’d spend long days, and he was great! I stayed at his house for two weeks at a time while we were recording.

SV: Don’t you think that having that kind of relationship during the recording rather than just going into the studio and recording your parts brings something tangible to the project? A sense of warmth that might not be there otherwise? 

SO: Definitely. And that is so important to me as an artist and composer, to bring that closeness in the studio to make a good vibe. It’s infectious. It goes around to all the musicians, and that translates onto the recording. When Eric Marienthal did his parts, he came over to my house, and I recorded him with my mics in my little studio. We made him lunch and hung out. That’s me, that’s what we do, we have fun. Eric is amazing, just unbelievable. He knows exactly what the song needs because he listens. I didn’t have to say anything to him. He knew exactly what to play.

SO: I think my travels. I really observe people, and I feel their energy. When you’re around them you feel when they are down. Those lyrics are like having a conversation with somebody, or it’s like an observation from afar. I see people, and they’ve had a hard time in their lives, and someone comes along and pulls them out of the muck. That’s what I was thinking in "You Rescued Me." "Let It Go" is the same way. A lot of people have a lot of problems, and maybe because I’m optimistic, I’m always thinking there’s a way out. I’m thinking let it go, set it free! Put it out in the ocean, and let it sail. Move forward. I’m always telling people to move forward.  "See You Soon" is written for the audience. What would I say to them? I was thinking about how would I present a song to the audience saying that hopefully they will come back, and I’ll see them soon. Thanking them for being a part of it all. A lot of people are taking it differently... some people think it is religious.

SO: That’s what’s so great about songs, you can have your own interpretation and bring in what it means to you.

SV: Considering that, the sequencing with "Imagine" right before it is perfect. You don’t record a lot of covers. What brought you to record "Imagine"?
SO: I’m a huge Beatles fan and John Lennon, of course!  "Live as one" was the lyric. It’s like "yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about!" and it still holds up today. It’s such a beautiful song, and the message is right on the mark. I’ve always loved that song, and I’ve played it for years. I play it solo, even now, I play it solo guitar in the shows.

SV: I bet you can hear a pin drop... 

SO: Exactly, when I’m playing it I have my guitar synths, and when I’m doing it I get goosebumps. People get all emotional. I think with the times now after 9/11 and all that stuff, it has a lot that they connect with. When I recorded it I had "Live as One" as a vocal chant on it but it didn’t make it onto the record.
 

SV: Why did you call this CD 3D?
SO: It’s the third disc, and musically it’s three dimensional. I’m always thinking three dimensionally. I’m all over the map so musically for me it’s three dimensional. It’s a little bit of pop, a little bit of jazz, a little bit of electronica, a little bit of Latin. So it’s three dimensional in scope.

SV: You do cover a lot of territory on this one.

SO: Sometimes I always wonder if I am doing too many styles, but I think it works.

SO: That’s why I wanted Tom to play keyboards on the whole album, because it will have a definite sound when you have the same person involved. I know Pat Metheny does that too with the group. He has the same people, and they go in and make music, and that’s the sound of the album.

SO: I love doing the sounds with the voice because it’s not done a lot. I think of the voice as an instrument, which it is, and that creates my sound. If I was just a guitar player, and you take the voice out of the tunes, it would sound like just another smooth jazz record. It adds a whole different flavor to the overall sound. I think it makes the songs more identifiable too..

SV: When did you decide to do this kind of music?

SO: Actually before I was in high school. I always loved experimental music. I started listening to progressive rock so that kind of tipped me into this other kind of music. I remember buying Genesis Live back when Peter Gabriel was in the band, and I fell in love with how adventurous it was. Long tracks, many styles combined into one song. I just thought this was the coolest thing; it totally affected me. From there I realized there’s this instrumental music that is just as creative as progressive rock. That was around 8th grade. I was always a musical seeker; that was my thing. I still am that way. I love finding new things and twists and turns. I just embraced that, and I’ve been that way ever since.

SO: The whole spectrum. From progressive rock to the Beatles, and on the other hand I was listening to Pat Metheny, Lee Ritenour and Oregon, which is one of my favorite bands. They are eclectic, world music, classical, jazz. Ralph Towner totally affected me. In high school I was in the jazz band, played guitar in that, and from there just progressed.

SO: I was doing my solo thing mostly without a band. I was playing with bands, but I was mainly playing solo, and that’s how I was able to learn about the art of entertaining and using my voice as an instrument along with the guitar and using the synths. I started getting into all these different kinds of programming where I am able to do this as a one man band, so I just started building a show around it. I was always playing in restaurants and coffee shops, pretty much everywhere

SO:  I do half and half. Some is live and some is tracks, but I do it so the tracks are just rhythm beds, and I’m playing live on top of it. I’ve stripped the tracks down to where it is just bass and drums, and I play everything else on top. I’ll have a percussionist with me a lot of times which is really fun, and with the guitar synth and the technology I can play bass and guitar and sing at the same time with percussion driving the rhythm. It’s not only because I hear all these things at once, it’s just developed into this kind of style. Even with the band I’ll do things solo because its kind of my history, and I’m real comfortable doing it.

SO: I’ve always been a creative person. I always hear different styles of music and try to combine different ways to make that happen. In the live setting playing solo I’m always making up songs on the stage, because when you’re in a live setting it’s so different from when you are writing at home. A lot of times that’s why I’m able to create this kind of sound that I do. It’s funny because when I record I’m thinking of a broad scope, even though it sounds like me just trying a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Some things work and some things don’t but I like variety so that’s what I’ve always strived for.

SO: Yeah....

SO: That has happened. Its funny because I still perform solo just to play like that. I’ll try songs out when I’m working on them at home, then I’ll take them in a live setting, and I come up with melodies more in front of a live audience than at home in a more relaxed thing. That seems to work for me. I always try my songs out in front of an audience before I record them. It’s a form of improvisation. You hear a song, and you play it differently in front of people. I call it my music research. I’m always doing research. The audience doesn’t know I’m doing this at all. They think its a finished song.

SO: (laughs)... so the audience is such a part of what I do as an artist.

SO: I think that’s so important as an artist, to just try something new. It’s turning people on to the music. There are so many fairs and festivals and arts and crafts shows, and this music fits in everywhere. I call it "feel good music" because when I listen to it I light up, and that’s how I see other people react.  It's amazing how many people gravitate toward it when they hear it in a place where they wouldn‘t expect to be hearing it. You reach people you normally wouldn't be able to reach. If you open up to that amazing things can happen.

SO: I opened up for him. I was with a violinist, and he called me the day of the show and said he got a gig opening for Steve Reid and a group that was mostly guys in the Rippingtons. Steve saw us play. He really pays attention to other artists. After the show he approached me, and about two months later I got a call from him. It was in Nov of '96 and he asked if I would like to join his band. I just flipped out. He needed a guitar player/singer/songwriter. He didn't realize I had a bunch of songs, and he was looking for material because he was recording an album, so I sent him some songs, and he ended up using all nine of them on the record (Mysteries).

SO: I’m a "songwriteaholic" [Ed. note: Isn’t that a great word!] so I had a whole bunch of tunes, and I had them cataloged. I was working on things that really affected and touched me so I was always writing stuff in hopes of making a solo album too.

I made demos of everything and I got some interest from this little independent label. I was actually shopping for a deal and got some investors to help out so I could really record the project. That’s when I pooled together the musicians. What was really cool was that the musicians that played on it wanted to play on it. I didn’t ask. Rob Mullins heard me do "Sunrise Celebration" the way I do it. It was totally different on the Bamboo Forest album. He wanted to change it to my sound so we made it more of a live sound. Out of the kindness of his heart, he wanted to do it, so that’s how the whole album came about. People came in like that. Tom McMoran, who did the piano solo on "First View,"  heard the song and fell in love with it and said he wanted to play on it. Same thing with Dave Hooper, Jeff Kashiwa, and Larry Antonino. They liked the music, and they wanted to play. I asked Dave Kochanski to work on the programming with me, and he did.

SO: Being a new artist it’s virtually impossible. Then I was talking to this keyboard player named Theo Bishop that I had met thru Rob Mullins. He mentioned that he and his friend were starting a label. I didn’t really think about it at the time. Then I met Joe Sherbanee, the musician who was the other guy starting the label. Joe brought his parents to see me because they were backing him. He started his record company on his parents coming to see me live. It was cool to see his parents say "we like this artist and we’re going to back it."

SO: It was shocking. I wasn’t expecting that at all. I was real naive. I was just happy there was a project out. Here we go, here’s a start, we have a launch pad now. I was happy that it  was being presented at all.
 

SO: Yeah. I was writing a lot of stuff. That year I learned a lot. It was real growth, doing some shows and getting a little airplay. That got us some gigs and we sold a lot of CDs at the shows. So I was writing and thinking of the format more for the disc, but still trying to be diverse and not really follow a formula. I’m not a follower so I was trying to think of ways to write a commercial tune and make it my sound.
 

SO: I haven’t, which is really bizarre because so many people do get that pressure. The label  was involved to some degree with making sure there were commercial things, but I think with me, Joe knew that I knew that. I’m in tune with the industry and the music community as a listener and an artist, so I have an instinct for what I need to do. So I was never told how, which is great!

SO: Not at all. It’s funny, I had that song and it was the last song I recorded. I was going to save it for the third record because I had a bunch of tunes already done for Positive Energy but something told me hey, lets go back in and record this song. So it was the last song to be recorded and mixed. It happened that it did really well.

SV: And the new single "Chips and Salsa" has a toe-hold on the Smooth Jazz chart right now. Which is quite an accomplishment in these times, so congratulations and hopefully it will follow the same trend since it’s an equally wonderful song! One last question just for fun. You are one of those people that it would be a blast to get in a room with a stack of CDs and just turn someone on to music you’ve discovered, because you are all over the place with different genres and you have great instincts for finding hidden treasures. What is catching your ears these days?
SO: Oregon, Pat Metheny, Bjork, Tori Amos’ live album. I’ve been listening to Focus, the band from the 70's. Mark Knopfler’s new one is really good, I love Youssou N’Dour’s  Egypt.  I love world music. I love all kinds of music. If it touches you it doesn’t matter what category it is.

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