Jazz Funk Soul - Interview

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By: Keivu Knox

Everette Harp, Paul Jackson Jr., and Jeff Lorber are the three legendary artists that make up the jazz super group “Jazz Funk Soul.” They recently released their fourth album entitled “Forecast,” and sat down with Smooth Jazz Magazine to discuss their careers, both individually and collectively.

SJM: So jumping right in, how has the response been to “Forecast?”

Paul: Really, really good, people have been receptive to the new music, sales is doing well, and we sold a lot of copies at Blues Alley last week. It ’s catching steam on radio as well so all in all, it ’s been great so far.

Everette: Yes, the reception has definitely been great so far. Things are a little bit different than it used to be with streaming, but we’ve had some great reviews of the album as well.

SJM: How did you all land on the title of “Forecast ” for the album?

Jeff: That was one of my song titles. What I try to do with the music that I make as a solo artist, and with Jazz Funk Soul is make music that is forward thinking and try to skate to where the puck is going to be. Music that is more harmonically ambitious and we try to step up and make things as good as we can. We want to make music that is a reflection of where music is going.

SJM: Speaking of that, where do you see music evolving in the next year or two?

Jeff: With a name like “Jazz Funk Soul,” I think we have a little more be-bop in Sep/Oct Let the music take you… SmoothJazz Magazine | 39

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our cannon. But we want to definitely expand our sound. One of my biggest idols in Stevie wonder because he is someone the musicians are crazy about. Harmonically and soundwise we love him, and the average listeners love him equally. That is the sound that we are looking for with our music.

SJM: The entity Jazz Funk Soul has been around for almost ten years.

Where does the name stem from?

Jeff: We started this thing with no plans to take over the world. We saw it as a way for myself, Everette and Chuck (Loeb) at the time to put something together to tour with. That was the idea at first but then Shanachie wanted a record from us, so we got in the studio to put out an album.

Everette: We bounced around a few names, but it was our management that came up with the name of Jazz Funk Soul. It best fit what we were trying to do.

SJM: Paul with the transition of Chuck a few years ago and you coming into the fold, do you remember what you felt when you joined?

Paul: I had extreme ambivalence. While I have always enjoyed playing with Jeff and Everette for years and excited for the opportunity to play with them, on the flip side I was replacing one of my heroes that passed away. So it gave me a feeling of joy with playing with these guys and continuing the franchise, at the same time, Chuck wasn’t going to be on here to see the fruit of it. But knowing that Chuck was a musician’s musician, the fact that he knows we are continuing to strive for excellence makes it a great situation.

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SJM: What was the creative process for this project?

Everette: from the beginning of the group the process was the same. Each of us would bring three songs each and then if we wanted to collaborate on the tenth, be it two of us or all three of us, we would do that. We do bounce songs off each other and say “yes that ’s cool.” For me I’m more selective and have a couple of songs ready but for Jeff, when the label says it ’s time for a new album, he already has twenty songs ready for the album! (laughs)

Paul: More like twenty-five or thirty!

Jeff: But we also collaborate a lot. We try to encourage that. Chuck definitely encouraged it and we try to continue that.

Everette: On the last record Jeff and I co wrote about four and on this record, we did some collaborating for sure.

SJM: Do you find that there’s some friendly competition between you all? Being such prolific artists is it a challenge to bring your best work to the table?

Everette: I don’t consider it competition.

Jeff: I would say in a way there is some competition. I want to have the best songs especially with working with these guys. The music has to be so great because of who I’m working with.

SJM: When you bring songs to the table, how does it fit for you to say “this is a great spot for Jeff or Paul to have a solo? Are you composing these songs with solos and artists in mind?

Jeff: If I know I’m working with these two guys, and that sound palette with them, I know that I have some great tools at my disposal. It makes it more exciting for me knowing they will have the space to create in spots, and it keeps me excited about it, even more than when I do my own album. Also, all of us have so much experience in the studio that we have the mind of a producer so we can kind of figure out how the song should go and the solos as well. Its like we’re creating a painting together. We each have different colors to paint, but we all know where to put our brushes.

SJM: Tell us about “Fish Grease” that was one of my favorites of the album.

Paul: I had an idea for a couple of funk guitar parts and made a loop of it. I was trying to create a melody with it. I was a Jazz Crusaders fan through and through, and I wanted it to be an homage to the 75-76 iteration of the Jazz Crusaders. Even though Everette is great at alto sax, but I felt that he would be great playing tenor on this song, so he laid he performance along with some other parts and we had a song that I was very proud of.

SJM: “Keep Holding On” was another great song, tell us about that one.

Everette: When it was time to start writing for the record, I was just messing around on the keyboard. On most of my recent playing I’ve been playing the tenor sax but the majority of my career I played the alto. So I wanted to go back to that and have something reminiscent of the contemporary 80s jazz stuff that I loved. So I can up with the groove and had a Marcus Miller hint to it. The song then began to write itself really. I remember sending it to Jeff in its raw form, and he 42| SmoothJazz Magazine Let the music take you… Sep/Oct

said that its some good stuff to flush a tune out. It really evolved from there, with a great melodic finish.

SJM: Speaking of melodies, “When The Time Comes” was another one with a strong melody.

Everette: I was just sitting at the piano and came out with the bass line. It was a moment that happened when I remember once I had the bass line the song grew. I didn’t want electric bass on the song, so Reggie Hammond ended playing the acoustic bass on it. These songs just grow organically. We all write that way. We can confine to formats but when we write, it wasn’t our goal to stay confined. This song and other songs on the album are an expression of who we are and what we’ve done. I wanted to put a rock guitar part on this one and at first, they were surprised that I wanted it on this song but I felt that we weren’t writing for radio when doing this project, we wanted to be creative.

Jeff: Here’s the thing. A lot of people write music and create music for singles and radio. Now when I’m listening to projects, I want to hear the singles but I want to hear the other songs on the album too. If you’re making an album with ten songs, not every song has to be a single, so I want to hear what the artists is doing when it ’s not a single. I think that more attention in our industry could be paid to that.

Paul: I had a very interesting conversation with Pat Prescott the other day and we were talking about jazz radio in the 70s and 80s. You would head fusion, straight ahead, so many different subgenres but more importantly; On Monday you would hear track #1 from an album, Tuesday track #7, and Thursday track #10 from that album. And it gave you an overall tone of the album so on Sep/Oct Let the music take you… SmoothJazz Magazine | 43

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Friday you would go to the record store and buy the album because you heard enough to expect it to be a good album.

Everette: I used to do a radio show for WLRQ in Orlando called “Smooth Jazz Odyssey.” When they asked me to do the show, I said that I would, but I had to be able to play contemporary jazz from the 70s and 80s only. This was in 2007 or 2008, and that was all I played. The reason why is because at the time I felt there was a vacuum for the music I wanted to here, and I wanted to bring back what we loved about music back then to the forefront of radio. There is a certain expression that is missing today, but you have it with certain artists like Alex Bugnon and Marion Meadows, who both play expressive stuff. But if enough of us align to that, the industry as a whole will have no choice but to shift back towards that.

SJM: Well I definitely appreciate all of your ability to be expressive. I can also appreciate the fact that on this album, and I believe on every Jazz Funk Soul project released thus far, there are no covers on this album. Is that on purpose?

Everette: Is that still a thing? (laughs)

Jeff: Absolutely it is a thing, but this is what I appreciate about Jazz Funk Soul. When I write my album, I have to come up with 10 songs. For Jazz Funk Soul. I only need three. It ’s a lot more manageable and so we don’t need or what to have covers. Playing with this guys make me want to just create our own stuff, and I’ll change my answer to an earlier question. I wouldn’t call it competition, but I would call it inspiration. I’m inspired when I’m working with these guys.

SJM: Switching gears a bit, I wanted to go down memory lane a bit. I’m going to name a few of my favorite songs by you all. Paul, one of my favorites of yours is “Days Gone By.” What do you remember about that song?

Paul: That was the first project that I recorded after I built the studio. I re- 44| SmoothJazz Magazine Let the music take you… Sep/Oct

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member Robbie Buchanan came over, and he was known for his fender Rhodes sound. He showed that on the Whitney Houston album and I knew at the time I wanted a great Fender Rhodes sound. He played on that record so that is something I definitely remember, along with the great 808 drums on the record as well.

SJM: Everette, when I mention the title “When I Think of You,” what do you remember?

Everette: That was a song written by Brian Simpson and myself. Before he was a recording artist he contributed to a couple of my albums. It was a nice groove, one of the simpler sounds on my first record. A lot of my records have a lot of chord changes, but that song was simpler by comparison. George Duke Sep/Oct Let the music take you… SmoothJazz Magazine | 45