November 2005
Interview by: Harvey Cline

Between cruising the ocean’s blue, releasing new material and launching a record label, saxophonist Warren Hill took time recently to chat with Smooth Views: 

Smooth Views (SV): The new disc has been out for a few weeks now, and was reviewed in our October edition of Smooth Views. How has it been received by the fans and media so far?
Warren Hill (WH): Very well. You know I’m always taking chances with my records and try to stretch myself beyond being complacent. People are really digging the songs. The thing about the record is that everyone has different favorite songs on there. So to me that’s a good sign, and that I did something right. There’s nothing worse than people liking one song on your record. We had so much fun making this record and the whole process, and so far so good. Maybe people just don’t give me the bad reviews.

SV: I’ve noticed that here is a mix of cover songs as well as new material. How tough was it to keep the balance and decide what to put on the new disc?
WH: Well it’s interesting. There’s a couple of these songs, in fact three of the covers out of four, that have been part of my live show, some for a longer period than others. “Come Together” is actually something that I started covering back in the early nineties. I played it in some shows, and a couple of tours. Then I stopped playing it for a long time and slowly brought it back. I said to myself , “I gotta once and for all record this darn thing” because I’ve been playing it so much. “Play That Funky Music” is the same thing. It’s been part of my show for the last year and a half. “Low Rider” as well, because it’s one of those tunes that pops in and out whenever you’re finished doing gigs. It’s one of those ones that everybody knows. So if you’re running out of material or people want to hear more or you get another encore you say “hey, lets do “Low Rider” and you go out there and jam on the thing. That one’s been around for a while. “Back At One” is the only one that I’ve actually never performed live. It’s such a brand new recording. I’m a huge Brian McKnight fan. I think he writes beautiful melodies and songs. Of course my wife is a big fan too. So that one’s kind of for her as well.

SV: You kick it off with a funky little tune named after your home town of Toronto. How did this one get chosen for the opener, and what was the inspiration for it?
WH: I named it Toronto because I was in Toronto when I wrote it. I was staying at my parents’ place. I think I had a gig of some sort and I remember practicing my saxophone in the living room and this melody came to mind and I started jamming on it as I was practicing, and I always carry a little Dictaphone around with me, and just sort of threw it down on the Dictaphone. When I am composing it’s odd where I come up with these ideas. It may be skiing on a mountain and sitting on a chair lift. I remember writing one song doing that. So I always say where I am when I come up with a song and of course here I am, sitting in my parent’s living room and here is a song idea. So then when I go back and compile a record and finish writing I go through these tapes and sort of weed out all the stuff that I think I must have been on some sort of hallucinogenic when I came up with it. And somewhere in there, there is actually some good material so this is one of them. Toronto is a very exciting city. I think it’s one of the top cities in North America. I did grow up there and I am still a Canadian citizen. So there is a certain amount of paying some homage to my home town.

SV: So, how did it become the opener?
WH: On the CD there is no particular song that is called pop jazz and I think that "Toronto," if you are thinking of Toronto, symbolizes that terminology the best. And when you first put the record on it lets you know the shape of things that are coming on the record. For me overall it is a funkier up beat record. There are a couple of ballads: “Still in Love,” “Back at One,” a couple of mellow songs, but for the most part I would say from looking at my past CDs this one is a little more high energy.

SV: I think so too. I go walking a lot and I always take the disk with me and I kick it off with “Toronto” and I am really into the walk when that one is finished. A great one to open with by the way.
WH: Very cool.

SV: You mentioned “Still in Love” that is one of my favorites on the disk. There is a lot of emotion and I understand it is also your first single. Can you tell us a little bit more about this one?
WH: This was written for my wife to celebrate our 10th anniversary. I have written many songs for her in the past that usually have some sort of significance. I wrote “Our First Dance” way back in the second CD after we were engaged. It was the first song at our wedding. I wrote a song called “Tamara” for her on my third that played as she walked down the aisle. Then I have written songs for my daughter and so on and so forth. But with this one, when I am composing she sometimes is walking by the studio and will poke her head in and give a thumbs up or thumbs down on some things. This is one where she poked it in and said, “that one is for me.”
 
SV: She knows how to pick the good ones.
WH: It was funny because she really didn’t have to say it cause I had already intended on it being that. I guess when you are working and living under the same roof it kind of hard to keep any secrets.

SV: I know what you mean. There is a part where you do a modulation down about ¾ of the way through you know where I am talking about. It goes da, da, da, da. It sounds like you ought to go up another fifth or so.
WH: You mean where the saxophone breaks?

SV: Yeah. I want to try that. I keep following that down and go oops he didn’t go up. You mentioned “Play That Funky Music,” and I know you got Brian Culbertson and Jeff Golub on that one. Did you record that live? If you did, how much fun was that for you?
WH: Sorry to take out the mystique. I guess it would be nice to make up some story.

SV: Yeah I could just see the three of you jamming on this one.
WH: Yeah, we will probably have to do that on my cruise because we will all be together on there. In fact, this record was made very piece meal because the co-producer, Andre Berry, lives in Los Angeles. l live in Boulder and I don’t know if you noticed but of course Golub lived in New York, and the Harris brothers are in New York. Most of the other guests are in L.A. Basically when I fly out to L.A for some shows I would get with Andre and we would do some recording then and I recorded a lot of my own parts just here in my studio here in Boulder. Jeff recorded his own parts on this one from his studio in New York and Culby was actually on the road with Andre on the college tour here in Chicago and he ran into a studio in Chicago that had a B-3 and recorded on that tune.
 
SV: I am surprised he didn’t have one in his hotel room that night or something.
WH: A lot of the stuff was done in hotel rooms as well. Surprisingly, with Ron Reinhardt all of his parts were recorded in Palms Springs in a hotel room.  It is amazing what you can do now with technology.

SV: I just talked with Earl Klugh last month and he told me that they would record parts and email to the other artist and email them back and then play them.  It has completely changed.  It is unbelievable what it is now.
WH: I would never email a final part but when Andre, and I would be working on songs he would send me rough mixes of things for me to play my sax to, and he would just email those over, and as I would be working on my parts he would want to hear updated versions of what I was doing so so I just sent him stuff. But when it got time to actual compiling all the master parts and everything we don’t use email for that.  We definitely stick them in the mail and on a CD or we hand deliver it to each other and do it that way.   There is a certain point where you just can’t trust technology.
 
SV: On “Virgin Gorda” I keep hearing a noise or like two beats in the left speaker. What is going on there?
WH: That is just ambient noise. It is intentional.

SV: I figured it was after about the fifth time I heard that.
WH: Yeah, with chill music and that sort of thing you get a lot of that stuff which is not necessarily musical but is just creates a certain vibe. We wanted to do something because it is a very simple of melody and the vibe of the song is Virgin Gorda, obviously named after the island in the Caribbean, but if you listen closely there is a whole bunch of stuff in there.

SV: Yeah, I took the headphones off the first time and we were sitting on the deck listening to it Sunday night and I said listen to this and it freaked my daughter out and it just kept coming on and on and I said listen again. At first they thought it was me but after a while you know it was the CD. Do you have a favorite tune yet on the CD?
WH: One that stands out to me is, I really like the horn stuff that the Harris brothers did. So the songs that they are on really stand out to me. In particular “Funky Music” and “Come Together.”  I think they did some incredibly cool stuff on there and then the way it was complemented with what I did on my sax.  I am a big fan of “Still In Love” obviously because I did write it for my wife and I play it live at my shows and we really stretch it out and open up the solo and I do a big improvisation on there.  The one that I do like a lot and I think it is because it was more of a challenge for me is “Bridge in the Gap,” the last tune on the CD.  For any jazz buffs out there they recognize that we go into the cord changes of “Giant Steps” in the middle of a song.  So it is basically this sort of acid groove, kind of funky groove going on, and suddenly we just take a left turn and go into “Giant Steps.”  I like the way that one came out. It is very modern yet it sort of pays homage to Coltrane, who I was definitely studying quite a bit of. I don’t play like that now but I certainly studied much of that music and I just was really excited about taking the challenge to sort of throw giant steps on to a “smooth or pop jazz record.”

SV: Well, that one holds it’s own very well and could have even started off the whole disk I think. It was that strong.
WH: Yeah, I remember you said that in your review.  That was really cool. Actually there was a company that  I endorsed that has a compilation of a CD for their artists.  When I sent them the CD that was the song that they picked out for the compilation.  So I think sax players can really respond to that tune.

SV: So let’s talk about the new label for a few minutes.  Tell us about the new concept behind the new record label that you and your wife have launched.
WH: Initially it is your normal type of independent label.  We have distributed it through Native Language records out of California so we are in all the normal retail stores and we are doing the normal route of printing CDs and shipping them out and doing all that.  The second phase of the label though; is my vision really where I think music or the distribution is heading and I am working on formulating a membership site.  We have popjazz.com right now where you can buy individual downloads of the songs or mail order the CD that sort of thing but I am trying to morph that into something that is more of an experience for people.  I do believe it can almost be a real time experience, especially if you get into simulcast and things like that.  But it is a place where the membership portal is just to service my biggest fans so to speak.  It is not necessarily a fan club.  It is more of a place where people that dig the music that I am doing and want to know more about that,  and want to hear things like live recordings and out takes from the studio.   There are all kinds of that stuff that just sort of stays in a vault somewhere.

SV: That would be things they could purchase.
WH: Behind the scenes videos, access to the best seating at my concerts.  There is sort of a wealth of things you can do with the power of the internet.  It is an amazing thing and you can really get in touch a lot closer to your fans. Not just on here, but globally because it is the kind of thing that really has no physical boundaries.  So that is what we are working on.  It is really easy to describe the concept, it is another thing to get it accomplished.   It is a heck of a lot of work so we are still in the formulating stage of that now.

SV: Just doing the framework and knowing what you need to do and go after it.
WH: Yeah, we have a lot of framework in place.   To launch something like this, the user friendly aspect of it is the highest of importance because I know not all my fans are as tech savvy as we think they might be. I think a lot of us take the internet and the whole computer digital experience for granted.  For those of us that have been doing it for so long, when you run into someone that really isn’t well versed on a computer you kind of scratch your head and how can you not know about a computer.  But it is true there are a lot of people that don’t.  They would rather read a book than surf the net. Read a book and listen to a Warren Hill CD.  So the important thing is to make sure that I am not forgetting them. I am trying to create an experience for people that are into this kind of stuff, and at the same time I have to also respect that there are people that just want to buy my CDs and listen to the music.
 
SV: And go to the shows.
WH: It is a balance and it has been a lot of work but it really is a labor of love because I do like to create music but I also like to create on other levels as well.  To me this is just another way to express creativity.

SV: Will you be signing people to your label or will it be a label per-se.
WH: I would like to sign people eventually.   When the word first leaked out I got flooded with CDs, calls and what not. I kind of had to tell everyone it’s a new concept and I need to guinea pig it first. I will be the one who gets it going, gets it up and running and humming. Once I get to that point then I will be able to take on more.   Ultimately I see us having a good collection of artists.   It would be a better place for an artist because it is self servicing.  We basically provide the framework for an artist to just come and plug their stuff in. Then they would be responsible for updating things on a daily, weekly basis and servicing their own fans.  That is the idea behind the whole membership site.

SV: So there would be jazz and non-jazz type artists?
WH: Well it is popjazz.com so anything that falls under that umbrella.  Which I think is a big spectrum.   I kind of see it from straight ahead to smooth jazz to fusion to even vocalists that have jazz flavor to what they do.

SV: I am going to ask you the same thing I asked Rick Braun a couple of months ago as he launched his new label.  You got this one coming up, and Rick started ARTizen, and Koz is involved with Rendezvous. Do you see more of the mainstay artists today leaving the traditional places and going with these type of companies?
WH: Well it depends. There are some artists that like the security of being signed to a label. The labels that are still doing this music that are still committed to it have been reduced in numbers and I don’t know how that trend is going to continue.  It may come to a point where artist don’t have a choice.  There are just not record deals to be had. I think what we are dealing with right now, probably the biggest problem, is the development of new talent especially in our format of music. I think that new comers have a completely different set of rules in front of them than for someone like me I was shopping a record deal when Kenny G had a number 1 Top 40 song with “Song Bird.” So back then everyone was looking to sign a sax player.  Now it’s like I said just new artists, I think they sort of come out of the wood work on their own there not exactly signed to labels and the labels invest money in them and those days are long gone.

SV: Yeah, it is not every year we get a new Mindi Abair or anybody else like that.
WH: Yeah, and I remember in the early 90s when I started out there were just new guys popping up nightly and some of them stuck around and some of them didn’t but there was a lot of stuff there, there was a lot of music and a lot of creativity going on. Now it is all still there it’s just that no one is investing the money in it.

SV: Because you know they are coming out of the colleges, they are coming out of Eastman and Berklee.  They are just as talented as anybody else it is just giving the correct chance to get out there and get signed to a label and get a tour and then maybe get up with somebody that will promote them and get them into the limelight.
WH: Yeah I think that is you know it is hard to say what the internet is going to do for music and creativity.  I mean I hope that people can reduce the song swapping and I see that as beneficial to artists to a certain extent. I know that on pop jazz one thing I am going to do for promotion reasons, I think that it is good to put songs out there for free but the artists and song writers have to actually agree to it first.   I don’t usually have these have these conversations with younger kids in their twenties who sort of have grown up essentially stealing music on the internet, but at the same time they will always say that it is because I swapped that song and downloaded for free that I became a fan of that artist.  I wouldn’t have heard them otherwise.

SV: And bought ten of his disks.
WH: Yeah exactly, and now you go see them in concert, and I always enlighten them.  I say, "Well you have to realize one thing, the artist didn’t put it there to be taken for free nor did the songwriter. Actually the only way songwriters make money is from the sale of the music that they write and what if good songwriters have no incentive to write songs from a financial standpoint.  They always have incentive just from being creative but if there is no reason for them to actually get their music to the artist that can perform it and bring it to the masses, pretty soon you are going to notice that the songs that are coming out really suck.  What is the point in having a career as a songwriter?"

SV: Exactly, and you know this leads me to another question I wanted to ask you tonight.  What do you contribute to the high numbers of cover songs that are coming out in the industry right now?
WH: In our industry in smooth jazz?

SV: Yes.
WH: You know I used to say on my early records that I would l never do a cover song.  My feeling was that the only cover songs that are worth doing are classic songs, and why would you touch it when you know if you can’t do anything better you might end up butchering it.  And then on my second CD we did “Tears in Heaven,” and we did a completely different spin on it.  It was essentially bass guitar and saxophone.  Vail Johnson did this amazing thing he sort of multi-tracked a bunch of bass stuff, and that’s when I started to feel like you can do them if you do your own thing to it.  What I don’t like is when I hear cover songs that basically sound like the original.
 
SV: Yeah, it’s like they read the sheet music and went with it.
WH: Yeah, it’s the exact same.  I do hear a lot of that kind of stuff and I feel like, "OK you took the same drum groove, almost the same sound, bass line and everything and just put your instrument on it."

SV: I think that Steely Dan tribute disc that came out a couple of years ago was a lot like that.
WH: I think I was even on that.

SV: I think everybody was mailed sheet music and told to record it and send it back in.
WH: Yeah, in fact I was asked to produce a couple of songs on that.  The ones they wanted me to play on they wanted me to produce as well, and I sent them a proposal.   I said here is what I would do and of course it was way beyond their budget.  What I was going to do was say, "You can’t redo a Steely Dan song, you have to create something different from the ground up and make a statement with it.  But they wanted to just redo it, and I ended up just playing on it instead of producing it, because it was just one of those things. Sometimes, unfortunately, it is the almighty dollar that stifles things.

SV: Do you see any reason why so many are coming out right now especially in the later part of this year and first of next year to strictly cover albums and cover songs?
WH: Is that true?

SV: Yeah, I think it is beginning to be a general trend right now.
WH: I don’t know if part of it is that radio tends to pick up those songs because of the familiarity concept.  I also see people that are doing jazz standards.  It seems that the records that are hitting the big numbers in the traditional jazz world are too.
.
SV: Like Marie Perioux a couple of years ago.
WH: Yeah, or lets redo a bunch of jazz standards or what not.   I mean those are classic songs and they became standards because everybody did them.  The other thing too that I noticed is that in live shows the audience really responds when you do a cover tune.  It is the familiarity thing, and when I do “Funky Music” and “Come Together” it really gets people going.  There’s no question about that.

SV: Speaking of which the first time I ever saw you and I just read the liner notes this evening on another story on the same song “Roxanne.”  You were at Capital Jazz Fest and played a little spot in woods there off to the stage somewhere and you came out of nowhere, you were like in the back of the crowd playing “Roxanne,” and there was this "Wow," and every time I hear “Roxanne” I think about you now.  To me that was one of the best moments.
WH: I think that is one of the things I do too.  Typically people cover old R&B classics and what not in this format, but I like to go left a little bit and sort of shock people and do songs that aren’t as predictable.

SV: That one hit you in the face just a little bit.
WH: “Tears in Heaven” I think was an odd choice and “Come Together,” and of course “Play That Funky Music White Boy.”  I remember people looking at me funny when I said I was going to do that one.

SV: Let’s talk about the cruise for a few minutes.  You know you already done one.  How did you get into this?
WH: We’ve done two actually.  Just a little crazy idea, basically.  Norwegian Cruise Lines used to do the jazz cruises.  I think the last one they done was in 2001.  I was on one in 2000, and it was such a miserable experience as a musician. I was there with my band, and it was great because you could sort of see the potential.

SV: You were like the house band?
WH: No, no there were a bunch of artists on there myself, Jonathan Butler, Marion Meadows, Patti Austin, and it was a great sense of camaraderie and all that.  Craig Chaquico was there too.  But it was set up so wrong in my eyes, and I am kind of an analytical person so, of course, my mind started churning while I was on there just thinking to myself, “OK I would do this different I would do that."  It just sort of percolated for a couple of years and I hooked up with a travel agent that you kind of need to do something like this and put it in motion and the first was in January of 2004.   We started to work on it the later part of 2002, so it was a good 14-15 months of solid work to make it happen.

SV: Does this take away from your normal activities?
WH: It sure did. This record was already half-way done towards the end of 2002, and I had to put it on a shelf, because once I started the cruise thing there was really no turning back.  I had to finish it.  I saw suddenly it was going to be successful, and that I had struck a nerve with it but the only way to carry it through was to put the time into it.  Of course I was still touring and doing all of that but I didn’t have the proper amount of time to finish the record properly, to put 100% into it.  So once we did finish the first cruise in 2004 and got things rolling for 2005 cruise I was finally able to get back to the studio and finish the record the right way.

SV: How much hands-on are you actually doing with the cruise itself?
WH: Well, I was the first year and then I backed off a little bit the second year, and now that we definitely know what we’re doing, I can delegate responsibilities.   I have a really good partner out of St. Louis and a new partner who puts on several cruises now.  They do the Koz cruise, and they do the jazz cruise which is the only straight ahead full-charter cruise. So it is in very good hands, and I just kind of oversee stuff.  It’s an amazing thing cause you never would think it could be so incredible until you actually experience it.  I mean, the thing about this music is that the type of people that enjoy this music are, it’s a certain type of person, that they all get along really well with each other and the friendships that happen.

SV: Yeah, all over the country I know what you’re saying.
WH: Yeah, all over the country and all different walks of life and professions.  They have a real, real, real passion for music.  They can’t get enough of the music, and it’s like a jazz festival every day because you’ve got all these artists on board and they’re not going anywhere.  They’re there for a vacation too, and it’s a musical vacation for them.  Most of the artists don’t usually get the opportunity to say,  “Hey I’m a huge fan of Acoustic Alchemy.  I ‘m just going to go jump on stage with these guys and jam with them,” or at 2 in the morning Peter White walks into the jam session and just starts playing and stays up until 3.  These things would never happen anywhere else, and it’s because we kind of create our own little world for the week.  It’s 1800 people and the bands and the artists and everything.  It’s amazing because at the end of the week people are just coming up to you giving you bear hugs and saying “that was the best vacation of my life.”

SV: What are the dates and maybe some of the artists on board this year?
WH: We are going out of Fort Lauderdale.  We leave January the 21st, and we are gone a full week and get back on the 28th.  During that week we are going to go to San Juan, Puerto Rico, were gonna go to St. Marks, and were gonna go to the Bahamas to a private island where we have a day at the beach. Throughout the whole week were going to be listing to Acoustic Alchemy, Bobby Caldwell. We’ve got Richard Elliot, Brian Culbertson, Jeff Golub, Euge Groove.   We have Triple Threat which is Everett Harp, Paul Jackson Jr., Bobby Lyle.  We’ve got the Sax Pack with Kim Waters, Mary Meadows and Jeff Kashiwa.  We’ve got a guy named Warren Hill.  We’ve got Brenda Russell.   We have Wayman Tisdale and I think if that’s 14 that is it.

SV: There has always been such intensity in your playing and it comes across in your concerts and on your disks. Where do you, basically, get this from?
WH: It must vented up or something because I’m a Canadian boy and we are always usually kind of passive people, very low key and I am a pretty low key guy I think. When I was young I had dreams of being a rock star I guess. I played a guitar and I sang and of course I was the guy who put the first band together in our class and taught everyone how to play their instruments. I just love music and I love performing. I found myself fronting a rock band and playing clubs when I was 13-14 years old so I think maybe that intensity comes from that sort of rock and roll upbringing. But at the same time I was a good kid, I wasn’t getting into trouble. I was very studious. I was a very good student in school and got really good grades and did all of my homework. I was probably the rock and roll nerd. Maybe it all just kind of stems from that because I got such a high when I was a kid being on stage and playing battles with bands and playing clubs. I would sing Led Zeppelin and Rush and the Stones and all those real hard rock songs. I guess that never leaves you. The reason I switched from guitar to saxophone was hearing David Sanborn. I had never heard anything like that before. I was playing the sax in the school band it was kind of a mandatory thing I really wasn’t into it. I just figured the sax was something that gets played at a marching band, but then a friend of mine brought me this tape and it had Grover Washington on it, it had David Sanborn and had Michael Brecker and I heard it and just flipped out because I didn’t know you could make the saxophone do that. So that’s when I put the guitar away. So I guess a lot of that real bluesy rock guitar and the rock singing and everything really transferred.

SV: It all comes full circle with Pop Jazz. How has your music developed for the most part since your first release back in ’91?
WH: I’m not so sure. I know I’m a better player. I don’t know if I’m a better composer. Composing is something that evolves that you have no control over it I think. If  you listen to the first CD, Kiss Under The Moon, it’s got so much stuff on it. It is so different. There is what we would call smooth jazz stuff on there but then on the last song I sing kind of a Don Henley rock ballad thing. And then there are pop power ballads on there and just all kinds of different things. I think that my CDs have always kind of had that an eclectic mix of music but the core of it is that the melodies are always very strong. With the arrangement supporting those melodies I always try to make sure that they are just not complacent that they are something to listen to. I don’t like to make CDs to be background music. It can work that way if your driving in or your chilling around the house or having a party whatever it might be, entertaining people, but the flip side of it is that I want to make music that when you actually listen to the music and there is a lot of substance that you can really sink your teeth into. In that respect I don’t know if it’s really changed that much. I always feel like I’m trying to push myself but when I listen back.

SV: It really hasn’t changed that much?
WH: Well I listen to Pop Jazz and I am proud of it and I don’t usually listen to my stuff. When I finish a record I download it into my computer, it’s in my iTunes list but I don’t sit there and listen to it because I’ve already heard it about a million times. But it’s weird because sometimes I’ll just be sitting on a plane or whatever listening to  some music and I will have it on shuffle and so and something will come that was from an old record and I will listen and think “wow that’s some cool stuff” and then I’ll listen to something else and that was cool too. But then again I don’t sit and gloat over what I do, I do the best I can and then you let it go. You have to be done. I know there’s a lot of people out there that listen back to their stuff and they can’t listen to their music because it still could’ve been better. I’m not that kind of perfectionist. I work it and work it and at some point you just got to say “you know what that’s it it’s done”.

SV: Your Christmas disk came out just a couple of years ago and I’ve noticed as soon as I put it in that a lot of traditional type music at the beginning of it, the first half of it and that traditional sound and you get into more of a contemporary sound toward the end of it. This interview will probably be coming out about Christmas time. Tell us a little bit about your Christmas disk maybe for those that have not heard that.
WH: Well first of all, I have to say that the idea of doing a Christmas CD is you sort of begrudge it a little bit because you have to do it in the middle of summer and it makes zero sense. To me it’s like I’m already hearing Christmas songs at the Mall I can’t handle it. It’s too early. So having to deal with it in the middle of summer is hard enough. In spite of that, even  though the prep work was tough it was actually the most fun I’ve had making a CD ever. Why? Because we made it in about two days for the most part. We literally went in, we rehearsed and then I took some rehearsal tapes away and sort of spent a couple of days reworking some stuff. Then we went right in the studio. We had two days and we cut everything as a band, and then after the fact I went back and did some overdubs and fixed some things up. It is always hard to produce and play your horn in the session so I usually have to go back and concentrate a little more and fix a lot of my horn stuff. There are usually quite a few mistakes because I’m listening to whether or not the guys are playing the right chord instead of concentrating on my own thing. But I think the integrity of what happened there is that you can feel that we had a ton of fun making it. It was my touring band so there was already a ton of cohesion going on there. I really think that that came through and we did things like you said on the CD. I mean there are a couple of tracks on there that are straight ahead.

SV: Yeah, “Frosty” comes as bum, bum, bum.
WH: That was an ode to “My Baby Don’t Care For Me” by Nina Simone. That was the total vibe we were going after and we I think we nailed that.

SV: My favorite has to be “Happy Christmas”. Is it in 6/8 time?
WH: Yeah.

SV: It just comes across and you just see people bump, bump, bump, bump. I love that.
WH: We cut that with live percussion and everything was great. We got the total vibe there. I am a huge John Lennon fan and that has always been one of my favorite songs.

SV: But you add a lot of soul to that one. You really do and that is one of my favorite Christmas songs. I got a few from the jazz era but that is one of my favorite ones.
WH: Well cool. I appreciate that. We did a small tour with that and it was a lot of fun to go out and perform those songs. “Oh Holy Night”  is one of my Mom's favorite Christmas carols. That one is for Mom. In fact I am thinking about coming out with another Christmas CD. Doing  the same thing just going in and cutting it live.

SV: Well Warren is there anything that you would like to tell your fans out there this evening as we close tonight?
WH: Oh, I don’t know, tell all your friends about Pop Jazz and go out and buy two copies of it. Cause it’s my own label and baby needs a new pair of shoes.

SV: Thanks so much Warren, and best of luck with the cruise, the new label, and the new disc.

For more information, visit Warren's website at: www.popjazz.com

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