March 31 marked the release date for Gregg Karukas’ new CD, GK. SmoothViews caught up him with at his home studio. What a pleasure it was to converse with Karukas, whose career spans three decades. He is a soft spoken, unassuming person who is down to earth, gracious, intelligent, and lovin’ life. 

SmoothViews (SV):  Welcome back to SmoothViews! We are delighted to have this second interview with you; the first one was in 2005 for your Looking Up CD.  I’m happy to speak with you today, especially about your exquisite new CD, GK. I downloaded it from iTunes and took a long listen.  There’s such striking songwriting and a talented lineup of players. Your new record debuted at #6 on Billboard, is that right? 
Gregg Karukas (GK): That’s what I heard, yeah!

SV:  That’s great! Congratulations! It's been about four years since your last recording.  I’m wondering if you took more time because it was fun to do.  You wanted to make it unique?  Or you’ve just been way too busy in between records?
GK:  Well, it’s a little bit of both and all of the above.  I never rush a record. There’s a 2½ year to 3 year space between almost every one of my CDs. It’s a process. What I do is write lots of songs and catalog them, saving them in the computer. When there’s a group of songs that I think are really, really good, that’s when I devote some time to producing them, taking them from the demo stage to the real thing.  It’s not like I have this deadline where somebody says,“You’ve got to have a record ready by this time.”  I have to say that my label, Trippin’ In Rhythm, has been really cool about that.  His attitude is: “When you’re happy with it, Gregg, then we’re ready to hear it.”  That’s the way it works.  They don’t hear any of the music at all until I’m fully satisfied with the songs and have them all at least in some form of produced stage.  It takes a long time to get a group of songs diverse enough because I never do anything in just one style.  I have about 4 or 5 styles that I’m known for – among them R&B, the funky stuff, and the Brazilian flavored songs. 

SV:  I think there’s an ‘80s fusion sound too.  Do I also hear a ‘60s vibe?  On the new CD, I’m referring to your track “Wildwood.”  Oh man!  That’s my favorite track.
GK:  Thanks!  That goes back to a soul jazz vibe. One of my big influences is Les McCann.  “Wildwood” is one of my many tributes to Les over the years.  He was a very supportive guy early on when I was beginning my music career.  I started that groove with the left hand bass line and I just had to keep it going through the whole song.

SV: (laughs) It’s really cool.  I also love the drumming on this song.  In the liner notes, I see it’s Oscar Seaton who played with Ramsey Lewis a lot.  That’s the vibe I was getting, Ramsey’s In Crowd or Dave Brubeck’s Take Five, and Joe Sample.  You know the really good trios and quartets back then.
GK:  Yeah, and you know that’s one of the songs that we love playing live.  It’s been going over really well in concert.

SV:  I bet.  It has an old jazz club, live feel to it.  The Brazilian influence is evident on several songs.  On “Jamba Samba,” Ricardo Silveira’s guitar solo is amazing.  He’s played and recorded with you a lot for a long time, yes?
GK:  Yeah.  Ricardo and I first met in ’88, I think. I knew him even before that because one of my best buddies, the bass player in my band when I lived in Maryland, had gone to Berklee at the same time as Philippe Saisse, Ricardo, and a few other people.  My buddy was always saying, “We’ve got to get together with my buddy Ricardo.” Anyway, in ’88, Ricardo lived in Brazil; he was touring with Milton Nascimento at that time.  One time he came to the States as part of Milton’s tour; we went to see him and hung out. Later when he came to L.A. to do some touring, he asked me to play in his group.  I’ll never forget that band. There were two of the greatest musicians from Brazil. Nico Assumpção, he’s deceased now but he played with Milton Nascimento for years. He was the top bass player in Brazil.  He was like the Jaco [Pastorius] of Brazil. He did some stuff on bass that people say, “Oh, he sounds like Jaco.”  Well, Nico was doing it loooooooong before Jaco.  And the other guy was a drummer named Carlos “Bala” Gomez.  He is like the Steve Gadd of Brazil. I was the only American in this group.  We did a few dates touring around with Ricardo. It was such a fantastic experience playing with those musicians.  Since then, Ricardo and I have been good friends.  He’s performed on almost every one of my CDs. And I’ve recorded on quite a few of his CDs.  So it’s a long time friendship looking back more than 20 years.

SV: And long distance too.
GK:  Yes.  He comes up to Los Angeles once or twice a year and I always try and have something for him to play on, whether it’s my project or somebody I’m producing.  

SV:  Those Brazilian influences make such a positive impact on your music.  They feel good. Have you recorded with the great Brazilian percussionist Airto?  How about recording with Flora Purim?  You know, she’s an honest to goodness Brazilian National Treasure?!
GK:  I’ve never played with her, but I know her from many mutual acquaintances and from playing with Dori Caymmi who is revered in Brazil and America.  Airto and Flora would come to see us when Dori and I played shows in L.A. Do you remember a project that Miles Goodman did? It was a Brazilian all-star project that had Dori on it and Oscar Castro-Neves too.  I remember playing with Dori at that time; we did a show at the Hollywood Bowl with Toots Thielemans and Ivan Lins.

SV:  Yes!  It was The Brasil Project led by Toots Thielemans.  So many outstanding artists on that recording!  Toots is still touring, isn’t he?!
GK:  Yes!

SV:  Back to the Brazilian songs on your new album, “Floating in Bahia” is really delicious, it’s down tempo, has a lovely melody, and your playing is fantastic.  Rick Braun has a solo on that track, right?
GK: Yes, Rick really did a great job on that. He came in to my studio. I was all set up and ready for him with the microphone, headphone mix, and everything. I really didn’t say much at all, just, “Let’s play it and see what you feel.”  On the very first pass, he played some great stuff.  We did a few more takes. Usually, that’s the way I like to record, to get these guys’ first impressions.  They may not know where the song is going but their ideas seem to be the best, most spontaneous ones.  Same with Jessy, who sounds great.  If it doesn’t exactly work out at that moment, I have ways to fix it.  With computers, I can move a little phrase here and there, or combine them so that it will build off of what they did on the first pass.  If I say, “That was a great idea; let’s do something like that.”  Everything starts to come into focus very quickly and before you know it, Rick’s packing up his horn and going home.

SV:  And he doesn’t live that far away, so I’m sure he’d come back if you needed him too! (laughs) “Mesa Moon” is a really interesting track.  Its gorgeous, flowing mid-tempo piano is contrasted with a change up, that goes into this cool Latin hook with flute. Then it goes back to those lush piano flourishes and muted trumpet.
GK:  Thank you.  That is one of those songs that may never be a radio hit, but it goes through those many moods like you mentioned.  It just developed organically, that song. I tried to make it work the best I could and it came out very nice.

SV:  Yes, it did!  That song is a good example of your various styles, all woven together.
GK: That’s true.  In the beginning, when I played it, then listened back to what was coming out, I thought, “This sounds a little bit like Joe Sample.”  I said, “OK. Now, let’s try to develop it more.” I took it then to a different place.

SV:  Another fun one is “Coyote Party.”  I admit to getting lost as to whose guitar I was hearing – the opening has this great guitar lick, a rock twang to it.  I didn’t know if that was Ricardo or Paul Brown.  And then there’s a great solo mid way through, and I thought that was Paul Brown. Then there’s Michael Paulo on sax.  You’re playing organ.  Then there’s this funky, big horn section. It’s tremendous!
GK:  “Coyote Party” goes back to my rock roots.  I listened to a lot of Leon Russell and Jackson Browne. It even goes back to Traffic with Steve Winwood. This groove has that reminiscent rock vibe to it.  That’s Paul playing all the bluesy soloing; the rhythm stuff is Ricardo.  Ricardo has so many styles; he can really play the blues and rock.  Also he’s got that great lyrical nylon string guitar sound.  This one worked out nice to have him play all the rhythm parts.  I brought in Paul to play the solo and we did this dialog together from the beginning to the end, one big jam between him and me.

SV:  There’s the softer side to “GK” with “Manhattan,” “Walkin’ In Time,” and “Daylight” that goes to the elegant-yet-easy-going grand piano style of yours, with those spectacular melodies. 
GK:  Thank you.  I try to do stuff that’s different and not just one phrase repeated four times and change into another phrase.  I try to make the melodies develop over the course of the song.  I tell you, the “Manhattan” song came together very organically.  The opening chords of the intro - the block chord thing - I came out to the studio one night, put my hands down on the piano, and that’s what came out.  I came up with a little melody and as soon as I played it, I said, “Oh! That sounds like ‘Girl In The Red Dress’ a little bit.”  Then I said, “Let me just try and take it to another place.”  I find that the very first ideas I come up with are usually the very best.  They stand the test of time.  If it sounds like another song I have written, there’s a few stylistic things I do and it’s my sound.  So why not?!  I’m not totally concerned that every single song has to be a completely different thing.  So what I did with “Manhattan” was just kept working on it and developing it, and trying  to make it the cousin of “Girl In The Red Dress.”  I figure the girl has come up in the world.  She’s more sophisticated now.  She’s moved uptown to the big city, Manhattan, hence the title.  It’s still the same girl but she’s got more of an attitude now. I’m getting a lot of comments on it and it’s nice to hear.  That’s the first single we released to radio, “Manhattan,” and it’s doing really well.

SV:  It’s a great way to open the record too.  In the pocket right off the bat.
GK:  That’s good to hear.  You know, the sequencing of a record is a hard thing to do.  To figure out what song should be first, what is second and how it goes.  That’s one of those things, yet another thing you have to deal with. Writing the songs, producing them, deciding on who will play on what song, calling the artists, recording, then mixing, all this takes weeks and weeks.  I never rush it.  It just takes as long as it takes.  Then once it’s done, you still have to work on what the package is going to look like, the art work.  Then, what’s the order of the songs going to be?  I tell you, I have a lot of respect for people who put their own CD out, whether they record it in their bedroom or wherever.  It’s an accomplishment; it’s a piece of your art that you put your blood, sweat, and tears, heart, soul into. (laughs)  Having done it a lot and having helped a lot of young artists get their first CDs produced, I have a lot of respect for anybody who puts that as a goal and gets it out.

SV:  You wear many hats on this production.  I was surprised to see you played drums on several tracks.  Plus you designed the packaging.  You have total  influence over the final result.  It’s great to see you do your thing!
GK:  You mention the drums.  I used to be a drummer for a short period of time. I got back into piano more seriously when I was about 15 or 16. When I did my first record, The Nightowl  back in 1986, I was working on the songs and actually programmed all the drum parts with my drum machine.  People would say, “Who’s playing drums on that CD?!”   I got known as a really good drum programmer. The Nightowl  was all programmed and that was a function of my little bedroom studio. I created the drum parts because I knew best what they should be and didn’t have room for drums. That project was before computers (BC). 

I actually programmed all the drum parts first and laid them on to tape.  Then I played everything except for bass, guitars, and saxophones.  I played all the keyboard parts to the drum machine parts by hand without any computer, sequencer, or anything.  From there, on my next couple of CDs, I branched out.  I would program the drums on maybe half the songs and half would be a real rhythm section with drummers that were playing in my band at the time.  I’ve had Will Kennedy on quite a few of my CDs.  He’s one of my favorite drummers.  Dennis Chambers too; also I used Bernie Dressel who played in my band for years.

One of my first bands was Bernie, Dave Koz and Jay Dulaney on bass. He’s now a big famous rock drummer with the Brian Setzer Orchestra.  Between Brian Setzer Orchestra and the Gordon Goodwin Big Phat Band, Bernie Dressel is known as one of the best drummers around.  On the new record, we have a mixture of tracks that we’ve recorded with a live rhythm section, in this case, it’s Oscar Seaton and Melvin Davis.  I programmed some tracks from the ground up where I do a combination of programming and playing. Sometimes I use loops. There are some incredible sounding loops of real drummers playing these days that you can combine.  I always change them a little bit.  I break them down into their elements, like just one bit of the groove and I’ll take a little bit of a fill from here and a little bit of this and that and make it into something that you could never tell wasn’t a real drummer.  That’s what I go for.  On a couple songs, you know, the drums parts will obviously be in that R&B school, then you know it’s programed. But more often than not, it’s me programming drums and using loops that are actually real drummers playing and me modifying them to be more what I have in mind.

SV:  I made a note about one of the new tracks, “Walkin’ In Time.”  “Gorgeous melody, great drums!”  Then I looked at the liner notes and it’s YOU drumming!
GK:  Yeah!  You know, I thought for awhile about that particular song. I asked myself, “Is this melody strong enough?”  It’s a repetitive vibe, and I liked it.  Then I stuck with it.  I said, “I’m going to keep it.”  And it turned out to be one of my favorites because it’s distinctive.  It doesn’t sound like anybody else.

SV:  On your website, I enjoyed seeing pictures of the area where your new home is located, near those beautiful Santa Monica Mountains with an expansive, breathtaking view. 
GK:  We are so fortunate to have ended up here on the edge of Thousand Oaks.  It was a long process of waiting and looking at houses for about three years.  We definitely found our dream house.  We’ll be here for quite awhile.  Everybody that comes out here, as soon as they see the place, they understand why we moved a little further out of L.A.

SV:  I like the way the sun plays off the undulating hills.  It looks like a different place as the sun moves throughout the day.
GK:  We take hikes twice a day out in the canyons.  There’s a big mesa that we walk on.  I’m also big into mountain biking so I go out right before sunset.  I stay out until the sun has gone over behind the horizon and then it gets really good.  The clouds get lit up by the angle of the setting sun.  It is a lot like Sedona here because we have a really big mountain ridge right behind our house.  It’s volcanic in its origin but it’s been eroded by the wind and the rain, so it has these shapes that are really cool.

SV:  One thing that struck me from looking though your website, you love your family.  There are several pictures of you all together at the new house and in Hawaii.  We don’t often get to see the family side of artists’ lives.  You’ve been very generous in sharing your family with us in a way that is fun and endearing.  I totally understand why you live where you live and think it’s wonderful that you can nurture your family this way, at the same time have a great career in music.  I wondered, “How can one human being come up with so many magnificent songs over a span of 3 decades?”  How do you pull that out of yourself?  Then I thought, “Family helps us stay in touch with our emotional side, our tender side, our humanity.” That’s what I figured you were up to, there in Thousand Oaks.
GK:  Well, there are a couple things that come into play.  I’ve always considered myself a composer first because that was my original inspiration.  Hearing songwriters when I was real young, hearing The Beatles and Stevie Wonder, that is what inspired me because I knew they were writing their own songs.  There were so many great songwriters, like Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and Leon Russell who wrote “This Masquerade” and “Song for You.”  Those kinds of songs touched something in me even when I was a kid. To be able to gradually develop my craft as a songwriter is something that I’m thankful for being able to do. 

I had an outlet early on, right after I got out of high school.  I formed a little band with my brother.  We were playing all original music. Then I hooked up with sax player Tim Eyermann.  We formed a band called East Coast Offering.  We became the top fusion band in the mid to late ‘70s in DC.  I had an opportunity to write lots of songs in that band. Half of the material was mine. You’d be surprised if you heard some of the songs that I was writing then.  Some of it sounded like Weather Report, some like Frank Zappa, some like The Crusaders, some like Chick Corea.  There were a lot of notes.  I gradually got a lot of notes out of my system.  But always, I was trying to be melodic and lyrical even though it was a fairly fusion-y sound.  It was great to be able to have a band that had such great musicians so I could actually write whatever I felt like, and they would be able to play it.  We were doing odd time signatures, quite a fusion of material, if you will.  We were fortunate that we worked almost 5 nights a week regularly.  We also did a mixture of some covers, some Chuck Mangione, or Tom Scott and the L.A. Express, and a couple Crusaders songs.  We started out as a jazz lounge band.  That evolved to become all original material.  I was very lucky to have that kind of outlet along the way. 

At the same time, what you mentioned about family, in my twenties and thirties, I remember my conscious decision to focus more on music and maybe less on settling down. There was something deep inside, subconsciously, that said, “Maybe I’m not ready to get married.”  I feared what every musician would fear, the cliché: if you get married young and you have a kid, then all of a sudden the financial pressures would take precedence over what might be your path and you’d end up selling insurance or something. 

Basically all of us are starving musicians. In a way, I still consider myself one. OK, maybe not all of us are. I’m happy to get by.  Luckily from working in the studios and saving all of my money and working on projects, I’ve gotten to a point where I have a comfortable life and a family and a nice house.  It’s a total dream come true when you think about how I started off. No big plans to be a “recording artist/star”. I was prepared to live the life of a single jazz musician and take life as it comes, as long as I could pay the rent.  The old saying in New York City if you meet a jazz musician and you say, “How’s it going?”  And they say, “….. making the rent.”  They are a total success, they’re making the rent!

The guys that I play with now - Rick Braun, Michael Paulo, Peter White - we’re all married and have children. When we do shows together, they bring their families often. We hang out a lot, as families.  Of course, David Benoit and I’ve been friends for so long.  We remember when his daughter was first adopted.  And we’ve watched her grow up over the years.  One person who doesn’t have children is Boney James but Boney, of course, has been married for a very long time. Lily is an actress; they were both always really focused on their careers.  I can remember when we were playing together and my wife, Yvonne, was pregnant with our first child.  We were sitting in the airport.  Boney and I were getting ready to catch a plane to a show and Lily was coming along.  They were asking, “What are you going to name your kid?”  We didn’t have a name yet and they tossed around a few names.  Someone said, “Al, Al Karukas!”  I remember Boney made a joke like, it sounded like a good name for a used car salesman: “Come Buy A Used Car from Al Karukas. Get a great deal right here from Al Karukas!”  We thought it was a great joke at the time!  As it turns out, we named our first kid “Alex.”  We don’t call him Al, and it’s not Alexander, simply Alex.

SV:  And your other son is Stevie?
GK:  Yup! Stevie.  Named after Stevie Wonder and my brother Stephen.

SV:  In the liner notes for “GK,” you also mention Harry Karukas.
GK:  That’s my father, Harry. He is a retired restaurateur.  He owned a couple of restaurants in Maryland. The Bowie Inn Italian/seafood restaurant that he built, owned, and ran for many years, as soon as he retired, he sold it.  It continued like it was for awhile but then it became an Outback Steakhouse.  We are pleased that he lives with us now in California.

SV:  Was your father’s place a tavern?  A roadside tavern?
GK:  Yes.  His first restaurant “The Old Bowie Inn” was a real classic 1940s - 1950s roadside tavern.  It had a shuffleboard table, pool table,  red checkered table cloths, a juke box, and a long bar.  When I was growing up, the juke box was cool because it was always playing the hits of the ‘60s.  When the guy came to add the new hits and put the new 45s into the juke box, he’d take out the old ones and we would get to keep all the old 45s.  We had all of the hits of the ‘60s from The Beatles to the Beach Boys to country music to Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.  All that stuff we listened to, especially surf music.  I used to play along to that stuff.  I used to pretend I was a drummer and would beat on pots and pans while playing those 45s. We kept them for many years until I was a teenager then I think they got thrown out.

SV:  Do your kids play music?
GK:  Well, yeah!  Coincidentally!  We never forced them into music but my oldest, Alex, took piano lessons for a couple of years, and stopped for awhile.  Then he took a little violin.  For the last year and a half, he’s gotten really serious with guitar and gotten back into piano some.  He’s taking lessons and doing very well.  Into classic rock. He’s also into musical theatre and acting.  He’s into improv comedy, like the TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway?  That’s what Alex loves to do, improv comedy.  He’s definitely a performer. Stevie is probably going to be a writer or an architect. Something completely different.

SV: What I really enjoy about listening to your CDs are your compositions, so well crafted, very enjoyable, and tug at the heart.  Plus you’ve got that groove thing going on. It’s really such a gift.  I read something where you said you write for people who are not musicians because we non-musicians don’t know all the technicalities, but we can relate emotionally.  Music is a language and you translate emotions for us.  What I’ve noticed in this album, in particular, your song intros are really interesting.  You’ll start off in one vein to tantalize us, and open up into another.  That really makes it fun to listen to; big surprises follow some of the simplest intros.
GK:  That’s interesting.  For some of the songs, I’ll start with an intro, and have no idea what the song is going to be.   There’ll be this cool little thing I love that may not be a groove and may not really be a full song.  Then the song develops from there.  Sometimes, I’ll work on the intro last.  I’ll work on a song idea, then I think about what would be an interesting way to start the song.  I don’t want to just jump right into it.  My songs are not like a lot of songs that start in the groove and go.  I want there to be some development, beginning with an intro, like when you read a book and there’s an introduction.  I think about movies that I love; some movies start out in a situation and you have no idea what’s going to happen.  You’re wondering,” What’s going on?”  Within 10 minutes, you’ve figured out what’s happening then the action and story really start.  It’s important that you have some mystery at the beginning or something that draws you in without too much fanfare.  Maybe just the piano playing a little thing.  It can be a contrast to what’s to come after that. It’s all about, what we say in the compositional terms, tension and release. 

SV:  Great explanation, thank you.  There’s intelligence to your music.  I so appreciate that, especially when it’s reflected in improvisation found in live performance, the free flowing fun that musicians have playing together live. It’s hard to capture that in a recording.
GK:  When we get out and play the songs live, we open them up a bit for soloing.  That’s the real fun part when you see a song live.  I’ve worked for months on the CD and I’ve lived with the songs myself. Nobody’s heard them.  Nobody hears my songs, except for my family, until I’m almost done then I play them for the label. Whatever I like, they take my word for it and they put it out.  Then, to get it to the next stage, I may change the arrangement a little to play them live.  I don’t really write the songs with the idea, “I’m going to play this on stage so I have to write it this way.”  There’s a couple of songs where I might think about that. There are a couple of songs I play for a year live with my band before I record it for the record.  “Wildwood” is one of those.  We’d been playing that as an opener for almost a year before I did the record.  So I definitely wrote that as a live song to start out with.  But some of these others, there’s a couple that I’m going to have to write out because they’ve never been performed live.  We’ll be doing them in the coming months at our CD release party and at some of the shows I have coming up this summer.  We’ll be playing a lot of the new material.

SV:  I’m glad to hear you’ll be getting out on the road.
GK:  I wish I could say that we’ll be everywhere – Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas City. But, unfortunately, it’s tough out there, not as many festivals, not as many promoters doing concerts.  Any chance I get, I’m out there whether I make money or not, literally, that’s the way I look at it now.  It’s a shame.  There are a lot of great artists that you’ll never hear in your city because they may not be one of the top 10 artists who do all the same festivals every year, year after year.  I can just hope to be in the Top 20.  Every CD I put out, I hope that it builds from there.

SV:  Some of these festivals would do well to mix up the talent from year to year, which may help sustain and grow the audiences.  As it is, the audiences are shrinking.
GK: There are so many good artists deserving to play at festivals, and deserving of airplay.  Generally, the music is all good. Personally, I am not into the cover song concept.

SV:  I’m glad you’re not.
GK:  It tends to dilute radio a little bit, it tends to dilute the artists. I don’t think there are too many people known as great composers that do covers.  I made a conscious decision all along to never do a cover on my records because I think I have to be true to what I always wanted to do as a kid.  Luckily nobody’s ever suggested I do a cover.  I’m sure there are a hundred stories of record labels saying, “Yeah, why don’t you just do one cover or one vocal.”

SV:  I googled you to prepare for this conversation and was so impressed – there are hundreds and hundreds of sites where your new CD can be downloaded.  I went to iTunes, and all 11 of your albums are up, including “GK.”
GK:  The internet is a great way for the artists to get closer to the audience and vice versa. Right after the release of GK at midnight on March 31, there were already a couple of people that had downloaded the new CD and posted reviews.  I think that’s fantastic to see the immediate feedback.  We like to have people go to my website to purchase the CD because they bypass all the middlemen.  They get an autographed copy directly from me.  That’s the best way to support the artist.  PayPal makes everything real easy.  The label gets paid because I purchase my CDs from them. Everyone gets taken care of when the people come straight to me; we keep a connection with the fans over the years.  I think that’s much more valuable in the long run.

SV: Technology has shifted the music business paradigm. It’s really a different business today.  It has distilled down to artists and fans, very few people in the middle anymore.  Is it harder for you?
GK:  If it’s more work, that’s fine.  One gets a larger share of the profits.  I remember my first record The Nightowl  was only released on vinyl and cassette.  I pressed the record label to make CDs back then.  I actually had to sign a separate deal that allowed them to recoup more money just to make CDs because they were afraid they were going to spend so much making CDs.  Long story short, I own almost all of my records now and they are all available on CD and I’m glad because if it was only on vinyl or cassette it would be pretty obsolete.  In fact, I still have a couple of boxes of Nightowl vinyl in my garage.

SV:  You could make some decent money on eBay! (laughs)
GK:  They’ll be collector’s items someday.

SV:  You have a long list of all the technologies used to make this new CD.  You must be a really, really smart guy to have mastered these technologies.  You’ve put these tools to creative use.  Very saavy.  I like the video you made of “Napa Road.”  It’s a quick way to get a video up on YouTube right away – and at minimal cost!
GK:  Now I’ve started working in Sony Vegas, which is a full fledged, video editor.  What I’ve done is combine some of the stuff that I got from the Animoto website with my own effects.  That was one of the first ones I did. In the near  future, there’s going to be some of the new videos up. Cameron Smith of Smooth Jazz TV did a video profile on me.  We’ll be done editing it and will put it up in the webosphere very soon.  I hope to be doing a video for each song.  They’ll be a combination of stills and live footage.

SV:  Your fans are going to flock to your site and YouTube to see all those videos.  It’s an inspiration to see how these tools let you flourish as an artist and also have make your life easier in some ways. 
GK:  I’ve pretty much been self contained for all my projects.  I’ve never used another producer.  The only way I’m able to do my own projects is because I have my own studio.  It figures that every dollar I made, beginning when I first moved to Los Angeles, I basically saved and put it into gear, recording gear or keyboard gear.  Now I have it all at my disposal.  Now people come to me to produce their records.

SV:  I saw your list of credits on All Music Guide, you’ve worked with a lot of different artists.
GK:  We can also do long distance collaborations.  That’s how I did the track with Russ Freeman.  I sent him the track and he did his guitar parts in his own studio. 

SV:  I do like that track, “Believe In Me.”  There’s a fascinating interplay of his acoustic guitar, with Luis Conte’s percussion, Michael Paulo on flute, and you on this tender, romantic piano.  A real standout.
GK:  And that’s not really a guitarist’s melody.  It came from the piano and I played it for him first, asking, “Do you think you can do this because it’s got a lot of big jumps in it?”  He did a great job.  He really spent the time and got it right.

SV:  For Rick Braun’s flugelhorn solo on “Napa Road,” you mentioned you pieced some of it together?
GK:  It’s a solo section in the middle.  He played it through maybe 8 or 10 solos. From that, I saved them all in the computer.  I listened carefully to every single one of them.  The second solo he did, I used most of that.  Then through the magic of computer editing, if there’s one little phrase that may not end up just right, I can borrow a phrase from a different solo, put it in there, and make it all come together to be a spectacular solo.

SV:  Spectacular it is! And a brilliant use of technology.
GK:  Here’s an interesting thing.  We have a trumpet solo on “Mesa Moon” which is a Harmon mute solo.  On that song, I had written and played it on the keyboards with a mute trumpet sound. In this case, there were a lot of different ascending chord changes and voice leading in the horn section.  From my original solo that I transcribed, Lee Thornberg played it through as written first.  He played it beautifully and he added his own little thing at the end.  In the end result, the solo stays true to my original inspiration!

SV:  Cool!  You play what sounds like a Fender Rhodes organ on several of the tracks but I didn’t see it listed in the instrumentation.  Are you playing a Fender Rhodes or do you have keyboard sounds that mimic a Fender Rhodes.
GK:  I still have my Fender Rhodes, my original one that I got way back in the ‘70s and modified it extensively.  There was actually a time, when I moved to L.A., that I made money modifying them for other keyboard players, tweaking the Rhodes.  But these days, I keep it in storage.  There are so many great sounds on other keyboards and samples of Rhodes.  I use a combination to get the Rhodes sound on my CDs.  The organ is a mixture of a couple of organ synths that I go back and forth between.

SV:  I’m a big Jimmy Smith fan.
GK: Oh yeah!  He’s my main man.  In fact tonight, we’re going to see Larry Goldings play here in L.A.  He’s one of the current piano/organ players who is really great.

SV:   I’ve really enjoyed this conversation so much.  I could talk to you for hours more!  It’s really been fun.  Thank you so much! Congratulations on your brilliant new CD, “GK.”

For more information and to sample every track, visit www.karukas.com