Hot on the heels of releasing his new CD, Talk of the Town, SmoothViews caught up with Darren Rahn in the studio, already working on 4 new projects.  It was a delight to converse with Rahn, who is down to earth, gracious, intelligent, and optimistic. 

SmoothViews:  Hi, Darren, welcome to SmoothViews. I first became acquainted with your work on one of early Narada CDs from Eric Darius, Just Getting Started.  The A&R guy raved about this very talented, young producer.  Since then, I’ve followed your career.  For the past year, you’re EVERYWHERE!  You’ve produced tracks on the new CDs of Michael Manson, Eric Darius, Tim Bowman, DéNaté, Wayman Tisdale, and Dave Koz! In addition, last November, three of your productions went to number 1, 2, and 3 on the R&R Smooth Jazz Charts! It must be a fun to be Darren Rahn these days, so in demand, pushing hard at that cutting edge.
Darren Rahn:  It’s been a really, really good couple of years and so many cool opportunities.  Those guys have been great – Eric, Wayman, Dave, Tim, plus Jeff Lorber – a lot of these guys have been my musical heroes and now I’ve gotten a chance to work with them.

SV:  Your new record is so hot!  I have to ask you about the CD’s title because it is so perfect!  You are the talk of the town!
DR:  (Laughs) It was kind of a coincidence actually. Right when I had started to write for the record, I had a couple of tunes and was ready to come up with titles.  An idea just flashed through my head and I thought “Oh! That’d be a great title for one of the songs.”  I named it “Talk of the Town.” Now, fast forward two years, I had no idea all this cool recognition was going to be happen for me.  I guess the title was fate. (laughs)

SV:  (laughs) It must be.  Talk on the street is your new record’s one of the most highly anticipated smooth jazz records in a long, long time.  You mention in your album press materials that the smooth jazz scene has changed so dramatically during the course of your career in it.  From my perspective, it is getting more difficult to find good smooth jazz (fewer live concerts, less radio stations, smaller CD retail sales) yet there you are, just riding this wave.  Congratulations! To me, some of the genre artists have gotten into a rut – same ol’ same ol’.  When that happens, audiences move on to someone who is fresh and innovative…and that must mean YOU!
DR:  I’m flattered by that, thank you.  Every time I write, I try to innovate. We all have our comfort zones and things that we’re used to doing. But when I’m writing and producing, I always try to push myself so that the music and production are constantly evolving. When I think back, growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the music was always evolving.  It was really exciting to see how things were changing.  Now it feels like maybe, for awhile, in the smooth jazz genre, a lot of people have lost that kind of inventiveness.  I really want to do my best and incorporate some of the things fans are used to but, at the same time, move the music and the production forward a bit.

SV:  I am always so impressed with your work.  When I hear something I really like, I look at the liner notes to find YOU had a hand in it!  Usually my very favorite tracks are your tracks, ones you’ve produced and played on!  And it’s been fun getting to know your new record.  I was interested to see that your twin brother, Jason, is on the record with you. Is he backing you on most of the songs or just featured on “Duplicity?”
DR:  He is featured on “Duplicity.” You know, he actually records a lot of the productions I do; we do the horn sections together.  We’ve been doing that for quite awhile.  On this record, I really wanted to find a song that let him step out front.

SV: He’s primarily a trumpet player?
DR:  Yes.

SV:  Like you, did your Mom make him play the piano too?
DR:  Oh yeah. (laughs)  He plays several instruments -- drums, guitar, keyboard, and trumpet.  He’s a talented multi-instrumentalist.

SV:  As are you!  On this new record, you’re playing flute, percussion, piano, keyboard, EWI, Fender Rhodes, various saxes, all horn arranging, singing, producing, engineering, executive producing, and the graphic design!
DR:  Well, you know what, it basically boils down to various types of saxophones and keyboards, plus simple percussion things.

SV:  Simple? You are very modest.  Who else is in your backing band on this new record?
DR:  I’ve got some really, really great session guys on this record: my dear friend and one of the best bass players alive, Mel Brown; also another dear friend and amazing guitarist, Frank Selman.

SV:  You three have a lot of history together, don’t you?
DR:  I met both those guys playing in bands years ago.  Not only do we do a lot of business together, but we’ve played together for years and years and years; it’s a natural relationship with them.  You don’t have to say much.  Having that playing history makes things really easy.

SV:  Frank’s in Colorado?  Is that where you live too?
DR:  Yeah.  We’re in the Denver area.  Well, Mel used to be in Denver but he now lives in Arizona.

SV:  To get away from the cold temperatures?
DR:  Exactly!  Among the other great session guys on the record, we’ve got one of my favorite organ players on Planet Earth, Ricky Peterson, plus the amazing drums of Michael White, and good friend of mine and keyboard player, Nate Harasim, who is also signed to Nu Groove Records.

SV:  Oh yes!  You make up the group DéNaté with Nate and Deborah Connors.
DR:  Right!

SV:  It’s impressive how the Nu Groove Records artist roster has grown.  They are the hot smooth jazz record label now.
DR:  Yeah, they’ve got a really good line up and have grown tremendously over the last year and a half.  David Chackler is a great guy and has a passion for good music.  He doesn’t micromanage, like some labels that try to control things in a certain way.  David is one of those guys that really lets the strength of an artist come out.  He lets them express themselves naturally.  It’s not contrived.  He lets people to do their thing.

SV:  David was around way back when the original Nu Groove released the first Down To The Bone records.  You were probably in high school then. (laughs)
DR:  Actually I was in college.

SV:  David has a reputation of being a stand up guy.
DR:  When you meet people who are great to work with like that, you hold on to it and cherish it. You know it’s not always that way. It’s really nice when you run into people who are that terrific to work with.

SV:  Back to Ricky Peterson for a minute, he’s played with everybody– of our contemporaries, Steve Cole, Brian Culbertson, David Sanborn, Mark Antoine, Hiram Bullock, Mindi Abair, Paul Jackson, Jr., Jeff Golub, and the list goes on.
DR:  I first remember hearing Ricky in the early ‘90s on David Sanborn records, “Snakes” and some of those cool tunes.  I remember thinking, “Man!  That guy’s great!  Who is that guy?”  I was so interested; I even read the credits to find out.  Now, here we are, fast forward 15 years, and he’s playing for a bunch of my friends in the smooth jazz industry. We had used Ricky on a Wayman Tisdale record.  So I thought, “Let me just give Ricky a call.”  I called him up and asked him if he wanted to play on my record and he said, “Yes!”  He was incredible to work with.

SV:  That’s an amazing backing band!  What strikes me about your new record is the superb quality of the musicianship and sound production. You’ve been known to say that you’re all about the songs and the audience.  I agree that those are the two most important things.  You need a good song and the audience will follow. You wrote nine of the tracks on the new record, right?
DR:  Yeah, I wrote all the nine originals and we also did three covers.  Once again, growing up in the heyday of the ‘70s and ‘80s, I remember putting on records or listening to the radio; every song that came on was great.  You’d go buy a record and you’d get to track 8 or 9, 10 or 11, and it was still great.  There wasn’t filler material; people were playing with their hearts.  That was the feel we were going for with this record.  My goal was to create something that people would really enjoy, something that was solid from beginning all the way to the end.

SV:  Growing up in that era too, I’d listen to an entire album in one sitting – as an “experience.” For me, it goes back to the ‘60s when bands like the Beatles recorded concept albums.  That’s real entertainment.
DR:  The whole package.

SV: Now a days, some albums shoot for maybe three killer tracks and the rest are pabulum.
DR: For the last several years, I’ve been producing behind the scene and have been carefully watching the industry.  I’ve seen how it has just fallen into this slump over the last few years.  It’s been hard to watch that happen.  I started to think, “Why is this?”  Of course, there are a lot of factors that are beyond our control like the economy.  It all seemed to begin to erode around 9/11/2001. That certainly affected it.  Economic things started sinking.  But the other thing is, record companies began having a hard time; budgets continue to shrink.  People are struggling to survive.  But it doesn’t cost any more to do a record this way.  If you’re going to do 10, 11 or 12 tracks on a record, you’ve got to do them anyway; you might as well make every one special.  I think we’re starting to see a resurgence in that kind of focus on the music.  We went through this phase of internet, MP3s, recording at home, and all these cool technological advancements. Now, I think people are realizing, “Hey, there’s really no substitute for a good song.”

SV:  People have stopped buying or downloading whole albums and just purchase a track or two. Having 12 great tracks is a good solution to the track-at-a-time download culture that we’ve become.  People are going to want to own the whole album.
DR:  I hope so! (laughs)

SV:  There are many artists, fans, radio stations, and industry people who have hung in with this music genre since the mid ‘80s.  I am most concerned that many radio stations have moved out of this format. It’s getting hard to hear the music.
DR:  It’s going to take some reinvention. Through the ‘90s and into the new millennium, radio stations started to see this “formula” working.  It’s like anything else, when you find something that works, you hit a comfort zone. It happens to musicians all the time. I think the industry has gone through the same thing and now they’re realizing, “Hey, you know what? That was good.”  Now it’s time to move on and break some more new ground.

SV:  Recently I’ve had occasion to spend hours at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport, also at LAX, waiting for flight connections.  In both airports, I noticed that all the music overhead was smooth jazz.  It’s now the sound track for people’s lives everywhere – the music is in grocery stores, elevators, spas, and shopping malls. 
DR:  I think it’s gone a little too far in that direction.  You used to walk into stores and hear pop orchestras or the Boston Pops and now you hear smooth jazz.  There are positive and negative sides to that.  The positives, obviously, it gets the music out there.  But really, is this what we want?  When you went to see Jeff Lorber or Grover Washington, Jr. in concert, how did it make you feel?  It made you want to jump out of your seat, right?!

SV:  Exactly.  Exhilarating!
DR:  I think we’re at a time now where, hopefully, we’re ready to start moving back to music that really, really moves us.  I guess it’s OK to have a “soundtrack” for your life, but we want people to be paying attention to the soundtrack, not sleeping.

SV:  Has recorded smooth jazz gotten too far away from the improvisation component of the original contemporary jazz in the ‘80s?  Attendance at live events is still strong probably because the live performance is often far more creative and vibrant than the recordings.
DR:  You get to actually get to see guys cut loose.  When you talk about how this genre was formed, it started with jazz fusion. You look back to the jazz fusion of Lorber, Grover, and Sanborn – these guys were doing this combination of jazz, R&B, and pop, mixing it together.  There was an inventiveness, a flair, and an excitement to it.  Yeah, I think it’s time for that again. I also think it would be cool to see the industry embrace some of the new technology.  You listen to any of the more popular formats on the radio and they are still evolving too.  When I create a record, the healthiest thing for me is let go of my preconceived ideas. Let new music happen naturally.  Sometimes that’s really difficult to do because there’s a worry that maybe radio isn’t going to like this.  But I think if you let that go, and just let good music happen, at the end of the day, it’s that really heartfelt music that deeply touches people.  Back in the day, if radio programmers heard a song that moved them emotionally, boom! They’d spin it.  They were doing it out of passion, not thinking about tests and markets.  They were moved by something and wanted to share it. I think that mindset would really move us forward right now.

SV:  I agree.  Audiences become truly engaged with the music when it hits them both emotionally and intellectually.  When you talk about new technologies, what do you mean exactly? 
DR: There’s so much technology in music available to us today.  I think it’s really cool when you can combine it with great live musicians.  There are a lot of people who feel if you have programmed drums on a song, that’s really bad.  Or it’s not cool if you have a synth bass.  I think it’s exciting to be open to different kinds of sounds.  For example, take  synthesizers, which have been around for many decades, there are incredible sounds available at the fingertips now.  You look at guys like Herbie Hancock back in the ‘80s; yeah, he could sit down with a jazz trio and perform beautifully.   But on the flip side, he could create something that was totally electronic and synthesized, which was also very compelling.  I love to embrace these new technologies and combine them with great live musicians.  It creates a lot of exciting possibilities.

SV:  Herbie is always exploring.  His CD and DVD “Possibilities” is a perfect example of what you’re talking about. 
DR: Those collaborations were so incredible. He took people from different styles, different eras, and different vibes and mixed them all together.

SV:  So, who will you be working with in the near future?
DR:  Oh, let’s see (takes a deep breath)…all kinds of people. (laughs)

SV:  I bet!
DR: Production-wise right now, I’m working with Najee.  And I just finished a song for Jay Soto.

SV:  You’ve produced Jay in the past, haven’t you?
DR:  Yeah, we worked together on his first record for Nu Groove, which I think was his second record, if my memory serves me correctly.  I’m mixing for a couple of great young musicians, a sax player named Philip Martin and a young bass player named Julian Vaughn.

SV:  I’m really encouraged to hear you’re working with young people.  When you came along, I was so glad!  Oh Great! A young person!  Eric Darius, a young person!  Youth can revitalize the music.  Hopefully, younger musicians will bring a new generation of audience as well.
DR:  I prefer to think of it as “No Boundaries.”  To get to work with legendary guys like Jeff Lorber, Dave Koz, and Wayman Tisdale, that’s incredible.  They’re each unique and so amazing at what they do.  But it’s also wonderful to work with some less experienced young guys who are coming up in the game.  That kind of interaction between all levels of experience is something that can help our genre.  We won’t get stuck on “it has to be this” or “it has to be that.”  Keep it open for everyone.  There’s a lot of great young talent out there.  Maybe they’re a little inexperienced and maybe they don’t have the full skill set, but if they’re given the opportunity, they’ll grow into it and bring something new to the game.  Someone’s got to give those young guys a chance.  It’s like when you collaborate on music with a live group. You hear an idea; it sparks something new.  You hear one idea and all of a sudden the piano player, vocalist, or sax player says, “Oh! That’s great! What did you just play? That gives me an idea!”  That’s the way we need to be in our industry.  We need to have that same kind of interaction and stimulation going on within the business.

SV:  Yes! 
DR:  That’s the best place to be, creating music.  When I did the new record, Talk of the Town, I wanted everyone to play music and contribute their ideas.  I didn’t want to micromanage.  You look at the special guests; we’ve got Wayman, Jeff, Bob James, Tim Bowman, and DéNaté.  I was not telling people, “This is what I’m going for on this tune.” Rather, I wrote the music and placed it trustfully into their hands, and then let them bring their own thing to it.  It makes such a huge difference.  It was the same with the session players.  Instead of saying, “Well, it’s got to be this way.”  I’d say, “Let’s see, what are your thoughts? What are your ideas?  What are you feeling? ” Then we’d make that work within the context of the song.  After all, if it only has to be one specific way, I probably could have done the record all by myself. But I’d miss the interaction and individual personality that each special guest and each featured artist brought to the record.  This kind of stimulating collaboration takes it to a whole other level.

SV:  How did you hook up with Bob James?
DR: That is a cool story. Bob has been one of my favorites since I first heard him in high school.  That was the late ‘80s.  I think the first time I heard Bob James was on the Double Vision record that he did with David Sanborn.  It’s one of my all-time favorites.  I just followed his music like crazy.  It was 1998, I got a chance to meet Bob after one of his concerts. He had come through Denver.  Back then, Mel Brown and I were both in Denver just gigging together.  We decided to go to Bob James’ show.  Afterwards, we got to hang out and talk to Bob a bit.  I remember thinking “Man, some day if I could have Bob James on one of my records…”  He was so nice and so gracious.  Then, another 10 years go by. We were doing Wayman’s Way Up record.  I was producing several tracks on that.  One of them was called “Conversation Piece” and we believed it needed a great piano player.  We were trying to decide who would be the right person and just felt that Bob James would be perfect!  The record label knew him and called Bob. He said, “I’d love to.”  At that time, that’s when Bob and I actually had interaction as we worked on the tune.  When my record came up, I wondered if Bob would play on my record?  I was nervous but I called him and asked if he would do it.  He was so incredibly gracious and said, “Yeah!  I’d love to do it.”  It was a dream come true for me having him on the record.

SV:  He’s been around forever making incredible music!
DR:  Oh yeah.  He’s incredible. I remember checking out some of his classic work including the record he did with Earl Klugh…once again, great musicians collaborating.

SV:  Awhile back, Bob and Keiko Matsui toured playing duets, the Four Hands tour.
DR:  I love to see two people of the same instrument collaborating.  That’s something I hope to do on some upcoming records with my favorite sax players.

SV:  We’ll look forward to that!  With the new record out, are you planning on touring?
DR:  Oh yeah!  I’ve got a dates planned already.  As things come up, I’d love to be out there doing tons of performances for the new record.  We’ll see what comes our way.  Right now we have some things lined up.  I’m going to be in Reno next month, and the week after that, I’m at the Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards.

SV:  Congratulations!  You were nominated in the “Wind Instrument” category, right?
DR:  I was nominated in the wind instrument category and also as a member of the DéNaté group.

SV:  For “International Group of the Year?”
DR:  Yes!  I’ll be up there with DéNaté, playing the new single “Sweet Dreams” and I will also be playing with Brian Culbertson.  Then we’ll cross our fingers.  It’d be great to win an award.  We’ll see what happens.  It’s pretty cool because I was actually born and raised in Canada.  That’s a great station up there – The Wave 94.7 with Mary Kirk and all the staff – it’s a really excellent organization.

SV:  We wish you the best of luck!!!  With the loss of so many U.S. radio stations, it looks like the internet will be carrying the good word for smooth jazz for the time being.
DR: I know it’s really tough out there. Hopefully we’ll see more live shows coming up.  Fortunately, I think everyone’s holding on by the skin of their teeth. (laughs) I think we’ll make it through to more good times if we get back to the good music and if people are moved enough to say, “Oh! I’ve got to get the album.”  That’s what we need to shoot for is creating music that makes people say, “Oh! I’ve got to have that!”  Or “Oh I’m going to put that in stockings” or “I’m going to give that as a gift.”  If people are moved enough to get out of their computer chair, hop in the car, and go to a store, that’ll mean they’ve actually been moved by the music.

SV:  I’m glad there are artists like you who continue to look for that next best thing instead of going for the easy formulas.  It’s comforting to know that you’re out there trying to break some new ground.  I really appreciate that so much.
DR:  I’m trying my best! It helps having people like David Chackler at Nu Groove who really believes in the music too.  They’re working hard over there to make sure that people do get to hear it.  I want to give Dave a shout out and tell him “Thank you for keeping things rolling” from the label standpoint.

SV:  Way to go, Dave!  And good luck to you, Darren, at the Awards.  Congratulations on the new record.  We’ll be listening for your radio single to hit Number 1.  Thanks for making such a remarkable record.
DR:  Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure!

SV:  Thank you!

For more information about Darren Rahn and Talk of the Town, visit www.myspace.com/darrenrahn and www.darrenrahn.com