B-Side Morning Brew w/ Bij & Niles

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Good morning and welcome.

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You're listening to B-Side Morning Brew with Beebz and Niles. Hot coffee, cool chatting, chilling on the corner of Lifestyle Lab and Music Street on

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91.5 KUNV Jazz and Lore.

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Not at all.

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Me neither. Not at all. I'm still in bed. Oh my gosh.

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Okay.

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Alright. Good morning, man. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Okay, watch it. We always do that. Yeah, you eat it. You eat it. It's funny. Well, good morning, everybody. Good morning, my brother. How you doing, man? Top of the morning to you, my friend. He's got the morning voice going. It's been a minute. It's been a minute. Let's start with our sip of coffee. Oh yeah, oh yeah. That's it. Man, I want to get right into this.

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You and I have some great topics today, this morning, to discuss about the music trade. Things we've been kind of just naturally in conversation been going over, over the phone, over the last couple weeks, I'd say. And like, we realize this is some nice content for the show. First of all, man, you just played on the Diana Kral concert in Hollywood, right? The Hollywood Bowl. How'd that go?

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You know, it's always great to play there. Sold out crowd. We revisited an album. Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra was backing her up. We revisited an album that we did with her probably back in 2007, 2008. From this moment on, John Clayton arrangements featuring Diana Krall. Yeah, it was, uh, we debuted that music of the album in Las Vegas.

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Really?

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At the old Las Vegas Hilton.

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Back then you're talking about.

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Back then, back then, yeah. Yeah. When, uh, the room that Barry Manilow plays in now, which is now the Westgate Hotel.

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That's right. Wow, man.

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Wow. So we revisited that music, sold out crowd, and, uh, fantastic night of music. Always great to play that stuff. So it's good to see her, you know, at that time she had just had her twins and now they're 16 years old.

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I don't know. I don't know if a lot of people realize that also that she's married to the great Elvis Costello. That's right. Well, you're a fan of Elvis. I know. I am. Yeah.

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And so he's a great guy. He's hanging out with us. I had a chance to have dinner with him and everything.

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That is cool.

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And get a taste of kind of what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to pull back the veil, as it were, of the music industry. And people don't realize, I mean, we have convergent careers, as it were, in the music industry. They're convergent and divergent both at the same time. And many different aspects of the music industry. Well, been through because of our job, the genres of music that we've, we've performed.

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Yeah, well, case in point, even with Diana Krall, I mean, I didn't see anywhere on the marquee that it was featuring the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. And you realize, I asked you about that. And we're talking about the politics of that, you know, just you realize part of that is a lot, you know, her crowd. I consider her crowd more of a pop audience, let's say. There's a lot of heavy jazz listeners, don't get me wrong, I understand that, but I would say she's more of a household name, right? So as a result, I can imagine because of her audience, I'd probably say a good 60-70% of that is more on the

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I say pop, but you know what I mean, more that's not maybe a heavy jazz head.

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imagine that part of that is, you know, the powers that be, the label or what

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have you, are just, they're not gonna put the, you know, a lot of people would not know who Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra are. That's part of it, you know. That's part of it,

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but I also think, I mean, it was part of the jazz series at the Hollywood Bowl, so that was pretty interesting. Yeah. So I mean, you know, you're gonna have things that go along with that. But that's that thing where you realize that, well, part of this is what you and I have talked about in terms of the difference between, let's say, the genre of jazz and the other genres, right? We're talking about between jazz and classical music, how it's very Whereas on the pop side or the mainstream audiences, they're not necessarily thinking too much about who played on what, even though there's great musicians that have played on some of the biggest albums and some of the biggest artists that they've ever heard of. I find that interesting where, you know, we had a friend recently who played on our album post our songs separately on his posts. I called you and laughed because I was saying, I'm like, man, this is what I'm talking about, in that all the comments he received was about the performance of the instrument. No one said, oh, that's a cool playing on that song it's horrible there was none of that it was just man great playing you know great work that you're doing and then I took offense to that because I'm a writer you know I mean I'm an artist but then when when that same musician did that with your song I thought when I saw that post that more people would at least acknowledge your song because it's more jazz driven, obviously, right? But no. Nope, same thing. And I thought to myself, this is a real shame, you know, where you come from both spectrums. You come from the music trade in that you get hired to do many different gigs, whether it's recording, live, what have

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you, but you're also an artist. You kind of walked between both worlds. Now I imagine you have more of an

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how do you not acknowledge the song you wrote

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or record it? Well I think you bring up a good point in that jazz in and of itself is really just classical music it's a set of repertoire that was made popular through black Americans taking that music and applying improvisation and jazz theory and different types of harmonies to it. And so it's kind of, you know, like one of the big pet peeves we have is, you know, when we do our series, we don't book people who are just gonna come out and play jazz standards on their set. Because that, to me, is just like playing Beethoven for an orchestra. Everyone plays it all the time. There's only so many different ways you can play it, the same tune. And same thing with vocalists that do these jazz standards that have lyrics. The tribute artists. It's the same, you know, what are we talking about here? Which is fine. So now what you see in the jazz idiom is now it's being, not only getting away from calling it jazz, but you know, Black American black american music or just music and i would you know the many quotes that you've sent me from ellington and miles davis and coltrane and and and coltrane for the exactly i'm just making good music they hated all of us all you know i'm not calling it anything in fact jazz at that time was derogatory for a lot of African Americans because it had been appropriated in the European tradition and made into something that quantified in that way and took the creativity out of it. So it wasn't allowed to evolve. It was stagnant.

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Which is disheartening. Then you have the other side of that in terms of the extreme opposite where you have, you know, my favorite artists are guys like Sting and Peter Gabriel, and whether it's like Phil Collins was just amazing songwriter, all those kind of guys were just like just hit after hit after hit. And some of the best players in the world that played on all those records, whether you have bass players like Lee Sklar or, you know, Tony Levin. I mean, man, you had a guitar player, you had Steve Lukather, who started Toto, James Taylor, guitar player, made the whole Michael Jackson song, the greatest solo in terms of the most melodic and remembered, so on that flip side, no one really knew who they were, unless you were a musician. We knew because we were looking at the liner loads on the album, and we would, you know, God, I wanna be as good as that player, this and that, which is great, but the listeners didn't care. They cared about a great song. They don't know why the song is great, and there's something to that I love also. You don't need to dissect it. And yet I wish there was this happy medium. Do you know what I mean? It's like on the jazz side everybody just thinks about the musicians and not the art. And

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the song that's being, that was written or being written or being recorded. And on the flip side in the pop or mainstream world no one cares about, about the musicians. They just care about the song.

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Well I mean who do we really blame

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You know, which tries to quantify the art in such a way that it can be marketed and consumed by the average non-musician, right? The people that are buying it, you know.

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I think we should jump into a song.

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So we're going to play Interescope off my EP Departure. EP departure. You know this is a track actually that the cats during the session was the last track we recorded and we recorded it in one take. Yeah. After we figured everything out. Yeah. And it's to me it is the epitome of what it is to come together as a group and bring the ultimate sound and

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presentation to a song. Well you know I want to bring to this before you make the final introduction and we get into this tune. During that moment when you guys were working out the last bits of this song, I remember going from the control room into the into the studio. Face, or Tom Luehr, sax player, one of the sax players on... he was coming up with this piano idea. He was on the piano. The reason Radiohead would do. And I thought, wait a minute, I forgot FACE is very much into also my style of music, the pop and the alternative and the indie rock and things like that. And he's one of, I think, one of the best jazz and saxophone players out there, but he comes from a very eclectic musical background. And the cool thing is you guys kept that in, but now I don't hear it and that's the beauty of being inspired by different genres of music in our world and bringing it in and Cross-pollinizing and even me who really knows that and knows that melody or knows that piano piece I don't hear it at all anymore in your tune and that's amazing That's the beauty of music even though there's only a handful of chords we can pull from you know, that's great, man

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well, then let's check out Interscope then, off my departure EP.

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You're listening to it here on 91.5 KUNV Jazz and More.

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so so so so Welcome back to B-Side Morning Brew with B. Jean Niles. You are listening to B. Jean's John's new song off his EP Departure, song entitled Intrascope. Man, again, great tune. It's just amazing how that whole thing came together in the studio. And I know every nuance of that song because me and Rob mixed it. Let's just say I've heard it enough. But man, great tune. You need to take a break. Yeah. It's good to come back to it with fresh ears after you've listened to it for so long. Yeah. Well, because now you can listen to it with a radio-friendly ear and not a dissect, you know, trying to dissect the tune. Yeah, man. Luckily with that tune and that EP, you know, want to bring up something very near and dear to our hearts is that we just found out a few days ago, about a week ago, I want to say that, you know, John Nashen passed away, DJ at KUNV for years and years. And I found out about it. It really hit me.

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You know, I mean, and just what a great guy and what an honor to have met him and be around him on so many levels, you know. He was always so

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supportive of us and actually so instrumental in helping us forge our relationship with KUNV. Yeah. Very supportive of our concert series when we first started the Jazz Republic series. He would emcee the shows, would make sure he had us on his radio show to promote our shows, really was a constructive, gave us constructive advice about the music and the industry and the scene.

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Yeah, how to navigate the scene, yeah.

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Introduced us to people, and yeah, he was really a true music lover and an exceptional musician. He will be missed.

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He will be missed. I remember, I remember you know to me he was one of the old classic DJs until things change and you know you can't say certain things on air or what have you but I remember his whole thing kind of reminded me of like a Wolfman Jack so those of you listening who are our age and all don't know who Wolfman Jack is but it was like what would he say? He's a little John Nash, a little junk in your trunk, a little pep in your step, a little pride in your stride, a little glad you're striding. And it was just classic radio DJ, you know what I mean? And then he would just go into the tune. Very cool man, yeah. Very blessed to have known him. And which actually leads me into us also talking about, from a DJ perspective, how radios change in terms of what they play, what they can and can't play.

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And how music is consumed, how music reaches the consumer. Yep. I mean, we grew up listening to radio stations and that's how we would find out the new music that's being put out.

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Yep. And I think that's why, too, today that, you know, look, our crowd and our age, and I know we do hit some younger audiences in terms of our music and thankfully so. But for the most part, our audience is not actively looking for new music. And I'm one of those. I'm one of those. I'm not actively looking for new music. I know there's some out there, don't get me wrong, I understand. But as a result of that, when I'm on social media, I put on stuff of me cycling and stuff now. I don't think it, I don't know. I see a lot of cats putting stuff out there musically, and I don't think anybody really cares. I think music has unfortunately been a bit devalued because there's so much out there. I miss the gatekeepers of the record labels. You know, I really do. I really do.

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I mean, you know, in my involvement in the music industry, first starting out before I could really consider myself an artist as it were, creating my own original music and bands and things. I mean I was touring with people like Eric Benet, Carl Thomas, Ashanti, these pop R&B acts, you know, they had label deals. We'd play these festivals and we'd go in the studio and record these albums. I mean, I can, there's two albums I know for a fact that Eric Benet, I recorded with Eric Benet that have not seen the light of day and maybe will never see the light of day. Yeah. Because the label, the A&R guy decided, oh, we're not gonna release this right now.

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Yep.

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And he didn't have the rights to it. So it's done.

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Yeah, there's pluses and minuses to that too. Absolutely there's pluses and minuses. Absolutely, that's the thing. But I would say the plus for me that in terms of the gatekeepers back in the day Is that it was very much bottlenecked to be able to get in into the music trade as an artist or being signed as an artist Let's say which is the road. I was always taking you know I was never I never went down the road of Wanting to be a session musician a session player you know And that doesn't mean anything other than when I was a kid I just knew I wanted to be an artist. Sting was my guy and I wanted to be the next Sting, essentially. And so that idea and all those years I worked hard at being signed and then ultimately getting signed when I was younger was the ultimate payoff for a minute. And then my career didn't take off where I thought it would as a result of that. And there's other politics involved in that as well, and also my naivety of it, especially then. But nowadays...

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And realizing it takes a great deal of effort and energy and a team of people to keep that momentum going.

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It's the team of people. I mean, I have a question for you. So we've talked about this in terms of, I can tell people all day long that I was signed by this, done this, and my songs have been on this movie or this TV show or this and that. And even our last record, getting something from at least the Recording Academy, you know, traveled the world. I've got to do a great many things. I shouldn't be this way. I shouldn't really badmouth my career. But in terms of even with your recent Grammy win, I remember the Grammy itself had a different maybe connotation to it, a different something to it at one point. This is in my head though, so which can, as you know me, that could be very construed. There's a lot going on in your head. Since you've gotten that, honestly, what do you feel it's done for you, if anything at all? And what can you use it as, even if it's a tool, something great on the resume, let's say. You as a session player, as an example, and even a

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educator in academia. Well, as a session player it really hasn't really added much more to it, other than the fact I can charge a little bit more. But as a session player, I mean people know that what I do is what I do, so I'm getting called already for my skill set. As an artist, it definitely gets me in the door a lot easier to book things, you know, with the band. And from an education standpoint, because I am so involved in education, being able to speak about that level of the industry as a career, resume, building achievement, and talking about how to get there, or how I got there, or how my path took me there. And it's not for everyone, but people that know me know that that's always been a goal of mine, was to win a Grammy. It's funny man it goes back to

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and this actually is gonna lead us into a song I recorded a long time ago but it's the same thing that happened this is would have been about 13, 14, 15 years ago so when you're talking about the Diana Krall album you did that at that time 2008, 2009, 10 somewhere in there I was I was signed with EMI and I got introduced to a producer engineer named Carmen Rizzo. Now Carmen is a two-time Grammy nominee. Yeah, he was working with Seal at the time, Coldplay, Alanis Morsette, Paul Oakenfold, all these, you know, really great names. I remember we had a conversation this year when I started working with them on that album and he said, man, he goes, you take the... I'll

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never forget, he says, you take the love

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where you can get it. He goes, if you find it, then you go to Turkey and you perform shows there. And that's it. You take that love wherever you get it.

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It's really that simple.

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Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, take a corner of the world, wherever it is, a little alleyway, and make it your own. And it will build from there.

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You know? That's what I loved about MySpace, by the way.

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Oh my God, yeah.

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That was great.

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The best platform for us artists to build relationships all over the world.

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Because you could literally tailor who you wanted to connect with in what part of the world. That's right.

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It was absolutely brilliant. And you knew the metrics. You knew how many people were in France or wherever. You could pick anywhere in the world. It wouldn't matter. So this song we had recorded, at the time I was writing very, I say this now because I don't write as prolific as I once did and I don't know why. Maybe I don't know if it's because I was traveling there and there was a lot going on in my life at the time, but anyway, this song we recorded together and he brought in the great keyboard player Jamie Mahobrick who was playing with Seal also at that time, James Taylor, Jamie's played with all sorts of major cats, so he's pretty much featured on this tune. It's called Out of the Vault. It's called out of the vault out of the vault out of the vault. It's called breathing space

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Closing down me, closing down me I've been trapped inside my head The world's unfolding while doors are closing I'm locked inside by shame Breathe, I need some breathing space. Breathe, give me some breathing space. Everything in space Life lessons wasted Confusion tasted Is this still time for a change? Bound by my dreams Life's weight in grief Somebody open up these windows and doors so I can breathe I need something to help me stress anymore It'll be so easy to say it was so wrong I need some free dance, please Go for me Give me some free dance, please I feel so wasted

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Alright, welcome back. You're listening to B-Side Morning Brew with Bija Niles on 91.5 KUNV Jazz and More. That tune you were just listening to was Breathing Space written by my main man Niles Thomas. Man, that's super chill. That brings it back. We've got a lot of people to thank though, so we're going to do that real quick. I mean, obviously, first and foremost, we want to thank KUNV, Jazz & More, for giving us a platform. High Note Roasters, of course, for being here with some fantastic coffee.

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Our audience, our listeners, we'd like to thank you all for joining in, having your morning cup of brew with us.

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We look forward to sharing a lot more. We've got a lot of cool stuff on the pipeline. Keep on listening. And if you're so inclined and you want to find out where we are in the world what we're doing creatively you can visit us at bijohnwatson.com or nilesthomas.com

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well good morning everybody have a wonderful Sunday

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you've been listening to B-side morning brew with Bij and Niles, chillin' on the corner of Lifestyle Ave and Music Street on 91.5 you've been listening to B-side morning brew with Bij and Niles, chillin' on the corner of Lifestyle Ave and Music Street on 91.5

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KUNV Jazz and More.