Walter Beasley Interview Page 4

Smitty:  Yeah, man.

WB:  And the guy Quim [Quer] from Spain, check this out.  I’m on www.myspace.com/walterbeasley.

Smitty:  Uh-huh.

WB:  So I go on MySpace and one of my first friends who come on and say “Well, Walter, can I be your friend?”  Okay.  “I love your music.  Come over and check out my site.”  So I said, okay, I’ll do that, and there’s this beautiful little chill kind of track in the back and I’m like this is gorgeous.  So I e-mailed him and I said “Well, this is a great harmony and rhythm.  Can I write a melody to this thing and maybe if it comes out okay we can put it on the record?”  So he speaks Spanish so we’re doing it back and forth in Spanish, so he said “Sure, sure, I’d love to.”  So I wrote a melody to it, the record company loved it, and we wrote it back and forth over MySpace and did it over the Internet, so that’s the first time that’s ever happened to me in my life, man.

Smitty:  Wow! 

WB:  The track’s called “Land of the Sun.”

Smitty:  Now you know that’s way too cool!

WB:  “Land of the Sun.”  He lives in Spain and I live in Massachusetts.  I don’t know him, I’ll never probably meet him in my life, but we wrote a track over MySpace.

Smitty:  That is slick, dude.  (Laughs.)

WB:  Yeah.

Smitty:  I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that happening.

WB:  It’s never happened to me.  And another thing about MySpace, it gets slammed for all the whack stuff, but here are two musicians just trying to do their thing and you come to each other’s page and like, oh, let me put me with you and see how we can make some money and take this to another level, you know?  So that’s what we did and I would encourage all musicians, all people who are musicians to network in any way they can and to use the Internet, especially JazzMonthly.com.

Smitty:  JazzMonthly.com. Thank you, man. You’ve got a lotta love, brother.

WB:  JazzMonthly.com and to meet as many people as you can and learn as much as you can about the music and you will be surprised how much more you will be enriched by that whole process.

Smitty:  Well said! Oh, that’s cool, man.  That’s really cool.  That’s a great story.

WB:  Yeah, man, I couldn’t have dreamt it, you know?  I mean, it didn’t hit me until after we wrote the track, that it was done all by phone.  No, I’ve never done this before.  (Both laugh.)

Smitty:  Well, my congratulations to you, Walter, for this great record.  I love the album cover and somebody took some great shots.

WB:  Yeah, they did. This brother down in Miami, Paul Greco. Beautiful cat, man. I was down there, my father was very ill, and I had to go down there….Heads Up has just been so great with this too because my father got very ill at the end of the project and I had to go stay with him for major surgery in Miami, and they had a photographer down there in Miami, and one of the days when he was in physical therapy I went and I took pictures, and I think these are some of the best photographs that I’ve ever taken.

Smitty:  Yeah, very nice, man.

WB:  I’m very thankful.

Smitty:  Yes, well, this is just a quality product all the way around, man, and evidence of that, I’ve seen you on the charts, so that’s a very cool thing.  And I think that’s a great motivator for your students as well to see the success of your hard work and it shows that they could get there too.

WB:  Yeah, and that’s when I know it’ll be time to go. When I can say that there are a couple coming behind me that I know are gonna do more than what I did in a different kind of way. I’ll know then that’s the time to really focus on teaching other areas about my business and just go ahead and just spend more time in education.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love making records, I love talking to you, and I love talking to my fans when I go to concerts.  I love it, man.  There’s one thing I’ve always asked God to do and that’s to not make me addicted to the applause because there’s a lot of who don’t know when to get out. And that’s when I want to know that I don’t want to be on the road because Uncle Sam is making me get on the road.  (Both laugh.)  And all those things factor into it.  In fact, during the course of the semester we talk about business skills and we talk about ways of making decisions, and as we progress I’m at the stage in my career now where I have to make some decisions that relate to the next 10 or 15 years. Because that’s just life and we all have to make that walk, and it’s just a great time to be me, a great time to be you, and to be able to express ourselves in the way we do it, and life is only a quick minute here.

Smitty:  That’s right.

WB:  To touch as many people as we can.  That’s what it’s all about.

Smitty:  Absolutely.  I couldn’t have said it better, my friend.  The record is called Ready for Love by Heads Up recording artist Walter Beasley.  Walter, thank you so much for this great record and for your remarkable mentality and your extraordinary ability to reach others in music education. Much success with this record and all of your future endeavors.

WB:  Thank you very much and thank you so much for the opportunity. I really appreciate it.

Baldwin “Smitty” Smith

For More Information Visit www.walterbeasley.com and www.headsup.com and www.myspace.com/walterbeasley.