Smitty:  Yes, I think that’s huge that you’re doing that and that’s a great effort, and hopefully people are clicking in to your site and taking advantage of it. Let me ask you something about you as an educator….Over the years do you find that as you are dispensing knowledge to others that you too are learning from them? Do you find that you are learning along the way with them, be it from your students themselves or from what you are discovering to pass along to them?

WB:  Oh, great question! Yeah, I mean, it’s a great exchange, man.  And maybe that’s one of the reasons why I stay at Berklee and I even have private students at my house now.  I’ve just gone really overboard (both laugh).  But I found that I have learned to view different challenges and view different systems differently through the eyes and through the ears of the younger musicians, and I never thought that that would happen.  I really didn’t know, but now I find myself learning much more about approaching maybe different scales and different melodies and harmonies in a different kind of way because young kids really….it’s one thing to listen to history, to listen to others and to become steeped in the historical traditions of the music and so on and so forth.  Well, when you don’t have that, you don’t have that saddled on your back, so that you don’t know that you’re not supposed to do certain things in certain areas and stuff like that, and the younger they are, the more chances they take because they don’t have that fear element.

Smitty:  Yes. They’re bulletproof.

WB:  And they’re not constrained by the institutions and the “by the book” way of thinking. So it’s a great question and I think that older people, and obviously I’m not that old, but older people need to really realize, including myself, that there’s a wealth of knowledge and wealth of wisdom in younger people in the way they approach things because they don’t have….you know, our hang-ups.

Smitty:  Exactly.

WB:  And it’s a great exchange.

Smitty:  Yeah, young people are very uninhibited.

WB:  Yup.

Smitty:  And that’s a very great resource to tap into along the way. Now, let me ask you, because as an educator, as a teacher, I think what you’re doing is just phenomenal because I’m sure you know and I know, not everyone’s a teacher.  We may be a teacher to some degree, but not everyone is a teacher in that they can actually reach people and actually help them to benefit from what you’re sharing with them, because it’s one thing to put a book in front of someone, but it’s another to be able to explain that and help them to see how they could benefit from it and then help them along the way, so I think what you’re doing, over 20 years of this kind of great work, I mean, it speaks volumes for you as a musician and a person.

WB:  Well, I really appreciate the compliment.  Sometimes, man, not very often, but sometimes I think about, on my days when I’m just having a rough day, does anybody really know how hard this really is?  (Both laugh.)  You know?  I mean, I thought about it the other day and I talked to the record company about it, I talked to the institution about it, I don’t think anybody who’s an instrumentalist who’s been a full-time professor has ever sold as many records as I have in a lifetime.

Smitty:  Yeah.

WB:  And that’s an accomplishment that very few people even recognize because I teach, you know?  (Laughs.)

Smitty:  Right.

WB:  And I didn’t think about it until then, but sometimes I wonder and I’m like, you know, this is an art form in itself, to be able to motivate, to recognize the students who don’t want to be taught but maybe who just want to be motivated, and there are students who just want to be motivated and not taught.  (Laughs.)

Smitty:  Yes.

WB:  So, man, you’ve got to be a doctor, a psychiatrist, a father figure, a brother, an instigator, you’ve got to be a provocateur, all that kind of stuff, and this art is by far the most challenging of anything I’ve ever tried to do in my life.

Smitty:  Yeah, and yet you find time to kick out a record on time and it’s always a quality product that people buy and want to hear because the results are there that you’ve sold more records than any instrumentalist who’s been a full-time professor.

WB:  Yup.

Smitty:  So I think what you’re doing is definitely a great deal of effort, but it’s one that so many people benefit from and it’s a rewarding thing for you and others as well.

WB:  Yeah.  That’s well said.  I think, yeah, you’re right.

Smitty:  Yeah, man. And your new record came out January 23rd.

WB:  Yes.

Smitty:  And you’re hitting the charts and so this must be an exciting time for you.  I mean, ‘cause there’s always that little weight off your shoulders after you’ve got the product out there, it’s finished, people are hearing it, you’re getting reaction, that’s when the fun really starts, when you feel that reaction from everyone else.

WB:  And I put so much of myself into this record that I was so nervous.  I was scared to death, man, and then when I got the word in the first week sales that I was No. 2 in the world behind Kenny G, I was floored, man, and I was just so thankful and I smiled all the way in to work. I found out on my way in to teaching and I heard that I had a No. 2 record in the world and I was up at six o’clock in the morning to go teach some folks how to play saxophone.  (Both laugh.)  That’s when I said there are times when it doesn’t get any better than this.

Smitty:  Yes indeed.  You know, the hard work always pays off.

WB:  Yeah.  Man, that’s perfectly said.  You should come to Berklee!

Smitty:  (Laughs.)

WB:  You’re right.  You should teach that, man.  That’s exactly what I teach my students.  We won’t get into that.

Smitty:  Yeah, I know, but, you know, there’s just no substitute for hard work if you want great results, you know?

WB:  That’s right.  That’s exactly right.

Smitty:  Yeah, that’s so cool, man.  Well, I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying the record and these great players that you have brought along with you and, I mean, there’s a ton of them that we didn’t even talk about.  We mentioned James Lloyd and Eddie and those guys, but you’ve got some great players on here like Milton Smith on drums on “Miss You.”

WB:  Yeah, I mean, see, I call it my D.C. Love track ‘cause that’s one that….I had a song called “Don’t Say Goodbye” back in the day that was kinda like a theme song for me.  It was a regional hit, it was a vocal hit, and when he brought that to me, I said oh yeah, oh quit.  I was like, yeah, let me do some begging just like I used to do.