Smitty:  Yeah. But when we talk about making music for the reasons that most musicians make music, it’s for yourself and it’s for fans that enjoy it.

MC:  Right, absolutely, absolutely. And it just so happens that people love this stuff, man.

Smitty:  Yeah.

MC:  I mean, just how you said it. It is a record that people just keep listening to it over and over and over again because there is nothing like this on the market right at this current moment.

Smitty:  Well, I have to admit I’m one of them because I’ve just hit repeat on so many of the different tunes. And when I heard Steve Quirk playing it I made a long distance call to England so, I mean, to do that says something about how this kind of music can move people. So, yeah, I think you’re right on. When people play from their heart and they’re playing with feeling and emotion, you’re gonna have a fan base automatically. Because people identify with realism and when the music’s real, I mean, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

MC:  No, it doesn’t. (Laughing.) The response for this record has been absolutely astounding, only because this is something that they don’t get very often.  It’s like being thirsty for some water.

Smitty:  Well, talk about some of the cats that supported this record, the musicians.

MC:  Hami’s on there, Marquis Dair. And he’s just one of my “bestest” buddies on the planet right now. He’s been like in my corner just egging me to do this thing.  “Man, you should do this.  Man, you should do this.”  And I was like “Ah, I don’t wanna make no record.”

Smitty:  Well, he was tight on “Mood Reflections.”

MC:  Oh yeah, oh yeah, he’s a bad boy (laughing), a bad boy. And then we have Dennis Farious is playing trumpet. Dennis came in and he was just great, man. He came through and he laid it out. I wrote it down and he played it. Bob Sheppard, I mean, Bob is another guy that just….I just wrote it down and he was in the studio about an hour and he was gone.

Smitty:  Now you know that’s bad.

MC:  Yeah.  I mean, the performance was like just astounding.  I was like “Dude, we don’t need to change it.  Leave it just how it is.” It’s raw, it’s uncut, and people appreciate that more than the….

Smitty:  The polished.

MC:  Yeah, the polished sound. People like that gutness, that grit. What’s the tune that we had all the horns on? 

Smitty:  Oh, you mean “Moments in Blue”?

MC: Yeah, “Moments in Blue.” “Moments in Blue” was a composition that I was just trying to show my roots, but not go to my roots. Because if you listen to it, it does have the sensibility of the three horns; tenor, soprano and trombone. And it does have that sound where it’s more traditional. Purists, I should say.

Smitty:  It’s got that pure sound….

MC:  Yeah.

Smitty: ….and it has just a touch of what I call the big band.

MC:  Right, right, but the beat underneath it all, it’s totally different.

Smitty:  Exactly. But it has just a hint of big band with the horn section.

MC:  Right.  So, as you know, that was one of my training grounds there, was writing big band. This was like, you know, that’s where I was going, showing you my roots, show you where I came from a little bit.  And I think most people got it immediately.

So by me putting Kamasi (Washington), who is a great tenor player, and Ryan Porter, who was one of our mutual friends, they just laid it down. I mean, the rest of them….Joe Sheu was playing guitar on two cuts, I went to college with him and he’s a great guitar player as well. I called him on the phone and sent him the file on e-mail, he sent it back to me with the right part on there. I didn’t even tell him what I wanted, really. I told him “This is the song, see what you’ve got,” and about a week later he sent it back. It was done. All right, leave it alone, its right, let’s keep moving on.

Smitty:  Well, talk to me about “Feel Inside” because that was the first tune that I heard that really got my attention with the background vocals and the heavy vibe work and then the nice grooves.

MC: “Feel Inside”, Mika Lett, co-wrote that tune with me. That tune, the actual basis of it was created about three years ago, and it had just sat and sat and sat, and I said “Well, look, man, what I know is that people really enjoy hearing old and new.” They like to hear old, but they definitely like to hear the new stuff, but the problem is my diet of hip hop….I grew up in that era….so I understand R&B, hip hop, I understand what they do today. I do what they do today. So if I understand it, I need to capitalize on that, I need to use that to my advantage, so Mika, who is a great writer, I just said “Listen, this is the tune that I want:  ” I just started humming it to her and about five minutes later she was in the booth cutting the vocal. And I said “The tune needs to be like a Bobby Lyle/Joe Sample vibe.”

Smitty:  Yeah, and you can feel that, you know?

MC:  Yeah, and you could hear that I studied those guys.  (Laughing.)

Smitty:  Yeah, and you picked two great ones to study.

MC:  Right, you could hear I’m using all their riffs, every single one of them. If they got a riff, I took it. (Laughing.)

Smitty:  Yeah, this tune is over eight minutes long. That’s a little unusual.