Jazz Monthly.com Interview with Marcus Coleman

“Jazz Monthly Feature Interview” Marcus Coleman

Smitty: Well, when you talk about great keyboard players, you must include my next guest. He’s got a fantastic CD out, it’s self-titled, and let me tell you, when I heard this record, my immediate response was “This is elegant funk.” Please welcome the incomparable MWC recording artist Mr. Marcus Coleman. Marcus, how ya doin’, man?

Marcus Coleman (MC): I’m great, thank you.

Smitty: All right. Hey, man, this is a great new record you’ve got here and I’m really digging the vibe. In fact, everyone that I’m around that have heard this record, are just raving about it, and you’ve gotta be proud of this music.

MC: I am, man, it’s just a combination and a melding of a whole bunch of different influences and a whole bunch of different types of music that I actually like.

Smitty: Yeah, absolutely. You know, when I heard the first song from this record….I heard it on Steve Quirk’s “Fusion Flavours” radio station out of Manchester, England.

MC: Great.

Smitty: And I heard “Feel Inside,” and it got my attention as I was doing working on a project….and I said “Man, I like that song,” so I went about my business and the following week I heard another track off this project, and I think I heard “Mood Reflections.”

MC: Okay, yeah.

Smitty: And I said “All right, who is this Marcus Coleman guy?”

MC: (Laughing.)

Smitty: You know, I said “This is some funky stuff.”

MC: Yeah.

Smitty: So I had to talk to my boy Steve Quirk in England, and I must thank him because you and I would not be talking today if it wasn’t for him.

MC: Oh, great.

Smitty: He’s a good friend and does a lot of great things with his show.

MC: Yeah. He contacted me and was just like “Send me the record right now. I need to play this on my radio show right now.” (Both laughing.) The response that he’s been getting, it’s been great and he’s kinda telling me about what’s going on.

Smitty: Fantastic.

MC: The record….hey, I tell you what, the record is a record for people that love music, and if you love music, you’re gonna identify with it immediately.

Smitty: Absolutely, I truly think so, I think you’re right because it’s got that groove and the melodies throughout the record, and it’s got dance tunes, it’s got some chill, laid back tunes.

MC: Right.

Smitty: ….and it’s just got that bebop, head-boppin’ thing working.

MC: Right.

Smitty: It’s just got it all.

MC: Yeah, I mean, that’s kinda the sensibility of what I was trying to accomplish, was to put a record together that had all of the sensibilities and all the influences and nuances of music that really has color, has dynamics….it keeps your attention. It’s unfortunate because music nowadays doesn’t really do that. It’s a really big commercial machine that thrusts this music onto people, but it really doesn’t have the depth or the scope where music came from or where it could possibly go.

Smitty: There’s some out there but not as much as it should be. I know what you mean.

MC: And I just think that, for me just being a music lover first but then a musician, I like to hear musicians actually play music that really takes music to that level where it really speaks to your soul.

Smitty: Yeah, and this does. It definitely does. How long have you been playing the keyboards, man?

MC: I’ve been playing since I was two years old.

Smitty: Two years old.

MC: My first recital was when I was (laughs)….I think I was three. I think I was three at my first recital at El Camino College in Gardena, California. And I’ve been fooling with it ever since.

Smitty: Man, that’s amazing. You’ve come a long way. The chops are there!

MC: Oh yeah, it’s been a long journey, a lot of stuff to learn, a lot of people to listen to, a lot of stuff to study.

Smitty: Yeah. Talk about some of your influences along the way.

MC: How it really got started, there was a school….when I was in junior high school, I was trying to find this thing in my head that just kept saying “music, music, music.” My mom used to listen to all these records, adult contemporary stuff, like Anita Baker, Luther Vandross, stuff like that and then she was into old school stuff, but what happened was I went to school one day….and the principal called me into the office and she says “Marcus, I want you to walk down the street here to this other school.” Now, you’re not supposed to be walking out of the school campus when you’re in junior high school. So she says “Walk down the street,” and I go down the street to what they called the R.D. Colburn School of Performing Arts. And it had a very big affiliation with USC at the time. They had a bunch of USC students that come in and out of there for rehearsal purposes or whatnot, so they gave me a full scholarship to attend their school until I turned 18, so I guess that was 12 to 18.

Smitty: Cool.

MC: That was a place where my influence really started….the influences of those teachers and playing the standards, and playing in small groups and really getting the opportunity to experiment with sounds, like, you know, you got your traditional quartet set-up and your traditional quintet set-up, things like that. But then you could also do other things. They would encourage you to write, they would encourage you to take music theory classes and things and then they would say “Okay, now that you’ve got this, listen to this guy, he’s gonna apply what we just talked about.”

Smitty: Oh, cool.

MC: So he would say “We’re gonna listen to….we’re gonna learn ‘Maiden Voyage.’ Now go actually listen to Herbie (Hancock) play it and listen to the application of it rather than just learning the chords.” So I think those influences started there, then there were series. We went through Duke Ellington, we went through a whole series of people. I mean, Lee Morgan, Herbie (Hancock), Chick (Corea), and then of course you mature a little bit, you start hanging out with your own crowd, and before I knew it, I was playing some very tough material, you know, that you’re not supposed to be playing when you’re in a band in high school.

Smitty: (Laughing.)

MC: And subsequently, you know, I fell in love with playing big band music, so I started my own big band.

Smitty: Did you really?

MC: Yeah. As a matter of fact, I just found some tapes of some big band stuff that I wrote and arranged a long time ago, and the guys around L.A. were just like willing to come out and just get in the studio and just record my tunes so I could hear what I wrote. And then I can go back and arrange or fix my arrangements if I didn’t like the way something sounds, so that’s how I kinda learned so much about arrangement and sounds. So the influence started back at the R.D. Colburn School.

Smitty: Wow, that’s quite a story. Talk about when you wrote your first composition and then you actually heard it. What was that like?

MC: My first composition that I ever wrote…. you’re gonna laugh. (Both laughing.) I used to listen to the radio….88.1, it’s a jazz station out here….it used to be KLON, now it’s KJAZ,….and I used to listen to that radio station every night. When I went to bed, the radio would be on and I would go to sleep listening to that radio station, so if anybody knows something about the subconscious….hearing something subconsciously, they obviously were playing a tune that I woke up and thought I wrote. (Both laughing.) I went to the piano and wrote it down, went to the Colburn School, let them play my tune, they started playing, it was like “Okay, wait a minute. This sounds too much like ‘Shining Stockings.’”

Smitty: What?

MC: (Laughing.) I thought I wrote that tune! (Both laughing.) That was the first tune I ever wrote, somebody else’s tune. Then after that I started just finding other things—I just found some chord progressions and some colors that I liked, that just like, everybody wasn’t playing. And I’m thinking “Everybody knows these chords and everybody knows these voicings, but it’s very obvious that everybody doesn’t know these chords and these voicings.” And for whatever reason, I just kind of, not capitalized, but I just really got a good understanding of those colors and I started using them in everything that I did, but as I got more into writing my own things, those colors just became signature, you know?

Smitty: Yeah, your sound.

MC: You can hear those colors in every record that I’ve ever done. There’s some signature that I put on every record. I don’t know what it is, but you kinda just know that’s me.

Smitty: How ‘bout that? That’s your vibe, man.

MC: Yeah, and people are really receptive to it. It’s like “Okay, this is something new and personal. We haven’t heard this.” It’s like, you know, Horace Silver had his signature on everything; McCoy Tyner had his signature; even Herbie has a signature.

Smitty: Oh yeah.

MC: And I didn’t realize I had my own signature. People knew….there’s a television show that I write for called GIRLFRIENDS, comes on UPN.

Smitty: Oh Yeah.

MC: People know me by listening to that show. (Both laughing.) So I get my friends that didn’t know I was actually writing that show, “Hey, man, this thing sounds like you.” Well, it’s because it is me. It’s me writing those things that started so long ago, it kinda just developed and me writing my first tune, it even started there because I hear things like that. And by me doing that show, it only enhanced my writing even more, but not only that, it taught me a skill that I could not otherwise have learned.

Smitty: Yeah.

MC: You know, I could not have learned how television music actually works. I mean, to a lot of people it’s kind of a mystery, but it’s not brain surgery.

Smitty: Yeah, I can imagine. But you gotta be in that whole scene to understand it.

MC: Right, right, and I did. It just so happened that it worked out that I did that for the last five years. From 2001 to 2005.

Smitty: Do you enjoy that aspect of making music?

MC: No.

Smitty: Yeah, I wonder because when I hear this record and I’ve watched GIRLFRIENDS and I could understand some of that vibe of doing things for TV.

MC: Right.

Smitty: This record has got to be a whole lot more enjoyable.

MC: Oh man, this record is for people that love music. What I had to do for television was just to appease a whole bunch of people who really didn’t care about the music like that. I mean, it was secondary. But the attitude behind this record for me was….the attitude was: You know what? I am not going to confine myself to being commercially correct. I’m not going to confine myself to doing music that….I’m shooting for the radio. And, you know, this is what people have been asking me for. Just be me.

And that’s what you hear right here. You just hear me just being creative; I’ve never been that type of person that is commercially correct. I don’t like commercial music. Commercial music takes away from the artistry, takes away from the creativity, because now you’re doing something corporately. (Laughing.) Which I don’t too much care for. I mean, I’ll do it if I have to.

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.

MC: Right, absolutely.

Smitty: As far as I’m concerned, it could’ve gone on for another eight minutes with me.

MC: Right. Oh yeah, oh yeah. You know how it got that long?

Smitty: No.

MC: Because I didn’t stop. (Both laughing.) I didn’t edit, I just let it go.

Smitty: Yeah, man, because it just goes and it, I mean, and the vibe is so consistent.

MC: Yeah.

Smitty: You know you’ve got a great project when people tell you that the only thing wrong with each song: it is not long enough.

MC: Not long enough, right.

Smitty: It’s kinda like if somebody put a piece of blackberry pie in front of you and you tell them after you’re finished, “There’s only thing wrong; it just wasn’t enough.”

MC: Right, not enough.

Smitty: You know, that was my feeling with this project. That’s why I have to hit repeat so much. (Laughing.)

MC: Because I gotta hear it again.

Smitty: I gotta hear it again.

MC: And you know what? I’ll tell you something else. This record, I think, was me trying to, again, not fit into the mold, which I know I don’t; number two, I’m trying to bring the sensibility that music was great….it used to be great and it can be great again. And number three, I wanted to find that audience that really appreciates this type of music, to the point of like you said, it’s not enough. Well, you have to wait for the next record because the next record’s gonna be even greater.

Smitty: Yeah. And speaking of that, I know you’re working on new material.

MC: Uh-huh.

Smitty: So give us a sneak peak.

MC: Whew.

Smitty: Woo-hoo! I got you on the spot, baby.

MC: I don’t know if I should divulge that right now. I’m not ready to unveil the masterpiece! (Both laughing.) This record, this new record, again repeating my same formula, is for people that love music. It’s going to be nostalgic.

Smitty: All right. I want one of the first copies. Well, I can’t wait for that, man, because I’m really digging this record here. Now, where can people purchase this record?

MC: Well, you can buy it directly from my Web site, www.marcuscolemanmusic.com, or you can go to www.amazon.com, or you can go to www.tower.com, you can go to www.bestbuy.com, you can go to www.cdbaby.com.

Smitty: Can we find it at www.jazzmonthlystore.com?

MC: Yes, you will be able to find it at www.jazzmonthlystore.com.

Smitty: That’s all I was looking for. (Both laughing.)

MC: Yes. Hey, I didn’t forget. I was making that last and but not least.

Smitty: But not least, okay. Well, I tell you what, Marcus, it’s a pleasure to know you, it’s a pleasure to know your music, and to know that there’s another project coming very soon.

MC: Yeah, it’s coming real soon. I’m 75% there.

Smitty: Cool. I will say to all of the fans out there that you’ve got….you should listen to this record. This is some incredible music and I will stake my reputation on it, not that….my reputation is all that much. (Both laughing.) But I must say that very few records slay me to this degree.

MC: Great.

Smitty: So by all means put this one in your CD changer. This one should come with a money-back guarantee knowing that you’re not gonna have to worry about it.

MC: There are people that are telling me they don’t even listen to jazz and they love this record. (Both laughing.)

Smitty: And, you know, that’s another thing. I think when you have people in that frame of mind where they’re open to new music and they hear it, they don’t have to be a jazz lover….

MC: No.

Smitty: ….or a jazz fan.

MC: Just good music.

Smitty: Somehow someone has got to get you out on the road so people can hear this music live because I know that the funk level goes up….

MC: Oh yeah, oh yeah. And people are expecting that. It’s like in the old days when you used to go to the show, to see Earth, Wind & Fire, you know, the show was better than the record.

Smitty: Yeah, and it should be.

MC: That’s right. That’s what I’m looking forward to, so we’ll see what happens. You know, hopefully somebody will come along and bless me with a tour of some sort.

Smitty: Marcus, it’s been a chill and a thrill my friend. Once again, it’s a self-titled CD and you can get it at www.jazzmonthlystore.com, among some other places, and Marcus, best of everything with this record and I hope to see you out on the road, my friend.

MC: Thank you.

Baldwin “Smitty” Smith

For More Information Visit www.marcuscolemanmusic.com.