Jazz Monthly.com Interview with joyce cooling

“Jazz Monthly Feature Interview” Joyce Cooling

Smitty: I’m always so happy to welcome my next guest to anything that has to do with music and I’m so happy that she’s joining me at JazzMonthly.com today. She is one of my dearest and closest friends in the business and she’s just got that sonic vibe workin’. You’ve got to hear her incredible new record. It’s called Revolving Door. It’s the follow-up to her last great project called This Girl’s Got to Play. Please welcome the amazing and wonderful Ms. Joyce Cooling. Joyce, how ya doin’?

Joyce Cooling (JC): Smitty, I’m doing great. How can I be anything else after all that? Good golly! (Laughing) That was quite an intro. Thank you. Right back at ya, by the way.

Smitty: (Laughs.) Oh, thank you. You’re so welcome and well deserved, my friend. This great record…you know, I’m trying to think. I think the last time we actually got to talk face to face, I saw you back in January at the Cerritos Performing Arts Center in Los Angeles. How ‘bout that?

JC: That’s it.

Smitty: And what a great show with you and The Rippingtons.

JC: Wasn’t that fun?

Smitty: Yeah. And it’s just great to see that you’re about to release your new project.…I know we were talking about this record back then.

JC: (Laughs.) The record that wouldn’t finish itself.

Smitty: Oh no, this is right on time.

JC: You know what? It is. We were talking a little bit off mic and this record, it was just gonna come out when it was good and ready, and as much as we pushed and shoved and prodded it, it wasn’t gonna happen. So like I said, we put our hands up in the air and it came out when it was ready and so here it is.

Smitty: Yes indeed. Now, I know you had mentioned that this record is by far the most personal recording you’ve ever made.

JC: Yes.

Smitty: And I could feel that in the music. When I put this record on….and then I have to tell you that I listen to music in different modes. I listen to it around the house and then I listen to it in the car. When I take night drives.

JC: Yeah.

Smitty: And there’s something about taking a night drive when you just kinda feel like it’s just you, the music, and the road.

JC: It is, it is, and there’s that continuum of the wheels against the pavement, there’s sort of that continuum and you’re moving through locations but yet it’s dark and you’re in your little environment of your car and it is you and the music.

Smitty: Yeah.

JC: I know what you mean. It’s a cool place to listen, I think.

Smitty: Yes indeed, and I really got deep into this record, and I’m trying to pick a favorite track, but there’s too many! (Both laughing.)

JC: Yeah, well, that’s a good problem. I’m glad you’re having that problem.

Smitty: But just to highlight a couple of them, though, the title track, it’s just got that sonic groove and I’ve gotta ask you, you must’ve used some fat strings with that guitar because it just had me beboppin’.

JC: I’m glad. You know what it is, Smitty, about that sound, really, of that guitar on the track “Revolving Door,” is I was talking to somebody else about this….there’s nothing on it. It’s just straight in. Oh, there’s a little reverb, just that kind of thing, but I didn’t go through anything, it’s just a real, straight in sound. I mean, nothing adulterated about it. And I play with my fingers, I don’t use a pick. So I know on that tune which is the title track…. and maybe this is too early to get into in the interview, “Revolving Door” is about a sort of a deep issue for me. Is this something we should talk about now or maybe later in the interview or…?

Smitty: Joyce….

JC: (Laughs.) Let her go, huh?

Smitty: You could do whatever you want, my friend. (Both laughing.)

JC: This is Smitty, this is Smitty’s show, I can do whatever I want.

Smitty: That’s right. You have carte blanche.

JC: All right, all right, then I’ll go there. But just briefly. I won’t belabor the point. We were talking about the sound of that guitar and so it’s gonna seem like “Well, why is she bringing this up?” But it all comes back to it. The meaning behind “Revolving Door” is that “Revolving Door” is really a situation that we can find ourselves in where you’re stuck on something. It can be a relationship with a person or something at work or a situation where you’re trapped in this, like, habitual pattern or a situation that just won’t fix itself. There’s no beginning, no end, and you keep going ‘round and ‘round and no solution to this problem or whatever, so I call that “you’re in the revolving door, you’re in that spinning thing.”

Smitty: I truly know what you mean.

JC: Yeah, we all do, at some point. It happens and you can’t figure out how to get out.

Smitty: Yes.

JC: And the reason I bring up “Revolving Door” in particular on this CD is I was using it as a metaphor for what’s going on with mental illness, and that’s all kinds of mental illness, everything from depression to psychotic states, and I grew up personally with a brother with schizophrenia, so the whole mental illness thing is, like, in the Dark Ages, Smitty, compared to a lot of the, you know, advances in medicine with physical afflictions and things. Mental illness is like….there’s still shame attached to it and fear and all kinds of misconceptions are still really woven into what people think of when they say mental illness. It’s a hush-hush embarrassment, it’s a shameful thing, and so all of that keeps it in the Dark Ages.

Smitty: Yes.

JC: And in the instance of my brother, he struggles with schizophrenia so he goes into the hospital and they don’t know what to do with him. They just don’t know. There’s lack of research, lack of everything. So he’s back out and still nothing’s been changed, so he’s back in and back out. So literally the mental hospital becomes a revolving door and then the whole bit with the drugs not working. The whole treatment is lacking and so that’s a revolving door. And then the situation the family finds itself in is a revolving door because we’re not qualified to deal with this. So that’s basically the whole revolving door thing, so back to the title track “Revolving Door,” how do you put all of that into words and everything you’re feeling about your brother and other people suffering with mental illness and the whole thing that’s wrong with the health care system and all that, how do you put that in words?

Smitty: I totally know what you mean.

JC: So the song had to be an instrumental and when we started writing “Revolving Door,” it didn’t have that title. It just came out and there was some angst in it. It’s kind of a slow shuffle and it’s bluesy and there’s angst in it but yet there’s hope, the bridge lifts to like a brighter key and there’s hope and all, so when we got finished writing it, I said “Jay (Wagner) I think this is ‘Revolving Door.’ I think this is what we’ll call it.” And when I was playing the solo, it’s not a solo with a lotta finesse. It’s like, kinda yanking on the strings and, like I mentioned, I play with my fingers so I’m kind of literally like grabbing the strings sometimes and just pulling it, and so it took on like a different tone for me. So it’s kind of a little bit raw with no effects and not a real dolled up sound. So maybe that’s a little longer explanation.

Smitty: No, I think it’s great and I love it. I think it’s great when you can explain that and really put that into words because the music is incredible. I mean, I was just captured by that song like you wouldn’t believe.

JC: Oh, I’m glad. Thank you.

Smitty: And it’s always great to hear the story behind a song. And then what I love is the selection in which you placed them on the record because you follow that up with this great tune “At the Modern.” Music is a journey in most cases.

JC: It is, isn’t it?

Smitty: And when you’re on a journey, you like to enjoy a variety of things while you’re on that journey.

JC: Right.

Smitty: And I think you really have captured that and taken us on this great diverse musical journey because you’re using a variety of guitars, I could tell.

JC: Yeah, a whole bunch of ‘em.

Smitty: Yeah, but you gotta love that because if you just hear the same guitar all the time, it’s like okay…

JC: (Laughs.) Got any other tricks in your bag there?

Smitty: Yeah, well, it kinda helps you to keep you in that little suspense of “I wonder what the next song is gonna sound like, and I really got into that.

JC: Cool.

Smitty: And I love “Come and Get It.”

JC: (Laughs.)

Smitty: That is so cool. I love that guitar. You’ve gotta talk to me about some of the guitars you used on this record because you really mixed it up great.

JC: Okay. We did use a lotta different stuff and on that track, you know what I love? My favorite thing about that track is I love Jay’s B3 solo.

Smitty: I know!

JC: Organ solo. Oh my God! I love that solo he takes. It’s got so much personality. I don’t know why, but I love it. I’ve loved B3 since I was a little kid.

Smitty: Yeah, it just grabs your soul.

JC: Oh, God, and I grew up around Newark, New Jersey and the whole B3 tradition going on there….I came up going to all those clubs and again, too, they didn’t care about age. They didn’t care if you show an I.D. to be old enough to get into the club, so I heard everybody. I heard Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, I heard Jimmy Smith, I heard, oh, everybody came through that circuit.

Smitty: It was such a melting pot for great musicians.

JC: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Smitty: But, yeah, I love that B3 solo too in that song.

JC: Yeah, it’s great, he takes a great solo. I love it. It’s got a lot of personality and heart, and that song was kinda dipping back to my Newark, New Jersey days where it’s a shuffle and it’s not to slam dunk that style by any means. It’s a little, you know, it’s different, but it’s got the little tinge for me of that stuff that I used to listen to. Even though it’s not that style, it’s definitely influenced by it. So, yeah, that was like a really fun track for us to do. That was kinda like, again, that warp we keep talking about, brought me back home. It’s like warm and friendly to me.

Smitty: Yeah. Well, talk to me about “Jesse’s Bench,” the title, because first of all, the song is great, very cool song, but I just wondered “How did she come up with that title? There’s gotta be a story behind ‘Jesse’s Bench.’”

JC: There is, there is. Jesse was a neighborhood guy and he’s since passed on, but he was a guitar builder in his day and he ended up struggling with some things personally and he was on the street quite a bit, but he was one of those guys that…everybody loved him. He was one of the most beloved guys in our neighborhood. And he always sat in the same place on the street.

We’d Come by, “Jess, you hungry? Need a cup of coffee?” or whatever, and he was an extremely bright and soulful guy. People would sit down and talk to Jesse for hours on end. It seemed like he sort of, like, preached is not the word at all for Jesse…he gave solace to people, people would talk to him about stuff, he always read the paper so he was up on every current event. People just sat and talked to Jesse. He was there for years and always sat at this one place, at this one bench, and when he died, it was sad because he was struggling with being indigent and it was the kind of thing where….I don’t know the whole story about it, but he got moved from one hospital to another because he didn’t have insurance, you know, that whole story.

Smitty: That’s a shame.

JC: But yeah. But everybody missed him and so there was this shrine put up and even now people, like, left things and made things and they’re kind of glued to his bench, and so I thought, hey, “Jesse’s Bench.”

Smitty: How ‘bout that? Well, that was very cool of you to do the song.

JC: Everybody loved Jesse, you know?

Smitty: That is so cool. Well, this is such a great record and I love the way you began this project with “Mildred’s Attraction” too. (Both laughing.) I missed that song. Oh, what a great record to open with. Please talk to me about some of the guitars you used.

JC: Okay. I have my big ol’ fat jazz guitar that was on, oh, a lot of the tunes like on “Mildred’s Attraction” I used my bigger guitar. “At the Modern” is my nylon string guitar, but my nylon string, that’s an acoustic-electric. So that’s like a different one than, say, on “In Case of Rain,” that like solo nylon guitar piece.

Smitty: Yeah.

JC: Brazilian percussion on it.

Smitty: Yes.

JC: That one…I have a friend who’s got the most amazing guitar. Matter of fact, we just had dinner with those guys last night and I just love his guitar and I just said “David, you gotta lend me this.” He said “Oh yeah, take it, take it as long as you want,” so I took it and it’s this beautiful handmade classical guitar, and I brought it in to the studio and I wasn’t quite used to it so I had to kind of work with it for a couple weeks to get used to it. So I just went in and did that tune on David’s guitar and sadly I had to return the guitar.

Smitty: (Laughs.)

JC: Sucks, sucks, sucks. Then I used another acoustic nylon guitar on “One Again,” the very last track of the CD, but it’s funny. “One Again” is about my aunt and uncle, and Smitty, they had one of the only true, true love affairs I’ve ever witnessed. Not all this stuff like “Oh, I can’t live without you, baby” and, you know, that stuff is like, oh my God, you’re just like counting the days til the divorce.

Smitty: (Laughs.)

JC: I mean the real deal. These guys were a team, they were best friends. I mean, it was just a great love affair and everybody loved being around them.

Smitty: That’s beautiful.

JC: That uncle was a guitar player and he kinda gave me my first start in music, one of ‘em, and way back when he also, later on, after he retired from the road and traveling, and he had five kids and lived in New York, in the city. And when he retired he opened a guitar store, and he hand picked….he played through hundreds of guitars….hand picked all these really inexpensive but beautiful guitars, and so I call it my beach guitar. It was like a $30 guitar.

Smitty: Wow.

JC: I love that thing. It’s my oldest guitar. It’s the first one I ever played, the first one I learned on, and it was supposed to be for the family but I kind of confiscated it. “I’ll be taking this, thank you.” And so I thought why not, since this song “One Again” is written for them, why don’t I play his guitar that he gave us back then. So I did, I used that original guitar on that track. Yeah, so it’s not like a fine handmade instrument, not at all, but it was one that he hand picked, and to this day it’s still my favorite guitar. I love that thing. If I’m just gonna like pick up and play some chords or write a little thing, that’s always the guitar I go to. It’s always been.

Smitty: Yeah. Well, you know, you are true to your words when you said that this was the most personal project you’ve ever done.

JC: By far.

Smitty: Because you kept it so personal in so many of those little ways that mean so much, I think that’s really cool.

JC: At least to me, and I hope someone else can glean something intimate from it, you know what I mean? Something personal.

Smitty: I truly think so because this is the kind of music that causes you to reflect and to really think about yourself, and at the same time you can get into a nice little groove too.

JC: Oh, good.

Smitty: I mean, yeah, there’s dance music on here. Come on!

JC: Yeah, well, no, there is, there is some dance stuff on there. No, I know what you mean because that’s a part of life too. It’s all a part of it and the other thing is, this one I felt so different when I was making this CD than any other CD. I’m struggling to put it into words. I guess because of the whole mental illness thing, and Jay and I are gonna donate a portion of our proceeds to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), and I’m not doing this to shine a light on me at all. This is not about me, this is about the cause. But the reason I bring this up is that I think when a person, or maybe I should just speak about myself, me, I’ll just speak about myself and see if anybody else feels this way. When I’m doing something not like out of the realm of me, I’m stronger.

Smitty: Yes.

JC: If I’m doing a CD like, okay, “CD of our music” and I certainly get behind it, but not like…like I’ll go to the mat for this mental illness thing, this NAMI thing. I’ll go to the mat for it. I won’t go to the mat for myself.

Smitty: Yeah.

JC: You know what I mean? And I’m not….again, I’m not trying to shine a light on me about “Oh, what a nice person.” Not, please, not at all.

Smitty: Oh, no.

JC: It’s not about me. I’m just….I’m better when it’s for something else. And since this one is for something else, I think as people we rise to that occasion or calling, do you know what I mean?

Smitty: Yes indeed, and I think it’s one of those things that as humans we readily identify with.

JC: Mm-hmm.

Smitty: Because not just mental illness, but mental illness is something that we all are familiar with, either be it a relative or a friend of a relative.

JC: Ourselves.

Smitty: Yeah.

JC: How many times have we struggled with a problem? We wouldn’t be diagnosed as clinically struggling with mental illness, but how many times have we gotten into a funk. People can relate to getting into a funk they can’t break out of for some reason.

Smitty: Yeah, absolutely.

JC: Maybe it lasts a few days longer than it should. We can all relate to that.

Smitty: Yes indeed, and that’s why I love the therapeutic value of great music like this record here, Revolving Door.

JC: Mm-hmm.

Smitty: Absolutely. I think music….and I know I’ve said this so many times….I really think that music has a deeper therapeutic value than we know.

JC: Oh, it’s so…yeah, more than we’ll ever know. It’s on almost a mystical level that’s beyond understanding of exactly how it works but yet we know it works.

Smitty: Yeah, yeah.

JC: It’s on a very deep, kind of mystical, spiritual level that music affects people.

Smitty: Exactly, absolutely.

JC: And also on a very, let’s say, unmystical plane, whether or not this is necessarily a cause that someone is particularly attached to or connected to. And this is, again, this is almost embarrassing to talk about, and I hope, you know, I don’t want this to come out wrong.

Smitty: Oh, no.

JC: But this is not a sales pitch. Of course I want the record to sell, but this is not why I’m saying it, but when somebody picks up the CD, whether or not mental illness is a part of what they’re personally connected to, you’re helping that cause.

Smitty: Yes indeed.

JC: Physically some money will go to NAMI for mental illness, but also it’s sort of perpetuating, hopefully, on a different plane, just that awareness, and even if you can raise awareness in a couple people or in a few people a little bit, then it’s better than not having done it all.

Smitty: Yes, you are so right. Plus there are also other benefits. Getting the record, certainly you’re going to be benefiting NAMI but also you’re benefiting yourself by getting some great music. I mean, this is a great record. I mean, normally we would just get great music, but now we’re able to help out some other people that are in need, so I love it, yeah.

JC: Mm-hmm. This one was just more personal and deeper for me, way deeper for me. After you make a few CD’s or anything, not just CD’s, whatever it is a person does, after they’ve written so many books or taught so many classes or put out so many fires or made so many presentations, you have to start searching a bit for what’s the meaningful here? How can I impart something, give something to either….whoever you’re giving a mission to, whatever it is that you do….how can you up the bar? How can you reach out more? How can you just raise the level?

Smitty: Yes. I know what you mean.

JC: And so for me, since I’m a musician, this is what I do. I feel I can say this confidently on a personal level. Now whether anybody else will feel this or not, it’s truly up to them. But on a personal level, I have raised my own bar.

Smitty: That’s cool. I think if we all did that, the world would be a much better place. .

JC: We are doing it. Don’t you find, though?

Smitty: Yes.

JC: With every interview you do, don’t you find yourself “Well, how can I…?” You know? I know you care a lot about your interviews. We were talking about it off mic. You’ve thought about this.

Smitty: Oh yeah, I take it very personal and I always have the musician or the artist in mind because I think here’s where I can make a difference, I hope. So I wanna do the best I can at making a difference in getting the music out there and keeping it fresh.

JC: Right. You’re not sitting here with me with some straight set of questions that you ask everybody just to get through the interview and get this done. You know, you’re passionate about this, so each and every interview you do, you take it to another realm. I mean, otherwise, why? Why do it?

Smitty: Yeah, exactly, I like that. Yeah, why do it if you’re not going to really do it in a way that everyone can feel it and benefit from it and really digest it, yeah.

JC: Mm-hmm.

Smitty: I think you’re right. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate that.

JC: Well, it’s true. I know a lot of musicians will vouch for that. It’s so obvious when you do interviews. Not that you don’t, you know, wanna jot things down that come across your mind, not that at all, but that…You know what I mean, like that whole set of stock questions. That no matter who you’re talking to about what kind of music, you just ask the same stuff.

Smitty: Oh yeah.

JC: You don’t do that.

Smitty: No, I couldn’t.

JC: No, you couldn’t. But, you know, it happens.

Smitty: Yeah, and again it’s variety in interviewers, variety in things that we see in the world. There’s just such a variety of ways of doing things and, for example, the variety in your sound and the way you make music versus another guitarist.

JC: Mm-hmm.

Smitty: And we love your style. (Both laughing.)

JC: Well, that’s good. I am glad about that. I’ll make no bones about that. I’m thrilled.

Smitty: Oh yeah. When I was listening to the record, I said to myself, “This is a nice diverse record.” It has so many guitars, I couldn’t wait to talk about the strings and everything. Because you could hear all of this great music and it wasn’t this same salad being tossed over and over and over. But it was something new and fresh every time out with each track and that’s what I loved about it, and it was so personal. I loved it. I still love it.

JC: I’m thrilled, Smitty, and you were right when you said that “You must’ve had some big fat strings.” Even if I used the same guitar, we found ourselves, like, “Well, hey, let’s throw another gauge set of strings on this.” Even the gauges of strings are constantly changing. And I hadn’t done that on other guitars before. It was kind of like, well, here’s my axe and I always like to play a little bit of acoustic guitar, nylon string guitar, but on this one also we played two different steel string acoustic guitars. So we kinda ran the gamut, but you were right when you heard the string difference, the caliber difference, and that’s very true. We did that. I mean, that’s a good ear.

Smitty: Yes, and whether the listener knows that or not, they’re gonna feel that great fresh vibe every time out for each track. I think they’re gonna feel that and embrace it, I really do, and I did immediately.

JC: I hope so, I hope so.

Smitty: I’ve been wanting to ask you something: At some point I remember reading somewhere that you talked about….how do I say this? (Laughs.)

JC: It’s all right. Let ‘er rip. It’s the Smitty Show.

Smitty: You said that you were sitting outside The Vanguard…

JC: Uh-huh.

Smitty: …and the bartender would let you sit on the steps but he wouldn’t let you in because you were underage.

JC: Right.

Smitty: But I remember you saying something about hearing everybody there while sitting on the front steps. I could just see you sitting there with your ear to the door or just listening, and I often wondered what did you hear? Talk about some of the things you heard from the steps.

JC: Oh, Smitty, I heard everybody. I heard literally Joe Henderson and I heard Woody Shaw, I heard Thelonious Monk, I heard….everybody came to The Vanguard, and in the summertime they’d leave the door open because it’s so hot down there. The Vanguard is down below the street. It’s down in the West Village, and it’s in New York and it’s down below the street and people would smoke and it’s a very small little place with no windows.

The only entrance to the outside world was that door at the bottom of the steps that would open up, and they would leave that open in the summer and plus the bartender knew how much I loved the music. He’d leave it open a crack so I could hear better and he was really cool. I don’t know who that was or I wouldn’t recognize them if I saw them on the street, but I owe them a lot. That was like school for me. It was a really exciting time. You know where else I used to go on my breaks from the little clubs where I was playing down in The Village was 7^th Avenue South, which was the Brecker Brothers’ club.

Smitty: Wow.

JC: Brecker owned a club kinda diagonally across the street from The Vanguard, like a little further down 7^th Avenue and then across the street, and theirs was the opposite situation where Eric Gale and all those guys used to play was upstairs, and they were so musician friendly that all the musicians on their breaks would come around the corner, whatever, and go in and just hang out on the steps. They’d let ‘em come up and listen and then we’d all have to watch our watches and when the break was over leave. That was years later, but New York was like that. And then Sweet Basil was more like you had to press your face up against the glass, 7^th Avenue too, right across, really, from 7^th Avenue South. They weren’t like The Vanguard….the guy at The Vanguard was special. That was really special because it could be snowing or raining or whatever and you could sit down in that little cubbyhole freezing your butt off sometimes, but that music, my God, I mean, everybody….we heard everybody.

Smitty: That’s so cool.

JC: It was so cool.

Smitty: You were just destined to play, you know?

JC: Yeah, I think I was. It was, yeah, yeah, I’ll agree with that.

Smitty: Yeah. It’s those kind of things that really start to shape your musicality, your musicianship, before you even knew it.

JC: Mm-hmm.

Smitty: Because those things, I think, tend to stay with us more than we know.

JC: Oh yeah, yeah. They become part of you. It’s so funny how we as people, a lotta times we always term things or we label things in terms of the physical, like when a child is growing or developing you talk about how they’re building strong bones 12 ways. Their cells are dividing, they’re growing taller or they’re this, they’re that, but at the same time your experiences, I think, are affecting you on a cellular level. I think that your experiences, they’re inside you, they are a part of you as much as your bones and skin and hair are.

Smitty: Yes. They become a permanent influence, I think.

JC: Permanent, permanent. They’re in your bones. It’s in your bone marrow now and it ain’t going anywhere.

Smitty: No, I think you’re right. Well, going back to the record, I just love this record so much, I just want to thank you for taking so much time to do this record the way you did. You and Jay both and everybody else that had anything to do with this record, I think you did it right, I think it sounds right, it’s fantastic, and…

JC: Thank you.

Smitty: You are so welcome. And I wanna thank everybody at Narada because I know that they had some interworkings with the record and all of that.

JC: Very much so.

Smitty: People like Jill Weindorf, Mario Martin, Anne Aufderheide…

JC: Rich Denhart.

Smitty: Yeah, Rich.

JC: Connie Gage, those guys were like, you know, side by side.

Smitty: Yes, and I wanna thank my good friends over at A-Train (Entertainment) too.

JC: Oh yeah, Al (Evers).

Smitty: Al and Dan.

JC: Oh yeah, all those guys.

Smitty: Yeah, because these records are a team effort. I know you guys are the nucleus, the main cog, but the support around a record is so much a part of it too, and I just wanted to not forget them for the beautiful work that they do.

JC: I could not agree with you more. No, hands down, any musician will tell you that you can’t do this alone. This is very much a vibrant team effort. So you’re absolutely right in saying that.

Smitty: Thank you. So now, we’ve got a tour coming?

JC: We do. Stuff is starting to bubble up there. In September we’re going to one of my favorite cities, I love it. We’re gonna kick off September going to Detroit.

Smitty: I knew you were gonna say that.

JC: I love Detroit. You know I do.

Smitty: Yeah.

JC: We’ve talked about this. I just have this thing. I don’t know what it is. I love the people, but it’s just, you know, there’s a special energy when we play there. It feels good. And we’re going….I’m really looking forward to this….going to Korea, to Seoul later on in September, and I have been to Southeast Asia before to play as a musician. Never, never have I been to Korea and certainly have not played there, so, man, that’s gonna be way cool. Yeah, I’m really looking forward to that.

Smitty: You’re gonna have to tell me about that one when you get back.

JC: Oh, you bet. I’m looking forward to it. What an opportunity, and especially, like we were saying with the way everything’s going down right now, to get an invitation to go, I felt really honored, really happy to be invited…and then we’re gonna come out to Texas.

Smitty: You know I will be there for that.

JC: Putting something together. I’m gonna try to make a little splash there. And each and every place we go, I don’t know if we’ll be able to do it there so much, we’re going to invite NAMI and try to do something with them…

Smitty: Oh great.

JC: …and raise awareness, so the concerts will kinda have a real soulful vibe to ‘em. It’ll be a good thing. So this is gonna be a different tour for us.

Smitty: Excellent. I like it.

JC: Yeah, it’s gonna be, I think, if I may crow, we’re one upping our previous situation. And I can’t take credit for it with the involvement of all these other people.

Smitty: Yes, and that’s so cool, I love that.

JC: Yeah, so I’m more excited than ever, really, to kick this one off.

Smitty: Well, I certainly look forward to it and…

JC: And I know I’ll be seeing you.

Smitty: Yes indeed. You certainly will. Well, Joyce, you know it’s always a pleasure and an honor to talk with you.

JC: Likewise.

Smitty: And it’s always great when you’ve got some new music coming out and I have just totally embraced this one and I highly recommend it for everyone’s collection.

JC: Great.

Smitty: It’s called Revolving Door and, Joyce, best of everything in 2006 and beyond with the record, with your career, and all the great things that you’re doing with NAMI. Much love to ya and you’re to be congratulated for all the things that you’re doing right now.

JC: Smitty, way deep in my heart, right back at ya. Truly, you know, just all the best and I can’t thank you enough for doing this.

Smitty: Oh, you’re so welcome.

JC: And with everybody. Really, you know, you just spend time to get the music out there and we don’t get to get the word out without you doing stuff like this, so a heartfelt right back at ya.

Smitty: Thank you so much. Well, we’ve been talking with the fantastic and lovely Ms. Joyce Cooling. She has a great new project out. It’s called Revolving Door. You’ve got to check this one out. The street date is September 12th. Get set for some great music, wonderful grooves, and it’s for a wonderful cause as well. Joyce, thanks again and much love to ya.

JC: Likewise. Thank you, Smitty.

Baldwin “Smitty” Smith

For More Information Visit www.joycecooling.com or www.naradajazz.com or www.nami.org