Jazz Monthly.com Interview with down to the bone

“Jazz Monthly Feature Interview” Down to the Bone

Smitty: It certainly is my pleasure to welcome to www.jazzmonthly.com for the very first time a super group that has a very nice CD, it’s called Supercharged, and let me tell ya, it’s got the thump, it’s got the bump, it’s got the hip and the hop. You’ve got to check out this new record. Representing this fantastic group Down to the Bone is the incredible, Mr. Stuart Wade. Stuart, how are you, my friend? Welcome to Jazz Monthly!

Stuart Wade (SW): I’m doing fine, thanks, Smitty.

Smitty: Very cool. You cats really pumped it up with this record, man. I love the groove from start to finish.

SW: Oh, cool, yeah. I wanted to go all out on this one and just make it as raw and as funky as possible ‘cause it sort of represents the music that I love, and it’s sort of no holds barred on this one.

Smitty: Yeah, man. Well, talk to me a little bit about the history of Down to the Bone just for the fans, I know you’ve had a couple of bands before Down to the Bone, but talk about how Down to the Bone really got started.

SW: Well, basically I was in a soul band called Think Twice and there were four of us, two producers and then two musicians. It was getting a little bit poppy, so what I wanted to do is I wanted to take one of the tracks and do a funked up version, so I took it upon myself to go into a studio away from the others and I took this one track and I was basically stripping it down to the raw essentials of just bass, drums, guitar and the vocals, and then I put some extra grooves on top of it, and I had to come up with this name for this remix, so I said “so what am I doing here?” I’m basically stripping it down to the bone, so I basically called it the “Down to the Bone Remix.”

Smitty: (Laughs.)

SW: And the remix, the actual version I did, took off really well. There’s a dance radio station here called KISS FM and it was in their Top 10 play list on KISS FM for weeks on end and DJ’s across the country were playing it, so then I sort of thought, well, it would be silly not to take it on as a full-on project and the Think Twice thing was sort of coming to an end, so I and the keyboardist from Think Twice, Simon Greenaway, went into the studio and between the two of us, we came up with “Staten Island Groove” and from the remix I had this whole concept of this Down to the Bone project, and also there was a club I was going to in London at the time called ‘To The Bone’, and they were playing a mixture of all the stuff I love, which is basically jazz, funk, soul, a little bit of Brazilian, so the title also came from that club as well.

Smitty: So that name was just destined to be, you know?

SW: Yeah, I was saying “to the bone” or “down to the bone.” Everything I was doing was just leading to that one name.

Smitty: Yeah, well, it’s a great name, man, and I think people totally identify with it, but now they’re gonna really identify with this great horn section on this latest record because it just adds a great new dimension to what you cats normally do. It’s got a funky groove.

SW: Well, I’m really glad you said that because that is the whole intention. In the past it was just basically two saxes with the flutes on top, but now because I meet new people, I’m learning all the time, I’ve now got a big group of musicians to call upon. I thought, well, I really wanna take it to where I wanted to go at the beginning, before I knew all these musicians, so I now want to incorporate a full horn section. It just gives it this whole more powerful edge.

Smitty: Yes it does. The title track “Supercharged,” man, what a song!

SW: (Laughs.) Yeah, I mean, that sort of sums up the whole concept of the whole album and I think this entire album and the title track “Supercharged,” I think it really shows what Down to the Bone is and it’s taking me to the place that I wanted to get to when I first started all this, but as you do with any business, you always learn as you’re going along, so you’re going on this journey, and I’ve always been, I feel, aiming to get to this funk groove place, and I think with this album I’m the closest, I think.

Smitty: Yeah, man, ‘cause it’s got the funk and it’s got the groove. Now, talk to me about the band, introduce the band.

SW: Well, to be quite honest, and this will probably get confusing, there’s been essentially two bands. There’s the live side of the band that goes out on tour and Shilts, the saxophonist who’s also on the album, is the band leader, and the live side is made up from guys who are based in L.A. because, to be quite honest, there’s not enough money to fly a U.K. band over from the U.K. to perform in America anymore because venues aren’t paying as much so there’s not as many gigs.

So there’s a full-on L.A.-based band and other people involved are Katisse Buckingham, who’s the second saxophonist. He also is an amazing flute player and he also does a rap on stage as well. There’s a track we do called “Vinyl Junkie” and he’s written this rap that goes on top of it, so it’s got this whole urban rap vibe on it as well. And there’s Bill Steinway, who’s on keyboards, in the live band as well. But then there’s also the guys that I usually call on in the U.K. because obviously living in the U.K. I know the studios here. There are whole sets of guys here. The new addition would be the D.C. Horns, which is Jon Radford on trumpet and flugelhorn; Bob Dowell, who plays trombone; and Pete Grogan, who plays alto sax; and then there’s bass player Julian Crampton, who I always use—he was with Incognito—and Tony Remy on guitar, the most amazing guitarist I’ve ever worked with. So there’s a whole host of different musicians who basically make up the concept of Down to the Bone based around myself writing and producing all the tracks. Musician-wise there isn’t really a full-time Down to the Bone act. It’s myself calling on all the guys who I basically trust to do the best job.

Smitty: You’ve selected some great guys to do the job because this is a great record. Talk to me about the third track, “Parkside Shuffle.” I love that one.

SW: I probably don’t do this the conventional way, but what I do is I’ll do the music first, build up the groove, finish the track, and I don’t usually title the tracks until after they’re finished because then that way I listen to the track a couple of times and I build up this mental picture of the feel of the track, then I come up with a title that I feel fits the track so that when you look at the title it justifies the track. I mean, it’s the same with titling the album Supercharged.

Smitty: Yeah, I can dig it.

SW: I couldn’t title the album until I knew I had enough tracks that could justify giving it the title of Supercharged, and I also don’t put funk in a title of a track until I know that the track is justifiably funky. So to be quite honest, the titles are probably the hardest thing I do.

Smitty: (Laughs.)

SW: I don’t wanna give a really good track this really lame title because a lot of people will pick up the CD, read, and the CD tells the story of the sort of music that’s inside, so you read the titles and you look at the picture and you build up this mental image of what the album will probably sound like.

Smitty: Yeah, that’s a great approach. I know you had some very cool highlights along the way with this record and one of them had to be working with Roy Ayers.

SW: Oh my God, yeah.

Smitty: Yeah, talk about that experience and what that was like for ya.

SW: Well, Roy Ayers has been, in my opinion, prolific in all the funk groove soul movements since the sixties when he first started out. Then in the U.K. we had Brit funk, which was in the eighties, and there were a lot of people who would listen to Roy and go “Oh, I love that stuff. I’m gonna go form my own band.” You had bands like High Tension, a whole load of other bands, and then you had the acid jazz movement and the rare groove movement where people were rediscovering the old stuff from the seventies and eighties and sixties, and Roy Ayers was very prominent in all that side of it as well, but you’d hear the music and you’d think, oh yeah, there’s a definite Roy Ayers influence there.

And then there’s the new beat stuff that’s coming out of London at the moment and when you listen to it you could hear there’s a Roy Ayers influence in that, so throughout my musical learning period as you’d call it, Roy Ayers has always been there. He has always been a huge idol of mine and I never thought I’d get to the stage where I could justifiably ring someone up like him and say “Would you play on my music?” Because it’s a very sort of like, oh, is it good enough for him to play on and all that sort of stuff, and now I’m at the stage where I’m the most happiest musically. I feel I can justifiably ring him up where I had this track and tracked him down by his manager and sent him the track, and he basically said he loved it, wanted to play on it, so he did the vibe parts and the vocal bits that he’s done on top of it, sent it back to me, then I basically cut it up and pieced it all together, but I had this surreal conversation with him. I found myself on the phone and I was saying the words “Hi, can I speak to Mr. Roy Ayers, please?” And it just felt like I was in a dream world.

Smitty: (Laughs.)

SW: And he comes on the phone and starts talking and you get this really stupid moment where you feel like you’re just about to say “Roy Ayers, you sound just like you do on your records.”

Smitty: (Laughs.)

SW: And you have to stop yourself from coming out with these really stupid comments ‘cause you’re so blown away ‘cause you’re talking to this guy on the phone.

Smitty: Yeah, I know what you mean, man. (Both laugh.) That’s kinda funny. Well, I love that track that you guys did, what is it, “Electric Vibes.”

SW: “Electric Vibes,” yeah, yeah. I mean, I had Roy Ayers in mind when I did it, but I didn’t get in touch with him until I was confident enough that the track was where it was. I felt, in honor of him, I had to do a track that would justify him playing on it. And I think, I mean, you know, I hope I achieved that. I certainly think that when you play it, without a doubt you can tell it’s Roy Ayers.

Smitty: Oh, man, no doubt and he can still cook, you know?

SW: Oh, definitely. He’s such a cool bloke. And he lives the groove. It was instantaneous. When he heard it, he basically hummed the parts over the phone to me. He was going “Oh yeah, I can really get into this” and he started humming it.

Smitty: (Laughs.)

SW: I was going “Don’t…no…record now, press record now!” He knew exactly what to do. Of course he would. He lives for the groove basically.

Smitty: No doubt. You’ve got some great vocalists on here too: Hil St. Soul on “Smile to Shine.” That’s a great track. Her voice is just made for what you guys do. I mean, it’s like she just walked in the room and just fell right into that groove.

SW: Yeah, I worked with Hil St. Soul on the Crazy Vibes and Things album that I did when I was on Verve and she did the track “My One and All,” so I had worked with her before, but this track that she’s singing on this time is slightly funkier. It’s got this whole rawer groove. What I usually do is I’ll do the music and then I’ll send her the track, and I basically let her write the vocal parts on top. She even titled it “Smile to Shine” herself. So I left all that side of it up to her because I thought, well, I didn’t want to get in the way of her creativity. I just wanted her to feel the music and write the song that she felt fitted the music rather than me interfering, so in that way we sort of split the music in half.

Smitty: It’s tight.

SW: Like yourself, I really feel that with my music and then her vocals on top, the two seem to work really, really well together and that she’s fantastic to work with. She’s a great vocalist as well.

Smitty: Yes, man. The track just has that club groove, you know? All of this music, really, this’ll make your grandma wanna get up and bust a move, you know?

SW: (Laughs.) Well, basically, in a sense, what I have lived with, I’ve always listened to the funky groove stuff and I’ve always gone to the funky clubs and then I’ve always gone to see the funky bands, so basically this CD is the true me and the true music that I love.

Smitty: Yes, man, and what about Corrina Greyson, what a great track, “Shake It Up.”

SW: Oh, “Shake It Up,” yeah, yeah. Corrina, she came to the studio here and I basically had this rough vocal part written out, so she basically had sung it, but she’s the girlfriend of—there’s a guy called Neil Cowley, who I work with on keys—he has his own jazz trio that he does and the drummer, Irvin Jenkins—Irvin Jenkins’ girlfriend is Corrina, and I’d heard about her and I’d had this impression of I wanted this like sort of real edgy, bluesy type vocals on this track, so I went to see her. She runs events where she has DJ’s and bands playing on stage and she features her own band and her own act, so I went to see her sing and I knew instantly since she sung that her voice was the right voice for this track.

Smitty: Start to finish, this entire project has just a funky groove. I mean, it doesn’t slow down, it doesn’t stop you in the middle, it just says continue the groove, let’s party all night.

SW: Absolutely. What I’m trying to make when I do an album, I’m trying to make each track as strong as the one that you just heard. That’s partly because I buy a lot of what we term as rare groove over here. It’s the real hard to find old funk albums and stuff like that, but you’d buy it on hearing one track, this amazing track. You’ve gotta buy the album, but then the whole of the album wouldn’t be as good as the one track you’d heard.

Smitty: I’m there on that.

SW: So I thought, well, I think it’s important to basically tell a story with each album when you do it, but also make each track as strong as the others so you don’t end up with what are termed as album fillers. I think it’s important so that when people listen to an album you don’t want them to fast forward between tracks; you want them to listen to the album from beginning to end.

Smitty: Exactly! You also said that every album that you’ve done with Down to the Bone has been a learning process. How has it been a learning process?

SW: Well, basically, because I’m a non-musician, I don’t come from a musical background, I wasn’t taught music at school, so in a sense I threw myself in at the deep end. All I knew was what I loved and I knew that the tracks have to tell a story and have a beginning, middle and an end, and all that sort of stuff, so I had this idea that I really wanted to start off, but I didn’t have any of the contacts, I didn’t know how to run a studio, I did not have a music business then, so all the musicians that I work with now I’ve had to find and then you build up a rapport and then you’ll do an album one way and you think, oh, yeah, next time I’ll do it differently because you learn through your mistakes. Well, one of the most important things to me is communication because I have to tell the musicians what I want from them and I have to understand what it is exactly that I want. If you have to take too long about it, then you waste so much more time and money, so you learn how to communicate quicker and you learn how to not do things in the mix and stuff like that, so a little bit you learn through experimenting like I have done.

Smitty: Right. Just listening to your music over the years, the learning process that you are experiencing is a very cool one.

SW: Good.

Smitty: Because all of the projects that you cats have done have always been super cool and this one is just at the top of the pile, you know?

SW: Excellent. Well, rather the top at this stage than at the bottom, otherwise I’m going the wrong way.

Smitty: (Laughs.) Oh, man, yeah. Now, this one comes out, what, June 19th?

SW: June the 19th, in America.

Smitty: Well, you’ve got my stamp of endorsement. This is one fantastic project with some great band members and a super groove, and I can’t say enough about that horn section, the D.C. Horns.

SW: D.C. Horns, yeah, in the pocket.

Smitty: And you are working on the tour?

SW: Well, the tour, I mean, it’s not a—we don’t really get to do full-on tours as we used to where we’d be playing solidly for three, four weeks. It’s odd dates. But basically my manager and my agent, they fix up the dates that they can get. Shilts, he’ll be rehearsing—I just spoke to Shilts today. He’s actually scoring out the new tracks ‘cause we hope to feature four or five of the new tracks off of this album within the sets.

Smitty: Oh, cool.

SW: So he’s going out with that with the guys in L.A. at the moment and then we’ve got basically four dates that are upcoming to try to sort of push the new release.

Smitty: Well, the audiences for those four dates are in for a treat.

SW: Oh yes, definitely. To be honest, with the live show we always try to make it a party vibe. The main aim is that whatever we do on stage, it’s to just try and blow everybody away and to make sure that people are not sitting down. We always try to get people standing up, dancing in the aisles, whatever, so that it creates this whole party atmosphere so that then the audience, I think, then feels like their contributing to it as well, so that the band can then feed off the audience and the audience can feed off the band.

Smitty: Yeah, man. Well, you’ve got some great grooves here to do it with.

SW: Thanks, Smitty.

Smitty: All right, man. Well, I’m looking forward to hearing some comments from the audience from this great record once it’s released because this is something to definitely anticipate because it’s a great record. All right, give me your Web site.

SW: Well, the Web site is www.downtothebone.com.

Smitty: All right, so they’ll get to hear about this record and see the dates that you cats have lined up for the tour and that kind of thing on your site.

SW: Oh, yeah. And there’s also a My Space as well, which actually has even other bits of information. It also has sound bites on the My Space and there’s a link from the Web site to the My Space page as well.

Smitty: Oh, very cool. Yeah, everybody loves that My Space.

SW: Yeah, I think more bands seem to be using My Space than their own Web sites these days.

Smitty: Yeah, exactly, and it seems to be catching on.

SW: Yeah, yeah.

Smitty: All right, man. Well, Stuart, once again, man, congratulations on this great new record.

SW: Thank you very much, Smitty. Thanks for the interest of the interview as well.

Smitty: Yes indeed, my friend. It’s always a pleasure and always love to hear what you cats are up to and what you’re coming out with, so I’m sure this is something to really anticipate for all of your fans.

SW: Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. I’m really excited about this album because it’s really getting me to the stage that I feel I’ve been trying to get to with all the past albums.

Smitty: Absolutely, my friend. All right, well, Stuart, hopefully I’ll see you when you come to the States, my friend.

SW: Yeah, yeah. Smitty.

Smitty: All right, we’ve been talking with the fantastic Stuart Wade, representing the super band Down to the Bone. They’re great new record is called Supercharged, and the name certainly fits the project. You’ve gotta check out this new record, it drops in the States June 19th, and this is one to have for your jazz collection. Stuart, once again, thanks, my friend, and we’ll speak with you soon.

SW: Thanks a lot, Smitty. It was a pleasure.

Baldwin “Smitty” Smith

For More Information Visit www.downtothebone.com and www.myspace.com/downtotheb and www.bluenote.com