EE: Yeah, that was a fantastic time.
Smitty: Yes. I know that you hardly ever do a record without Oscar Castro-Neves. He is just one of my all-time favorites. I love to hear him play, love to watch him play, because you can tell that he totally enjoys playing the guitar.
EE: Yes.
Smitty: And he just has so much emotion when he’s playing. Talk about being in the studio with him and what that’s like, that whole experience.
EE: Well, he’s a legendary player, I mean, someone who….he is one of the few people from the original time of the Bossa Nova. You know that I, in my case, I’m so much younger than them but because I was a child when I started, I was playing with the actual real Bossa Nova people at that time when I was 15 years old but they were already adults. I’m also the exception, but Oscar is one of the few people….I think he is the main guitar player from the Bossa Nova period who’s still alive and who plays this music incredibly, and we have a fantastic….myself with Paulo Braga, who’s the drummer, who also was the drummer with Jobim and Vicente Amigo and Marc Johnson. The four of us have an incredible communication when we do this music and I must say that we really bring the authenticity of Brazil, you know, and the Bossa Nova to every recording that we make, I mean, to every presentation that we play, because it’s there. It’s the Sao Paulo root.
Smitty: Yes. Well, you can totally feel that. Well, let’s talk about this new record, just mentioning that. I just totally enjoyed this record and some of my favorites are “Running,” I love the title track “Around the City,” and one that I can’t pronounce, is it “Chiclete Com Banana”?
EE: “Chiclete Com Banana.”
Smitty: Hey, I wasn’t too far off.
EE: Not too far.
Smitty: It’s a great tune and it’s just so alive. Tell me about that song.
EE: Well, “Chiclete” is actually one of the few songs that is not an original, but it’s a song that I listened to since I was very young in Brazil and I thought would be interesting to put it on this record because “Chiclete Com Banana” means “Chiclets with Banana.” The lyric talks about Uncle Sam, the USA playing, you know, getting together with Brazilian music and wanting to see Uncle Sam play a samba or mixing boogie woogie and mix Miami with Copacabana and it’s so interesting the way the lyric goes, so it talks a little bit about bebop, with samba, boogie woogie with American things, and it was just so right for me because of my tradition, that I have all the Brazilian tradition at the same time the jazz tradition together. So I said, oh, this is a cute one for me to sing, and I love, I mean, it’s a challenging song to sing. It has a lot of elasticity on the melody if you see, you know, you need to really reach out there, and I had fun doing it and I also like it a lot.
Smitty: Yeah.
EE: Now “Running” is a song that….I really like the message that the song has and when it talks about where I’m from, we carry on and we keep on living and we keep on running, running towards what I’ve been running from.
Smitty: Yeah, it’s almost like turning around and facing it.
EE: Yeah, sure. So I like that very much. And “Around the City” I think is a very interesting story, very original story that can happen in the big cities so much because the song is about someone who’s actually lonely and who’s going around this whole city and basically ends up meeting the person….he’s like right there, right close to her, so it’s also a message to the people who are in a big city that you know so many but you are by yourself and it can be so close you can be right there, so just don’t lose perspective.
Smitty: Yeah, absolutely, and that’s so true about big cities. So, now, talk to me a little bit about the band because I love this band. I know you mentioned some of them just now, but talk a little bit about the band and what they mean to you.
EE: Well, you know, the band, for example, Marc Johnson, who I’ve been working with since 1987….it’s almost 20 years. He is a fantastic musician, and although he is American, I could not imagine having a Brazilian bassist over him. He developed the Brazilian language and because he’s a virtuoso, he’s got an incredible technique, gorgeous intonation. He’s a true improviser and somebody who does a lot of interplay. You know, I like that.
Smitty: Yeah.
EE: I like the interplay in the music, so it’s fantastic. And Paulo Braga, who is, to me, Brazil’s best, greatest drummer for the style that we do. He is just fantastic. Oscar (Castro-Neves) we talked about, he’s incredible. Randy Brecker, who I don’t need to say much about, is one of the greatest trumpeters alive. I mean, he’s just an incredible player, plays gorgeous. And then we had some other elements on this record that were great because we had different percussionists. I had the flamenco percussionist, I had the Cuban percussionist, two different Brazilians, and we kind of mixed some elements between Latin, Bossa Nova, Brazilian music, and flamenco. We mixed different elements; for example, a song like “Oye Como Va” which is a Latin song, real heavy Latin, we mixed with Bossa Nova, and I had Cuban and Brazilian, timbales, but also the Brazilian elements in Oscar and it was really, really interesting to have that mix of the different rhythms together. So we did that.
We had other guests as well that played great, and Gene Lake is a fantastic drummer, a solid backbeat, groove, just fantastic. My producers, who were just amazing to work with, we had such a great time working together: Andres Levin, who is the leader of a group called Yerba Buena, and he is incredible, I mean, he was so familiar with my music and a fan, and he knew I wanted to do something different and he knew how to do that with me without having to compromise musically what I wanted to do but take it a step farther for what I wanted to do, so it was really great to work with him and the elements that he brought in. Like loops, we did loops on this record; we had some songs that had two drummers, very interesting stuff. Lester Mendez of course, and produced three other cuts, who is also a fantastic producer who produced a lot of pop music….he produced Shakira and others, and Jewel I believe he produced. So he also brought in a different element to this and we co-wrote songs together, so it was really a fun, fun project.
