Smitty:  Yeah, man.  Well, I get it.  I totally get it, bro.  (Laughs.)  And, hey, you’ve got some vocalists on here kickin’ it.

EG:  Yeah, some serious vocalists.  It’s been a while since I’ve had a vocal tune on one of my albums and it’s not because I haven’t wanted to, I just haven’t kinda felt the right thing, and lo and behold, I sorta had two that crept up on one album, so the first one that comes on there is—I knew this from the beginning I wanted to remake this song “I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know,” which was made famous, I think, by Donny Hathaway.  I mean, that’s the version that everyone knows.  That’s the only version that I was even aware of until recently.  But I knew I wanted to do that, I knew I couldn’t do it in the way that Donny did.  I mean, that’s kinda hallowed ground doing anything that Donny Hathaway did.

Smitty:  Yeah, man.

EG:  And so the challenge was really trying to come up with something different, so we did kind of a neo soul, a little harder edged version, a little bit quicker version of the song, and then Ali Ollie Woodson from the Temptations came in and sang it and just knocked it out of the ballpark.

Smitty:  Yeah, he’s got that Motown blues sound.

EG:  I hear so many influences and stuff in his voice and it’s not like he’s emulating these guys.  I mean, he’s been around long enough to be like the originator of a lot of these influences.

Smitty:  True that.

EG:  And it’s so amazing to hear these different influences all like merged into one soul.  I mean, it’s just absolutely incredible.  And it was really funny.  After we had finished recording that, Paul Brown looked over at me and goes “Now, that’s something you’re not gonna hear on American Idol.”  (Both laugh.)  We had to laugh about that.  I mean, it’s true.  Sometimes we get sorta dumbed down with singers.  You start expecting less because they start giving out less. But this guy, he puts out so much, you really see what a real singer’s all about.

Smitty:  Oh, yeah, man, I mean, he makes you feel it.

EG:  Yeah, well, knocked you off your seat, I guess.

Smitty:  Yeah, he did. And “Baby If You Only Knew (What I Could Do).”

EG:  Yeah, that was Jeffrey Osborne, and this was a song that I had written.  I was originally gonna do it as an instrumental and I kept kinda hearing this other thing with it and it seemed like it lent itself to a vocal tune and Paul Brown was working with Jeffrey Osborne at the time and I said “Why don’t you see if you can get it to Jeffrey and see if he’s interested?”  And Jeffrey wrote some words to it and knocked it out, so really that track is just the two of us.  I played all of the instruments on it and he sang all of the voices on it.

Smitty:  Oh, man, what a way to knock it out and to close out the record. You have got another great record. You’ve just done it again. And the first single, what, is the title track?

EG:  First single’s the title track, “Born 2 Groove.”  Yeah, that was a song that I didn’t necessarily think was gonna be the first single, to be honest, but it seemed like everyone just kinda jumped on board with it.  I set out to write a song that was one chord.  I tried to write a song that just had one chord to it, which is basically then the song becomes all about the groove and the parts that you put into it, so that’s why sort of the title “Born 2 Groove” made sense to that because it’s just one chord.  There’s no changes to kinda get you through the different sections and you have to set up the sections by the band playing dynamically and the parts and the melody that may go with the groove, so it’s kinda stripped down into its basic form.

Smitty:  Yeah, but it’s nice and tight.  And I like “Café del Soul.”  It’s got a sweet groove.

EG:  I don’t know how to describe that.  That was a kind of romantic little song, I guess.

Smitty:  Yeah, I was chillin’ to that.

EG:  Yeah.

Smitty:  Man, you got a great mix of songs.  It’s got all the elements of a hit record, I think.

EG:  From your lips to God’s ears, as an old manager used to tell me.  If all I can do is do something that is pleasing to me, I guess, and hopefully other people will find it that way.  It’s an interesting thing making a record, especially dedicating six, seven, eight months to this record, at least a solid six months where I just didn’t do anything else but that. It’s so hard to remove myself from it, so I can never listen to the disc for the first time, you know what I mean?

Smitty:  Yeah, I do.

EG:  You were able to listen to it for the first time and get a first opinion.  I can’t ever do that, so it’s always interesting to me to hear other people’s comments and it’s generally not my take on what the record is like, which probably means I’m really clueless, number one.

Smitty:  (Laughs.)

EG:  But it’s just really because you got a first impression, and I’ve heard from a lotta people that they think this album is very mellow.  I don’t necessarily get that.

Smitty:  Mellow?!

EG:  On paper and tempo-wise and everything, it shouldn’t be, but that’s people’s first impressions with it, which I think is kind of interesting.

Smitty:  Wow, well, I didn’t get the “mellow” out of it.  I mean, I thought it just had this real nice uptempo groove.

EG:  Yeah, you know, I don’t know.  I think there could be some confusion there as well too with mellowness being described as the sound quality because I think something that has to do with the HD lending a lushness to the overall sound recording.

Smitty:  Yeah.  I mean, there’s a couple songs you can chill with but, I mean, for the most part this is a bust a move kind of thing, you know?  (Both laugh.)

EG:  I thought so, but I’ve just been hearing from people listening to it for the first time telling me otherwise.

Smitty:  Yeah, well, we have such a variety among the masses.

EG:  Yes, exactly.