Smitty: Yeah.
HK: And he’s just really smart and caring about the artists and about the projects and the music. So what that’s meant for me is it’s just been an incredibly rich environment to build a company and to mentor new employees, to create an environment where people’s ideas are valued and respected, and it’s been a joy, this wonderful friendship that’s evolved through the years, of the three of us, and we have a lot of fun outside of the office and just tremendous mutual respect for one another, and it makes life very fulfilling, to tell you the truth. It’s a real blessing.
Smitty: Nice. Well, I take my hat off to you cats because you’ve done something over the past five years that I think has been just a brilliant thing in that you have consistently produced great products, great projects, I mean, time after time, year after year. Everything coming out of your camp has just been fantastic and as you add musicians to your roster, they’ve always been stellar musicians, and I notice their continuance of development as they sign on with you guys and continue to do what they do.
HK: Mm, thanks for that. That means a lot to me.
Smitty: Yeah. Now, I want to talk about the latest that I have from you cats and that’s these great compilation CDs, speaking of that, Late Night Rendezvous and Smooth Ones.
HK: Mm-hmm?
Smitty: Yeah, and I must say, once again, the packaging is fantastic and the song selection, I mean, you had a million to choose from (laughs) but you’ve put some great ones together with these two projects. Talk a little bit about the history of these and how this all evolved.
HK: Sure. Well, we started a series of lounge CDs called the Rendezvous Lounge Volume I and Volume II. Those have been well received with respectable sales, and we always liked the idea of branding the company and the name Rendezvous by doing this compilation series, and thought that it was time to start creating some series that were outside the Chill area, and for the Smooth Ones, we basically realized that we had quite a few number ones on our label at radio and the idea seemed like a natural to celebrate our fifth year to do a CD that really showcased all of these number ones that the label generated, and to be honest, we didn’t have quite enough for a full ten songs and we went to our extended family for a couple of them, like Mindi Abair, who we oversee a show called “Chill With Mindi Abair,” so we considered her in the extended family, and then Dave has toured with Peter White and Rick Braun on the Dave Koz & Friends Christmas tours and so we went to them for some songs, and between the extended family and the current roster, we had an album of some great number one songs.
Smitty: Oh, cool. So you were putting the number ones together. Man, that’s fantastic. But you’ve got some great artists here. Wow. Kirk Whalum, Marc Antoine, Praful, I mean, just a wonderful mix of music.
HK: Yeah, I think it really shows the diversity of the label that we could have someone like Praful, who had a number one with “Sigh,” and Kyle Eastwood, who is a number one artist in France, and to the great Smooth Urban guys like Kirk and Wayman. So, yeah, it’s a really wonderful diversity of artists who all have accomplished a number one of some kind or the other. We had to stretch just a little bit with the France thing, but we love Kyle Eastwood and really wanted to get him out to—we wanted to just keep making sure his music gets out there in as many ways as possible. He’s just an awesome artist.
Smitty: Yes, he is. I remember we had him on the show here and I remember telling him when I first heard his record, it was one of those ones that was hard to stop playing it and, in fact, I told him I made a couple of trips around the block before I pulled in the driveway.
HK: Yeah, I’ve read that in your interview with him—yeah, that’s a great story.
Smitty: Yeah, it’s just a great project and he’s a fantastic guy too.
HK: Yeah.
Smitty: Yeah. Well, when I see that, I say “Well, you know, they’ve done it again.” (Laughs.) “Another great artist that they have there,” you know? So you guys have really been so consistent in what you do, which is a beautiful thing.
HK: Thanks.
Smitty: Yeah. And Late Night Rendezvous.
HK: Late Night Rendezvous, what we wanted to do with that is to showcase some of the deeper cuts on some of these projects, like there are some really beautiful songs that don’t get exposed through the usual channels and we found some just really beautiful deep tracks that bring to mind just a really intimate, sexy, romantic, Chill type of experience in the Late Night Rendezvous, so they’re really nice companion pieces, these great number one songs and then these really deep, more complex, really textured songs from the Late Night Rendezvous.
Smitty: That’s a nice way to celebrate five years when you think about all the work that had gone into putting these songs together over the years, these different projects, different artists, and you can bring that forward now and say “Hey, let’s stop and smell the roses and think about a lot of the things that we’ve accomplished and let’s put it out there.” I think it’s a beautiful way to do it.
HK: Yeah, thanks.
Smitty: Yeah, wonderful. So, now, what’s up for Rendezvous for the next five years? (Laughs.)
HK: The next five years? The heavy question. Well, I can tell you the next three months. (Both laugh.)
Smitty: I mean, what would you guys, looking forward, what would you like the next five years to be?
HK: Well, we’re really excited about doing more multimedia events and activities like the living liner notes and, I guess, what we’re exploring with Patti Austin, and different Internet shows, DVDs. We’re really excited about finding other ways to—like you said, our artists are so charismatic and their personalities are so larger than life that they’re sometimes not really contained on just a CD. So as the world is moving into new media and all kinds of technologies that are even yet to be explored in terms of how to connect people with artists, I’m really looking forward to pioneering some of those outlets.
Smitty: Yeah, I think that’s a great look into the future because technology is just advancing so fast and as a label and as consumers, you’ve gotta be ready for that.
HK: And we also think there’s an opportunity to find ways to bring adults, the older demographic, into the new media experience.
Smitty: Mm.
