The
Smooth Jazz Site
Jim Savitt - "Artist Spotlight" Interview
2003
The Smooth Jazz Site
would like to welcome Jim Savitt from New York City. Jim plays a
mean Smooth/Contemporary Jazz guitar and also helps produce projects for
his label, NightCast Records.
Derick Winterberg – Good morning Jim.
Jim Savitt – Good morning from New York City.
DW – Jim, how long have you been playing professionally?
JS – I’ve been playing professionally for about 20 years at this
point.
DW – Really, 20 years?
JS – Yes, I started when I was really, really young. I started
playing the trumpet first, which was my initial instrument back in
elementary and high school. I started doing gigs in the evening
while I was in high school with different bands playing trumpet
primarily. I started playing guitar during that time in high
school and then since college and I’ve pretty much made the guitar my
main focus.
DW – In the time that you’ve been playing professionally, how long
have you been with NightCast Records? I find that they are real
supportive of you and go through a lot of effort to get your music out.
JS – Yes. NightCast Records is a new label, I’ve been
with them for about 2 years and they’ve been around for just about
that long as well.
DW – So you were the first artist they signed then?
JS – Yes, that’s right.
DW – Well I expect your name and NightCast to be pretty well known
soon.
JS – We’re getting there. They’ve been doing a lot of
promotion, the album is out at a lot of stations and we’ve got a
number of great reviews around the web. They’re really working
pretty hard out there.
DW – Jim, when did you decide that playing the guitar was going to be
your life’s work. What you were going to put all your energy and
effort into?
JS – It was really around the high school age as well. When I
made the switch from trumpet to guitar that’s when I really felt music
at a much different level. You know, as a kid you start out say on
trumpet for example, you’re in a band playing the marching band music
and concert band music. When you’re at that age and in those
bands you’re not playing music that you’re hearing on the radio or
can easily relate to. At that point I started playing guitar and
was able to play the music that I loved to hear as a kid, I was
listening to rock and roll growing up and that’s what really got me
started. I was a big Allman Brothers fan actually, way back then,
and that’s what influenced my initial interest in guitar because of
the improvisation elements of their music. I started playing that
kind of music first and then I got deeper into improvisation.
That’s what lead me more into jazz, listening to Wes Montgomery, and
to Miles Davis, to John Coltrane and I went down that whole path of
exploring deeper approaches to improvisation. But it started with
the interest in rock and roll and that was a kind of launching pad.
DW – How do you think your music has evolved just over the past couple
of years since you’ve been recording and playing a lot of live gigs?
JS – A couple of things have changed that I’ve noticed. One is
getting involved on the production side of things, producing my record
and doing production for other artists. You learn to think not
just as an instrumentalist, not just as somebody playing melodies and
solos, but you really think in terms of the whole group approach to the
sound. It really opens up your ears and you look at music as a
bigger picture instead of being so focused on a primary instrument like
the guitar. And also I’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot
of different musicians including David Mann and Nkossi Konda, an
Afro-Pop musician who was on Harry Bellefonte’s former label. I
was playing with Nkossi’s Afro-pop & World music group here in the
New York City clubs, and that was really something, it's a totally
different approach to rhythm. So, getting exposed to different
artists and different genres really helps and, as I mentioned, focusing
more on the production side helped me develop as a player because I
learned to see a much bigger picture when approaching music.
DW – On the subject of World Music and New Age, tell me how you got
involved in the Leaving Footprints project. Although
technically not Smooth Jazz, I think it’s something that almost any
Smooth Jazz fan would enjoy hearing. At least I know I did.
JS – We’ve had some great feedback on that project. The
history of that CD actually goes back about 7 or 8 years. I’ve
got a good friend, Rob Rolling, who’s a guitarist and composer and
we’ve been working together, on and off, on acoustically related music
for many, many years and writing those kind of tracks. Rob had
been experimenting with combining subtle nature sounds with acoustic
guitar based music. There was a window of opportunity where I had
some time to really focus as a producer on the project and turn out a
full length CD, to say “Look, let’s get this together and let’s
make this happen.” So we took those initial tracks and wrote and
recorded a bunch of new ones and that’s how the album came out, it
developed
organically. And we’re lucky with that one. We’ve got
some airplay already on one of the New Age stations and we have some
interest by one label to license some of the tracks for a New Age
compilation.
DW – I don’t know that I’d put that project down to luck.
It’s really good music, I wrote a review about it for The Smooth Jazz
Site and I think what I said was that it was relaxing music but would,
by no means, put you to sleep. You know, it almost makes you think
a little bit and I think it’s hard for music to do that sometimes,
especially nowadays.
JS – Well that’s the tricky thing about that type of music.
There isn’t a clear market that you can release it into with
established radio play and everything sort of in place. We
actually have had some professional massage therapist’s use it in
their work here in the city and around the country. Like with yoga
and spas.
DW – Yeah, I can definitely see that. I’ve been to some spas and the
musical atmosphere really helps in the relaxation. So in all your
20 years of playing what’s been your most memorable musical moment to
date?
JS – I guess two of them. One was last summer when I played in
Columbus, Ohio. That was one of the highlights because I was
playing in this concert series sponsored by WJZA and it was this big
outdoor stage they had set up for about maybe 1,200 to 1,500 people.
I brought my band out from New York so I had Ted Cruz whose played with
Larry Carlton, Roberta Flack and Chaka Khan, my drummer Tony Lewis
who’s played with a bunch of Smooth Jazz guys, Bill Foster on bass and
Positive Records artist Randy Villars on sax. So it was just great
to bring the band out there and really promote the album and have that
experience. That was probably the number one musical experience,
and the other, which was very interesting, a few years ago I was invited
to play in Egypt, in Cairo, in 1999 and 2000. I was over there for
over week on each trip. And that was a combination of my Smooth
Jazz and some Rock and Roll. It was sponsored by the State
Department over there for an international festival that they were
having. It was real interesting to go over there and meet the
people in Cairo and play music for them. Every so often, you
really get some interesting opportunities like that.
DW – Cool, that’s what it’s all about. Well, let’s bring
it up to the present. My first exposure to you was through your
debut album, Hear and Now. I call it your debut
album but I know you previously released a CD on your own with 5 or 6
songs on it, but Hear and Now was your debut album with
NightCast. Tell me about that album, how you put it together, how
you decided what to include on it.
JS – Sure. How that came about, the first thing I did was
contact Ned Mann, who is David Mann’s brother. He is a great
bass player who played on a couple of tracks on my first EP, The
Way Home.
I realized, having a 5 song EP, that it really wasn’t a finished
product. I couldn’t go out there and start pitching or promoting
it, it was really more of a demo. So the thought was to put a
full-length album together and I definitely wanted Ned involved because
he is so talented. I met with him and the first thing that he
explained to me was the dynamics of the radio market. When you
write and produce songs in this genre you do have to be sensitive to the
radio format to get airplay, which was kind of eye opening for me.
Unfortunately in this genre that’s often taken to the extreme and
there’s a lack of passion and dynamics in some of this music. I
learned how many of the radio playlists are pre-selected in the Smooth
Jazz stations around the country. Ned suggested that the first
thing I should do is talk to his brother Dave to try to bring him on as
a producer for some of the tracks to make sure that I have some radio
ready productions. So I met with Dave and talked about a game
plan. Our conversation was that you have to play within certain
parameters but there are ways that you can produce something that still
has the musical fire, passion and dynamics. Dave listened to
a lot of the music in my catalogue and we picked a few tracks that he
produced. We also co-wrote a couple of tracks and that was the starting
point of the Hear and Now album. I started with
those four tracks and then from there did the rest of the production on
my own. Seeing Dave’s approach allowed me to learn a lot by
sitting over his shoulder during those periods. I wrote and
produced pretty much the rest of the album on my own. Trying to
stay in the Smooth Jazz format but opening it up a little bit more by
introducing World elements for example. Ned Mann was the mix
engineer for all tracks. There is plenty of groove based Smooth
Jazz music on the CD but I’ve got the song “This Time” on
there that has a kind of Hi-Life / World Music feel. I put a
little bit of New Age in there as well, “Without You”, is an
acoustic guitar feature. I also have an Afro-pop track that was
contributed by Nkossi Konda. My approach was to say: obviously I
have to understand that there are certain parameters in order to get
airplay but let me open it up by introducing some different elements to
give the album some more depth instead of being homogenous all the way
through. And I also went back and forth, as you can tell, between
acoustic guitar and electric guitars and nylon string guitar so that
there wasn’t so much of the same sound on the album. I really
wanted to give a broad, diverse representation of the guitar’s sound
and potential.
DW – Do you feel that there is a noticeable difference between East
Coast and West Coast
Contemporary Jazz?
JS – Maybe there’s a stronger Hip-Hop influence over here in New
York, you know, the heavier beats and grooves. My opinion on the
Contemporary Jazz scene is I think it’s pretty similar throughout.
I’m not seeing too much of a difference. Now when you get into
different kinds of music then there’s definitely a stronger a Hip Hop
and Rap influence here in New York.
DW – How much of your own style do you feel has been influenced by
where you live? Do you think that if you lived on the more
laid-back West Coast that you might have evolved a little differently?
JS – Yes, definitely, because the one thing that’s great about New
York is the cultural diversity here. I mean the whole exposure
that I’ve had to World Music, and playing in the clubs here with
different bands in various genres, there’s so many times that you’re
playing with interracial bands and everyone’s coming in with different
backgrounds. I’m in another project right now, which is an
original Pop/ Rock project where I was brought in as the guitar player,
sort of like the early Talking Heads. The players are from all
around the world. Everyone’s coming from such different musical
reference points that it is a really good melting pot. I have also
worked on some house/club music with an internationally renowned DJ that
spins in New York. So yeah, there’s definitely intensity
and diversity here in New York that may not exist in other cities.
DW – Jim, a lot of your music is getting exposure through the
Internet. How do you see the Internet affecting the music industry
in the future?
JS – Well it’s interesting. As a smaller label we’ve had
some very good success getting radio airplay in eight countries around
the world and we’ve been tackling the major markets, but what we’ve
noticed is that it’s a lot harder to crack into the major markets
because they’re so tightly controlled and you need to have a pretty
hefty marketing budget to hire independent media promoters.
That’s sort of how the business works, you know. Often in the
big cities the DJ’s don’t have any say in what they play at all.
And also in our format, the Smooth Jazz format, there’s a skew towards
more and more vocal and less instrumental music so there are smaller
opportunities to get the instrumentals out there. I’ve had a lot
of conversations with people about this and, at least here in New York,
you turn on the Smooth Jazz station and you hear Lionel Ritchie, Michael
Jackson, Hall and Oates, Billy Joel. It’s interesting because I
had a discussion recently with a very well known manager who handles one
of the largest bands in the genre, and he was saying that there is
concern with the format due to the fact that this is happening, that
there’s so much more vocal music and that the instrumentals are
becoming so formulaic. As a result the labels are having a harder
time attracting new CD buyers. Because new people that are getting
into the genre may come across a Smooth Jazz station and if they’re
hearing Michael Jackson or Lionel Ritchie they may move on down the
radio dial. They didn’t even have time to hear the instrumental
stuff. So it seems that’s what has been happening in some
segments of the major radio market. Obviously you can’t fight or
change that situation as a small independent label. That’s the
way that it is, and you either have the budget to hire the promoters to
go after those markets or you don’t. But we’ve been seeing a
lot of new, emerging delivery vehicles for music, sort of analogous to
what FM radio used to be, you know when it first started. So
we’ve been going after the Internet radio stations, satellite radio,
things like that as channels to get the music out there. We’re
actually on VH1 Radio through the Internet. We just got added to
Music Choice, which is delivered to millions of households through
cable. We’re hopefully going to be on XM Radio soon and there
are a number of other stations on the Internet that are also playing
tracks from my CD. We see the Web as a place where the DJ’s still have
a say in the music that they play so we are definitely using these
outlets as a way to reach new
audiences.
DW – I would say that a good 60 to 70 % of my Smooth Jazz listening
these days is either the Internet or CD’s. I know you can’t
please everyone but The Smooth Jazz radio stations don’t seem to be
pleasing their core audience anymore.
JS – Yeah, it’s really something and, hopefully, the audience will
gravitate towards another source whether it be through the Internet or
whatever. Like for me, as a listener, I don’t listen to the
radio that often, I listen to Music Choice and Web radio primarily.
I have them hooked up to my home stereo and if I want to listen to music
I go there. It’s rare that I would tune into the FM radio dial
unless I am in the car.
DW – And I think that if the satellite radio continues to be a
reasonably priced item that that will put a big dent, hopefully, in
commercial radio.
JS – It’s interesting, because I read an interview with Pat Metheny
just on this kind of topic and he had a comment in one of the interviews
where he was saying that music is just everywhere. He’s
concerned that the general public may get numb to music in general, not
just Smooth Jazz because it’s just being delivered everywhere.
DW – It sounds like you really enjoyed the festival in Columbus, Ohio.
Are you planning on getting out to more of the country this year anytime
soon?
JS – Hopefully. The label is working right now on trying to get
some bookings lined up for the summer. They’re sending out all
of the packages and the festival schedules are still being put together
at this point so we’ll keep you posted on that.
DW – Last thing. How can people find out where you are playing
live if they happen to be in the New York area? Do you have your
shows listed on your website?
JS – Oh yes. Everything is on www.jimsavitt.com.
DW – Well Jim, that’s pretty much it for me. Did you have
anything you’d like to add before we wrap this up?
JS – I guess the only other thing would be to check out the Chillin’
Nights album by the group Manhattan Project. I think
you’ll enjoy that because that’s a new project that we just finished
and it’s kind of a combination of Chill Out, House, and Smooth or
Groove jazz. And there are a bunch of great New York City
musicians that are featured on there. Some of the musicians are in
my band and some are on the NightCast label so hopefully you’ll have a
chance to check that out.
DW – Yeah, I’ll definitely take a listen to that and put a review up
on the website.
Next Month:
An interview with Gerald Veasley. Don't miss it!
Enter
to win an autographed copy of Hear
and Now right here!
I would like to thank Jim Savitt for taking some time out of his busy
schedule to sit down and talk with me. For more information on Jim
and his music please visit his website at www.jimsavitt.com.
You can also purchase his CD's through my Amazon.com Associates outlet.
Just
click on the Store button at the top of this page, or simply Click Here.
Ó
The Smooth Jazz
Site –
Interviewed By Derick Winterberg