Alison Crockett

Interview 9 December 2003

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Let's start with the recent UK visit, how did it go and did you acheive what you set out to acheive.  How was the saturday show.  Anything we can look
forward to as a result of the trip.
The UK trip went extremely well.  The show was fantastic at Cargo. I had a great time.  What I set out to achieve with this trip was to promote this record and it went well.  I got a chance to do a few interviews and make connections with a lot of new people.  I will certainly be back as soon as I can.

Tell me about the link with Wah Wah 45's - selling well I hear.

 The guys at Wah Wah 45 have been just great.  They are great people.  We were linked together by my former manager, Emily Moxon, and we hit the jackpot.  They are very supportive and have a really good business model that allows them to achieve their goals on a regular basis.

What do you think of the UK 'scene'.......and how you fit into it.

The UK scene is one that I've been a part of, as much as someone who lives in America can be, for a long time.  My music has been played there for as long as I've been recording.  I think that there is greater acceptance in the UK for new things.  The musicianship is great.  There are some really wonderful musicians over there.  I have several people that I can now call on to work with that I feel really comfortable with.

Tell me a bit about yourself, where you from, where you live, always been there or moved around.

I'm originally from Washington, DC.  A lot of people think that I'm from Philadelphia, because musically, that's where I'm from.  I really became who I am as an adult there as well as a musician.  I now live in Brooklyn, NY.

How long you been in music, and at what point did it become your destiny .......and then your living.

I don't know about destiny, but it was always what I wanted to do.  I made the decision around 12 that this was it.  Before that, I was just obsessed with the piano, but I moved around in the arts a lot: drawing, painting, acting, dancing, singing.  So I've been doing music for a long time.  It's always been my living.  I got all my degrees in it.  I see no reason to do anything outside of it.  This doesn't mean that I earn all my money from performing, but I earn all my living from music.  

Who are your influences both then and now, there's bits of all sorts in there, the newer neo trend, but also very old jazz stuff.

My brother and I grew up listening to music from the time we were in-utero to music 6 - 8 hours a day because our father, who was originally a jazz pianist and saxophonist before he became a physician, constantly listened to records...really loud.  You could hear it in every corner of the house.  So I listened to Count Basie, Coltrane, Lou Rawls, Nancy Wilson, Al Jareau, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Earth, Wind & Fire, etc...over and over and over again before I understood anything about music.  I didn't understand the radio because I didn't hear it played until I was about 10.  I had my own influences as I got older: Sting, Prince, Janet Jackson, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Loose Ends, Luther, Sarah Vaughn, Betty Carter, Horace Silver, Marvin Gaye, Donnie Hathaway,...a lot of people I revisited because I had to hear them in order to feel comfortable.  Every so often I must hear Rubberband Man by the Spinners.  It reminds me of home.

you've got a musical degree uh?

I have a Bachelors of Music and a Masters of Music.

This was in Philly - was this where you got into the Philly scene.  What did
you do there with King Britt and elsewhere.

I went to Temple University and I had transferred from upstate New York.  I had decided to learn jazz the way it should be learned...in the clubs.  So I did that and sang everywhere.  John Wicks heard about me and brought me to see King.  The rest is history.  Of course, just when Philly started blowing up, I left...ain't I smart...

Season's Change was pretty big.

"Season's Change" is still a big record for me.  Regular people may not know it, but every DJ does.  King wrote a great song and I'm glad I had the priviledge to sing it.

Was this period when you seriously put things down, did you do anything beforehand that we would know.

Working with King was the first time I had done any serious recording.  Before that, I had done demos to get gigs, but that was it.  

Tell me about Greg Osby and Knitting Factory, when would this be, about 1996.

Greg Osby was a fortuitous accident.  I was at a Jazztimes convention in NYC when I first moved here.  I went to a panel discussion about acid Jazz and Greg was there.  I asked a question and talked to him briefly afterward.  I handed him a CD.  I was in DC and he called me saying that he would love to work with me.  Unfortunately, we never were able to record together, and he moved on to a different style in the later 90's.  We did some great performances together.

You did quite a lot of jazz stuff and appeared at some big shows with some big names?

I've had the pleasure to be around a lot of great musicians.  But in NYC they become almost local musicians so I got a chance to do a lot of things with a lot of people.  It was great.

And then US3, how did that come about, and where did that take you.  How long were you with them.

I was with them for 3 years.  Us3 came about when Geoff heard me do Seasons Change.  His A&R person called.  It was really exciting to goto the Sony building in NYC and actually be invited there.  What a rush.  I learned a lot in that situation because I had to write outside of my comfort zone quite a bit.  It really gave me confidence to be able to write quality songs in whatever environment I'm in.

Was that like a full time involvement or did you have time to 'do your own thing'

I had time to do my own thing, but I couldn't release anything for a while which was a drag...

The album On becoming a Woman, tell me about how this came together, how long it took, who you used (did any of the guys come to the UK?  I can't
remember though I was introduced).  tell me about the 'Team'.

This record took a while because I was doing it while I was on the road with Us3.  Teddy and I had just started collaborating and we had four songs.  Actually it started with me doing gigs and having songs that I worked out there.  Then we just started to put them down.  At the time, Teddy was working with Ron Worthy who really helped us out concerning vision for the record.  We recorded in Electric Lady Land Studios and Sorcerer Studios in NYC on 2 separate occasions.  I used Calvin Jones(Cassandra Wilson, Greg Osby) on bass and a young drummer named Mark Collenberg(q-tip) and my cousin, Etienne Lytle on organ and Rhodes.  In the next session I used Casey Benjamin(DJ Logic, Heavy, Buster Williams) on Rhodes, Carlos Henderson, bass and Terion Gully, drums.  The last 2 musicians have worked with literally everyone who is anyone in the music business.  I was really very fortunate.

Tell me about the songs, and where you draw from. All personal stuff.

The songs I write are not necessarily about me.  Shirley Horne said once in an interview that she has to be an actress when she sings.  She sings all this music about subjects that she has never experienced as a married mother of one.  I really took that to heart and started writing stories that had some parts of me in it, but not really about me.  I don't really believe in infedelity like what's about to happen in "What we do Now" but if it happened that would certainly be a great scene in a movie I think.  I have a really good imagination and I always wrote little stories when I was a child.  Musically, I have worked really hard at creating a good song from top to bottom.  I am not a producer; I write songs at my keyboard.  So all the chords that you hear are me.  Teddy's the producer(and a very good writer as well).  Since we grew up listening to the exact same things, we tend to think similarly about how music should go, even if we express it differently in our respective musics.

If it has to be bracketted I suppose it would be neo but I like the mellow drum and bass like backbeats to several tracks UR for example.  What do you
think it's got that makes it standout.

I think what makes this record stand out is the songs. As I said earlier, I really worked hard at creating songs, not beats with words but a verse, chorus and a bridge; everything flows and has a purpose.  I worked very hard at creating chords that had movement and meaning and melodies that were singable and interesting, at least to me.  I am not interested in creating music that goes over people's heads, but I am interested in being musical.  I do what I do and it sounds like it sounds.  I'm glad people are responding positively.

The songs are certainly strong in lyric, delivery and production.

Thanks for the complement.  That's what I was going for.

Which tracks are getting attention, and what are your personal favourites.

The tracks that are getting attention tend to be my personal favorites which is strange because that's not always the case.  It never occurred to me that "Like Rain" would be so popular.  I though it was too jazzy and strange.  I knew the words could connect because it's such a universal thing- someone wanting to break up but not really wanting to hurt the other person in the process.  "U R" is starting to get interest since the Wah Wah release.  That song is about my husband.  I'm very, very pleased with this song.  It think it has the most perfect and pretty bridge I have ever written.  The words and composition are amazing in how I got these words to go together that don't even rhyme that much and it just works.  I wrote it in my car on my way to work.  I love "Crossroads" and "When I think of You".  I tend to like the mellow cuts the most.  

Anything else you'd like to add

That's all folks...

Thanks for the interest.  hope to see you again when I'm in London next year.

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