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Let's start with the CD, it's been on the streets for about 3 months, how's it going down.

Slow but sure. It's only available online and we haven't started our mass promo/marketing campaign. But by the same token the word is definitely getting out about "Rebirth of the Cool".

What about overseas?

It got good reviews in Germany, Switzerland, London and I know it's being played in Japan. So we're looking forward to an even stronger presence in the near future. And I've got a fare amount of overseas orders - from Switzerland, Italy, Japan, Spain and Germany just to name a few...

What kind of things have you been doing to promo it?

We're pretty much in every jazz search engine online and when I'm on tour w/BWB I sell CDs after the show. There are also several online reviews and lots of word of mouth and as I said earlier there is a marketing plan that will be under way soon -- but we'll talk about that when its happening.

You were gigging with BWB, Norman Brown, Kirk Whalum, Rick Braun. How was that?

It's a lot of fun. The music is good, all the players are stellar and as Kirk says in the show "We're here to have a good time". Its a pretty open gig -- in other words you can be as creative as you want to be which is
the nature of jazz music -- its a blast.

Do you have you're own band and if so who is in it and what have you done. 'Course you work closely with Reggie (Griffin).

I do have my own band, which consists of -- well the instrumentation is guitar, bass, keyboards, sax, trumpet and percussion. There are some guys who play with me more often than others, like Nick Smith on keyboards,
Dwight Sills on guitar and Muyungo Jackson on percussion. Mel Brown usually plays Bass but I've also used Sekou Bunch and Andre Berry. The trumpet and sax chairs usually rotate but Brandon Fields has played with my band, as well as Everrette Harp and more recently Benny Maupin. On trumpet I've used Sal Marquez as well as Johnny Britt from the group "Imprompt2". But more recently I've been using a young trumpet player named Richard Grant whose really great and I'm sure you'll be hearing more from him in the future. In LA it really comes down to whose available when you have a gig.

As far as my brother Reggie is concerned, he has done a couple of shows with me but his personal preference is being in the studio pushing buttons, turning knobs and creating.

About the album - what was the plan? Why the solo album, how long has it been in there, tell me about how it came together and the plan that was in your head........and did the final product meet with that objective.

Ummm the plan was to make a record with music from the heart that the whole world would embrace... And sell as many copies as humanly possible (chuckle-chuckle) :-).

In essence I just wanted to get the music in my head out of my head in a tangible form for everyone else to hear. Because I thought some of it was pretty cool.

The solo project has been on my mind for more years than I'd like to talk about :-) and some of the music on the CD was written over ten years ago.
I would start the project get side tracked going on the road with someone else and by the time I 'd get back to working on me, two years would pass. Soo I finally decided if I was going to do a CD project and finish it,
then that's just what I'd have to do. In other words, just stay focused and get it done.

My brother and I own a studio which made the recording process much easier t facilitate.
And I'm very pleased with the end result. I am a drummer but I didn't
want
to make a "for drummers only" kind of record. In the way I hear my music,
drums can make a statement and but still be accessible to someone who
wouldn't necessarily seek out a recording by a drummer.

A lot of guys I've played with over the years who are also good friends lent their talent to "Rebirth of the Cool" and we had a good time doing it. In essence, I couldn't have asked for a better result.

How did it all come together .......and tell me about some of the people you brought in. There's some great names in there Branford Marsalis, George Duke, Stanley Clarke, Dwight Sills, Gerald Albright and others. Are these
people you have worked with and known for some time, or was anybody brought in especially.

Ummm I have a history with all the names you mentioned. I've played with George and Stanley off and on since the early 80s . Dwight Sills and Everette Harp and myself have done several tours of duty with Anita Baker as well as my playing in their individual bands at different times. Gerald I've known since the mid-80s and I played in bands with him prior to his first recording as a solo artist. Ummm Branford I met in the early 80s and would run into each other from time to time on the road. And when I asked him if
he would play on my project he just said "when and where".

I just called on musicians, that I knew or had worked with, whose talent I had a lot of respect for. I can only assume that the feeling was mutual because no one hesitated to say, "yeah, cool, let's play".

The album is very varied including some fine vocals. Is that kind of thing hard when essentially you are a drummer.

I'm a musician first and a drummer second and a singer third. It wasn't hard. I mean the songs that I sing on the CD, I wrote the melody and lyrics. And I write and sing within the limits of what I know I can do
and in that respect it wasn't hard at all.

As far as the diversity in the music, its a reflection of the different musical situations I've been in over the last 20 years or so -- From fusion, to funk, to vocals.

How do you write your stuff?

I start on keyboards often times with a bass line or a melody and I fill in the blanks as I go. I think playing drums helps with writing because as a drummer, I'm listening to everything that's going on as I play and I try to make sure it all fits together, from the standpoint of playing in a band as well as the different instruments in a drumset. In essence its all got to feel good.

Harmonically I always know where I'm going or what I want to express but every once in a while I surprise myself. I have sometimes gotten up from the piano and said to myself, "did I write that???" Some songs I consider to be"gifts from above" b/c the whole song will just be there all of a sudden as
if it were just planted in my head.

What's Razor Edge Productions all about. What else is in there, anything else we should be aware of. Do you have any other artists, what's on the agenda.

RazorEdge is a production company my brother Reggie and I formed after construction was completed on our studio. It's basically a place where we can do collective as well as individual projects using our combined and
individual production and songwriting talents.

"Rebirth of the Cool" is the first of many projects to come, with myself as an artist. There is a "Clifford Brown tribute record" that I've been wanting to do for sometime now. As a very small child I was greatly
affected by the recordings of my Uncle Clifford with Max Roach and Art Blakey. We are
in the concept phase right now but I plan on recording it later this year.

Having other artists is something we will pursue in the future. It's not a priority right now.

Now let's go right back you were born in Indianapolis but now live in Sherman Oaks California. Tell us about yourself where you from, what it was like, what your background was and how you got to California. Music was always
strong in your family? There's some New York years in there somewhere isn't there.

Yes, I was born in Indianapolis. The birthplace of Freddy Hubbard, Wes Montgomery, JJ Johnson, and a lot of other folks. Actually my family left Indy for Houston, TX when I was 2 yrs old. My father was a minister and he took a position as pastor of a church there. I was in Houston when I got my first drum. My brother Reggie asked our parents if he could play saxophone.
When they agreed I decided I wanted to play the drums. I was always beating on things anyway so I don't think they were surprised by my choice. I was 10 at the time and remember listening to "Uncle Cliff" as we called him, with Max and Art. I also listened to my oldest brother Robert's record collection. He's ten years my senior. Stuff like Wes Montgomery, The Jazz Crusaders, Chico Hamilton. The drums seemed to speak to me the most out of everything I listened to.

A year or two later My family moved back to Indianapolis. My first drumset was a red sparkle Japanese made three piece kit. I think we got it at Kmart. Oddly enough a couple of other kids had drums in my neighborhood so we would go to each others houses and see who could play the latest beat from a
James Brown record.
I had a passion for playing and I don't think any of those guys ever play more than a year or two after. I played in grade school and High school band. My mother was a Howard University music major so she was big on music education. I also studied with a gentleman named Thomas Akins. He was the principle Timpanist with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. That sort of gave me an edge over a lot of guys because I got the technical info from studying. And while in high school a trio I was working with (Keys bass and
drums) was put in touch with these guys from some band on the North side of town. There was a sax player, a singer and this skinny guy who sang, played guitar and wrote really cool songs.
We ended up putting our two bands together and playing dances and party's until some of us went off to college. We played originals and Earth Wind & Fire and......I can't think of what else. As a matter of fact we thought we were Earth Wind & Fire. By the way the skinny guy's name was KennyEdmonds
who the world knows now as Babyface.

There were a lot of bands in Indy in those days. Most were large bands with like two keyboard players two guitars, horns. There was a lot of music coming off the stage. My brother Reggie had a band called "Manchild" that was big like that. I would fill in when they would fire a drummer. But
couldn't continue because of school.
After my first year of college I started playing with the premier local jazz band, "Merging Traffic". All the guys in the band were several years older than I was. We played original music as well as Return to Forever tunes, Weather Report, Billy Cobham, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin... all the hip
_ _ _ t. It was a lot of fun.
We soon started opening up for Jazz shows in town. We opened for Grover Washington, Michael Henderson and so on. Then there was a show we drove to Dayton Ohio to open. It was for Jean-Luc Ponty. Steve Smith was playing with him then. We're talking 1977. The following year JLP came to Indy and we opened again. The same for '79. By this time we knew the guys in the band although some had changed. Casey Schurell was with JLP now. Anyway long-story short. In 1980 Jean-Luc came to town and I went to the show. He
remembered me from the previous years and we sat and talked. I gave him my number I don't recall if he asked or not. So time marches on and a little over a year passes. By this point I had been living in Cleveland for sometime with the band Merging Traffic. One day my mother calls and says Jean-Luc called and said he was having auditions for a new drummer. He also said he would not fly me to LA for the audition but if I could make it there he would leave a time slot for me. I was doing the starving musician thing in Cleveland. So my mother and my brother Thomas bought me a ticket to LA.
I remember after the audition feeling like I didn't do so well and I told Jean-Luc that I was really nervous when I was playing and he looked me in the eye and said, "Everybody was really nervous". So I didn't find out until the next day that I had gotten the gig.

Most of the other jobs that came my way in the early 80s were a result of having played with Jean-Luc. When we played in LA everybody was there - Stanley Clarke, George Duke, Jeff Lorber, Lee Rittenhour, Ronnie Laws - as far as the jazz scene at that time, you name 'em and they were there. Soo that's how I got here. I never spent any time working in New York, although my brother Reggie lived and worked there for about 16 years.

What music were you brought up on and how did you learn, who were your influences. Have you been full time in music all your life?

The early years -- listening to my older brother Robert's records. My brother Reggie was the one who would bring home Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, Jan Hammer, and Return to Forever records. Soo my early influences were Billy Cobham, Lenny White, Narada, Michael Walden - in other words,
hard hitting, fast playing, technical wizards. I learned to play odd-meter listening to these guys, which was great preparation for playing with Jean-Luc.

After my first year of college I drove a tractor and cut city property - vacant lots etc. The Indianapolis Colts play in a stadium that use to be one of those vacant lots. But other than that, I've played music full-time
and feel blessed to have been able to do so.

You've worked with scores of big names. Tell me about some of these, who you learned from and who you enjoyed working with.

I've learned from everybody I've worked with. Even if it was learning what not to do. From most of the people I've worked with, I learned that the music is more important than the musician. One can't survive without the
other. So there's got to be a respect and dedication of and to the music. And over the years there have been groups or artists that were more a pain to work with than a joy but I must say none of them were jazz oriented artist and that's all I got to say about that. For the most part, I enjoyed working with everyone.

You've done Jazz, Jazz Funk but a whole heap of soul bands too....and quite varied from great vocalists and vocal outfits thru to out and out funk What do you like and are you at home with all of it.

Musically it's all fun to do. I've played with the Isley Brothers, Cameo, and Anita Baker - and its a blast holding it down while they do their thing.
But by the same token playing with Stanley or George Duke you really get to
interact with the artist on a different level. I guess when it really comes down to it, playing jazz is considerably more liberating for me. It just allows you to express more of who you are.

You been all over the world?

Never made it to Australia or China or Africa for that matter but God willing there's still time.

What's on the horizon and what's happening next.

Lately I've been working with Rick Braun and BWB, they've both got dates
going on thru the course of this year. I'm still doing what I can to
promote
my record, like this interview, and will hopefully be performing with my
band
in a town near you...

Is Reggie up to anything

Reggie is always up to something. He's finishing production on a Hawaiian jazz project. He's on the Big Island of Hawaii right now.

And are you coming to Europe?

I've had a couple of offers from people in Germany as well as Switzerland but we're still discussing arrangements.


Anything else you'd like to add.

When you finish reading this interview run don't walk and buy my record.
And get one for a friend. Support live music. PEACE