Hot. Of all the music and sights I saw during the CJF weekend, what stuck in my mind was the heat. It was hotter than hell during that weekend. But the music made up for it. That, and a lot of water.

Read on for Clifford Beck’s recap of performances by Brian Culbertson and the Funk Experience, Spyro Gyra, Rick Braun and Richard Elliot, Alton Merrell, B.K. Jackson, Wayman Tisdale, Four80East, Down to the Bone, Joe Sample and Randy Crawford, and Ken Ford.

We didn’t attend the Friday night concert with Justin Young, Boney James, and Brian McKnight. We did attend the the Capital Jazz Challenge Competition at the Hilton Columbia on Friday night. There were six finalists this year. Every single one of them played their ass off, with a few standouts I really enjoyed.\

Alton Merrell on keyboards didn’t win but, in my uneducated opinion, he should have. A humble master of his instrument, he didn’t overpower with a lot of volume and simple chord changes. This cat is a piano player. And I mean that in a good way. What sealed the deal for me was when he closed his set with “Spain.” Yeah, that “Spain,” Chick Corea’s “Spain.” Did no one else in the crowd, except for the judges and maybe a few more then me, realized what they were seeing and hearing? Taking nothing away from B.K. Jackson, the sax player who won the competition, I would have voted for Mr. Merrell hands down. B.K. Jackson is a 16 year old saxophone player out of Tampa Bay. Simply put, we are going to be hearing great things from this kid. He is a absolute marvel on the sax, playing on a level years beyond his age.

Saturday. Ken Ford playing electric violin started off the festival playing a hell of a energetic set with more funk than I’ve ever seen in a violin player. Lots of energy,and showmanship. Spyro Gyra surprised me. I was expecting somewhat of a laidback set from them, but that wasn’t so. Upbeat, tight and a great crowd pleaser. I look forward to seeing them live again. We then walked up to the Symphony Woods Stage to see Plunky. This was my second time seeing Plunky. The first was years ago at a festival inside Washington D.C. He was great then,and even better now. The man’s got vocal skills to equal his horn blowing, and when he played “Drop,” the crowd went crazy. Nice set.

I’ve seen Wayman Tisdale before and, as usual, he started his set nice and tight with what could be considered a signature tune of his as well as Earth, Wind & Fire’s, “Can’t Hide Love.” He played a great set, but it looked like Wayman was hurting. His medical issues seemed to be bothering him. and he walked off the stage using a cane limping. Regardless, he performed great, didn’t hold back, and was backed by a hell of a tight group. He put on a nice performance. Again, hopefully someone can chime in on the performances of Dianne Reeves and Chris Botti. We didn’t stay for their performances,and left the Festival just before the wind picked up, the sky opened up,and it poured buckets of rain.

Sunday. Four80East opened up Sunday. I’ve got plenty of their music, but never have I seen them live. I was impressed. They played what I would call a upbeat, laidback set with a bit of funk. Great musicianship and a good rapport with the crowd. These guys put down a hell of a good groove. Ditto for Down to the Bone. They grooved also. Nowhere as laid back as Four80East. These boys came with the jazz-funk. Best line of the day was when Paul “Shilts” Weimer referred to the crowd on the lawn as “You crazy bastards” because they were right under the sun.

RnR. Rick Braun & Richard Elliot. I remember Rick touring with Sade back in the early nineties and Richard Elliot used to blow the funk with Tower Of Power. They played a hell of a set. They also bought the funk. Obviously they are good friends as well performers because it showed, even when Richard Elliott threw a large bucket at Rick Braun. Their band was nice and tight and both of them got a chance to open up a and bit together and separately.

Joe Sample played a very nice acoustic trio set with his son Nicklas on upright bass, and a nice drummer by the name of Johnny Vidacovich from New Orleans on the trapset. Joe played about four cuts, then invited Randy Crawford out on stage. This woman has a voice that I could listen to while drinking a nice single malt,and enjoying a great cigar. I had to settle for just a lot of ice water but Randy sung her songs with a feeling I’ve always enjoyed. Second best line of the day was when Randy offered congrats to Hillary for running a great campaign and called Bill a rat husband.

This brings me to the last act of the festival, Brian Culbertson and the Funk Experience. Simply put, I was blown away. This cat brings a 11 piece band with him that is so tight it ought to be against the law. And totally bought the house down. Think Earth, Wind & Fire with Larry Dunn out front. Think Parliament, and/or Bootsy with the keyboards out front. If Brian Culbertson could enter a time machine and go back to the seventies and play with Bootsy, Parliament, EWF, Brick, Wild Cherry, The Commodores, Graham Central Station, any of the funk-jazz groups from back in the day, he would already be gone. I almost didn’t recognize Sheldon Reynolds, formally of EWF, on guitar. He’s lost a lot of weight from what I remember. Still, he grooved,and damn,it felt good to see and hear him play. I would suggest that you do not download Brian’s new album. Go buy the CD. When you see who produced this project, and who contributed, all you will say is ‘damn’! I would also suggest if your say in a mile radius of where Brian and his Funk Experience will be playing, I suggest you suck it up, by the ticket, and hit the road. You will not be disappointed. I assure you.

As usual, a great overall Capital Jazz Festival. Good food, good friends, Plenty of vendors to separate you from your money, and most of all the music. And the heat. Damn, it was hot. But it could have been worse, it could have been raining.

Looking forward to next year already.

The post Capital Jazz Fest 2008 appeared first on ContemporaryJazz.com.

Four80East was conceived by Rob DeBoer and Tony Grace in their Toronto-based studio as a departure from the commercial pop music that the duo had more typically produced. Radio airplay of their song “Eastside” led to the successful U.S. debut of the band’s first outing The Album in 1997. One decade later, Four80East has evolved from a studio project into a full-fledged band with performances planned throughout the states in summer of 2008. The band’s latest recording, En Route, was released in 2007.

Sean Miller: We’re talking with Rob DeBoer and Tony Grace of Four80East about the new release En Route. You’ve both experienced change as of late with both a new label home and a new recording studio. Is the title of the new disc meant to reflect upon these changes?

TG: Originally Rob thought maybe “Forthcoming” might make a decent title for the new record but I didn’t think it had enough punch to it. So we batted around a bunch of ideas and I thought the thing that sort of separated us this time around is that we’ve been doing live shows and we’re trying to get on the road with this. Besides all the other changes that have happened in our lives — we’ve got a bunch of kids between the two of us now and we’ve got a new studio location — the record industry sure has changed since Round 3 so we’ve had to change our course and direction in the business. I think En Route sort of captured that feeling we were having at the time we finished the record.

SM: The album’s radio single, “Noodle Soup” was actually composed long before the release of En Route. If you will, talk to us about that track and about how it came into fruition.

RD: “Noodle Soup” was one of the first things that Tony and I worked on together. We met in ’91 and went into business and “Noodle Soup” was actually released as a 12″ [record] in the UK in its original form and it’s kind of been kicking around over the years and we decided to resurrect it for this album.
TG: “Noodle Soup” originally came out as a single on Boomtang in the UK in 1993. We did a collection of singles at the time that were all sort of instrumental based downtempo dance tracks and Noodle Soup was one of them. I always liked the tune and when we were finishing up En Route we thought we needed a single for radio and looking around we found in the back catalog “Noodle Soup” and we thought okay let’s re-do this in more of a live band setting and see what happens. That’s how that one came about.

SM: As producers, what deciding factors do you guys use in choosing material for an album?

TG: This may be one of the toughest parts and may be one of the key jobs of a producer — is to decide what songs go on a record and what songs don’t go on a record. It’s usually okay for Rob and I because we’re both contributing to the record and it’s not like we’re turning to an artist who perhaps has written a tune and is looking to get it on a record and we don’t think it should go — that’s a much more difficult situation and a much more delicate situation to deal with. Rob and I have known each other for so long now and we finish each others’ sentences so that’s not a problem. We both know inherently if a song’s going to be on a record or not. I think Rob answered this question best in one of his previous interviews saying that the question you need to ask is does it have that Four80 sound? And I know that sounds very simple but it’s just something that you either know instinctively if it’s something that’s going to fit on the record or it isn’t. I know that’s not terribly descriptive but it’s more of a feeling that you get with a tune. Is it something that captures the mood that the other tunes on the record have? If so, then it goes. We don’t think about it too much. We either know instinctively if it’s on or off.

SM: Tony, what was the first project that you and Rob worked on together? How did Boomtang Records come about?

TG: The first project that Rob and I worked on together was a track called “Face To Face” by a local group here called Primitive Fire. They were a group that had a video of their single on Much Music in Toronto. We thought it needed a remix so we gave them a call and told them we’d do it. This is all around the beginning of Boomtang Records which had stated just before Rob arrived on the scene around 1990. We started putting out stuff in England and then Rob came and we really upped the output [and] put a lot of singles out. Boomtang Records became a label in 1992.

SM: Four80East began as a side project then?

TG: That was the beginning of the remixes for us. We were doing a lot of a “euro” kind of sound. As a break to that I’d be noodling away on stuff without any sort of script or anything which all sort of lent itself to that sort of instrumental jazz kind of feel. We put enough of those together and we started Four80East. That was about 1995 or 1996 when Rob and I started fooling around in the studio working out the tracks for the first album.

SM: The Album was initially released in England prior to its U.S. debut. Were you at all shocked that the release garnered such widespread success in the states?

TG: Originally we released the record in England. This was all during the time that Sade was happening and Talkin’ Loud – the label – was well on its way. The Rebirth of Cool comps were out and guys like Ronny Jordan and such were happening over there. I think Down To The Bone was out somewhere around that time as well. So that was the market we focused on when we put the first Four80 record out. It wasn’t until it got back to the States in late ’97 [that] it got to a station in New York, WQCD. They started playing it and it went number one for two and a half months. That’s my discovery of smooth jazz in the U.S. and what they called New Adult Contemporary. In a lot of was it was very much a fluke — the release in the U.S. – and we really had to scramble to get ourselves a distributor to get the record out in the States.

SM: While Four80East began in the studio, you’ve recently had the opportunity to perform live. What’s it like transitioning from a couple of studio musicians into a full-fledged live act?

TG: Taking the show on the road was mainly a logistical problem because we never thought outside of the two man studio setup. We had to do some refining and a bit of editing on the tracks to figure out who’s going to play what and what parts are going to be handled by who. It was a bit of a learning curve but we figured it out. It seems to be translating well live. We were very well received in Catalina this past October and it looks like we’re doing a whole bunch of shows in the States this summer.

SM: Rob, can you recall a specific point in time at which you decided you wanted to become a musician?

RD: My folks got me into music lessons when I was four so really that’s all I was ever into. I don’t know what else I could do really.

SM: Same question for you Tony; and at what point did you pick up the drums?

TG: I started playing drums when I was about 11 when I finally had a chance to pick up a drum set for $21 from a friend of a friend up the street. That’s what got me going. I was lucky enough growing up at that age to have a place to put my kit because I come from a family of seven and it was already pretty much tight quarters and [a] noisy household. The idea of bringing drums into the house just did not appeal at all to my parents so I was lucky to get that break and have a place to put my kit. I think if I didn’t have that I probably wouldn’t have played drums.

SM: Talk to us about the contributions of saxophonist Jon Stewart. Rob, I understand you’ve worked with Jon before?

RD: I’ve known John since the early ’90s. I used to play in a funk band and John used to sit in with us through a mutual friend. When it came time to choosing someone to play on our Four80East material John was the first guy I thought of because he’s into a lot of different kinds of music but he’s very soulful and I’ve always loved his sensibility on the funkier side of things.

SM: Tony, who are your biggest musical influences?

TG: Growing up I guess my biggest influences were other drummers — guys like Steve Gadd, Tony Wilson, Billy Cobham, Bill Bruford — all these guys. But it was more people who had an experimental attitude towards music that probably had the most influence on me, whatever form that was. If it was jazz, like Weather Report, who were mixing things up and combining some of the new synth technology with jazz and coming up with some neat hybrids. The same thing with dance music — the Manchester sound — the stuff that was coming out of England in the early ’80s. Even the punk movement; the more experimental sort of prog-rock and ambient stuff coming out of the UK all play a part in influencing how I looked at music and how I create music.

SM: And for you Rob? I understand you’re a bit of a Bruce Hornsby fan?

RD: Bruce Hornsby for sure was an influence. I mean I was always much more into pop than jazz and guys like that who brought that kind of musicianship into pop were really appealing to me.

SM: Thanks so much for joining us.

TG: That’s great. Thanks for having us, Sean.

RD: Thanks for having us Sean.

The post Interview: Four 80 East appeared first on ContemporaryJazz.com.