A Conversation with AJ Croce – HuffPost 10.1.14

[piano music playing in background]

Mike Ragogna: AJ, that’s you playing?

AJ Croce: Yes I am!

MR: Awesome, nice way to kick off an interview, man! so your latest album is calledTwelve Tales. We talked about that as it was being recorded, so let’s not only talk about those twelve tales but let’s also get an update. What are you up to?

AJ: You know, I’ve been living Twelve Tales for a couple of years now. I got started at the end of 2012 with the first two recording sessions with Cowboy [Jack Clement] and with Kevin Killen. I was touring and writing and recording and while the project was going I was releasing one song a month and then finally released the album this year. Then I was touring for the album. It’s been kind of nonstop. I’ve really enjoyed it, it’s the first time in many years that I’ve really enjoyed touring so much. I think it’s largely because my kids are older and I can travel with my wife. It just makes life nicer.

MR: How you assembled this is a very original idea, basically releasing singles over and over and then making it make sense as a top-to-bottom project when released as a physical product.

AJ: Well that was a scary part of it. I played iwth different bands in every city, each producer has their style, there was a different engineer on every session, so I was really concerned about the flow of it. But honestly I guess I’m the common denominator first of all whether I’m playign piano or guitar, it’s my voice that’s holding at least part of that together, and then the other thing that I realized kind of recently of why it worked was that every session was live. There were some overdubs but the most i had with a producer was two days. So even though it took a year to make because of logistics and because of everyone’s schedules and so forth that live factor contributed greatly to it holding together I think. I hadn’t really thought about that being a factor that bred consistency.

MR: How did the mixing work to make all of the recordings sound cohesive?

AJ: Well, that’s the thing. Every producer was different. Some of the producers were engineeers. Kevin Killen is a master, from U2 and Peter Gabriel and Elvis Costello over the last thirty years and countless other people, he’s an amazing engineer. Allen Toussaint is not an engineer, he’s an aranger, a musician, a songwriter. We had an engineer there but then it ended up getting mixd in California. So it’s one of those things where the engineers contributed but they weren’t listening to other people’s stuff. I guess it’s sheer luck. I’ve kind of felt like if there was a thirteenth tale that it might have unraveled.

MR: [laughs] The artist is at the heart of this. In the old days when vinyl was emphasized you had a side A and a side B and artists used that flaunt different aspects of their talents or they would set up different stories–one play in two acts.

AJ: Yeah, a lot of times you’d have the label’s choice of, “Here’s the single, here’s the A side,” and then the artist would get to pick the song they liked the most which might be an uptempo thing but most likely it was a more thoughtful piece they really loved to play, and that was the concession: The B-side.

MR: Right, so in this case, the singles are what you just described. I guess the unifying factor, regardless of the producer, was the vibe of AJ Croce. You as an artist shine through.

AJ: I think that most recordings are going to sound different with different producers and I think had I had more than two days there wouldn’t have been the same kind of consistency or fluidity because then you would’ve seen more of a stamp. All of these producers have a real distinctive sound. Mitchell Froom has a really distinctive sound and Cowboy, even though it’s the same as when he was with Sun Records, this live thing, it’s consistent. And the arrangements that Allen Toussaint writes are very much him and you can hear it in there. So the songs would sound different. I think for a lot of listeners that aren’t musicians that makes a huge difference. For me I can hear a demo of a song with just the artist–which is kind of my favorite way to hear stuff, really pared down and really kind of raw–hear a demo of a song and then I can hear it a hundred ways as far as production goes. But most people don’t because that’s not their field, that’s not what they do. So things really sound different when they hear a production and I think that goes even for a lot of people at big labels, they can’t hear the potential of a song even if they think it’s a good song, they can’t hear what the production might be.

MR: It takes a creative musical imagination. It’s asking a lot. A lot of people complain about people in that position not having “ears,” but it really comes down to, “Do you expect them to be the artist?”

AJ: Right! And yes, in the old days, I think that was a common thing, whether it was staff producers like John Simon or George Martin or whether it was someone that had a vision for an artist like John Hammond, you were in the hands of really creative people who were extremely passionate about music and gifted in that way.

MR: You have way too much knowledge about roots and Americana and New Orleans music. What led you down those paths?

AJ: I think I heard someone play a blues scale on the piano and I was like, “Wow, what is that?” I had heard it in the music that I loved like Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, I heard that scale in there but I didn’t know how to play it. I was trying to play along with the stuff that I was hearing on the radio and that was in my dad’s record collection which I listened to. I heard it in Bessie Smith and I heard it in Mississippi John Hurt and Bill Broonzy and all that stuff, but at a certain point I learned how to play that scale an dall of a sudden it opened up my eyes to twenty different ways to do it and I started hearing that. When I fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, I saved up and I went to London by myself. I would stay with a family or I would stay in youth hostels or the last year that I went there I got my own apartment and shared it with someone. When I was fifteen, I landed and I was out of sorts and I was walking through North London and there was a pub. I looked in or I heard something and there was a piano in there and I said, “Can I sit down and play?” because I was practicing a lot as a teenager. They said, “Well do you want to come back later tonight and play? We’ll buy you dinner and get you a tip jar.” I was fifteen and they gave me a Guinness and a tip jar.

So people were shouting stuff out and I realized it was just sort of ingrained. I knew the Muddy Waters stuff and I knew the Ray Charles stuff and I knew the Bessie Smith stuff and I knew the Big Bill Broonzy stuff. That part of London was pretty affluent and this was an audience that had grown up listening to and buying American music in the sixties. This was the early mid-eighties and I was a kid. That really had a big influence on giving me a certain confidence and just understanding how to play other people’s stuff. I was into psychadelic music at the time and I loved that underground, I loved all kinds of different stuff, I loved Tom Waits and all different kinds of music and of course a lot of rock ‘n’ roll stuff, and I’d throw that stuff in, Chuck Berry of course and Little Richard and Fats Domino. It was one of those things where people dug it.

MR: There are a lot of really great pianists that I’ve interviewed and having seen what you do a few times now, I can honestly say you put many of them to shame. I think you’re one of the best-kept secrets on keyboard.

AJ: [laughs] I don’t know man, I really don’t. I guess I love it so much, it’s one of those things where there’s a combination of a few factors and influences that come through. I think the rootsy stuff really comes through. I love to find melodic dissonance. I love Thelonius Monk because of that. I love hearing him play solo because of that. While I don’t play like him and I don’t want to that concept is important. Finding a balance between playing simple and then showing off I think is the other thing. I practiced a lot as a kid and I was fortunate. Another person who was really influential and I don’t know if I mentioned him in any of our conversations was a guy named Francis Thumb. Franny was part of the Harry Partch Ensemble. If you’re not familiar with them, Harry Partch was an avant-garde classical composer who worked outside of the common western scale and invented his own instruments and his ensemble would perform with these instruments.

Some of it was hard to listen to and some of it was just truly amazing. Franny had studied with some really amazing legendary classical artists and conductors and so forth. He and Tom Waits were best friends, they grew up in San Diego. He wrote two plays with Tom Waits and countless songs. Franny had no interest in being an artist in his own right as much as he did being a teacher. He loved it. He taught at the school I went to in ninth grade. When I got into his class he had me play for him and I did and he said, “Okay, what you need to do is practice.” And he was right, so every day I would go in and for the hour I was in class I would practice and then on Fridays he would say, “Well if you want to be a good songwriter, if you really want to say something in a way that’s unique and very individual you need to read this stuff.” And he’d take me to the library and he’d pull out Neruda and Dylan Thomas and Voltaire and Baudelaire and E. E. Cummings, Ogden Nash, very different, unique voices that completely inspired me. He made a big impact because of that.

There was also a guy here who had a record store that just closed this year after like forty years that was all folk arts music. He was a musicologist who worked at the library of congress and he turned me on to some amazing stuff. When I was young it was hard to play stride piano, not that there were a lot of kids in the eighties trying to learn how to play stride piano, but what excited me about it was that it was freaking hard. It was hard to do, and I had something to prove because I knew I wanted to do this for a living and I also knew that I had to practice and be doubly good because people were going to say, “Oh, he got a shot becausse of his dad,” and, “He had it easy,” and all of that stuff, not really knowing my life. That was just sort of what they’d think. But it was hard because I was a kid still, I was a teenager and those guys could reach a thirteenth. Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Duke Ellington, Basie, Earl “Fatha” Hines, those stride guys could really use that in a great way. It was hard to figure out, but I figured it out through a couple of different people. I figured it out through Little Brother Montgomery who was kind of raw blues player. He used stride sloppy but understandable and beautiful. And then Mississippi John Hurt was basically playing stride. The same thing with Lonnie Johnson, he was playing stride on the guitar. That simplified it so much–for a guitar player it’s incredibly hard to do that stuff right but for a piano player it’s much easier. I shouldn’t say it’s easy, but it’s much easier, and it taught me how to do it. I said, “Okay, I’m just going to break these thirteenths and tenths apart and figure out how to do it that way,” and that’s what I did.

MR: Where does this go? And because you did the album as a sampling of different production styles, are you tempted to do this again? Are you tempted to do it yourself?

AJ: I can call all of the above. Everything you mentioned sound good to me. The next project was influenced by this, and it’s just in its earliest planning stages so I don’t really want to give it away because I’ve already got a lot of people that love the idea and are doing their own Twelve Tales now, but it’s so hard for an independent artist to get anyone to write about them that you need the story and if someone else has already done it then it’s hard, but I have a really cool idea and it’s influenced by that and it’s going to be equally challenging, it’s going to take a year and a half or so before I can record it. Hopefully the next recording, as far as the production style it’s hard to say what’ll happen because a lot can change in a year but my main goal is to find a producer that is a little different than the producers that I worked with on this, someone that has a little bit less of a fingerprint on the project. There are a lot of different kinds of producers who basically figure out who might be the best players for it and find an engineer who’s not going to put their idea of what is great all over it and it’s very subtle. That’s what I’m looking for, someone that’s very subtle because it’ll be very, very song-driven.

MR: AJ, what advice do you have for new artists? I know we already got a lot of it from your musical history, but please, it would be great if you would put it succinctly.

AJ: We’ve done this before and I question my own advice. Clearly, I’m not a superstar or a household name or anything like that. If that’s what you’re looking for, then my advice is probably not going to be any good for you. But if what you’re looking to do is be the best that you can be and you don’t really care for the celebrity or the fame of that side of it–that’s fine if it happens. But if your goal is to just do your thing whatever the result may be as far as success in the public eye, I would say a couple of things. I would say figure out what you want to do besides music. Figure out three things that you would want to do in your life besides music. It’s something that was proposed to me when I was looking for my second manager, I met with a guy and that was one of the questions he asked me and it stuck with me, clearly. That was a long time ago. Besides music, what’s important in your life? To know that is to know that you might sell millions of records and if music is your only focus you could be fifty or sixty years old and have a ton of accolades but be completely lonely. You could be in a milliion different situations but I think that to know what you really want besides music is the key. From a musical standpoint, I think you need to keep your ears open.

I think you need to try and play as many styles of music as you can. You need to listen to every genre of music until it’s not a novelty. When you first listen to a twenties recording, espeically on a 78, it’s a novelty. It’s fun and it might be cool or it might be funny or it might be ridiculous or it might be anything that you can think of, but at a certain point if you listen to it enough that novelty wears off and then the actual art of it becomes really clear. Same thing for music that you may not listen to whether it’s jazz or hip hop or metal or classical or electronica, with any kind of music the more that you listen to it the broader your palate’s going to be. Even if it’s not your thing, no one needs to hear your hip hop album, your electronica album, especially if that’s not who you are. But I really believe that if you practice it and you listen to it until the novelty has worn off and you see the value and the art in it, I think you become much more able to contribute something unique.

MR: And that’s basically what you did.

AJ: It’s what I do.

MR: Right, still do, nice. So I’ve heard you play “Operator” in one of your more recent performances. I think people often wonder when they go to see you if you’re going to play any of your dad Jim Croce’s songs.

AJ: It is a curious thing. It’s kind of a surreal thing on one hand and on the other hand I feel like I’m in this family business so it’s important to pay some tribute to what came before. There have been people in my family playing for a long time but a lot of people know my dad. It’s strange to not really know what people are looking for. I’ve had opportunities, many many opportunities to make cover albums and do whole albums of his and I don’t understand what the fascination with that is. I really don’t. I don’t know if people are looking for this connection where I play a song just like him and they feel like they can connect to me through that, I don’t know if they want to hear something that’s totally different because I do it my own way; it’s a no-win situation when I think about that stuff, and that’s why I’ve never done it. And the other thing is, if I choose to do one of his songs it’ll be just because I love the song and I want to do it and I’m really attached to a particular thing, you know what I mean? So when someone says, “Why don’t you do an album of your dad’s stuff?” I say, “Why don’t we just listen to an album of his? He did it great.” [laughs]

MR: I’ve always wondered about those recordings, where people do live versions of whole albums…or even re-recording a whole album.

AJ: I’ve played in cover bands before where we did a night of Queen and I’m playing the keyboard and doing piano and strings and then singing harmonies and doing all of that stuff and it’s fun and it’s challenging and I’ve done that with Bowie and it’s really fun and I’ve done it with Prince and it’s really challenging. I think that cover bands are a unique phenomenon. I guess people want to hear something that’s familiar and they want to hear a band play it well. I’m having a really surreal experience right now, too, because I’m leaving in just a few days for Europe and on a couple of the shows there’s a cover band in Holland called The Alluring Ajettes and they cover my stuff. Their whole set is my catalog, right, but it’s three women singing. They’ve been doing it for a while and they have a following and they’re goingt o come and sit in with me on a couple of shows and sing background on a couple of songs. To me that’s a very surreal experience. Then I sort of took it further and said, “I wonder if they have a bigger crowd than I do.” But yeah, that’s sort of existential.

MR: Is there anything you like to do other than playing music? And raising kids and being a husband?

AJ: Yeah. I’m a fan of old cars and I have an old ’64 Skylark Convertible. It’s nothing fancy, but I love it. It needs paint, it’s not in perfect cosmetic condition but it runs beautifully and I just love it. I love old cars and I’ve had a bunch of them over the years–different kinds. This one’s my favorite. My son has the bug, too and he has a ’57 Rambler which has not been the most reliable vehicle, but now it is. Now that I’ve put all of my money into it. [laughs] But I love that. And I love travelling. I love new experiences. I love meeting new people and new places. I’m putting a New Orleans group together that I’m going to tour with next year. There’ll be all kinds of music but it’ll mostly be festival-driven. I’m holding auditions in New Orleans in November and some phenomenal players are going to be coming in. When I was there, there were a lot of great players who came to the show. I’m not looking to do a Doctor John show or a Professor Longhair or The Meters or something, I just wanted to have that element as part of it because it’s part of what I do. There are so many talented musicians down therre, espeically rhythm sections, horn sections, singers. So I’m putting together a pretty big group to do some shows next year and I’m looking forward to that. And then travelling. Besides just being on tour, my wife and I are going to drive around and meet up with the tour wherever it has to be. I’m contemplating renting out the house and just being a gypsy for a while and just enjoying the new experiences that you have every day.

MR: So, Europe is going to be your next experience, I wish you a lot of fun and luck, AJ. I imagine it’s pretty energizing for you.

AJ: It’s great, yeah. I’m excited. The first show is a big festival with eighteen thousand people, it’s a big difference from my last gig at Yoshi’s in Oakland where we had two hundred fifty people or whatever there. It’s a completely different experience. I love it.

MR: AJ, that feels like a nice ending but I know there must be one last thing we need to visit. What else you got?

AJ: Well, if people are interested and they want to get a sense of my stuff–I hate to try and sell myself or try and sell Facebook but–my Facebook page is better than my website in some ways than my website because I put up performances of shows that I’ve done, shows that I’m doing, a lot of times there’s links to live performances while they’re happening–I really try and get people that are into it to like the page so they can see what’s happening.

https://www.facebook.com/ajcrocemusic

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne