A Conversation with Euge Groove – HuffPost 11.8.13

Mike Ragogna: You’ve explained it a billion times to every other interviewer. But now, it’s my turn. How did the name come about?

Euge Groove: The name that’s on my birth certificate is “Steven Eugene Grove.” Euge is just a corruption of Eugene. Instead of calling me Gene, I got nicknamed “Euge.” That started when I got married; my wife’s family started nicknaming me that. They’re from the South, they nickname everything in the South. “Groove” is just a mispronunciation of my last name, “Grove.” I was doing a lot of touring in Europe and still do and they see G-R-O-V-E and pronounce it as “groove.” So Euge Groove just came out of that.

MR: There a story out there that the fans were chanting “Euge Groove” and that’s why you call yourself that. All lies, huh.

EG: Yeah, that came later. On the first Smooth Jazz Cruise, some people saw me for the first time and they’d go “Why are people booing you?” But they’re not booing me, they’re going “Euge! Euge!” So that kind of came with it.

MR: What’s great is when Earl Klugh ended his show, everybody was going “Klugh!” and if you weren’t listening closely, it could’ve been “boo,” like at Bruce Springsteen’s concerts.

EG: [laughs]

MR: What are you thoughts on you’re playing on Smooth Jazz Cruises?

EG: This’ll be my tenth year of doing it, I was on the very first one. We were kind of reminiscing about this the other day. There was Andre Berry, one of the bass players on the ship, and Randy Jacobs, and the three of us are the only ones who were on the very first smooth jazz cruise that started in 2004. It’s awesome, I try to do them once a year. I don’t want to do any more than that because I think it kind of takes away a bit from them being special. But it’s great to be up close and personal with the fans, which I think is why they like to come. They get to hang with everybody and see what they’re like.

MR: You have a pretty large demo.

EG: A Euge demo?

MR: Dear God. Yes, a “Euge” demo!

EG: Sorry.

MR: No, no, please do more of that, that was good. Your fans seem to be from their twenties to their eighties. How do you explain yourself, sir?

EG: I think you’re being a little kind in saying it starts in the twenties. I’ve got kids in their twenties and it’s not so much their music. They hear it and stuff, but the core audience I would say is more late thirties and up. For me, the music that I try to write and love and kind of where my inspiration came from is the R&B of the seventies and contemporary gospel music. Message aside, that’s my favorite genre that I listen to these days.

MR: Ah, R&B, the recurring theme. Who are you listening to these days in contemporary gospel?

EG: Oh, guys like Israel Houghton, he’s definitely one of my favorites; Tye Tribbett…there are a lot of other guys in there. That’s the music I listen to. I’ll turn on Watercolors [on Sirius XM] or turn on the Praise channel and listen to that. Again, message aside, I’m not trying to preach to anybody, but the music is incredible.

MR: This young person over here–let’s just call him Jonnie Cohen–his favorite show of the cruise was the gospel brunch. What is it about smooth jazz that makes it so expansive to include genres like R&B, gospel, funk, hip-hop, etc?

EG: I think smooth jazz had its heyday as far as popularity in sync with radio, probably in the late nineties, early two thousands. As radio stations turned away from smooth jazz, I think that opened things up, in my perspective anyway, because people weren’t trying to conform to what they thought radio was about. You’d get great artists who would come out with these killer albums and it didn’t fit the mold of radio and radio wouldn’t play it, so radio didn’t grow. I think they kind of killed themselves with that. I think you had a lot of artists who were listening to what radio wanted and that’s how they were making their records. So once radio became completely inconsequential to them, they started doing what they wanted to make. I think, musically speaking, that’s really helped the format grow.

MR: I’m with you on that. I think the machine itself would’ve rejected anything outside of whatever they defined as the “Smooth Sound.”

EG: Yeah, I’ve worked with big labels and small labels. My first two albums were with Warner Bros. and I never got anything from them as far as, “You need to make a record this way or we’re rejecting this.” They always stayed out, which was kind of a cool thing. I’ve always done well with radio because I think that’s just how my ear goes. But you’ll hear guys who are arguably more straight-ahead players, they’re trying to shape something for radio and it just never works. It seems insincere.

MR: A lot of your songs became staples on the smooth jazz format. “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” is one of those. It seems like the roots of smooth jazz are in the seventies. For instance, the Phil Ramone records, the pop records of that time such as those by Phoebe Snow or Paul Simon–or even “Midnight At The Oasis” by Maria Muldaur–had elements of smooth jazz in there. For players, it seemed like that was the platform for what ended up becoming smooth jazz, because those artists had to play somewhere. Then you had David Benoit and all those cats who started coming onto the scene.

EG: There’s more of a new age thing, too, with them. You know, the bands that you mentioned, those were instrumental to me growing up. I grew up near DC and Baltimore and I would go see these bands come in and cover songs with a big horn section and the B-3, and that just shaped me forever. Once I heard these guys play live, I knew I wanted to do that. It’s my favorite music to listen to and subconsciously, I know that’s where I pull all of my writing from. It’s not necessarily like I’m trying to write in that way. That’s just how I hear things, I hear those progressions and how they used diminished chords and that kind of thing, and it comes naturally to me.

MR: The words “groove jazz” come to mind.

EG: For my last name?

MR: [laughs] Exactly. No for the genre.

EG: Traditionally speaking, the artists who have done the best have had more of an R&B and groove jazz kind of vibe to them. That’s what I like to listen to, but also popularity-wise, those are the guys who have been the best for whatever reason. It’s interesting if you historically follow music and you’re really nerdy and geeky about the numbers and that stuff.

MR: Nerdy and geeky. I’m in.

EG: [laughs] Yeah, I’m in, too. If you watch the transition from AM to FM in the seventies–we were one of the first formats to go over to FM–it was the higher quality music. Easy listening and jazz-influenced stuff, those were the formats that went into FM because it sounded better. Now I think we’re seeing that with smooth jazz in the digital revolution even though the traditional FM stations are what they used to be in any format, not only jazz. Every format’s getting crushed. The ones that are doing particularly well on XM and Sirius are the smooth jazz stations. The digital stations, their biggest formats, are musics that actually have a higher production value to it.

MR: Yeah, pop music took a hit when flannel came in, alternative and indie introduced an intentional lo-fi sound whereas jazz hasn’t gone that direction. But it could also be that people who listen to smooth jazz are also a little bit more concerned with sonics when it comes to their music.

EG: Yeah, I think they are. Going back to the geek inside me, I also do my releases on HDTracks.com where you can download 24-bit 96k versions of the masters. It’s stunning. To come on a ship like this, you have to come from some money. These cruises aren’t inexpensive. Some of these people, I’ve been to their houses, they have amazing sound systems so for them, being able to listen to the higher-quality stuff is important.

MR: So that’s where all the high-end sound systems have been hiding.

EG: Yeah, exactly. It’s fun for me when I make my records. I have a killer system in my studio, so I try to make that translate for anybody who wants to geek out that much, I guess.

MR: Euge, with your records such as “Chillaxin,” you’re obviously employing elements of different genres, your variation of “smooth jazz.” How do you approach recording your albums creatively?

EG: A little bit of panic sets in because I have to sit down and get the task at hand down. It’s always difficult to shut out the outside world and get into that writing space. But again, I don’t think I’m trying to go in any particular direction. It’s hard to say where an inspiration comes from. With the song “Chillaxin,” I had just gotten a brand new keyboard called a Nord Electro and it’s a really organic keyboard. It only has organic keyboard sounds in it for an electronic instrument, and I know that’s kind of weird, but it’s like a real piano, a real Fender Rhodes, a clavinet, and an organ. It’s sick.

MR: How close do the samples get?

EG: Well, it’s a digital sample of everything, but it’s a digital sample of only organic instruments. You won’t find synthesizers in there or those kinds of sounds, it’s just an organ, a Fender Rhodes, a Wurlitzer piano and a clavinet. Six sounds in the thing and I was so inspired by the rawness of the sound I wrote this one little chord part of a song and I tried to put other instruments with it and they didn’t fit because they sounded synthesized and this sounded real. I was like, “Okay, I’m going to have to overdub another sound from this.” I started layering all these sounds, I used the organ for the bass, and before I knew it I had written the entire song on just this one keyboard.

MR: That does kind of make you complete the process by using electronic drums and bass.

EG: Exactly, the bass came from that and I just put a simple live-sounding drum groove with it and that was really the song. But that’s where inspiration comes from; it can sometimes be a sound, it can sometimes be panic.

MR: How much of the music you record is you, where you arrange it that way and keep that through the final project?

EG: A hundred percent. When you do the writing nowadays with computers and virtual instruments and things, you can get pretty daggone close. The way that I’ve worked my last several records is that I’d get the songs arranged exactly like I want them, all of the orchestral arrangements and everything, and then I go in and replace that with live players, so the live players bring in their little touches to it, the little twists and turns that you can’t program, something that only the personality of a player can do.

MR: Who are some of your favorite players to play with? Make sure not to leave out anyone, considering you’ve lent your talents to Richard Marx, Elton John, Tina Turner…

EG: No, they paid. I wasn’t lending. [laughs] Yeah, I was a sideman for many, many, many years. I learned from every one of them. The first big tour I did was Tower of Power, who were on the ship last night. At all of twenty-four or twenty-five years old I got the gig with them and then the Tower horns went out with Huey Lewis & The News and watched Huey and those guys in their prime playing in front of fifteen, twenty thousand people every night and you see how grounded they are and all of the work ethic and everything, I learned that from them. Richard Marx, what a great songwriter, I saw what he did with that; Joe Cocker, just a pure guttural performer; Tina Turner, a really classic hands-on everything, controlled everything. So there was a lot to learn from these guys if you kept your eyes open.

MR: And of course you have the Elton John experience.

EG: Yeah, just in the recording studio, not in the live situation. Elton was just some recording stuff.

MR: Do you have a favorite medium or are they pretty equal, live versus studio?

EG: It used to be all live for me. I didn’t know anything about the studio until I started getting into doing my own records and I realized how difficult that was. I think I tried probably five different times and learned five different ways how not to make a solo album until I actually got it right. It’s two different worlds and two different paths. When I get in the studio, I’m going to start to in January and I’ve blocked out a three-month period of no touring or very minimal stuff because I don’t like to leave that world and switch hats because it’s just a different headspace.

MR: Is the process you sitting down and then writing for the project or are new works springing from a collection of things that you’ve written already?

EG: I’ll be sitting down and writing for the project. To be honest, I don’t have one song even sketched out for this.

MR: Oh well. How about by then?

EG: By then? I work all the way up until New Year’s. January comes and I’m going to shut the door and turn off the phones and that’s what I’ll do.

MR: What kind of touring schedule do you have?

EG: I’m out every week between now and and New Year’s.

MR: What kind of places?

EG: The cruise lands back in San Diego and I have to take a ferry out to Catalina Island the night we get back, then I’m home for a few days and then I go to Buffalo, I play at a performing arts center there. The next day is Phoenix Jazz Festival, it’s going to be outside. Then I fly to South Carolina doing the Earl Klugh Weekend Of Jazz. He has a thing he does out there every year, so I go to that and then it’s Vegas, I’ve got two weeks in London coming up…what am I forgetting? Oh, Dayton, Ohio, Columbus, Ohio, Chicago, Texas.

MR: How about New York and the East Coast?

EG: Already did it. I was there for two weeks in September.

MR: Do you enjoy getting on stage and jamming with the other musicians?

EG: Sometimes. Sometimes not. It can be a little bit of a cacophony every now and then, too many elements going on. But when you get like-minded players and it’s the right situation, there’s nothing like it, being able to feed off each other and kind of listen to what the other person is doing and shape your solos around each other which is a blast. I know for the finale night they have Sirius Watercolors Hall Of Fame inductees, Richard Elliott and I are doing a Grover Washington song together to honor Grover. That’s going to be a blast.

MR: You have a radio show.

EG: Yeah, SKY FM is the company. They were one of the early players in internet radio. It’s kind of like iHeart radio where they have fifty different stations or whatever. I don’t know how many jazz or smooth jazz stations they have, but I do a weekly show every Thursday on Smooth Jazz 24/7–that’s the name of that channel. It’s the only channel that has DJs or presenters as they call them. I do a two hour show every week and I get to talk about and embarrass my friends with the inside knowledge that I have.

MR: Do tell. What kinds of things do you say?

EG: I don’t know, I haven’t put my stuff together for this week yet. Just knowing their families and how they are with their kids or playing their horns jumping in the pool, that kind of stuff.

MR: So it’s very personal.

EG: Yeah. Obviously I know most of the guys, it’s not that big of a genre so I can put little stories in there. Richard Elliot, for example, has a song called “Panamera,” that’s because he has a Panamera car. He bought the Porsche Panamera, so I can share the little bit of information that Richard Elliot is ridiculously rich because he has a Porshe Panamera car. Things like that.

MR: Say, didn’t you replace him in Tower of Power? And why did you ever leave Tower of Power? How could you do such a thing?

EG: [laughs] Well, because I was married. I had the first kid along the way and I had to support a family. I had an offer to go out with Richard Marx and it was a pretty lucrative thing.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

EG: What advice for new artists? Oh my goodness. I think diversity at first until you figure out exactly the path that you want to go down. When doors open, just be ready for them to open. I think one thing that I learned in music school is that if you’re being hired for a gig as a player, it’s a given that you can play. They already assume that you can musically do the part, but can you show up on time and do it professionally is the big thing. Once you do that, you’re going to meet other people and doors will definitely open up, just be ready when the doors open.

MR: And who the heck opened your doors, mister?

EG: I had one door after another. They haven’t stopped, fortunately. I went to school in Miami, I started playing in clubs down there, I hooked up with a DJ that saw me play in the club, this guy Lewis Martineé. He hired me to play on an album for this vocal group that was coming out, Exposé. I didn’t know who they were, but the next thing you know, it was one of Clive Davis’ number one girls acts and it was at the top of the chart.

MR: And you’re wailing away on their hit.

EG: A number one Billboard Top One Hundred chart hit! So I’m living in Miami and a roommate of mine said, “Hey, let’s move to California.” I went, “Okay!” That’s all it took. We moved out to California and I remember getting into to town and listening to my sax solo on the radio and going, “I’ve made it!” That couldn’t have been further from the truth, but that kind of prodded me to move there and my roommate and I wrote this song called “Hearts On Fire” that Richard Elliot put on one of his earlier albums. He heard me play on that. He was leaving Tower of Power and recommended me to them, that’s where that connection came from. So I worked with them for a while. Richard Marx’s manager Hermie played with Tower of Power, recommended me to him and from there, I met another musician who was playing with Joe Cocker and he goes, “Hey we need a sax player over here,” so again, one door just kind of opens into the next.

MR: And you were with Joe Cocker.

EG: I played with him from ’94, the last time I worked with him was about 2003 or 2004. I actually got to open for him the last time I went out there. That was interesting, there were some venues where it was absolutely perfect and some venues where I wish there was chicken wire on the front of the stage. These people were rowdy and they didn’t want any of that smooth jazz stuff.

MR: And even then, I bet you pushed the borders of the genre.

EG: Yeah, absolutely. I’m not afraid to get out there in front of anybody. I had guys in Boston flipping me off, so, okay, I jumped off the stage and started playing in their face and they laughed. It could’ve gone the other way, I guess they could’ve kicked my butt. I don’t know.

MR: You look back at that guy who got his first job with Exposé, is there anything you want to tell that guy?

EG: Lewis Martineé?

MR: Uh, that would be you.

EG: Oh, me! Tell me? I don’t know, it’s never a dull moment, I can’t look anywhere and say I made the wrong decision.

MR: Would it be something like, “Hey, it’s going to be okay, don’t worry?”

EG: I don’t think I’ve ever been a worrier. If you’re going into it worrying about where your paycheck’s going to come from, where you’re going to eat, the world of being a musician is not for you. There are ups and downs. Obviously, I have three kids and there definitely were times where we were going through a big glass jar for quarters to put gas in the car and get them to school. There are times like that you have to go through. Fortunately, things are a little better now. I’ve got great managers and agents and stuff in my life that help me keep the roller coaster a little more stable. But being a musician is definitely not for the faint of heart.

MR: What’s the future look like for you, other than the album?

EG: That’s another thing. We don’t look too far down the road because you get scared, but that’s the big thing for me. This was an awesome year, I did more touring this year than I’ve ever done in the last thirteen years of doing the solo thing. Hopefully next year will be just like that. I’ll get into this ninth album and it’ll go the way it’s supposed to be. I can’t worry about it because if you do, I’ll end up in a corner somewhere wrapping a sheet around me drinking vodka.

MR: [laughs] If you’d like to test that theory, maybe you can do that on the ship.

EG: [laughs] Too many responsibilities.

MR: One last question, if you could be an animal…

EG: A zebra.

MR: A zebra, great. Wait, no, the question is what the heck do you think as far as the genre itself? One last thought about that which we lovingly and maybe temporarily are still calling “smooth jazz.”

EG: Smooth jazz.

MR: Yessirie. Like, maybe we should get rid of that “smooth”? Should we start there?

EG: I don’t have such a bad feeling about it as some do. I think it’s just a name and I think it just kind of points people in a direction. Some people are vehement about it. You’ll say, “I’m playing on a Kirk Whalum album,” and they’ll say, “I love that, but that’s not smooth jazz!” I’m going, “Yeah, it is.” For some reason, some people think that all the bad music in the genre, that’s smooth jazz. Just like any genre, it encompasses great music and bad music. There’s some absolutely horrible stuff out there where you put it in your car CD player and you don’t want to change the CD, you want to change the car. But there’s also absolutely incredible music out there, guys making amazing stuff. I mentioned Kirk Whalum. I think my favorite album of his was his tribute to Donny Hathaway he did a few years ago. The production, everything was just so organic and real. And it was really cut that way, with real musicians and real strings and not a hype sound, just an organic sound. I hear stuff like that and the guy’s at the top of his game and then there’s other stuff out there that sounds like it was made on a K-Mart drum machine through a Realistic microphone.

MR: Any closing thoughts?

EG: Closing thoughts? I hope you’re enjoying the cruise. What do you do for music, Jonnie? What’s your thing?

Jonnie Cohen: I just graduated from University of Iowa in jazz guitar and I play in an afro-fusion band in denver.

EG: Do you want to be a player? Do you want to write or have a band?

JC: Yeah, I kind of have my own project but I’m really interested in the studio world. It’s really exciting to me.

EG: Yeah, we used to get called for studio dates back in the day. That’s gone. I haven’t been to an outside studio, even for my own stuff, in so long. You build it at home. If somebody wants a sax or horn section, they’ll send me the file and I’ll do it at home and send it back to them. That’s just the way it’s come.

JC: I also want to be more performance-oriented, being backup or touring with artists.

EG: Do whatever you can do. I think that was the thing with me, had I not been the sideman for Huey Lewis and Joe Cocker and Tina Turner, I would not be the artist that I am today. There’s no way. I see that with some guys who missed that little piece of their education, where they didn’t see somebody at that level do it and you see that they missed that little piece of the thing, it’s almost like they’re performing in a wedding band, almost. It’s a different thing.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne