A Conversation with Spyro Gyra’s Jay Beckenstein – HuffPost 12.6.13

Mike Ragogna: Jay, you have a new album out, The Rhinebeck Sessions. Why Rhinebeck? Why there? Why this kind of album now? What the heck is going on here?

Jay Beckenstein: [laughs] Well, in terms of the geography, there’s a studio up there called The Clubhouse. The Clubhouse has a very nice lodging right by the studio, which was perfect for the way we were approaching this recording, which brings up the second part of the question, “Why this kind of album now?” This is very different from everything else we’ve ever done, it’s kind of easy to recognize that. I think it really was a result of two factors; one, we’ve done our regular routine too many times and it really was time to get away from it, and two, the band was in a very, very good playing mode. The band was playing really well, so doing the spontaneous thing we did on this record led to change and was in line with what the band felt its strengths were.

MR: You normally woodshed your songs on the road, but not for this one. How did the creative process work differently from before?

JB: What was a bigger issue was that typically, the songs were written before the sessions and the songs were written by individual writers in the band. They always came from band writers, but each one of the five of us had very different approaches to our writing. So inevitably, we put out a series of records that were very fractured–sometimes in a good way–but they bounced around from style to style and each writer would have their say, but maybe they lacked a kind of total sound on the records. Also, because the writers were bringing in material, they had very exacting ideas of what they wanted to do with the material, so things would often get very locked into place. On The Rhinebeck Sessions, it was a situation where we didn’t allow anything to be written in advance by any individual. We forced ourselves to write together.

MR: After forty years of doing things a certain way, did that make this make these sessions a little challenging?

JB: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We all wondered whether we’d be fighting–which, for us, is just disagreeing–because we also only allowed ourselves a short period of time, three days living at the studio. That didn’t happen, though; I’m happy to say the band really rose to the occasion. Going into it, there was a certain amount of trepidation and worry that we were somehow tossing away money doing it this way, but not at all. I couldn’t be more pleased with the results. I think we really made a statement, if not to the public, then to ourselves about our group identity.

MR: After all these years, what dynamics have changed either creatively or personally within the band?

JB: I think the biggest changes probably stem from my role in the band. I really took a pretty strong role as leader in the early years. While I’m still the one who holds the purse strings and makes certain business decisions and things like that, on the creative side, I have really pulled myself back to make more room for the other guys in the band. I think this particular recording couldn’t be more of an indication of that. I used to be the producer, now it’s produced by all of us. I used to be the primary writer or at least the guy that got the most things on record, writing-wise; you don’t see my name on a song on this. It’s everybody. I think a lot of the evolution artistically that has caused has also been a good thing personally. I don’t feel I have a status of leader or boss to the other guys in the band, and I think that they genuinely feel that the band belongs to them as well. That has only encouraged that more and more and more along the years and it’s brought us closer and closer together.

MR: And you also released this record independently. How does it feel to be rid of the ten thousand-pound gorilla and take your career into your own hands?

JB: The nature of the business has minimized the financial importance of making records. My band used to truly rely on record sales and the money we would get from the publishers and the live shows were an additional income. Now it’s just all about the live shows. There are just no record stores out there with a mechanism to sell recordings the way we used to, or anybody used to for that matter. So in a way, that has created a freedom. You certainly can make the record now and say to yourself, “Well gosh, there’s no way to sell it, I may as well make the record I want.” I’m exaggerating that, we do okay with the records, but relative to the past–and I’m speaking for all–the transition to the digital age is not, I hope, complete yet because the rewards for artists are not in place.

MR: Exactly. Independent artists that sell online, though it is empowering, they often take a major hit financially. The revenue streams are not yet balanced or consistent.

JB: Oh, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. For example, our last record Foreign Affair hit Russian high definition sites six weeks before we released it. It was for free in all its glory more than a month before we had planned on putting it out. That’s the ugly side of it. If you can get it for free, then paying a certain amount of money for it makes you feel ripped off.

MR: That’s true. And now we have generations of music downloaders who’ve pirated their mp3s without the understanding that sales were how artists survive.

JB: And not just the artists; think of the writers. The writer only gets paid a writers’ credit if there are legitimate sales registered. So the person who writes the song, who might be a chubby guy in a one-room apartment somewhere and this was his one big chance, he got a song on something and ooh, it’s stolen.

MR: That is unfortunate for the writer as well, very true. I hope that we’re not done with how digital distribution and royalties are set up.

JB: No, I hope that there’s some better deal made, but that said, it’s all changed anyway and you can make a case today that when the playing field changes, you have to change your approach to it too, and we and everybody else are trying to do that. These days, the internet is a really terrific benefit in a lot of ways. It’s certainly easier to sell T-shirts on the internet than it is to lug them around from gig to gig. It is certainly easier to make music because of the digital age. There’s huge conveniences in music production. It’s certainly easier to make an end run around critics and gatekeepers because of the YouTube world. I think it is a way for a band like Spyro Gyra to stay out there because that rather small base that still exists in Omaha can still connect with us. So there are benefits, but I can’t say that thus far there’s been any kind of equalization. It’s still much rougher than it was before the digital realm.

MR: And it seems that especially in the realm of jazz, genres are shifting. For instance, smooth jazz is nothing like it was before because now you’ve got instrumental R&B, you’ve got funk, you’ve got blues, you’ve got fusion, all of which are being incorporated into the music as the pop approach gets more abandoned.

JB: That whole smooth jazz thing was very unfortunate. I’m not speaking for the music, but what happened there was that a radio format set itself up and became the gatekeeper for the major free publicity, which was radio. That gatekeeper, who was not an artist, who was not one of the musicians, decided that a very narrow band of style would get through their colander and they filtered the music into its most vapid form and forced a whole generation of artists–not speaking of us, because we preceded it–but I watched a whole generation of artists chase that damn thing and it was nothing but an artificial creation of some corporate dude who thought he had a really great radio format to sell BMWs. That’s how I see smooth jazz. It’s not how I see smooth jazz artists, because there are a lot of great musicians that were sort of pressed into that world by the changes that radio format brought. All you’re seeing now is–now that the radio format’s gone–all of the artists that were played on it are stretching out in their various personal ways. They’re not smooth, they’re gospel! They’re not smooth, they’re R&B, or funk! Because they’re playing the edgier version of who they were, which was completely thwarted by that darn radio style.

MR: Really well stated, nice. So Jay, in your opinion, what is the state of jazz these days?

JB: It’s very interesting. You know, on one hand, it’s a very tough field. On the other hand, jazz is an amazing musical form and no matter where we go around the world, there’s a small group of people that are really into it and a group of players. On a world-wide scale, I’ll be darned but there is really a growing number of places where jazz education has really grown and produced a lot of young jazz musicians. There are hip jazz scenes like in Brooklyn, but it’s certainly not anything huge or big and the big jazz institutions like jazz festivals and such, they’re all under pressure because of changing styles.

MR: Yeah. And also you have a lot of kids who graduated with jazz degrees these last couple of years. I personally know a bunch. There’s an attraction to the music on the gut level, I feel. Online, it’s in the Top Five growing formats. There seems to be a disconnect between the alleged image of jazz not being one of the most popular formats and yet people are gravitating to it in the millions.

JB: That’s an interesting observation. Here’s my take on it: First of all, I hate to be the negative in this but it’s a free market out there and if jazz was selling a lot of tickets for high prices, you’d see a lot of jazz. There are no promoters out there going, “I’m not going to do jazz because I dislike it,” they’re all going, “I’m not going to do jazz because hip-hop and electronic dance music are going to make me fifty times the money.” That’s just the nature of the beast. That said, some period ago, jazz really received a big boost in academia. I think even dating back to the days of when it was seen as “we’re going to have a black jazz professor to balance our music department,” back to the sixties and seventies. But it spawned an entire industry of jazz education and that industry was tied into an industry of instrument makers, trumpet companies and saxophone companies and reed manufacturers. The saxophone companies weren’t selling saxophones to people making their living playing saxophones, they were selling saxophones to people studying saxophones. So this big industry sprung up around jazz education and some really wonderful jazz educators found themselves at universities teaching jazz. Berkeley, North Texas, University Of Illinois,

MR: I would add The University of Iowa. Their jazz department is one of the best.

JB: And there are great jazz programs all around the world because of the expansion of the jazz education industry. Well, the end result of that are jazz graduates who find themselves with no jazz out there to play. So they are going to perpetuate it because there’s no choice but to go back into the educational fold and use your jazz degree to teach jazz to more guys that are going to come out and not have work in the real world. Now, I’m not complaining about this because I think just the learning of jazz as a human being is like learning yoga. It has its own benefits. It is a wonderful, incredible thing on its own to be able to play jazz with an ensemble. It is magical. So I don’t complain at all about all the schools churning out all the jazz musicians they want. But be warned–in the real world of dog-eat-dog musical capitalism, jazz has yet to recover at all.

MR: Interesting. The philosophy and psychology of jazz.

JB: Jazz is falling into the same role as classical music. Like classical music, it’s taught at universities, but how many great violinists are going to go out there and become stars? In the jazz world, there’s a jazz ecology that jazz musicians can play in, but it’s limited, much the way that classical music is limited. But just like classical music, jazz is such a sterling art form, such an amazingly sophisticated version of music, it deserves to continue to exist, just like classical music even if it only becomes an institutional setting.

MR: As you said, there seems to be a very similar trajectory between jazz and classical. Maybe it’s due to the trends in our culture over the last sixty years or so, but it does seem like more sophisticated forms of music are always the ones to take the hit.

JB: Oh, well we could run on that one, too. Both of those musical forms are the most difficult musical forms. There are maybe some others…for instance, bluegrass is pretty hard. But those are the most difficult musical forms. They’re the ones that take years of practice, there’s no instant gratification whatsoever in either one of them. We have a world out there that has very much democratized music. You can put together musical things without knowing a note, without playing an instrument. There’s a good side of that; isn’t it great that anyone in the world can make something that sounds conventionally good? But, of course, the downside is the master is ignored, the music of the masters is ignored. “It takes too much time, it’s too hard, I’m lazy, I’ve got other things to do.

MR: Well, I’m positive none of THAT came into play while Spyro Gyra was recording The Rhinebeck Sessions, I’m sure.

JB: [laughs] Not so much.

MR: I’d love to learn more about the band’s history. I especially loved “Shaker Song,” “Morning Dance,” “Incognito.” By the way, the band did borrow that name from the recording, no?

JB: I don’t know, and I’ll fess up to something else. We’re not the first Spyro Gyra! Not that I knew about it, I found out about it after the fact, but if you go online with “Spyrogyra” and replace our “y” with an “I,” you end up with an English folk group from the sixties, Spirogrya.

MR: No! Say it ain’t so!

JB: Who knew? I was absolutely sure when I called it Spyro Gyra that I was not going to have trouble with somebody else having the name.

MR: Jay, so far, you’ve had an especially really good run making music. What do you think about that after all of these years?

JB: I still have this oddly childish attitude that I’ve managed to live my entire life without ever working. Now I know that’s not true. Intellectually I know I’ve worked really, really hard and every time I get on a seventeen-hour plane trip to South Africa, my butt is working really, really hard. But it still feels like somehow, I got away with something here. It’s like a little secret, “Oh my God, we’re playing music and they’re paying us!” [laughs] That’s still in there.

MR: And after all these years, I bet you guys are like a bunch of big kids when you’re playing this music, aren’t you.

JB: Well, it is the one place in the whole world where we don’t age. It hurts more getting out of cars and getting into planes, my hair has turned white and all that other stuff, but on stage, that isn’t there.

MR: By the way, were you prepared for how big a hit “Morning Dance” was at the time?

JB: No, of course not. And if I was to go back in time and have the whole thing happen again and somebody asked me to put down a really big bet on whether it would be a hit, I’d bet against it again. That was very freakish. I think you can count the instrumental songs that became hits on the radio on one hand pretty much. I haven’t the foggiest other than that I can still listen to it and it sounds pretty and pleasant and youthful and happy and who doesn’t like those things?

MR: By the way, The Manhattan Transfer’s recording of the group’s “Shaker Song” is still one of my favorite recordings by them to this day.

JB: You know, Janis Siegel and I were roommates in college.

MR: Well, there you go.

JB: There’s a funny story in there. I remember her leaving school after her freshman year and–little Jewish boy that I was–I’m going, “What are your parents going to say? You’re leaving school! That’s crazy!” It was my junior year when I was sitting in my dorm watching her Manhattan Transfer CBS special.

MR: Wow.

JB: Yeah, Janis had a quick start there. Even more amazing, about six or seven years later, Spyro takes off and the two of us meet out there in the professional world.

MR: There was a happy conclusion for everybody.

JB: That one worked.

MR: Jay, what advice do you have for new artists?

JB: “Artist” is a pretty broad word. You’ve got to love it. You’ve just got to love it. The difficulties in getting your creation out there and appreciated and getting it to where you want, those difficulties are so great, there are so many headwinds that if you’re not getting goosebumps from what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it. It may turn out that the greatest reward is the actual act of creating and if you’re not satisfied with that by itself, you may be disappointed.

MR: Beautiful, thanks. Are you ready to start your next forty years of Spyro Gyra?

JB: [laughs] Yeah, sure, I got up this morning and started the next forty. I’m going to plow the next forty with my forehead. I’ve considered franchising it, it could live longer than I. You never know, there may be another version of Spyro Gyra down the road if I can find the right replacement for me.

MR: An animatronic Disney robot?

JB: [laughs] I don’t know, it’ll be better than the other band.

MR: I’m pretty sure you’ve influenced a great number of bands. Do you think you’ve made a contribution to pop culture?

JB: Yeah, sure, I had my moment of cultural zeitgeist. We’re part of it, that great stream of human energy and everybody copying off of everybody else and everybody being influenced by everybody else. I don’t think you could ever draw a draft of it, but I know we’re in there.

MR: One more question. Now that you’ve recorded in Rhinebeck and you see how beautiful the place is, is there a part of Rhinebeck that will always be with you now?

JB: Oh, that’s interesting, a part of Rhinebeck… Everybody probably says the same thing; The Poets’ Walk is really, really beautiful. But there’s a bakery right downtown and I went there every morning and I really like that. I wish I could give them a plug.

MR: Yeah, Bread Alone Bakery. I love that place.

JB: There are so many great things in Rhinebeck. Rhinebeck’s a gorgeous place…and pricey!

MR: [laughs] Indeed. I was going to move there until I did the math.

JB: Well then, welcome to Kingston.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne