A Conversation with José James – HuffPost 6.13.14

Mike Ragogna: So your album While You Were Sleeping comes about a year after No Beginning No End. Loving this creative run?

JJ: Absolutely, man. I wrote this album while I was on tour for No Beginning No End and I’m doing the same while I’m on tour for this one. I find that the more creativity, the better. The best time to do it is when I’m in it, not when I’m out of it.

MR: What was the difference between how you created this album and the last album?

JJ: Well for me every new album is a sort of summary and a reaction against the previous album. No Beginning No End there were like twenty musicians, we recorded in five different studios in three different countries, there were a lot of different bands, it was really exciting, it was really about me experimenting with different players and different songwriters. What I realized was that I really wanted to have more control over the sound and the production. This is really like a band album, it’s the same guys in the same studio in Brooklyn creating a diverse array of arrangements and sounds, and what that allowed me to do as a producer was really focus on performance and songwriting, which I feel is a personal evolution on this album.

MR: You had Kris [Bowers], Solomon [Dorsey] and Richard [Spaven] as your core group, and I understand you all had equal say on what went into the record.

JJ: Yes, up to a point. I really wanted everyone’s involvement, I thought it was really important. I wouldn’t have been able to create this album without them for sure.

MR: Also, you had Brian Bender overseeing it.

JJ: Yeah. I really trust him, we’ve made a lot of albums together now, for myself and other people. We have a great rapport, especially as a vocalist you really need to trust whoever’s on the other side of the glass because sometimes you might be tired, singers can get inside their head and that’s a very dangerous place to live, so he’s good for getting you out of your head.

MR: And you have a newbie, Brad Allen Williams.

JJ: Yeah, he’s a great guitarist from Memphis, he really brings that Memphis soul, blues, gospel feel but he’s also thoroughly trained in jazz and plays in rock bands. He’s pretty much an amazing genius of guitar, he can do anything you ask him to.

MR: It must be nice having these multi-talented/multi-genre artists adding to your already blended music.

JJ: Absolutely. They’re all, like myself, trained in jazz, so a lot of the communication with us is very easy, like shorthand. It makes it really fast. We especially needed that on this album because every sound was heavily curated, especially all the guitar and synth stuff. We had a lot of arguments about which direction to go in terms of the sound. Minute things, really nerdy things.

MR: From a musical perspective, is that the mission? To line up the foundations you learned in jazz and take it outward from there?

JJ: Absolutely! I’ve never forgotten how excited I was hearing Off The Wall by Michael Jackson. To me that’s his best album and to me the reason behind that is Quincy Jones. Some of the best pop music has been made by jazz minds. All the Al Green stuff I like with Willie Mitchell production, all the Motown stuff, every single Motown single that we love is played by jazz musicians. For me it’s all got to feel good and the musicianship has to be high. That’s really why I love jazz musicians, because they have the same level of musicianship as a classical player, but the freedom of an artist.

MR: The lyrics of “Angel” present the concepts of wanting to hook up and also wanting something deeper.

JJ: Yeah, I feel like we always want the best, ultimately when you’re attracted to somebody it’s often because they’re cute or you think they’re sexy or whatever, but really in your heart you’re looking for love and you’re looking for a partner and someone to elevate your life and give you some sense of purpose. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t and that’s the endless search that we’re all into. We act like it’s not important sometimes but here we are doing it over and over and over again. I think we’re looking for something.

MR: With “Bodhisattva” you’re hinting at your spiritual side. How deep does that go, and how does it play into creating new music?

JJ: You know, it’s really everything. I feel like that’s where the music comes from. I was listening to a lot of Alice Coltrane, later music she made after she quit the record business which is really fascinating. Hearing a musician make music that has no commercial intent is pretty amazing. It feels different. I kind of wanted to tap into some of that energy and bring it on the album. Hopefully in a small way it’s there.

MR: You mentioned Al Green before, and you cover “Simply Beautiful.” That trumpet solo is beautiful, too. That was by Takuya?

JJ: Yeah, Takuya Kuroda. Al Green is a legend, man. I love him, I’ve had a chance to meet him briefly, he’s a gentleman and amazing and I’ve loved that song ever since I first heard it. That’s one of the songs that just blew me away as a teenager. I was introduced to Al Green by way of Pulp Fiction, by the way. That puts me in the nineties. I just felt like, “Wow, this is a way to end the album in a very sensual, soulful place. I really want people to connect the dots between all the different styles that we’re doing on the album.

MR: Yeah, at times, you even rock out on this album. Is that a way of getting out all your endless energy?

JJ: Absolutely! It’s just fun. I wanted to have fun, I wanted the band to have funa nd most importantly I wanted the audience to have fun. We played Holland last week, we were playing “Every Little Thing” and there are people dancing and jumping up and down, it kind of gives people permission, “Yeah, go crazy if you want to and have a great time.” Some of my work has been seen as a little over serious, people are shushing people in the audience like I’m some great artist that you have to listen to with reverence. I’m like, “No, no, this is just music to have fun to.”

MR: You mentioned Holland. You have an international following, don’t you, in addition to the united states?

JJ: Absolutely! I’m always touring.

MR: How do they react to you overseas versus America? What are the differences and similarities?

JJ: Well I’ve found that over here the genres are further apart. That goes to venues, too. What I’m faced with is, “Which room do you play?” In New York and LA I can get away with it, we can play at the Roxy in LA and we can play at the Highland Ballroom in New York, but in other places like Minneappolis where I’m from it’s like, “Are you going to play at First Avenue? Vincent’s Gold Club? The Dakota Jazz Club?” There isn’t really an in between. Europe seems to have room for stuff that’s in between. Jazz people will go to a non-jazz room to see Branford or myself or someone like that play. That’s really the major difference. I feel a lot more free. In Europe and Amsterdam, for example, we play in the same place that D’Angelo plays, and we can play jazz there. I’ve done a Billie Holiday project there, at the Paradiso.

MR: Is D’Angelo an inspiration to you?

JJ: Absolutely. I think everybody would agree with me that Voodoo is like the definitive R&B album of my generation. I’m dying for the next one. It’s been a long wait but it’s going to be worth it if and when it comes out. We’re all going to be blown away again.

MR: Your album includes “Dragon” with Becca Stevens. You two go way back, right? What’s the history?

JJ: We met at the New School here in New York. She was just so ahead of everybody else, she’s an amazing guitarist, even back then she was writing solely her own stuff. Most people were learning about standards and stuff like that and she already had a band and she was writing her own music and she was super badass. We became friends but I moved around a lot and got caught up in my career and she got caught up in hers and we were in and out of touch but when I was working on this album one of the major albums is Stereolab and I love the way that they do their vocals and I really wanted more female artists on this album as writers and performers, so I called her and she came down and she totally killed it, and then she wrote “Dragon” based on the other songs that I had recorded in the studio.

MR: She got what you were doing and then made her own contribution. And It also doesn’t hurt that since you know each other she knows where you’re coming from , rather than some songwriter coming up and saying, “Hey I’ve got a great song for you!”

JJ: Yeah, it’s like a meal and then she brought the dessert.

MR: [laughs] That’s sweet. You’re another amazing Minneapolis musician. What’s in the lakes that’s creating this?

JJ: [laughs] A lot of fish. I think what’s great about Minneapolis honestly is there’s so much room to experiment, when I look back on the first thing I did I’m blown away, I was able to really work with some pretty radical experimental jazz guys from Chicago and also do theater and straight ahead jazz, there’s a great hip hop scene there, there’s obviously a great rock scene there, and people are super open to new artists there in a way that they definitely are not in New York.

MR: I don’t think there’s even such a thing as “breaking” in New York anymore.

JJ: I know what you mean. You get to the top of your place and then you come to New York and then New York breaks you.

MR: [laughs] That’s a nice way of putting it.

JJ: But you really have to earn it here, that’s the thing. Everybody up to Lady Gaga has to put the time in. I think that’s a good thing. The more time you spend on the music the better it is.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

JJ: Focus on the songs. I think a a lot of new artists get caught up in the production or writing to the production, but if you look at Adele for example, those songs could have been produced any number of ways and still been huge hits. Those songs could have been performed by any number of artists and still been huge hits. I think it starts with the song, always.

MR: There’s something scary about “Rumor Has It.” That song could have been written in any era. It could have been a girl group record in the sixties, a keyboard, new wave thing in the eighties… A good song is a good song, isn’t it?

JJ: Exactly.

MR: Are there any songs on this album that you knew right when you finished writing them that they were the highlights of this record.

JJ: Absolutely. For me it was the track “While You Were Sleeping.” That to me is the synthesis of what I’ve been trying to do as a writer, because it has the jazz harmony and it has the simplicity. It combines singer-songwriter, blues, folk even with jazz in a way that I haven’t seen in a modern way but I’ve definitely seen in people like Carole King or Joni Mitchell. Obviously they’re much better examples of that, but this is my step towards that synthesis. I was really, really happy to have stumbled upon that.

MR: So the singer-songwriter genre was also very influential on you in addition to jazz and some of the funk and electronic stuff that you like?

JJ: Absolutely. That really came from writing on guitar. People like Joni Mitchell or Neil Young or Bob Dylan, the guitar is such an important part of their writing. And Kurt Cobain as well. I think of him more as a singer-songwriter than as a rock god because it’s really personal, it really comes from him. You can’t really cover Nirvana.

MR: Yeah. “Come As You Are” seems like the best illustration of that.

JJ: Exactly. He probably would’ve saved his voice doing unplugged for the rest of his life.

MR: And since you said Joni Mitchell, what period Joni MItchell is your favorite?

JJ: Oh man, that is impossible. I mean, I love Blue, that’s the record everybody loves. That’s so tough, man. She’s one of the rare artists, maybe her and Stevie Nicks where you just can’t pick a period. They’re just geniuses, man. It’s just impossible.

MR: And speaking of Minneapolis, Prince said The Hissing Of Summer Lawnswas one of his favorite albums. He got the experimentation she did with that one.

JJ: Absolutely.

MR: You mentioned Quincy Jones before. Is he a fantasy producer for you some day?

JJ: I don’t know about that, but his autobiography is like the musician’s bible, man. I’ve read that thing like thirty times. For me what’s great about musica as opposed to other art forms is if you want a lesson with anybody you just put their record on, man. If I want to learn how Quincy did it, it’s all there. That’s the genius thing about records, it’s like time capsules as opposed to dance or something where it’s just gone.

MR: Quincy Jones recorded and arranged from a jazz perspective, yet he produced Lesley Gore who doesn’t sound anything at all like genres you’d associate with him. At the time, I don ‘t think anyone would have been able to predict that Quincy Jones would produce something like “It’s My Party.”

JJ: That’s the thing about jazz musicians: It’s all in them. As long as they have that opportunity, and I think Robert Glasper’s a great one of today who’s doing that, they’re going to dazzle you.

MR: What do you want to do? What’s your ultimate goal? Where are you heading?

JJ: Honestly I think when I started on this path I said, “I want to be known as the jazz singer that can do it all, I want to be able to go on tour with Mccoy Tyner, I want to be able to sing with Jazz At The Lincoln Center Orchestra, I want to be able to work with Flying Lotus, I want to be able to do all of it.” For me, I think I’m so restless I kind of have to be able to do it all. Next year is Billie Holiday’s hundredth anniversary so I’m going to do a tribute to her because she means a lot to me. I’m still going to keep writing on guitar, I think it’s really fascinating, and there’s definitely another album in that direction as opposed to piano. I’m going to keep experimenting. Right now, I’m having a great time just playing and experimenting with the band and unfolding the music every night.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne