A fun party song with Dave Price on Drums, Mike Milillo on Sax and Mark Bracken on bass released the weekend before my son is to be born
Solo Funky Jazz with a lot of Hammond and Mono Synth
........It's about the music again.
Story behind the song
THis one's been some time in coming. It started right after last Christmas when I recieved a ton of African hand percussion for Christmas. I added a slightly reggae/calypso organ part, then added a melody part on trumpets, which drew from one of my lesser credited trumpet influences, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. When naming the song, I thought to myself, "What if the TJB crashed in capetown, S.A. and got together to make music? THis song is my guess on what would phappen, hence "Whatif" (sorry the title isn't any deeper!).
I asked one of my friends, Mark Bracken, who played with a classic rock cover band in the area to add some fretless bass work. He brought a special "bounce" to the tune that it didn't have before. Also, the last time I had this up for preview, I had a shuffle drum part on drum machine that I just loved, but according to everyone else just seemed to clash with the rest of the song. So I entered the frightening world of recording real drums, and another friend of mine, Dave Price added his touches to this song. He did all the drum set work on this one, and took it again in a bit of a different direction beatwise as well as adding another ton of energy to it.
The last musician to be added to this was my favorite jazz collabing partner, Mike Milillo, who the last time I talked to him wasn't playing sax because of health reasons. I had another guy lined up on soprano, and Mike heard the preview version, and asked if he could join me. THe other guy was too busy, so I jumped at the chance to get Mike on board on this one. His improvising always thrilled me, and on this one, he came through again.
I had a lot of fun doing this one. Believe it or not there's only one keyboard on this, the hammond. Everything was real this time, including the kalimbas! I even managed to get the guitar out for this one (there wasn't room for another solo, so it was just a few tiny parts, I was embarassed to ask anyone to do it!) so after about 30 takes (literally!) I managed to squeak out these simple little guitar solos.
THis one's going out two days before my little son Jonathon Daniel comes into the world, I thought this was the perfect tune to celebrate with!
Exotic rhythms with energy and presence...nice brass work...enjoyed..