Hey folks you are right here at JazzrocktTV.
Today we have a special story that we had before
but that kind of renewed itself
as of a new album
and the artist is MSM Schmidt.
And Georg visited this MSM "Michael Schmidt" in Bremen.
Yes, actually in his home town at his home studio
where hew creates all this great Fusion tunes
and the birthplace of his records.
We already had him several times
with all the great stories about his records
and all this amazing people playing on them.
We just had a look who participated
on his last album, which released last year
and it's amazing again.
As we always say, it's the Who's Who
of the international Fusion scene.
We have people like Dave Weckl, Jerry Goodman,
Jimmy Haslip, Allan Holdsworth and we will hear
the story about that in a second, Bob Mintzer,
and a young colleague here - MonoNeon,
who we met in Miami at the GroundUP Festival,
Gary Novak, Oz Noy, a long list of people,
John Daversa, also already a guest at JazzrockTV,
Virgil Donati and many many more.
Jimmy Haslip is his partner-in-crime.
Of course, already since the last albums,
but this time it seems to be even more grounded
how the two work together.
Yes, and you will see a video in the episode
where you can see that they got good friends.
So today we are get very personal.
Yes, very personal with Michael at his home
I took the opportunity and visited him
at home in his studio and asked him about
his album "Life" and he talked about how
it all happened and stories about the album.
And before we start with the interview,
should we listen to a track?
Sure, please!
And then we move over to the interview.
There is a lot of cool stories he has to tell.
Be surprised. And he also has some single tracks
that he presents showing how it got recorded.
Very cool. Yes.
We are listening to the title track
"Life"
and then we also hear the story, why the album
is called life.
Yes, so I'll talk a bit about the story of "Life"
my now 6th album.
Which we finished and finalized around
one year ago
and this year it's almost an old hat
and the next thing need to come
but we are still tainted with the former project
and as some might not know how I work
and what's the history about it
I'll tell a bit about it without going
too be too detailed.
So the story of "Life" ist first of all
in order to make it short
that was sick about a longer timeframe and
was not very motivated to do music at that time.
After that was all solved it was like a plug was pulled
and suddenly many ideas came up for new tunes.
That was directly fired by Jimmy Haslip
my produced who contacted my some day by email
and asked me if I didn't want to do something new.
At that time I had a tune ready from
the former album UTOPIA
and 2 new tunes party started to work with
for those I didn't really knew where to go with.
But he did motivate me and felt well
and then I just finalized these tracks
and sent the demos to Jimmy and he said
let's just start with it, even it's not all ready
and all tracks are prepared, so then
let's do it step by step.
So we aligned about that and I send him the first tunes
and continued hard-working on more composing
and suddenly 9 tracks have been ready.
that went quite quick, which is unusual for me.
The ones who know me know, that I don't
matter much about scores.
even I have a keyboard here
I'm not a keyboard player
I don't play the instrument, I'm just developing
the tones and the chords.
But this time and worked out pretty well and
then it went really quick with the new tunes.
Then Jimmy started to recruit musicians
and he deemed to keep it small this time
with maybe 3 base musicians
to utilize for all tracks
and he had some ideas who to choose and
as he is my producer I give him plenty of rope.
But the idea with just 3 people very quickly
pulverized and ended up with 25 musicians.
And the base group also got enlarged as well.
So it's a typical MSM project
where a lot of different people got involved.
So we invited a various of musicians
and actually Jimmy had a charter to do
whatever he wants to do
as we are working together so many years
and he always has good ideas and knows
so many musicians that I might not know
and so he always shows up with someone to
present to me to have on the album.
And this time he even did not tell me before
who he want to include in the project.
And so it turned out we met at a gig with
Jeff Lorber in Minden and he told my while dinner
that he will have some surprise guests for me.
That was actually nice as we had guys like MonoNeon
and I didn't knew MonoNeon before
so I did the usual Googling and found out
what a remarkable person he is.
And everybody googling for MonoNeon
will find great stuff and will have much fun.
He is an extraordinary bass player, who plays
the bass upside down like Jimmy.
He is actually to only one to play like Jimmy.
But the whole philosophy of MonoNeon
is completely different.
Please check that out!
But then came some names
I knew from my early childhood
like Jerry Goodman
the violin player of the Mahavishnu Orchestra
so I wanted to have violin for one track
and Jimmy tr ied to get his guy for it
without telling me
and used his contact and finally got him.
So he got him for the track "Ready to go"
but as Jimmy changing titles once and a while
it got "Red and Gold" at the end.
Sounded bit more nice to him.
Yah, so then he finally came up with
a very special thing
that Allan Holdsworth will play on it!
Then I was really surprised!
Because I did tried before to collaborate
with Allan Holdsworth before
actually since my second album
at this time I wasn't that much
in contact with Jimmy
he played already on stuff
but at that time Mitch Forman was my main contact
and Mitch said, I should really think about
doing something with Allan
as it's difficult to get to him
and Allen is a bit special
and if you get what you want
you never know
so better think about it.
And so it did not happen.
But after the 3rd album it got close
and so I asked Jimmy to try again
as he got more and more producer
and so he eventually tried it
but failed again
as Allan have been a special person
have been , to be fair
as he passed away last year.
He had such a high expectation to himself
as he was never satisfied.
which lead to the situation
that he liked to play,
as for me and also for other projects,
but when he the listen to his stuff afterwards
he did not think it was good enough
and that was kind of a red line through his life
and therefore he did not release any more stuff
as he was never happy for himself with it
and whoever have seen him live
might have also seen that.
Also his sound was something
he constantly worked on
so even when he was preparing for a gig.
We have seen that when we met him with his band
with Virgil Donati and Jimmy at Quasimodo in Berlin
and we saw how long it took for him at the soundcheck
and it took almost 2 hours as he was not satisfied.
And also about his performance while the show
even the audience very much appreciated and liked it
you could see in his face that he didn't liked what he presented.
But he was actually so very kind, and we had the honor
to meet him backstage.
And he told me that he apologize that it did not work out
so far, but he was really willing to perform on my album.
So I still had some hope because of this!
But when doing LIFE I didn't had any hope
as we tried it 4 times and it never worked.
So Jimmy actually used an opprotunity
as he didn't gave up and was still sending
demos of my tracks to Allan
and Allan was always fine with the demos,
but never found the time and mood to perform on it.
But finally he then did it
but as Jimmy knew already that Allan would
very likely delete his recorded tracks after
he recorded them
Jimmy urgently drove the 2 hours drive to Allan
as he lives in Vista, a small village in California
where Allan had his Studio, which was also called
Vista Studios at this time
and first of all listened to that tracks
and then copied them on a harddisk
and quickly drove away with the harddisk
as he had the concern, Allan would delete that.
So one track was already recorded
when I met Jimmy in Minden
and he told me that Allan promised
to do a second one as well.
And so it was! And the track this was about
was a track I already had a specific title in mind
and is was intended to be titled "Pandora"
but after Allan passed away and actually
had a key role on that tune and played a long solo
we decided to dedicate the track to him
and renamed the tune to "Vista".
That's actually the story about it.
The kind of tragical thing on that is
that Allan long time before and also after that
didn't really record anything.
So this 2 tracks he recorded for me
are really the last recorded tracks of him
as far as I know.
As I don't know if there is anything else he did.
But this is actually a bit of a heritage.
so also an obligation for me to honor that!
And I will not lower the other musicians
as there is a lot of great people on it
but as of this it eventually
got a bit to an Allan Holdsworth album.
Even he played only on 2 tracks
and only played solos
as he didn't liked to play the head,
so we gave him the solo to play.
But I really did'n know about all of
and Jimmy did all this on his own.
Allan Holdsworth - a genius as a guitar plays
a genius as a musician
but most likely also ... too much genius ...
a complicated human person.
who could not cover himself for his own values
actually a sad story
So he might be standing on stage
and the audience is cheering and excited
and is desperate as he is not happy at that time.
This is a tragic story.
I think Chick Corea said .. or was it Miles Davis
"Don't judge" ... when you are playing - just play
don't judge what you are doing
as soon as you start to reflect back
what you are playing
and that will happen quickly
it will drag you away from your mood
So it's an amazing thing then
that these last tracks are captured
on this album.
So that's really a unique thing.
As Michael said, the album
turned out to be a Holdsworth album
even it's only about 2 tracks.
Yah, it's only two tracks, but I think
Michael does see it as his responibility
to support that and that's really a good thing.
But know you will see something really special
as everybody can listen to the final record
we can now listen to so specific parts
of the record and for that Michael got some
special - so called - stamps, and whats all about that
he will explain by himself now.
As everything was mixed by Rich Green in USA
I very late got some so called "Stamps".
That's actually groups of audio tracks
means subgrouped tracks of keys, horns, etc.
but separated with bass, drums and guitar.
So I actually have these separated tracks
and can also present them here.
Therefore we can listen to a track
in this case "Vista" with Allan Holdsworth
and we can even just separate the track
Allan played for this tune.
So only his part without the other keyboards and stuff above it.
so we can hear the pure guitar part
let's do that now
That was Virgil Donati
and he will do a feature for him too.
Virgil was very excited
and then inquired via Jimmy
if it may be possible that he will get
the stamps that I have here now.
And these are actually the stamps which
have been created from 3 tracks for Virgil.
So he is able to use these on his clinics
as a playback track and to play along with it.
And he also has a click-track as well
to have this on his headphones for the playalong.
I don't know if he actually already did it.
He was really very involved in the whole project
and he also took much care about giving
promotion CDs to drum magazines
in order to get a review.
I really liked that
and his role in the project.
Another one who really worked for me
was Jost Nickel.
He plays on the 2 versions of the title track.
And he also plays on another track that I recorded
already a while ago. And Jost is known
in Germany as the drummer of Jan Delay
but also has his own stuff and I knew him
from a Band called Matalex,
from Cologne I believe.
Alex Gunia was the guitar player
and they also played here in Bremen.
And that was the first time I have seen him
when he was still very young as this
is 20 years ago, but he already played very good.
And a while ago I was able to see him again
playing with Barry Finnerty at a small show
here in Bremen, and he was great again.
So I asked him, how he feel like playing for me.
And Jost is a very pleasant person
so we could attend the recordings at his studio
and that was really fun.
That was a new situation for me
as I have never been attending the recordings.
Which is related to the fact that I'm not a notist
and when musicians might come with questions
how to play certain parts and notes, I might scratch my neck
and just say, just play.
With drums I might be a bit more comfortable
as I played the instrument by myself
and I was grown up with.
So I can guide a drummer how I expect
him to move on and that was very comfortable
with Jost.
We had a great time with him.
Jost Nickel, not only at Jan Delay,
also with MSM Schmidt.
And looks like he feels comfortable
as he explained he is such a great person
so it might also not the last time they met.
As many other musicians who do reappear
on all his albums.
Is this the fifth or sixth album he did?
It's the fifth, I think
ah, the sixth one ... Sorry Michael.
And we just thought about Allan Holdsworth
and asked ourself why we don't have
a JazzrockTV episode about Allan Holdsworth?
So it's about time, we will do it, and in 2018
we will do a long episode with music and stories
about Allan Holdsworth.
So, and now we have to transfer to ...
We need to lead it from the stamps
to more about Virgil Donati, who is really a crazy drummer.
And for that Michael has another feature with a solo
by Virgil together with the solo track by Allan.
A very cool feature from the separated tracks he has
and that we should absolutely watch as well.
We will now listen to an excerpt from the track Vista
it start where we stopped before
and then will hear just Virgil Donati
and Allan Holdsworth as a duet.
And I think this is really an interesting part.
So let's see I'm doing this correct.
My programming had a drum solo as well.
Oh really did you play by yourself?
I'm doing it by programming it and playing
it on this keyboard step by step.
And it will be edited, cut and quantized
like hell.
But Virgil did a whole different interpretation
he also starts earlier, as he has his own way of
interpreting it.
And that's actually why we want these guys.
But one thing I have to say
that he was actually not really planned for this track.
As I always have kind of a wishlist
of people I want to work with
I was really looking to work with Dave Weckl.
That was a goal fro me for a while
as I believe is perfect in sound, groove
and precision for such stuff.
So Dave Weckl got this track and replied,
that he will not play this track,
as it has so much double-bassdrum
and that's not really the stuff he is into.
As I already programmed it with double-bassdrum
I told him, that he can do it different.
But he didn't want that,
and so he focused on two other tracks of the album
which turned out to be very good.
So we then hat the very special situation
that on one track Jimmy Haslip, Virgil Donati
and Allan Holdsworth played together.
And that's actually the trio being on tour recently.
Am not sure if any other one got in between
but these three have been on the road a lot
and have been very good friends.
Jimmy once and a while tells some personal stories
from all these musicians.
So you could feel that it was much more
than just a musical relationship.
And especially when Allan was struggling
with health issues, the two others
took much care about him.
That's a really touchingly story when you hear that.
Yes, that really goes to the heart.
And sadly it seems to be, when you
not able to be involved in the scene
you might be forgotten very quickly.
So it's even more great, that Virgil Donati
and also Jimmy Haslip continued
to take care about him
and showed him that he is not forgotten
and helped as much as they can.
This is a bit up and down, but that's life.
So the album title makes sense now.
So the story by Michael about how it starts
and now the story about Allan Holdsworth
all the musicians getting more involved.
Sure, and these guys want to know
what they are asked to be involved with
they might not play any other thing.
Like the story about Dave Weckl.
That was about a technical thing,
but you can see that they think about it.
So it's not just going to the studio
and play down the track
so they think about it and select
so it's a great compliment
that these musicians play your stuff.
But Michael so much stayed on the ground.
Keep it on going Michael. Be as you are.
But you know what, let's listen to another track
the one with MonoNeon that we spoke about before.
That's also the track featuring John Daversa
who also was a guest here at JazzrockTV
for his Grammy Nominations.
Yes, John Daversa plays as well
and the track is called "Rush".
And after that excerpt from the track
we will show you a clip from Michael
where he was meeting Jimmy Haslip
think it was in Minden or Aschaffenburg
and Jimmy talks about how the two
met the first time
and that's a fascinating story to hear
and to the both of them talking about that.
But lets first move on with a meet of generations
which is interesting having Dave Weckl on drums
and MonoNeon from a kind of different
Fusion generation playing together.
So by MSM Schmidt the new generation gets
mixed together with the old ones.
With all due respect for Dave Weckl.
Now rush rush
so you have something to practice
A word about Jimmy Haslip.
We are meeting regulary
at least 2 times per year.
We he is on tour somewhere here
in our area we find a date to meet
at a concert and try to spend some time together.
That's always big fun, as Jimmy can tell
lot's of nice stories.
A while a go we met in Aschaffenburg
where he was planing with Oz Noy
and we met at a hotel and had 2 cameras
sat down on a sofa and Jimmy talked
about the project "Life", and then Susanne came up
with the question to tell a bit about us
and then we talked about how we actually
met the first time.
Jimmy did very well remind about that
but I also could remind that, but you always
have two sides of the story.
Michael with Jimmy on the couch
or the other way around.
So they have been both sitting there and telling
about life and it's really nice to watch.
You can feel that is lifeblood in it
I don't want to praise it too much
we don't want to get Michael to blush
but there is so much honesty in it
and so much authentic
and that comes across
also it comes across when listening to the album.
It's not just played down all the tracks in the studio
they all wanted it to play and sound great
so the full album is like that.
So, before I get sick live on camera,
we come to an end with our small program
and have a raffle at the end.
Michael got us an autographed
copy of his album
that we and he actually wants to give away.
Those of you who can answer a question
that Michael will ask in a second
can send us an email with the right answer
to the email address below
and we will draw the winner
we only have one CD so not everybody
sending us the right answer will get one.
From the correct answers we get
we will draw thew one who will get this CD.
But wether you win the album or not
you need to buy the album
at your favorite store
or visit the website of Michael
to get this super amazing fusion music.
We are following this great music for some years now
and all the great stories around it
like the one from today, seeing him at home
where he develops all this great music.
That's really unique!
Absolutely.
I can not think of anything comparable
also with such a constancy.
We already spoke about how many albums
he already did.
And he already has new plans in mind
we can not talk at bout it, but he
already has plans in mind
where you mind think, my goodness
how is that supposed to work.
So we are not yet at the end
And our support for Michael
will continue anyway.
Keep it up!
So the conclusion is:
Whether won or bought
this CD is always a win.
With that slogan we move on to Michael
to give the quiz question
and let him say the last words.
See you next time.
Who would like to have this CD
should send an email to Jazzrock
and answer the following question:
What's the name of the drummer of Jan Delay?