Behind the Music: Reed Larson-Erf’s Backstage Interviews

Earlier this summer, we hosted a benefit concert to support Will’s Place—and the night was nothing short of magical. Before the show began, Reed Larson-Erf, one of our incredible staff members, stepped into the role of interviewer and headed backstage to meet the musicians. With his signature charm and thoughtful questions, Reed captured some special moments with the artists who gave their time and talent to support our mission. We’re so excited to share these interviews with you—each one is a glimpse into the heart and energy behind the music.

Reed Larson-Erf interviewing Al Stewart. Photographed by Sarah Larson

INTERVIEW WITH AL STEWART

What made you want to play here tonight?
Because the Empty Pockets, and especially Josh, asked me to. And I owe Josh so many favors over the last ten years. He’s done so many great things for me, that I am obliged [to play].

You write a lot of songs based on history. What kind of historical moments do you find make for the best songs?
All of them. Every different country, every different time period–I mean, the last 6,000 years of civilization, if you want to call it that…. But every country has stories to tell, and I don’t care if it’s Bulgaria or Australia or South America or whatever, there are all these stories out there. If I can’t think of what to write about, my favorite thing to do is to open an atlas, at random, and whatever country I’m looking at, I probably know something about the history of it. And if I don’t, I can make it up. The last song I did doing that, on my last album, [was about] the South Pole–it’s Antarctica, the north of Antarctica–and I’ve already got[ten] two songs out of that. [laughs]

Speaking of which, I’ve listened to your single “On the Border”. What historical moment is that about?
It’s about three [moments]. The first verse, especially–“The fishing boats go out across the evening water,/Smuggling guns and arms across the Spanish border,/The wind whips up the waves so loud… turns the rifles into silver,/On the border,” that is about the Basque separatist movement, which was a violent insurrection inside Spain. Basically, it kicked off in the 1970s. It’s probably still clicking along in a small way, but the Basque separatist movement is rather like what happened in Ireland, you know, like an insurrection within the country itself. The second verse is about the crisis in Rhodesia, which became Zimbabwe, and it’s about the overthrow of the colonial government, and the installation of [Robert] Mugabe, who became the President of Zimbabwe. He drove out all the white farmers to take over their land, and destroyed the economy in the process, and… inflation went to, I don’t know, ten thousand percent or something. And then, of course, the last verse is about the decline and fall of the British Empire. So my songs are not that simple.

You are originally from Scotland. How is the experience of being a performer in the United Kingdom, vs the United States, for you?
Believe it or not, I’ve had hits in pretty much every country in the world that I could have hits in. And some of them are crazy: I had a record at about #3 in Brazil, for example. Or Peru, or El Salvador, or South Africa, or Australia, or Germany, or Holland, or Spain, or Canada, or America. And the reason I say all of that, is there’s only one country in the world where I’ve never had a record in the top 30, and it’s the one I was born in, which is the U.K. [laughs] So, the result is really good. Because I’m still seen, in England, as a folk singer. And folk singers are not played on the radio in England. I mean, they’re like, “Oh, it’s folk, we can’t play it.” [BBC] Radio 1’s never gonna play me. You don’t appear on television. So you’re not in any of the media, because you’re a folk singer. But–and here’s the kicker–the people who like folk singers are incredibly loyal, and they come back to see me every time I [return to the U.K.] I actually draw more people in the U.K. than I do in America, even though I’ve had two Top Ten hits here, because I’m still seen as a Leonard Cohen or something over there. I’m not seen as any sort of a pop star. So I’m seen as having more integrity.

“Time Passages” is another song you’ve played, that has a kind of nostalgic feel to it. Did that song come from a place of nostalgia?
Well, they all do. All my songs do [laughs]. Someone once said to me–and I love this quote–“Your songs have made me feel nostalgic ever since I was a child.”

We were just talking about folk music. Would you say that the reception of folk music in the United Kingdom–I think you would agree with me that it is very positive?
Oh, it’s much bigger than here. But of course, I’m not a folk singer. I haven’t been a folk singer since 19… probably, ‘75. It’s just that that is how I am perceived in the U.K. I’m not perceived that way in America at all.

How are you perceived in America?
Oh, I don’t know. As some guy who had a couple hits in the ‘70s, I think. Probably.

I’m given to understand that you are currently on your final tour. What do you look back on most fondly? And what are you looking forward to in this new chapter of your life?
Well, I’m not giving up touring. I’m very precise with the English language, or at least I try to be, because that’s my job. In England, this tour is billed as the “Farewell Tour.” Okay? Now the operative word is not “farewell”; it’s “tour.” [laughs] In other words, what I want to stop doing is going over and being in 20 different cities, a different one every night, because I think I’m getting too old for that. It’s a farewell to touring; it’s not a farewell to doing, for example, the Glastonbury Festival or something like that.

So, if you’re not touring, then what are you going to do?
Well, I can tell you what I plan to do. I have mapped out not one, but two different books that I would like to write. I mean, it’s no fun to fly anymore. You talk to every single artist–and I talk to a lot of them–[and] nobody wants to do this. I mean, the airlines are unreliable, they’re understaffed, they’re sort of basically like flying trash cans, and I don’t think anybody wants to be on an aeroplane at this point in history. So the idea of sitting at home and writing a book is extremely appealing to me.

Speaking of the books, you are working on a novel about an alternate history of Poland. At what point does your history of Poland diverge from true history? Why did you want to write about that history?
Well, Poland is an extraordinary [country]. I mean, [it] vanished off the map, for example–completely–for a very long time. It was partitioned, and then it was gone. And then it came back, and then it was invaded by both Germany and Russia at the same time, and then it was gone again, and then it came back again. Poland’s a remarkable place, but… I’m not writing it in the way that you think, as a serious book. It’s more a series of calamities [that] can happen to humanity if it’s not careful.

But before that book, there’s another book, which is… I would think it’s an updating of Alice in Wonderland, because I like surrealist poetry, and I like surrealism in general. So, if you think of Lewis Carroll, combined with Edward Lear and probably Mervin Peak, who are all great surrealist writers… the book, basically, what I want to do with it is to turn inanimate objects into [beings which think] the way that people think. So in other words, the chairs, for example, would be a Greek chorus with the table: the table would be in charge, and the chairs would echo whatever the table tells them to think.

If the inanimate objects become endowed with human-level sentience, then the obvious question is, what are they going to do?
Well, this is the point. I mean, the refrigerator, for example, hates being a refrigerator. It wears six overcoats, but it never gets warm. The refrigerator has a plan, and it wants to go somewhere warm. So, in order to go somewhere warm, it has to persuade whoever runs the house to take it somewhere warm. The refrigerator is the first character that you meet in the book, and it’s also the last character you meet in the book. There’s a television set that… loves horse racing. So, all the broadcasts on the television are done by horses. [laughs]

That might present something of a communication barrier.
No, it doesn’t! You’ve got to wait until you see it, but I’ve got a lot of this book planned out to write, it’s just a question of getting along and doing it. But the alternative history of Poland, it’s not just that. What it is, is, I’ve just taken a country that happens to be geographically implausible, because it has an empire on one side, and an empire on the other side, which, of course, is Poland’s downfall. It’s got this huge problem with Germany on one side of it, and Russia on the other. It’s untenable. It was always untenable, and what they’re doing now–this is fascinating–as I sit in this chair, Poland is developing the largest army in all of Europe, because it’s been invaded so many times by so many people, on both sides, that they’ve developed this “never again” mentality. So the second book is probably going to be slightly more serious. The first one is pure surrealism.

That’s if I write them. Now, don’t ask me if I’m going to be any good at this, because I don’t know. I’ve never done it before, I’m a songwriter. But I do know how to use words, and there’s a fair old chance that it might turn out to be good. I’ve written the first page of the inanimate-objects book, and it makes me laugh, and it makes everyone I show it to laugh, so on those grounds, I think it might work. There’s a little furry animal [in this book] called a churkle, and most churkles are… what’s that Gremlins movie? Cute little furry animals, right? This particular churkle has a problem, in the sense that it can’t stay anywhere. Its full title is “The Churkle that Never Could Stay Anywhere,” and it’s based on a poem that I wrote. And because it can never stay anywhere, wherever it is, it isn’t. So the poem went, “Wherever it was, / It wasn’t, because / It was the Churkle that Never Could Stay.” So, occasionally, characters in the book think, out of the corner of their eye, that they see something moving, but by the time they look, it’s gone. Because the Churkle can’t stay. Can’t stay anywhere. When I’m writing about it, they say, one of the characters so far, “That could be very inconvenient, especially around Christmastime.”

You once said, “If you can speak wine, you can move in any social circle that you want to.” What social circles has your knowledge of wine gotten you into?
All of them. I mean, I’ve met people I would never, ever encounter under any normal circumstance. For example, I know an NFL player who’s won four Super Bowls, and who became a good friend, just because he likes white burgundy. I would never meet anybody like that, in my normal life, but I know people who run pizza companies and run banks–in fact, pretty much everyone I know is not in the music business. Now, this is very strange. I never really mixed with people in the music business. I was always mixing with other people in the wine world. Because, first of all, people in the music business all want to talk about music. And it bores me. I know what I like. I don’t want to sit and talk about Gibson guitars for six hours, and then I really don’t care. You know what I mean? But I’ll sit down and talk about chateau d’marguex for six hours, with interesting people who come from walks of life that are totally different from mine, because I want to meet people who are in totally different walks of life. I don’t want to meet musicians. I know what they think, and I know what they do, and I know what they’re interested in. I want a much broader social circle, because I can’t write the songs that I write unless I’m meeting the people who are creating history.

Speaking of Gibson guitars, which you brought up: you relayed, once, an anecdote of a friend of yours sneaking you in to meet John Lennon by pretending to represent the company that made the guitar he used.
Yeah. That was a Rickenbacker–it’s a different guitar. But yeah, I met John Lennon, and he actually let me play his Rickenbacker guitar–it’s the black one in the movie A Hard Day’s Night.

So what was that like?
Oh, it was great. He was very friendly. I played him some Chuck Berry riffs. [chuckles]

Reed interviewing The Empty Pockets, photograhed Sarah Larson

INTERVIEW WITH THE EMPTY POCKETS

Josh Solomon, Erika Brett, Nate Bellon, and Adam Balasco
Interviewer: Reed

Reed: First, I think it’d be a good idea if I got everybody’s names, and what instruments you play?
Erika: My name is Erika Brett, and I play the piano and I sing.
Adam: My name’s Adam Balasco–I play drums.
Reed: Awesome! And I know Josh Solomon plays guitar.
Adam: And sings, and does keys. And Nate Bellon plays bass guitar.

Reed: How are you guys all feeling about performing here tonight?
Adam: I’m so excited. It’s going to be very fun. There’s a lot of good guests and people to play with, which I’m happy about. It’s a good cause.
Erika: Yeah! We’re going to raise money for an amazing place and have the most fun doing it!

Reed: In a recent interview with tonight’s host, Steve Cochrane, Josh said that you’d be playing backup for all of the other performers tonight, in addition to your own original music; and finally, you’d play with the rest of them at the end. That is no mean amount of playing. How are you feeling?
Erika: Well, we have our work cut out for us, but I think we’re ready to rock.
Adam: We had some stuff to learn, but we’re mostly ready, and excited. It’s going to be fun.

Reed: Josh has said in a Goldmine interview that yours is a blues band at heart. Blues expresses the sorrows of the singer, and although singers from other genres, like pop music, are the ones that usually feature in today’s headlines, the world is as sorrowful as ever. How wide is the modern blues audience?
Adam: Commercially speaking, it’s not that wide, and you referenced pop musicians, who are obviously selling more records, but blues, it still permeates. We were just trying to get on the Billboard Blues charts–and we did, thankfully–Live in Buffalo [is at] #10 on the Billboard Blues charts. And we were competing with that movie soundtrack to Sinners. And that was a big deal! And that’s expressing something that I think is modern and contemporary and–and it’s blues. Erika, why don’t you jump in?
Erika: We’re definitely not a traditional blues band, in that sense. But we definitely have a lot of blues elements to the way we write, and the way we play, and that is why we’ve been using that name. But I would agree that we represent a lot of different genres, and that our music is really multifaceted, so if people were to disagree that we were a blues band, that would be okay with us. [Laughs]
Adam: Yeah, right. [Laughs]

Reed: What other genres do you represent?
Adam: Rock.
Erika: Rock, rock n’ roll, a little bit of Americana, probably, maybe even a little jazz.

Reed: What is Americana, by the way?
Erika: That’s a loaded question.
Adam: It touches on blues, and on country, and American stuff–maybe acoustic guitars would be at the center…
Erika: Yeah, rooted in instruments…
Adam: And vocals, and melodic stuff. Yeah, genre stuff.

Reed: You’ve described your musical influences in the Jackson Hole News & Guide as country, folk Americana, and 1970s rock music, alongside the works of the Beatles, filtered through a metaphorical strainer of “groove and blues.” How do you synthesize such disparate genres?
Adam: You just have to. Not consciously.
Erika: It’s in your body!
Adam: There [are] four of us, we all listen to a bunch of different music, and that’s kind of what comes out. It’s not conscious at all.
Erika: It’s like the synthesis of our tastes, as people, and then the synthesis of those tastes coming together with each other as band members.
Adam: Exactly.

Reed: You have one song called “Privatize the Profits,” another called “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” There seems to be a real economic theme going on here. Blues being about what makes one unhappy, are troubles related to money the source of the travails you sing about?
Adam: Well, the band name is The Empty Pockets. It’s not the only thing, but yeah… y’know, we’re not crying poor, necessarily. But yes, you’re right, that's what the blues is about, and we definitely think economic disparity is a big problem in 2025 and [want to] do something about it.
Erika: Yeah, economic equality is very important to us. And we hope that that message is getting out.

Reed: You said that the title of your album Gotta Find the Moon refers to the need for individuals to find their own solutions to major world problems. How do you guys “find the moon” in that way?
Erika: Well, we’re always looking for connection, and love, and light, among people that we deal with, and we wanna spread that message far and wide.

Reed: What kind of people do you deal with?
Erika: The good ones. The nice ones.
Adam: Preferably, that’s what we want. If you’re nice, come to our shows.
Erika: Kindness, you know? Love.

Reed: Anything more specific? Do you deal with–like, what jobs do they have?
Adam: You know what? If you’re a billionaire, we don’t even want you to come to [our performances]. Well... we want you to come to the merch table, but otherwise, we don’t want you at our show. You know what I mean? If you’re a billionaire. We’re for the working class, we’re for regular joes. That’s who we want at our shows.

[Bass player Nate Bellon arrives.]
Reed: Hello, Nate!
Nate: Hey, how is it going?
Reed: Not bad, glad I could have you. Sorry we started without you.
Nate: Oh, no, [I’m] sorry I missed the start.

Reed: Do you do a lot of improvisation when you perform? I thought I could hear that on your rendition of “Privatize the Profits” from Live in Brooklyn.
Adam: I would say, there’s a framework that we follow for playing the music, and then we improvise over the top of that. So we always kind of know where we’re at, but we can go on flights of fancy, and if we’re really communicating with each other, either saying things or giving each other meaningful looks, we can even violate the underlying rules, and then come back and be like, “You know what, alright, now we’re back at the chorus,” rather than this extended jam on the air, or whatever. We have become more improvisational as we’ve aged, as a band, but there’s still some times where we’re like, “You know, just keeping it tight, in and out, bam, go! Nailed it!”

Reed: I’ll let you go with just one more. According to the Detroit Jewish News, you have performed with none other than Kenny “Danger Zone” Loggins. Was he really made of flesh?
Nate: He was.
Erika: He was! He lives, and he breathes, and he knows who we are! That was a crazy thing.
Adam: He loves lobster tacos. We might see him in October…
Erika: We are gonna see him in October!
Adam: …because we’re on a festival–

Reed: Wait, Kenny Loggins eats lobster tacos?
Nate: Yes, we’ve eaten lobster tacos with Kenny Loggins.
Adam: That’s an exclusive.

Reed: Where does he get lobster tacos?
Adam: He was at a seaside–
Erika: Anne Arbor?
Nate: Yeah, and we convinced him to go out to lunch with us, one time in Santa Barbara. And that’s what he ordered.

Barry Debois photographed by Sarah Larson

INTERVIEW WITH BARRY DEBOIS

The main thing I know you from is Once: the Musical. Do you feel like performing at a concert like this is a different experience from performing in a musical?
Well, obviously, in a musical, you’ve got the whole story of the show to give context to a song, whereas in a more cabaret-style [performance] like this, you rely on the song to tell its own story, so you can’t rely on the whole narrative. That's one big difference. But the nice thing is, the songs that I’m doing really work [as] standalone [performances], really great standalone musical theater pieces.

So what songs are you going to be doing?
The first one is called “I Could Be in Love with Someone Like You.” It was originally in the show The Last Five Years, by Jason Robert Brown. It was taken out of the show for kind of interesting legal reasons [to do] with his ex-wife, and replaced by a similar song. But it’s a really great song–it’s one of my favorite Jason Robert Brown songs to do. It’s about a Jewish guy who is in love with an Irish-American gal. And the second song that I’m doing is “Falling Slowly,” and that character is an Irish guy in love with a Czech girl, so it’s kind of interesting. And I’ve done both of those shows. “Falling Slowly” is from the musical Once, and the movie Once.

So, Jason Robert Brown–is that an artist you really like?
He’s probably my favorite contemporary musical theater composer. Interestingly… I think it was Northlight Theater, [where] they [had the world premiere of] The Last Five Years, the show that the first song is from.

Were you in a production of The Last Five Years?
I was in two productions, but not the ones that were here.

I take it you listen to a lot of musical theater?
Some– I don’t know about “a lot.” I don’t know a lot of old classic musical theater, because I didn’t go to school for it, so I always feel a little bit uncomfortable saying, “Yeah, I know lots of musical theater!” But [works] from the ‘90s to the early to mid-2000s, [I] know a lot of that stuff. I did a fair amount of musical theater.

How did you get to be involved with musical theater?
My family is a musical family–not necessarily [involved in] musical theater, but [a] musical family. So I grew up in music, and then I went to an arts middle school, where I was introduced to theater, and then started to fall in love with musical theater. I didn’t know that I would ever do it professionally–I went to college for mechanical engineering design, but at night, I was doing lots of music and theater. Eventually I quit, and moved to New York to pursue just performing, professionally, which I did for a while. Now I’m back in Chicago, and back in the corporate world, and performing when I can.

What are you doing in the corporate world?
I am an event technology consultant. I have accounts where I sell technology solutions for events.

Like what?
What we make, actually, is apps for big corporate conferences.

How did you come to be involved with the band, The Understudies? There are videos on your website of you playing music with them.
Yeah, that’s cool that you know about The Understudies. When I was…the national tour of Once, I was actually an offstage swing. I covered two parts in the show, and the rest of the time, I was offstage. I was also the Music Captain for the show. There were six or seven of us that were offstage swings, and there were 13 [members of the] main cast, so all of us covered a couple of parts in the show. And so we had to rehearse all the time–as we were touring the country, we would set up a bunch of instruments in every theater, backstage, and rehearse the show, because we would all have to practice to stay ready to go on for any of those parts–and any of those instruments, too, because in Once, everyone’s acting and singing and playing an instrument. Once we got very comfortable with the show, then we started to do cover songs, and we ended up calling ourselves The Understudies, because we were the understudies of the show. And then, we ended up making a pilot episode for a mockumentary-style [TV show]. That was called The Understudies, the pilot of this mockumentary-style comedy, that was based on… characterized versions of us. And then we did a bunch of cover songs together.

The musical version of Once is based on a film from 2007. Did you watch the movie or refer to it at all when preparing for your role in the musical?
Yeah, I knew the film and loved the film before it was turned into a musical. The movie Once was a big reason why I started to play guitar. And then when the musical came out, I studied and studied that music a lot, because I really wanted to be in the show, and eventually was cast in the touring production. So yeah, I… loved the movie first.

Interestingly, before showings of Once began, there would be a mock-bar party, and you and your castmates would be on tables, singing and playing instruments. What was that like for you? Was it some kind of warm-up?
It was so fun. It was a warm-up–it was really a warm-up for us, it was a warm-up for the audience, and the thing that’s really special about Once… in particular, is that… we would invite people onstage to actually buy drinks at the bar onstage.… When you’re doing theater, you want to bring people in. And how better to bring them in than to literally bring them onstage and have a drink with them and hang out with them? We weren’t drinking, but… we were playing music around them. So, it was a really cool way to immediately, from the jump, bring them into the show, and then it very seamlessly turns into, suddenly, the story that begins. And so, that was incredible.

Speaking of the story that begins, Once deals with some strong emotional subject matter. What kinds of emotions did you experience while you were working on the musical?
Once does deal with heartache, love, the challenge of new love when you’re still invested in an old love, heartbreak, and death–how that lingers for all the people who are left behind. It deals with all that stuff in a way that artists do, which is through creation. And for the main character, Guy, and his counterpart, Girl, they fall in love through creating together, and through dealing with all this stuff together, and it’s hard, and it’s messy, and then they make beautiful art, which is usually how it ends up working out in real life, too. I loved just going through that process every night. It was always an adventure.

You are not only an actor, but have been a writer and director on certain projects as well. Do you feel like being an actor made you better as a writer/director, or indeed, that understanding how to write and direct made you a better actor?
They both have informed the other, for sure. Being an actor definitely made me a better director–especially since I didn’t go to school for directing, having a lot of experience around a lot of other directors, I learned a lot from them. And then, knowing how to talk to other actors [was useful]. I don’t know if it made me a better actor on stage necessarily, but what it did do, is make me a better auditioner. Because I cast other people in things, I learned what it’s like to cast people, and it reduced a lot of the stress of… auditioning. Because you realize that the people you’re auditioning for are really rooting for you, and there’s no negative energy. They’re really there for you, to support you. So it’s really changed my approach to auditioning.

Your website describes you as “above all… passionate about collaboration.” What are some of your favorite creative collaborations over the years?
Gosh, well, definitely Once–there’s no question. I wrote and directed a short film, and that was such a cool learning process. I collaborated with several good friends in New York, and also a bunch of people that I didn’t know that we cast in it–[the short film is] called Train Approaching. That was one of my favorites. Also, I love the stuff that I did with The Understudies after Once–some of the covers that we did. Maybe one of my favorite collaborations that I did was, we made a mashup of “Blue Christmas” and “White Christmas,” and we did it with puppets, while also playing and singing. It was so fun–we made the puppets, we made the little stage, and we performed in it. It’s a cute little story–it was really cool. That was probably one of my favorite collaborations I’ve ever done.

Wait: I have one more. [The birth of] my daughter! With my wife, [this] is my favorite collaboration ever. She’s amazing. She [my daughter] was here earlier, [and her name is] Adeline. And my wife… is Darcy. She’s in The Lovettes.

Chase Huna photographed by Sarah Larson

INTERVIEW WITH CHASE HUNA

I know you’re from Palm Beach, CA originally, so thank you for coming out here.
Oh, no, Palm Springs, California. Palm Beach is in Florida. But that’s a nice place too. Palm Springs, California, yes.

So how are you feeling about performing tonight?
Very, very excited. Obviously, we’re doing all of this for a very good cause–Will’s Place and everything that Will’s Place means to my friends, the Empty Pockets. I’m really, really grateful for them.

How did you meet the Empty Pockets?
How’d I meet them? Through mutual contacts. Musicians just meet musicians over time, and I met these guys and Al Stewart through an old bandmate of Al Stewart’s–his name is Peter White. And the Pockets have been Al’s backing band for the past ten years, so I was up on tour and meeting them and getting to play with them over the past few years, which has been really, really great.

Being that my brother actually plays a saxophone himself, what kind of saxophone do you play? Alto? Tenor?
Tonight, [and] on the Al Stewart gigs, I play alto. I really do love tenor, though. Tenor’s just something that has always spoken to me, if that makes sense, in a musical fashion. But yeah, tenor’s really great, [and] alto–those are my two go-tos.

You have a song called “Dynamic Duo.” I take it you are a Batman enthusiast?
Oh, you know what, I’m actually not. That was more so a song title of a guitarist I had worked with, who was a Billboard #1 Smooth Jazz artist. His name is Steve Oliver. And at that point in my… young career at the time, we had done so many shows together, and it was just something that really kind of clicked with me at the time. So, that’s more so why I named the song “Dynamic Duo”... because of my appreciation for Steve Oliver, the smooth jazz guitarist.

I actually encountered the name of Steve Oliver when I was doing research. He was an early mentor of yours, then?
Yes. He produced my very first record, which was called “On the Chase.” It came out in 2017.

How did you come to meet Steve Oliver?
How’d I come to meet him? Same way I came to meet guys like Peter White and Al Stewart, just connections that you make through music. You go to one gig, and you meet someone here, and [the] same thing happens wherever you go. You just meet people along the way. I met him through mutual friends, and playing gigs at different places… and kind of was aware of his reputation… as a smooth jazz guitarist. And I thought, I want to have my own song, I want to have my own record, this is kind of the path I want to do. And he happens to be here at this time in my life where, maybe this is a guy I work with, at this time.

What were some of the things that Mr. Oliver taught you?
Working with Steve was [when I had] my very first recording experiences, really. [During] my… freshman year in high school, I’m driving out to his studio, which is 45 minutes from my house. He lives in a town outside of Palm Springs, called Banning. And I would drive there on weekends (because I’m a freshman in high school, you have school during the week)... on weekends, I would go out there and spend the whole day out there, and just watch him at work. Watch him, how he crafts a song, how he records a song, puts something together from nothing into a final product. So, going to him week after week, doing that, and eventually creating the first album I came [out with], On the Chase, that was my first little bit of recording experience, which was very helpful. Very, very helpful.

Another song of yours is called “Cloud 9,” which, as an expression, is supposed to mean something idyllic or heavenly. But the feeling of the song is a bit sadder than that–I was listening to it, and I honestly kind of felt like crying. What’s the story, or the motivation, behind “Cloud 9”?
Being completely honest with you, I don’t even remember what that song goes like. After the On the Chase CD came out, I wanted to somewhat self-produce myself. But there’s definitely a learning curve that comes with a lot of things in the music business, including recording and crafting your songs, writing songs. So, those albums, Life of the Party, Life of the Party Vol. II, were… a learning curve for me. [On] a song like “Cloud 9,” I didn’t have the… knowledge that I have now on how to title a song. Because instrumental music doesn’t have words, obviously, so you have to convey emotion through melody. And at the time, I think I was maybe 20 years old, and I didn’t know how to convey that emotion in the correct way that I do nowadays. … If I could go back and redo some things on that album, I definitely would. [I’d] take the knowledge that I know now about songwriting, and what I said [about] crafting a song, and conveying melody through just instrumental music, [and] I’d do it much, much differently. But I’m really very proud of it. (“Dynamic Duo” was a part of that little series of albums, as well as a popular song of mine, called “Dance,” which people seem to like quite a lot.)

Do you have any major ambitions for your career in the future?
Yeah! Right now I’m finishing up my latest project, which is called Heart and Soul. It’s an album of contemporary jazz. The first radio single came out [in] February of this year–2025–and it was featured on Dave Kos’s SiriusXM Watercolors Sunday show… it took the top spot–#1–on the smooth jazz charts in the country of Spain, as well. So, it did some good things for me. The album will be out in January 2026. It’s called Heart and Soul, and there will be multiple singles that come off of that, including a song I did with my good friend Peter White (who’s Al Stewart’s old bandmate there). Yeah, yeah, [I’m] very excited about it.

I have to ask: were you really listening to jazz when you were two? Because that’s what you told the Coachella Valley Independent.
Yeah! From the point when you’re a child like that, two years old, you’re either listening to Beethoven or Bach, or whatever the parents are putting–what’s going to make a baby calm? All that stuff, so, they’re typically playing classical music. But then… I started hearing jazz around the house, and I thought, “Oh, I really kind of like the sound of that!” So, I wanted to listen to that more, that’s what I would listen to when I went to bed at five years old. When I was seven, I saw a guy play saxophone for the very first time, and I thought, “You know, I already love the sound; not only does it sound cool, but he looks cool doing it, too.” So I thought, “That’s probably something I want to do for my life.”

You also told the Coachella Valley Independent that saxophonists have written their own songs and played the lead parts, as you do, even going back to the 1920s and ‘30s. Can you give any examples of ‘20s and ‘30s saxophonists who have done this?
Yeah! Charlie Parker, John Coltrane–probably two of the biggest saxophonists from what you can call the “big band/swing era.” I know that kind of comes later, in the ‘40s/’50s, but if you’re thinking about bebop jazz… jazz at that point in history–1910s, ‘20s, ‘30s–was actually one of the biggest genres that we had… I don’t know if I could speak for the world, but [in] America. And it was because of saxophonists like that–Charlie Parker, John Coltrane–that really crafted that sound.… As it progressed, that’s when you get into the big band, ‘40s/’50s swing era. You get into someone like Frank Sinatra, and all the jazz crooner guys.

Frank Sinatra played saxophone?
He did not play saxophone. He was probably the biggest name in the big band era. What I mean: big band era, you know, you’ve got a 17-piece big band–five saxes, four trombones, four trumpets. And… a band can play the lead, but typically, you’d see a singer. And the biggest singer at the time was Frank Sinatra. So if you ever go back and listen to any of his records, I mean–saxophonists, they can cover “Come Fly with Me” or “Fly Me to the Moon,” those classic songs, but it was much more recognizable with the vocal [element] on there.

Can you explain to me the basis for the title of your single, “East Coast Swing”?
Yeah! That was really, really cool writing that one… To get back to your point on “Cloud 9,” “what emotion do you convey within instrumental music?” That was the first time I felt that I had conveyed an emotion properly. With “East Coast Swing,” the idea was that I was listening to saxophonists and music from the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, but kind of jazz-influenced things from East Coast towns like Baltimore or [Philadelphia], New York. So I kind of took those ideas, what I heard from that, and wrote that song, thinking, “This is something that would sound like, if I’m walking to a gig late at night,  it’s in this old, smokey club in Baltimore, and they’ve got the backroom, and it’s got the jazz, stand-up bass”--in the song, it’s a[n] electric bass, but what I picture[d] was a guy playing the stand-up bass… And you’re just playing there, [hums from “East Coast Swing”], just kind of a smokey little riff–that’s what I thought about, in writing that one.

On a couple of your songs, I’ve noticed moments that feel like they’re improvised. Do you improvise much in your music?
I do improvise. Jazz is a lot of improvisation, right? Nowadays, I probably don’t [improvise] as much, just based on how I’m becoming a better songwriter, but… in more of my early recordings, I’d say I am improvising quite a lot, just because of my understanding of what a song should be at the time, which was, “Oh, jazz, this needs a sax solo, and this needs a sax solo.” Whereas nowadays, I have a better understanding of song structure, and how a song should flow properly, and how, maybe not every song needs a saxophone solo in it? But yeah, in my earlier recordings, in my earlier songs and albums, there’s definitely some solos going on.

In 2023, you were excited by the divergent demographics of older jazz-minded listeners and younger, pop-minded listeners in Coachella Valley, both of whom you felt you could reach with your music. Two years later, what kind of reception has your music gotten in the Valley?
If you ever head out to Palm Springs, California, it’s basically known as a retirement community. People, they live [elsewhere] for their entire life, and then they decide to retire in Palm Springs, so that’s why you have [age] 55+ communities [there]. But it worked out for me, because that’s the audience that was listening to the big band jazz at the time, and they remembered [that]. You go to some places, and you talk to some people, and they're like, “I saw Sinatra at this place, at this time, in this year…” So, playing that kind of music is really, really great, and it really taught me a lot [about]… playing saxophone in general. And I appreciate what young people listen to as well, whether it’s… pop… and that’s something I try to influence in my music. I want to have a nice blend of something that I can reach all audiences–older, but also younger, because we’re all getting older, right? None of us are getting younger, so if you think 30 years down the line… you need to think, “How can you apply your music to a younger generation, and how can you get that audience?”

How easily do you meld pop and hip-hop sounds with jazz?
You know, what I’ve learned in the past… I’d say, couple of years, is, a lot of contemporary jazz nowadays–if you listen to radio and stuff–it’s really R&B-influenced. [A] lot of soul singers… [for example,] tonight, we’ll be doing a cover of “Simply the Best” by Tina Turner. On my new record, there’s a cover of “The Girl is Mine” by Michael Jackson, and another cover that I’m really proud of [is] “Through the Fire” by Chaka Khan. Great, great R&B [artist]--I mean, Michael Jackson, which is pop, but some consider him to be R&B as well. So, to [answer] your question: it’s refreshing for me, because I want… to try to convey my music to all age ranges, right? Not just one 55-and-up community… I’m 26–how do I convey smooth jazz to another 26-year-old, that, when they think of smooth jazz, they think of Kenny G? But, there can be somewhat of a bridge between the genres, and that’s something I’ve always tried to do, within my music… to create that bridge. It’s not easy… definitely still working on it, but it’s something that I hope to accomplish one day.