Turn Up The Good by Sean Meredith-Jones

In the 70’s and 80’s, Disco, Motown, Rock and Roll, and New Wave started to become the pop music of the era. Jazz started to become a kind of music you learned in the classroom and not on the street. It slowly became socially disengaged with the culture around it..

These days when a jazz artist tries to do something a little more relevant to the culture…as in doing groove music or covering a Nirvana song instead of a Cole Porter song…the jazz police have a hissy fit. They seem to forget that jazz music was never about staying in one place musically. It was about integrating music of the time and taking it some place else. There are people in the jazz music who think there was/is no real jazz music after 1965. If it doesn’t swing it’s not jazz. If there’s overdubbing on the record, it’s not jazz. If the instruments aren’t acoustic, it’s not jazz. Then they wonder why jazz music doesn’t sell the way it used to.

Unfortunately, jazz music now to most people (in the west) is lounge music….elevator music, background music…the stuff you hear at weddings…OLD PEOPLE music…lol. It’s music for snooty people with Armani suits drinking Martinis trying to impress their dates. In some ways, much of that is justified. Having taught guitar lessons for many years now, I never get one student that wants to learn to play jazz for the sheer love of it…and I’ve had students from 6-56. The only time anyone comes to me wanting to take up jazz is when they have an audition to get ready for to get into a post secondary music program.

It doesn’t help when generation after generation of jazz players rehash the same tunes over, and over, and over again. Those songs have become musician standards….and are no longer relevant to the average listener. Most people have no clue who Horace Silver or Cole Porter is. I’ve been asked in the past why I don’t do the traditional thing by starting off making albums of standards. If I was interested in making records that nobody buys…I suppose I would do that.

There’s another missing element to jazz these days that the pop/rock genre has jazzers beat hands down. That is going into the studio and really crafting a sound. To me the studio is an instrument just like the guitar. I’ve lost that macho image of thinking that everything should be recorded live off the floor. Who cares?!! That’s only something you can brag to others about at parties. I have never bought an album based on this premise….and no one else does either. You would never have bands like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd…etc. Unfortunately, most jazz guys never put any thought into the actual SOUND of their records…and the records sound like it. They’re dull, lifeless, and boring.

One thing I did before starting the new project was simply ask others what they thought of the last album...."New Time" The jazz critics thought it wasn’t “jazzy” enough….too easy listening. The pop critics said it was “too jazzy”….others thought it was just plain nerdy….lol. In a way, I take all of those statements as compliments. I did want to make something unique…and I think I was pretty successful in that regard. Unfortunately it was a hard price to pay as it left the album in commercial limbo.

Fortunately there are actually people that did like the album for what it was. I can still put the album on and listen to it with a smile.. I was a college music nerd who had just graduated…and the tunes were more about playing around with all these cool modal voicings and fancy shmancy chord progressions. I wanted to impress people with it. Typical college grad mentality I guess.

Being away from the academic life has been a really good thing for me. There comes a point where the appreciation of music can become so academic that that it becomes void of any real emotion. It’s no secret that professional artists don’t know everything…sometimes inspired amateurs know something.

Another reality I was aware of is that the way people listen to music these days has changed dramatically. Most people are passive listeners….they listen to music in the car…or in the morning while they’re getting ready for work….or at work. I say passive as opposed to active listening…where you totally engage with the music and tune out everything else. People are just plain busy these days….and don’t have time during the day to listen to an album all the way through and do nothing else.

With all this in mind, I made some real simple and deliberate decisions with regard to the writing process. Less ballads and more up tempo material. More major key oriented music…and less minor stuff. Bluesy….earthy textures. Punchier…heavier…and shorter songs. I also knew that the overall sound of the record had to be a little more “in your face” so to speak…in order to be something that people would want to play in the car.

Most of the songs have a very bluesy quality to them. The Stevie Ray Vaughan influence certainly came through…though the songs themselves are quite different than anything he would write. I think the SRV thing comes through more with the actual guitar playing and sound of the guitar. I love southern music…gospel, blues, country….all that stuff. Blues is certainly the X factor in a lot of music. If you took blues out of jazz…you have no jazz. You certainly have no rock and roll without it either. Blues and the guitar are also a perfect match as far as I’m concerned. Songs like Turn Up the Good, Falling Back Again, Alone With You, and Come And Gone, and Push, all have a real southern bluesy quality to them.

The Songs:

I’ve never written so much in such a short amount of time. I’m not concerned with what the jazz police think of my music. I know who my audience is…and I wrote it for them. I’m a lot more assertive with what I think sounds good…and I knew the sound I was looking for overall. The idea was to create something warm, friendly and with a little more of a tude’ than the last album. The songs were written between May and August of 2005.

Turn Up the Good

It’s harder to write a good blues song than one might think. I wanted something a little more slamming to start the album off. There are a few twists to the form though. It’s a 16 bar form instead of the usual 12. The turnaround is a little different too… there’s almost 2 turnarounds back to back. One’s the approach…and the last is the final descent. The melody has a real southern blues quality to it. It’s all harmonized in 6ths…and the way it sounds on the guitar is really cool. . Mike, Ben, and Robi totally rocked on this track too.

Falling Back Again

I can’t remember how the song ended up in 7/8…I think it was just something I wanted to try and it seemed to work. The final version has a real reggae funky beach vibe to it. The Hammond organ mixed with the wah rhythm guitar I thought was really quirky. It’s a pretty simple form though…a 16 bar progression. It’s derived from a minor blues, but it never starts or resolves to the Imin chord. There’s a lot of filler chords between the primary ones…and the turnaround is a little unusual too.

Alone With You

A slow deep groove for this one. I do love R&B music of old…the whole 70’s Motown thing. I wanted a cross between that and dance music of today. Pretty simple harmonically…but the focus here is all feel. Mike and Ben really groove their tails off. The playing isn’t all that flashy…but again…it goes back to what my focus is these days. Something to draw people in…not “hey look at how fast I can play.” It’s about ideas, mood, and playing together as a band.

Blue Sky Blvd

I teach guitar lessons 4, sometimes 5 days a week. I have a lot of young students that want to play Green Day stuff. I can’t tell you how many kids I have showed “Blvd of Broken Dreams” to. Sometimes, the next 2 classrooms down from me would be working on the same song! The title is a reference to that song. I wanted a bright happy go lucky sound here. Something you could go driving down Sunset Blvd with in Cali.

Come And Gone

Hymns totally rock when they’re done well. I didn’t want to do a cover…so I took a crack at writing my own. I had been listening to lot of Norah Jones at the time. I just luuuv what she does. She totally has this southern bluesy warm way of singing melodies…and her band just totally gets it. The melody line has lot of subtle nuances to it…the bending, sliding…articulations and so forth…I thought of Norah and the way she sings…I wanted it to be something she might do.

Push

I had also been listening to a lot of Sheryl Crow at the time. Her music is so easy to listen to and she has another really warm way of singing melodies. I thought of her when I was writing the melody here…though the chord changes are closer to a bebop progression than anything. This was one of the first songs I wrote for this album…and when it was done…I really wasn’t sure if it was going to work. When we played it as a band…Ben, Robi and Mike just kicked major heineken on it….it’s a keeper!

Take Me Away

I try and make it a point to have one or two latin songs in our live set. It really takes the listener to a different place…and can totally change the atmosphere of a room. We used to do songs like Jobim’s “So Danco Samba..” I wanted that old school Bossa thing happening. I also really liked an album that Larry Goldings did a while ago…an album of all Latin music played on Hammond Organ. I definitely wanted a bit of that vibe on this album

Spanish Jewel

I had a date with a girl who was a Spanish teacher. I don’t know why, but I thought writing a song for her on our first date would be a good thing to do. I wrote this song the night before we went out. I wanted the melody to have that sort of “Desperado” vibe to it. The chord changes are a lot more elaborate than traditional Spanish Music. The bridge moves through 4 different keys in a short amount of time. The Bachucada drum feel really kicks it up a notch….shout out to my man Emeril….;)

What I Meant To Say

The song has a Bossa feel to it…but the vibe is a lot darker. It seemed to round out the previous 2 latin songs nicely and made it a completely different section of the album. I still love rich, exotic chord progressions…and the way an acoustic guitar sounds when played in this style.

Dig

We do a lot of up tempo jazz/funk music for the live show and I really didn’t have anything written to showcase that. I love the way the band sounds on this…not fusion….just that raw gritty bluesy sound of the guitar mixed with the Hammond Organ. A lot of funky bidness’ going on here. The melody is just a basic blues/bebopish riff which I had the band play in unison. The send off into the solo section is in 7/8…just a sprinkle of the unexpected.

Good Times Ahead

I’ve always loved Joe Satriani and the way that he approaches writing instrumental songs and stating melodies. When I was younger, he was definitely one of the players that really showed me my way around the guitar. As I’ve grown older, the influence is still there, but it’s laced with a lot of other things. Our tones are a lot different…and I really try and avoid writing “guitar music” if you will. What I do keep from him is the energy and rock edge that he has in his playing combined with his greater depth of harmony and feel. I wanted a song that had a real vibe about it that you can go cruising to.

Setting Sun

The title says it all. I wrote the 1st two bars of the melody one day and knew instantly I had to do something with it. The mixing engineer described this song as having a “Pink Floydian” personality to it. I hadn’t listened to Pink Floyd until recently. I picked up Dark Side of The Moon…after I had already recorded this album. Dark Side…such a great album….and I do know what he was talking about. This song is one that you’d listen to while driving down a long desert highway….into the setting sun.

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