Chris Botti

For the last two years, jazz trumpeteer Chris Botti has been without a home. The much-in-demand artist has been touring in support of his own records and spent a great part of the last eighteen months on the road with Sting. Botti, Sting and their bandmates have traversed the globe at least twice. Such an extensive touring schedule with as high a profile artist as Sting might make it difficult to concentrate on his own music, but Chris has recently written and recorded his fourth album set for a October release on Columbia Records. ASCAP's Randy Grimmett caught up with Chris while he was on a break from touring.

How has life on the road been?

Life on the road has been entertaining and fun; very tiring, sometimes, but for the most part very, very fun.

How long have you been out on the road with Sting?

This August was two years with Sting. Before that I was out with my own group. Before that I did a little tour with Paul Simon and before that I was in London playing with John Berry. I've actually been on the road and technically without a home since April 20th of 1999. So, by the time things kind of wind down to the point where I need to find a place to live, it will be two years of living in hotels.

Has it been difficult to write and record this album with your tour schedule? How did you manage to do that?

I had done a couple of sketches of songs that are on the new record, but basically, once I made a decision to use Kipper (the co-producer of Sting's Brand New Day), we decided to rent this house in Los Angeles in the Hollywood Hills above Sunset and basically load all of my equipment into that house and sit there and write for one month. And at the end of the month, then we would start recording.

So, the record is sort of split up -- we had two months off the road in February and March and half of April and we loaded in our equipment on February 4th with just the couple of sketches that I'd done in Miami. Then we just wrote for a month and then started recording, so the record happened rather quickly. The house that we rented had this incredible view overlooking LA and so we just wrote mostly at night from a visual perspective and gave it wing and I'm really happy with the way it came out.

And are most of the songs on this record co-writes?

Most are Kipper and I with the exception of the ones that I brought in from Miami, or Kipper, me and a jazz pianist named Billy Childs. Sting wrote one song that appears on the record which is an unreleased Sting song that Shawn Colvin sings for me.

How did the concentrated writing experience over two months differ from what you had done on your previous records?

It tapped into more of a stream of consciousness thing for me. When you have that kind of focus it does something to you. Sometimes when you have a lot of time on your hands, and you're writing only with yourself watching over yourself you tend to be your own worst critic and throw out a lot of things or you don't chase the things that are worthwhile. So when you have someone else there that you can play off their ideas, it can be really great. When you're living in that situation for six straight weeks it can really add up to some nice moments, so having that kind of focus was something that I loved. Because Kipper was around to start a groove, I found myself writing for the first time more from a trumpet place. I would just improvise melodies and that was really freeing for me and different as well.

Did you enjoy this experience more than having the prolonged period of time to write?

It was by far my most enjoyable record and it went so fast. I was so happy with the fact that you could make a record in that amount of time and made me realize that taking eight or nine months to make a record isn't always necessary, especially an improvisationally based record.

What do you mean by improvisational?

Well, first and foremost, even though my music is melodic, it's still music that doesn't involve lyrics. I used to joke around that I wrote all of my own lyrics when I was growing up -- meaning that I spent so many hours practicing my trumpet that when I put the trumpet up to my mouth and play that the playing is making as identifiable a sound as someone writing an incredible lyric. So, I wanted to come into this record and make it a little more free flowing and really play on the record more and I think we've succeeded at that.

This record, to me, feels a little looser than your previous records.

There was a real effort to make things a little bit more dramatic. There's a song on the record called "Best Time." That song was kind of a template to try some really out of the ordinary things for me -- both key and chordal movements -- and just letting things drop out into nothing and spatially kind of really exploring different territories. I've done a lot of things with guitars and stuff like that and recording with practically nothing at different points on the tape. It was interesting for me to really maximize the tone of the trumpet and not have a lot of things around it at times, and then at other times have a lot of things surrounding the trumpet. The drama of those things is what makes Kipper fantastic at what he does and I really enjoyed that.

There also seemed to be a more loose feel to the underlying rhythm on this record, it was more colloquial and less formal than some of your other stuff.

There's a song called "Miami Overnite" that we wanted to sound like an old Philly style production. The rhythm on it is stock in the way that rhythms were stock in the 70's and not like retro up-tempo, it's more a Philly sound with a mix of Miami. There are things on this record that were grooves that were originated by Kipper and I would just improvise over the top. There's a song called "Blue Horizon" where Kipper had the beat going and then Billy Childs would just sit at the keyboard and I would just improvise stream of consciousness melodies and Billy would find chords underneath them and it just kind of came together. We wanted to make a record that came from two points of view: one was Miles Davis' Kind of Blue and the other was Sade. The reason I use Miles Davis' Kind of Blue is that record was written and recorded in two days. So we wanted to come from a stream of consciousness place and do a record that was more quickly written, but we wanted to keep it super-melodic which is where the Sade feel comes in. The way Sade sort of does Spanish or Latin rhythms, I've always been a fan of that -- I love the way Spanish music, but not flat out Latin music, has been embraced by the trumpet.

Do you find it hard to recapture the song when you write improvisationally?

The hardest songs to recapture on the road are the ones that aren't written improvisationally. The ones that are written improvisationally usually lay really nice on the horn and are the easiest to play live. The ones that are hardest to play live are the super melodic ones. For instance on the new record, "Lisa" is a very delicate song and for the mood of it to really translate correctly it needs to have special attention to the melody when we play it live.

You did fewer covers on this record. Was that a conscious decision?

The whole cover thing is a tough one for me because this is my first record for Columbia and I really wanted to play on this record. I wanted a lot more playing on this record than my last one. I'd been on the road playing in front of people for a year and a half and I felt like my playing was good and I was really proud of the tone of the trumpet and the way I was getting around the instrument, so I kind of wanted to do that a little bit more. When you get into the cover element as an instrumental artist you run the risk of making it sound like Muzak. If there's a real reason to do a cover and it's different sounding and it fits with the mold of my own compositions, then I'm all for it. Someday, I hope to do a duet record with Paul Buchanan of covers backed by a small orchestra. That whole thing about a record label wanting a cover to get on radio is not something that I jump at.

What's the plan with Columbia?

They have been so great. My first meeting with Jeff Jones, the new president, just set the tone for this record. They have been so supportive. It's unusual for a record company to say "just go for it" without having heard anything. Jeff's just trusting my ability to make a great record. They came out to the house and listened to some of the really early demos about a month in, but they were committed to it from the get-go.

What are the tour plans to support this one?

I finish with Sting on July 29th in London. Then my own tour starts August 4th in Seattle. I'll be on the road the whole month of August, then I'll be working with Sting in September on his new record. Then I'll be back out on the road with my own group until whenever -- hopefully for a long time.

What will your touring band be like?

It'll be a quintet or a sextet. We're messing around with the idea of having two keyboard players, including Billy Childs doing some dates with us. It will be at least five musicians.

Do you like life on the road?

Yeah, when I'm touring with my own group I get immense satisfaction of playing my own music and the world kind of revolving around me. When I'm on the road with Sting I get to play in front of much larger audiences and because I'm featured with his band, it's something that I really love. And the treatment and comraderie is fantastic and I get to see the world in such a high style with so many things open to me. It's a really unique experience and I wouldn't change doing it for anything. It's really opened a lot of doors for me and introduced me to a bunch of other musicians and people that don't listen to jazz music who see me with Sting and then end up buying my records or e-mailing me about my music.

As you're writing a record and recording, how do you hope that people will respond to the record?

I hope that people feel that the record played as a whole evokes some sort of sensuality in them. I want to strike a bit of sensuality when you play the songs back to back and you're with someone, I want this record to be sensual.

By Randy Grimmett