Ellington

Chattanooga Times Free Press entertainment reporter Casey Phillips spoke with Brooklyn-based New Orleans-style jazz pianist Josh Charles about his love affair with New Orleans, doing his part to aid the recovery effort and his friendship with Dr. Dog.

CP: Growing up, you were studying classical piano until a blues radio station caught your attention. How old were you at the time?

JC: Well, it wasn't so much blues as it was New Orleans music, I think. I grew up in Kansas City. I started taking piano at 8, and my parents are from Detroit, so I grew up with Motown in the house. The soul of that R&B was deeply ingrained in me before I ever started playing.

I remember hearing Professor Longhair, James Booker and Dr. John on this radio show in the city when I was 11 or 12 years old. It just blew me away. I said, “I just have to learn to play like this.” I was lucky to be extremely gifted in classical music, advancing very fast, but I didn't have the passion for it that I did once I heard this other kind of music.

CP: Was there a particular aspect of the music that resonated with you?

JC: It was just that it was all piano, and it was so funky. It had an original sound to it with the rhythmic pulse behind it and the harmonies. It sounded like there were four hands going at once. It was so cool to be able to hear the piano doing that on its own without the bass and drums. It was doing its own thing. That really attracted me. It was like, “Hey, I'm a piano player. I can sit down and play like this and rock the house.”

People always like to hear that. They always want to hear it, but I'm not a boogie-woogie player, by any means. There are people who are really gifted in that sense, but those things are written out. I'm improvising everything I'm playing.

CP: Is that typical of New Orleans music? I know you studied jazz in college, did that contribute to your facility with improvisation?

JC: Jazz music is definitely different. As far as the New Orleans style of playing I'm known for, it was all aural, being around the music, playing it, playing it with the people who played it, getting the spirit and feel.

I say this all the time, but there are people who can play the New Orleans type of piano you know and love, but when you hear it by the guys who really mastered it, the difference is that there's a spirit and a feel other than just the notes. Everything I play, I try to put that into it, so that it's ingrained in what I do.

Yeah, as far as jazz music is concerned, I was a serious jazz musician and studied extremely hard under Barry Harris in New York, who is a legendary educator in the be-bop, blues and swing tradition. That's the type of jazz I really love. Some of that's come across in what I play, but it's a bit of a different side of me, in some respects. The improvisational side is where that comes from.

CP: You've lived all over the place - born in California, raised in Kansas City, studied and live in New York and were going to live in New Orleans. Obviously, New Orleans is in your music, but what about the other places you've lived? Have those left a mark as well?

JC: I think, certainly, growing up in Kansas City, that's a great jazz and blues town, so that was pretty much in part of my core as a player - all the early Camp City rhythm & blues.

I think New York itself is where the straight-ahead jazz side of me came through. Also, I play rock music, and living in New York, you tend to get into situations where you'd like to exert a lot of aggression. It's a very high-energy lifestyle, and I notice that when I'm in New York, I'm a very different person than when I'm out in the South. It's not that my energy level dissipates, but it subsides into a different groove. The record player slows down a little bit, so it gets a little more funky, a little more laid-back.

New York has had a tremendous influence on me as an artist. There are so many great musicians there. Most of the opportunities I've had, even in the New Orleans world of music, come from when those guys came to New York. I would say New York and New Orleans are hugely important in my musical development.

CP: Do you do more of your writing in New York or while on the road? Can you tell a difference in tone between songs written at home as opposed to on tour?

JC: Yes, definitely. The songs on “Love, Work & Money” started in New Orleans. I made the plan to leave New York and to move to New Orleans, and of course, that was when Katrina hit. Then, I ended up back in Kansas City, where I started writing the songs for the record. They certainly had more of that New Orleans flavor, in mind with what I was thinking.

When I write in New York, I like to walk around the city a lot. You get into a rhythm of the pace of the city in which you're walking, which dictates the rhythmic idea, the lyrical idea.

I tend to not write when I'm at the piano; most of my ideas come when I'm away from the piano and guitar. A lot of my best songs come from being stuck in someplace and having to call into the tape recorder and put the idea down. (Laughs.) It's very hard for me to sit down at the piano and say, “I'm going to write a song.” It usually doesn't happen that way, if ever.

CP: So it's mostly flashes from the blue?

JC: Yeah, you want to. You want to be able to do that (write at the piano), and I can come up with a melodic idea from jamming at the piano or playing on the guitar, but it won't necessarily translate into a finished song. That's very rarely ever happened.

CP: You said what you're doing on stage are improvised. When you're at home jamming, do many of your songs start from the melody or do you tend to write from lyrics?

JC: They tend to be separate, or they can come up at the same time. With a song like “Love, Work and Money,” I had the melodic and the lyric at the same time. That's the greatest way to do it because you get a chunk of something that feels special. The same thing happened with “Picking Up the Pieces.”

“The Waiting Game” was my first single, and it's the perfect idea for a song literally about living life in New York City. We're all waiting for something. It's like a life story: Of a musician trying to make it or someone waiting on a phone call from a job or their girlfriend or finding love. That song, to me, is real New York in its lyrical tone but the music behind it is a completely Southern, soulful thing. That's an example of a song where I came up the piano part to it before I had a lyric. The hook was in there.

CP: Do you find that, since Katrina hit in 2005, the songs you write that are influenced by New Orleans are any different than those from before the hurricane hit?

JC: I think it's all the same. To me, New Orleans is a very special place. Even though I don't technically live there, it's like an adopted home to me. I spend as much time as I possibly can there. The spirit of the music and the people and the culture has always been the same, pre-storm or post-storm.

There's definitely been a bit more biting edge to the lyrics, I think, but musically, I've always reached for those musical influences that are as embedded in me as much as rock stuff like U2 and Tom Petty. It's like I grew up listening to rock music, but I've always loved New Orleans music.

CP: You did a lot to help out the recovery effort after Katrina by donating proceeds from the sale of “Healing Time.” What compelled you to do that?

JC: It was a dream. I don't have money to give, and I'm not very handy. What I do is make music. It was an ambition and a dream. I wrote the song before I had any idea what I was going to do with it. I literally came up with that song while walking the streets after the devastation of the storm. It took a little while for it cultivate into something that was special.

When I realized I had something special, I wanted to do something with it. I wanted people to understand how much the city and the people and the place meant to me by giving all of it and trying to raise awareness.

I've now started a foundation called the Healing Time Foundation, whose main goal is to help American cities in need, starting with New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, which is very much in need with the oil spill. I'm really excited about that.

When people buy my record, 10 percent of the proceeds go the foundation, and when people by “Healing Time” separate, 100 percent of the profits still go to the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans.

I feel like, if you're in a position where you have a voice and people will listen to you, you should use your voice for the right reason, as well as obviously doing what you need to do to have a career. I feel like you have an obligation, if you're in the spotlight in any kind of way, to use that for good.

CP: How long was it after the storm before you went back?

JC: I was there three months after the storm in December 2005. I was there in December to start this record with members of Dr. John's band. We cut a few tracks, and then I went back to New York. Over the next year and a half, we cut the rest of the album. It's a combination. I did some of the overdubs when I went back to New Orleans as well. I was in New Orleans quite a bit after the storm. I was there for the first jazz festival after the storm, and I've been back almost every year since many times.

CP: Since “Healing Time” alone received so much acclaim, did it put any additional pressure on you to one up yourself with the rest of the album?

JC: Yeah, I actually wanted to put out an album. (Laughs.) I didn't even have an album. I had an EP out. “Healing Time” wasn't on that album; it didn't fit. I wasn't really promoting anything except “Healing Time” all last year.

It was a tremendous ride. We certainly did got a lot of critical acclaim and publicity, which has poised me to be successful with the launch of my debut album. Quite honestly, it's something I really care about. When people ask me to do things I care about, I'll do them.

CP: What are some other things you've done that people have asked you to support?

JC: There have been other things with New Orleans. I'll do anything for New Orleans. We were working with some military organizations to help soldiers coming back from war. We've been in talks with breast cancer foundations. Everybody has different levels of compassion and caring. I tend to be deeply moved by things that touch me.

As an artist, the easiest way to help that is through song. The power of music is tremendous. It's a great gift and an honor to be able to do this for a living.

CP: Once you had “Healing Time” and it didn't fit the EP, did you build “Love, Work & Money” around “Healing Time”?

JC: No, “Love, Work & Money” was always a conception of when I thought about the three recording sessions I'd done over the last couple of years and realized I needed to make a full-length album. A culmination of all these songs and a couple of new ones ended up making the record.

We made the record without knowing how we were going to release it, other than digitally. We had no label backing and only had some independent financing, which was hard to secure over time.

We got lucky that the finished product was then taken on. I was very lucky in the sense that I did have a home for it once it was released. Sometimes, people take years to make a record, and this was just one of those times. (Laughs.)

A lot of artists get into that situation because you find you can do some things here but then you need to save up some more and wait until later for others. That's what happened with this record. It was completely organic.

When I started this project for New Orleans in December 2005, I had no idea what “Love, Work & Money” was going to be, if it was going to be anything. I was wanting to make a record, and I had some songs. I was getting back into music after taking a bit of a break after my rock band broke up. That's where it came from. Amazingly enough, four years later, it finally came out.

CP: Did that extra time benefit you in any way?

JC: My next record I plan on recording all in one room over one period. (Laughs.) It was definitely a blood, sweat and tears record. There was so much work that went into it. I'm very proud of how it came out. People seem to really like it.

It's different. I know it doesn't sound like everything else on the radio. I don't listen to the radio often, which is probably why. I'm amazed because it's really starting to pick up some momentum and steam. It takes a little bit longer than you expect it to, but when it does, it's like, “Wow” because there's so much product out there.

CP: Tell me about your relationship with Dr. Dog. How and when did you meet him?

JC: I met him when I was about 14 years old visiting New Orleans. I already kind of was playing New Orleans piano and listening to it. In Kansas City, I had a bit of a reputation as this young blues guy playing this style. I made my parents take me down to New Orleans saying, “I'm going to meet Dr. John,” not knowing full well that he didn't live there at the time. It was fate, though, because he happened to be there doing a record release.

I went to the show and approached his tour manager at the time and told her I could play like James Booker. She was a bit freaked out, and she said, “Well, you gotta meet Mac (“Dr. John” Rebennack).” So I met him.

I started talking about James Booker, and he told me how he got started at such a young age and was already making and producing records. I was just green under the ears, basically, and at that age, he was already seriously making history in rock'n'roll music. He said I was like a hustler, and he respected that about me. He said you've got to go after what you want.

After I moved to New York, I would call him and say I wanted to see him play that night or just talk. I'd spent time with him as much as possible in my early years in New York. He was always extremely kind and gracious and told me so many great stories that helped developed my style and the way that I hear and play the music.

I could hear the notes he was playing, so it wasn't like I needed to know what he was plying at the piano, but I need to find out why it sounded the way it did and why it was so great. That's what I learned from Mac. He said to always keep it natural, to always bring it in your heart, and it would always be right.

I've lost touch with him over the years and reconnected with him after Katrina. I see him sporadically, but my formative time with him definitely was when I was a teenager.

He's always been a huge influence to me, and he's an important figure in my life. I always appreciate that I was lucky for him to take the time with me to share his world with me. That's something I'll always remember, as long as he's around.

He also inspired me to fall in love with New Orleans. The things I learned from him are the things I learned New Orleans and the culture. He opened up the doors to play with some great artists and legends. That's why I care so much about the city, because it's the backbone of my musical growth and development.

CP: Have you started thinking beyond “Love, Work & Money” to the next album?

JC: Yeah, I've been writing. My style is New Orleans meets Motown, and I think you'll see that from me. The next record will be a lot dirtier and more gritty and more raw. It will definitely have my sound, which people are starting to hear, the sound in my voice.

I also love rock’n’roll, so it may have more New Orleans, Motown and rock’n’roll.

You constantly grow, hopefully, as an artist. People compare me to certain artists like early Elton John and Van Morrison. I'm huge fans of those guys. They made different records all the time, but I think you develop a sound and that's what people know you for. I don't want to deviate from my sound; I just want to keep growing.

CP: Any ideas when you'd like to see the next one out?

JC: My goal this year is to be on tour as much as possible. I want to get to Europe and all over America. We're working and trying to finalize some opening act spots with some really big artists but nothing I can announce this second.

I want to spend the year on tour and then get in the studio. I'd actually like to cut a live record and then get into the studio early next year to work on the next one.

That can definitely change. You write when you write, and you get inspired when you get inspired. I'm definitely in the formative stages at this point, for the thought processes for the next one. People need to hear this one first. (Laughs.)