J.P.M. names his top five most influential albums. Bass Players United (bass webzine) recently caught up with Joseph and asked him about five albums that influenced him in one way or another.
CLICK TO READ Cartersville, GA: 5/11/2010: – The Daily Tribune has a nice feature interview about Joseph and Blue Canoe Records. BLUE CANOE RECORDS FOUNDER RELEASES CD, HELPS PROMOTE FELLOW JAZZ ARTISTS Author: Marie Nesmith Features Editor Date: May 10, 2010 Section: Local News In his CD “To Africa with Love,” jazz musician Joseph Patrick Moore draws from his fascination of Africa for his inspiration, fusing the continent’s rhythms with his own Southern heritage. “It’s mostly instrumental but there are four songs that feature four different vocalists,” said Moore, a resident of White since 2003. “This is my eighth CD and this was something that I’ve really never done before in that I pretty much recorded, mixed, engineered, produced. I really [wore] all the hats in putting the project together and it took quite a while to do that. But that being said, there are 13 songs on it.
“Eleven are original tunes and two are cover songs. I did play all the bass. If you listen to some of the songs there’s a lot of multi-takes or multi-tracks going on, where I might play like the lead bass line or the melody line underneath the bass chords sprinkled in with I have some other musicians who participated with it as well,” he said, referring to Brian Carl, guitar; Wayne Viar, drums and percussion; and Tyrone Jackson, keys. To be released on Tuesday, “To Africa with Love” is being physically and digitally distributed by Moore’s record label, Blue Canoe Records, which the 40-year-old musician co-owns with Travis Prescott. The CD currently is being pre-sold on Amazon.com for $11.99 and an MP3 album is available at the Amazon MP3 Downloads store for 99 cents. “I would say [he’s] pretty versatile. It’ s kind of hard to pin down his sound,” said Prescott, who lives in Austin, Texas. “He started out years ago like a lot of guys playing rock music and pretty quickly moved to jazz. But he’s always kept his finger in a lot of different pies and you can tell that if you listen to his latest release coming out. It starts out doing a very upbeat version of a classic song and then goes quickly into smooth jazz and then he does straight-ahead jazz, which a lot of guys steer away from.” Founded by Moore in 2003, Blue Canoe Records is based out of his residence and represents nearly 30 artists from across the globe. Along with distributing the CDs, the label puts it into the hands of radio DJs, searches for song placement in TV shows and provides materials for social media, such as electronic press kits and videos for YouTube. “He understands what artists need and what they want and that’ s kind of how I think he got interested in it was he wanted to start a collective or sorts where musicians could draw on each other for inspiration and actual physical support when they were doing recording and performing,” Prescott said. “But it grew pretty quickly because the way he sets it up is he lets them keep all their earnings, which is very unusual. You [generally] don’t see that. “The very stereotypical bad record label thing — he steered away from and because of that I don’t think either one of us is going to get rich. He just loves what he does and he’s passionate for it. I think artists are drawn to it and I think with all the Grammy Award winners that we’ve got on the label performing or actually being out front in some of the releases that we’ve done is kind of evidence of that.” For Moore, Blue Canoe’s ability to provide musicians exposure who previously were “under the radar” is one of his favorite aspects of being the label’s artistic director. “… some of these artists that we’ve taken on we’re able to provide them a little bit maybe more than they could themselves,” Moore said. “Partly because we have the distribution. We have the radio and press contacts. It really is rewarding and the other side of it is, [it is] rewarding on an emotional and spiritual level. The reality is because Blue Canoe is mostly jazz-based music, jazz typically only sells about 3 percent of the marketplace, so the audience for jazz is not very strong, just to put it mildly. “So on a financial level I think for any jazz label [it is] kind of a challenge. There’s not as many opportunities with that, that might come with a rock or a country artist. So I don’t know necessarily if financially it has been rewarding. But outside of that, on just a personal level and seeing some of the positive things that have come [to] some of these artists’ careers, that has been extremely rewarding.” For more information about Moore, visit JosephPatrickMoore.com or BlueCanoeRecords.com. In the near future, he also will be releasing a DVD documenting the making of “To Africa with Love.” Copyright 2010 The Daily Tribune News, All Rights Reserved. JPM has been added to the PoliceFans.org website as it relates to his performance with Stewart Copeland (Savannah, GA 2008). READ POST The PoliceFans.org is a website dedicated to The Police and all things regarding Sting, Stewart Copeland, Andy Summers as well as sideprojects they have undertaken. The website is an “un-official site” fan website.
Q. What inspired you to first pick up the guitar/double bass and what were your first attempts at playing these instruments?
A. Dan: My dad, although he didn’t play an instrument, was a big music fan with great taste and a huge collection from just about every genre of music. He always had his stereo going in the house, so I learned to love music at an early age. I played the tennis racket for a while until moving up to the real thing. The first guitar I had was a cheap little rental that came in a cardboard box. Having horrible action, it was really hard to play. So my first attempts were discouraging. But I kept playing it until my parents bought me an electric for my tenth birthday. My grandfather and his brother both played and they insisted I have a Gibson and I got a Gibson Sonex guitar. I loved that guitar and played it incessantly. My brother and I formed our first band that same week. He was the drummer, playing on pots and pans to begin with. A. JPM: I was inspired from a recurring dream about playing bass. I know that it may sound trite, but it’s true. I started on the electric bass guitar and had been playing for about a year before picking up the double bass. While the electric and double bass are two different animals, starting on the electric gave me a head start in learning my notes and getting comfortable playing on all strings. Q. Dan did you take lessons or are you self-taught? A. Dan: After getting an electric guitar I started taking weekly lessons at a local music store. I pretty much kept taking 1-2 lessons a week from a number of different classical, jazz or rock teachers in the metro Detroit area until going to college, where of course I also took private lessons. Q. Joseph, who inspired you to learn the Double Bass? A. JPM: My first teacher was Rusty Holloway (Knoxville, TN). Rusty started me with proper technique/hand positioning/arco development etc. etc. At first, I would say Rusty inspired me to learn. As I started listening to bass masters on various recordings, I fell in love with Paul Chambers, Jimmy Blanton, Ray Brown, Ron Carter. Q. How did you guys decide to record a Christmas record and what can we expect from “Christmas Time Is Here”? A. Dan: Is it not a requirement to make a Christmas recording at some point? I think our recording, Christmas Time Is Here, is a unique contribution for Christmas music loving audiences everywhere. A. JPM: Dan and I had been doing several private gigs over the last few years around the Christmas season and many of the clients were requesting Holiday tunes. At some point, Dan and I discussed how we should record and document what we were doing, hence this CD recording “Christmas Time Is Here”. Q. This is a duo recording, why or how did you decide to have this as the CD concept? A. Dan: We have been talking about doing a duo cd for about a year. Initially we were thinking about doing original tunes but that kind of morphed into a Christmas recording. I love playing duo with a bass player and there have been some great recordings done in the past. “Chops”, from Joe Pass and Neils Henning Orstead Pederson is really great as well as “Alone Together”, with Jim Hall and Ron Carter. JPM and i have played a lot of gigs together in this format and it is always a blast. A. JPM: It was born out of gigs that we were playing around the Christmas season. Most of the jobs were in fact duo performances. This naturally opened the door for the idea of this recording. Q. Lets talk about your creative process. How do you approach arranging standard songs like public domain Christmas music? A. Dan: Like any song I would arrange, I’d start with the melody. This is the most recognizable part of the song and I would leave this in tact as much as possible (with slight rhythmic variation). Then I would start reharmonizing the melody from scratch to see what I could come up with, and maybe alter the feel and tempo. A. JPM: My main goal for the songs that I was arranging, was to try to achieve a different feel/style approach on each song. This was a great challenge as much of the Christmas catalog has been recorded and documented countless times over the last hundred years. I explored re-harmonization and tried to add a slightly unexpected feel to the song. By the nature of us playing in a duo setting, I knew it was automatically going to be different as we didn’t have a lot of production and other players to rely on. The duo setting set some arrangements in motion and the music mostly dictated what was required from us. Playing in a duo setting and this recording is one of the most challenging recording projects I’ve ever undertaken. Q. There is a large catalog of Christmas music available. How did you decide on the final list of tunes that were recorded for this project? A. Dan: Joseph and I each picked around 10 tunes that we wanted to play for this project. The tunes that I brought were more or less simple arrangements that I play on certain gigs during the holidays. Josephs arrangements were much more elaborate and creative in my opinion. My favorite one that he arranged is “We Three Kings”. A. JPM: I have several Christmas songbooks. I spent about three weeks playing every Christmas song known to man. I made a list of all the songs that really appealed to me or those songs that I felt could lend well in a duo setting. Once I had my master list of tunes, I narrowed it down and picked about half of the tunes on the recording and started re-arranging them. Q. Dan, what is the most important bit of advice you could give to new guitarist players? A Dan: Listen to as many different kinds of music artists you can. Go out and hear it live as this is an aural art form and it is learned by ear. Find what you like and learn it note for note. Listen to it, play it, understand it, assimilate it and love it. I also suggest taking lessons. A good teacher can add structure to your practice routine and they can help you overcome your weaknesses as well as a great source of inspiration. Find every resource you can about music and guitar. Study it and learn how to be your own teacher. Q. Joseph, what is the most important bit of advice you could give to new double bass players? A JPM: Find a teacher and study privately. Develop good habits from the beginning. Listen and learn to read music. Q. Thanks for your time and consideration for this article and interview. Any last thoughts for our readers? A. Dan: Rock on! A. JPM: 1/20/09-Ho, Ho, Ho! |
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