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We’ve been on a 8-year, 300 day a year world tour. So, we’re insane.
I always joke around and say that somewhere around year 4 we became a dysfunctional family.
That’s kind of what I ultimately made my priority in life, is to tour. So, it’s a never- ending tour.
I guess my success, you know my real success, in other words being able to sell a concert ticket
happened to me later in my life. And being able to work with so many
other people at different points in their life gave me the perspective to know, for
instance: there’s a zillion pop stars out there that are successful in their 20’s
and they go, “Oh the road is too daunting for me
I’m too tired. And then they leave Their audience
so to speak, they take some time off. And their audience just goes.
And then they wake up when they’re 30 or 32, and kind of go, “Whoops what happened?
I didn’t take care of my audience.” I just always felt like that was a mistake on their
part, and I didn’t ever want that to happen to me. So were‚ just non-stop relentless
touring, whether its in the states, or Asia, or Eastern Europe or Australia or
wherever ‚ we go there, and I enjoy it, and enjoy the opportunity to make music.
Well, my list of collaborations is getting smaller and smaller as I have the
opportunities to work with so many different artists. I’ve always just kind of wanted
to find and then work with people I admire even if its from a totally different genre
of music. And certainly this new record is a great example of that- Vince Gill, I
think he’s just such a spectacular musician,
I just couldn’t help but want to work with that guy
he’s so terrific in any genre of music he’s in. So we’ve just made it an
opportunity to work with different people and acknowledge their greatness and happy they’re on our album.
Well, as a kid, when I first heard Miles Davis, it took me two minutes to say,
“Wow I want to be a trumpet player!” And I love all the great trumpet players:
Clifford Brown, Freddy Hepburn, Quinton Marsalis is great. But then, I became an adult, and
there’s a whole part of me that loves popular music. I’m not necessarily talking
about Katy Perry, I mean the more sophisticated part of pop music: Sting or
Peter Gabriel or Stevie Wonder. The two worlds intersect in a way as I grew older.
And I learned as much as from being around Sting and my friendship with him, and how to
really love being on the road. That can be as much as a hurdle for a lot of people as
anything. They don’t want to be away from their family, so they don’t tour that
much, and their career doesn’t get that big, and they don’t really learn how to adapt.
I learned so much from being around Sting
and how to work an audience. How to interject different pulse points in a show,
and how to make people go…well, make the audience rock out!
I kid of got a lot of that from being around Sting. He’s been a great influence.
Hey man I don’t have a career with out my friendship with Sting. He’s probably the
one I’m most proud of working with, and grateful that he’s my friend.
I see him all the time. He has houses in Europe and New York, so I’ll see him.
When we’re in Italy in a couple weeks, we always hang out in August at his place.
We see each other often, and talk often. Somewhere in the world we’re always crisscrossing.
We just did a concert in the republic of Georgia, outside of Turkey near Russia,
and we did a concert together there last year and it was fun. So we’re always kind of
collaborating and doing stuff- its great.
Some of the musicians, a couple of them, we’ve been together for about eight years.
The featured special guests, like our violinist and our singer - our singer, she’s been
in the Rolling Stones now for about 19 years, but the last two she’s been out with us.
And she’s a phenomenal Grammy-award winning singer and she has a voice to die for.
So its like the more success I’ve had in my career, rather than spending my
money on lighting rigs, and things blowing up on stage, and elevators coming all
over the place. I spend it on great musicians. And each level of success I’ve had, I’ve
kind of gone out and cherry-picked the best musicians in the world and featured them.
And that’s been a real ability for us to not only have a Jazz show, but have a rock show, and a
classical music show, all rolled into one thing. And I think people walk away going,
“Wow that was different!”
There again, that’s the difference between what we do and pop music.
You know you go see a band to play their hit, and they do their hit. But with us, it’s so open-
ended in a weird kind of way that one night, a song I really love playing could suck,
and the next night it could be different, because there really isn’t a standard way we play it.
There’s so much space where you’re
relying on someone else’s creativity within the arrangement. So some nights it’s
fantastic to play that song, and the next night its not so fantastic. But generally,
it kind of matters how I‚m feeling, trumpet- playing-wise, or mood-wise,
whatever feels good at that moment.
We always, for my whole career, have always done like an autograph signing after every show.
Like an hour long, or something. It gives you a sense for what people like, what they would love to hear
And sometimes it will last almost like another show all unto itself!
Like a fan will say, they’ve said “Chris you should cover the Miles Davis
‘Sketches in Spain’ and not be afraid of doing that.” And I thought
“Hmm that’s an interesting idea.” And we ended up doing it.
And that’s the one specific instance that We did.
But, for the most part, I just enjoy the opportunity to speak with different
fans and see what they like -or don’t like- about my music
and that’s always interesting to me.