Sy Smith and I have been making music together since 2008. So when she called me to work on a tribute song to Janet Jackson for my people at SoulBounce, she almost got cussed at (in approval) over the phone. She came through to the studio about a week and a half ago and we went to work on our version of Miss Jackson’s “When I Think Of You” for SoulBounce’s #31DaysOfJanet series this month. We had a ball knocking this one out and I hope y’all enjoy it!!
Sy Smith – “When I Think Of You”
(J. Harris III, T. Lewis)
Produced by Zo! & Sy Smith
Arranged by Sy Smith
All instruments by Zo!
Recorded & mixed by Grant Nicholas at G Nick Studios, North Hollywood,
CA and Zo! at East Wing Studios, Silver Spring, MD
Mastered by Grant Nicholas
“Disappear” is actually one of the three songs on Tales From the Land Of Milk and Honey that wasn’t a result of one of the two marathon studio sessions that Nicolay and I scheduled (in February 2014 and April 2015). Like the song “Count To Five” from my ManMade album, the drum pattern came to me while driving in my car …in silence. My phone’s voice memo is always something I use to capture ideas as SOON as they pop into my head because 9 out of 10 times if you don’t record them right then and there… you forget them later – I don’t care how dope of an idea it was. Even if I don’t forget it, I want to go back and listen to the idea exactly how I had it so that if I need to tweak it once I record, then I have the freedom to do so. I always feel like, whatever the idea was must have been dope enough for me to want to record it on my phone, so I want to listen back to it exactly like THAT. So in March 2014, probably feeling inspired from the work that Nic and I had completed just a couple of weeks prior while at a stop light… I opened my voice memo app and “beatboxed” this drum pattern exactly the way I heard it.
Boom KLACK! Boom……… KLACK!Boom, KLACK! Boom………
When I took that pattern in to the studio and started working on it, the demo that I laid for it was much more mid-tempo than anything, but it was workable enough so that I could sit down and figure out chord progressions. The first progression I worked through was one that involved a bassline that was on the busy side, BUT it fell in line with what the drums were doing. The second piece of the music I worked through involved hits on the one… I knew that the song would need dynamics and something that would make it sound interesting when played live and the hits sounded like a perfect solution to me (I actually still have voice memos with the recorded drums AND of me playing those first two parts on the Rhodes). Those hits while another chord progression was happening created a bit of a song climax AND it went right back into the original form pretty easily. To be honest, I think it even took me a week or so to even record the rest of the song officially because I wanted to sit on the demo version and make sure that I didn’t hear anything else on it. I wanted to go in and record all of the ideas I had in one shot (letting stuff sit and “figuring” it out is not a normal practice of mine as it may lead to overthinking in the studio, which is a NO GO). I finally went in to record the music and upon hearing it again, it seemed slow to me… So the first thing I did was bump the tempo up some. A loop of the drums was already recorded so I then patched in the Moog Minitaur and recorded the synth bass part. Once I laid the bass, I added a second part that bounced between two chords at a time… This was to serve as a vamp, or even a “part two” (shouts to The Isley Brothers who were the masters at doing this). Once that was finished, layering began. Synth pads, sprinkles of piano in the verses, and a soft Rhodes pattern was added to aid in the song’s movement. But things got real definitive once I added a lead synth via the Moog Voyager, which appears at the very beginning of the song in the melody line that introduces the entire piece. Having that lead part kinda tied everything together musically… ESPECIALLY on the hits. I definitely remember getting hyped as SHIT when playing the synth lines over the hits. Once the music was finished, I named the instrumental “March Sadness” – a play on the NCAA’s “March Madness” which was in full swing at the time of the recording.
Where normally, I send music to him as soon as I finish it, I sat on this one for a couple of months before letting Phonte hear it. The instrumental was my new favorite, BUT we weren’t in full “record” mode for anything just yet. Because of that, he didn’t hear this one until early May when +FE was in town for our show at The Howard Theater in DC. Before we left my house to go play the NPR Tiny Desk set, he and I got up in the studio to check some new ideas I had been working on. “March Sadness” was the first thing I played to which he responded with…
“Man, go’on and send me that shit…”
BET.
I ended up passing him that one and two other instrumentals, if I’m not mistaken. And just for demoing purposes, I even opened the mic up for him to record a very rough scratch vocal on it, where he kinda sang and hummed his way through the melodies and changes just to get an idea of a songwriting cadence for later.
Fast forward to February 2015, Nicolay and I received an email from Phonte with the subject title, “Disappear” and the message read…
“2015 here we come”
Now at the time, Phonte and I were working on something else COMPLETELY separated from anything +FE, so we had no idea that this email contained the first song for an upcoming +FE album that would be finished and released just six months later. NONE. But when I opened it and recognized the instrumental, I got hyped immediately… Then hearing Phonte’s verse and remembering that it loosely matched the cadence of the scratch vocal that he had recorded back in May 2014 was real dope. But the icing on the cake here was that damn Carlitta Durand. I swear man, her vocals win every single TIME. When she came in on those pre-hook hits?!?!?! I damn near lost it… That part had so much “punch” behind it now to really take it over the top……. Then when her verse began, that same voice took on more of a “delicate” role, it was crazy to hear that contrast from the same vocalist within the same piece. But MY part?! …MY part is the “…catch 22 I keep falling for your touch” line. Good GRACIOUS I got goosebumps off of that shit the first time I heard it (and still do now even after having heard it 3,892 times). She NAILED that line.
Once the vocals were finished, Phonte was telling me that he wanted Nic to work with the second part of the song – the “part two” I described earlier. So I sent Nic the song’s original Pro Tools session and after hearing what he ended up doing with the drums and additional synths… I was sitting there like, “YooooooooOOOOOOO!!!!!!” He took the drums and flipped them so that the momentum of the song continued on a huge high, but the swing was different – AND it had his signature on it. I honestly wish I was in the studio with him to have actually seen how he did what he did with those drums. He also added more layers of synth in the form of arpeggiated parts and some additional pads. And I haven’t even told Nic this yet (I’m sure he’ll find out once he reads this story), but MY favorite piece of the second half is what he did between 3:49 and 3:59…. That eight bar ride out?!?! Fucking CRAAAAZY. There’s really something to be said not only about our complementary styles but the sheer confidence we have in each other to just pass an instrumental between the three of us and still end up with a uniformly, solid piece of music that contains distinct signatures from Nic, Phonte and myself. I actually think the same can be said for the entire +FE album, but “Disappear” in particular was one where within that 4:26 worth of song, you can literally “hear” the baton being passed. I think that’s REAL dope and hopefully it makes for a more intriguing experience for our listeners.
Have you ever been in a “groove”, let’s say …in the gym before? Where you aren’t missing days, the workouts are feeling good to you and there’s progress in the fact that you’re starting to see some results? That basically describes where Nicolay and I were for this song. We had gotten into a great routine in the studio, so much so that I feel like we were ZONING when this one was made. The “introduction” process felt looong gone with the creation of both “Milk and Honey” and “Work It To the Top” back-to-back in our very first session only a couple days prior. Then by day two, we really started to figure out how one another worked in and around the studio. I mean, just how freely our ideas bounced back and forth was incredible – not necessarily the amount of ideas, but the fact that the ones we had WORKED almost every single time. Damn near everything we tried sounded dope to us, which is a helluva motivator in my book. If I remember correctly, that second day we ended up knocking out three instrumentals, none of which happened to make the album… BUT we were excited to have five brand new, fully-composed songs at the end of just two marathon studio sessions. Ironically enough, before these sessions I NEVER drank coffee…
Oh my, how times have changed.
We started working on “Truce” during studio day number three… Funny thing is, we were so in a rhythm at the time that this was made that I honestly can’t even remember what element came first. I WANT to say that Nic put the drums together for it to set everything off. Now, I’ve always felt that if used correctly, the Maestro Rhythm King MRK-2 drum machine sounds can provide a simplistic yet potent backbone to your music… Hell, just ask Sly Stone (“If You Want Me To Stay”, “Family Affair”, “In Time” etc.) or Larry Graham and Graham Central Station (“The Jam”). As Nic got into “mad scientist” mode preparing and programming those drums, I sat down on the Rhodes and worked through a three-bar chord progression that seemed to complement what he was doing and that piece ended up becoming the intro and the hook. Since we always like to keep it interesting with changes and transitions, I came up with a verse part and then an ending, which I separated… First recording the Rhodes keys for the chords and then picking up the bass guitar to record that part. I then added the synth line that you hear in the beginning as well as the hooks (once again, the Moog Little Phatty came through in the CLUTCH). The closing progression was important, why? Because we wanted to make the end of this song as BIG as possible. It made sense, the music felt somber… but pretty. Taking it out on a higher level of energy than the majority of the song was definitely the move. So we continued to layer and add everything from pads, atmosphere, swell strings and even some arpeggiated noise for the hooks and ending. At ONE point, there was even a “phaser” sound that came from one of the keyboards (starts at 3:07) that lasts throughout the duration of the song. In the original instrumental, that ending is a solid minute, plus….. and the phaser rides aaaaall the way through. It was a really dope addition and 100% accidental. ….at least I THINK it was.
This song got real when Phonte wrote to it and sent it back with them recorded vocals on it… My initial reaction was, “COME on, bruh…” Up to that point, after touring with her for over a year I was really only familiar with Tamisha Waden’s LIVE vocals. Hearing her own this recorded verse for the first time, I DAMN near called her out of concern like…
“Ayo, Tamisha, you alright?! I don’t know what the hell happened, but It’ll be okay… Trust me on this.”
Her vocals sounded very genuine. To me, It sounded like she was singing through TEARS. I loved it, the texture was perfect. I’m sure she has received more than a couple texts from reaching out to her about hanging in there or some shit since this record has been released. Phonte was writing about something damn near everyone who has had any type of relationship can relate to… Finally getting on the same page, pushing the pride to the side, possibly humbling yourself, throwing up the white flag and calling a …Truce. Whether it’s to “start over” on the right foot in a relationship, to keep the peace in a co-parenting situation, or perhaps to even keep from catching a case in the workplace… we have all been in these places at one time or another. Overall, it sounded like our creative zone carried over to what Phonte and Tamisha were doing in Raleigh because between the subject matter, Tamisha murdering her solo parts and those ending harmonies they sang together??!!?
Let me just start this story off with this fact… “Milk and Honey” was the very first song that Nicolay and I created when we got together in February 2014 at his studio in Wilmington, NC. The FIRST jam. When I say that any and all doubts he and I may have had about working with another producer were thrown outta the window after this one. Trust me… To me, hearing how this song came together was clear and uncut proof that this collaborative production was supposed to happen.
Scheduled studio time was to begin on February 10, 2014, cold as shit outside, but the precipitation held off fairly well for my drive down from Silver Spring, MD to Wilmington, NC. I had never driven that six-hour stretch before as the only cities I had driven to in NC previously were Raleigh, Durham and Charlotte, which is also a six-hour drive, but to the west of I-95 – Taking the drive east off of I-95 South was new… I loaded my car up with a few weapons: The Nord Lead 2, Moog Little Phatty, and my 5-string bass guitar. Although it was only the three studio items, I remember it feeling like I was loading up to play a damn show somewhere. Regardless, once I arrived the set-up process was a quick one. I took a quick look at everything Nic had in the studio and I can remember pretty much getting right to work. The Fender Rhodes piano was powered up and ready to go, so I started messing around on it and came up with a chord progression… JUST from that progression, Nicolay started constructing these Brazilian jazz-influenced drums around what I was playing that had me buggin’ OUT. Once again y’all… This was the FIRST thing we started working on and I was already thinking, “This is about to be something SPECIAL.” This was also the first time I had gotten to see Nic program his drums, which was something short of phenomenal in and of itself, all the way down to the breaks and drum fills. DOPE. From there I can remember coming up with a change and then the melody line that lead back into the main groove and then recording the different parts (seeing Nic program the drums around that line was NUTS). Over the drums, we recorded my chords first via the Rhodes and went all the way through the song, no looping, no flying parts… Played it straight through. Same with the synth bass, which I played on that trusty Moog Little Phatty… straight through. That part was FUUUUUUN to play. An extremely loose and free bassline that I wanted to kind of directly complement the movement of Nic’s drums while also serving as the glue between them and the Rhodes parts that at the time seemed to be floating freely. When the string and flute parts were laid, we had a solid enough foundation to send off to Phonte….
Months later… I remember hearing “Milk And Honey” the first time with Phonte and Shana Tucker’s vocals on it… I damn near lost my mind. This song probably should have been named, “+FE Music Is On The Same Page And Shit” because when I heard what they did, I literally said aloud, “That’s EXACTLY what this song needed!!” From the chants, to the murderous harmonies on the words at the very end of some of the phrases… They knew what to do with this song. And when Shana came in on her solo part, it felt like Natalie Cole coming in on my favorite song of her’s, “La Costa”. I’m actually getting goose bumps while typing this now. SO very refreshing to hear. Then Nic sent me another updated version where he added acoustic guitar over the key change, the sound effect (heard at 1:29), and that quick four-note synth line over the final hook…. NOW the song was REALLY speaking, good gracious.
BUT WAIT
Let’s go right back to that February 2014 studio session with Nic and I…
So, after about the 20th playback on the “Milk And Honey” instrumental, we were deciding if we should add more to it or leave it for later and simply move on to something new. I happened to notice that there was a kick on all four beats (in each measure) and just to experiment with it, I asked Nic to let the kick keep going as a “four to the floor” pattern. And on the Moog, I messed around with a minor bassline groove that sounded VERY early 80’s. I’m pretty sure this was verbalized…
“Yooooo!! It would be CRAZY for this joint to go from a ‘Brazilian jazz’ feel to ’80’s funk.'”
Once that was established, I remember messing around with the bassline some more while Nic went IN once again on the drum pattern. To hear him construct these 80’s sounding drums was a damn work of art. He switched the kick to sound more like something from a drum machine and combined a live drum kit with some Roland TR-808 sounds, it was NUTS. When he added that damn double 808 clap at the end of the phrases?!?!?!??? Sheeeeeeeiiiit. We were THERE. I recorded the bassline and Rhodes parts along with the couple of blips and beeps on the synth… and Nic finished it off with more synth work to fill the song out even more. We had successfully gone from one genre of music to another in the matter of seconds and loved every minute of it. A studio party was already happening with just the instrumental, so imagine what happened upon hearing Phonte channel Steve Arrington on the damn joint. I heard that shit and hit him up like, “YOOOO… We perform this joint live ….IT’S OVER!! We ALL gotta have mics!!”Tamisha Waden came in on the hook with the big, hollerin’ ass vocals, which were VERY “80’s uptempo” and it worked so well with what was happening. To top everything off…. a jive ass “HUH!!!” right in the middle of the hook. I think it was literally at that moment that I felt like we were making the music we grew up on – FUN music. This is stuff that we’ll enjoy performing just as much as we enjoyed making it. Everyone asks when there will be another Zo! & Tigallo Love The 80’s album…. Well here you go: Zo!, Nic & Tigallo Love the Originals.
Saturday, October 10, 2015 – Indianapolis, IN The Hi-Fi
1043 Virginia Ave, Indianapolis, IN 46203 | (317) 493-1209
Doors: 8p | 21+ BUY TICKETS
Zo! & Carmen Rodgers
Two separate artists who come together LIVE on the same stage, at the same time to perform songs from each other’s vast discographies.
Only two months after Nicolay issued his collaborative City Lights, Vol. 3: Soweto, the producer and instrumentalist, along with singing, songwriting, and arranging partner Phonte, returned with the most varied Foreign Exchange album. It’s also the one that most emphasizes the duo’s extended family of collaborators. The cover of this, their fifth proper full-length, displays Carmen Rodgers and Tamisha Waden — two of their co-lead and background vocalists — as well as Lorenzo “Zo!” Ferguson. The FEnucleus and Zo! go way back and take it to another level here, with Zo! — similar to Nicolay, a studio wiz who typically works in isolation — a co-songwriter and co-producer of every song. Perhaps proximity and a history as performing partners partly explain why so much of this sounds like a party, as free and easy as the group’s shows. FE previously went house with “So What If It Is,” a deep and cleansing track, but when they return to the form here, it’s with the humorous and rhythmically tougher early-’90s throwback “Asking for a Friend,” where Phonte affects a distinguished Englishman accent akin to that of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air‘s Geoffrey Butler. On first listen, the song sounds merely like an amusing novelty until the stellar Waden-led chorus enters and takes it somewhere else. (No R&B group before them has maintained such a strong balance between female and male voices.) A different stunt is pulled with “Work It to the Top,” bumping boogie that touches on 1979-1981 Slave — just a little bit — down to Phonte‘s spirited Steve Arrington mannerisms. Beyond those two songs and the pair of delighted Brazilian fusion-styled title tracks that begin and end the album, what remains largely refines the sweet and blissful grooves of Love in Flying Colors. That’s not a bad thing, not when the writing is as sharp, with rich harmonies laced through rhythms that bound and wind with unforced finesse and warmth. Even with a disarming ballad on each side, Tales from the Land of Milk and Honey is one of the funnest R&B albums in some time.
The new album has gotten the NPR: “First Listen” treatment, meaning you can stream and listen to it worry-free more than a week before its official release. So run it from front-to-back!! …Co-Produced by, Yours Truly!!
This song right here? “Asking For A Friend”??! As some of you may know by now, this was the first single released from the upcoming The Foreign Exchange album Tales From The Land Of Milk And Honey this past Monday night.
BUT….
Let me explain to y’all how there almost wasn’t even an album to begin with………
No, for real.
Making music is unpredictable. SO unpredictable that this entire project began with a very brief conversation Nicolay and I had during soundcheck before The Foreign Exchange’s New Year’s Eve show in Durham, NC on December 31, 2012 about possibly getting up to do some studio work. Up to that point, Phonte and I had worked closely on music dating back to the end of 2005 and I had worked with Sy Smith and Jeanne Jolly (who both toured with us at the time), but I still hadn’t stepped into the studio with Nic yet. I mean, he and I had played numerous shows together and we have done work on the same songs before by trading files, but never had we been in the same studio, at the same time, creating while trading ideas. Now, on paper it made sense… Two producers/multi-instrumentalists who both compose from scratch without aiming their final product at any genre in particular…. But what folks don’t understand is that the idea of a “perfect” collaboration can be tough when it comes down to its actual execution. For example, when I create music, I do it solo. Nobody just hanging around, no 20 people in the studio while I’m working, no “yes” men or hype men there to gas up every single note, chord, or new sound I play…. Absolutely, alone. Same with Nic. So, the idea of simply working together with another producer who creates in almost the same fashion presented itself to be somewhat of a challenge in our minds – I think because, creatively we didn’t want to step on toes. But with the May 2013 release of my solo album, ManMade and the September release of +FE’s Love In Flying Colors under our belts, we finally decided to give it a try and locked in a time to get to work. By the time we finally got up in February 2014, it was waaaay overdue. I loaded my car with some equipment, grabbed my small carry-on suitcase and hopped on 95 South for the six-hour drive from Silver Spring, MD to Wilmington, NC. I was anxious to get some new music done and to be honest, neither of us knew what to expect. On the drive down, several thoughts ran through my head…..
The hell will this music sound like?!
How will our sounds mesh together? Will they compliment or clash?
Will it sound more like a Nicolay track? ….Or will it sound more like something I did?
Let me explain one thing about art….. If you overthink it, you kill it. He and I knew not to discuss these things beforehand and I’m glad we didn’t because once I arrived at Nic’s studio, instincts took over and we just let the music happen. Three to four days later, we walked outta there with seven brand new instrumentals. Upon leaving, the only question I had while driving back home was, “Why didn’t we do this shit SOONER?!?!?!!” To me, the craziest part was the fact that the music sounded like Nicolay …AND it sounded like me – the two styles merged and the sound was literally split down the middle. With these seven new ones in the chamber, we then talked about working toward completing a “Nicolay & Zo! EP” containing some music with vocals and maybe a couple of instrumentals in there. I spoke publicly about the EP throughout 2014, we even discussed touring options once it was released and everything….
Fast forward to the top of 2015 when Phonte started recording to some of the music along with Carmen Rodgers, Tamisha Waden, Shana Tucker and Carlitta Durand… Once the music started to take shape around the new vocals that were recorded, we decided to focus on creating a “crew” album rather than just a Nic & Zo! EP… An +FE Music “compilation” project, basically. Sounded like an excellent idea to me… But, It also sounded like Nic and I needed to get back to work on some more music so that we could have a full album’s worth of material to pull from. After coordinating schedules again, on March 31, 2015, that’s exactly what we began to do. I drove back down to NC for round TWO of marathon studio sessions in Wilmington.
The second time was a bit different mainly because we knew what to expect from each other from the jump…. At this point, all we needed to do was open up a “New Session” on Pro Tools and go in. Once I arrived, we set up quickly and jumped right into something brand new. I can’t remember why we specifically decided to knock out a House track that night for that very first song, but I DO remember being hyped up about it being as though I had never worked on one before…. Hell, I had never even PLAYED on one.
Nicolay sat down and began to program the drum track. In the final version, listen to the way the intro for “Asking For A Friend” comes in piece by piece. It’s perfect because that’s damn near how I heard him make the drums. First, was the four-to-the-floor kick with the open hi-hats, then, the toms…. percussion pieces, the snare ….and finally the claps to round it all out. As he was getting everything together drum-wise, I sat down on the Rhodes just to see what would happen and the very first thing that came out was the melody line you hear (right as Phonte’s vocals begin in the final version)… I then hopped on one of my favorite weapons in the studio, the Moog Little Phatty keyboard to work the bassline out until finding something that we both agreed with and from there it was back to the Rhodes to knock out the chord progression for what was to become the hook. Once the hook progression came THAT’S when things seemed to tie together, musically. By this time, Nic had the drums KNOCKING along with all of the intricacies placed and polished. Once we layered that hook up nicely with synths and strings, we added a fully extended vamp out and called it a night. While sipping coffee at damn near midnight we ran the song on repeat, satisfied with the new ‘nod’ to old school house music we had just created – Shit felt like a party in there. Meanwhile, two hours west in Raleigh, NC… Phonte and Carmen were getting ready to set up shop in the studio as well. With two spots running simultaneously for three to four days, we KNEW there was gonna be something special to coming out of this. So we sent the music to them to hear and write to if that’s what they felt, etc. Honestly, I really just wanted to hear their initial responses…
The next day, when Nic and I got back in the studio… Phonte had already called excited about this new record…… BUT, with the music that we already had for the album, he was thinking that it may have been too “hard” of a house record to include in the album batch. No problem… Hell, I knew we would use it somewhere down the line, the joint jammed too hard. We then moved on to start creating the next piece, which we would also send to Phonte and Carmen along with a third joint later on at the end of that day. In total, we ended up creating and sending 5 or 6 new ones to Raleigh, NC that week. ….But they kept going back to listen to that first one.
Once we wrapped, I drove back to Maryland on that Friday, April 3rd …and I’ll be damned if on APRIL 6TH, Nic and I didn’t receive an email from Phonte with the subject title “Asking For A Friend” that read……
“This shit went from “maybe it’s too hard” to “this could be the first single” REAL QUICK.”
I KNEW he couldn’t turn away from that joint!! I clicked the attachment and listened to the long introduction while nodding hard as hell….
“Work….Work….Work…..Work………..”
Heeeeell yeah… I was completely locked in wondering what would happen next once the verse started. Then the vocals came in …..and when them vocals came in??!?! ….WHEN THE VOCALS CAME IN?!?!?
My response: “Yoooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!”
The last time I responded like that to some vocals Phonte sent over to me, it was our “Africa” remake. I got him on the phone immediately and said, “You were on your Rockwell ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’ shit with this one…” He explained that it was more of a Talking Heads “Once In A Lifetime” feel, which works completely because this is meant to be a FUN joint, so be fearless and go ALL the way in. We went from talking about the song itself, to this brand new collection of music we were now sitting on. He told me that after talking with Nic, the project went from an +FE Music compilation….. to an +FE ALBUM, to which I responded, “Hell yeah… RUNNIT!” I got hyped up not only because I felt the collection of music was CRAZY, but also because I knew I had production credit on all of it right along with Nicolay and Phonte – a first for an +FE project. …..To make it even better, y’all get to hear the stories behind it all.
Saturday, August 29, 2015 – Akron, OH The Akron Art Museum
1 S High St, Akron, OH 44308 | (330) 376-9185
Doors: 7p | All Ages BUY TICKETS
Zo! & Carmen Rodgers
Two separate artists who come together LIVE on the same stage, at the same time to perform songs from each other’s vast discographies.
