Zo! Brings His ManMade Soul Music Back To His Hometown of Detroit This Saturday
The music of the Detroit born and raised multi-instrumentalist/producer Lorenzo Ferguson, known to all us as Zo!, brings back the deep soul music from generations past. Currently residing in Maryland, Zo! has been releasing his own projects for over a decade now and is currently a member of The Foreign Exchange collective started by Phonte Coleman (formerly of the hip-hop group Little Brother) and Dutch hip-hop/soul producer Nicolay. Recently, Zo! released the newest chapter in his vast discography with ManMade, a voyage into depths of real soul music, and he’s coming back to his hometown this Saturday, June 29th at the Elizabeth Theatre in downtown Detroit to present the album live in concert. I asked Zo! about the new album and his feelings about living a life in music.
How would you describe the progression of your projects from the early works to ManMade?
I think there’s a greater quality of musicianship from album to album because of the time that I get to put in on my instruments. Experience has played a huge part in being able to develop a sound that I feel is my own as well as just being able to apply music making in the studio to more of a live experience because I’ve been on the road more often lately and it’s been easier to pick up on what a crowd responds to. To me, live presentation and interaction with your listeners is just as important as your studio release. If you’re able to make the two work hand-in-hand, you have a much better shot at connecting with your people musically.
Why did you name your album ManMade? What’s the principle theme behind it?
ManMade describes the work ethic needed as a completely independent musician/artist. We’re booking our own shows, building relationships with our listeners, making the music, etc. — it is very much blue-collar work and you can’t be afraid to get your hands dirty in order to accomplish long-term goals. Even the cover art is a depiction of me walking to work, where “work” is in this dilapidated building that represents our music industry. I’m basically representing the “last of a dying breed” group of artists who has no management, plays 95 percent of the instruments on the album, helps to distribute the music while touring… and I’m walking into this broken down building/industry to shine my light on it as much as I possibly can.
Ever since Henry Ford opened up shop in 1903, Detroit, Michigan has been associated with the motto, “Building from the ground up.” This means perfecting your craft as a “labor of love” at a perfectionist level, then taking your work to the people one by one to create loyal supporters. As a native of The D, Lorenzo Ferguson, better known as Zo!, embodies this motto. As a member of The Foreign Exchange Music family, a collective who represents “from the ground up” to the core, Zo!’s musicianship as been a vital piece of the +FE Music sound on record as well as on stage, while serving as the band’s musical director on tour. Now with the release of his sophomore album, appropriately titled ManMade, Zo! sat down with SoulTrain.com during a tour stop in Los Angeles to discuss bringing his latest labor of love to the people.
SouTrain.com: In your bio, it said as a kid, you aspired to be a Major League Baseball player and despised taking piano lessons. What was the moment that changed that and music became your passion?
Zo!: I think it changed almost overnight when I learned how to play by ear. Once I learned how to play by ear, then I was able to learn songs I wanted to learn rather than only classical pieces. I could turn on the radio, pick out songs and play them for other people. When you’re a kid, it’s important to you to be able to kind of show off and get your little praise. Once I was able to do that I thought, “Oh this could be something.” But at that point in my life, it had yet to trump baseball yet. It was there, but I never knew I would be making a living off it.
SoulTrain.com: For a number of years, while progressing in your career, you were a music teacher. Talk about the importance of music and other arts programs in schools, and how your experience as a teacher shaped you as a musician.
Zo!: . It helps you tremendously as a musician because you’re practicing all the time to teach your students. I think when you teach, you have to be on top of your game. This was especially [true] with the environment I was working in, which was kids with special needs that were also in and out of jail. They’ll come to my class, look at me like and go, “What do you know? What can you teach me?” And If I play on the piano and suck, then they’re really looking at me like, “Aw you’re garbage, now I don’t have to listen to you on any level, period.” So when you are on top of your game and answering all of their questions the way they need to be answered, then they are looking at you like, “he cares enough to answer these questions and is looking out for us.” The same applies with music education as a whole. If you are able to, for example, decipher different notes and signs while reading music, you’re able to unlock other types of reasoning that applies to other subjects and basic problem solving. Music and arts can be applied to math, English and science. When states get to cutting budgets, they look at arts as a hobby. I see it as a life changer; I’ve seen it save lives first hand.
Those who know me and my preferred musical tastes are fully aware of how much love the music catalog of the great Leon Sylvers III. As a kid, there were two albums that I would run REPEATEDLY… Shalamar’s “Three For Love” and “Friends” where Mr. Sylvers was the producer on both. Matter of fact, I used to love anything on that Solar Records label ….Why? Because not only was there some great music being released through them, but I used to get a kick out of how dope the vinyl label looked as it was spinning around on the turntable. That alone would fascinate me for at least a song or two… Once I got older, picked up the bass guitar and revisited some of these songs that I grew up with I noticed that the basslines within Leon Sylvers’ production work were pretty challenging. The bass is so noticeable that instead of playing a supportive role, it’s damn near carrying the entire tune. When I found out that he was also the one playing these lines?!… I got SUPER inspired. So much so that his work was added to my “go to” list in regards to shedding on the bass (Jamerson’s work, some disco jams, and various mid and up-tempo 70’s/80’s songs are my other “go tos”). So one day I was messing around on the bass and kinda thought to myself, “I don’t even have an uptempo ‘jheri curl jam’ in my catalog… It would at least be FUN to try and construct one.”
“We Are On The Move” began on the bass… It was actually the only song on ManMade that I wrote on the bass guitar. I wanted the bassline to move, be playful….but remain funky – I wanted it to “carry” the record. A good number of uptempo records from the late 70’s/early 80’s have very memorable basslines and I wanted this one to be no different… PLUS, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to show off my bass playing a little bit. A lot of folks aren’t aware that I play anything outside of the keys. ……Soooooo with that being said, I wanted to make sure to add in a guitar part in there as well. What it ended up becoming was 30 seconds of me playing two instruments that most of my listeners don’t even know I play… bass and guitar. Once the keys roll up into the first chord, that’s a clear indication of jheri curl juice beginning to be flung freely from that “yellow bottle” saturated moistness of a hairdo a/k/a …the official start of the party.
The original instrumental for this joint was titled “Eighty Three” as in the year 1983 for obvious reasons. The music for the joint literally took me back to that particular era. I can remember playing this one for everybody in The Foreign Exchange live collective at my house the night before we hit the Capital Jazz Fest stage last year and from their reactions to the just the music, I could tell that I had something pretty special on my hands. Once the crew and I returned hom from that early/mid June 2012 +FE run, Phonte and I got to work. Phonte was sent the instrumental and immediately sent me a vocal referenced version back. We had ideas…. We had HUGE ideas. And they seemed to come through for this one piece by piece….
First of all, I think I let out a clear, “OH SHIT!!” when I heard Gwen Bunn hit that “Get ready!!” on the hook because I didn’t tell Phonte exactly where I pulled inspiration from to create the music, yet he wrote an almost Shalamar-inspired hook for it providing me with further evidence as to why we work so well in that studio. We had a couple of challenges in getting a lead vocalist, that is until we turned to the brotha Eric Roberson. Now as busy as Erro remains with EVERYTHING, he always seems to have time for our music and it’s a blessing to have a kat that talented in your corner – especially since I was a fan of his before we started working together. Now he has appeared on my last THREE albums (ManMade, …just visiting three & SunStorm). Phonte hit Erro up with the reference and he turned it around in less than a week… I mean, the dude is a PROFESSIONAL and I love working with him for that very reason. He simply gets the music, walks in a studio, murders it, sends it back to you, and keeps it moving like nothing ever happened…. But right before the final lead vocal was done on it, Phonte said, “Ive got an idea for the ending… just give me a minute.” …..Ok, bet. Now, I admit I can be a bit impatient sometimes. So I created an ending of my own…. One that has a few percussion instruments on it and once the song is completely over, it breaks off into a SECOND part… and that was cool. But one morning at about 6am, I got one of those, “G MUTHAFUCKIN MAIL” texts from Phonte and I already KNEW what the deal was. I opened the email and there was a new version of the song. I played it through and didn’t notice anything different…..UNTIL
*chiiiiiimes* into……. *conga playing*
“Wait…… Hol’lup. Who?……. What the f…… YOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!”
Phonte had gotten Brevan Hampden to add some live percussion playing at the end of the song and it took on a whole new LIFE. I think I played that shit about 25 times in a row that morning. From there, I added a synth line and rhodes key chops at the very end of it so that the joint would in the words of Phonte, “go out in a blaze of glory”. We wanted the listener to be PARTYING by the end of the song. And then to hear Sy Smith, Erro and Phonte go back and forth as if all three of them are on stage together clowning out…. maaaaan, that was a treat for me. And when Erro says, “Come on, come ON, Come OWN, COME OWWWN!!!!” …That’s when the stage is set for a full out “dance as if you could give a damn about ANYthing else in your life right now.” Brotha was tryna bring some MJ to the table on this joint… We hear you brotha Erro, we hear you.
In December 2012, I was sitting fairly comfortably with the album….. But the perfectionist in me still felt a bit uneasy. To me, the album as whole was cool… but I needed at LEAST two more joints to make it RIGHT. Not too long after making this declaration to Phonte in a phone conversation one day, I had a drum pattern enter my head seemingly out of nowhere… and the time signature was in 7/4. Hmm, interesting… But I was proud to realize that the patterns and compositions that were starting to pop up in my head weren’t always tied to a 4/4 count (see: “Count To Five“). Creative expansion and growth in that studio is one of the greatest feelings in the world. Another great feeling is recording a drum pattern and having it sound EXACTLY the way it did when you ran it a million times over in your head – accents, fills and ALL. I can remember playing just the recorded drums over and over for about a half hour before I even put my hands on the keyboard to figure in a chord progression. The open hi-hat that I played in the pattern gave it a “smoky” feel to me and the colors I saw for the music were various shades of blue… So, I had the setting and atmosphere already, all that was left was to sit down at the keyboard and play with a progression that matched not only what I was feeling, but also visualizing. I can remember messing around on the keys for about five or ten minutes and coming up with this progression where the bassline seemed to ‘walk up’ the board to accompany the chords being played (this part ended up becoming the intro and hook). Once I demoed it and got an idea of what direction it was going in, that’s when I began re-recording all of the parts separately. The keys were recorded first followed by the bassline. I EQ’d the bass guitar and adjusted the tone on the preamp so that if you listen closely on a few parts in the song, you can actually hear my fingertips on the bass strings… That’s EXACTLY how I wanted it to come through. Maintain the beauty of the music itself, but still keep some of it raw as hell. Hearing fingertips plucking bass strings is always reminiscent of funk players like Bootsy and Larry Graham playing… To hear that on a ‘pretty’ record was just the contrast and texture that I wanted for the song.
Once I added the changes, completed the instrumental, and titled it “Seven Eight Enough”… I hit Phonte with a typical, “Check that gmail” …or a more exaggerated “G muhfuckin MAIL” text, because I KNEW we had something crazy on our hands. He called me back within about 20 minutes and when I picked up, he quoted the great Negro Poet and Philosopher…………………….. Gucci Mane…
Phonte: “mmYAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!”
Me: “IssssssGuuuuuuuucci!!!!!!”
*Heavy Laughter*
Me: “Looks like I just need ONE more joint now!”
And guess who happened to be in the studio with Phonte when I sent the instrumental over to him? …None other than the one and only, Jeanne“If you don’t want the executive producer….. ALL IN THE VIDEOS… DANCIN’… COME TO DEATH ROW”Jolly!!! The two of them were already recording for something unrelated to the album. Before this joint was sent, we were talking about putting Jeanne on the instrumental for what ended up becoming “New In Town (Happy)” (the instrumental was actually titled “Lifaudit”) BUT!!!!….. Since Jeanne was already there, a song was written for her to the brand new music. I mean, why not? …The excitement was completely there and dammit, so was the vocalist. And to be honest, this was one of the greatest examples of “right place in the right time” I have ever witnessed because Jeanne got in that studio and CLOWNED on this track. Phonte sent that joint back to me a couple days later with her vocals and what bugged me out the most was how the tone of her voice MATCHED those same colors I saw a couple days earlier when I ran the drums over and over again. It was like I made the song specifically for her without knowing it in advance. To this day we refer to this joint as her “one hitta quitta” track… She simply came in, took no prisoners for about three and a half minutes …then rolled the hell out. The dope part about it was that she really loved the results. The next time I saw her was at soundcheck for our New Year’s show in Durham with The Foreign Exchange and she was raving about the song, “I looooove the new song! Phonte really wrote some beautiful stuff for it!!” Truth. I am happy with the fact that the song allowed her to show off that vocal ability…
Standout Track: No. 11, “Body Rock,” an eight-minute slow burner that sounds borrowed from Prince’s sex-ballad songbook. Over light piano and drum taps, Sy Smith gently coos, “I don’t need another love, you make my body rock.” It’s the final track on Lorenzo “Zo!” Ferguson’s new album, ManMade, which finds the Silver Spring composer experimenting with dance music, varied time signatures, and traditional soul.
Musical Motivation: Zo! wanted to create an ode to ’90s R&B. He chose Sy Smith for the vocals after conferring with collaborator Phonte Coleman, frontman of the North Carolina-based Foreign Exchange, who wrote the lyrics. ManMade is Zo!’s first album as a full-time musician; the Detroit native made his last one, the 2010 LP SunStorm, while teaching music at Rock Creek Academy in Van Ness. “I had more time to give to this album,” Zo! says. “That gave me more time to push the creative envelope.”
On the Grind: “Body Rock” is an “adult-time joint,” says Zo! “When you wanna have your quiet time with your significant other, you don’t wanna hip-hop ’em to death, you wanna slow grind,” he says. “That’s what we’re giving them with this record.”
The roots for one kinda goes all the way back to a previous working session Phonte and I had in June of 2010 for The Foreign Exchange’s Authenticity album. When the two of us sat down in my studio to produce the original draft for what was to become +FE’s “Fight For Love”. We first worked out the chord changes and I laid out some “dummy” drums… Or drums to hold the groove together at the time simply for writing/recording or demoing purposes to be thrown away later on. Well…. Fast forward more than two years later to October of 2012. I called Phonte and told him… “Man, I’ve had these drums in my head for a few days now and I THINK they’re the same pattern as what I laid down for the DEMO version of “Fight For Love”.” This is why I always say that a higher power is with you while creating music simply because it was really unbelievable how that SAME particular pattern was just archived in my brain like that. Things like that don’t happen just because …there’s purpose and meaning behind it. Since the drums were something I did originally and were simply thrown away and never used for anything released…. Of course I had the green light to utilize my own drum pattern. ……..and I did.
Once I recorded the major portion of the drum pattern and got the correct feel of the drums that I was looking for, I then played the hi-hat live over top of it, which really seemed to add some character to the joint. The sixteenth notes every second bar pushed the pattern along a little bit while adding a bit of movement – I wanted that because of the way I already envisioned the album being played live. Now with the drums moving the way that they were, I wanted the chords to take time going through the progression…… BUT when the bassline was added, it moved right along with the drums thus connecting the two effectively.
Interestingly enough, Phonte and I originally heard Jeanne Jolly on this joint ……..that is until I did the music for “Tell Me Something New”…. But I’ll get to that story a little later on. Phonte wrote they lyrics and recorded a reference, which sounded dope… THEN he hit up the studio version of Ms. Johnnie On-The-Spot, the one and only Carlitta Durand who always comes through in that clutch. She went into the studio and smashed her part. Hearing her “response” in the form of a pre-hook and her hook over the music really brought it to life… This was a helluva pleasant surprise to me, because I didn’t even know Carlitta was gonna be on it – Phonte just sent the joint on through to me with the credits. Talk about a vocal “cherry on top”.
Now we had a joint featuring Phonte and Carlitta almost reminiscent of our “Say How You Feel” days from 3-4 years ago, which was cool…. But we wanted a different look for this one – enter mah man from the Bay, 1-O.A.K. I have known this brotha for a few years now. Back in 2009 when I was on the road with PPP (Platinum Pied Pipers), he and one of my favorite producers out of the Bay Area, Trackademicks opened up for us in San Francisco and Los Angeles. As a matter of fact, we recently ran into each other again after the last San Francisco +FE show in October at Mezzanine. At that time, I had no idea that he would 1) Be contributing to my album, which was already in the works at the time, and 2) Have such a key contribution to the album. Hearing his newly laid vocals on the track was the PERFECT compliment to Carlitta’s already recorded parts. It was precisely the type of energy we were wanting to bring forth in this song as 1-O.A.K. brought almost a “youthful” sound to the music that fit the subject matter and duet perfectly…
“’cause I’m giving yooooou!! …Nothing but the very best part of meeee… Feels like I am finally freee-eee!!”
…Throughout the recording process of this one, I always thought that part was dope because he sang that shit like he MEANT it… Then to hear Carlitta follow those verses up with her unassuming yet very commanding tone where words and phrases leave her vocal chords with the same ease and effort as that of a regular conversation. The pairing made for excellent chemistry, in my humble opinion because their communication back and forth in the song sounded authentic and realistic. PLUS… I would LOVE to witness to the two of them performing this song live… Together.
The story of “Count To Five” begins in my car while sitting at a red light. The music was turned off, as it often is as I drive… As odd as that may sound for a musician, the quiet in the car allows my mind plenty of room to race. Therefore, when I hear something that sounds good in my head I can immediately pick up my phone and record those thoughts into its voice memo. Well, that’s exactly what happened in this case. For some reason I kept hearing a drum pattern in a 5/4 time signature – meaning simply five counts per measure (see The Foreign Exchange’s“All Roads” for example). This was kinda crazy because at that time I had never composed a joint in five before so I was already excited about what the song had the potential to become. So I ended up putting my phone up to my mouth and literally beatboxed the drum pattern I kept hearing in my head so that I wouldn’t forget it and could work with it later. A day or so afterward, I created the drums to sound completely IDENTICAL to the voice memo I recorded in the car (I still have the voice memo in the archives too – I may post it one day). Musically, I had no idea where I wanted to go with it……. So I proceeded to play around on the keys for a bit. No more than five minutes later, I started playing what ended up becoming the intro piece of the song. It was different, but I loved how it sounded. It reminded me almost of some 80’s New Wave stuff. Once that part fell into place, the piece that wound up becoming the verses and the hooks came instantly. Going from that intro to what became the hook sounded craaaaaaazy – the contrast was huge, but it made SO much sense to me. When I laid everything out and began recording, the sound took an even more interesting turn once the different elements were added. Layering the wah-wah guitars at the beginning over top of the keys, over top of the brand new Moog Minitaur synth bass module I picked up a couple of months prior to recording this music in 5/4 gave me a sound that I had never created before. This was a song that even while laying it down felt like creative growth right there in the studio… Now THAT is a helluva thing.
Once all of the music was recorded… I hit up Phonte, then sent him the joint. Maaaaan, he turned that shit around in less than a day with all of the lyrics written and a recorded reference. I can remember him telling me in a brief conversation soon after, “Man, I’ve got something for this one already.” He sent that final back to me and we got on the phone buggin’ OUT – The joint was a WINNER. He already had someone in mind to record the final vocals for us and proceeded to reveal who it was via this track from Darryl Reeves’ ridiculously dope album Mercury (which I attempted to buy in May while I was in Atlanta but Moods Music was sold out of it!!!) with a sweet-voiced singer named Gwen Bunn on it. The song was called “Every Time I See You.” I was like… “Yoooooooo, get her on it!” He ended up sending her the reference track, instrumental and the written lyrics and she said that she would have something within a couple of days. …Sure enough, she returned with a raw recorded version that may have even been done via laptop. It definitely wasn’t gonna be the final version, but we knew that she was what the song needed – she sounded dope over the music. About a week or so later, she was in NC recording the final vocals with Phonte. Then to find out that Gwen is only 21/22 years old?! Sheeeeit man, she’s only beginning!!! At the time that this story was written, I still have yet to actually meet her in person to thank her for acting a fool on this joint, but we follow each other on Twitter and tweet sometimes… In 2013, that qualifies as the same thing, right? ….Maybe not? *shrug* ……Haha.
Multi-instrumentalist Zo! is best known for his work with Phonte and Nicolay of the Foreign Exchange collective. Even when he’s not working in the background, however, he’s still capable of crafting the same kinds of mature, soulful grooves FE is known for, which is what he does on his latest project, ManMade. While he doesn’t contribute any vocals, he supplies all of the instrumentation. Life+Times caught up with the Detroit native to discuss ManMade, his creative process, working with the Foreign Exchange and more.
Life+Times: Tell me about your upcoming sophomore album, ManMade. How is it different from your first album and what can people expect to hear?
Zo!: It’s my sophomore full-length album with The Foreign Exchange Music imprint, a follow up to SunStorm, which was released in 2010. With this one, you probably hear a lot more musical growth as far as risk-taking, kind of being able to step out of the box a little bit. On the first single, “The Train“, it doesn’t really sound like anything I’ve ever done. A lot more uptempo, more of a dance-oriented feel. More growth, more maturity; I’m also a full-time musician now, so hopefully you’ll be able to feel that in it as well. I think it really came together and I’m definitely proud of the final product.
Phonte
(feat. Carlitta Durand)
“Gonna Be A Beautiful Night (Zo’s Legendary Story Of A Star Remix)”
Remix Produced by Zo!
All Instruments by Zo!
From The Foreign Exchange album +FE Music: The Reworks Buy Here
Zo! 