THE VERNON REID INTERVIEW - The Black Rock Coalition
By Earl Douglas

ED: Congratulations on the new record. Please tell us who s playing on the record.

VR: Well, there are a number of people. One is Don Byron, a great jazz clarinetist. Another is Hank Schroy, a bass player I met while I was producing a demo for his old band, No Walls. A really good bass player. There s a keyboard player on the record named Leon Grenbaum, who s really unique because he basically plays an instrument that he invented. He {Leon} has this thing called the Samchillian Tip Tip CheeePeee. He took a computer keyboard and turned it into a musical instrument. So a lot of times when he s playing, he s basically types the notes out. Curtis Watts plays drums - he used to be in a band called SSL. DJ Logic used to play in Eye and I - he s a really an excellent hip-hop DJ. That s the core band, but there are a number of other musicians. Graham Haynes is on the record - it s a cast of thousands.

ED: The music industry, if not the entertainment industry, as a whole, is very niche-oriented right now and this record doesn t really fall into any niche/ How were you able to convince the people at Sony to back this record?

VR: My feeling about the music business is that nobody really knows what constitutes a hit or what the public is going to turn around and say, Hey, I like it. Even looking at Living Colour - that band was in many ways a long shot. What I do with this record - which is many ways an instrumental record - the songs are led by instrumental melodies. With the history of popular music, there s been a lot of instrumental things that have connected and the reasons for that is not usually explainable. Part of it is that music is magic, and if you hear a melody or a groove that you like, you ll like it. No one can really explain a song, for example, Frankenstein . There s no explaining that because no one really knows. I know when I heard Alanis Morissette, I liked the song. I didn t know it was gonna be a hit. I just knew I liked it, and that s the way it has always been in my experience. That s what I felt with Living Colour. We just dug the music and we weren t really thinking about, Oh, we re gonna have a big record . Not at all. They {Sony 550} have faith in me. There were individuals like my A&R man, Michael Kaplan. Michael is a guy that loves music and responded well to the music that I started making away from Living Colour and there s a certain amount of support. I had a great deal of fun making the record and I didn t worry. I refused to worry about what other people thought. I just trusted my instincts.

ED: I heard that there were close to 40 songs recorded for the album.

VR: Yeah, I recorded a lot of music. I thought about the example Jimi - Jimi recorded constantly. There s always finding new studio bits and Jimi got to use the studio as a tool. That s kind of where it was for me. I started thinking, Why not record as many things as I hear? One of things with Living Colour records was that we would record just about enough {songs} to make the record. Never enough B-sides and other things. So it was kind of the opposite approach. I had way too many songs, which made it very difficult to decide because they were a lot of things that I liked that are not on the record.

ED: At some point will you release any of these songs?

VR: I m sure they ll all come out eventually. Some of them will be B-sides and depending on what happens, maybe they ll be on the next record. But I think they ll come out.

ED: With your record about to come out, Fishbone s about to drop their new one, Me Shelle NdegeOcello and Tony Rich and The Fugees are already happening, do you think this is the right moment for Progressive Black Music?

VR: It s always that moment. The music always has to be progressive in my mind. Whether its connecting to audiences, well that s a function of whether audiences are being exposed to it. Then they have to make their decision. I think it s a good time. There s never a bad time for music. There s always a bad time, in terms of priorities, what the record labels priorities are. I ve learned the hard way that often times, it s really all of those other things that the public doesn t see, that determines whether or not a record will be offered up for their {the public s} decision. That s always a drag. But you know what? I really like the stuff D Angelo is doing. I love Me Shelle, I love Dionne Farriss and what she s doing, so I want to say yeah. I even dig the stuff like Skee-Lo and The Jungle Brothers are working on a new joint. It s encouraging that The Fugees have done so well in such a short space of time with their new record. These are encouraging times.

ED: What are, if any, tour plans?

VR: I think I m gonna let the record come out and let it sink in that this record is out. We re gonna do some isolated dates - New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other places, but there won t be an extensive tour until the fall.

ED: The BRC is entering its second decade. Does it amaze you that it s still going on?

VR: Yeah, it is kind of amazing. I think that the key is for the organization s survival is to shake up its hiearchial goals for itself and address itself to what s happening with today and what musicians needs today. It {the years} just kind of snuck up on all of us. Time has a way of doing that.

ED: With bands breaking up a lot faster than they did, let s say, 10 years ago, and with the music industry centered on immediate record sales, what advice would you give to upcoming bands that are doing something slightly left of center?

VR: Make music your life. I d also say do it for its own sake. But it s also important to have a life outside of it. Don t get so fixated that you re not a human being. It s really a hollow victory, I believe, if you do it for the sake of being famous, because it can actually happen to you. If it does happen to you and you re not centered within yourself and not grounded, then you ll suffer. You definitely will because it doesn t solve your problems.....Have fun - above all, have fun. If it stops being fun, then something is very, very, very, wrong and you ll have to look at that...The other thing is be real with the people you re working with. If things bother you, don t just let it sit there and eat away at you. Have the courage to speak up. If there s something you just don t agree with - if you don t like the producer, you don t like the record label, - don t, just for the sake of a little fame, sacrifice essentially who you really are, because who you are is gonna come out and bite you.

Interview originally appeared in May 1996 BRC Newsletter