For those not fluent in the Lingua Franca da Cornu, or, the way horn players talk, the term Jump Street means from the top, at the beginning, right off the bat, from the left, immediately. For example, if a jazz trumpeter were to say “I knew the skirt made change from jump street.” his friends would understand that, in his opinion, the girl in question was a known purveyor of sexual commerce from the very beginning. There, that should clarify the title, but more about Groove Duke and the “IT” being nailed in a moment.

There was a time when recordings, really good recordings, were being made by really good people as a matter of routine. These recording projects came in under budget, everybody usually got paid and if they were successful, there might have been a little $omething on the back end. This was back in the days before iPods. Audio-philogically it was the Cro-Magnon era of monophonic AM radio. The mono 45 rpm record is to the mp3 as cave painting is to CGI. A friend of mine has an old Chrysler with the original tube radio and I have to say man, old-school R&B popping out the top of that single dashboard speaker still gets the hairs on my neck up and dancing.

So now, here we are in the summer of 2010. Recording budgets have become somewhat of an oddity on display in the history museum. The skill set of composing and recording digital music is approaching that of virtual Playstation auto theft with the results being a fairly accurate representation of the circumstances under which the crime was committed. Okay, that’s a bit strong, but there can be no argument that, under the heading of of self-produced recording projects, there exists a lot of crappy music parading under false pretenses.

Out of this fog and into the harbor sails the Heavy Mariner. This freshman release from Chicago’s own Groove Duke, Mark Alan Cornell, has somehow managed to corral a cracking ensemble of living, breathing musicians, singers, technical personnel and other mercenaries for next to nothing to produce a body of work that does exactly what a horn-driven R&B album should do…it makes you smile.

Heavy Mariner

Groove Duke provides plenty to love for everyone on this album. The horn arrangements are tightly written and performed While the solo playing eloquently serves the songs rather than the players egos, a welcome element and the benchmark of experienced road warriors. The Rhythm Section, capitalized out of respect to the album personnel, is a heaving beast of groove. There is nothing mechanical about this band. The true test of any Rhythm section is a slow shuffle and the depth of feel in You Better Believe It is like being tied to a chair next to a sleeping Rhinoceros. The back beat pops at the last possible instant and what seems to be a groovy little tune is actually quite sinister under the shiny facade. And let me say something about sounds. I’ve spent hours watching engineers trying to get rid of a snare drum ping. But wait til you check out Judas Love. A ping never felt so right. From the single, Stick Boy right down the line, the Rhythm Section kicks the rest of the band square in the ass and handing in a less-than-my-best-stuff performance doesn’t seem to be an option for anyone.

But let me get to what makes this album really work in the tradition of classic R&B records. Instrumentals are great and who can’t find love in their heart for Squib Cakes, Home Cookin’ and What Does It Take. But the ultimate connection with an audience happens at the vocal mic. That’s where the story unfolds, that’s where the guts get spilled, that’s where all the joy, pain, faith and details are put on display for everyone to see and hear. And it is at the vocal mic that this album makes its boldest statement. Pauli Carman, the voice, heart and soul behind Champaign’s How ‘Bout Us produced the background vocals so it will come as no shock that they are stellar in every way. The arrangements are classic and familiar without being trite and Cornell’s stories couldn’t be told without the marvelous interplay so characteristic of great R&B vocal ensembles.

Mark Cornell

Mark Cornell’s singing chops are deceptively musical. While he isn’t Al Green, Teddy Pendergrass, Donald Fagan, Sly Stone or even Wayne Cochran, his original dialect is derivative of a massive hit singles collection. But it isn’t beauty of tone in the usual sense that make Cornell’s vocals compelling. Cornell is first and foremost a musician in general and a trumpet player in particular, a combination that has proven both interesting and successful in the past. Witness Louis Armstrong, Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon for example. Of the three, only Baker had what most would consider a pleasing voice in the strictest terms, but all three are masterful singers who get the point across on a most intimate level. Accomplished Jazz musicians have a sense of intonation, time and phrasing rare even in the best golden-throated vocalists.. Cornell is cut from the same whole cloth and when he tells you a story you listen and believe. Sometimes he’s the guy across the bar and sometimes he’s sneering menacingly into your ear as in the afore-mentioned You Better Believe It. His emotions run from zero to sixty but he is always consistently “That Guy” and you just want to hear more.

Which brings me to my only real issue with this album. Does Mark Cornell see himself as a trumpet player who sings or as a singer who plays trumpet? There is never a moment on the album where I say to myself, “Damn, I wish that trumpet was louder.”  I can’t say the same for the lead vocals. There are sections where the background vocals, excellent as they are, could step back a few feet from the front of the stage. But I can’t blame them because it feels as if Cornell is having an “I’m really just a trumpet guy doing the best I can.” moment. I got news for you Mr. Cornell. You’re busted! No matter what you think, you sing your ass off so step up and accept a 5dB boost in the mix for your bad self.

Getting back to the craft of making records that sound and, more importantly, feel good, Heavy Mariner kicks the hell out of some projects costing a boatload of money. Everyone involved with this record knew exactly what they were doing and did it well. It sounds like just a good time weekend in the studio with a bunch of pals but anyone in the know will tell you how much is involved in an album like this.

Heavy Mariner from Groove Duke started out as a Sellaband project but Mark Cornell made it happen on his own. Above all, the album makes you smile. Yeah, there is the obligatory instrumental to open the show. But my face started cracking open about halfway through the drum fill that starts I Get The Picture and I was a stepping, grinning mess for the duration.

Get yourself a copy, go find someone with an old mono sound system, preferably in the dashboard of a mid-sixties chrome-encrusted land-yacht and roll the windows down. Just don’t forget to floss because you’re gonna to be grinnin’. The “IT” is old school R&B and Groove Duke is nailin’ it right from Jump Street.

Is writing a song an art resulting from divine inspiration or is it a craft accomplished by technical know-how and repetitious practice? Arguments can be made for both concepts and numerous examples given of inspired songwriters with limited technical training. But for the young aspiring musician of today with a modern arsenal of digital music making tools at hand, what if inspiration falls short? Wouldn’t it serve young musicians to put inspiration on hold for a moment and explore the craft of musical construction in order to build a more powerful vocabulary. Then, when the coconut of inspiration cracks open a head full of ideas, the aspiring songsmith will be able to decide which of the many available options are most suited to convey artistic intentions most effectively.

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome in becoming a songwriter is the notion that every note issuing from the pen is sacrosanct. One must come to grips with the idea that out of a hundred songs, maybe a handful will be meaningful. Writing the rejected material however, is far from a waste of time. Indeed, it is precisely the time spent writing embarrassing garbage which results in the ability to recognize and sort out what works from what doesn’t. Think of it as doing a computer search. The first step your computer takes in looking for a file is to eliminate the irrelevant files and narrow down the areas to search effectively. In other words, if you are searching for toilet paper, you already know that the frozen food aisle is a waste of time. Yet it is not uncommon for inexperienced songwriters to waste time and energy digging under the frozen peas and pizza for something being displayed for half price with a coupon in the paper aisle.

Here is a simple exercise in songwriting that is painfully basic but time well spent. It is an exercise in simplicity and exploits the fact that many popular song structures are much simpler than we would care to admit. Let’s take three basic chords for our harmonic vocabulary. E Major, A Major and D Major. If we write the three chords in every possible sequential combination, we have the following results:

1) E, A, D    2) E, D, A    3) A, D, E    4) A, E, D    5) D, A, E    6) D, E, A.

Write each chord sequence on a piece of paper and throw all six pieces into a hat. Now take one piece of paper from the hat as you would in choosing the winning raffle ticket. Play this combination of chords in the given sequence for at least five minutes. Don’t try to make anything more out of it than it is. Just set the drum machine, sequencer or egg timer to five minutes and let the chords decide the groove. After five minutes, try singing a simple melody over the chords. Let your ears do the thinking and don’t try to come up with something that the world has never heard before. If you have a short lyrical idea in mind, go ahead and try to incorporate it but the idea is to build a melodic vocabulary inspired by three simple chords. You can sing “Granny wears army boots” for all I care, just explore as many melodic ideas as possible.

Now, choose another piece of paper and repeat the exercise until you’ve gone through all six chord progressions. If you can refrain from thinking too much you should be able to get through the entire hatful in an hour. Then, to make things more interesting, choose two pieces at a time and start your timer.

For young bands slugging it out in the garage as to whose idea has the most value, this exercise will not only expand everyone’s abilities but also serve to let every band member contribute to the group’s musical vocabulary. Each member can pull a sequence and the whole band can play the sequence as a unit. In this way, every member has the chance to direct the band through their sequence in turn. Whoever pulls the paper out of the hat gets to produce the track so to speak, and the combination of everyone’s input will increase the band’s ability to write as a unit.

“Three chords” you say. And I answer emphatically, “Yep! Three simple chords.” As a matter of fact, if you do the exercise, you’ll find that about a million songs will come to mind. And the reason they will come to mind is that they were hit records…and that is the whole point, isn’t it? To learn how to write a hit song. Artists like Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, CSNY, Bob Dylan on and on and on haven’t been embarrassed to express their artistic inspiration through the use of just three chords and neither should you. And when the times comes to get really tricky and need to say your piece with five or six chords, you won’t be rummaging around in the freezer wondering where the damned toilet paper went.

I made the switch from gym rat to studio rat when I realized that breaking fingers on the basketball court didn’t add much to a bass track. So I hung up the old sneakers, grabbed my bass with both hands and took my gym rat mentality with me into any studio with a good espresso machine. What can I say? The things I would forego for a chance to be in the room with the guys and gals is a very short list. And that is why I jumped at the invitation to travel to Holland to work on Traveling Girl with some good friends who also happen to know their way around a recording studio.

I was picked up at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport by the Traveling girl herself, Lille Mulder. As we knew each other only by email, we both did a few laps around the terminal before the process of elimination successfully put us into the car together. The two hour drive to Dick Kemper’s Studio in Doetinchen gave us a chance to tell our life stories and lay the groundwork for the two week’s work ahead.

Dick Kemper

S&K Studio reflected all the know how of the seasoned musician/engineer/producer that is Dick Kemper. Dick toured the world as the bassist of Vandenberg sharing major concert venues with Metallica and Ozzy and that experience combined with the intervening years of recording have served to create a consummate studio pro. I was here to work with Lille  only on the vocal tracks but a quick tour of the studio and a listen to the basic tracks told me that she would have plenty of inspiration to draw upon when it was her turn on the other side of the glass.

As good as Dick is at his job, any engineer or producer will tell you that they are only as good as the talent holding the guitar or bass, or in the case of Nico Groen, hitting things with sticks. And in this department Dick had plenty to work with. The producer of The Traveling Girl is my good pal Casper van Vulpen and Casper started the project off with plenty of wind in his sails by choosing great songs to record and the right combination of players to make the magic happen. This project was truly an international effort as Casper had gathered the forces of a Russian from Poland, a Polish songwriter from England, a British writer from London, an Austrian from Los Angeles, a rhythm section from Holland and one of the best singers I’ve worked with in years. Lock the doors and get the coffee going. This was going to be more fun than a pick up game at the Fourth Street cage in the Village.

The Traveling Girl

Lille was a dream to work with. Many singers can be temperamental, moody or demanding. Lille was all of these but in a very unique way. Where some singer’s moods or demands are driven by insecurity, inability or lack of preparation, Lille took full responsibility and her demands were only of herself. And where some singers might hit the wall of their endurance or storm out of the room blaming it all on the headphone mix or the color of the pop filter, Lille forced every mood directly through the microphone and into her vocal performance for upwards of eight hours at a stretch.

The main focus of my involvement was in creating authentic and sincere vocal performances with a singer in English as a second and sometimes third language. Regrettably, I only know how to say “Goddammit” “Two Beers” and “Screwing in the kitchen” in the Dutch language but Lille and I were able to work together in German as well as English. I find sincerity to be the most attractive element of any vocal performance and this must be based on not only a thorough understanding but also a convincing belief in the lyrical content of a song.

Producer Casper van Vulpen

Whenever studio rats get gather in the temple of sound they follow a timeless ritual. Everyone let’s everyone else know who they know, which new plug-ins they use, choice of recording software, past, present and future drug, alcohol and gambling profile and whatever other factoids seem pertinent to the session. It’s just a bit of canine butt-sniffing really, but it serves to lubricate the initial get-to-know-you period better than passing out resumes. We already knew each other via the internet so the circle sniff was just a bit if handshaking and joke telling. Before I hit the pillow that first night I felt warmly sniffed into the pack.

My second day in Holland Lille and I went to work in earnest. As we went line by line dissecting the finer points of pronunciation we also discussed the inner meaning of every phrase. Sometimes when writers create in a foreign language they might say something that makes perfect literal sense but loses symbolic meaning or poetic value in the translation. There were a few corners to smooth over in this department and we changed a few words or phrases to insure that Lille was portraying the feeling behind the meaning with belief, conviction and precision.

Nico Groen at S&K Studio

I had initially thought to coach Lille into a strictly American pronunciation but her delivery has a certain international charm which we certainly did not want to lose. So we concentrated on clarity and those areas where letter sounds differ between Dutch, German and English while retaining the feel and passion which went into the original demos of the songs. On a technical level, most problems arise when losing the distinction between voiced and un-voiced consonants. Using the word “Love” as an example, the ‘V’ must have pitch. Dutch and German speakers pronounce the word as “Luff” because their ‘V’ is our ‘F’ and so “Live” becomes “Life” and “Very” becomes “Fairy.” Another pitfall is the American ‘TH’ sound which doesn’t exist in many European languages. To make the sound one must extend the tip of the tongue between the teeth and blow out a puff of air. Euros tend to replace the ‘TH’ with either the hard ‘D’ or the sibilants ‘Z’ or ‘S’ as in “Vaht do you Sink about ziss.” And, as the sentence indicates, even our ‘S’ sound has voiced and un-voiced versions as does the ‘TH’…hear the difference between “This” and “Think” “What’s” and “Was.” And then there is our ‘W’ which is their ‘V’…so our “Was” would be pronounced “Vass” two corrections for the price of one on that one.

The key was to make the corrections seem effortless and allow the vocal performance to be driven by Lille’s amazing sense of phrasing. As I got to know her day by day I learned that Lille is fierce when it comes to learning new things. She was hell-bent on mastering whatever I suggested and made notes on the lyric sheets, wrote on the leg of her jeans, pounded the table and repeated the ‘TH’ sound until I had to cover my coffee cup. But I didn’t want her to obsess so the best and most efficient learning came through simple conversation. We decided that when in the studio we would speak only English and I would try to catch and correct every mispronunciation as it happened.

Lille keeping an eye on Roland Franken

There are many structured exercises aimed at engaging the diaphragmatic-intercostal musculature but none is more efficient than uncontrolled laughter. Being among new friends gave me a fresh audience for the jokes that elicit groans from my stateside friends and I took full advantage. Teaching the jokes to Lille was also a way to practice Americanized idiomatic pronunciation. What seemed to be breaks in the work were actually quite useful and her delivery of the songs as well as her complete understanding of the intent behind them improved at a fast clip.

Two weeks later my job was done and Lille dropped me at the airport where she had first found me. We were in the studio every day and the two weeks seemed like one long session. Working with Casper, Kostek, Dick Kemper and especially Lille had made the time go much too quickly and on the Los Angeles bound flight I wished that we had been making a double album. The musicians played their asses off, Lille sang her ass off, Dick engineered his ass off and now my ass was off for home.

Traveling Girl will be  available online and represents the hard work of very talented people from all corners of the globe (yes, I know that the globe doesn’t have corners, just go with me on that one). It was a ton of fun to be involved with the project, the music and, most importantly, the people. I hope you all enjoy it.