Music that's out of this galaxy: Jeff Lorber Fusion shakes the bad rap of aninnovative sound

Houston, we have Jeff Lorber Fusion.

The band will be playing two sets this Saturday at the Red Cat Jazz Café, which is right back in the heart of downtown. Led by pioneering jazz fusion keyboardist and composer Jeff Lorber, the band's new album Galaxy features a mix of brand new tunes, including "Horace," dedicated to the groundbreaking pianist and composer Horace Silver, and updated versions of some of Lorber's best known compositions from the '70s and '80s, including "Wizard Island," "The Samba" and "The Underground."

Galaxy features the core group of Lorber on keyboards, Jimmy Haslip on bass, and Eric Marienthal on saxophones, along with guitarist Paul Jackson Jr. and Larry Koonse, drummers Vinnie Colaiuta and Dave Weckl, percussionist Lenny Castro and trumpeter Randy Brecker.

The album's cover features photography courtesy of NASA, evoking the era of great science fiction inspired art and iconography that graced many fusion recordings from back in the day, as well as Lorber's fascination with physics and science.

Chris Becker: There's a great Kip S. Thorne quote in the booklet of Galaxy. "When struggling to understand space, time, and the universe, it helps immensely to be immersed in Jeff Lorber's music. His music inspires me and puts my soul at peace, so I can become one with the astronomical phenomena I probe."

How did Kip come to know your music? Is he a friend of yours?

Jeff Lorber: (Laughing) We didn't really know what he was gonna say. I didn't expect him to say that, to be honest with you. He's a genius . . . I knew he would say something interesting, something about "the cosmos" or something!

I gave him a call cause I thought it would be nice to have a quote from him that would relate to the artwork we have on the cover and the title of the record. Which is basically kind of a reference a little bit back to a lot of records from the '70s, (in) the early days of fusion there was a lot of space-related titles.

I'm a big fan of science and physics. I'm actually closer to getting a degree in chemistry than in music! I went to music school and I was taking courses in chemistry in college for awhile.

CB: I hear you about the artwork of the CD and going back to that outer space thing and some of the great fusion records that came out in the '70s and '80s where you'd see Herbie Hancock in a spaceship or something like that.

JL: Exactly. Or Return to Forever, some of the stuff they did like Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy.

CB: The production on Galaxy is very contemporary. The first track "Live Wire" is almost like a progressive house track.

JL: Yeah! That's kind of what it's modeled off of. I was very lucky to get one of the best mixing engineers on the planet, Michael H. Brauer. I had been a fan of his mixes for years. He worked on a lot of R&B records from the '80s. He worked with this group called Change, he worked with The System, Luther Vandross, a lot of great R&B records. He's also really busy doing all this pop stuff (including John Mayer and Coldplay). I just went to his website and sent him sort of a fan letter (laughs).

So he had a free day in the studio and he basically mixed half my album in one very long day! I was very lucky to get him involved. It was fun to fly to New York and work at the legendary Electric Lady studios, which used to be Jimi Hendrix's studio.

(The album) was mixed through an analog board, through and SSL which is sort of . . . not as common nowadays. It's a little more expensive, luxurious way to work, and I was glad we could do that.

CB: Yeah, you really get the nice separation of the instruments, a nice warm sound.

JL: The thing that's happened is that digital technology is really mature, you know? When people first started recording with ProTools and using digital equalizers and stuff the first thing that happened was you heard a lot of brittle, overly bright tracks. But it's been around long enough.

That's one of the luxuries of living in this time — we have these wonderful tools. Some of my favorite music is from the '60s, but the technology we have (today) for recording is wonderful.

CB: Great production these days seems to involve a hybrid of analog and digital.

JL: Absolutely.

CB: Going back to 1977 and the first Jeff Lorber Fusion record, looking back at that time period, what was the inspiration for this music you guys were making? Why did all these bands suddenly come up playing this kind of music?

JL: Well first of all, the reason why I called my band The Jeff Lorber Fusion was purely like truth in advertising. I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time. Most of the bands there were playing something like country rock. So the name was to let people know, it's not gonna be country rock! It's gonna be fusion music.

It's interesting to think about different eras of music, where things just really heat up and there's this amazing surge of creativity. If you look at the '60s and the '70s in particular, there was just so much exciting music happening on every level. A lot of these artists like Chick Corea or Herbie or George Duke . . . Miles (Davis), of course, who was the ringleader of everything for years . . . people were just tired of playing that straight ahead Swing stuff. They wanted to branch out and see what they could do.

Fusion artists were mixing R&B rhythms, Latin rhythms, the use of synthesizers, which were just coming on the scene, and the use of multi-track recording studio technology. A group like Weather Report was so experimental with some of the things they did, their approach to harmony, their approach to melody, their use of odd time signatures. It was just basically a total crustaceous period of innovation and experimentation all across the board.

I think it started out when you had groups like Cannonball Adderley's who would throw a little bit of funk into what they were doing. It was sort of a competition to see who could be more innovative and more creative in using all those different aspects that I was just talking about.

CB: I think it's important that I emphasize your point, because fusion has been maligned as being a commercial stab by jazz musicians who want to sound like rock musicians. But someone of my generation or a generation or two behind me, when we hear this music, it simply sounds very creative, very innovative.

JL: I totally agree. The reason it got the bad rap . . . every time there's a new musical trend, everybody wants to jump on the bandwagon. A lot of these records were incredibly successful. You had groups like Return to Forever and Bob James and Miles — these records were going gold! So of course the record companies wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

Everybody with a saxophone gets a record deal! Eventually, it sort of runs its course. And there's a lot of mediocre music put out there under the guise of fusion music.

And that's why I dropped the name Jeff Lorber Fusion for a long while. Because it sort of got a bad rap. And at the same time, it's the same reason why I brought it back. You look at the state of where music's at right now, and the idea of fusion music, like something that's more ambitious, and more up-tempo, and more exciting, all of the sudden, once again, it sounds like a fresh idea.

The Jeff Lorber Fusion plays Saturday at Red Cat Jazz Café. Stage times are 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Doors open at 7 p.m.. For tickets, call 713-226-7870.