CM  Marcus thanks for taking the time out of a hectic schedule to talk with me this afternoon for the readers of the Smooth & Soul website… and just to kind of pigeonhole myself for you, I’m an amateur bass player, I’ve been a fan of funk, soul and jazz for over thirty years and I’ve been a fan of yours for over half my life so I could sit here and ask you questions all afternoon but I know we’ve got about 30 minutes. 

I need to kick off on a personal note.  I want to say “hi” from a guy who I only met yesterday – and that’s Smitty from Jazz Monthly. 

MM  Oh really, how’s he doin’? 

CM  He sounds fine – I was asking for feedback on something that I’d written.

MM  Right.

CM  He wanted to say hi, although I know that the two of you have spoken quite recently.

MM  Yeah, absolutely.  OK good, please give him my best.

CM  I will, I will.  Now, am I right to say that the first date of your current tour in the USA was in Maryland last night?

MM  Yeah, we played last night in Annapolis, Maryland.

CM  OK, now how did the crowd in Maryland react to the music from your new CD?

MM  Oh they loved it (laughs).  You know, I ended up signing a bunch of CD’s afterwards for people who didn’t feel like waiting to get to the record store the next day.  That’s always a good sign right (laughs)?

CM  I reckon so, I reckon so.  So, I think it’s Virginia for the next two nights and then on Friday you’re going to be playing for your home crowd in New York City.

MM  Exactly, exactly.  And then do we’ll do Cleveland and then we’re going to go to the West Coast.

CM  OK.  I’m guessing that maybe going to New York City, especially playing at BB King’s club will be a special buzz for you?

MM  Oh yes, it’s always nice to come back home, you know, although working out the guest list thing is a big chore – a monumental chore.  You got family, friends, you know what I mean, so that’s always tricky.  But it’s always nice to come home man.

I’m looking forward to it but you know we’re playing Virginia but it’s just outside Washington D.C. and that’s going to be great too.

CM  I think I even know the area – it’s close to where they hold the Capital Jazz festival in June. 

MM  Yeah, I believe so – I believe it is yeah.

CM  I know the spot.  It’s beautiful.

MM  Yeah, I’m excited about forward to D.C.  We’ve had a large, strong audience, a large, strong following in D.C. for a long time.  We’re gonna have a nice week, nice tour.

CM  That’s great!  Now, I know that in addition to the touring that you’ve done extensively in the US, you’ve also toured in Japan and Europe for example.  Do you find that the audiences in these different places react differently to different material, you know, or do you get a different vibe?

MM  Years ago yes.  Years ago, Japan was very much its own place and I would change songs that we were playing, based on that audience. 

But now the world is much smaller than it used to be and it seems like people are reacting to the same thing.  It might just be because musically I’m getting better and getting my message across to people better, you know what I mean? 

It’s pretty much the same.  Now, every city has its own personality, you know, regardless of the country so Amsterdam is always crazy, Washington DC is crazy but I really look at it more in terms of cities than I do in terms of actual countries and continents you know. 

CM  OK…  Now I’ve been listening pretty heavily to the new CD “Marcus” and there’s some deep, deep grooves in there.  I’m guessing there must be some serious dancing going on at some of these shows…

MM  Oh yeah, you know, sometimes you play in places that have seats and you see the people trying to figure out whether they should get up or not so usually toward the end of the show I say “you know what, if you wanna get up it’s all good” (laughs).  And you look out there and see we got a little party it’s nice.

CM  Yeah, because I think, just before I picked up the phone to you I was playing “What is Hip?” and I really don’t know how anyone could sit still to that…

MM  (laughing) yeah that’s fun.  We’ve been closing the show with that.  We closed the show with that last night and it got people going pretty crazy (laughs).

CM  It’s a really fast tune.  It must be tiring to do that at the end of a set I guess.

MM  You have to make sure your energy’s right.  If your energy’s right it’s no problem.  But if you just ate dinner before you went on stage – something crazy like that – you’re going to pay the price by the time you get to “What is Hip?” (laughs) 

CM  (laughing) I hear you.  I hear you.  Marcus, can I take you back kind of to the early days when you started out recording.  Can you tell me what the first record was where you heard your bass sound and who that was with? 

MM  Oh boy, the first one.  I did a couple of recordings at the age of 16 or 17 and most of them never saw the light of day but I think the first one was a Lenny White record.  I played for 30 seconds on an album of his.  The album was called “Big City”. 

He’s from my neighbourhood in New York and he was gracious enough to let me hang out with him while he was running from here to here, from studio to studio.  And I happened to be in the studio when he said “look man, I need to do an interlude – pull out your bass”.  So, that was a big moment for me – although it was 30 seconds long, it was a pretty big moment for me. 

CM  And he must have liked that sound because on the next CD I think you played on every song. 

MM  Yeah, you know a year later he asked me to go on the road with him.  I was at college and I took a semester off to go on the road with Lenny White and had a great time.  And at the end of the tour we did an album so it was very nice.  So it was really an incredible experience for me – I was 17, I was out on the road with Lenny and then I was in the studio with him making that album and I met so many great people.  So it was really a beautiful experience. 

CM  Can you remember how you felt when you first heard the sound of your own bass on one of his records? 

MM  It was an awesome feeling man.  Awesome feeling.  I mean you don’t really know what the best setting for my bass was.  I just turned all the knobs up (laughs). 

CM  …and just went for it. 

MM  And that ended up being my trademark sound, you know, all the knobs full up (laughs). 

CM  I was reading about how you contract musicians for your own albums and how when you’re working on the album you hear the sound of the songs and you figure out who, either vocally or instrumentally, would fit on there best… 

MM  Right. 

CM  …and then you start making the calls. 

MM  Exactly, exactly.  I imagine the song and whose voice would be really nice, whether it’s an instrumental voice or actual voice… 

CM  Yep 

MM  …and then I make a couple of calls – see if I can make it happen, you know. 

At this point in the interview, Marcus had found out that a soundcheck for a session at a satellite radio station was going to start two hours early and he had to head for the tour bus – just to show how busy his schedule is. 

CM  So back in the beginning then, when you were working with guys like Tom Browne, Lonnie Liston Smith and a list of people I couldn’t even, you know, write down, the process must have been the other way around, so they were the guys making the calls to you. 

MM  Yeah, well those early ones happened really just by word of mouth and introductions. 

CM  OK. 

MM  A friend of mine from New York who I grew up with had a guitar gig with Lonnie Liston Smith invited Lonnie to our neighbourhood to chat with the young musicians there and that’s where Lonnie heard me (laughs) and we were trying to jam but we didn’t have any songs to jam on. 

So Lonnie said “anybody have any tunes?” and of course I piped up “I have a couple of tunes” and wrote ‘em right there on the spot like they already existed… 

CM  Fantastic! 

MM  …and Lonnie was impressed enough to ask me to write some songs for him.   And that started that relationship, which was really nice. 

Tom Browne is from Jamaica, Queens, New York as I am and we grew up together. 

CM  That’s the New York connection again… 

MM  Exactly, so really just making connections through those relationships you know.  It’s nice being from New York, because you don’t have to move.  I got an early start because you don’t have to move to New York.  I got an early start.  I was already on the scene 15, 16 years old so by the time I’m 19, 20 I had a pretty good following. 

CM  I understand that, so where was the turning point?  When did you start making calls for singers and musicians to appear on your records? 

MM  Probably in the 90’s.  The 80’s was pretty much me producing other artists so I was making the calls for musicians or studios and all that but it was for Luther Vandross or David Sanborn, Miles even or whoever else I was producing.  So I began to make calls for musicians in the mid-80’s when I started to produce music. 

CM  All right… 

MM  But I wasn’t producing myself, so if you ask me when I started doing it for my actual own albums, that was probably the beginning of the 90’s. 

CM  All right, now it’s impossible to read about your career  without looking at the things you’ve done in terms of movie soundtracks.  And the more I’ve read I’m amazed by the amount of things you’ve done.  Could you tell me how you got into that whole thing? 

MM  Yeah, let’s see, it was probably the end of the 80’s, ’88 or ’89, I call a call from Reginald Hudlin and he was fresh out of NYU Film School. 

CM  OK. 

MM  and he told me that New Line Cinema, a new movie house, had picked up his senior thesis to be produced into a full-length picture.  And he was excited and he wanted me to do the music. 

And I told him “look, I don’t really do movies”.  I hadn’t done much movie work at the time.  I worked on something with Miles in the 80’s – that was more of a record that we just kind of gave to the movie people and told them to use the music any way they saw fit… 

CM  So that was Siesta? 

MM  That was Siesta yeah.  But I had not done any movie score work where I’m sitting there looking at the scenes and crafting music to match the scenes, you know. 

CM  OK. 

MM  I did look at it in Siesta but that was such a different mentality because I was working with Miles, you know.  

So I told Reggie I don’t do that much.  So he said “you’d be good, I have all your records, I love all your music.  You’d be perfect so let me just send you the tapes and you’ll fool around and you’ll come up with something and it’ll be great”. 

And that’s exactly how it happened.  I just experimented and Reggie would come down and make suggestions to me.  You know, “I can’t hear the dialogue here – make sure you don’t cover up the words”.  Things like that, things that you learn as a movie composer. 

CM  So that’s a whole different discipline isn’t it? 

MM  Yeah, yeah.  It’s a different discipline from making your own albums but it’s not that different from making albums for other artists where I’m the producer, where I’m really trying to create a nice setting for Luther Vandross… 

CM  I got you. 

MM  So basically, I was using the dialogue that the actors were saying as a lead vocal and trying to create an appropriate setting for that so I found I could make it not so different, you know. 

CM  OK, I’ve even started to think that maybe it’s something that bass players have a kind of a leaning for because I know that Stanley Clarke wrote some movie scores and I think Victor Wooten wrote at least one movie score too… 

MM  Yes, Stanley’s done a bunch and I think Victor’s just starting to get into it, which is really cool.

And I don’t know if it’s the bass.  You know when you play bass your job is really to hold things together. 

CM  Yes. 

MM  Because that’s really the role of the bass – you’re the glue that makes everything sound like it belongs together.  And so, maybe taking that mentality into movies gives you an advantage, you know.

But you do have to know your orchestration and you do have to know a lot more than bass, but I think that bass mentality and listening to the whole picture really helps you when you’re writing music. 

CM  Now, seeing as I mentioned those two names, I don’t know if I dreamed this or whether I really did read it, but are you planning a recording project with Stanley and Victor? 

MM  Yeah, we’re in the middle of it right now.  We’re probably 60 to 70% into it.  Really exciting, really exciting to hear the different styles coming together man.  We’re really having a nice time. 

CM  I can imagine that…  I just got through reviewing Victor’s latest solo album and it’s absolutely incredible. 

MM  Oh yeah, absolutely.  Yeah, he’s just a great artist. 

CM  Incredible. 

MM  Beautiful person, great musician.  And Victor and I are just thrilled to be working with Stanley who we grew up listening to, you know, so it’s really nice. 

CM  Fantastic!  I made a quick reference to the list of people that you have worked with, either as a band leader or you’re collaborating on their records.  Is there anyone that you’d like the chance to work with, or work with more? 

MM  You know, I don’t do many sideman gigs anymore.  I don’t do any anymore, haven’t done in a while.  But Herbie called me and said “look, I need a bass player, could you do this?” 

CM  Yeah. 

MM  Called me about two years ago and I had such a good time man that whenever I can if he needs me, I’m there.  It’s a really beautiful place to make music with Herbie Hancock man, so really enjoying that.  You know, I’m enjoying the collaboration with Corinne Bailey Rae.  I was really honoured to have her on my album. 

CM  She sounds great… 

MM  And then in terms of new people,  I’m looking at the new hip-hop artists man, who are starting to talk about more than just having money, you know what I mean? (laughs)

CM  (laughing) yeah. 

MM  … and stuff like that man.  There’s some new artists, man, who are really interested in saying something that can uplift people man, you know.  I’m excited about finding them and working with them. 

CM  ‘Cos you’re gonna have DJ Logic, I think, on at least four of your shows on this tour… 

MM  Yeah, he’s a very talented DJ man, and we have a great time working together. 

CM  Yeah? 

MM  The last time we worked together, we were in North Sea at Rotterdam, the North Sea Jazz Festival. 

CM  I was going to ask you about that… 

MM  And we did a gig on Saturday night and it was beautiful.  Sunday morning they woke me up – they said “look we need you to come back man and fill in because Amy Winehouse is not going to be able to make it”. 

So, we had an off day so we got on stage man and apologised to the audience for not being Amy Winehouse (laughs) but I’d given Amy’s record to DJ Logic so he started scratching “Rehab” and then we jammed on that man and people just really, really enjoyed it. 

CM  Fantastic! 

MM  So we had a nice time, last time Logic and I were together. 

CM  And you’re hosting another Jazz Cruise in January 2009 is that right? 

MM  Yeah, the Playboy Jazz Cruise.  Playboy’s going to sponsor it and it’s gonna be cool man.  We’ve got Herbie Hancock and Dianne Reeves and Roy Hargrove.  Got some great jazz artists who are going to be on the ship and it’s going to leave out of Florida and go down into the Caribbean. 

CM  Did you convince Keb’ Mo’ to get back on a ship? 

MM  Keb’ wasn’t trying to get on the boat but I convinced him man.  I said “look man, we’re gonna have Herbie, we’re gonna have Roy Hargrove”.  He said “man OK, well, based on that I guess I’ll have to deal with all of it” (laughs) so I’m really excited to have him. 

CM  Now, I read, I think one of that last things I read yesterday was a quote that described you as “a New Yorker, who plays funk, with jazz”. 

Now, in my mind, a lot of column inches are written about the state of jazz, but what’s the state of funk – who’s flying the funk flag in 2008, apart from yourself? 

MM  Well.. I think we have Bootsy, who’s been popular since the 70’s and is just as popular now.  He’s doing stuff and Maceo’s doing stuff. 

And Stanley Clarke’s on the scene man, doing his thing.  He’s actually reuniting with Return To Forever but he, Victor and I are going to get together and do some gigs. 

So, I think that the funk really never left, because you know it’s the base of hip-hop.  So it’s in people’s ears – they just have to start listening to the instruments again… 

CM  That’s for sure… 

MM  … and so I don’t think it’s that hard to revitalise it.  People seem to react very well to what we’re doing so I’m hoping we can keep the funk alive. 

CM  Fantastic!  Marcus, As a long-time fan of yours, , this has been a real pleasure for me and I want to wish you every success with the new CD, with the tour and with the Playboy Jazz Cruise early next year. 

And behalf of the readers of the Smooth and Soul website, I want to say thank you for talking to me today. 

MM  No problem at all man, right now we’re headed towards Sirius Radio, which is a satellite radio station and we’re going to do a live performance on the radio… 

CM  Cool. 

MM  … so we’re going to have a good time, fire it up. 

CM  I wish you every success Marcus. 

MM  Thanks man, you take care. 

CM  Thanks very much for talking to me.