PH: Welcome to Germany. Is it your first time here?

Jessy J: Thank you,It´s my first time.

PH:  Do you like it?

Jessy J: I do. It´s beautiful. There´s a lot of nature. So I was surprised to see some interesting birds at the hotel. Very beautiful birds. Different from the ones that are in the United States. The colouring is different.

PH: First I want to introduce myself. I´m Peter Höld from the internet radio GrooveFM.

You ever heard about it?  

Jessy J: I have heard , yes.

PH: You have heard about GrooveFM? Hey, that’s great!                                      

And congrats (congratulations) for your top ranking on the Jazz Billboards.

Jessy J: Yes, thank you. Thank you so much.

PH: It´s sensational, you are number one!

Jessy J: Thank You, it was a big honour, so I felt very buzzed.

PH: Absolutely - it´s a very good album, I like it a lot. I heard it in the car on my way to Augsburg. It´s great.

Jessy J:: Where do you live?

PH: I live near Frankfurt (am Main). You know Frankfurt?

Jessy J: I heard of it.

PH: You have to visit it. – next time you are in Germany.

The name of your new album is Hot Sauce? Where does the name come from?

Jessy J: The name comes from being a latina. Cause I´m Latin. Latinas are known for their spicieness of their personality and sometimes having a hot temper.  The name Hot Sauce came from my jives also being very latin inspired. One of the songs have rhythms from Latin America and in the jives is more like the sauce it´s coming from my saxophone.  

PH: Hot Sauce is your third album and also produced by Paul Brown. Which way did you find each other?

Jessy J:: I found him! (laughs)– I met him at the New Pearl Beach Jazz Festival in 2006, he had a concert with his band and was performing on stage. I knew that I wanted to work with him, so after his concert I introduced myself, gave him a cd and a business card and said „One day I would love you to produce my album. When can we start?“

And he was really busy, he was explaining to me that he had projects already lined up and he was only working with artists that had record deals. At that time I did not have a record deal. So he called me the next day and said he listened to the album and he liked it, but he was busy. So we did not get a chance to work together at that time, but a few months later he needed a saxophone player for his band. So he had my information, he liked my album, so he called me to play a few shows with him.

After our first performance together, we started working together consistantly. And we decided to work together on a cd, Tequila Moon.  

PH: A great opportunity, yes. (laughs) On your new album you work together with a lot of famos musicians like Joe Sample, Ray Parker Junior, ... and was it collaboration by chance, or how did you come together?  

Jessy J: I asked them – again. (laughs) Some thing that I´ve noticed is from being a musician is you need to know exactly, what you would like to do. So in my case I knew, that I wanted to work with Paul Brown. So I knew, I wanted to record and write with Joe Sample. I wanted to record with Harvey Mason, Ray Parker Junior, and the other people that where on the CD. So I´m very goal oriented, so I like to write a list of the things that I would like to do, and then I pursue them, actively.

When I first met Joe Sample in 2008, it was after the announcement of my CD Tequila Moon, we had a jam session performing in California, and I met him and I introduced myself, and then I said „I would love to play with you“. And he was getting ready to go on stage and he asked me „do you have your saxophone? Come up and play with us.“ I played a song with him, „Put it where you want it“, it´s one of his very famous songs. And after we finished jamming together, and on stage, during this song, we kept looking at each other, we kept playing off for each other, we had a lot of musical chemistry.  So after the song was finished, we said, that was so much fun, that was a great time, let´s do it again, and I asked him „Joe I´d like to work with you on a CD“ and we kept in touch. He´d been all over the world travelling and finally we had a chance to work together. At the beginnning of this year we wrote and recorded two songs, Rainbow Gold and Last Night.  

PH:: Great. And on your actual album you jammed the song Last Night, I read, it´s been recorded in one take and the hole song lasts 15 minutes. Do you plan to release this on a special download or something like that?  

Jessy J: Ohh, that´s a good idea. I haven´t thought about it. 15 minutes is a looong song.  

PH: A very long song, but it´s something like a live track.  

Jessy J: It was special, because we kept grooving. There was no way to end. Cause we felt so good we all just kept playing: Harvey Mason was playing drums, Nick Sample was playing the bass, he´s Joe´s son, and then Joe and Ray Parker Junior. And we just kept jamming and jamming, finally we have to end it. (singing) Ba-da-da-ba, the way it just ended.  

PH: You can hear it on the track, there’s a lot of fun.  

Jessy J: Yeah, (laughs) also at the end of the track did you notice, that we kept playing? After it ended? (singing) da-da-da-da one two da-ga-da da-ga-da con-ga-daga and then grooving back into the song again and then we faded it out.

PH: Yes, I heard that. We play the track on our radio. That was a little problem, because I don´t hear the song till the end and wondered what´s happening, when there was silence.  

Jessy J:  Your english is very great, by the way.  

PH: Thank you very much. 

My favourite songs on Hot Sauce are Rainbow Gold and Last Night. What is your favourite and why?  

Jessy J: Well, the whole album is very special to me, because this is the album that I was dreaming about for a long time and we took two years to record it. True Love came out at 2009 and before True Love was even out I was hardly started writing music for this album Hot Sauce. To me it´s a very special album because of the success of the album but more so because of the people that were on the album like Joe Sample. Someone when I grew up listening to. In college, we would study his music and very well respect it.

So, those two songs also stand out for me, Rainbow Gold and Last Night. It´s being highlights of my musical career, being in the studio with them.

I also really love to play Hot Sauce live, because of the energy from that song is incredible on stage. The energy just never drops down, it just stays up, up, up, up high at an intense level, so that´s my recent favour performance song.  

PH:: Some questions, I also asked Paul: What is on your i-pod or MP3-Player? Got an i-pod?  

Jessy J: I do. (laughs) I have 160 gigabyte i-pod so there´s everything on my i-pod. Some of the things that I like to listen to are classics and Sergio Mendez. I love the senior Sergio Mendez. I also have a lot of music from new artists that play jazz. (Like) Gretchen Parlado, as Esperanza Spalding , Saunders Sermons, who performed on my CD as well. I Like the classic jazz greats. So I gonna have a kind selection of Latin music, jazz music, new jazz music, like the artists I told you about, and then even some older traditional jazz music like Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges. I love music.

So any music that´s really good, that´s what I like to listen to.  

PH: You are using a lot of social network, You are everywhere: facebook, twitter, ... I think you have had a podcast, but the last update I´ve seen was from June last year...  

Jessy J: I haven´t updated it recently, but I just recorded ten webisodes for my new album, and they´re all receipts featuring Hot Sauce. So I get into the kitchen and cook up some latin mexican tradishes that was very fun to record.

I think it´s important to be direct to the fans. On this days and age when CD stores are less and less, now artists have the opportunity to connect directly to people and I think that´s invaluable. So I see it as a great ressort so I really do spend a lot of time investing in that.   

PH: A great opportunity to be very close to your fans, yes. Now we are at the end of the interview. Thank you very much for your time and I’m looking forward to your concert tonight.  

Jessy J: You´re welcome.