Although Cal grew up seeing his father play the piano, he remembers taking piano lessons for every year that he was in school. He has been trained in advance jazz and theory classes and would admit that he learned some of the stuff on his own as well.
Cal is super excited about his new CD which is due for an early 2013 release. This CD is the follow-up to the highest successful compilation Inside Out which spawned hits such as “She Loves the Water” and the title track.
For the new CD, Cal has already secured sax player Elan Trotman to appear on one of the tracks called “Smooth” which has already been released and receiving good feedback. Asked about Elan’s collaboration on the track, Cal said that it was actually a kind of spontaneous affair. “Elan came to town to do a show at one of the local spots out here and called up and asked if I would like to sit in with him. He was only going to be here for a couple of days and I ask him if he wanted to do some recording. It started off as nothing too serious; we said we will go in and see what happens. He went in there (the studio) and he just really threw down the set on a track that I have been working on and that is what we now know as “Smooth.”
Cal said the track paves the way for tracks on the new CD that would be different from those on his previous CD. “I think when you together with someone else you find different stuff than what you would do on your own. Most people think that you can still tell it’s a track that I would have done but it’s got a different quality with Elan on it and it’s really taking it to the next level.”
On the new CD, Cal told us that he would be pretty much building on what he did with Inside Out. He explained it by saying “I think that if you like Inside Out you will really love the new project as well. Inside Out was 10 years in the making so a lot of those songs were written over 10 years ago and when I’m writing songs, they are kind of reflective of what’s going on in my life. Inside Out has a wide range of different experiences that are reflected in songs and on the new project there are obviously different things going on. I can hear growth in the new CD; I can hear what I was able to build on and what I was able to do with Inside Out.
He said that although the new CD is still coming together, it would definitely be a “continuation or a growth sprout from Inside Out.”
When not recording, Cal works behind the scenes as a music producer. Does his producer life run parallel to that of a musician? According to Cal, “interesting enough I have worked in Hollywood for so many years in the industry and you find out that most of the engineers and producers are themselves musicians on some level or another. Great example of that is Richard Marx; he was an engineer that worked with my dad before he launched his career as an artist. And there are other examples too: Mic Murphy from The System, he was a technician that traveled with artists as I do and I know some people who have worked with him as well.”
There is much talk about Jazz being a dying genre and I asked Cal how he felt about that statement? He feels that there is more of a “transformation” going on in terms of the advancement of technology rather than the music fading away. “The access to music has changed; it used to be if you wanted music you had to go buy a record or a CD. Now you can download and of course you have the illegal downloading. Everyone says this is so new but when we were kids we took our favorite songs off the radio. It wasn’t nearly easy to do; you had to sit and wait for the song to come on the radio and by the time I had gotten my favorite song on cassette, I had earned that.
“So now it’s just so easy (to get music) and it’s on demand so that’s changing.
There are a lot of ideas floating around on how we can continue to make a living as artists. As professionals we support artists and well, there is a whole industry that kind of depends on the sale of the music and it is having a hard time right now. Technology has also opened the opportunities for a lot more people to make records. You can do on a laptop now what you needed a multi-million studio to do before, so I think there is a new influx of new talent that is made possible by the fact that the technology is there so I like to think of it as a transformation and a lot of the old avenues are transforming.
“There is so much radio now that is online. So the way we get the music is changing and I think in time it will find its balance, I’m hoping that. I think as long as the music has feeling and its speaking to people, it will remain alive and that’s what I strive to do with my music; music that resonates with experiences. I think as long as you are able to do that and that human element is there, I think that people would be able to be drawn to it.”
Cal who writes his own songs for his CDs described the songwriting process “It’s very difficult for me to say ‘Oh I need to write a song and go and write it.’ There are those who can do that. For me there is a moment that hits you, it’s so simple when that time comes to put it down; it really only takes a few minutes to come up with something. Of course it takes time to put it together but as far as the inception of the song, you just never know when it is going to hit.”
Asked about the weirdest moments when a song will hit him, Cal said“a lot of times I get the idea in my sleep and I would hear the song completely done in my sleep and I have to write it down so it won’t get away from me. Other times I will sit there messing around (at the piano) and I will hear something if I’m practicing.
“Sometimes when I’m driving I will get an idea so I try to keep some sort of device with me so I can record it. Sometimes it hits in the most inopportune times and I’m walking around with my I-Pad and I’m trying to hum a song into it and people are like ‘what is he doing?’
You can force it and you can make something happen but those songs are no where near the same as the ones that just kind of happen.”
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