 This episode of the Hawaii Smooth Jazz Connection, I am your host, Wendell and Harris. As you know, I'd like to showcase our local artist here in Hawaii and today is one of those days. My guest today resides on the Big Island and began playing music at the age of 14. He studied with legendary saxophonist, Bill Green, and has played in numerous bands in and around LA. He attended the University of California at Los Angeles and began his professional career working with many big names in the music industry, including Ray Charles, Donna Summer, Bob Marley and the Whalers, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Bonnie Ray, and legendary jazz musician, Forest Henderson. This is just to name a few. Let's find out more about this artist and welcome Mr. Jeff Gape to the show. Aloha Jeff, how are you? I'm great. Aloha Gwen. How are you doing? I'm well. Thank you so much for being on the show as you, I love to showcase our local artists because I don't think you guys get what you deserve, you know, for people to know. So you tell us, how did you get into playing music? Oh, interesting story. I won't go too far into this, but you know when you're in second, third grade and you take a music aptitude test and I failed and I wanted to play so badly. So I never played. My brother picked up the clarinet and oh, probably when I was 12, and I just picked it up and started playing it, no lessons and kind of surpassed him at that point a little bit. Decided I wanted to play saxophone. So at 14, I got a saxophone and took private lessons, didn't go into the school band initially because I was just learning. And then a year later, I got into the school band and went forward to that a couple years there and then I was out by school. That got me going. Yeah. That got me going. From there, bought a one-way ticket to LA. I lived in upstate New York two weeks after I graduated from high school, $100 in my pocket that was given to me by a friend, by the way. And my horn and a suitcase had a friend in LA and I said I'm coming and I showed up at the airport. I'd never been to LA before, showed up at the airport. I was still 17, wasn't quite 18 at that point. And just got into the scene kind of, you know, tried to hang around the right people, stay out of trouble, which I managed to do. Which you managed to do? Wow. So you just picked up, you just picked up upstate New York with $100 in your pocket and just went to LA. Right. I did. And you know, when you're that age, you're fearless and I was fearless. I do remember sitting in Chicago at O'Hare and the airplane and going, what have I done? Okay. All right. Yeah. This is cool. Wow. Now you played, you were in LA, of course, and you played with some of the biggest names in industry and, you know, I named some of them, Donna Summer, Bob Marley. I was a happenstance at the Roxy in Hollywood and, you know, these gigs all come about not because anybody knows who you are, but it's all due to networking. So when you network, my goal was to study with the best players that I could, okay? And so to kind of back up a little bit, I joined the Musicians Union, local 47 Hollywood. And now I got a book and I got a lot of names and a lot of these names in this book, in that time, they had their home address, they had their home phone number. So the first guy I called literally was Ronnie Laws. Okay. Yes. I called Ronnie Laws at his house, his wife answered, and because I had just seen him at the lighthouse in Redondo Beach, I thought, I need to, I need to talk to this guy. Remember, I just turned 18 at this point. So I didn't know anything. He was so nice to me, absolutely so nice to me. I interrupted his dinner. But from there, basically what happened was is I, I was, he referred me to a couple other guys that were teaching. One was John Clemmer. And I thought, oh, okay, I didn't know who these guys were. So I looked, you know, looked him up as much as you can back then. There was no internet, of course. And listen to the local jazz station and I found him on there and studied a little bit with him and moved on to another teacher in between gigs. And so what happens is, is you network and when you're working, when you're studying with someone, if you're good enough, they'll use you as a sub. And so that was my goal is to become a sub. And so I became a sub. And when my instructors couldn't do the gig, they would call me. And so pretty soon you get to know these people and the object was to get in everybody's book. You wanted to be a guy that showed up on time, a guy that did it in first take if you could. Everything that you could possibly do to keep the job and to get the next one. And so that was my goal, really. And so it just kind of springboarded from there. You know, I talked to some guys. I remember talking to Al Garth, who used to play with Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina. I remember calling him up and saying, you know, I was thinking of going out on the road with those guys. And he goes, don't do it, don't do it. They're ready for a breakup right now. The print, I'm going to like this if they hear it. But he strongly recommended that I don't go. I had a few of those too. But in those days, you know, you take everything that you could possibly do. And that's basically how it worked. You know, the Ray Charles thing was I was living in Colorado. I moved out there for a short period of time, had a house out there, called up a friend of mine. He said, yeah, Ray's auditioning on Sunday. Get here. So that's how these gigs come about. So even with Michael Jackson and Miss Diana Ross, two of them. Right. That particular thing was a special she was doing. But again, I was with local 47 and they use union musicians. So we are union musicians. And if you look at that special, sometimes you can see me had much more hair. I think I'm going to go back and look for it now. But it was a special on CBS called Diana. Anyway, this was like in 1981, OK, just before Michael was really getting rolling, of course. And so, yeah, that's how those gigs come about, you know, word of mouth. And so I encourage all the young people, you know, even though we don't get in people's books these days, it's social networking now. Yes, you want to to get involved that way with as many players as possible. Yes. Well, how did you go ahead? No, no, no, go ahead. Yeah. How did you how did what brought you to Hawaii? Brought me to Hawaii is well, my wife and I have two children who have grown up. Our parents have long passed away and taking care of them. We looked at each other and said, now what? And we said, let's just sell everything and move to the Big Island. And most people thought we were crazy. I like to tell people, actually, I tell everybody this, I didn't move to the Big Island to start a career. I came here to end one, actually. But once I moved here, I started had all this time. I was basically retired at all this time. And I was composing and writing. And I thought, well, I need to put together a studio here. So I started putting together a studio and writing and composing. And that my 2008 release, Paradise Park, that that was basically the result of that. And so at that point, it was like, well, people might want to hear this. So I started playing locally. And and then I got a lot of attention in Europe, actually. They seem to like the UK really seems to enjoy my tune. So I'm very pleased with that. They've given me a lot of publicity that way. And that's basically how, you know, it just kind of morphed into this into that. And every time I do a project, I say it's going to be the last one. The last one I did was what, six years ago. And, you know, with this COVID thing going on and no live music, there was nothing else to do but sit in the studio and write lousy tune after lousy tune until you find something that you like. I think any composer out there could could relate to that. Now, what is your favorite genre of music to play? What is your favorite? Oh, favorite. I like I like everything from chamber music up to smooth jazz, straight ahead. I'm more geared, though, to what I compose these days. So it's it's smooth, but it's not. I don't know if I fit really into a specific genre because I would say 15 years ago, I decided that whatever I was going to do was going to be original. So if I'm going to play out, it's going to be my tunes. And if nobody likes them and nobody wants to hear them, I won't play out anymore. That was where I was at. So everything I do now when I go out is my original material. And I have to say here on the Big Island, I've just had a wonderful, wonderful response. Really, to, you know, and I can't thank the audience enough the fact that you can actually go out, play live, people come in to hear your original material and nothing better than that for an artist. There really is nothing better than that. Yes, well, hopefully, once all this COVID and stuff is done, we can get you over here to Oahu. I would love it. Yeah. We need we need you over here in Oahu. There's a lot of guys over there that are waiting to go to work, too. You know, yes. Yes. Yeah, there's some great players over there. Yes, they are. Now, you talked about what exactly have you been doing during this COVID besides writing besides writing music? What else have you been doing? Sure. Well, I do have a day job. OK, and I work for the county of Hawaii and I work with the Kupuna through parks and recreation. And so we assist them with information and assistance and transportation to and from doctors, appointments, basically anything that someone who's a shut in primarily essential, we will will help. You know, if somebody needs some assistance with their health insurance, we'll assist them with that if they need, if they're hungry, we'll assist them with the local food basket program over here. So we're basically community service workers. So we're in the community, whatever need they have, we try to fill that need. If not, we will refer them. Oh, OK, all right. Well, we have to go on a quick break. But we'll be right back. Aloha and welcome back to the Hawaii smooth jazz connection where we are speaking with Mr. Jeff Gay over on the Big Island. Jeff, now tell me, we talked about your career, what, you know, how you got into music and we talked about your career. But tell me, who would you. Anybody that's dead or alive, who would you like to collaborate with? Oh, on a project? That's a very interesting question. I've always really admired Keiko Matsui. Really love her composing. And she's really the total package. I really, really do. There's so many, many great players out there. It's really hard to nail it down. I've worked with so many different generations of players. It's really tough, but she's someone I've always admired. Boney James, great player, ran into some physical issues, almost stopped playing and is back with a vengeance. So, you know, wonderful to see that. Wow, well, you know, speaking into fruition, it might happen one day. You never know. You never know. You never know. You never know. You never know. Now, let's talk about your albums, okay? So in 2005, you did trade secrets. 2008, you did Paradise Park. 2011, you did Shoe Strings, which is my favorite album. And that album received in 2011, a Nahuku Hano Hano Award nomination. But in 2012, it won the Big Island Music Award. Your latest album is Portrait. So tell us about that. Portrait, basically, you know, each album is different. It's a collaboration. It's basically a collaboration of where I'm at at that point in my life. And that's how they come about. I never really know what's going to happen. I don't write for any specific person, any specific genre. It's just, this is what's happening. And that's how all the albums actually have come out. Wow. Well, will you play for us today? Will you play for us now? Sure, I'd be happy to. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I think what I'll do is I will play something new. Okay. New that's not already released yet. So this will be out on my next album. And this too is titled Catnip. Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah. Okay. Muster point. You know, I'm just with, you said that's going to be on your new album. Right. Coming up. And it's, and it's called catnip. So I'm going to be looking for that one. So I can play it on my radio show. But what other projects, if any, do you have coming up or any, I know it's kind of hard with the COVID and everything to do performances and shows. But I know a lot of entertainers and performers are like booked into 2021. Right. Do you have anything coming up on the big island or anywhere? Locally here. Yes. We're just waiting. Once again, we're just waiting until things open up. Some of the clubs have opened up, but they're not, they've got singles right now, you know, just someone ukulele, that sort of thing, guitar and vocal. Right now the bands are not happening. So we're in a holding pattern. Just like we are over here on Oahu. So one thing that I want to ask is, what advice would you give a new artist coming into the industry? Ah, new artist. Well, like we had talked before, social networking is really a key because you can reach worldwide. You can be some guy sitting in a studio at home. Here we are. And, you know, we can reach out to, you know, I hear from people from the UK, from Japan, and Germany, Australia. And then of course the US mainland, that sort of thing. And that's basically how I found you. And so I recommend, you know, use your social media. If you're an up and coming player, find, find a teacher. It doesn't matter how much you think you know, find a teacher, especially someone that is much better than you. And I do recommend that for anybody upcoming, the people that you hang out with, they always want to be better players than yourself. That's how you get better. So that's basically what I recommend. Just networking, get your tunes out there, and always be ready to go. Whether you're playing, you're playing a little gig at the Elks Club, or you've got Carnegie Hall coming up. It's the same gig. And always be prepared. That was always my motto. Now, where can people go to look you up to find out, you have a website, you want to give them your website, where they can find you? Certainly, yeah. It's Jeff Gaith.com. So www.jeffgeeth.com. And they can find out anything else that they'd be interested in. The samples of all my albums on there, and they can make purchases that they like. We're on Pandora and Spotify, and all of the streaming services. So you can find me out there. Yes, you can. Because I found. Yes, you can. Well, I thank you so much for agreeing, you know, to do the interview. I am just so happy to interview again, our local artists, because not too many people know, you know, know about you. And my goal is to, I want people to know about you, you know. So kind of you. And thank you for giving Big Island a voice. Oh, yes. Most definitely. Most definitely. Again, thank you so much for being on the Hawaii smooth jazz connection. And I will definitely be in touch with you. Most definitely. Most definitely. Aloha. Thank you. Aloha to my viewers. Thank you for tuning in. And until next time. Aloha. Thank God.