shannon kennedy home |
fan club |
bio |
performances | cds |
store |
saxophone sound clips |
photos |
contact
| Steppin Up (2007) | |||||||
About Steppin Up:
This smooth jazz CD features Shannon Kennedy's band as well as several guest artists. Dan Reckard and Andrew Sporn on keys, Bob Fazio on bass, Drew Simpson on guitar, and Bubba Bryant on drums. Guests include Greg Vail on saxophone, EWI (electronic wind instrument), and percussion, Bijon Watson on trumpet, Tony Guerrero on flugel horn, Peter White on guitar and accordian, and Kirk Whalum on tenor saxophone. recording session photos | album artwork Steppin Up Song Information: Click on a song title to hear a sound sample of the song.
Writing the music to Steppin Up: Writing Double Shot (this song was composed when Shannon was 17) - I first started writing when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school, and I've used several different methods of composition; some have worked while others have not. My first method of writing was sort of random. I would write a melody in Finale and write harmony under it - most of which didn't make sense. I later wrote music by playing a melody on the sax and would later figure out the chords I heard in my head in Finale. Another method I used was to write the chords using the piano, then write the melody over the chords. This method is the one I used to write Double Shot. I wasn't quite happy with the melody I wrote, so I took it to Greg Vail to improve. Initially, the style of the song was 80s pop/rock, like something you would hear in the movie Flashdance. We were going to record it this way until my piano player Dan Reckard sat down to help me with the arrangement. He suggested that we record the song in a Steely Dan-like style (we are both huge fans), so we came up with a groove that is similar to the song Home at Last. When we got into the studio to record the song, Greg Vail was inititially going to record tenor of Double Shot. Kirk Whalum ended up being available to work on the project, so Greg opted to have Mr. Whalum record the tenor on this song (and I must say we are both really happy with the song). Writing Mosaics (this song was composed by Shannon at the age of 17) - This was another song that I wrote using the piano to create the chords and the sax to creat a melody over the changes. When I first wrote this song, it was a very simple pop tune with a little bit of latin influence. This song and The Night Shines Through were the first two songs I ever took to a show to have my band perform live. This first time we ever played Mosaics, my band played it with a much more complex latin style. The more complex feel the band gave it was very cool, but wasn't quite what I wanted on the album, so we found a way to fuse elements of the simple pop feel and the complex latin groove on the recording. You can really hear the transition between the sax solo and Dan's piano solo. The quartet recorded Mosiacs, but listening back to it later, I thought it could use a little bit more, so I wrote woodwind parts which I recorded on keyboards, flutes, and clarinet. The woodwinds gave Mosiacs the more light and up feel that you hear. Writing Simple Secrets (this song was composed by Shannon at the age of 16) - I wrote this song when I was studying with Rob Mullins. My best friend and vocalist Katy Eggleton was also studying with him at the time, and Rob wanted me to write her songs for her to write lyrics to and record. This and What If I'm in Love With You are the two songs I wrote for Katy (Simple Secrets was originally called Tune For Katy). The title Simple Secrest came from a poem that I wrote. This song was one I wrote in Finale. It was a little random at first, so when I decided I wanted to record it on the album I spent some time to correct the randomness. When we got into the studio to record Simple Secrests, the sound the song had was a little bit of a surprise. I expected it to be a little bit more jazzy, but it it sounded very much like a pop tune. Dan came up with this really fun keyboard part which really makes this song - I love it! Simple Secrets ended up being a very fun song. Writing The Night Shines Through (this song was composed by Shannon at the age of 17) - I was never formally trained on the piano, so my voicings and chords tend to be a little unique. The Night Shines Through is one of those pieces where you sit down to practice and it just kind of writes itself, but you can still hear my unique chord progressions. The Night Shines Through is probably one of my favorite songs on this album, I feel really connected to this piece - it is a very emotional ballad. My father chose the title for this song - without him it would have been called "E minor ballad" , so this song is for my dad. Writing Old Town Coffee House (this song was written by Shannon at the age of 17) – I wrote this song one day while I was practicing. At the time, I was playing at a coffee house down in Temecula, California called the Old Town Coffee House. I had a gig at the coffee house that same day that I wrote the song, so I decided to name the song after the coffee house and perform it there that night. If you go to the Old Town Coffee House off of Old Town Front Street in Temecula, you will still see a framed version of the song on the wall there. It was my piano player Andrew Sporn who decided that this song was a calypso. Dan Reckard, who played keys on the recording, played with a marimba sound that really gives the song character. Drew Simpson, my guitar player made me fall out of my chair laughing when we were recording this song. He was playing a rhythmic octave groove and only once during the song he changed it for about a beat. I thought it was really funny when he did it, and I still laugh every time I hear the song. Writing What If I’m In Love With You (written by Shannon at the age of 17) – This song was originally called Mother’s Day RNB, and then Stolen Embrace. It was written for my friend Katy Eggleton, but I sequenced it and gave it to my mom for mother’s day when I was sixteen. What If I’m in Love With You was originally a very slow RNB tune, but we sped it up quite a bit and made it a little bit funkier. Dan Reckard help me fix up the bridge a little to keep the energy going, and the song just kind of played itself in the studio. Writing Just A Sketch (written by Shannon at the age of 17) – This is the oddball song on the record. There aren’t very many smooth jazz artists who write and record a tango. And the style isn’t the only reason this piece is different – the instrumentation is also unique. The melody is played on bari sax while the countermelody is on clarinet. It is also the first song on the record with strings (which I played by the way). And yes, it’s true, I also played guitar on the song. Guitar was my first instrument, and I haven’t really kept it up, but I decided to pull back out for this song. Another great feature to this song is Peter White's solo acoustic guitar playing and accordian playing. His contribution really added to the flavor of this track. Just A Sketch is currently my favorite song on the record. Writing Do You Remember (written by Shannon at the age of 16) – If you listen to this song, it kind of explains itself. My friend Tony Guerrero played flugel horn on this song and Greg Vail played EWI. I think it is the only true-to-form smooth jazz song on the record. Writing Steppin Up (written by Shannon at the age of 17) – I came up with this song while practicing tenor (yes, that does happen occasionally). It was initially intended to be played on tenor, but I ended up liking the sound of tenor and alto sharing the melody. I had a lot of fun writing the horn parts on this song – I played alto, tenor and two bari parts in the horn section and Bijon Watson played the trumpet parts. Arranging In A Sentimental Mood (not written by Shannon) – This is the only song on the entire album that I did not write. In A Sentimental Mood has been my favorite song for quite some time now. If you’ve ever attended one of my performances, you’ve seen me play it on bari. In A Sentimental Mood is a beautiful ballad that we recorded with a little twist – it is done as an RNB ballad as opposed to a jazz ballad. Writing Whatcha Gonna Do (written by Shannon at the age of 15 and adapted at the age of 17) – It took a very long time to come up with a title for this song, but my personal trainer, Mike Blanchard came up with it at one of my shows. Greg and I wrote this song together. I think of the Crusaders every time I hear it. I initially played it on soprano, but decided it would be better with a more aggressive tenor sound. I have to thank Drew for his wonderful guitar on this track – it makes the song. Writing A Purpose (written by Shannon at the age of 17) – I was working this song, and showed it to my friend Dan Higgins who really helped me out on it. It was a lot of fun sitting at the piano with help and watching the song grow into the powerful ballad that you hear on the record. This was the first song I ever arranged strings on, and it was a very educating experience. I wrote them on my own and kind of surprised people with it, which gave me the courage to arrange the strings on Just a Sketch. I love this song as the closer on the album, I think it is very impacting. The Making of Steppin Up by Shannon Kennedy This CD took a little but longer to put together than the first project, Angel Eyes. We started talking about the project in maybe June or July 2006, and I wasn’t really sure if my band was ever actually going to make it into the studio to record. In interviews and such, I told people that I was working on my second CD so that I would kind of force myself into having to do (I even gave people a tentative release date to give myself a deadline). I found it was a very effective form of self motivation although I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. We finally made it into the studio in August, the scheduling was very difficult because I only had one week off of school in between semesters, so I had just that one week to try to get everyone into the studio. Luckily, everyone was available to get in the recording studio the Monday and Tuesday the week I had off, so recording the rhythm section went pretty smoothly. In the studio, we had our fair share of problems. The first day, my drummer, Bubba Bryant, broke his snare somehow so we had to retrack some of the stuff the next day. Another problem we had was that the headphone system was working 100%, so there were complications such as having the click track in only one ear. After two days of recording in the studio, the bass, keys, and drum tracks were pretty much laid down, but Dan Reckard, my keyboard player came over to my house later that week to fix and add some piano parts. The next week, school started for me at Cal State Long Beach, and I got a little busier than I was ready for. With the exception of recording The Night Shines Through to hand out as a demo at the Labor Day Jazz Festival I was playing at in Vegas on September 2nd, I didn’t get any of the other saxophone tracking completed. After I got back from Vegas with my band, Drew Simpson, my guitar player and I got together to track guitar on the album. Recording with Drew was a lot of fun; he added a lot of character to the music on Steppin Up. I finally got around to recording soprano saxophone on Do You Remember, (a song I wrote for a friend of mine because he always forgets) and passed it off to my friend Tony Guerrero who played flugel horn on the track. This was one of the first songs on the album that I recorded keyboards on, and probably the first time I ever tracked keyboards on a recording. September 22nd, 2006 was my 19th birthday, and my friends and I were going to go to Sea World, but they had to bail on me, so I spent ten hours or more that day recording. The first song that I worked on was Just A Sketch, the tango. Greg Vail drove up from San Diego where he was working that day to say hey to me for my birthday and listened to the song and gave me a few suggestions. I recorded the bari sax and the clarinet on the track that day. I also recorded Old Town Coffee House and Mosaics, as well as the title track Steppin Up. Over the next few weeks, after I had been in school and adjusted to the schedule change, I was able to set aside time to record I was able to record on most of the other tracks. I only had Double Shot and What If I’m in Love With You left to record because I was waiting on guest artists. Double Shot was written by Greg Vail and myself, somewhat modeled after a Steely Dan song. I was very excited to have Kirk Whalum play on this song as a guest artist. We recorded this song in mid-October when Kirk Whalum was out in California for another recording session. Lastly, on Just A Sketch, I had the priviledge of recording smooth jazz guitarist Peter White. I went to his studio and together we tracked him on acoustic guitar and he later tracked accordian. I am forever grateful for Peter White's talents and contribution to this project! I started recording and working on Steppin Up at the age of 18, and at the age of 19 and four months later Steppin Up was completed. It was a much longer process that the making of Angel Eyes, but I am very happy with Steppin Up and I already plan to spend even more time on the next project. |
|||||||
