As I have written before, I have admired Walter Smith III’s playing since I first heard his album III (check it out if you haven’t heard it yet, it is gorgeous). Walter is one of my favourite saxophone players and I have been fortunate enough to see him play live with Ambrose Akinmusire, Eric Harland and Next Collective. When I saw that Walter was coming to Australia for a small tour I e-mailed him and asked if I could interview him, Walter was very generous with his time and his answers.
[Interview contains very mild course language]
J: Thanks for taking the time out of your schedule
WSIII: No problem man.
J: How is the jet lag?
WSIII: [Laughs] Ah, it could be better. I’m from Europe so it’s like doubly worse than it should be.
J: Your schedule since you were last here in Australia with Eric Harland has been pretty crazy you have been all over the world.
WSIII: Yeah that’s pretty much the job you know – always heading somewhere.
J: How do you stay inspired and creative when you are constantly juggling jet lag, minimal preparation time and being away from family?
WSIII: The family thing is the hardest you know – not being home as much. But in terms of being inspired, that’s the whole thing that gets you from one concert to the next one because otherwise it’s kind of ridiculous. You’re always tired, you’re always kind of eating not necessarily ideal meals. You’re not really taking care of yourself in the right way, but the reason you’re doing it is because of the love of actually performing and playing music. So, listening to a lot of music, talking about it, doing a lot of stuff outside of music as well, just to kind of take your mind in different places – but always for the purpose of the music.
J: How does humour fit into music for you, I know lots of people always talk about Walter Smith being such a funny guy, and even with some of your song titles you are quite playful with it, how does humour fit into music for you?
WSIII: I dunno, that’s just always been something that is a big part of my personality. Like dealing with people I kind of get along with everyone and a lot of it ends up based on not taking anything too seriously, being able to laugh at anything. I think when it comes to music, the most important thing you can do is just be honest about your own personality. That’s kind of the way I am, it should be reflected in everything I do – if I draw a picture, I’m probably going to draw something stupid because that’s where my mind is all the time. But you know everyone is not like that, for instances travelling with Ambrose [Akinmusire], we’ll be there and everything I say he’ll be like “dude, are you just like constantly laughing?” So somebody like him is on the other side where he is pretty silly but he is often serious a lot of the time – and that is also reflected in his music you know? I think everybody’s personality comes through. For me I’m pretty much always doing something silly.
J: I’ve been thinking about how different artists focus on different things, some artists focus on a political or like a social justice agenda, sort of like Christian Scott, some artists have a spiritual focus, some artists like making jazz more accessible and some people have really cerebral goals as well which I can’t always understand because I am a musical rookie. What’s your focus when you get to create, play and record your own music?
WSIII: I think what you just said kind of sums it up, everyone has different perspective on the same stuff. We’re all using the same twelve notes so what your personality and how you were brought up and what your interests are is how it reflects in the music. So for me whenever I sit down to write something, the inspiration could be something that is very serious at times, but a lot of the time as I start working on it through my own filter, it slowly goes from something very serious like a picture or a feeling into something very silly for me. So like it always kind of transitions, whatever it is I’m starting with I bring it back towards what I’m really about, and I think that kind of ends up being why people have a sound that follows them if they’re playing their own music or if they’re playing some else’s music. The choices they make, it doesn’t matter if it’s your own stuff or not, your choices still come through on whatever it is.
J: That brings me to another question, although firstly I might add that I’m surprised how little I have read about your project with Dayna Stephens, it is such a gorgeous record.
WSIII: Thanks.
J: Speaking about composition, how did your compositional process change between writing for your latest album Still Casual to Reminiscent? It’s still very much you but at the same time it’s a different side of you I guess.
WSIII: I think everyone when they compose, you kind of come up with stuff that you feel represents you in a way that want to put forward. But also write stuff that while you still put the same time and effort into it, somehow it doesn’t really kind of go in that same direction, so it goes in a separate pile. If I’m going to do my own project I have a certain thing that I want to think about and want to put everything in that direction. For something else I’m way more open to bringing something that I would never really use for my own thing so the stuff of Dayna’s record ends up being stuff from that pile you know?
J: I see.
WSIII: I had no real attachment to my own music but when he asked me to bring a few things in, I think with that filter on it I was like “oh sure I could see Dayna doing this,” and then kind of edited a bit towards that kind of thing. It kind of had life to it that’s very different to anything I would normally do.
J: I read in a recent interview that you did that you have been thinking about doing a trio album which is exciting because we got a little glimpse of it on your album III on Criss Cross you did a trio track Highschoolish which was really cool. I really love that whole album. Is that kind of a little glimpse on what your trio sound might be?
WSIII: [Laughs] Hopefully it will be much better than that. I don’t even remember where it is but somewhere there is a really big splice, we were recording it and I wasn’t sure whether or not that song would be used but we were in the middle of it and I just stopped, I was like, “dude this shit is terrible, I’m sorry.” It was like three minutes into it and I went in the booth and [Jason] Moran was like, “Nah that shit was killing, listen back.” I listened back and I thought, “okay I dunno,” and then the guy for Criss Cross [Gerry] Teekens was there and was like, “man you actually need more time, the records not long enough,” it needed like five minutes added on, and I was like “cool.” We just went back and just started playing from wherever we stopped, it was kind of random.
J: That’s really interesting, I’ve never heard of that before.
WSIII: Yeah I don’t even remember where it was, if I could bring myself to listen to it I could probably work out where it was, it’s pretty random man. That’s like the only time I’ve ever done something like that in the studio. So the trio thing I have in mind will be very different then that. Recently in the summer I was home for a week about three weeks ago and did a couple of duo concerts and I wrote some music for that and I’m kind of feeling like the trio thing would be a combination of standards and some more thoughtful compositions more so than that Highschooish kind of thing. I’ve always wanted to play some standards, it was such a big part of learning, I learnt hundreds of tunes and then once I started really playing gigs and being a professional or whatever, that part of my learning kind of never ended up being part of what I do for a living. We never play standards, so I feel like I really just want to play them but there’s really not a avenue for me to do it so my idea behind doing it is to kind of open myself up to doing it and kind of getting back on horse in terms of really playing tunes a bit, just doing something opposite to what the norm is for me at least.
J: Do you have saxophone trio albums in particular that have inspired you, that you really go back to?
WSIII: Well yeah, the Sonny Rollins stuff but I remember the first album that I got that really inspired me to do it, which was when I was in high school was a Kenny Garrett record Triology. When I heard that, that was like my favourite album for a long time and it has “Night and Day” and all that kind of stuff, it has stuck with me, that’s something I kinda wanna do myself. But I really like all of Mark’s [Turner] stuff with FLY and [Joe] Lovano has a great trio record, a couple of them, Josh Redman, there are a ton of new ones that are really inspiring. Even Melissa Aldana, her trio record is great. So I just like that sound of the bass and saxophone filling in all the harmony and kind of being a bit more mobile in terms of not having someone to lock everything in harmonically.
J: It sounds like, from what I have read, it’s a really exposing experience for a saxophone player.
WSIII: It is because you have to kinda play a lot [laughs]. But you have to keep coming at it from different directions because it can get really old really quickly. So it is challenging and I don’t have a fully formed picture in my mind of exactly how I would approach it but I have some of the music in mind and some of the guys that I would like to play with in mind, so it’s a start.
J: Will we see a bit of that vision in Sydney on Saturday 15th August at SIMA Sound Lounge? [Tickets here]
WSIII: I dunno, we’ll see [laughs]. But we’ll totally play some, I’ve been working with some of the tunes that I kind of always loved, I’ve been going back through and reworking them and practicing them a lot, so I’m sure we’ll play some of those. We’ll do some of the stuff from the latest album too, in trio, which I have been doing recently and [laughs] that’s kind of eye opening as well because you start to realise that some of the stuff that I’m writing is really not that sound harmonically if the chords aren’t there. It’s just like melody and bass and drums, it’s like, “wow this song actually really sucks.”
J: [laughs] You sound pretty hard on yourself there.
WSIII: [laughs] No just honest.
J: I was going to ask you, and you already touched on it a bit, which current artists leave you feeling really excited about the future improvised music?
WSIII: I mean there is no shortage of them. Just now I was listening to this piano player Aaron Diehl, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him.
J: Yeah he is great.
WSIII: I was just checking out his newest record and he has Benny Golson on there and he is one of my favourites, I got to know him a little bit and he sounds ridiculous on there. At the moment I’ve been checking that out but I try to check out as much stuff as I can. Before that, I was listening to Rodney Green’s record, the live one at Smalls with Seamus Blake. You know Rodney’s a great drummer, I love playing with him too.
J: He sounds so great on Reminiscent.
WSIII: Oh yeah man he sounds great on there, he’s a very tasteful drummer.
J: I feel like everyone on that album, just to jump back to it quickly, it feels like a group that’s playing together all the time, there is some real deep connection there on that record.
WSIII: Yeah I think Dayna has a way of like galvanising [laughs] relationships with people. He kind of makes it fit together in a way and also his writing, all the songs are kind of quirky and they’re… I don’t want to say they’re easy but they’re very readable – you kind of look at it and play through it but you don’t really realize all the stuff that’s happening until a few times through. It’s just some amazing ideas he comes up with and I think the fun thing about composition to me is when somebody brings in something and it just kind of opens up that part of your mind where you’re kind of looking for all these unique things that are happening and it kind of brings something out your playing too. For that session I remember that kind of being the vibe, it was just fun you know.
J: Like you just said, different parts of your mind get opened up, you play with so many varied groups from Eric Harland’s group to like playing with Terence Blanchard to playing with Ambrose Akinmusire, there would be a whole bunch of different sides of yourself that would be opened up.
WSIII: Yeah sure absolutely, in order to exist within their world it takes a different approach, even though it kind of ends up sounding similar, the mindset is very different with different people.
J: I was wondering which live concerts you’ve been to that have kind of moved you or inspired you the most in your life?
WSIII: Ever?
J: Yeah what comes to mind?
WSIII: Well let’s see… Actually there were two concerts that I saw when I used to live in New York years ago and they were both at Joe’s Pub – it’s a little spot downtown. One of them was Charles Lloyd quartet, and it’s like a club but the way it’s set up, you’re really close to the stage so it feels intimate. It was Charles Lloyd from start to finish. Then later on that year, I think her name was Michelle Mercer, she wrote a book, Wayne Shorter’s biography came out and they did the book release there at Joe’s Pub. So Wayne was there and he sat in with Lionel [Loueke] and Gretchen [Parlato], they played for maybe half an hour then after that the Fellowship Band played and it was Myron Walden, the alto player, that was one of the most ridiculous concerts as well. For weeks after that I was thinking about and remember in great detail everything that he had played and the emotional roller coaster that that band took me on that night, it was pretty amazing. So those are just two that come to mind but of course there have been tonnes of them.
J: I lost you for a few seconds while you were talking about Charles Lloyd, which quartet was he playing with at that time?
WSIII: Oh it was the one with Geri Allen on piano, Bob Hurst on bass and Eric Harland on drums.
J: Man that would have been so killing. It’s kind of cool that you brought up Charles Lloyd because for some reason I’ve always thought of your sound and his sound in a similar world, I don’t know if that sounds blasphemous or weird to you, but when I listen to both you guys I end up in a similar place in my mind. What is Charles Lloyd to you in your career?
WSIII: Well to be honest I didn’t know much about Charles Lloyd until I went to Monterey at the jazz festival. The first time I went – I don’t know how long ago that was, maybe ten years ago or twelve years ago – he has this record that came out a long time ago called Forest Flower and it has [Keith] Jarrett on it and it was like some famous live record and I’d never even heard of it and through that I started checking out all of his music. Then later on when Eric [Harland] started playing with him I was kind of able to see him more. It was kind of like he came out of nowhere back into the scene and started having these great bands but maybe he was always there I just didn’t know about him. I just got to see him a bunch in different settings and for me he’s like one of those guys that in his sound you can just hear like a spirit, like there’s a feeling that is kind of transcendent from the saxophone, like I don’t picture him as a saxophonist at all he’s just playing music. There are technical reasons why, something about the way he articulates everything, it’s very legato, very round, it’s like, even though I can tell you what the notes are, it’s not like you can write them down and play them, it’s just like a ball of sound or something. It’s pretty cool, and also that he’s so open playing with all the young guys that he plays with, because now Gerald Clayton plays with him and Joe Sanders and actually Kendrick Scott’s been playing for him. So imagine that, a dude that has played with everybody calling dudes in their thirties to come play which is really kind of inspiring to me.
J: How does someone at your point in your career start to have a similar kind of mentorship of younger musicians? How does that work?
WSIII: Well I think for me that’s not really something that at the moment is part of anything that I’m going to be doing because I don’t really consider myself a bandleader, I do a record every couple of years or whatever but in terms of even doing tours I turn down most of the tours that I get offered to do other people’s music. Every now and again I’ll take something when it works out and it’s convenient to do it. So for the moment I’m still in that part of your career where your still kind of trying to find your own thing, I’m still very much trying to learn how to compose and get better at that, I feel like once I get better at that, I have some sort of level of comfort of knowledge then I feel like you can start to bring in other people into the fold that may not be as experienced as you. But at the moment I don’t feel like I have a whole lot to offer somebody in terms of just calling them to play.
J: I guess I am a big fan of your albums like III and Still Casual, I’d love to hear with a working band, and I’d love to see that from an outsiders point of view but obviously I don’t know much about what goes on in your world, how does it turn out that you would turn down gigs for your own music?
WSIII: Well when I’m saying I turn stuff down, I’m saying all the time I get offered to play this festival or come to this club or whatever but it’s not necessarily like a tour that’s presented. So on my end I would have to work with management and do all that stuff to book a tour and to be honest with you it’s a lot of work that I’m not interested in. You know there is so much work that goes into being a sideman, business stuff that you’re involved with that takes up a lot of time and if you’re doing your own stuff as a leader, I don’t what the exponential growth is but you’re doing like 50 times more work to do that. The other thing for me is because I do stuff sporadically like the last concert we did in Melbourne in May, and before that in April we did something in Europe – one gig, and in the fall we did a tour of Japan but like they’re sporadic. Every three months we do a week or two or a concert, but even doing it that way it always feels like you’re re-learning the music in a way. Because it’s not even fresh in my own mind, so I’m going back and I’m like, “shit, I remember I practiced this so much and I used to be able to play it and now I have to start over.” So like our next concert will be in in October, we’ll be a one off in Finland in Helsinki. I’ll be in Europe already but everyone is kind of gonna come out to do it and it’s like for that I’ll have to go back and learn all the music again just for that one gig. So you know there’s a lot of work involved in doing that and to be honest maybe later on, when I feel like I have more time I’ll pursue it at some point but for the moment I’m cool with not being a leader.
J: Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate you taking the time out and I’m looking forward to seeing you play trio in Sydney.
Additional Notes: Tickets to hear Walter Smith III play Sydney 15th August are here. Check out his website here.
A New Frame 
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