JT Talks About Smooth Avenue, Music and Growing Up With The Blues

March 1, 2018

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JT singing with Smooth Avenue Smooth Avenue has been pleasing audiences in Boise with their distinctive sound for a while now. Playing a variety of places, from Boise’s Sapphire Room to Willi B’s and the Boise Blues Festival, they’ve attracted a legion of devoted fans that love their blend of music. James ‘JT’ Tyler, who formed the band and serves as the lead singer, sat down with me to talk about music, his life and what Smooth Avenue is up to these days.

Q: JT, what was the idea behind the Smooth Avenue band?

A: Initially when I formed the band I thought I wanted to do smooth jazz. I got some guys together and we worked on some things. But my idea of smooth jazz and what some of the other member’s ideas about smooth jazz were not quite in sync. One of the guys was and he’d select tunes that fit that genre. It didn’t really pan out—we did one event out of St. Chappelle Winery and than went by the wayside. It took a while before I decided to do another band, but I kept being encouraged to form my own band here. It took me a while, but I had an incident that really spurred me into going out and searching for members for my band. I started going to blues jams actually and the blues jams took me back to my roots, because that’s what I grew up with was blues and jazz.

A lot of blues was played in my St. Louis neighborhood every weekend at this place called the Club Riviera. B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, even Ike and Tina turner and some of the other soul greats would come by and perform so I would get blues on one night, maybe soul or R&B on another night; and as a kid I left my windows open, just taking all the music in. In our neighborhood we had some local musicians that were probably ‘pick-up’ musicians for the bands. There was a really good sax player, I remember hearing him practicing in the evenings sometimes. Every evening though they would have a concert for me—again, I was not really old enough to appreciate blues per se. I just knew that it was a rocking good time because people were pretty noisy there.

Q: Who were your early musical influences?

A: My grandmother on my father’s side was a gospel singer. She was asked to be the headliner for many events. My grandfather on my mother’s side also was someone who was asked to be the lead singer for the choir that he was part of. My mother played piano and my sister does now; she leads a choir. We’ve had a fairly musical family; and as a kid, my grandmother made us sing in the choir, so I didn’t have a choice. So I had an early introduction into music through the church; and it still in some ways carries in terms of the gospel influence and the idea that you want to inflect feeling into the music you perform.

One thing that I remember is what one coach I had said; I keep carrying this around with me as I mentor, talking to kids around the Boise area that are up and coming vocalists—he said, JT, you sound pretty; I don’t believe you!. It took a while for that to sink in as to what he really meant by that; and what I’ve tried to carry forward from that is to try to get in touch with the emotion of a song. It really makes you rethink how you do a song. In blues, for instance; you just can’t sing blues, blues is something you have to feel; when you feel it, than you can share that. Some people like to sing technically correct, but emotionally direct. That’s just not how I look at performing my music. The other thing I like to do is, I personally love to do harmonies. I used to be in an a Capella group; and I developed a deep appreciation for harmony and singing in a choral group but with tight harmonies; I really appreciate that. I haven’t been able to incorporate that in my last iteration, but it is something I’d like to move forward because I think it adds a different edge to what you’re doing.

Q: What genres do you incorporate into the music you play?

A: When I think about the blues musicians that came to play at the Club Riviera, they would do blues but they would also do jazz as well. Some nights they would also have soul, so my whole background has been hearing all those sounds. So now, I try to incorporate blues, a little jazz, soul and as music has progressed, a little funk in that.

Q: People obviously like you, because there are a lot of ‘Smoothies’ around. Who are the ‘Smoothies’?

A: I always say that a ‘Smoothie’ is someone who loves the musical emanations of Smooth Avenue. We don’t care about gender, we don’t care about generation or anything like that. If you love what we do we call you ‘Smoothies’. Some people say You’ve got some groupies but I say no, we have Smoothies, because Smoothies is gender independent. I start of every event with a question out to the audience, Are there any Smoothies in the house?. Usually we get anywhere from a few responses to much greater numbers. It’s kind of a great way to start the evening!

Q: What upcoming gigs do you have?

A: We have several upcoming ones. March 3^rd we have the Sapphire Room in Garden City, Idaho, which is probably our favorite place to play—it’s probably the premier place for music in Boise . We have another one coming up at Ironwood Social March 23^rd. We’ve just got word that we’re going to be doing some events at the Sandbar which is at the Riverside Hotel, we’ve got a couple of dates there. We’ve got an event in Ontario, Oregon as well as the events we have planned around town.

Q: JT, What are your Smooth Avenue shows like?

A: I try to think of the shows not only musically but also in terms of being entertaining to the audience, so we try to play music that will get people up and dancing. If they’re not up and dancing we’ll do a slow soul ballad. I want people to feel the emotion behind the lyrics of the song. We have a mixture of up-tempo—if it’s something soulful then we want people to really feel it, if it’s painful to feel the pain, if it is about love we want people to feel the love; and I try to get the emotion across in the delivery of the song. I let my guys do their thing in some cases because I can’t say that every song will be the same because there is some improvisation that happens sometimes within jazz; and I like to let musicians be creative in what they deliver. I allow them to mix their own flavorings into the recipe of the music that we’re serving the listening audience.

We try to put on a very classy listening experience that people are going to walk away from and feel really good about the music that they’ve heard that night from Smooth Avenue. Hopefully, when they think about going to an event or think about music or think about a band in Boise—what I like to hear when someone asks them what’s their favorite band is that they answer, Smooth Avenue. I don’t always expect it, but it’s nice when people give you that kind of recognition.

Q: Who were the artists who really influenced you?

A: I would say the number one if we’re looking at blues was Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland. I just love his voice—it just mesmerizes me with his tonal quality and what he does with it. For modern day blues, Keb Mo’ would be one that is a great influence. Robert Cray—I listen to a lot of his music; Stevie Ray Vaughan, I love what he plays and his phrasing. There are others, typically male singers like Luther Vandross—if you look at the soul side he was very influential. If you look at it in terms of females, you have of course Aretha Franklin and then Mariah Carey, just with the way she can soar with the notes she plays and the runs that she does. The Temptations as a musical group and then fast-forward that and you’ve got InSync, Maroon5, Bruno Mars—there are a lot of different influences these days; old plus new.

I heard a lot growing up—Nina Simone, Lou Rawls was played a lot, Big Joe Turner. Nancy Wilson was played a lot, Dinah Washington, Etta James. Again, these are early influences that were part of my growing up. Luther Allison—my mother probably played that record, If Loving You Is Wrong, til it had no more grooves in it. I’ve heard that song forever. Another of my favorite songs that I just sang the other night, I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know; its been done by a lot of people, but I just love the way it was done by the group Euge Groove. He’s jazz, but he did a very nice, soulful version of that song and I really love to sing that one. Smokey Robinson, the O’Jays, Funkadelic, Michael Jackson, Prince; a lot of those people were my early influences.

Q: So Chicago Blues is what influenced you?

A: When I think about different influences, when I think about blues, there are different areas. The is West Coast Blues, East Coast Blues, there is Memphis Blues. There is talking blues and then there is Chicago Blues. There are other areas that they give names to as blues influences but I think for me, Buddy Guy and Luther Allison and other people who came out of the Chicago area are probably the ones that I identify most because I just love the rhythm that they had; and I thought that some of the styles that they did of music then were very advanced, because if you listen to modern-day music you still hear some of that same styling, I just love that particular styling. Buddy Guy is one of my favorite influences as well in music so I really appreciate that as well. Then St. Louis had its own blues thing as well.

Q: So what’s the future hold for Smooth Avenue?

A: I really am looking forward to compiling a CD within the next year. I’ve got a couple songs, one that I actually penned the lyrics to myself. It’s called Too Much (Hate) and it’s a reflection on the times that we’re going through today in terms of people’s interactions with each other and the wish and hope that people can be better in how they treat each other; and recognize that even though we’re different, in a lot of ways we’re the same. We can change the dialogue that happens today IF we will step back, reflect and then look at how we approach each other and approach it from a positive standpoint and a feeling of love and respect for your fellow man, regardless of their background or what other things might be different; what I am or what you are. I think we can do that—we have to do that. So the song is really about trying to change mindsets around that.

It is available on iTunes and some of the other streaming services. There is a free video that goes along with it as well that I’d like to encourage people to take a listen to and if they like it, share it with their friends, relatives and others. Again, it shows you that whatever one person is, there’s another side that doesn’t like that; and just shows that we can probably change that with love. There’s some great video segments in that that really drive the point home, so I’m hoping that people actually have a chance to take that in.

It’s been a long road for me, from when I started Smooth with four guys to where it has evolved now with six or seven guys. Sometimes I also incorporate a female vocalist, Angie Michelle. She’s a really great vocalist that’s going to be at some of our shows. Great styling, she’s somewhat new in the area but she’s going to be a force to be reckoned with as time goes forward. As I like to say, if you stay still you don’t progress. You have to sometimes make changes, sometimes go in new directions that you din’t necessarily anticipate. I had one guy ask me early on—I think my first recording was in a bathroom—the guy had a bathroom studio; and he asked me, JT, what do you want to do with this thing? I really don’t know, I just want to see where it takes me; and I’m just going to go where it leads me. It’s led me to being in a duo called Sax and Soul back when I was a wedding singer basically, to being in a five-part a Capella group and now here in Boise, moving from smooth jazz to blues to a combination, a fusion of different musical styles that have been part of my life.

I don’t like to channel myself into one or the other because I think now with the way that new musicians are looking at things, some people that just used to do blues only, they’re now doing blues and jazz, because there’s a close association between the two. You can’t get away from soul from blues as well, or jazz, so they’re all part of my experience growing up in the black community. We have all those things going on, so now I think I’m putting all those things together with this iteration of Smooth Avenue. Hopefully people will like it and they’ll come out—-you know what, who knows what the next thing will be? What will be the next thing that we’ll step into moving forward?