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[0:00] Robert Bannon: Are you ready?

[0:01] Robert Bannon: It's the round table with me, Robert Bannon.

[0:05] Robert Bannon: Welcome to the round table, everybody.

[0:07] Robert Bannon: My name is Robert Bannon. You're listening to us on Broadway World over here on the Broadway Podcast Network, iHeart and Spotify.

[0:12] Robert Bannon: If you are a jazz fan like me, if you love a guitar like me, if you have no talent to play guitar like me, then you need to be sure you're listening to people who know what they're doing.

[0:23] Robert Bannon: Our next guest has incredible music, his incredible career in history in charted albums, millions of streams, and a grand brand new music video that is so fire.

[0:34] Robert Bannon: I loved watching it, and it's streaming wherever you are. Dr.

[0:38] Robert Bannon: Dave is in the house. Welcome to the show.

[0:41] Dr. Dave: Thank you. Nice to be here.

[0:44] Robert Bannon: I'm so excited. And while we're talking about it, I want everyone to make sure that you know that Dr. Dave and the house call band Midnight Dream is out, and the new hit single and video, Sexy Cindy is streaming.

[0:58] Robert Bannon: What is Sexy Cindy? How'd you come up with this song and the title?

[1:02] Dr. Dave: Well, Sexy Cindy is actually a model from Columbia. She was out here vacationing. I met her, and she was so strikingly beautiful. I asked her if she'd be interested in being on a music video. So that's how that came about.

[1:15] Dr. Dave: Um, so we went into the studio, and you can actually see if you go to YouTube and put in Dr. Dave and the house call band, Sexy Cindy, you'll see the music video, and you will see us actually making the song in the studio that's on the radio.

[1:33] Robert Bannon: So she's a real person.

[1:35] Dr. Dave: She is.

[1:36] Robert Bannon: Are you guys friends? Do you stay in touch?

[1:41] Dr. Dave: I've lost contact with her. Um, so no.

[1:46] Dr. Dave: But the song lives on and it's got a ton of streams.

[1:49] Robert Bannon: How did you get started in instrumental and jazz music?

[1:53] Dr. Dave: Um, where did you grow up and how did you find this genre of music for you?

[1:57] Dr. Dave: Where to begin? Well, I grew up in Southern California, and I was originally a blues and rock player. I was getting bored with it, frankly, and I was looking for something to do.

[2:08] Dr. Dave: I on the radio one day I heard the solo on George Benson's This Masquerade. And I immediately thought, I've never heard anything like this before.

[2:15] Dr. Dave: A friend of mine said he's got a lot of his albums, and I should listen to them. I listened to it, and then I was hooked. So that's how I got into jazz.

[2:28] Robert Bannon: And well, how did the guitar call to you?

[2:31] Dr. Dave: Well, that's interesting. I was a little kid, and I had a much older sister who used to take me. She introduced me to Elvis Presley movies, and I saw Elvis Presley with a guitar in his hand, and I wanted to be like Elvis Presley, so I started playing the guitar.

[2:51] Dr. Dave: That's how that started.

[2:53] Robert Bannon: And that's so we all find inspiration from somewhere, someone, and for you being Elvis and the guitar. So when you look back, when we look at your career, a lot of people may know your albums, especially the albums when you first started and first came out on the scene.

[3:08] Robert Bannon: You've been doing Dr. Dave and the House Call Band. If I look at your website and everything, it has been around for like 30 plus years now.

[3:16] Dr. Dave: Yes, it has. I've been very fortunate that I've had the success that I've had, and I've been very blessed to have played with some great musicians like Freddie Hubbard, Ernie Watts, Carl Evans Jr., the Fat Burger Band, and the Fat Burger Band members, and Ronnie Laws, Hubert Laws, his famous flautist brother, and I can go on and on, but I've just, you know, these are guys that I ended up buying their albums.

[3:46] Dr. Dave: I listened to, never thought that one day I would actually be performing with them and recording with them.

[3:52] Robert Bannon: And now you have your own list of number one and top 10 hit jazz hits on all the different jazz charts and instrumental charts. Is it hard without being a singer, without having a singer, without having lyrics?

[4:04] Robert Bannon: Is it hard to find a way in this business? How do you hook? What do you... I don't... I'm a singer, so I'm... singers are the most egotistical people ever. But for you, so for you, you know, your music to express the feeling to express your story. What's your process to come up with your songs?

[4:25] Dr. Dave: Well, first let me comment on your comment about singers being egotistical. There guitar players are not far behind.

[4:33] Robert Bannon: Okay, fair.

[4:37] Dr. Dave: So anyway, as far as vocals versus instrumentals, I'm in jazz, so actually most of the radio stations prefer instrumentals. So I'm kind of lucky that way.

[4:52] Dr. Dave: Um, in fact, I've actually put some vocals out there, I've had hired singers, and the feedback I got from the radio stations is they really would prefer instrumentals.

[5:03] Dr. Dave: So that's the status of that, at least on the smooth jazz charts. They like all instrumentals.

[5:08] Dr. Dave: Um, however, and Reserve for Abby is one of those tunes that has what I call vocal stabs. And especially in the... and also in Sexy Cindy, if you watch the video, we've got singers in there.

[5:26] Dr. Dave: I got two female vocalists and a male vocalist. And if you're gonna make something entertaining, the average person relates to singing.

[5:29] Dr. Dave: If you're gonna make something entertaining and hold somebody's attention, the average person, you're gonna have to have some vocals.

[5:42] Dr. Dave: And if you want something to have a sexy vibe to it, I think you need female vocalists somewhere in the song.

[5:50] Dr. Dave: And that's what I did with Sexy Cindy, and you'll see that they're doing these kind of sexy vocal stabs throughout the instrumental song.

[6:00] Robert Bannon: Well, I love it. It has a whole vibe and style. And as we go through this month, when you get tired of holiday music, when you're decorating your tree or cleaning your house, or driving home from a hectic day at work, Dr. Dave's music is the perfect thing to center you if you're having people over your house, if you're having a Christmas party and you want to have a real vibe and something special to be playing on this, this is the music you need to listen to.

[6:27] Robert Bannon: What do you picture people doing to your music? Do you make it for them to be at home? Is it relaxing? Is it date night? Is it a drive home? Like when you picture people listening to Dr. Dave, what do you hope they're doing?

[6:40] Dr. Dave: Uh, the PG answers only, Dr. Dave.

[6:45] Dr. Dave: It's actually all of the above. You just covered everything.

[6:48] Dr. Dave: Uh, it depends on the song. For example, Sexy Cindy's a fun song. So the vocalists on there are having fun, and you'll see in the music video, we're having fun in the studio, and I've got some nice fun shots at the same time.

[7:03] Dr. Dave: If you go for Reserve for Abby, which by the way, I'm one of the ones singing on Reserve for Abby.

[7:07] Robert Bannon: Love it.

[7:08] Dr. Dave: You can hear the girls' voices, and I got mine blended in.

[7:11] Dr. Dave: Um, because I've always wanted to be a singer, but I can't sing that well. I had to disguise it in with some people that can sing.

[7:19] Dr. Dave: Um, that was a romantic song, and so certainly that had to have more vocals in it to make it romantic.

[7:28] Dr. Dave: And then you got songs like, oh, one of my songs are called Love Potion. That's a song that if you got your sweetheart there and you're having... like, for example, you want to ask her to marry you, or you're just madly in love, and you're sipping wine, and if it's the holidays, maybe under the Christmas tree or what have you?

[7:51] Dr. Dave: This is a good song, good music to have in the background.

[7:54] Robert Bannon: It's perfect.

[7:56] Dr. Dave: By the way, you mentioned Christmas. I do have a Christmas song album, it's not a full album, it's two, it's called Two Christmas Songs.

[8:03] Dr. Dave: Dr. Dave Two Christmas Songs. You can purchase it on any Amazon or, you know, YouTube or Pandora, Spotify, whatever.

[8:15] Dr. Dave: It's just Dr. Dave Two Christmas Songs.

[8:17] Robert Bannon: Look, Dr. Dave, Two Christmas Songs, Dr. Dave and the House Call Band, all of their music. You can see his Spotify, those numbers that are up there may even be too low as I've looked just before we came on.

[8:28] Robert Bannon: He's got streams and streams, millions of streams, everybody, that you need to make sure you check out and listen to the whole entire collection of music.

[8:36] Robert Bannon: When I was looking at you, I was just listening to you as I was sitting here doing some work and Cecil's Groove, which came out and has a lot of streams.

[8:46] Robert Bannon: What do you think about a song like that? What is it that hooks the audience? What is it about the music? You've had songs that have streamed millions of times.

[8:54] Dr. Dave: Is there something you can say about what it is about a song that makes it a hit?

[8:59] Dr. Dave: I wish I knew the answer. I'm trying to find it.

[9:04] Dr. Dave: I appreciate the question, and it certainly is a conversation that we have in the studio often.

[9:08] Dr. Dave: We never know. Sometimes the songs I think are going to be big hits or not, and the songs I was surprised that we just threw in end up being big hits.

[9:17] Dr. Dave: Cecil's Groove, actually, Cecil McBee Jr., his famous father, Cecil McBee Sr. played with some of the great jazz legends of all time.

[9:28] Dr. Dave: And he wrote this song, and I'll take credit for naming the song because after we were done with it, I asked him, I said, Well, okay, so what are we gonna name this?

[9:38] Dr. Dave: And he goes, I don't know. And I said, Well, let's just name it Cecil's Groove, and that's how this came about.

[9:44] Dr. Dave: We have... he's surprised, I'm surprised, we're all surprised that this became so popular.

[9:48] Dr. Dave: This is approaching four million streams, so I got four million fans streaming Cecil's Groove.

[9:54] Dr. Dave: So that's just with Spotify. That's not even counting all the other Pandora and all the rest of them.

[10:01] Dr. Dave: iTunes sends me some stats periodically, but we never really know what's gonna be a hit.

[10:06] Dr. Dave: We guess, and then we send it to the radio reps, the radio reps present it to the radio stations, and then we just see what happens along with all the streaming.

[10:14] Robert Bannon: So, for you, what is your favorite part of this process? Is it in the studio? Is it doing live shows? Is it the selling of the music? Is it the mixing of the music, the writing of the music? What part is the part that gets you the most excited?

[10:26] Dr. Dave: Uh, I enjoy the studio in studio because that's where all the creativity not only takes place, but it unfolds.

[10:35] Dr. Dave: So what was going on in my head? Now everybody else can hear it. Yeah, and it's almost a relief to get it out of my head because you know I've got it in my head here and it's like I wish you guys could hear what I'm what I have in my head and now all of a sudden everybody can hear it so I can let it go. So it's kind of a relief but I really enjoy the studio process. Not only that but I enjoy the interaction with the other musicians in the studio because they always have some valuable, shall we say contributions to whatever the song is because they all bring something to the party. So which leads me to your next question what is your experience in the studio like who are your the players are do you keep a steady band do you have different people come in and out and are you recording at home in a studio how does it work for you no I have a couple of studios that I use but one primarily one I use and I do use pretty much the same musicians.

I periodically I'll do some I'll do something different. For example, a tune that I did a long time ago with Freddie Hubbard on trumpet I wrote that for with Freddie Hubbard in mind believe it or not I really did I wrote this I said you know this is I'm gonna write a tribute to Freddie Hubbard. The engineer in the studio said why don't you just have Freddie Hubbard play on it I thought geez I didn't even think about that. So I had my manager get a hold of his manager and Freddie was out for it. So we went up to Clear Lake Studio in Hollywood and we recorded it and he was great and we had a lot of fun and it was just had a great time.

[12:12] Robert Bannon: Everyone listening we're talking to Dr. Dave. Dr. Dave in the house called band. The new single "Sexy Cindy," the video in the single is out, the album is out, and you've got to be streaming it. It's available wherever music is sold. We also found out about a little Christmas moment that you could add to the trick cart and just check on out and listen to it and take you right through the holiday season as well. You put in your title, Dr. Dave, contemporary jazz guitarist. What is contemporary jazz? How do you define that?

[12:37] Dr. Dave: Well, this has been a debate that's gone on ever since the early nine. Well, actually, no, much longer than that. Because it's really started getting away from straight ahead jazz back in the 70s with Grover Washington. And the GTI boys, you know, they're Kobe Rush and Ronnie Laws, George Benson. And they couldn't figure out what to label it as. It started out as fusion jazz, then they started it, then they went to funk jazz, and then contemporary jazz, then Art Good had a syndicated jazz show of what was contemporary jazz, that he called smooth jazz, and that stuck. Now, I don't know if it's because of his show or what, I think it might have been. And so now it's the smooth, it's on the smooth jazz charts, is what it is.

Personally, I like the term that was used a long time ago, but I don't hear it anymore called pop jazz. And the reason why I like pop jazz is because we've taken pop rhythms and we do jazz improvisation over the pop rhythms, so that's what I think is the best name for it, or contemporary jazz. Contemporary jazz is what's happening today, it's just contemporary, and it could be just about anything.

[13:58] Robert Bannon: I love that. I grew up in New Jersey and in New Jersey, you know, 101.9 was smooth jazz 101.9 growing up, and you know, you put on that station and you would hear some incredible players, some incredible musicians. And then I love the idea of pop jazz because I even, but you know, I was looking at your music, you don't do sometimes when I think of pop jazz, I think of like covers with jazz with a guitar or a saxophone. Your music's really original.

[14:24] Dr. Dave: We try to. Most of the stuff is either I wrote it or co-wrote it with, you know. Once in a while, we'll do it. I know I've heard the term cover, like if you do a, you take somebody else's music and the musicians do their arrangement of it and then they call it a cover. That's not technically correct. Cover is when you're actually trying to duplicate exactly what the original band did. So you're trying to sound like them. More accurately, what more accurately stated what it is, it's my arrangement, or it's a musician's arrangement of this song, which makes it unique. You know, you take some of the old Beatles tunes, for example, they're not trying to sound like the Beatles. There's a lot of orchestras that do Beatles tunes. Well, that's not the Beatles. That's this orchestra's arrangement of the song, which makes it a new song. So there you have it.

[15:24] Robert Bannon: That makes total sense to me. That makes it I love that. I love that definition. And we're gonna change that our thought process because when you take somebody else's song and you flip it on its head, that's more than just a cover. This isn't karaoke, this is a whole new arrangement of something brand new. So are there plans for you to go on the road? Do you still do live gigs and what's a live show like?

[15:43] Dr. Dave: Well, I don't do as many as I used to. I'm getting old. And traveling is more difficult than it used to be, frankly. But I right now I'm in the studio. So I'm working on a new album, and I expect to be done with that by summer. Okay, some good progress with it lately. I like the way it's coming around.

[16:05] Robert Bannon: What's the best way we could stay up to date so we know when the new album is out? Otherwise, I'm just gonna make you come back, Dr. Dave.

[16:12] Dr. Dave: Oh well, have me come back. I enjoyed being on your show. And I appreciate you having me. You can always check with Dr. Dave in the House Call Band on Spotify or Pandora or whatever, and whatever's new, it will come up. You'll see it available. When you go to Spotify or Pandora or when you go to Apple Music or wherever you listen to your music, make sure you click the follow button so it gives you an alert when the new music comes out. You'll get all of the new, the new music, the new tracks, the singles, and then when the whole album comes out, it will let you know that Dr. Dave and the House Call Band has a brand new single, and he told you from his mouth he's got new music, new music coming out.

[16:54] Robert Bannon: So you talk about holidays. Do you, I'm not from California, so is there really holidays, Dr. Dave? Do you like it's gonna feel festive? A palm tree, really?

[17:05] Dr. Dave: We actually have a lot of palm trees in my neighborhood. See, I live in La Jolla, and we have a ton of palm trees out here, right along that they're just right along the ocean, and it usually it's a sunny day. But I get your point. Without snow on the ground, it may not feel like Christmas, for example, but most of the time we can and at an hour drive, we can go up to where there's snow in the mountains. To the San Bernardino Mountains, it's a three-hour drive.

[17:34] Robert Bannon: Okay, so you can get your fill. You can live in both worlds.

[17:37] Dr. Dave: Okay, acceptable answer. La Jolla may be the most beautiful place, the beach, the cliffs. It is a magical what that's gotta be an inspirational place to write music, I'm sure.

[17:46] Dr. Dave: Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. It sounds like you've been out here.

[17:49] Robert Bannon: I have. I've been out there a couple of times and I've, I as a kid my parents always said what was your favorite vacation we ever did? We went to La Jolla, we went to San Diego and we spent a day in La Jolla at the beach through the cliffs and the coves and all of that. And it's something that is ingrained in my memory about how beautiful like the world the earth is a pretty amazing beautiful place.

[18:09] Dr. Dave: A kid from Jersey, yeah a kid from Jersey didn't see beaches like that. I'm so excited I'm excited for the music everyone I want you to check out the video stream the video "Sexy Cindy."

[18:21] Robert Bannon: Where are you girl? Where did you go? You know you lived in Brazil too you lived in Brazil for a long time.

[18:33] Dr. Dave: Are you there? I'm here. Are you there? Do you hear me? Can you I hear you? You do okay your volume's really large you don't hear me that's you lived in Brazil that's an influence on your music as well.

[18:34] Dr. Dave: I did live in Brazil in I traveled what I did is I wanted to travel the world so I did travel world and it was actually because I was in a legal feud with the record label I had signed and I was kind of stuck in limbo so I said well what am I gonna do now? I said, so I'll spend my time traveling the world. So one of the countries that I visited was Brazil. So I went through all over Brazil and I landed in in the city of Fort de Laza, which is in it's in the state of Cerrar, and it's in the northeastern part of Brazil. And it's just three degrees south of the equator. So it's like every day is like 85 degrees and the water's 80. Wonderful. And I loved it there. Met a woman there decided to live there.

So I was there for almost 10 years. Yeah. And I would be a plan in the jazz circuit there in Brazil. So it expanded my musical knowledge and library of information to draw in on my brain from playing with the Brazilians because they have a little different approach to music than we do. And learn Portuguese because you have to in order to get by so it was great. It was a great experience and I have wonderful memories of it.

[20:18] Robert Bannon: So all that music, all that inspiration from around the world comes to you. Listen to his music from beginning to end enjoy it this season and all the time and we'll be looking forward to more music from you Dr. Dave in the coming year the full album I hope you come back thank you so much for being here happy holidays happy new year happy thanksgiving happy thank you for the music thank you yeah I appreciate that same to you and everybody show my pleasure stream the music and Dr. Dave the music is out wherever music is available and we'll see y'all next time thank you again thank you.