Preston Frazier: Michael Leonhart is a great honor to speak with you. Your career has spanned well over thirty years. At Seventeen, you were a Grammy winner, and there are so many projects I would want to dig into with you, but we’re going to start with your current album with rapper JSWISS called Bona Fide. 

How did the collaboration that come about?

Michael Leonhart:  I had the residency at Jazz Standard with my eighteen-piece orchestra.

I planned out a couple months in advance and was going to jump into the Blue Note Suite and do some exciting stuff like Duke Pearson and some early Wayne Shorter and some weird stuff. I thought, ‘I’m gonna find the source of some weird hip-hop stuff.’

Then I thought about a drummer who would be doing the shows who could handle hip-hop and an MC. 

  Black Thought from the Roots came to mind as the MC, but he was going to be very busy . 

E. J. Strickland and his brother Marcus Strickland recommended JSWISS. 

 I spoke to him, and he was legit.

Electric Relaxation”, Eric B., and Rakim’s “Untouchables” were songs we tried out. Right away, at the first show, we both had a blast. We decided we should come back next month for part two.

We did the second show and I said ‘ you know if you’re around you have an open invitation to come back.’

I had in my book for the orchestra sixty songs and one of them is David Axelrod’s “The Edge” which Snoop and Dre did. I said that the songs aren’t like a museum piece, you could do your own verses on the song“Next Episode.” 

And it just started happening and it was just it was just the way friendships and collaborations build. It was natural and we started writing songs.

PF: 

Was his first appearance on your orchestra album, the Painted Lady Suite? 

ML: 

He’s not on Painted Lady.

The first appearance is actually a weird a and b side single that Sunny Side put out of the orchestra live at jazz standards.

The first release of the orchestra’s actually that “Electric Relaxation” A-side “Untouchables”, B-side. He and I had started writing original music together and I knew it wasn’t going to be for the orchestra. 

I decided to involve my samplers and horns and the two of us writing stuff. 

 I don’t go in with a preconceived notions. I get a sense of what’s going to be cool for the orchestra or great for a small group or if I don’t know what pile the song fits in. So with Jay I thought let let’s not try to force this into something, let’s just write great songs. And that’s how it developed.

PF:

Talk about the writing process for Bona Fide

ML:

We started in late December 2019 you start off with one song called “On the Money.”

We were working in person in the studio. And I we did his vocals together in the studio and then January stuff started getting a little weird; February of 2020, stuff starting a really weird and then locked down happened and once we all kind of you know, came out of our madness

We decided to keep writing remotely. We would  talk on the phone and we had more days and then I was just making beats and I was making more basic going tracks so around April and May of 2020 it was a a lot of back and forth, a lot of FaceTime.

I give him the freedom to do it with the lyrics, and I take the reign on the production, and then we start kind of sharing concepts.

PF:

You’re sharing concepts with with regard to the lyrics what about the music?

ML:

It’s the same with the when I produced Fagen’s Sunken Condos. You don’t write lyrics with Donald.

If he was stuck and I heard something egregious, I would say something. If I thought that we were really missing something glaring then I would say ‘Hey that caught my attention’ but (with Donald Fagen) most of the lyrics comes in fully formed. 

Same with JSWISS.  He’s a real writer so as the producer if I hear something that doesn’t feel right or that just doesn’t make sense or I know he can do better than I’ll say something.

If I have a beat texture that doesn’t feel like it hits hard enough he would say, ‘Hey can we make that hit harder’, and I would make it hit harder and that’s the collaborative process.

PF: 

 My first album of yours that I bought was it was Glub Glub volume 11. The second album I bought of yours was Slow. I still am captivated by Slow it but it seems like such a shift away from Glub Glub volume 11. How have your demos and preproduction process changed since then?

ML:

Really not a lot that’s the funny thing. I found a whole bunch of sketches at my parent’s apartment. Recordings demos, and I realized it hasn’t changed that much.

I’m a little more patient. I’m not quite as difficult on myself but the process is the same like in terms of channeling how I demo.

PF:

How fleshed out are your demos or are they a finished product?

ML:

 I’ve always loved the finite structure of four track and eight track and I have the tape a four twenty four it’s a tape cassette (recorder); That I keep in the studio. The sound is cool but it’s also the structured and prevents me from going too far down the rabbit hole.  Now I use Logic and some Pro Tools, but I can catch myself going off the rails.

PF: 

Thanks for the overview of Bona Fide with JSWISS.

If you have a few more minutes, can we chat about your Orchestra work and Steely Dan?

ML:

Sure

PF

Did you have projects lined up during your break with Steely Dan?

ML

Well, the idea of a break with Steely Dan is misleading. We typically do three to four months a year since 2007, but you never know for sure, because Donald’s mercurial. He’s open about it, so I think we’re we are going to tour next year. And it’s not planned out and set in stone. While I love playing with Donald, thank you, knock on wood, it’s been a while, and it’s part of a family, but I’ve always thought that I could be replaced. Everyone does.

PF

You’ve been there since 1996, along with your sister (Carolyn Leonhart). You two are the last two standing band members from the second phase of touring, which is remarkable.

ML:

Let’s not forget Catherine Russell, who was on the ‘93 and ‘94 tours.

And I think part of why we’re still around this is that we never take it for granted. I never assume I’m going to be there. People who have gotten relieved of their duties are the ones who often like, “yeah, yeah, I got this,” and we’re cocky or we’re too comfortable in their position. 

You need particular alertness and specific energy, not a lot of nervousness but a realization that this could be the last show you ever do, so let’s make it count. If you keep on doing that, you’ll have a great show.

PF

I am jumping back to the Bonafide album, the song “Bona Fide” which has a drummer named Nick Movshon, who also plays live drums on four other pieces. Discuss that song. 

ML:

Nick Movshon is first a bass player; he’s the bass player on most of the Amy Winehouse’s albums.

He’s a great bass player. We played together in several bands, including Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, among others; 

He plays drums amazingly well too. Typically, guys like Mark Ronson use Nick on bass and Homer Steinweiss on drums.

Those two have played together since they were in high school or even before, and that’s cool Homer’s on a bunch of tracks on the Bona Fide album, and so is Nick.

They each do their different thing and provide a different flavor. 

I don’t think of Nick as a bass player solely. I believe that his first language is bass, and he speaks drums fluently, or maybe you hear a little accent when you talk drums the same way my first instrument is a trumpet. And it’s also kind of piano speed and dexterity, but harmonically I can sit there and go to all these places, but on drums, I have an action. I play drums a lot of people, but it’s not my main instrument, and I have a lot of flaws and shortcomings on the instrument. But I have a unique feel.

On the song, I vari-speeded up about twenty percent starts to sound like Clyde Stubblefield, kind of like Al Green sound when I pitched it up. Very much like a piccolo snare. 

PF:

On the song “The Chase,” you used a Guest trumpeter?

ML:

Yes, Keyon Harrold. There was a WBGO tribute to Fagen, and I was asked to MC it.

And at the last minute, they asked, ‘how do you feel Keyon Harrold plays trumpet ?’

Yeah, he’s excellent, and we hadn’t met, but he’s played with Common . He’s a deep jazz trumpet player. He also can understand the hip-hop world. And played with  Snoop Dogg and Robert Glasper, and he did all the trumpet stuff for the Miles Davis biopic with Don Cheadle. 

So I was putting together a lot of charts, and it was a lot of spinning plates, and he came in. It sounds great.

There was a second opportunity to work together. And he blew me away again, he just played but also had no attitude.

I enjoyed being a leader, yet if you hire me to be a sideman.  I do what serves a greater purpose and I don’t need to be an orchestrator. 

I thought it would be nice to get other people involved in the JSWISS album, and he was a great fit.

So it was the same dance of trust, and he just crushed it.

PF: 

I’m going to shift gears a little to discuss a few of the projects you’ve been involved in as a player or producer. I want to start with the 2001 album Bein’ Green by Donna Leonhart.

ML:

That’s a deep one!  We were sitting in their kitchen. I had moved out. It was late 1999; I was 25 and at their apartment, and my mom said, ‘you know, I think I wanna record an album now,’ and I said, I think it’s great. And then she said ‘maybe you and dad (Jay Leonhart) could produce it,’ and I said, well now it’s a little less great.

I said, ‘knowing how this works, I think you need to ask yourself over the next three or four weeks what’s right for you. It should be dad producing or me, but I don’t think it will be fruitful to have us both’. She said ‘you know I spoke to dad, and I’m thinking about it, and I’d like you to produce it.’ You don’t want too many cooks in the kitchen.

When we got to Manhattan Studio on 27th street, I remember there was a day when we came in, we had a six-hour session, and she showed up on time, and she brought me some mail, and I said, ‘ no Mom, it’s hard to play both parts (son and producer) could you give me mail at the end the session?’

That was the first step in laying down the groundwork. Then about three weeks later, she said to me, ‘Michael, You’re you’re not listening to me.’ It was about the tempo of a song or something, and I realized she was right. 

Once we had those things in place, we were cooking. 

I had Chris Potter on bass clarinet too; it’s really a sleeper album.

No one sings like her, she is genuine. That’s the secret sauce.  

PF:

Let’s chat about the 2000s Two Against Nature by Steely Dan. You handled most of the horn arrangements?

How did that come about? I think Walter, Donald, you did the first song, “Gaslighting Abbie,” together the rest were either you or you with Donald?

ML:

That’s right, for the most part. It would never be Walter and me. It was always either myself, me, and Donald, or Donald, Walter, and myself.

It was probably 1998 and they’ve been working on the album for two years, not nonstop. They spend three months, and go to Hawaii and book sessions, and it was through the grapevine I heard things are being recorded in New York too. It was pre-internet, so you didn’t hear the songs. You had to be in a studio to listen to things. 

Donald told me about the album, and I threw my hat in the ring to arrange stuff. 

He said, ‘ can you take rejection?’ I said yea, and he ‘I’m serious, ‘and I said so am I! 

A few weeks later, he told me he had stuff to write horns on and then I went to River Sound; Roger Nichols was there, and they had finished a few basic tracks. 

I came in the studio and they said to Roger and an assistant, ‘okay, just record.’ We had open 57 Shur microphone we’re talking through ideas.

The basic structure of the song “Two Against Nature” was being worked out. There was a Wurlitzer, piano in the studio, so I was playing the Wurlitzer, and I was coming from a Tom Scott /Victor Feldman (method) in terms of voicings on the piano from Victor Feldman and Tom Scott in terms of the approach to the sound of the horns (but played on the piano to convey a horn arrangement).

I think Walter said, “Hey Roger, just record this on to tape. And so I did like two or three intros.

Possible horn things and just comping. They used it on the album.

It had that kind of Victor Feldman or Herbie (Hancock), 70’s approach to jazz and pop music where you would respect the chord.

I didn’t think they were going to use it, so I thought I might as well play whatever the fuck I wanted.

I’m thinking we’re going to replace my intro with something else and then Walter was like, ‘ no, no, it’s cool.’

PF: 

Were the horns the last part to be recorded for the album?

ML: 

Yeah, or maybe a little sweetening. We did a whole section with an entire session on “Two Against Nature” with Alto flutes and a French horn, but there was an issue that didn’t get kept. 

They said there’s an issue with this sound or something, or we’re going to redo that, so let’s bring everyone back, and I knew how much that would cost, like six hours recording the same musicians, pay them all again, but we had to redo it, so we did another session without the alto flutes. What I was thinking of was a Mancini and Gil Evans thing, but they wanted to trim it down, so we did five or six horns. 

This was in the final 3 months of recording and then Chris Potter came in to play those solos and I was there to talk about if we needed  additional parts.

You could do it all together as a band but the Steely Dan albums, you have that rhythm section of five or six people, scratch vocal , maybe you can keep the vocal then, depending on the song, it would either be Donald finalizing his lead vocal or having a better lead vocal that’s mostly scratch, you get the background vocals that are final and then right around then, the horns are being written and you land the horns at the end of the process.

PF

How did your 2020 album, Slow, come about?

ML:

I worked with Jon Herington so he and I got together a lot.

It was really like I had found someone I connected with. 

I didn’t think I would ever want to do a duet album because even though I was very young, I knew that I didn’t like it when people over played so I didn’t have a desire to be with the great pianist or a guitar player that would just play tones of notes I want someone that would be intimate and minimalist. 

I wanted to give him a chance to layer it. He was on board with the two different directions.

As I’m talking to you I realize that it’s not that far apart from the album my dad did with Joe Beck called, There’s Gonna Be Trouble.

Half the album with Joe Beck on guitar and my dad on bass and singing. Half the album it’s my dad with his Juno- 60 (synth).

That was the blueprint, you can do any kind of album you want as long as it sounds cohesive.

Use these two different lanes and very live and things that were kind of built up a little bit and then we added a lot of elements. John was so wonderful on Slow. 

PF:

There’s so many other great albums that you’ve done or been involved in. I want to talk about the first solo album by Jamey Leonhart, 2006’s Forward Motion.

ML: 

I was producing her album before we really fell in love. It was an e.p.

I realized in the middle of producing, I thought this woman is so beautiful and so electric and so just full of life and creativity I think that’s falling madly in love and it’s not the time to tell her.

We finished the album. And it was like two or three months afterwards I was very patient and I confessed my love. And it was reciprocated and then we know we are getting married and then she wants to do the followup and I said I would love to I’d love to produce and she’s about to do the arrangements she said you really understand my voice again, my pleasure and I had The Truth About Suffering (2008).

Forward Motion we did I think we did the basic tracking out of it studio in Brooklyn. It was a great studio with mellotron lots of older Ludwig and Slingerland drums and a great Neve mixing board.

We did the tracking  there and then did some sweeping strings at my studio.

Jamie is a poet.

She’s so tuned in to lyrics and the meaning of the them. That in the same way that my mother sings very naturally and doesn’t really think about. The lyrics just come out.

You know that she gets the meaning of lyrics in a way that many singers just miss.

She was an English major. She understands nuance and subtlety, that that’s her secret weapon. 

There’s a new one coming out soon. We are releasing The Illusion of Blue in bits and pieces. 

It is taking a while to complete it’s gorgeous .

It’s likely going to come out as a part one and part two. (it’s out now in digital formats)

Conceptually there are six songs on each part with originals covers. Jamie did so she’s very careful about curating how she puts together these things. 

My orchestra finished the third album, The Normyn Suite .

It is such a special profound album for me because it’s about the dog dying, but it’s about more than that.  It’s about selfishness versus actually taking care of something or someone else. It’s about loneliness, solitude, and mortality. 

PF: 

it’s a it’s a wonderful project I love the album and I love your work with JSWISS. Thank you I really appreciate your time.

ML:

Likewise thank you for asking any time you know we could we could do a part two.