Smitty: Well, I am just incredibly happy to welcome back to JazzMonthly.com an incredible artist. He’s one of my top five sax players. His latest CD is just so voluminous with fantastic sonic value, emotional gravity, and a high definition vibe. This cat has such volition to be heard and to reach a wider audience with his great vibe. His music will certainly make you get up and move and groove. The record is called Jigsaw Life. Please welcome the soulful and amazing Shilts. Shilts, how ya doin’, my friend?
Shilts: Oh, Smitty, you just took the words right out of my mouth.
Smitty: (Laughs.) I know, man. How cool. I am loving the Jigsaw Life, you know?
Shilts: Good, good, good.
Smitty: Well, hey, we were talking earlier in the year about this project and I remember you talking about how excited you were to get it out there and waiting to see how the fans were going to receive it, and I’ll tell you right now, this is just brilliant, man. I feel such a great elevation from HeadBoppin to Jigsaw Life. It’s just a fantastic book of music that you’ve done.
Shilts: Well, thank you.
Smitty: Yeah. So now talk to me about Jigsaw Life. How does a Jigsaw Life work?
Shilts: Well, obviously I wanted to do something different after the HeadBoppin thing and this time around I decided I’m going to do pretty much all original material on this one, there’s no covers, and it was my first solo production. So this was really all in-house this time. I singly wrote six out of the ten tracks and the other four were co-written with my good friend and keyboard player Bill Steinway, and everything was done at home in the studio here and it was just a project that I wanted to do pretty much in-house and that’s how it turned out. I did all the writing here and the production, recording and the mixing, pretty much everything. It was a good project for me to sort of like knuckle down and learn how to use all this equipment that I’ve accumulated.
Smitty: Yeah, so how does that all work? How does that fit in the mix of things when you’re working on a new project and you have this great vision for how you want it to sound and how you want to express yourself with your new music? How does that all work together with working with new equipment and that kind of thing? Because sometimes it could be a beautiful experience and sometimes it could be a bit cumbersome, you know?
Shilts: Oh, we had some moments where I just wanted to pick everything up and throw it out the window, but there were moments where everything was going great and the ideas were flowing and the music was happening and it was a joy, like you say, but what with all the technology that’s available nowadays, there is so much that you can do just with a computer and a few pieces of equipment. Technology and home recording stuff has advanced so much in the last couple of years, I think we take it for granted now what’s available out there and you really can make a good sounding record with a small budget and a small amount of equipment.
Smitty: Yeah, well, I will tell you, man, the sound is just fantastic. I mean, from the first note of “Piece by Piece” to the last song, “Time Gentlemen Please,” man, it’s just…
Shilts: (Laughs.)
Smitty: Oh, that is a kickin’ track. Man!
Shilts: Yeah, I tried to keep each track sort of separate. I didn’t want anything to sort of sound the same, oh, Track 6 sounds like Track 4 and blah-blah-blah. So I really tried to get each track to have an individual sound to it and a flavor. Obviously it’s still within the realms of the genre of music, but I wanted each to have a different kind of taste to it.
