If you are a musician who knows fusion-based guitarist Jeff Richman, you're either sitting at the top of your game as a professional, or climbing your way up as a student. Stay close, and likely you'll materialize in a project or two with him and some of his numerous friends. That's a good place to be if you want to net some contacts among the best of the best, while making some superb music with them, of course. Richman, who has earned himself a spot in the prestigious lineup of guitar professors at the LA Music Academy, exemplifies the resourcefulness a musician needs to thrive and move continuously forward artistically and professionally. In this interview, Jeff focuses on his venerable succession of live gigs at the Baked Potato in Studio City, and his fusion guitar-minded studio productions of tribute albums to John Coltrane, John McLaughlin, and Miles Davis.

Your series of appearances at the Baked Potato in Studio City have become well known as 'All-Star' jams featuring different - and quite esteemed - personnel at each show. Was that your original intention?

When a second, much bigger Baked Potato club opened up in Hollywood, I immediately started playing there with my band. And I noticed that when we played at this large club, we couldn't fill it. People just weren't coming in. Then, a bass player named Bunny Brunel called me to ask if I could fill in one night at that same Baked Potato in a band with some name players, like Simon Phillips and Patrice Rushin. The club was packed. And it was sort of weird, because here I was with my own great band playing original, complicated, thoughtful music [represented on albums like Chatterbox, featuring Mitch Foreman on keys, Dean Taba on bass, and drummer Joel Taylor] and we couldn't get enough people in. Then I play with these famous guys, I mean really watered down, simple standards, and the place is packed. So, it just made me think, man, I really need to refocus my objectives here. My objective is to be a successful musician/guitarist and to have the clubs want me to play there and to bring people in.

So what approach did you take at this point?

I actually started writing simpler songs that were on one page and kind of easy to read. It was still fusion and funk-style, but they were simpler tunes, which worked out because there wasn't time to rehearse.

You seem to have found your way back towards some, ahem, more complex arrangements.

I started thinking, well you know, although I love songs like "Footprints", I didn't just want to do jazz standards. I kind of copied some jazz/funk/fusion standards but made them my own. I started writing some of my own tunes with more fusion and funk sound. I called Justin Randy, who books at the Baked Potato, and I said "look, I'm going to change my way of thinking. I'm gonna try to hire people that have names from now on and just try different things." And immediately it was successful. He liked it and I liked it, and every month I played there with a different set of players and people started coming.

These performances have so far coalesced in two albums, Live at the Baked Potato Vols. 1 & 2, on Tone Center Records. When did you start thinking about releasing some of these jams as live albums?

There happened to be an ADAT machine in that club, and I thought, wow, I'm going to start taping these nights. Who knows what could happen? From month to month I'd put different bands together, and then I'd have these tapes, and I'd listen to them and notice that occasionally there'd be just a monumental track - a monumental performance. So, I started editing them and working with them. Also I got in touch with Mike Varney, who heads Shrapnel Records, and Tone Center also.

What led you to Mike Varney's record label?

He actually collaborated a lot with Steve Smith, a great drummer, and Steve produced a lot of stuff for him. I've worked with Steve before, and he gave me Varney's number. Varney and I had spoken a few years ago, and he was familiar with me. He's had success before with these shredder-style guitar players and made an impact, and he's sort of been wanting to change his reputation to be more legitimate out there in the record business. He was looking to expand, so I sent him the tapes. When he listened to some of this Baked Potato stuff, he liked my arrangements and things like that and saw all the big names, and he basically paid for it all. What happened was the album got edited and mixed with the help of Phil Giffin's production. He produced all my records, and I trust his instincts doing the edits and the orders and what should go on what. It's a hard job, and when the tracks came out, we all were really proud of the music. I don't think they really sold a lot of records, but it did have a little bit of an impact in the musical community of the "fusion world", shall we say.

Could you talk about how you initiated - and kept - contacts with the impressive number of name musicians involved?

Some people I knew, like Jimmy Haslip. We had worked together years before and he's an old friend of mine. [The esteemed bassist Jimmy Haslip is also a professor at the LA Music Academy.] It was easy to get him. Other bass players, like Alfonso Johnson and Abraham Laboriel, were acquaintances that I had played with and I'd just give them a call. Sometimes I made a lot of phone calls, but when somebody was available, they were up for doing it. Dave Weckl's kind of hard to get because he's so busy, but I got him a couple times. Vinnie Colaiuta played with me one time, even though he's not wild about playing live gigs in LA. Simon Phillips seems to be fairly open to it. I've got guys like Tom Brechtlein and Terri Lynne Carrington. J.R. Robinson did it one time. Gregg Bissonette's been hard to get to play with me because he's just so busy, but Danny Gottlieb played. I sort of have an emotional connection with New York, and I would occasionally try to get guys from the east coast, like the drummer Steve Hass. I try to vary it and try to keep it interesting, and I'm always looking for new angles.

How did you connect with guys outside of the jazz world? Steve Kimock, for example, is much more known as a jam-band mainstay and doesn't generally represent in the jazz-fusion scene.

Funny you mention that. The reason why it got brought up was one of my students, a real jam band junkie, recommended Kimock, saying some people swear by him. Let's see...I think I got his number from Alphonso Johnson, who played in a band with him and some members from the Grateful Dead a few years back.

Let's get into some of your studio projects. You've so far produced three tribute albums for Tone Center, the first of which is A Guitar Supreme, honoring John Coltrane.

Right. About a year after we did the Baked Potato albums, Mike Varney called me with an idea, and sounded me out about the possibility of my producing the music for a John Coltrane tribute album, which meant I'd be hiring the musicians for the basic tracks and then hiring different well-known guitar players to solo on it. One thing that was kind of alluring for me was that I kind of wanted to get my name out there more, and I was going to be featured as one of the solo guitar players, which was definitely attractive to me. So, I went about arranging all these songs - which was quite difficult because there's a fine line when it comes to arranging John Coltrane's music. I mean, here's one of the most outstanding legends of our jazz heritage and here I am trying to change up his tunes. I feel like I did a good job because I really got into his music in a very respectful way, and I tried to retain the essence of his energy yet shift it around and modulate through odd time signatures. And do all kinds of interesting harmonic things to it as well.

How did Coltrane's family - namely Alice Coltrane, his widow - react to this album? Did you feel a lot of pressure to make sure they were satisfied with your work?

I actually did sort of a no-no. I did a medley of two Coltrane songs, "Your Lady" and "Central Park". Apparently, it gets kind of sticky when you do medleys of other people's music, and you have to get them approved by the copyright owner. So, Mike Varney had to send the entire CD to Alice Coltrane, who's now around eighty. We were really nervous because we've heard that she's really a traditionalist. I even remember Mike Stern's saxophone player, Bob Franceschini, telling me to be careful because there are certain tunes she doesn't allow people to cover. Of course it turned out I had chosen about three or four of those songs, so I was pretty nervous. Well, we waited about three weeks and it was pretty amazing. She wrote a letter that Mike Varney said I should have framed. She loved the record. She loved my arrangements. She loved everything about it. Not only that, but when you're doing other people's tunes - especially songs like Coltrane legacy tunes - there are two kinds of royalty rates that the record company can pay the artist or the composer. There's like a lower royalty rate and the higher royalty rate, and she gave Mike Varney the permission to pay her the lower royalty rate. So, I think that letter alone really made me a real valid commodity in Mike Varney's eyes.

So it must have been a no-brainer for him to hand you the keys to the follow-up tributes to John McLaughlin (Visions of an Inner-mounting Apocalypse) and Miles Davis (Fusion for Miles), which, amazingly, were done at the same time.

Yeah, we did two albums at the same time, which was really a lot of pressure on me. We recorded the basic tracks in December [2004], so it was probably two or three months before that, around September, when I started working on the arrangements. Then it took me about four months to capture all the guitar players.

Did Mike Varney have particular players in mind for involvement in the projects?

Absolutely. He had a big say in everything. I had to run everything by him. There's a lot of players he didn't want to use, and there's a lot of players he did want to that I didn't. So there was a lot of going back and forth and always having to approve it with him. I got a couple a really good players on my own that he was really really grateful for, like Eric Johnson and Pat Martino. He was thrilled about that. Mike Stern, who's an old friend of mine, was an easy one. Varney has a partner at Magna Carta Records, and he helped me out getting Steve Morse, who records on that label. Mike's really sharp and knows exactly what he wants.

Fusion for Miles seems to feature a wider variety of styles among the players than the other tribute albums, including players like Jimmy Herring, Warren Haynes, Steve Kimock, and Bill Frisell. Was it a conscious decision to branch out like that?

It was kind of organic. I had to get who was available and willing. At the same time, I had to try to really get the right guy on the right tune. Sometimes it was hit or miss, but I think I nailed it. A lot of times with these projects, you can't be too anal or too "it's gotta be this way." You just have to have your bags packed and your homework done, and kind of leave an opening for something unusual or different to happen. I'll give you an example of that. On the last track of the Miles album, somebody I was really counting on backed out. And I really was at a loss as to who was going to play on it. I ventured out on a variety of people and some people I thought, "Nah, it's not going to work with this guy or that guy and I don't know if I want to call this guy." Somehow, oddly enough or luckily enough, we got Bireli Lagrene to play on that final song, "Spanish Key", and he was the last guy to play on it. I just kind of let go and let it happen naturally. And it worked out really well. He played excellent, and he was the perfect kind of choice.

As far as your most current projects, are there any plans for the next tribute projects?

Right now I'm talking to a guy at Magna Carta. He's somewhat interested in doing a Santana tribute, so that could be a possibility. I'm also talking to a president of a European label who Mike Varney hooked me up with. He wants me to produce a Dutch guitarist named Jan Ackerman. So that should be coming out at the end of the year.

Well, I'm starting to get the idea that you're a somewhat busy man, so I'll wrap this up by thanking you very much for your time and enthusiasm.

My pleasure.

For more info and upcoming gigs, please visit:
jeffrichman.net