Home » Jazz Articles » Interview » Meeco: Keeping It Real
Meeco: Keeping It Real
Courtesy Jeffrey Galvezo Sales
No rehearsals. No click tracks. No overdubs. No edits. Immaculately crafted though they are, and contrary to the assumptions such finesse may arouse, Meeco’s productions are wholly without artifice and are grounded on the classic values of feeling and spontaneity and real-time performance. In a word, 'authenticity.'
Along with fellow Europeans
Nicola Conte
multi-instrumentalist
Alfred Lion
producer1908 - 1987
Creed Taylor
producer1929 - 2022
Teo Macero
producer1925 - 2008
Meeco says that his next album will include some new directions, but it will adhere to the classic production values that make its predecessors so special. Immaculately crafted though they are, and contrary to the assumptions such finesse may raise in listeners, Meeco's productions are wholly without artifice. No rehearsals. No click tracks. No overdubs. No edits. They are grounded on the classic values of feeling and spontaneity and real-time performance. In a word, "authenticity." In all his albums, there is only one instance where Meeco edited a track, and that, he says, was simply because it was too long. His music-making aesthetic is the polar opposite of the one set out by
Brian Eno
synthesizerb.1948
Given his albums' sophisticated international vibe, it would come as no surprise to learn that Meeco is the scion of a well-heeled family and, as a child growing up during the jet-set era, was taken on annual holidays to the C?te d'Azur, Rio and the Swiss ski slopes, autograph book to hand in case
Jane Birkin
vocals
Astrud Gilberto
vocals1940 - 2023
Meeco aims high with his music and right from the start he has mustered the lineups on his albums from masters of the art. Among them are trumpeters
Eddie Henderson
trumpetb.1940
Wallace Roney
trumpet1960 - 2020
Benny Golson
saxophone, tenor1929 - 2024
Charlie Mariano
saxophone, alto1923 - 2009
David "Fathead" Newman
saxophone, tenor1933 - 2009
Bennie Maupin
woodwindsb.1940
James Moody
woodwinds1925 - 2010
Hubert Laws
woodwindsb.1939
John Scofield
guitarb.1951
Lionel Loueke
guitarb.1973
Kenny Barron
pianob.1943
David Friedman
vibraphoneb.1944
Stefon Harris
vibraphoneb.1973
Buster Williams
bass, acousticb.1942
Richard Bona
bass, electricb.1967
Ron Carter
bassb.1937
Victor Lewis
drumsb.1950
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
Freddy Cole
piano1931 - 2020
Gregory Porter
vocalsb.1971
Joe Bataan
vocalsb.1942
Before the interview, a little biographical info... Meeco, who was born Michael Maier and dubbed Meeco by Cuban musicians with whom he worked in the early 2000s, began piano lessons at the age of six. When he was thirteen, he decided he wanted to be a drummer. But after a couple of years, he began missing melody and harmony and, hopeful that his son would one day return to the piano proper, his father bought him a Korg Workstation. The instrument, which included a sequencer, stimulated Meeco's songwriting and was a watershed in his development.
As a teenager in 1990s Berlin, Meeco was fortunate to find three gifted mentors: the American-born pianists Bob Lenox and
Reggie Moore
pianoA relationship breakdown put a pause on Meeco's recording activities after Souvenirs Of Love. He returned in 2020, not with another jazz album, but a hip hop one, We Out Here (New Def). Hip hop had been Meeco's first love as a teenage musician. His jazz audience will be delighted to learn, however, that his fifth jazz album will be released in 2023.
Meeco talks about all this in the interview below. He concludes with a list of six albums which have been influential on his development, by
Horace Silver
piano1928 - 2014
Bill Evans
piano1929 - 1980
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
Erroll Garner
piano1921 - 1977
Nancy Wilson
vocals1937 - 2018
Cannonball Adderley
saxophone1928 - 1975
From Hip Hop to Jazz
All About Jazz: What caused your move away from hip hop and towards jazz in the mid 2000s?Meeco: I realized it was not the real me. I was always trying to imitate someone—let's make a beat like Dr Dre or whatever. It was not authentic and I decided I wanted to do my own thing. So I started following my heart and writing my own songs and they turned out to be a mixture of jazz, latin and classical. In time, that led to Amargo Mel.
AAJ: It was an extraordinarily assured debut.
M: Even now I think it is probably my favorite among my albums. There is a special magic about it, especially the songs sung by Eva Ventura—"Nocturna," "Para Siempre A Mi Lado." [Check the YouTube below this interview.] I very much wish I had done more work with her. The album is not perfect, of course. There are too many songs. But you have a tendency with your first album to put everything on it, because [laughs] you don't know if you will ever make a second one.
AAJ: One thing that stands out from that album onwards is the internal cohesion of your lineups, which is impressive considering you put them together on a project by project basis.
M: I don't know why, but it seems that I'm good at assembling bands, getting people together who are in harmony with each other musically even though they may never have played together before. It's a bit like being a football manager who looks at lots of different players when recruiting a team and with each album I'm intent on bringing my dream team together. I start by looking at the song. What does the song need? How can I emphasize certain aspects of the song? Who is the best person to do that? And then who is the best person to work with that person? It all has to fit together.
With Amargo Mel, actually getting the musicians to work with me was the big hurdle. I had no track record. I'd tell people who I had in mind for the band and often they would laugh. But I thought, I can ask, the worst that can happen is that they say no. And in jazz, everybody knows everybody, so once somebody says you're OK, you're in. I began with getting the best musicians I could find in Berlin. Then I met Charlie Mariano, who gave me Eddie Henderson's email address. I went to New York, met him and we instantly fell in love with each other. Eddie is such a beautiful person, a very warmhearted guy. He took me under his wing and he introduced me to many, many people.
Real-Time Production Values
AAJ: Once you've put a band together for an album, how do approach producing?M: You could say I'm old school. We never rehearsed. Not one time. No overdubbing either. It's all live. I would never rehearse because if you rehearse a song too much the feeling and the spontaneity is gone. So I introduce the musicians to the material in the studio. For me, feeling is the most important thing. I want music which touches the soul.
I should say that Amargo Mel was a little different, because it was my first album and I couldn't afford to fly the Berlin musicians to New York or the New York musicians to Berlin. So the rhythm section and the vocals were recorded live in the studio in Berlin and the solos by Eddie Henderson, David Fathead Newman and so on, those were overdubbed in New York. But Perfume E Caricias , Beauty Of The Night and Souvenirs Of Love were all recorded live in the studio in New York.
AAJ: What about post-production? Do you ever splice different takes together?
M: I only ever use complete takes. In all my albums there is only one time when I edited a track, and that was simply because it was too long. "Cut and paste" would not be possible anyway, because I never use a metronome. There is no click track. So every take is at a slightly different tempo, meaning you can't sync them. I insisted on this right from the beginning and many musicians were surprised—but they loved it, many of them came of age professionally when that was the norm. Again, it's about keeping the authentic, live feel in the music. Once you play with a metronome you bow to the metronome.
Some producers keep editing the music until, for me, eventually, they edit the life out of it, they erase and delete any feeling in the song. They may get a technically faultless track, but it's not appealing to me. I prefer to do perhaps three different takes and choose the one that sounds the overall best. I have been lucky, of course. You can only work like this if you have musicians on the level that I have been fortunate enough to work with.
AAJ: How detailed are your arrangements?
M: I provide the basic song structure, that's all. Let's say, intro, verse, chorus, solo one, solo two, back to the chorus, ending. We develop the actual arrangements together in the studio. Sometimes a song might have a horn or a bass line I've pre-written, but I leave the musicians room to develop things themselves naturally. I might say to Buster Williams or Richard Bona, this is the bass line I've come up with, now make it your own. I don't say, play it like this. If I did, then why would I want to use Buster Williams or Richard Bona?
I let go almost completely with the lyrics. Unless they are in English, the singers write them. We might discuss subject matter, but I don't really see myself as a lyricist. I'm about the melodies. The only album for which I wrote the lyrics was Souvenirs of Love, where all the lyrics are in English, with the exception of two tracks which I co-wrote with friends.
Burn Out... And Recovery
AAJ: Why was there such a long gap between Souvenirs Of Love and We Out Here? And why did you return with a hip hop album?M: Basically, what happened about ten years ago is that my life changed significantly, and ultimately for the better. I separated from my former girlfriend and left Paris, where I had lived for a few years, and returned to Berlin. I was very unhappy and writing a lot of sad songs. Then I got into a new relationship and got married and became a father and it wasn't that life at all anymore. Also, I realized that most of the ideas I was coming up with were more or less the same, they had the same melodies and chord progressions. I had burnt out. I realized I had to do something completely different to restore my creativity. This is when I came up with the idea of, after all that time, trying to do some hip hop beats again.
AAJ: Years earlier, you moved away from hip hop because you didn't feel it was the real you. What had changed?
M: I was older, I had developed my own identity. In 2020 I had the maturity to say, I want it to sound like this, not I want it to sound like this guy or that guy. Today I feel comfortable going there without the need to imitate anyone. And I mean, hip hop developed out of jazz anyway. The rhythmic element came out of jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, funk, etc.
For the follow up to Souvenirs Of Love, I plan to go in a direction which combines all these elements—jazz, hip hop and soul. I started doing this a bit on Souvenirs and I will take it further on the next album. I'm not going to copy
Robert Glasper
pianob.1978
Before that, this autumn [2022], I'm going to release another hip hop album. It's different to We Out Here because it includes some live elements, like I'm playing Rhodes and Wurlitzer and Hammond organ, and also some live bass.
Must Jazz Hybridize to Survive?
AAJ: Do you think jazz has to mutate, incorporating hip hop or whatever, in order to stay relevant?M: [Firmly]. No. I like to create blends with other musics, but that's not because jazz needs it, it's because that's what I want to do. You read it all the time: jazz is dead. No, it isn't. Jazz is an art form that will live forever. But there will always be different ways of interpreting it. You can look at it in the traditional way—which is absolutely fine, I love the traditional way—or you can have a new approach to it. How you do it is just a reflection of yourself and your environment. Jazz doesn't need to be "modernized."
AAJ: Final question. You've worked with some of the great jazz musicians of our age. Are there any you have kind of missed out on along the way, who you would like to have recorded with?
M: Oh yes, absolutely.
McCoy Tyner
piano1938 - 2020
Yusef Lateef
woodwinds1920 - 2013
Ahmad Jamal
piano1930 - 2023
Pharoah Sanders
saxophone, tenor1940 - 2022
Six All-Time Classic Albums
Meeco says: These are classic albums, but they all have a twist. On each of them, I've picked out what is for me the key track. They have all had a particular impact on my writing. You'll see I've picked a lot of ballads, because this is where I am coming from.
Horace Silver Song For My Father
Blue Note, 1965
My favorite song is "Calcutta Cutie" because of the atmosphere that is created. The voicings, the way he plays, it's just mesmerizing.
Bill Evans Trio Sunday At The Village Vanguard
Riverside, 1961
I could listen to this album for two days straight without sleeping. My favorite track is "Alice In Wonderland." The way he plays the intro, the harmonies, it's just wonderful.
John Coltrane Giant Steps
Atlantic, 1960
"Naima" is my favourite track, for the way Coltrane plays and also the harmonies. The harmonies on "Naima" have had a huge impact on my writing.
Erroll Garner Concert By The Sea
Columbia, 1955
Because of the feeling and the energy of Erroll Garner's playing. My favourite track is "Teach Me Tonight," it's so personal to him. I always tried to learn the way he plays the piano.
Nancy Wilson & Cannonball Adderley Nancy Wilson / Cannonball Adderley
Capitol, 1962
The whole album had an influence on how I approach vocals. The track I would pick out is "The Masquerade Is Over." The atmosphere, the whole vibe is something else.
Miles Davis Ascenseur Pour L'echafaud
Fontana, 1958
Again it's all about atmosphere, colors, moods. Miles Davis basically created the music on the spot, just looking at the movie. That approach had a huge impact me, musically and as a way of recording, without rehearsal, live in the studio, going for the feeling.
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Interview
Meeco
Chris May
Nicola Conte
Manfred Eicher
Alfred Lion
Creed Taylor
Teo Macero
Bob Weinstock
Jane Birkin
Astrud Gilberto
Eddie Henderson
Walter Rooney
benny golson
Charlie Mariano
David "Fathead" Newman
BENNIE MAUPIN
James Moody
Hubert Laws
John Scofield
Lionel Loueke
Kenny Barron
David Friedman
Stefon Harris
Buster Williams
Richard Bona
Ron Carter
Victor Lewis
Miles Davis
Eva Ventura
Talib Kweli
Eloisia
Freddy Cole
Gregory Porter
Joe Bataan
Zé Manoel
Bob Lenox
Reggie Moore
Marco Meister
Brian Eno
Horace Silver
Bill Evans
John Coltrane
Erroll Garner
Nancy Wilson
Cannonball Adderley
Robert Glasper
McCoy Tyner
Yusef Lateef
Ahmad Jamal
Pharoah Sanders
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