How'd you get hooked up with Jumbalaya?

Darrius: They [700 Club] were running it. It was a regular Friday night for some time and they had a band in there already. But they didn't like what they were playing, so they fired them. So then John Wicks was in charge of putting together a band. I think John mentioned it to me and I was like, "Cool, I'm down." But actually Laura [Kelley] ("Piece" of Piece of Sol called up my house and asked, "Would you play for us on Friday night?" Well, maybe she was the one that really just called me.

It's off the hook now. For a month, the bass player was gone...Bob Heinemen went to Italy for a month, lucky guy. For that whole month, Kevin from Maktub played. It was a different thing. We missed Bob. The real treat was last week, Bob left again. This guy Arne [Livingston] played--he plays in this trio called Living Daylights. Completely off the hook! It always sounds like there's more than three of them. Arne came in last week and ripped it up and it was beautiful. For someone who never played the gig, he was so deep in there, it was...wow! That was a great setup on Bob's part. [Laughs]

And from that, you got involved with Source of Labor?

Anything associated with The Roots and OK Player seems to be blessed. I'm impressed mostly with the artistic integrity, but then you get guys like Sisqó doing "The Thong Song."

Darrius: [Starts singing "The Thong Song," then laughs] I feel you, I feel you. It's amazing to me, as a songwriter that someone set out and wrote that. And as mad as we are, we know it. [Laughs] That's how magical it is. I'm jazz trained and writing pop stuff is difficult for me. Like writing the stuff for my album, getting to that level of simplicity. Where I was coming from at first was a lot of changes--which doesn't really groove a lot. Really simple stuff--as you know from D'Angelo's latest album--is what grooves the hardest. Or even the stuff I wrote for Source of Labor. All the stuff that me and Allen wrote for Source of Labor and along with Kevin, that stuff grooves. There are hardly any changes.

Darrius: Since September, I've been really working hard at sequencing music which is so brand new [to me]. Making music on the keyboards, not live band-oriented at all, where I'm playing everything; where I'm programming the drums. Coming out of one spot where I'm not calling anyone for rehearsal or nothing. I'm liking it a lot because I'm finding that I'm listening to music differently. Y'know, being a songwriter doesn't require you to be a producer. Being a producer is a whole different job and as a songwriter you start here, lyrics flow, the bridge, the song has a verse, a chorus and there's a chorus that fades out. Production is a whole new world that I'm stepping into. The vocals are having a coursing effect, there's a guitar that plays this pattern for this track, that sort of D'Angelo-esque.

Y'know, you got to start thinking of what type of sound do you want. Do you wanna sound kinda like D'Angelo in that direction or do you want to sound like Dark Child? You start to thinking of who are the producers are now and what their instrument sets are. So you kinda set a palette. Like okay, they would work with this type of sound and you gotta build your song off of it. But your thing can be original sounding but you need stuff that's kinda out there [in the market]. And that's how you make a song from production. That's totally different thinking. That's so much more business-oriented than music-oriented but there's an art [to it].

How do you reconcile the creative part of being a songwriter and the more marketing-savvy ear of being a producer?

Darrius: Well, as different as the hats are, they all work together. A songwriter needs a producer and actually, I'm finding that a producer can help the songwriter build a song. Like if I'm stuck with a song, the producer can go, "Well, it kinda needs to do this as an end product." The people that are going to want to listen to this will want to hear this. They kinda help each other but they're different skills. I used to think that stuff like hip-hop was really easy to do. Because I'm used to playing thousands of chords and long seamless lines and I thought it was like kid's stuff y'know, especially when I was learning jazz. I used to laugh at stuff like that. "That's not real music." But real music or not, there's an art to it. [Laughs] 'Cuz like a lot of hip-hop stuff... Whole songs are just two bars that are based on a two-bar or four-bar loop. I'm sorry, but you can write something that only lasts two bars and you can play that two bars for two minutes--that's an art. It's difficult to come off with something in two to four bars that's so infectious you can play it in a club all night and they won't tell you to turn it off and they keep dancing. That's an art. There are some songs that we can say, "I can't believe they did that."

Tell me about Slow Ride (with Reggie Watts, Davis Martin and Kevin Goldman [from Maktub] and DJ Diskyze) on Sundays at The 700 Club.

Darrius: It's very different. You got two people doing the same thing, in the same band. Me and Reggie do the same thing: we sing and play keyboards. I think it's engaging. It's hella fun. I mean...to be playing alongside a guy who has done that more than I have and longer than I have. I always say that most of my experience is in jazz piano. In the last three years, I've been doing that more hip-hop or soul-oriented stuff. Stuff when I'm singing or playing groove stuff.

Do you view yourself as a singer?

Darrius: I always sang. I always knew that I was going to. But I didn't want to be known as a singer while I would turn around and play piano. When I learned how to play piano, I didn't want people asking me to sing. I just wanted to learn how to play piano and establish that I was a pianist before some singer thing happened. So a lot of people when I first put out my album weren't expecting me to be singing on it. They thought it was going to be a piano album; I thought that was good. I was satisfied with that and I did my job. I learned to play piano and people connect me with the piano and the music making rather than just a singer. And don't get it twisted. Singers are musicians but some singers aren't. Y'know, I just wanted to make the distinction.

Are you working on new material?

Darrius: I'm always working on new material. I'm really excited about becoming a good producer, though. That will help me put out music faster. Y'see, the thing is that living in a small town like Seattle. Such a small town that you don't have a whole bunch of really talented musicians. You have talented musicians at standard levels, so there are few that are outputting at the level that the people I'm surrounded by are. So we get asked to do a lot of shit. When that shouldn't be the case.

Another great woman artist in town is Ohm Fletcher: What happened to her?

Darrius: Oh my God, that's another person that I'd love to write for. Don't get it twisted; beautiful voice, beautiful ear and can write. I don't have many experiences with her writing but she has written a song that we do as Plushsafe. Beautiful! But what you just said is the problem working with Ohm, period. Every band or every project that she's in should be titled what you just said, "Where is she?" No one ever, ever knows. Even when you're working with her or supposedly working with her, you're always going to say that. "Where's Ohm? Why hasn't she called?" That's another really beautiful voice, oh my God.

What's your take on the "Seattle Scene?"

Darrius: Just about everywhere else has a stronger music industry [than Seattle]. What Jonathan was saying, he made a really good point the last time we were talking. He said, "We're on the same level as the people that we admire, like The Roots. And we had none of the help that they had." He has built a hip-hop scene, just about single-handedly here in Seattle with no radio airplay, no help.

There is a hip-hop scene here, Jonathan and Tribal Music, Inc. are pretty much it. They've carried it.

Check out Darrius with Source of Labor and regularly with Jumbalaya on Fridays and with Slow Ride on Sundays at the 700 Club.

On the web:
Darrius Willrich

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