I’ve known trumpeter Jeremy Pelt for a little over a decade at this point. I started listening to his music in 2009 or 2010 and interviewed him for the first time in 2011. We’ve spoken on several occasions since — he’s one of the more than three dozen artists profiled in my book Ugly Beauty: Jazz In The 21st Century, which came out in February (available everywhere now! makes a great gift!). He puts out an album every year; this year’s offering was Soundtrack, his third release with pianist Victor Gould, vibraphonist Chien Chien Lu, bassist Vicente Archer, and drummer Allan Mednard. Back in April, I called it “high-level (mostly) acoustic jazz in the tradition of Seventies power trumpeters like Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, non-disco Donald Byrd, and Marcus Belgrave,” and I’ve come back to it over and over in the months since its release.

In addition to his own music, Pelt has been producing albums for other artists, mostly through the Cellar Live label. Since last year, he’s worked on some really impressive releases by pianist Anthony Wonsey, trumpeter Bruce Harris, baritone saxophonist Jason Marshall, and drummer Billy Drummond, and he’s got a few more titles coming in early 2023. He’s also been on the road a lot, spending about two months supporting Soundtrack in the US and Europe. So between his activities in the studio, and all the discussion in the pop and rock worlds of how tough it is to tour successfully, I thought it would be a really good time to catch up with him. I called him the other week, when his band was in Cincinnati and was about to head to the West Coast to play Portland and San Francisco.

So, I’ve noticed that you’ve produced your own albums for a long time, all the way back to the beginning of your career. Was that because you had something specific in mind that you wanted to achieve, or something you wanted to avoid, to keep from happening to your music in the hands of an outside producer?

JEREMY PELT: Well, you know, I think that the state of what a “producer” does these days varies. And, I shouldn’t even say varies, I think it’s completely different than what historically a producer’s role has been. So when you see my records, or when you see other people’s records that are more or less independently done, and you see sometimes that the artist themselves produced, that just means they ran the session and they’re intimately familiar with it. And then the executive producer’s the one that’s footing the bill. So I say all that to say that, except for the first date, David Weiss was my producer for my first date, and he was essentially the one that had the inroads with Fresh Sound — he had a deal with them to bring new artists to them and he’d produce their dates. So he was helpful in terms of supervision, which is really what that is, just supervising a session. But after that, it was just me, and it wasn’t because I was trying to escape anything or avoid anything, it was just because, I mean, at that point, I was the one that was there to oversee the whole production.

Right, OK. Because with a lot of small jazz labels like Steeplechase or Criss Cross, there’s generally speaking one guy who’s running the label, so to a certain degree you’re there to play your music, obviously, but you’re also serving [Criss Cross founder] Gerry Teekens’ vision of what the music should be, in a certain way.

PELT: Well, I wouldn’t even say that. Because I wasn’t serving his vision. I mean, especially with Teekens, let’s say — I mean, he was a financier. He was there, and sometimes he would suggest another take, but most times, it was just obvious. If there was a mess-up that was sounding terrible, then I don’t think you needed any outside source to say, “Yeah, you need to do another take,” you know what I mean? It wasn’t his vision. A lot of times, what he would do, he had an idea, but I never fell under that. If you didn’t have a concept, then you kind of fell under what he expected. So expectations were a different thing. He would be like, “How about a blues?” And then, “How about a ballad?” You’d have kind of a rubric set up for what would constitute a record on his terms, and that was something that he was used to dealing with, with the artists that he started to deal with when he started recording. That changed a great deal when he started to have artists that had concepts of how they wanted to do things. So he never really intervened or had any kind of vision, because I already had the vision. And so did Ralph [Peterson] and so did Orrin [Evans].

Have you ever worked with a really heavy-handed, Manfred Eicher-type producer?

PELT: No. Not on my projects. I’ve worked on some productions that weren’t mine that had, you know, several cooks in the kitchen, but I had nothing to do with that. I was a hired hand and just did what I was told. But as for my projects, never.

Around ten years ago, you started producing for other people, like Marianne Solivan and Gillian Margot, both of whom are singers. What was your experience like? What did they need from you?

PELT: I think that what I brought to the table was just a better way of organizing the session. And also being ears for them. But especially efficiency is what I brought, earlier on. And I still bring that to the table. ‘Cause sometimes, you know, you get in the studio and there’s a lot of B.S.-ing around, and I like to keep things on schedule and be very fast with suggestions and also to a certain extent really suggest that they don’t do, you know, superfluous amounts of takes. So with Marianne’s date in particular, she had some things in mind of what she wanted to record, and I helped her with some arrangements. With Gillian, it was much the same thing. I actually brought some material to her, and some arrangements, so I was more hands-on that way.

And now in the last year or two, you’ve produced a string of records for Cellar Live, with Anthony Wonsey, Bruce Harris, Billy Drummond, and now Jason Marshall. How did that arrangement come about, and how many albums are you planning on doing with them?

PELT: During the midst of the pandemic, close to the beginning of the pandemic and particularly after the lockdown and everything that happened post-George Floyd, [Cellar Live owner] Cory Weeds had gotten some money from a private donor in Canada and they said that they were interested in finding a way to have him address the things that are happening, racially speaking, and make donations to Black Lives Matter and different organizations. And the donor wanted him to come up with a way to spotlight Black artists. And so I think that’s where it started from. And Cory and I are pretty tight, so he reached out to me, because normally he would be producing the dates himself, but as you’ll recall, nobody was able to travel. So he couldn’t come to the States, but we could still record in the States. So he hit upon me to be the producer and produce these dates. And I also brought some artists to his attention, and once we listened to the artists who he wanted to record, then I was just the one that was in charge of getting it together.

From those sessions, were there times when you had more of a role in terms of choosing material and stuff like that? Or did these guys know what they wanted? Bruce Harris, I know, had made a couple of records before that, but Billy Drummond hadn’t made a record as a leader in twenty-some years.

PELT: So, no. I didn’t have a role in picking the material, and that’s completely okay. Everybody came with the material that they wanted to do, and if anything, I helped shape how the recording should go, and tried to shave some time off some things and do things to make it a more cogent record, but certainly did not have any input into what they recorded.

Steve Albini, who hates the title producer — he prefers to call himself an engineer, and he does a lot of underground rock records — he told me once that he thinks of himself like a barber. He’ll do the best he can to give you the haircut you want, but you have to walk in knowing what you want your hair to look like. How do you feel about that? Do the artists you work with have a solid vision of their music, and if they don’t, how do you nudge them?

PELT: Yeah. So I will go back to using the word varied, like I was trying to refrain from in the beginning, when I was talking about the role of the producer. Because it can mean something different for a lot of different people, especially depending on the generation that you grew up under. I like that explanation of the barber. But that doesn’t necessarily fit with everybody. As we’ve seen with somebody like Marianne or with Gillian, where I was allowed to be more hands-on about what they did and pick material that I thought would suit them and then shape it from that part. I think with all the instrumentalists I worked with in particular, they pretty much knew what they wanted to record, and with regard to Billy Drummond’s album, the only thing I think I did suggest material-wise, because they didn’t have one, I suggested they do a ballad, so they did “Laura.” But everything else, they’d been working on. So there’s that kind of role. Then there’s a much more heavy-handed role, where you essentially are steering the ship but you’re using the artist as the conduit, in a sense. You could look at Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall as a successful Michael Jackson record, but you could also just as easily say this is a Quincy Jones record. Same thing with Thriller. And the later records, you could say, well, this has Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis written all over it. So you have that aspect as well. Where the artist is interpreting the producer’s sound, you know? It doesn’t happen as often in jazz, but it certainly has and it will again.

The Jason Marshall record is really interesting. It’s a bold choice to make a baritone sax quartet record, and not have a second horn. What were your thoughts when he proposed that?

PELT: I didn’t have any – I didn’t think any different than if it was a tenor, alto, or soprano. Jason has had a very — how should I say it? His music is very personal, and I kinda look at him as a modern Cecil Payne or even Charles Davis, that has very different and kinda softer sounds than a Ronnie Cuber or a Nick Brignola or the traditional baritones that really sound like a baritone. It’s almost like an R&B singer when you listen to Jason, and so I felt like if anybody could pull that off, it would be him. But at the same time, it didn’t occur to me that it should be anything other than what he suggested, which was a quartet record.

You’ve been on the road a lot, in the US and also in Europe. A lot of pop and rock and R&B acts have been cancelling tours lately, saying that they can’t make the money add up. So what’s your experience of the road at themoment? Is it worth getting out there, from a financial perspective? Without opening up a spreadsheet, what’s your sense of the jazz touring life? Is it tougher than rock, as I would expect it to be?

PELT: It’s rough, man. You know, I think one of the things that’s tough about it, and I can speak from direct experience [laughs] — the pandemic being one thing, I mean, I had already started touring as early as last July, so we kinda got used to that. And yeah, I mean, conditions are a little bit different, but manageable. And it’s softened up, especially traveling throughout Europe, in terms of just going from place to place, restrictions have been eased. The biggest thing, and I just suffered this from the three-week tour that I just did in Europe, is the Euro collapsing. That is a big issue, and it’s a big problem, particularly if you made deals before the collapse of the Euro. You can’t really go back and renege on it.

Not if you booked the dates a year in advance, no.

PELT: Yeah, you know what I mean? And at the end of the day, it’s still their Euro. No matter how weak it gets, they can’t necessarily say, “OK, we’ll pay you a thousand more,” or however much it would be if it was the normal conversion rate. So that’s what makes it hard. It’s a blow for everybody. But, you know, you still have to be getting out here making music. And those of us that are lucky enough to still be able to drum up some interest capitalize on it.

And what are the realities of touring right now? Are clubs clean and safe? Are audiences masking at all? What kind of precautions are you taking, and is it better in Europe than it is here? What’s your observation?

PELT: I think it’s a country-to-country basis. Some places you go, like Copenhagen, or Denmark as a whole, they tend to think that the pandemic is over. COVID is done. They actually told me that. Which made me tie my mask tighter [laughs]. And then some places — France always had an aversion to the masks, whereas we were just in Germany and Austria and they’re still saying you gotta wear the masks on the train. But I mean a lot of it is silly. Because you can get on an airplane and take the mask off, but on the trains they’re gonna fine you if you don’t have a mask. So people are just trying — at a certain point you feel like it’s all political, and they’re trying to have some kind of thing that they can say to make it seem official, or what have you. But it’s a country-to-country thing. We got to Italy the last day that you had to wear a mask on the train, and the next day, you could go without the mask. I think as far as we are, I mean, we’re cautious, but there is a bit of us that are kind of lacking. Like, we’ll not have our masks on. That does happen from time to time. I could tell you this, the whole time that I’ve been traveling, I haven’t caught anything.

Finally, there was a documentary on [legendary bassist] Ron Carter on PBS recently, and I gotta say, he came off kind of intimidating! He’s a guy who understands his own worth, which is great, but he also seems like a “doesn’t suffer fools gladly” kind of guy. As someone who’s recorded with him, what was your experience? And if a young artist told you they were going to work with him, what advice would you offer?

PELT: I’d offer nothing, because you gotta learn [laughs]. I mean, Ron is Ron, and there are certain people that — he’s not the only person of his stature and age that I’ve played with — he does make it a point to make certain things a teachable moment. And that’s something to appreciate. And there were things that I learned about how music should be set up which I found quite helpful. And I think that if I’m gonna say anything to a young person about it, you know, I don’t know that I would even set anybody up with any advice. Just go in, obviously be respectful, which I don’t think needs to be said, but you know, you go in with your music and you listen and you learn straight from a master. And you’re that much better for it. I don’t want to be the go-between and be like, well, make sure you do this and make sure you do that, and you get there and you’re all perfect. No. Learn from a master why whatever it is that you’re doing is not efficient. And then that makes you that much better, ’cause you’re hearing it firsthand.

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