Chart-topping
trumpeter Rick Braun returns July 8 with “Can You Feel It,” his first
contemporary jazz album in five years; “Get Up and Dance” starts the party at
radio. It’s been five years since trumpeter-flugelhorn player Rick Braun
released an album full of the funky R&B contemporary jazz grooves that made
him one of the genre’s most consistent hitmakers over the past twenty years, but
the award-winning musician, producer and songwriter returns to his signature
sound July 8 with the release of his sixteenth album, “Can You Feel It,” which
will be issued by Artistry Music/Mack Avenue Records. A bona fide contender as
the feel good anthem for the summer of 2014, Braun’s “Get Up And Dance,” a
collaboration with tenor sax sensation Dave Koz, is already collecting radio
playlist adds.
After
scratching a creative itch to croon jazz standards on his two most recent
releases, “Sings with Strings” and the holiday-themed “Swingin’ in the Snow,”
Braun had a very specific direction he wanted to pursue for “Can You Feel It”
for which he wrote or co-wrote nine tunes along with helming the production.
“When I
started working on this album, which was about a year in the making, there were
two goals that I had in mind. I wanted it to be really organic and have a lot
of my friends playing on it. Young players melding together with the old
faithful,” explained Braun. So he reached out to a bunch of his friends,
colleagues and collaborators and dialed back the time machine twenty years ago
to the era of his breakthrough disc, “Beat Street,” to help chart the course
for “Can You Feel It.”
“It’s a
return to the sound and style of “Beat Street,” which essentially was a tribute
to my years playing in War. I took out all of the sequencing with one exception
and made the record like a garage band using great live players. It was a lot
of fun making the record. It’s energetic and earthy. We hit it hard—kind of
like Tower of Power—capturing the energetic, funky horn band sound. I wanted
lots of horn section parts on the album.”
Braun
added a new weapon to his arsenal: valve trombone. And he stacked the tracks
with layers of horns section parts adding power, punch and potency. His friends
were eager to join the festivities enabling Braun to toss the ball around the
horn with Koz, Brian Culbertson, Philippe Saisse, Jeff Lorber, Euge Groove,
Elliott Yamin and a retinue of ace players such as Frank “Third” Richardson,
Nathaniel Kearney Jr., Randy Jacobs, Nate Phillips, Adam Hawley, Sergio
Gonzalez, Brandon Fields, Tony Moore, Phil Davis, Ramon Islas and more. Bud
Harner, who co-wrote the first single with Braun, helped shepherd the album as
associate producer.
A
popular and dynamic performer who draws material for his set lists from his
vast catalogue of No. 1 chart hits, radio playlist staples and fan favorites,
Braun is touring nationally in support of “Can You Feel It” as a member of Jazz
Attack with fellow contemporary jazz titans Peter White and Groove. Sprinkled
in his concert calendar are dates with BWB, the all-star trio made up of Braun
and Grammy winners Kirk Whalum and Norman Brown. The Allentown, Pennsylvania
native entered the professional ranks by co-writing a Top 20 pop hit for REO
Speedwagon (“Here With Me”) before becoming a first-call sideman touring and
recording with Rod Stewart, Sade, Tina Turner, Natalie Cole and Tom Petty.
Braun released his solo debut, “Intimate Secrets,” in 1992, but it was the
success of “Beat Street” that forced the horn man to choose between continuing
as a sideman and taking center stage as an artist. The decision came easily and
Braun has never looked back on the path to stardom.
The
songs contained on “Can You Feel It” are:
“Can You
Feel It”
“Back To
Back”
“Take Me
To The River”
“Mallorca”
“Get Up
And Dance”
“Another
Kind Of Blue”
“Delta”
“Silk”
“Radar”
“The
Dream”
“Dr.
Funkenstein”
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