Let’s get one thing straight right from the top. Jay Smith loves jazz — and, man, can he play it.
But the wild-haired, high-energy Bakersfield keyboardist, composer and band leader plays music of all sorts, from bebop and jazz fusion to Latin rock and funk, blues, R&B and soul. As a longtime sideman in Mento Buru, he’s no stranger to Latin and ska rhythms.
“It’s hard to pigeonhole us. We do so much variety, so many styles,” Smith said last week as he talked about his band, the Jay Smith Group, and his own musical journey, which began in northern San Diego County with graduation from high school at age 15 even as he was already taking college-level courses at Palomar College.
“I also was tutoring the students at the high school for extra credit,” he said. “It gave me a lot of time to practice piano, which was fantastic.”
After about a dozen years in Bakersfield, most of that time spent in music, Smith has become one of the busiest musicians in town, and makes his living purely in his chosen field by performing more than 160 dates a year and giving music lessons at Nick Rail Music to some 50 students, from elementary school age to adults in their 60s.
This month, the Jay Smith Group released its third and fourth albums simultaneously. The first, Just Stop, encompasses some of the creatively fertile years the group spent with dynamic, soulful vocalist Marlon Mackey. But the album also features the group’s core members joined by local saxophonist Paul Perez, Justin Kirk on trombone, flugelhorn and trumpet, Patrick Contreras on violin, and several other guest musicians. Smith says it’s an album filled with soul and rhythm & blues, but with a modern sound and sensibility.
The other album, The Trio Showed Up, is an instrumental jazz project made up of the core of Smith’s band, the three musicians who play on both records. They include Smith on keys, longtime collaborator Cesareo Garasa on drums and another longtime musical partner, bassist Fernando Montoya. It was recorded live at a variety of venues in Bakersfield over a period of about one year.
Asking Smith to choose his favorite of the two might be like asking a parent to name a favorite among his children. But Cara Bruce, Smith’s longtime girlfriend, makes a strong case for the jazz record.
“When we get in the car for a road trip, the first and only thing he wants to listen to is jazz,” she said. “He is a purebred jazz lover.”
When they first met — it’ll be nine years on April 20 — Smith told Bruce she would have to support his music. It wouldn’t work out otherwise.
She realized her new boyfriend is deadly serious about the study of music, that he continually strives to get better by practicing two to three hours a day, not counting his time with students.
“It is music, music, music, all day, all night,” she said, laughing.”I wake up to it. I go to bed with it.”
But what really amazes her is Smith’s consistency, his drive to become a better pianist, a better songwriter. There’s never a lull in his pursuit of excellence.
“He never thinks he’s good enough,” Bruce said. “I assure him he is.”
After moving to Bakersfield about a dozen years ago, Smith, now 36, began connecting and collaborating with local musicians, building his resume and figuring out how he might one day make a living in the music business.
These days, you’re as likely to catch him having fun with a loose interpretation of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as you are watching him on stage paying homage to jazz gods like Oscar Peterson or Thelonious Monk.
He’s performed with dozens of groups all over the U.S. and in Europe. He has worked with or opened for a wide variety of groups and musicians, from Poncho Sanchez and Allan Holdsworth to Malo and the Fresno Philharmonic.
Mackey, who moved from Bakersfield to Virginia earlier this year to pursue new musical opportunities, looks back with gratitude and amazement on the nine or 10 years he worked with Smith. But sometimes it’s hard to believe they have come so far.
“Most marriages don’t last that long,” he said Friday in a phone interview from his new home.
But Bakersfield is a great training ground for musicians, he said.
“It was Boot Camp Bakersfield,” he said. “If you can make it in Bakersfield, you can make it anywhere.
“The Jay Smith Group … we watched each other grow up. We watched each other become better musicians. They’re brothers,” he said. “It goes beyond music.”
Mackey recalls being told there was no “scene” for the music they wanted to play.
“We were told you guys can’t do what you’re doing.
“Watch,” he countered.
On Thursday morning, Smith, Garasa and Montoya set up in the middle of the band room at Cal State Bakersfield and began jamming. It was a dynamic mix of music and conversation — a music lover’s dream to watch and listen, and then have the chance to talk about what they do, what they strive for.
“We’ve been playing together for about 10 years,” said Montoya, 31. “Jay was kind of my foot in the door for jazz.
“I like his energy,” he said. “And he’s always been very professional. We enjoy the hang, as we call it.”
But it’s not without challenges. Smith is always changing things up. Otherwise he’s going to get bored. Which means a song can get called that you haven’t rehearsed.
Then again, a true rehearsal almost never happens.
“We rehearse on stage,” Smith said.
The more important goal for these jazzmen is improvisation, the freedom to fly — or flop — means the chance to go places in the music they’re never gone before.
“If you practice, if it’s overly rehearsed, you’re playing a piece,” drummer Garasa said. “With jazz, you create music in the moment.”
Smith and Garasa have been playing together so long, and actively listening to each other, that they can sense changes in the music without meeting eyes or signaling with a raised hand.
And they described moments like when the music swirled beyond where it might previously have finished.
“As musicians, we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Garasa said. “Sometimes you can’t even see the song anymore.”
But when it works, the experience can be transcendent.
Music. It’s still a beautiful mystery. And when it comes together, it can change lives.
“Jay had a vision,” Mackey said. “He brought in players, and those players had a vision.
“And everyone started seeing it can be done.”
Steven Mayer can be reached at 661-395-7353. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter: @semayerTBC.