By: Rick Landers
A.J. Croce
Maybe it’s something in the DNA or some natural inclination for the son or daughter of a legendary musician to follow in their father’s or mother’s musical foot steps. And sometimes it can be a misstep until the child can find solid ground to fully realize or embrace their own personal destiny, musical or not.
Names like Frank Sinatra Jr., Gary Crosby, Natalie Cole, Jakob Dylan, Tal Bachman and others come to mind. All navigated their way to successful careers. Another is the son of a formidable singer-songwriter who crafted and helped define as much as anyone else, what has become known as Americana music – Mr. Jim Croce.
Step in, Adrian James “A.J.”Croce, who was still a child when his father tragically died in a small airplane crash in September 1973. With his father pursuing a heavy tour schedule, seeking to leverage his hard won and well-earned fame to better support his family, A.J. and his mother, Ingrid Croce, shared Jim with his band, the insatiable star crushing machinery and his adoring fans.
And, after Jim Croce died, his departure left a vacuum that could only be replenished through Jim’s music, his legacy and music itself, and as trite as it sounds, both “photographs and memories”.
Whether it was his father’s talents inherited or an individual drive that steered him toward a career in music, we are all now gifted with the songs of A.J. Croce, both written and sung by him. And, A.J. also embraces his father’s songs, allowing us all to close our eyes and hear the blue-collar clever tunes and touching love ballads, as if Jim was still among us. These are small acts of love and respect for his father, as well as another avenue for A.J. to embody and experience the warmth of his father’s melodic expressions.
Our conversation took us along paths that reached into his formative years, his father’s legacy, his love of guitars and music and the love of his life.
We traveled along his life’s journey, both its crests and its troughs. There were times when we spoke over one another, with a sense of urgency when talking “guitar talk”, both of us learning about guitars of which we had been previously unfamiliar.
Still, my take away from our bantering was that A.J. is intelligent, clever, enthusiastic and down-to-earth and in the end I found myself interested in hearing more of his music. But, mostly, I felt a poignant sadness that A.J. would always feel a deep sense of loss and yearning, as his wife, his best friend and soul mate, Marlo Croce, had recently passed away.
Although A.J. was born in Pennsylvania, his family headed to San Diego after his father’s untimely death. Life took a traumatic turn when he was physically abused by his mother’s boyfriend, leaving him blind. In time, he learned piano and discovered the musical genius of Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder.
As if passing from one generation to the next, like his father before him, A.J.’s focus became music and performing. He was offered twenty bucks to play at a bar mitzvah when he was 12 years old, and within a few years he’d find himself performing at gigs in San Diego. And, today A.J. continues to perform not only some of his father’s hits, but songs he’s crafted in his own distinct style.
Working with producer, T-Bone Burnett and John Simon, Croce would record his debut album, A.J. Croce, and later, That’s Me in the Bar, with Jim Keltner, featuring Ry Cooder and David Hidalgo (Los Lobos). He would later release several more albums including: Fit to Serve, Transit, Adrian James Croce (Best Pop Album San Diego Music Awards), Cantos, Cage of Muses, and Twelve Tales.
On the circuit, A.J. Croce has opened up for such musical icons as: Lyle Lovett, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart, Dave Matthews, Ray Charles and traded licks with Willie Nelson, Ry Cooder, Waylon Jennings, the Neville Brothers, and David Hidalgo. Fans could also find him on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Today Show, Good Morning America, MTV, CNN and Austin City Limits.
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Rick: Hey, are you in the Midwest right now?
AJ Croce: I’m in Nashville. I take off tomorrow for a couple of gigs the Midwest. Then Boston University and then Cleveland, the City of Lights!
Rick: Alright.
AJ Croce: City of Magic.
Rick: Yeah, I love Cleveland. It’s a place where like, the last time I was there, there was like absolutely no traffic. I couldn’t believe it.
AJ Croce: Have you ever been on that freeway in Cleveland where it makes like a sharp 90-dergee turn?
Rick: You know, I don’t recall. I stayed there once for a couple of days, I think, I stayed at a B&B, so I could go to the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.
AJ Croce: There’s a place in the road on the freeway where there’s literally a sharp like 90 degrees. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Rick: You got to question those traffic engineers who came up with that.
AJ Croce: Yeah. I don’t know. Anyway, man, I’m sure you’re the one with the questions.
Rick: That’s true, none of them about highways.
AJ Croce: True enough.
Rick: Do you go by AJ normally or …
AJ Croce: I do. I mean, my full name is Adrian James Croce. It was just happened to be that, you know, I was in school. It was just short. Ironically, my friends wanted it even shorter, so there was one syllable and it became “Age”. So, a lot of my friends just say, “Hey Age!”.
Rick: I just interviewed Jose Feliciano because on your website , there’s a mentioned of Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, both being inspirations for you.
AJ Croce: Sure.
Rick: So you’ve reached, I believe a 25-year milestone in changing music industry, since your debut album and it was 1993.
AJ Croce: That’s right, yeah.
Rick: So how have you grown since that time? How have you grown as a performer, musician, and even as an entrepreneur over that period of time, especially with the music industry changing so much?
A.J. Croce – Image by Sebastian Smith.
AJ Croce: Little things happen and then, I would say, probably my last release was the first time I felt like an old man, because there were so many changes that had to do with the way that a record gets rolled out and marketed. You know, I have a couple of independent labels, one that’s mine, one that’s a home for family stuff, it’s with my dad.
And so, of course for me, I’ve been involved in the business side. I’ve been a publisher of my own music and of my father’s music since, certainly starting with mine in the early ’90s. It changes all the time. And with the new law that was just passed, I think we’re going to see some really positive things for publishers. You know, it hadn’t really been changed since 1911 or something like that.
So, it was due for an update as far as composers and writers go.
As a performer, of course, I’ve grown immensely. I mean, I started off strictly as a piano player. And probably, you know, 15 years ago or so, I was given my dad’s, 1933 Gibson LO. And it’s just a jam. It’s a real, real sweet instrument and sounds gorgeous.
And so at first, I started writing on it and that was a success, because I immediately simplified the way that I was writing. I had all these options as a piano player, during the time before I could even walk, I was banging on the keys. So, for me I saw the world of options and with guitar, I did it.
So every guitar player I ever played with on a session, I would ask them hey, how do you play that chord? How do you do that?
It matters. I would say, “Hey, how do you, how are you doing that? How do you play that note or that chord, like that or how is it, what’s that shape you’re making?” You know, and even though I wasn’t a guitar player, I was interested.
And so finger style came really naturally to me. And being a huge fan of country blues like my father in that way, you know, Mississippi John Hurt and, like John is in it and Gary Davis and all that stuff, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGee, you know, Skip James. A lot of finger styles, you know. And it was one of those things where I started off with it being a way to simplify my writing.
And it was successful, because the first thing that I wrote got into the Top 40 Radio. I’ve been on the charts, but it had always been in like jazz and blues, and stuff like that.
I really got inspired to learn how to be a better player. And, you know, I wanted to know on how Django did his thing.
AJ Croce: Oh, I love Tommy! I saw him the other night. My buddy, Andy Reiss , we jammed together at my place, at his place and once a week they have a jazz jam session and so I usually played keys on that session, because it’s all bad ass guitar players. But, everyone was cool enough to let me play guitar, which I love.
Rick: Yeah, I actually forgot that Tommy lives in Nashville.
AJ Croce: Tommy is so freaking good. I can hear all that stuff on piano but, and so it’s kind of one of those things where I learn how to play stride piano which is probably the hardest form in the last 120 years.
Musically, it challenges the left-hand and you really need to forget about what’s going on. I mean, I spent a good year and a half just playing left hand stuff. Not even thinking about the right hand for a period, you know, you could do anything. You could have conversations, you could have friends over, you could have drinks. Just keep that left hand going.
And it was through one piano player, I got into, Little Brother Montgomery and a lot of guitar players like John Hurt and Lonnie Johnson and guys like that, Skip James and even folks like Merle Travis where I’ve really learned the way that the left hand moved. It simplified it. I don’t mean to be insulting, but it’s much simpler in the sense for piano player to play that because you have all of those fingers to play all those notes! And with guitars, of course it’s more complicated because you only have five fingers to create those chords.
Rick: You almost have to press all your fingers sometimes to get the chord right. You know, you have to twist them.
AJ Croce: Oh yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. And so, I started to fall in love with the guitar and, you know, that was really early on, as a teenager. You know, learning how to play that stuff. And then, I was always into it as a kid. I did go blind and so it was a difficult time.
I have to fight a very violent childhood and my father died. And so Ray Charles was solid and you know, and Stevie was solid and the music was solid. It was my escape. And yeah, I was a leftie, I’m a leftie. So, I actually had started playing guitar left-handed, but then I got this guitar that had been, you know, my dad’s. He traded and got me a banjo.
You know, in the ’60s, all he did, I think was changed the tuning pegs. Everyone that comes over, and it doesn’t matter who it is, they’re just like, “Oh, this is gorgeous!”
And so I felt the obligation to learn his stuff. I felt an obligation to learn how to be a good guitar player. You know, I may never be able to catch myself as a pianist, but I practice every day. I work hard in playing different kinds of music, different genres, approaching things in different angles. And I love mostly soul.
Rick: Oh, so you like the ES-335s and those …
AJ Croce: I have a 1963 Country Gent.
Rick: Aha, that’s a keeper.
AJ Croce: That looks like it’s brand new and it’s a serial number off from George’s that he played on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Rick: I was going to say this, like the George Harrison’s guitar.
AJ Croce: Yeah, it’s a jam and it took a minute to like figure. I had to download how to operate all the switches because they’re slightly different than any other guitar I had.
The first guitar, first electric I bought was a 1967 330. Ironically, I love the Beatles, but I was more into the Stones. And so I ended up with this 330 which is like a nice version of the Casino. I love that guitar. It’s simple. The tone is gorgeous. Each one of them is so unique.
Rick: So do you hang out George Gruhn’s shop?
AJ Croce: I do. I would and I should. You know, my main touring electric right now is such an odd ball thing. And I’ve been looking for a three-quarter size electric.
Rick: Oh yeah, small one.
AJ Croce: Right, that would fit the overhead and first he (Gruhn) said, I think have the perfect instrument for you. So he felt, he had this absolutely just gorgeous ES-140 which is a three-quarter size 135.
Rick: Oh, okay.
AJ Croce: You know, with him, I said hey, you know, I’m three-quarters the height of Chuck Berry, so I feel it’s the appropriate instrument for me. And it’s absolutely gorgeous. I just changed the turning pegs yesterday. You know, I’m trying to keep everything as original as possible but, you know, everything gets old eventually. You got it and you’ve got to fix little things like that.
Rick: I’ve got some ’46, J45 tuning pegs in the bag…
AJ Croce: All of them are in bags. I’m also a huge fan of the way that Ry Cooder will experiment with different pickups and, you know, taking an old Teisco and basically just savage the thing, you know, make it a unique instrument!
Rick: Yeah, you mentioned three-quarter electric. I just got in the mail a couple of days ago an old Harmony and it’s called the Terz which is a three-quarter size guitar. It’s like a Martin Terz, as far as it’s solid mahogany, back and sides and a solid spruce top for $190.
It’s an acoustic. It needs a neck reset and I’m going to have that done, but it’s 3/4, interesting that you ought a three-quarter sized electric.
AJ Croce: This is such a jam, man. I tell you what, my main touring acoustic is a ’55 Southern Jumbo.
Rick: Oh, I love those, yeah.
AJ Croce: And it’s the cannon and then that thing just sounds great. It always sounds great. But, you know, more and more when I’m on tour, if I’ve got solo stuff all alone, I’ll bring the 140 and yes, see if someone in the band can fly home with my Southern Jumbo, because if they don’t fit in the overheads of European planes which are really tiny. And I only travel with it in a soft case. When I open the case to show security, they’re just like, they can tell it’s special. It just looks beautiful, you know?
And with a single cutaway, it’s a piece of art. It’s beautiful.
AJ Croce: Nice.
Rick: A ’44 LG-2, and a ’46 J-45. I just got a guitar called the Candelas which is from LA.and Jose Feliciano told me that they’re the best guitars in the world, by far.
AJ Croce: Really? What do you think?
Rick: I don’t have it yet, it’s being shipped, but I’ve got your number, I’ll call you up and let you know.
AJ: Will you please? You know, I’m a huge fan of his. I totally dig what he does.
Rick: Yes, so he mentioned that and then I have a bunch; a ’79 Tokai Springy Sound that Stevie Ray Vaughan endorsed before Fender. So, I can go on about guitars. We should talk again, because I can talk guitars in detail. I love guitars.
AJ: I can do it all day.
Rick: Yeah, and it sounds like it, since you you like your dad’s guitar. It was an L-O?
AJ Croce: It’s ’33 L-O.
Rick: I’ve really find that for singing I like the mahogany back and sides, and give me a spruce top and I’m ready to go.
AJ Croce: Yeah, that’s generally, that’s the way I feel. Gibson just gave me this absolutely, you know, I thought it would be kind of a junkie thing, just because it’s new and inexpensive, and boy, was I wrong, like it’s a Joe Pass Epiphone.
Rick: Really, yeah?
AJ Croce: And it’s an Emperor.
Rick: Okay, yeah, I know those.
AJ Croce: I absolutely love the thing and I can’t tell you, I mean, I’m probably doing, you know, I’m putting a deal on it. I’m going to see how it does with the Bigsby. If not I’ll go back to the bridge it has because it’s great. The thing I like about it was that as a big, it’s a big body guitar, you know, more in the vein of like my mid ’50s, you know, like a Howlin’ Wolf 150, you know what I mean?
It’s big, it’s loud guitar that, you barely need an amp for and I really dig that. I can really dig in with the pick and even though I’m more of a finger style player, if I want to strum, I don’t feel like I’m going to tear the thing apart. You know what I mean? I want to dig in hard and play.
Rick: Yeah, you ever see a Richie Havens play?
AJ Croce: Yeah.
Rick: Oh man, talk about digging in.
AJ Croce: Yeah. So, you see him do it with acoustics?
Rick: Yeah.
AJ Croce: It’s a different thing.
Rick: Yeah, that’s true, that’s true.
AJ Croce: Hit a guitar like that.
And you can do that with heavy strings. You can change all kinds of aspects of your instrument to make it work, but with electrics, there are just, they are little different, you know, and you can easily knock that string out of whack.
Rick: Yeah, that’s true.
AJ Croce: And forget about breaking it, that’s the easy part of just the mechanical part of having to deal with that. So, I’m really, this is funny, I’ve got all of these really valuable instruments that I love, and I play a second string part in it. And what is different, you know, get sense, Fender sense and whatnot. And I am really happy with this one. I can’t wait to get that.
AJ Croce: Yeah, it is.
It’s two of two. It was a template. So, it was one of those things where a pal of mine over at Martin, let it go during the NAMM show.
Rick: Really, it wasn’t Dick Boak, was it?
AJ Croce: It sure was.
Rick: I know Dick, great guy.
AJ Croce: It already had it, and I did a European tour with that. I loved it. I used it on sessions a lot because it functions as, you know, in a really great way for capturing that jingly thing. And then sometimes I used this OO-15. I really like to be high strung and I put those really light strings on and then hearing that with my Southern Jumbo or with the D-21 or with, any number of full body guitars, gives you that 12-string in a really sweet way too. So, there’s lots of ways to skin a cat.
Rick: Yeah, so you like 12-strings?
AJ Croce: I do. I don’t like tuning them.
Rick: Well, that’s true. Another guitar I got coming in besides the Calendes is a 12-string LoPrinzi. Have you heard of LoPrinzis? There’s a guy named Augustino LoPrinzi who started out building guitars in a chicken coop and then in the back of a barbershop and now he’s probably 80 years old but he builds some really fine guitars. And his guitar, and this is Brazilian 12-string and it was around $800. They’re still cheap. I don’t know why they’re so cheap, because they’re great guitars. I’ve got a Yamaha 12-string here that sounds good. And some of the Yamahas, you know, I didn’t realize they had a custom shop. And so I’ve got, one of the custom shops, I got an L-25AT which is pretty rare. And it’s a beautiful, it’s probably as good as anything else I’ve got.
AJ Croce: Yeah. Yamaha makes good instruments.
Rick: Yeah. They’re great.
AJ Croce: And I endorse their pianos and their keyboards and stuff. I think, they make good instruments. I don’t have enough time in the day to tune the 12-string, and so the seven-string to me is as close as I get.
Rick: Yeah, it’s tough. I have got pretty good pitch and I can tune it pretty well, just by ear. But, I’m not necessarily picking it the first E note properly but whatever I start with, I can roll with that.
AJ Croce: Of course, of course, yeah. Yeah, I can do that too but it’s just like …
Rick: Yeah, it takes time, yeah.
AJ Croce: Like what’s the weather like?
Rick: Yeah, well, that’s true. Yeah, the climate you can screw it up.
AJ Croce: Yeah. You know, where are you, are you playing outside? Is it sitting outside, if the temperature changing while you’re playing.
Rick: Yeah, that’s true.
AJ Croce: One of the circumstances with the overhead lights, you know?
Rick: Yeah.
Rick: At what point did you think that you had your own music, a style that was your own, so you have sort of an AJ stamp on it, maybe distinct a bit from your father’s?
AJ Croce: Well, I always thought that what I was doing was different, that of course was different than him. While we had a lot of similar influences, I grew up listening to his record collection. So, of course I grew from different influences, but some of them were the same, you know. So from an early age, I was into the piano player and to more jazz stuff.
Rick: Ray Charles?
AJ Croce: Neat stuff…of course, Ray Charles, Little Richard.
Rick: Jerry Lee Lewis, the killer.
AJ Croce: Huge. I listened less to Jerry Lee than the guys that were the real masters.
Rick: Yeah, yeah.
AJ Croce: And not that Jerry Lee isn’t great, I love him. He’s a great showman. I love his voice, one of the greatest voices. I love his country music. I love his rock and roll. But you know, he doesn’t play like, you know, Albert Ammons or Pete Johnson or, you know, whether he can’t play right, like you know, like Willie “The Lion” Smith or James P. Johnson or Fats Waller or I could name names all day.
But, he’s a showman. He will play and that’s good, you know. I’m not taking anything away. I’m just saying, you know…
Rick: He’s like honky-tonk rocker.
AJ Croce: Yeah.
Rick: Which is good, I mean, good, he made it his, you know, he’s a legend.
AJ Croce: He is, yeah. It’s great. I mean, Elvis isn’t the best guitar player, right?
Rick: Right, right.
AJ Croce: It doesn’t matter. He was a great showman and it didn’t get in the way of him..
Rick: Expressing himself, you know, the way he wanted to.
AJ Croce: That’s exactly right. It’s exactly right. So yes, I was influenced by old music, but I was also listening to the stuff that I grew up with, like Randy Newman. I was singing Tom Waits.
To songwriters that were a little outside the mainstream. And of course I was also really into as a teenage the blues and jazz and all that stuff but I was really into ’60s garage rock and roll.
Rick: I was in the ’60s garage band. We actually played in a garage. We were doing Stones stuff and Animals and all that British Invasion music.
AJ Croce: Right.
Rick: So, you said you like people who are a little bit of out of the ordinary, Warren Zevon?
AJ Croce: Oh yeah. Yeah, the drummer that I’m playing with right now recorded a lot with Warren.
Gary Mallaber, he was with Van Morrison and on all those great legendary Van Morrison records.
Rick: Yeah, I just saw Van Morrison at Jiffy Lube in the D.C. area.
AJ Croce: Really?
Rick: Yeah, he was great and Taj Mahal opened for him. Yeah, it was a really good concert.
AJ Croce: Taj and I play together a lot when I first started. He is very encouraging.
Rick: That’s nice, that’s nice.
AJ Croce: Yeah, the same first producer, John Simon. Yeah. He was always a really genuinely nice to me. And appreciated it when I was telling him that I pay tribute to the old stuff. But, you know, also wanted to create something new.
Rick: Yeah.
AJ Croce: And that’s really the answer to your question. And I wanted to have an element of something that was timeless, but I also didn’t want to neglect the current language that we communicated with.
Rick: I want to tell you, I was listening to “The Part That Makes Me Whole” and …
AJ Croce: I wrote that with Leon, yeah.
Rick: Oh, Leon, well, that’s a lot, I love Leon Russell. But, you know, I found out that that was probably my favorite tune that I’ve listened to, it was like funky, slinky but it was down home and I was half expecting you to do a Warren Zevon grunt in it. You know, like he goes, “Ugh, draw a blood!”
AJ Croce: It was just live, man.
Rick: Was it?
AJ Croce: Yeah. We get, we did three passes and it’s live and then, Cropper, yeah, I left the stage for Cropper and …
Rick: That’s Steve Cropper on it, cool. I just spoke with Steve a month and a half ago. Nice guy.
AJ Croce: Yeah, yeah, he is. He is. And, you know, you listen to that solo, I don’t know if he ever knew all the chords, the song has a lot of chords.. But, he just played around and we had more fun, because I haven’t seen him in years, him and Dan Penn.
Rick: Yeah, the Box Tops, “Cry Like a Baby” and what else did he do? “I’m Your Puppet” is that him? No, that was Spooner Oldham, did “I’m Your Puppet”.
AJ Croce: He did “I’m Your Puppet”, he did “The Dark End of the Street”, he did “Do Right Woman”.
Rick: Amazing.
AJ Croce: He wrote “The Letter” for the Box Tops.
Rick: Yeah, incredible, yeah.
AJ Croce: The list goes on and on and on and on.
AJ Croce: Absolutely or in some cases in the hands of a great arranger, someone like John Simon. All of a sudden like this, if you could write a lighthearted letter to God about all the things that are wrong in the world, but made it as very tongue and cheek, and that’s what I did. Now, that song became really, really huge in Japan. Yes, in fact, it became a commercial in Japan for six years.
Rick: Really? There you go.
AJ Croce: So, I’ve done a lot of foreign ads and stuff, jingles and stuff. And what’s ironic about it was that it became, you know, it’s kind of a heavy, it’s kind of heavy even though it’s, you know tongue and cheek. And it became really lightweight in a sense that I’m selling a product.
Rick: Yeah, yeah.
AJ Croce: This song is selling a product. You know, I changed the words for the commercial. And then, but when I go to Japan, they asked for me to perform, you know, they listen to the song and it’s like part of the contract that I’ve got to perform my commercials. I feel that it’s a weird thing, right?
So all of a sudden it carries a great, like a deeper weight than it did before because it was written as just lighthearted letter and then it became even a lighter thing by being a jingle for like chewing gum or something. And then I’m going there and I’m performing it with the original lyrics and the original meaning thing, to like take on a greater meaning than it did before.
Rick: That’s kind of interesting.
AJ Croce: Yeah. I don’t know how that is. But like, yeah, that happened. But, writing is an exercise. I do it every day. Until they’re complete. So, I don’t write something great every day! I wish I could.
But, no one ever needs to hear it and you know what, I do lectures or when I talk at a university or if I talk for other songwriters, my point is that it’s an exercise, you know, that no one needs to hear it that it’s just like your practice. Your practice is a critical part of being good at any instrument. But, there is practice like performing live.
Rick: Oh, that’s definitely true, yeah.
AJ Croce: You cannot fake it and all of the things that you learned in your room or in your garage with your friends, all of a sudden need to be, first of all, they need to be forgotten in essence and second of all, you need to let the adrenaline work for you and all of a sudden you are in a different headspace.
Rick: Exactly, yeah.
AJ Croce: And to work within that headspace allows you to become better at that.
Rick: That is so true, yeah. That’s an interesting way to put it. I found myself the same way when I’m – I’m going to be featured artist here locally and when I get in front of people, it’s like, it’s almost like I’m in a bubble.
AJ Croce: Yeah, man.
Rick: When you’re in a studio, have you learned enough to take the lead, especially after your 12 Tales’s experience, as far as engineering production? Or do you let those guys do their thing or is it like more of a collaboration thing now that you’ve been around for 25 years or more?
AJ Croce: The three records before 12 Tales were all my productions.
Rick: Oh, were they? I didn’t know that.
AJ Croce: And so I’m not a great engineer, but I know what I want. I know how to get it and I know which tools are going to get me what I need. I’m paying attention to where things are patched. I’m paying attention to which effects that they used, where I’m keeping notes, you know, meticulous notes.
Of each path, of anything relevant. After those three records of, you know, being a producer, I really got to a place where I really needed, I wanted to learn more, you know?
I wanted to learn some of the greats and see how they do it. And one of the similarities between every great producer, whether it’s Allen Toussaint or whether it was Cowboy Jack Clement with Mitchell From or Greg Cohen or any of those people, is that every one of them is open, their ears are open, their minds are open.
They’re really open to the, any possibilities. So in the case of working with Allen Toussaint which was good for me, he’s been a hero of mine since I was really young, when I first saw and heard one of the Irma Thomas’s songs. And I needed to know everything about who wrote it and who arranged it. And so we were sitting there and we were playing live and recording live, you know, that was a quartet. And I said, man, I hear a harmony of four horns or I can definitely hear four horns on here.
And I hear background vocals. He’s like, I don’t hear it. I said, I don’t hear it right now, but let’s keep listening.
And so he said, first, let’s do one more passage just to see, we’ve got two good ones, let’s do one more and just see if we can beat it.
And as I came in after that last take, he’s singing this harmony and I said, “Well, what’s that?”
He is like, the trombone and then he set in and then and he starts singing this other harmony. And I said, “What’s that?” and he says, “Sing that.” And so in that case he immediately fell in and called up the horn section and three singers and he says tomorrow we’re going to do things more than vocal over here, otherwise it would have been one day.
Rick: Yeah, yeah, that’s cool, listening and really exploring and discovering new things in a song. It’s a real art. I’m thinking that, that takes a lot of discipline to do that, as well as being the guy behind the mic. So, do you find it a little difficult to go back and forth between the two and be objective.
AJ Croce: There are particular songs that I heard and had to be objective with. I think that there are certain songs where it’s really clear to me that what’s required is a really a good performance.
And, you know, the right players to add what they’re going to add. And then there are songs where, you know, there’s an element of fear, like of being able to achieve what is maybe possible with the song.
And so in the case of my last album, Out of My Head, the first song I wrote for the album, it was during the difficult time and I was moving and I wrote the song on a box in my kitchen. I was moving from California to Nashville. It’s the second time I was moving to Tennessee. And I wrote this thing. So I’m sitting with all of the players and we’re all sitting together real close and I said, you know, this is where my head is at. This is what I was thinking about.
And my inclination, group-wise was this sort of a dark emotional thing. Well, it was the way it was my twist, that I had a U87 [Neumman mic] on my right vocals. I was sitting at my Steinway. And I had a drum, an Indian drum resting between my stomach and the piano. So, it was precariously like if I move too much, it would slip and fall.
So I had to stay relatively in the same spot. So, I’m playing percussion, I’m singing and I’m playing piano. I can’t mess up because the drum is being picked up by both piano mics and the vocal mic.
And so, it was just a great band. And everyone understood, I was not always the best in communicating clearly and in this case I felt really proud that everyone understood the state of mind that this song came from, and everyone did so beautifully. That was one take. We didn’t even bother to do another.
It was just like, we got it. We knew it, we’re not going to beat it, we did it. It was as if I waited until the last song of recording with Dan to do that one out of my head because it was, because it scared me, you know? And so I hope that answers the question a little bit. You know, you don’t necessarily always know the potential of what you’re going to get.
Rick: Yeah, I guess you don’t really know until you’re finished when the song is actually done. You may think it’s done in your head until you’re working with other people and you find that it takes on kind of a different feel or meaning.
AJ Croce: Yeah, yeah, of course, it does. It does. Usually it’s really clear to me like you can’t tell instrumentation as, you know, having done it for years in arranging whether it’s horns of whether strings or a rhythm section or whatever it is, singers, of what, what’s going to, from the production side, what’s going to be satisfying to listen to.
But, you know, you never know and sometimes a lot of times, you do know. I always describe producing is like building a frame for a piece of art. And some pieces of art require really beautiful, well carved frames. And others, all they need is a magnet to go on the fridge.
You can’t think too hard about it in a sense and at the same time you can’t be lazy.
Rick: Let’s talk a bit about your wife and your kids, nurturing and everything. And then I’ve got a couple of lighter weight questions, I think, after that.
AJ Croce: It has to be lighter weight after that.
Rick: Yeah. And if this becomes difficult, just let me know and, you know, we’ll back off. You had time with your father then his loss and later a difficult time that you mentioned, regarding some serious abuse. And you also went through the blind thing. I would think that those experiences have offered you a clarity on how to nurture your own kids, especially with the loss of your wife, Marlo, and their mom. Do you have some core value system or perspective. What’s your perspective and how do you steel yourself to keep moving forward and doing the right things for your kids. What keeps that altogether for you?
AJ Croce: It’s a really good question and I don’t know that there is, you know, sort of a set patented answer for it.
Rick: Yeah, okay. Yeah.
AJ Croce: I think that the initial shock of loss of someone, of, you know, of your spouse, of the mother of the children, my kids are grown up. My daughter is 28, my son is about turning 22. So, they had the chance to know their mom, nice things, you know.
Rick: But, they’re still your babies.
AJ Croce: Yes, they are. They still are. And so I just, basically, I want to be there as much as I can for them to talk to. I want them to feel like they can tell me anything and I also want them to feel like, that feeling emotional in a time of great emotion and loss and sadness, is something that is really natural. And I also want to reassure them that, of course, I’m here for them.
My daughter just visited me here in Nashville. Visited here and I’ll be out there, we see each other every month. We talk almost every day.
Rick: Oh, that’s nice. It’s sweet.
AJ Croce: Well, we’re really close and I feel like it’s important that that everyone learns how to cope with it their own way. And at the same time to feel free to, you know, to cry.
Rick: Yeah, I’m sure.
AJ Croce: You know, to break down, you know, to have all of those emotions that are natural and when a lot of times even though she has so many close friends and there are so many people that love her, you know, it’s …
Rick: It’s hard.
AJ Croce: It’s still very different than being the spouse or the child, because those people kind of move on faster than you do.
Rick: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, I refer to mine, mother passed away just last night. I think what happens is you go through this grieving stage and, in time, it will kind of become more of an appreciation for having had that person in your life.
AJ Croce: That’s right. That’s very true. You know, the thing that is really important to understand for a lot of people, I think, is that you don’t get over it, you don’t get over it. You might get through it, but you don’t get over it, because you just don’t, because they were such an important of your life.
Rick: I think part of that is you don’t want to lose that memory, you know, and you want to lock in something. And maybe it’s the grief that locks in the memory.
AJ Croce: Yeah, I mean, for me, I’m in a new place, of course. We were so, so close. She was my best friend. She knew music inside and out. She was so smart and we could talk about anything and so I could say, “Hey, can I play you a song? I think it’s good.” She would, she was, you know, respectful of it but she would go, ” I don’t love it” or “I think this is good or I like this part of it, or this reminds me of this or this reminds me of that.” She had so many reference points.
You know, “That reminds me of a Squeeze thing, or that reminds me of Jelly Roll Morton.”
Rick: She was eclectic.
AJ Croce: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, like myself, I mean, it was one of the things we had in common with, our love of music. We spent many, many nights we would just be on the floor in the living room next to the speakers, so we could be in between the speakers and we would just listen to music all night long.
Rick: Wow.
AJ Croce: Yeah, we would listen and it was so eclectic. It could be punk rock or it could be heavy metal, it could be …
Rick: Grunge.
AJ Croce: Yeah. Anything it could be anything. And there’s this, I don’t know too many people that know me like that.
Now, I have a good friend in California who understands, my music and who likes it and has a good ear. He doesn’t have the depth of historical knowledge that she had. But, he’s like my last connection to that. So, we were talking the other night and he was like, count me in and if you need anything, send it to me, I want to hear it. I think he’s really honest, a unique people to be honest with you.
Rick: That’s cool, that’s cool.
AJ Croce: You know?
Rick: Yeah, it can be hard to trust friends and spouses to be objective.
AJ Croce: It wasn’t, yeah, she would be, there was no bullshit and sugarcoat it. And that was what I love, because if she’d loved it, then I knew I had something.
Rick: Was there ever a song that she didn’t care for at first, but later grew on her?
AJ Croce: No, never.
Rick: Really? She got it right away or didn’t?
AJ Croce: No. It was immediate.
Rick: Ah, interesting, interesting.
AJ Croce: It was immediate. And the thing is I did this panel a few weeks ago about copyright infringement versus creativity.
Rick: Oh, yeah.
AJ Croce: More for lawyers and for songwriter. But, we would play where, we could pick a part, any song by any contemporary artist and go, there is one bar of this from that, there’s a bar with this from there and thinking with my stuff with like, where, “Oh, I don’t know that from anywhere!” And when you didn’t know something from anywhere, it’s like, yes, okay. I had seen something.
Rick: It’s not derivative.
AJ Croce: Yeah. Yeah, exactly, and that’s really hard. I mean, everyone writes something that’s, you know, derivative. In some fashion.
You know, there’s only so many notes.
Rick: Yeah, that’s true and there’s in your phrasing and everything else, maybe you have the same words but the phrasing is different and I was listening to “Come Together”. That’s a Chuck Berry song. It’s from “You Can’t Catch Me” and it’s like almost word for word in places, it’s like, oh John Lennon, what were you doing?
AJ Croce: Like a hundred times.
Rick: But, sometimes it’s not even conscious that you do it and you may pick it up later and maybe you never pick it up. But, that’s kind of interesting. Hey, what are you working on now? You got any studio projects going on?
AJ Croce: Yeah, I got two.
Rick: Okay. Can you talk about them or?
AJ Croce: Yeah, yeah.
For the last five years or so, kind of, not kind of, but spending a lot of time reading all kinds of sort of origin stories. For lack of a better term, different kinds of origin stories. Some are folklore and or mythologies, you know, that cultural anthropology, some of it is archeology, some of it is theology. And I had this idea of what had started as being sort of folk tales turned into a project of origin stories and I was looking for collaborators and I started looking into Mali and Nigeria.
Rick: Yeah, Mali’s got great music.
AJ Croce: And I was looking in Morocco and Turkey and Paris, because there’s a big African community, I felt like working stories, to have elements of world music, but it didn’t need to be like one thing and I didn’t mean it to be like this particular style of thing, like Ethiopian stuff or whatever.
So anyway, long story short, ended up hooking up with, I think like the first band that was signed by Downtown, and so it’s the work section from anyone’s house in it, and the first thing we did was, the band started in Mexico City and then the lead singer is from Nigeria. There’s like this whole thought of different languages being spoken by a bunch of the guys from Brooklyn.
So, some were playing with sounds more with Richard Jones, some with Charles Bradley and they’re all gone. So, they’re all doing their own kind of projects and that particular group which had been relatively consistent for, I think, for the last like 15 or 20 years, really got into the idea of what I had compiled and distilled. I really distilled all of this work that I had done from hundreds of books down to about 20 pages of the fundamental story.
And they got into it and so that backup started in July. And in the beginning of July and yeah, that’s the last thing that I played for my wife. And she was really, really into it.
Rick: That’s sweet.
AJ Croce: And so, as soon as we can, we’ll get together even if this whole thing takes six months or a year before it comes out. I think everyone was really, really positive about it. And then otherwise, I’m writing for a new project. And so it has all kinds of influences right now. Of course, it’s still early in the writing process.
I have a few different ideas that I really like. I have a feeling it’s going to have some New Orleans influences, but I have an inclination to take those things that are very familiar and bring in a more sort of esoteric or vanguard harmony approach.
Rick: Oh, you like Middle Eastern or something even different than that? Something that’s known or …
AJ Croce: Well, I think just harmonically more challenging than what would be obvious.
Rick: So, dissident, like I’m trying to grasp this a little bit.
AJ Croce: Yeah, a little bit of dissident. Think of like the way that, you know, Ornette Coleman, how would Ornette Coleman play a New Orleans piece, how would Ornette play a New Orleans piece?
I don’t know that I would go that far outside, because I am trying to tell story lyrically, because the music it’s not the only part of my vocabulary.
And I want to be able to write a song that people can dance to, you know, and even think to, you know. So, hard that makes me whole and it’s important, because it’s something, in the sense, you can dance to that, you can groove to it. And so my inclination right now is to take these ideas that I have and these songs that I’m working on that are sort of falling into comfortable places and then sort of de-construct them.
Rick: Okay. That’s almost like a Cubist approach.
AJ Croce: It’s not unlike that. It’s not unlike that. You know, how far do I go?
Rick: But, still try to keep it commercial, you know, you kind of get outside the lines but you want to kind of stay in the lines at the same time. That’s hard to do, I would think. It’s a little complex to get it right and still you’ve got to like it as well.
AJ Croce: Right. That’s right. Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a lot of ways to approach it that can make it interesting for a lot of people. I have been fortunate to reclaim a fan-base that I probably lost from trying too many different things in my career.
So, I do appreciate the fact that my fans, whoever they are out there, I’m grateful for them. They come to my shows, they buy my music and I want to make them happy. And I do know they like that it’s the imitators of what they love, to hear the root stuff and to hear, you know, me taking off on the piano and having good guitar groves and all that stuff is important. So, I can’t, I’m not going to leave them in the lurch in the process.
That’s the balance that you have to live when you are an artist, everything is under your name as opposed to, I can’t sit with a different band, it had a different name, I could go in different directions. That being that it’s under my name, there needs to be a consistency. I used to bitch about it because I would say, it gives all of these opportunities to show versatility.
Rick: Yeah, the reach, to stretch.
AJ Croce: And the musician, you know, is discouraged from versatility. In fact, if they’re too versatile then they’re considered unfocused. And so yeah, so finding that core fundamental aspect of what I like about what I do, what other people like about what I do, and then finding ways to make it interesting, by like you said, sort of deconstructing, and making it fun.
As dark as my thoughts have been, as difficult as the time I’ve had, there is a lot in there that we all as humans deal with and there’s ways to look at things in life with a sense of humor. And the way that I got through my most difficult times as a child and my house burning down and, you know, not seeing for years and, you know, lost my father and all the things that happen and lost my wife.
You have to be able to laugh, if you can’t find humor in life… then you’ve lost. And so you need to find some place in music that can satisfy that.
Rick: Yeah, it seems to me like you found a way to be resilient.
AJ Croce: Yeah. Well, I mean, if you’re alive, then you find a way. You find a way.
Rick: That’s probably true. I want to mention that I love your “Which Way Steinway”. I listened to that as well, and I like piano. In fact, one of the first songs I ever heard when I was kid like in 1956, it was my mother’s favorite song she liked, I don’t know if you’ve heard it, “Canadian Sunset”.
AJ Croce: Oh, yeah.
Rick: Isn’t it a great tune? It’s like a sloppy …
AJ Croce: Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah.
Rick: Yeah, it’s a great one. I was going to ask you, if you’ve if you’ve ever heard Judee Sill.
AJ Croce: No.
Rick: And she was a singer songwriter. She was the first woman actually the first artist assigned to Asylum Records.
And she passed away about five or six years after that, she had a horrible life. I mean, she had to prostitute herself and everything else. But she did a song called Jesus Is a Cross Maker and Warren Zevon did it, Mama Cast did it, and it’s actually not religious, it’s about J.D. Souther who she dated in. So if you get a chance, look him, Judee Sill, okay?
AJ Croce: I will.
Rick: And Nick Drake, you ever heard of Nick Drake?
AJ Croce: Of course.
Rick: Okay, all right. Well, she’s considered, a Nick Drake of the female singer-songwriter world. I’m like all over Nick Drake.
AJ Croce: I really did, I really did love him. I needed, you know, sometimes you listen to stuffs so heavy …
Rick: Yeah.
AJ Croce: It took a while and you need a break.
Rick: Sure, yeah.
AJ Croce: And that happens to me a lot. I just dive into something and then I just I need a break which is good because you just sort of absorb that world for a minute.
Rick: I think that’s true. And then you need Andy Kaufman and “Here I Come to Save the Day!”
AJ Croce: Yes. My son is a huge Andy Kaufman fan. I think it’s his, you know, my son is at UCP but since he’s been in Los Angeles, he does serious acting and he’s just starting out. He is young, but he loves the unproven. And his favorite is Andy Kaufman. I think that really twisted dark sense of humor is what’s the most inspiring to him.
He likes Andy Kaufman and he likes the Marx Brothers. And he likes Lenny Bruce. And George Carlin. He likes all kinds of stuff.
Rick: Yeah. He sounds like he’s smart and he’s a clever kid.
AJ Croce: Oh yeah. Yeah, they’re both smart. My son is a real, you know, brilliant, has a brilliant creative mind.
Rick: That’s sounds like you, his mom, his grandpa and your mom.
AJ Croce: Yeah.
Rick: I think I saw your mom in San Diego. I was at the Croce’s in San Diego.
AJ Croce: She retired a few years back. She closed after 30 years. And yes, she’s just, you know, it was time, she’s in her seventies. It was wearing her out and she still has more energy than most people I know, but now she is very happy to be, I would say semi-retired. But, she does her art. Before she and my dad recorded together, and she liked Sixties music, her real passion was fine art and so she went to SD [San Diego] and Penn State.
She had been a potter and she had been a painter and so she’s doing a lot of paintings and I think that she’s doing pottery again and it’s been something that she hadn’t done in many, many, many years, and I know it makes her so happy. So, it makes me happy that she’s finding this thing that she kind of left behind for so many years.
Rick: Yeah, so is she doing well?
AJ Croce: She’s doing all right.
Rick: And I would imagine she loves her grandbabies.
AJ Croce: Oh, of course!
Rick: That’s sweet. And, I really appreciate you opening up about what you’ve gone through lately and I’m sorry that happened and I’m just sad about it. But, you know, life goes on and we just keep chugging along, I suppose.
AJ Croce: We do our best man.
