You are well-known for your live performances, and luckily, in this day and age, many people can view your sets on YouTube. What steps did you take with this particular album to ensure you maintained the energy and intimacy of your live performances?
Even though we recorded this album in the studio, the band and I treated this album as if we were doing a show, so we were performing like we had a live audience. We just went back-to-back-to-back doing the songs and a lot of the songs, the takes that made the record were a little bit like the live takes; I was singing right along and the band was playing. It just really worked out. It worked out really, really well. I'm happy. We basically went in the studio, spent four days recording and another couple of days of just tracking.
The album definitely has a raw feel and the band was tight. How did you go about selecting the band members?
This is my band that's been with me for some time now. It was just right up my alley to do what we normally do during shows. So it was really fun.
My favorite track off of Let's Do It Again is the Phyllis Hyman track, "You Know How to Love Me." Do you have any particular memories attached to this song, from your personal life or the recording process?
The Phyllis Hyman track sticks out because it was one of the songs that I recorded towards the end of the project. And right towards the end, I began to lose my voice and I was extremely hoarse. I was like, "How am I going to execute this song?" and "She was such an excellent singer with a lot of jazz inflections in her voice. Oh my goodness, I hardly have anything to give." I said, "We should have recorded this song first!" [laughing] It was interesting, because it was like 2:30-3:00 in the morning and we were in the studio. I was like, "I got to knock it out," because that was the last day that we had to do it. I just had to dig down deep and I was tired and not feeling well. So that song really stands out in my mind, because It was only by the grace of God that I was able to get the vocals out! [laughing]
How do you feel about your take on the songs that you covered by male artists? As you prepared for the album, did you approach those songs differently?
No, not really. The first single off of Let's Do It Again is "It's A Man's Man's Man's World" by James Brown. It was really fun to record, because it's right up my alley to do the bluesier, raw kind of music. It was pretty much a one-take. Basically, I just told the band, "It's late. Let's go deep down in the backwoods somewhere and get real stank blues-y on it." I let my vocals come out as wild as it needed to be. I didn't want to make it sound too polished. It is what it is with that song. That was pretty much the approach. I feel like what made the Godfather of Soul what he is was just pure soul. That's something that's just in you. You don't try to curl it up. You really can't learn it; it's just there. That's what he was about. I had the pleasure of meeting him once, so this is just another way of me continuing his legacy of keeping his music out there.
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