Emmerald: : So, I was talking with my mom last night, and I told her that I was going to be talking with you today. She said that you used to play at the Exit-In here in Nashville, Tennessee all the time.
Roy Ayers: Oh yes! I used to tear the Exit-In up, girl. I used to have so much fun there. I heard that they closed.
Emmerald: Yes, they closed for a minute, and then reopened pretty recently.
Roy Ayers: Are they bringing any jazz there?
Emmerald: Not really. They do a lot of local shows, mostly rock and pop-type stuff. Some country and western, of course. You need to come back through, though.
Roy Ayers: I am going to come back. I'd definitely love to play in Nashville again. That would be really good. Yeah. So, how are you doin'?
Emmerald: I'm great. It's such a pleasure to speak with you, thank you.
Roy Ayers: Sure thing. You've got the new album, right, Virgin Ubiquity?
Emmerald: Yes, and it's wonderful! How did this project come about?
Roy Ayers: Here's what happened. Let me start off by just telling you that I'm celebrating my 40th year in show business this year.
Emmerald: Congratulations! That's awesome.
Roy Ayers: And I still look good. I'm trippin', but people tell me that all the time. And, I just made my 63rd birthday. So check it out, I'm 63, and still kicking. I've been putting records out every year. I was with PolyGram; that was the big label that I was with for the longest, like 12 years. Back in the day, I used to be in the studio recording 20 hours a day. You know, all day-all night, then I'd go home, go to sleep, and wake up the next day, and go back in all day-all night. And that was all of the time. I still record a lot of hours, but I don't go as long as I used to. Back in those days, I recorded a lot of stuff that I just put on the shelf, you know, just put it into storage, and I never used it. Like if I recorded an album, like when I did "Everybody Loves the Sunshine," I did about 25 songs, but I only used about 12. So those other 13 songs, I put them in storage. And they were good songs, but I didn't feel as thought they were as good as the one I put on the record. So this accumulated over a period of time, and the songs that are on Virgin Ubiquity are from the period 1976 to 1981. I have a lot more tapes of a lot of different songs that I haven't ever listened to. They're just sitting up in storage.
Anyway, here's the catch to it, most artists, whether they're country & western, jazz, blues, or whatever, they all have contracts directly with the record company, and when they do music, all of their music is owned by the record company.
Emmerald: Right.
Roy Ayers: But I did mine through a production company. All the music I did, I gave to the production company. Then the production company would give the record company the album. I used to do all my albums like that. It was fantastic. But now, understand, I have never planned to do anything with these other tapes. The one that are released, like the Virgin Ubiquity you have there, I wasn't going to do anything with that music. One day, I was talking to this guy that owns BBE over in England, and I said I've got some tapes and stuff that you might be interested in, and he went berserk.
Emmerald: I'm sure he did.
Roy Ayers: And then he came over, and we went in the studio, and he was- have you ever seen Jamiroquai?
Emmerald: Yeah.
Roy Ayers: Okay, he was dancing like Jamiroquai when he saw all of the tapes I had. I didn't know that he was a Roy Ayers fanatic. So we were listening to this stuff, and I was thinking, damn, this is some good stuff. You know what I'm staying? Because, you know, sometimes when you do stuff, you just say well, this is just regular stuff, nothing special. But he was telling me "Roy, this is awesome. We've got to do a deal." So I said, no problem. So we did a deal. I've got at last three more albums worth of music. So it's like a new beginning, you know what I'm saying? It's so exciting for me because I've been making records all these years, and now, you know, I've realized something. When I was recording back, say from '70 to '82, I always played piano and laid the tracks down. But I really used to talk to the other musicians while the track was playing.
