Serendipitous sax

St. Petersburg native Mindi Abair, labeled ''the next generation of jazz,'' has a hot debut album and a career that's just falling into place.

By DAVE SCHEIBER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 25, 2003

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Things just have a way of happening in the burgeoning career of jazz saxophonist Mindi Abair, whose debut album hits stores today with a fitting title, It Just Happens That Way.

Take one night in 1999.

The St. Petersburg native had been getting attention on national tours with such marquee names as guitarist-vocalist Jonathan Butler, actor-singer Adam Sandler and keyboardist Bobby Lyle.

Then, out of the blue, the phone rang in her Los Angeles home. It was an offer to be the featured sax player for the Backstreet Boys, soon to embark on their record-setting Millennium Tour. Three days later, Abair was on a jet to Europe, immersed for two years in a nonstop, teen-pop scream-a-thon as "the Backstreet Girl."

Or consider this past Valentine's Day. It's one story Abair may never be able to top.

There she was onstage at the fabled Beacon Theater in Manhattan. In the packed crowd were top officials of Verve Music Group, on hand to see their rising star perform live for the first time. It was Abair's biggest moment in music, as the lone opening act for one of her jazz heroes, singer Al Jarreau.

She had not seen him since he presented her diploma at her graduation from Boston's Berklee College of Music just more than a decade ago.

Now their paths crossed again. Abair was thrilled. She was even happier that her set had been a big hit with the crowd of 3,000, her Verve bosses and Jarreau himself.

[Publicity photo] Mindi Abair was an all-state sax player at Northside Christian School in St. Petersburg, then went on to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Savoring the reaction, Abair returned to her dressing room. But her purse -- with her cash, credit cards, cell phone and driver's license -- was gone.

"So I run downstairs and see Al -- it's midnight and the only people left in the place are me, Al and a security guard," she says.

"I tell him my purse is gone, and he goes, 'What?' And then he starts looking through all the trash cans, and he's running up and down stairs, trying to find it.

"And I go, 'Al, you're Al Jarreau, sit down. You're not supposed to be looking for my purse!'

"But it was funny. I was just standing there at the end of this beautiful, amazing night and literally did not have a cent for a taxi. It's just me and Al. And he was so great."

Still, Abair had no way to get back to her hotel, and no way to catch her 6 a.m. flight to Tampa for a radio publicity swing.

So Jarreau and the security guard steered her to a phone. She reached the Verve sales director, who, between 1 and 4 a.m., managed to get her some cash, took her to file a theft report with the police, to the label to get press packs and CDs, and then finally to La Guardia Airport for her flight.

With no photo ID, at one of the tightest checkpoints in the country, in the midst of a heightened alert, Abair had to think fast.

"When I got to the (security gate), I literally had to hold up a CD to my face and go, 'Look, it's my picture,' " she says. "Then I showed them the police report and my press kit. And that's how I had to get on the plane."

Smooth, with an edge

[Times photo: Fred Victorin] Mindi Abair returned to her native St. Petersburg last week to plug her new album on smooth jazz radio station WSJT-FM 94.1.

Of course, Abair isn't fretting about the inconvenience. Earlier on that same crazy Valentine's Day, the industry magazine Radio & Records came out with its new issue for the week.

Dominating the cover was a sultry, blond sax player whose debut single, Lucy's, had just rocketed from nowhere into the Top 10 on the smooth jazz chart.

Next to Abair's photo was a roll call of raves:

-- "Mindi has created more than a new single. She's leading a new movement in music." -- John Mullen, operation manager at WQCD-FM and WRKS-FM in New York City.

-- "Mindi will be a breakout artist in 2003. She's got the hook and the look!" -- Carl Anderson, program director at WJZW-FM in Washington, D.C.

-- "Mindi is both figuratively and literally a breath of fresh air." -- Ralph Stewart, marketing director at KTWV-FM in Los Angeles.

Abair's arrival comes at a time when smooth jazz is hurting. According to a recent R&R story, the radio format remains successful nationally, but record sales -- aside from those of a few major names like Kenny G -- are way off.

One of the problems is complacency: artists sticking to a homogenized format, rather than creating new sounds. Another is smooth jazz's failure to bring younger listeners into the fold.

That explains the excitement about Abair and her blend of pop, rock and R&B influences into what she calls "alternative" jazz.

"Her CD is a departure for smooth jazz, but it still fits," says Carol Archer, R&R's smooth jazz editor. "Her approach melds pop with modern production elements, and she's a really strong songwriter. But there's something about her youthful perspective that sets her apart. She's already having an impact on the genre -- and you can see it in the way programmers and audiences have embraced her."

Abair made the cover of Smooth Jazz magazine last fall, but her CD created the real buzz.

"This is not a formula album just to get airplay," says Ross Block, program director at WSJT-FM 94.1 in St. Petersburg. "Sometimes, it's hard to find a voice as a sax player in smooth jazz, because no matter how smooth you are, it sounds a lot like other songs. But her music is a little bit different. Plus, when you talk to her, she's fun, outgoing, opinionated. And she also stands out for being a woman, which is somewhat unique in the smooth jazz world."

Fame and its drawbacks

Abair first caught the attention of Verve's artist and development honcho Bud Harner four years ago.

"I saw Mindi play at a concert in San Diego with Jonathan Butler, and she stood out onstage. When she came out to take a solo, the whole place was just mesmerized by her, this beautiful, young, blond woman coming up and just burning on the horn."

He tracked Abair down through the Musicians Union in Hollywood, only to learn that she had just committed to the Backstreet Boys tour.

"We left it that we'd keep in touch," Harner says.

Meanwhile, Abair became a fixture at the Backstreet Boys' sold-out arena shows in Europe and the United States. Young fans cheered her solos and clamored for her autograph after concerts.

"Touring with the Backstreet Boys was a life experience," she said last week during an interview at the Hyatt Westshore in Tampa. "It was unbelievable. You get to understand the price of fame a little better. I mean, I ended up in tabloids as Nick Carter's girlfriend, which was ridiculous. But they'd see us together -- hey, everyone was always together -- and then they'd get pictures with telephoto lenses."

The ride ended in 2001, as the Backstreet Boys went out on their Black & Blue tour with a new band and began to fade. Abair was also ready for a change.

"All of a sudden, I was back in the real world -- 'Wow, nobody cares who I am, that's cool,' " she says. "That gave me time to reflect on what I had to say as an artist and really sit and practice, instead of running from city to city. I cooked. I hung out with friends. It was great."

She toured briefly with pop star Mandy Moore but mostly performed gigs in Los Angeles, wrote songs and refined her style.

Last July, she felt ready to contact Harner.

"A few years had gone by, and a package came to my office," Harner says. "It was Mindi's demos."

Going solo

Harner and Verve CEO Ron Goldstein signed Abair right away, with no plans to make her conform.

"So we decided we wouldn't go to the regular stable of producers who make most of the smooth jazz stuff," Harner says.

They liked the 30 or so demo cuts Abair had done with her own producer/keyboardist, Matthew Hager. So they turned the reins over to him. The album was made in a month, featuring 11 instrumentals Abair co-wrote and one cover, Eagle Eye Cherry's Save Tonight (the lone track on which Abair also sings).

"Right from the start, Bud told me to make my own music," she says. "And Ron told me, 'You are the next generation of jazz.' And I was like, 'Wow, I'll take that and run with it.' "

The end result: something new. "There's the pop feel, the different instrumentation -- I use acoustic guitars and weird drum sounds, and some sampled stuff that's usually not too acceptable. They just gave me incredible leeway, totally the opposite of what I'd always heard a major label did."

Still, Abair and Hager feared radio program directors' reactions. "Actually, we thought they might hate it," she says. "To do something apart from what the stations are playing -- that's a big risk."

But Lucy's, written by Abair and Hager in one sitting, entered the R&R charts -- based on number of plays -- in the Top 30 and has risen steadily, at No. 8 as of last week. That's before the album has even been released. "It's very, very rare for something like this to happen in smooth jazz," Harner says.

Another rarity: The label has been receiving e-mails about her from young listeners. "They tell me they've never had 16- and 18-year-olds e-mailing jazz artists," Abair says.

It's a long way from Abair's roots in St. Petersburg, where she grew up in a musical household. Her father, Lance, was a sax player and keyboardist whose Tampa Bay-based band, the Entertainers, toured the country -- with wife Linda and baby Mindi. Later, Abair's bedroom was next to her dad's home recording studio. Musicians were always around.

Abair graduated from Northside Christian School in 1987 after becoming an all-state sax player as a senior and earning a music scholarship to prestigious Berklee. She won the college's Performance Achievement Award and graduated magna cum laude in 1991.

Abair has been approached about performing at the next Clearwater Jazz Holiday and is booked at WSJT's Smooth Jazz Fest in April. She marvels at the way her career has fallen into place. It seems to be in the spirit of It Just Happens That Way, a phrase she first heard in an old speech on hipness by Cannonball Adderly.

"I'm just a huge fan of his, and when I was a kid, I thought he was the coolest person on the planet," she says. "That phrase fits a lot of things. People ask me why I decided to become a jazz sax player when most of them are men, or how I made a jazz record that has acoustic guitar and all these pop melodies.

"It just happened that way."

LISTEN ONLINE: To hear samples of Mindi Abair's music, click here.

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