Far from a tribute band, Remain In Light is ready to headline a special New Year’s Eve show in Napa, December 31.

Original Talking Heads member Jerry Harrison and touring member Adrian Belew have been gigging incessantly in 2023 playing as Remain In Light, a show in celebration of the band’s iconic record of the same name released in 1980.

Not only was Talking Heads’ album ‘Remain In Light’ a commercial success, it also served as a conveyance for the entire band to delve deep into both world and electronic music. Just when their fans thought it was David Byrne who was doing all the heavy lifting, members Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth, and Chris Frantz proved to outside critics it was the sum of all their efforts that made the band what it was.

For those not privy, this was also the entry point for the now 73-year old guitarist, Adrian Belew, as a contributing force on the actual record and, again, onstage as part of Talking Heads’ now larger, nine-piece live troupe. To say his contributions were enormous was a great understatement, as his live playing brought a wholly different dimension to the band. As an aside, he also ended up playing on Harrison’s first solo release, “The Red and the Black,” in addition to David Byrne’s “The Catherine Wheel” soundtrack, an addendum to the Twyla Tharp dance piece. Those wishing to see Belew’s live contributions with Talking Heads can check out the band’s “Live In Roma” DVD as well as the live album, “The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads.”

The Bohemian caught up with Talking Heads’ always magnanimous keyboardist and guitarist, the now 74-year old Jerry Harrison, in anticipation of their four-date West Coast run which includes a show at Napa’s own JaM Cellars.

Bohemian: Talking Heads have released eight albums. What about “Remain In Light” did you feel deserved such a proper live treatment?

Jerry Harrison: “Remain In Light” was a turning point in Talking Heads albums as well as music in general. The inclusion of many more instruments, singers, and percussion as well as the influence of African pop music and Fela (Kuti) in particular made the album very different. The touring band that I put together for that tour was incredibly special particularly because Adrian Belew is such an original and unique player. Both Adrian and I found the YouTube video of our concert in Rome in 1980 to be quite special and we decided that we should use that concert footage as a blueprint for our tour.

Bohemian: Adrian Belew is such a talented singer and guitarist as well as a live toour-de-force. Besides playing live together, are you and he closer now?

Jerry Harrison: Adrian and I have remained friends since we first met. I grew up in Milwaukee and started splitting my time between New York and Milwaukee so I could take care of my mother. Since I was spending so much time there, I looked for the best recording studios to pursue my solo albums and productions. One of the studios was Royal Recorders which had been the Playboy Records recording studio at the Playboy Resort in Lake Geneva,
Wisconsin. The resort fell on hard times, but Ron Fajerstein, a diamond dealer from Chicago, bought the studio and equipped it with more equipment than any single studio in the world.
It was the world’s largest SSL (Solid State Logic) board and had four multi-track records in one studio. Adrian moved up to Lake Geneva to use the studio and his engineer became one of the house engineers. We would hang out together and he would play on many of the projects that I brought to Royal. We both later moved away, but continued to get together if we were in the same town at the same time. This tour has let us spend months together rather than evenings, so we are now fast friends.

Bohemian: You’re quite the ambidextrous player and skilled at keyboards, guitar, and piano. Did your parents believe in your musical endeavors?

Jerry Harrison: My parents were generally supportive. My mother was a painter and my father had been a musician when he was in college. They understood the pull and the call of the arts.

Bohemian: There’s only a handful of Remain In Light shows left this year. Do you plan on more in 2024?

Jerry Harrison: We will have played close to 50 shows in 2023. We have shows booked in 2024, but I don’t know how extensive it will be. We would like to bring this show to other continents. Hopefully we can make that happen in 2024.

Bohemian: You produced a lot a great records including Ireland’s own Fatima Mansions. What do you remember about working with them?

Jerry Harrison: Gary Kurfirst, Talking Heads manager and the founder of Radioactive Records, asked me to go work with the Mansions. I was only supposed to do a few songs, but when I got to London, I realized that they wouldn’t have enough songs for an album if I only did a few. They were a bit dispirited. I remember our rehearsals in a drafty rehearsal room in East London where we kept having to put in shillings to run the heater. They were great players and we worked quickly and were able to record enough songs to complete the record. I think “The Loyalizer” is just an amazingly powerful and hard hitting song.

Bohemian: How were your experiences producing other highly revered bands like The Verve Pipe, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Creeper Lagoon, and The Bogmen?

Jerry Harrison: Each of these bands is its own story.

Regarding The Verve Pipe, their previous albums had been quite lush with complicated vocal harmonies. Brian (Vander Ark) had written some wonderful songs that brought them into the “alternative” category. To a degree, I had to protect the simplicity and directness of the songs from too many layers and overdubs. I know it was a bit disappointing to many of the band members because they were full of ideas, but it was a success so I think I was right in my approach.

As for Kenny Wayne Shepherd, he had heard the version of “Boom Boom” that I had produced for Big Head Todd and the Monsters. We’ve made at least six records together, but the first one, ‘Trouble Is,’ remains the most successful as it included his biggest hit, “Blue On Black.”

I wish I had been able to produce the whole Creeper Lagoon record. A fantastic band with great songs. I think it’s a masterpiece still yet to be discovered.

The Bogmen were another fantastic band that didn’t fit with their label’s expectations. It’s
well documented in Lonn Friend’s upcoming book.

Too many stories to tell.

Bohemian: Who are the current members of Remain In Light?

Jerry Harrison: Most of the musicians who have joined Adrian and me were in the band Turkuaz, who I produced. The band is Shira Elias (vocals), Sammi Garrett (vocals), Craig Brodhead (guitar and keyboards), Chris Brouwer (trumpet and keyboards), Greg Sanderson (tenor sax), Michael Corubba (drums), Josh Schwartz (vocals and baritone sax). Julie Slick from Adrian’s trio (bass guitar), and Yohuba Garcia-Torres (percussion).

Bohemian: ‘Naked’ was the band’s last record and, in my opinion, the best Talking Heads release. The amount of guest musicians was staggering. Did you know when you started that this could be your last?

Jerry Harrison: I don’t believe “Naked” ever got the attention it deserved. It would have been amazing to have brought all those musicians on a tour. It was really fun to record in Paris and to be surrounded by so many wonderful West African musicians who we had been inspired by.

As for did I know it would be the last album, no. That said, without touring, it seemed inevitable that we might drift apart. I think we could have continued to have make wonderful records together after ‘Naked.’ Everyone in Talking Heads is very creative and as cool as our solo work is, there is something very special when all four of us work together.

Remain In Light play Sunday, December 31st at JaM Cellars Ballroom located at 1030 Main Street in Napa. Punk rock legends X open the show. Doors open at 8pm and the show kicks off at 9pm. Tickets range from $89 to $199 advance and can be purchased at www.jamcellarsballroom.com. Ages 8 and over are welcome.

Back in fall 2019, as Dave Koz was readying himself to do his annual holiday tour, he was already thinking about making an ambitious new album.

“In the beginning, the idea was to make like a double album or maybe a double EP that would reflect a little bit about where I’d been and then where I’d like to go,” Koz recalled in a phone interview. “I remember even, ‘Yesterday and Today’ was the working title of that.”

Of course, within a few months, the pandemic hit and this turned everything upside down, including Koz’s plans for a double album. Like many people, the saxophonist struggled to find his bearings in this strange new world of closed businesses and quarantining.

But Koz, who has always been one of the busier artists in music, hosting two weekly radio shows, organizing cruises, partnering in a wine business, recording albums and doing at least a pair of tours most every year, didn’t let the unexpected free time keep him from being productive.

As a result, when Koz got back to touring post-pandemic, he had not one, but two, new albums under his belt.

The first of those albums, A New Day, arrived in October 2020, and it marked Koz’s first album of original non-holiday music in a decade. To an extent, it follows through on the idea of making an album that stays true to the musical style of the 10 non-holiday studio albums Koz has released since 1990 (all of which have gone at least top 5 on the contemporary jazz chart). Like his previous albums, A New Day is largely in the instrumental R&B-accented smooth jazz realm.

The pandemic, though, did influence the upbeat feel of the music of A New Day.

“Immediately kind of when the pandemic hit, this is March of 2020, after the initial shock wore off, I was like, well, this is what I noticed about myself. I was really fumbling toward, trying to make myself feel better,” Koz said. “And I noticed it was really through music that I was able to accomplish that, my feel-good music from people I could count on. So it kind of dawned on me that maybe I should get my ass into gear and record some music, hopefully, to do the same thing for other people.”

The Golden Hour project actually preceded work on A New Day, and Koz feels it spurred a more spontaneous approach to making the latter album.

In February 2020, Koz got together with producer/co-writer Cory Wong to compose songs for that album. The Golden Hour was a quite different venture for Koz, pairing him and guitarist Wong with a big band playing, in many cases, songs that were more energetic—at times even rocking—than Koz’s other albums.

“He inspired me,” Koz said of Wong. “He said to me, ‘I just want you to do one thing, and that’s one thing for me, and that is not second guess yourself. Let’s just go with it. Don’t try to overthink about stuff. Let’s just capture these songs in the moment, and then we can come back to them and see whether we like them.’ At least in the writing phase, ‘Don’t judge.’ That was really great advice because I’m a total judger while it’s going down. So I think a little bit of that rubbed off in the songwriting for A New Day, where I was just able to just say, ‘OK, I like this today, and let’s finish it and see if it makes it tomorrow.’”

Koz, though, wasn’t through making new music. He has a new EP, Dave Koz Does Disney, featuring his versions of several Disney songs, coming out. And last year, he released Christmas Ballads, his eighth holiday album, which was released just in time for last year’s 25th-anniversary outing of his Dave Koz and Friends Christmas tour, back again this year for a 26th edition.

Working with producer Philippe Saisse, who has contributed to several of Koz’s albums, including as an arranger on his 2020 album, A New Day, a first step was figuring out a theme for the album—something that took some effort after seven previous holiday albums.

“Philippe and I, we talked through our many conversations before there was even a note recorded. We came up with the idea of it’s like the time of the day when you would listen to an album like this,” Koz said.

“So the specific moment that we had in mind when we recorded it was that feeling of after your guests have left. The party is over. You’ve put away the dishes. It’s the week before Christmas. You’ve got the fireplace going. You have a nice beverage in your hand, maybe somebody special there to share it with. What does that feel like musically? That’s why we decided to do all ballads and to reflect that warm moment that’s very specific in the holidays. And I think we got it,” he continued.

Another hurdle was choosing songs Koz had not previously recorded that fit the mood of the Christmas Ballads album.

“We recorded 10 songs that I had never recorded before,” Koz said, including the original song, “Wrapped Around Your Smile,” in the equation. “It was not easy to find 10 new songs. This was album number eight of Christmas music, but we were able to do it.”

Actually, Koz found several holiday classics to record, including “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” “Away in a Manger/Silent Night” and “Merry Christmas Darling,” all of which are performed in Koz’s silky smooth jazz form, but with some creative arrangements that often include orchestration and tasteful spotlight moments for solos from Koz, and guests David Benoit (keyboards), Rick Braun (trumpet) and Peter White (guitar).

There are also some less obvious song choices, including John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” coupled with “Imagine” (with Jade providing vocals on the latter song), and “Petit Papa Noël,” a song plucked from the 1946 French film, Destins.

A few songs from Christmas Ballads figure to be included in this year’s Dave Koz and Friends Christmas tour. But he will be sure to also perform the Christmas songs that have become fan favorites on these annual tours. This year, Koz is joined by guitarist/singer Jonathan Butler (who has done several of these holiday tours), singer Rebecca Jade, sax player Marcus Anderson and pianist Justin-Lee Schultz

Koz said he is grateful for how his Christmas tours have become an annual tradition.

Dave Koz and Friends perform at 7:30pm, Wednesday, Dec. 20 at Ruth Finley Person Theater (at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts), 50 Mark West Springs Rd., Santa Rosa. Tickets are $49 to $179 and available at tickets.lutherburbankcenter.org/0/5010.