Mick Unplugged - Kevin Flournoy | Mastering Melodies: Journey from Keyboard to Icon - Mick Unplugged [EP 19]

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

In this episode, Mick Hunt delves deep into Kevin Flournoy's musical world, exploring his evolution from a talented keyboardist to a masterful producer whose works have touched millions. Kevin shares insights into his creative process, his approach to collaboration, and music's profound impact on both the creator and the listener.Kevin Flournoy's Background: They transitioned from an aspiring musician influenced by family and early mentors to a renowned figure in the music production industry.Defining Moments: Kevin reflects on key collaborations and how they have influenced his approach to music, including work with icons like Gladys Knight and Chaka Khan.Discussion Topics:Kevin's early exposure to music and the influence of his father and early mentors in shaping his musical style.The process and passion behind his music production emphasize the emotional impact of his work.Collaborations with prominent artists and the unique synergy in these creative partnerships.Key Quotes"It's not just about playing music; it's about evoking emotions that resonate on a deeper level.""My goal is to reach people with my music, to touch their hearts and minds in a way that only music can."Next Steps:Explore: Check out Kevin Flournoy's latest projects and live performances for a deeper appreciation of his art.Reflect: Consider the role music plays in your life and how it affects your emotions and memories.Engage: Share your favorite Kevin Flournoy track or moment using #MickUnplugged and discuss how it moved you. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are you ready to change your habits, sculpt your destiny, and light up your path to greatness? Welcome to the epicenter of transformation. This is Mic Unplugged. We'll help you identify your because, so you can create a routine that's not just productive, but powerful. You'll embrace the art of evolution, adapt strategies to stay ahead of the game, and take a step toward the extraordinary. So let's unleash your potential. Now, here's Mick. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Mick Unplugged, where we channel our because and look beyond our why. Today, I have the incredible honor of introducing a true legend

in the music industry. He's a prolific songwriter and producer whose talent has shaped the sounds of many iconic artists like Tina Marie, Chaka Khan, Jamie Foxx, The Emotions, Babyface. I can keep going. Many, many more. Join me in welcoming the one and only, the man I call the GOAT, Mr. Kevin Flournoy. Kevin, welcome to Make Unplugged, brother. Man, you know, I told you offline, and for those that are listening and watching, I listen to the K-Flow show every Sunday when I'm making brunch for the wife. And it puts me in the right mood. There's nothing like live music. Like I will say studio music is great, but there is nothing that captures the soul like

live music. And Kevin, I'm going to be very honest and transparent. Your music brings out emotions that, man, I mean, you're talking about a grown man that will just sit there and be captivated just by music. And I know I'm not the only person that's ever told you that, but what was it about music for you? Like, I know the story of your dad telling you to pick out an instrument, but like, what was it for you? I'm not going to call your dad Joe Jackson or anything. No, it wasn't that, you know, I think it's a natural occurrence, you know, where, where the music spoke to me in a certain way. So music speaks to

everybody in a certain way. What it was telling me was that I had a talent to take it and sort of form it in a way or write it, produce it in a way to speak to other people. And so through songs and writing songs, through playing my instrument, which became piano mostly. So it wasn't just playing the instrument. It wasn't about just writing the song. It's about how can I do that to affect the emotions of the person that I'm playing it for, which is a whole nother element. So is the emotion of others, is that your because? What's Kevin's because? What drives you to create and excel in the music space? I might have morphed over the years.

At the beginning, I was just interested in the music. So I would listen to the radio and say, I like what I'm hearing. I want to recreate that. The thing where it became a thing where there's more purpose to it in terms of reaching other people evolved when I found out that when, first of all, as a player, I would play and found that the people would respond and say, that really touched me. That song touched me. The way you played that song touched me. That became inspirational to me to where I said, I want to do that more. So that became the because of it, because I can reach people. And then when I hear them talk about the effect that the music has on them and their life, that's big. Even to this day, the first song that I released on my solo project, I read comments, like all kinds of comments. And basically it's comments from people telling me how the song affects them personally.

And sometimes there's an anecdotal story about their wife, their kids. And it's interesting to read that. And that's where I get empowered. I like that part of it. And what's crazy, and it's not crazy, but you can see it in your music, right? I can hear it. I can feel it. Like it's rare that music can just totally be felt throughout your entire body and your mind places because, you know, like you have some instrumentals where it's just like I can almost imagine the words to the song being played and then I can listen to it five days later.

Totally different set of words come to mind because your music just brings that out. So I wanted you to know that personally. Oh, I appreciate you telling me that. I appreciate it. Yes. So who were some of your biggest influencers early on and how did that shape your career? Yeah, early on and what I just spoke about in terms of being able to reach people after my first couple of years in college, I was studying under Professor Jimmy Cheatham at UCSD in San Diego. And that's where the private conversation we used to have at his office hours, where he started opening my mind into being able to do that. That it's not just about if you're going to play the piano with a vocalist, it's not just about playing. It's not about you. It's about being able to understand what they're trying to project

and then play to their and support them. That was the first inspiration in my mind. And also he would say, after you graduate, everybody's going to want to hire you if you master this. And, you know, I was 18, 19. I said, okay, you know, I don't really know what he's talking about. Over the four or five years that I studied under Professor Jimmy Cheatham, and I'll say as a side, he had access to, he had come from that New York jazz, very so,

Dizzy Gillespie, all those jazz grades, Miles Day, and he would bring them to the school. So I would be able to talk to them too at a young age. And they would kind of say the same thing. And they would actually give stories of their plight in terms of the way they expressed their music, how it's an expression of their life, the struggles and everything and how they wrote songs. And so I'm listening to that, listening to the professor. And I started adopting those techniques. And it's about a person hearing your music and being able to breathe with it. Like you inhale and exhale a regular life cycle.

It's life. So if you're playing a lot, you got to stop playing so the ear can breathe. And then it's a whole concept of doing that. And so I started being inspired by what he was saying, put those practices into work and found out after I graduated and moved to LA that he was right because the vocalists were like, yeah, we want you to play. Well, you want to travel the world? I said, oh, this works. It really works. And then later on, I started infusing that in the way I write songs in my production. And it's about being able to breathe, inhale and exhale the ear actually. That's amazing. So obviously he was right. Yes. And you've been able to work with so many

incredible artists, right? Which collaborations kind of stand out the most to you and why? There's certain collaborations which are exciting to me. So early on, I started playing with Ronnie Laws. And the excitement comes from the fact that this artist plays sax, but it's different from everybody. There's a reason why he had major label deals. And he's an iconic figure as a saxophone player. When I play, it's him and I'll say working with Gladys Knight early on. And I really feel it when we're at rehearsal and it's really a tight quarters and they're sitting next to you singing.

You really can kind of sense the power in their gift. And that's inspirational. As far as her singing, the body laws playing the sax and it's different. There's a lot of vocalist singing, but there's something special there as evident from their history. Of course, you know, Gladys Knight and Chaka Khan, for instance, it's evident that they're here and they've been in the business all these years, but to stand next to them and play and hear that power is inspirational. And that was the moment when the Chaka's thing was inspirational too, because I was in high school when a lot of those songs were number one. I'm currently playing with the Pointed Sisters also. And it's kind of inspirational to hear that, wow, okay, I'm there. You know, and I used to be dancing to the songs. So yeah, it's a great journey.

I love it. So you are an amazing producer, amazing songwriter. And I want to hit on both of those, but I want to start with songwriting because a lot of people don't know this about me. But my first love in life was poetry. Right. And in particular, like writing ballads. And I love poetry with a passion. So much so, like I'm still in love with poetry. Yes. Talk about songwriting, like the inspiration, the time. Like what is writing a song like for Kevin? That's interesting you say about poetry, because that's what it is, a love for poetry. I have a process, and I like part of the process

that I like more than the other part. So the easy part for me is sitting at the keyboards, and sometimes we just drop our hands down, and something will come up within seconds. I come up with tons of ideas right away. Once the song is constructed and the core structures are constructed, the lyrical content, which needs to be poetic, especially if it's a beautiful song like a ballad, you can't just talk about anything. It's got to make sense. And you want it to be intelligent so it can kind of reach people and poetic. That part can sometimes be a struggle. So a lot of songwriters, what they do after they get their chords, they will kind of mumble stuff on, which I used to do, cassette tape

mumble kind of ideas. And those were morphed into syllables, which were morphed into words. And that process can be at the beginning, maybe I get 70, 75% of those mumbles are turning. And there are always like a couple of lines that'll kill me. They'll take it. I'll have to come back to it the next day because it needs to fit in this box, but you can't just say anything. And then maybe it needs to rhyme. And so the rhyme scheme needs to be a certain thing. And then you don't want to always have a predictable rhyme scheme. So sometimes you want to go off and your format's different with the song. And some of the greatest songs don't quite, it's not like four lines and four lines for the chorus.

It's something else going on added to it, which makes it more sophisticated. But my process, and I started writing songs early as a teenager, and that's what it was, sitting at the keyboard. I had a Fender Rose at the time and wrote many songs and a recording, some kind of recording apparatus and put that microphone up and would mumble. And I had back in the day where you had cassettes, you had this thing, you put all the cassettes in. And most of the time, people would have that with artists that they have and bringing it to the car. It was all me, right? It's all me. And so if somebody actually got to it, it wouldn't make any sense to them, just a bunch of mumbling and chords. Yeah, I used to do that almost every day.

That's wild. And I want to go somewhere because the average consumer of music don't understand or realize that the person singing the song usually isn't the person that wrote the song. What's a couple of songs that you wrote that most people don't realize that you wrote? You know, when I first came out, I did a tour with the record group Big Mountain. And so I actually wrote songs with the lead singer and another singer out of England and one called Caribbean Blue. Right. And so it was like a major song back in the day was in the 90s. And a lot of times people become surprised that I was like a writer on it, a writer on that. There's other stuff that I'm doing recently, like within the last year. Basically, the question is, did you write the lyrics? They always ask that because that becomes like, oh,

you can do that, you know, because I'm used to see me playing. But that's always been the game from the beginning about writing the lyrics. So there's just several things. I wrote a lot of songs. So this is several songs that I kind of over the years that I have done the lyrical thing and the music thing. And you're going to be hearing a lot more of that coming. Actually, I'm working on stuff now because part of my production thing back in the day was to find artists or singer to project what I wanted to project for my song. But basically back in the day, the way that would work is that the artists would have some sort of deal or you would have to get in some sort of business situation with a record company or

something to project that music out. Now, as you know, it's different now. You can just grab the singer. And so I grab people that I have relationships with. The iconic singers are not like the song I got with Phil Perry. And I will grab them, ask them to sing on top of the songs and then promote that. So there's a lot of the songs that I've been writing over the last 20 years that is going to be coming out in the next year or two. I love it. So let's go there to some of the new stuff. And folks, we're about to talk about two songs that when I talk about move me and I listen to every day. So you just hit one with Phil Perry. Tell me if you still care. The first time I heard that one, the recent rendition that you did of that one, I stood still for 15 minutes and I promise you, and I'm going

to have the links. And so everyone that's listening or watching, I'll have the links in the show notes. I promise you just take some time out of your day and listen to Phil Perry and Kevin doing, tell me if you still get, walk me through that one. Walk me through the selection of the artists and the band and everything like that. It's an amazing, amazing, amazing rendition of that song. Oh, thank you. And I appreciate that. So that's that came out of that concept where Phil Perry, somebody I worked with in the 90s as a keyboard player. So over years I developed relationships with these different artists.

So at a certain time it became easy to ask them to help me with something, you know, and because I already got the number and i can call and ask and so these songs that are coming out in the future are just like that so i kind of staggered them a couple of them were remakes like that was the sos band who did that in the 90s and then others are like that song but it's just me so i'm kind of staggering them out that i really kind of didn't want to put that particular song i was trying to put something else out just because i wanted to showcase my writing ability. But that one became ready. And the director of that video suggests, yeah, you should do, I remember when he was telling me, you should do the video on this one. And at first I was like, no, I want to do the video on my song.

And he said, no, do this one. And I said, okay, we do it. And I didn't put much stock into it, but he was a genius director, Frederick Tobias Nall, who had a movie-esque presentation in his head about how that would go. So the band that's in there, most of the members of the band were selected because they had been working with me for the last two years on these songs. There's a whole group of songs. I have a clip up where there's five background singers singing Tell Me If You Still Care. And they're in the studio and it's a big deal. So in that particular session, they were also seeing the background for the new artist I'm working with, Amanda Cole. They're working on her stuff.

In one or two days, I'll get a lot done. But these are the same guys, studio musicians, guys I played on the road with, currently work with like Melvin Lee Davis, who's a music director for Chaka Khan. I'm plucking different people with different talents to project this music. That's part of the reason why it sounds so good. I have to do my thing, but having guys on that level really takes it to another level. Then having Phil Perry on top of that level, on top of the other level, it just, things can happen, you know, even if it's not planned. And so we get into a vibe when we're playing live in the studio and there's something that's synergy between us because we communicate at

that certain level. And then Phil's part, Phil's just Phil. So stuff is going to happen. Stuff's going to happen. Like at the session for the vocal session, I just kind of sit back and say, okay, you know, you roll the track. And those guys like that shoot the first time, second, it's done. They've already thought through the presentation, the performance level before they even arrive. So they're not guessing. And then their history, yeah, they're not guessing them what they're trying to do. And all those elements come together to make what you hear, but it's the post that's a big thing. I tell people I work on the post after everything's recorded. It takes me a long time to do that. It's not that it would take me

a long time, except for the fact that I'm trying to reach people. It's things that people don't understand in terms of when I play the piano, I'm going to have to go back. Okay, the piano power sounds fine to everybody else. I need to go back in and play it a certain way so then I can get a response. Oh, that felt good when you hear it. And so that's going on all levels in that song. Well, it worked. Trust me. You got it right. I know you're a perfectionist. You got it right. And you just brought up Amanda Cole, To the Water. Everyone, you're going to see the link to To the Water here. And I'm going to tell you, Kevin, I'm looking you in your eye. My wife broke down when she heard that song.

And she just heard it. And then when she saw the video, the composition of it, it resonated even deeper with her. And so obviously, like, I'm a music buff, right? I love music. But to see my wife move to The Water, I know it's won some awards and it's going to continue to win. Like, good. Like talk to me through that one. Like, bro, like I could almost get emotional right now. Yeah, that's that's that has turned out. So that's a new one for me. The newest one. Yes. And yes, the same concept where I was trying to reach through the reach thing and the way I'm presenting it.

And I'm listening to the comments and it's nice to hear that it's moving because it speaks to something that everybody deals with at some point in their life. And so the challenge of that is you basically got to have like an Amanda Cole sing it. Singers like that are rare, especially these days where they actually can sing. So in the studio, she's singing the song from the beginning to the end. It's not like we got to punch in this, but it's a performance. And she's going to study that song. So she's doing the same thing I'm doing. I need to reach people.

I'm listening to this message, reach people. And I did the same thing with the musicians, the arrangement. This is a song she brought to me because we're working on the EP. So we were like three or four songs in already. This was a side thing. And when I first heard it, I was like, yeah, that's it. I know what to do. I can hear everything that you're listening to while I'm listening to a scratch of it. That process took about a year, year and a half to

really dial it in as far as bringing her out, getting the instrumentation, me working on my part. So I'm trying to create a masterpiece. Even in an environment that people don't spend that kind of time on music as much anymore, but I still want to. So there it is. Absolutely. Well, it is definitely my favorite song. When I tell you I have it on repeat, it is literally pulled up on my computer right here. There are moments of the day where I just need it and I just go to it. It's that deep. So you brought up something that I want to talk about your genius in production. Like you talk about hearing things. And I think one of the hardest parts of production is taking what you hear and what you want to, where you want to go, and then relaying that to other people, communicating that sound,

right? Because that's really, really hard is you've got the sound in your ear and you can play the note, but then how do you trust the saxophonist to really get it? Because you can't really just hit the note for the saxophone form. How do you get that bass guitar player to really go where you're going? Like, how do you do that, Kevin? Because you are freaking amazing. That's a great question because that is a very complicated process that I do. And I do it pretty silently. You might not see it when you see it when we're at the studio. So I've done some pre-work.

Part of the pre-work is that depending upon the song, there's different, like there might be five different bass players that you can call. And that's where it starts. And they're all like top bass players. So the particular one might, I say, this person is going to be able to emote a certain way on this type of song, like to the water. So you call that guy. So you're already halfway down the road. You're still going to have to offer guidance so they can hear what you have in your head. For each musician, I have to do that. And that process is a serious part

because once you do that, like I said, you're already halfway down there. When, what I do, once they're in the studio and they start recording, I let them do whatever they want the first couple. I don't say anything because ultimately, since they are professional, the most professional in the business, they're going to offer me something that I didn't hear, at least part of it. It won't be the entire thing. And sometimes they'll ask me, I said, no, just play, just play it. What do you want me to do? Just play it, pick the bass, just do it. And I you want me to do? Just play it. Pick the bass. Just do it. And I always learn something from hearing because they're masters.

They've recorded a lot of records. So once that happens, I start to mold. It's analogous to molding clay. So I give them directions. I say, okay, turn left at that signal right there, right on measure 45. Just change that right there. And those little things make all the difference in the world. That's the true production. One day, I just want to come film you in production mode. Like, I think that would be,

you know, when you talk about bucket list for me, watching Kevin Flournoy do his thing is bucket list for me. Oh yeah, you're invited. I mean, it's a process. It's good to see too. Yeah, it's an exciting process. That's it. So a couple of takeaways from today with Kevin, the goat, as I call him, not just in music, right? But even in life, think about the emotion that you're trying to evoke from others in a positive way. You know, Maya Angelou said, people don't remember the things you say. They remember how you made them feel. I see that in everything that you do. And I know that for the folks that are watching or listening, think about that. People are always going to remember how you made them feel. And the person that we're on the line with today is a genius at that. So Kevin, for the listeners, whether they're

a musician or not, what are some things, what are a couple of things people can really do to evoke the emotion that they want out of people in a positive way? For me and what I want to tell people is a focus. First thing is being really focused. And I like those words that I saw in your courage and perseverance. The courageous part comes in that don't be scared to get out there and do the thing. And the perseverance is that it doesn't always work the way that you have in your head. And I've learned that the perseverance is like, I might have to go back in and try it again because it's not always the first time that that happens.

And that's a big deal. Don't get discouraged about that. I'm getting ready to have a discussion with artists I'm working with now. I was like, okay, we need to go back in. And we don't have to because it's on the level that it sounds good, but that there's another level. So maybe the realization to people that there are levels to this and aspire to that level to where you're sitting back and saying, this is great and I'm comfortable with it. Love it. There are levels to this people. So my question,

not to Kevin, but for those listening and watching, what level are you at right now? What level do you want to get to? Because maybe there's work that you need to go to. Kevin, where can people find you, follow you? What do you want them to know? What's important for them to know about Kevin right now? In general, you can go to kevinflournoy.com. That's the website. And it has everything, the new releases

and everything you need to know about me, the bios. And if you want to find out records I've done in the past, that's the go-to place. Also on Instagram, kevin.flo, kevin.flo. So you can see stuff I'm doing, you know, like put stories in, like I just went to New York to do a project. You can see me in the studio, you know, working stuff out with various artists. My man, the GOAT, K-Flow and everyone, the K-Flow show, follow it. It will change your life. I promise you, you can just,

you can go to any episode, put it on repeat. It's my Sunday brunch. That's how I get started. I cook the best meals when I'm listening to K-Flow. Everyone listening, remember, your because is your superpower. Go Unleash It. Thanks for listening to Mick Unplugged. We hope this episode helps you take the next step toward the extraordinary and launches a revolution in your life.

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