J.Laine: Apple Jons

Inspiration is hard to come by with so many things telling us what’s wrong with the world it’s hard to realize that there’s still life to be lived and experiences to be had. Northen Virginia native Jon Laine has been inspired sometimes through his family and other times through other individuals who do what they do to the best of their ability. Idolizing the likes of Karriem Riggins and the late Jay Dee mixed with formal training in classical, jazz and band, J. Laine has essentially, pun intended, begun to create his own lane. With his recent release Apple Jons off of Tastefullicks Records an instrumental album that features Dilla Can Win a tribute to one of his musical inspirations, Laine has created a ride out instrumental album that takes you to a place to find and create your own dreams and aspire towards them.

Scheme: When did music inspire you to want to create your own?

J.Laine: Music has been in my life for a very long time. I started playing band instruments a while ago. I started playing the drums when I was 12 in the marching band and the concert bands and as I started to progress I developed a love for jazz music more than classical music but I was still involved in it (Classical) to please my mother. Then some people were telling me I have the natural ability on the drums and as I was becoming a senior in high school heading to college I started really getting into jazz heavily. As I was playing in the jazz band the first semester and ran into a guy who was in class with me and took me under his wing, then I met another guy who was in a communications class who was an emcee and we tried to start a band together but we couldn’t find the right musicians; he tried to get me to get into the studio and get me to start making beats. I knew nothing about making beats I didn’t know what an mpc was. I started to watch an engineer work with one and I realized how DJ Premier and Pete Rock do what they do. My friend Aaron was always saving money so then he bought this drum machine and this keyboard and we had no intentions of making beats so my sounds were very limited and my beats weren’t as good as they could be but people were impressed.

Fast forward a few years ahead and the emcee and I started a hip hop group called Urban Minds and we started going through a studio where I started to learn how to make beats through an MPC and that album that we put out was about five or six years in the making but during that time I was working really hard on trying to become a producer around the year of 1990-2000 and at this point that’s what I decided I wanted to do more than a tour drummer or a teacher I just wanted to make beats, that was my love. Then I started meeting people in DC (Washington) like K.Allen and Federico Pena and K.Allen started helping me get my stuff sounding the way it should’ve been to and he being a veteran singer songwriter he already had two albums under his belt. Finally he hit me up around 2003 and said he wanted me to be the executive producer of his third LP so that’s how I started to get into really making beats.

Scheme: So in music what is it that you look for, is the percussion the harmony; what grabs your ear about any particular kind of music.

J.Laine: I tend to listen to the overall sound of a beat or a song I never really pinpoint one instrument in the beat I hear it as a whole and then if I like what I hear as a whole I pinpoint the things that are actually making the beat. For example when I heard Breathe and Stop I just loved everything about it. From the sample to the way the drums were programmed and it’s such a minimal beat there’s not a lot going on it’s just a baseline with a guitar sample and some drums. So the overall aspect of the whole beat just blew me away. Then again I can pick up a classical CD by Razel and hear a little woodwind quintet feature and be mesmorized by how the clarinet sounds out of all the other instruments so it’s always something different its never really the same all the time.

“There is this sound that people have been wanting to hear for ages and cats like Dilla and Pete Rock have been doing it. I remember when I was spinning in New York and I played a beat by Pete Rock and this guy came up to me and asked me who it was and I said this was done by Pete Rock and he said this was some stuff he needed in his life.”

There is this sound that people have been wanting to hear for ages and cats like Dilla and Pete Rock have been doing it. I remember when I was spinning in New York and I played a beat by Pete Rock and this guy came up to me and asked me, “Who it was?” and I said, “This was done by Pete Rock.” and he said, “This was some stuff he needed in his life.”

J.Laine: It’s funny for me because I’m one of a billion people in the world that will say that he inspired other people to think outside the box. Like there’s that story of how he submitted beats to Roca-fella for Jay-Z’s Black album and they said everyone at Roca-fella laughed at all his beats because it wasn’t what they were expecting or what they were looking for. That was thing about him, he wasn’t afraid t o go left and do things that people wouldn’t normally do. I’ve always felt like I’ve had a certain sound in my head since I’ve been listening to music and a sound that I’ve always loved but I’ve always had a hard time hearing other people so. For example you normally don’t hear the beat from Runnin on the radio but that was the very first Dilla beat I ever heard and I remember I was running late to one of my classes when I was a freshmen in college. I heard it in the car on the radio and I thought it was very strange that they would play something that sounded the way that beat did on the radio. For me it was like this is the sound I’ve been wanting to hear someone do for a very long time. There is this sound that people have been wanting to hear for ages and cats like Dilla and Pete Rock have been doing it. I remember when I was spinning in New York and I played a beat by Pete Rock and this guy came up to me and asked me, “Who it was?” and I said, “This was done by Pete Rock.” and he said, “This was some stuff he needed in his life.”

Scheme: Let’s talk about the Beat CD Apple Jons, how did you come up with the name?

J.Laine: Apple Jons came up when I received an advance copy of Donuts about six or eight months before the album dropped and I was trying to figure out why it was called Donuts and someone told me was because Dilla was a huge Donut lover. When I heard the donuts album I started experimenting myself. So I said to myself he likes donuts what do I like and I thought of my favorite cereal of all time which is Apple Jacks and I literally will grab a bowl of Apple Jacks and finish the bowl before I go back to making beats at one or two in the morning.

Scheme: What can people expect from the album since your background was heavy in Jazz and classical music.

J.Laine: They won’t necessarily find any jazz or classical influences as much as they will find but they can expect to hear something different. As far as my friends who know me and now my music and my background they can expect something I’ve never done before and people who don’t know me they can just expect good music. A lot of influence comes out of the Donuts album, but it’s basically music they can put in the cd player when they’re taking a road trip.

Scheme: What was the process like creating this album and what did you learn about yourself making this album?

J.Laine: I started making the album in October or November of 2005 and I finished it by the summer of 2006. So it didn’t take me that long but one thing learned about myself is that I can be just as creative as a lot cats that are trying to make it out there. I used to listen to Karriem Riggins and think wow. Right he’s my idol because he plays the drums and is a fantastic music producer and when his myspace page went he was putting up unreleased beats and I was completely blown away. So as I was making the album and people started hearing it I was thinking this is actually some stuff because as I was making the album I was letting my production partner Travis Sparks hear and judge some of the beats. The more and more people said they liked it I started to think maybe I can be creative as these other cats out here.

Scheme: Speaking on Karriem is that where you want to see your career go where its that versatile where you can pretty much play and produce for any type of musician?

J.Laine: Yeah, I’m pretty much a freelance drummer right now because I’ve managed to develop an exstensive array of artists I’ve played with like Aretha Franklin, Wynton Marselis, Common and Omar so it sort of spans all genres of music so I liked to see myself at least but eve further along where I don’t want to be considered just a hip hop producer but just a music producer in general. I’m working on an album with this woman named Nila K who was the guitarist at the Dilla concert and she’s working on a blues album that has a little bit of pop influence to it. I’m also producing an album for Alison Carney and without letting to much out the bag that is a project that I’m really hoping to be a huge project. I’m also playing with a rock trio called Satali and we have a huge following in DC right and we’re trying to expand that as well.

Scheme: What was it like playing for an icon like Aretha Franklin?

J.Laine: Well when I got the call to play for her it was so last minute I didn’t know what to expect. The whole band got in a limo bus and we rehearsed with the with the orchestra and the music director and we never saw Aretha until the show started and when she came on stage the audience went nuts. It felt really good to play with someone who is a part of history, she’s the Queen of Soul and when I did it, it blew my mind.

“I’d definitely want people to know there’s a huge passion behind what I do in music and that its not just about the money and getting my name out there, its about getting good music out there again.”

Scheme: So back to the album what tracks did you create on Apple Jons that you knew would go in the album and what were the stories behind those tracks?

J.Laine: One of them is Wondering which I think is track nine of the album because when I played the actual record it was a record my mom used to have when I was nine or ten. So when I pulled it out I still wanted to freak it and create the same vibe that I had when I was I kid. The other track that I thought wasn’t going to be as good as it is right now and that’s the Dilla Can Win track. The whole album is a tribute to Dilla but that track was of course in reference to the Two Can Win track on Donuts. I really didn’t think to hard about it then DJ Roddyrod called me and said he’s never heard a chop like this. By far I think my favorite track is the last track on the album called Lifted because its track 32 which is the amount of years he spent on earth but I titled it Lifted because that’s not just the ending of the cd but that he’s been lifted out of this cold world into a much better place. I used the same sample he used on the Ways track on the Donuts album so I definitely didn’t want to create it the way he created it but I wanted to have Dilla elements in it.

Scheme: If you lost the ability to speak and all you could do was layout your catalogue and have people interpret your work for themselves what would you want it to say?

J.Laine: Wow that’s a deep question bruh (laughs). I’d definitely want people to know there’s a huge passion behind what I do in music and that its not just about the money and getting my name out there, its about getting good music out there again. I’m not going to front we all love the money and we all love getting Grammy’s for our accomplishments, but behind my music there is a person there that works his ass off to make that kind of music.