What is Lavajam?

Lavajam is my solo project. I'm with Mr. A.L.I. We have jam sessions, which make up the Jere McAllister solo stuff. And then you have Lavajam which is the Vick Lavender solo stuff. It gives Jere and I a chance to do what we want to do. When you work with somebody, it's also very important to take time out to do what you really want to do without being concerned about, "I wonder if my partner will like that?" It's a very good situation -Êwe're both able to do these solo projects and come back to Mr. A.L.I. and keep it fresh.

Of the two of us, I'm more of the militant when it comes to sound. Jere is more flexible. Musically, I sort of stay within the sounds that I love, and I don't really go outside that sound. Jere on the other hand is very professional. If Britney Spears came to him and asked him to do a record, Jere probably could and probably would do it. Me? Nah... But I think that combination works out great, because that's where you get the Mr. A.L.I. sound. It's that really great underground sound, which is where I'm from, and then you get more of the polished, professional sound which is where Jere is from. When those two meet, that's when you get "Cast Your Spell", you get "Rainy Day", you get our entire Transit album.

So many influences came into the Mr. A.L.I. sound. Influences came from rock, you can hear some jazz and soul, which of course is the base of what we do - so many different forms of music. That's the beauty of working with Jere. I think we respect each other enough to let the other bring his musical influences to the table. We had a lot of similarities when it came to music that we like. We were talking when we first met about some of the '80s bands that we liked, a lot of stuff like the Smiths, Love and Money, the Cure, Joy Division which later became New Order.

Something really strange happened to black music in America. After the '70s, everything became very electronic. You'd have artists like Teddy Riley who was making stuff like "Rumpshaker" and we hated it. Most artistic black kids hated that. Me, I was a huge Smiths fan, I have everything the Smiths ever made. It was artistic but it was very good musicianship. Bauhaus with Peter Murphy was another band I liked. We were playing all that stuff. There weren't that many black kids that got into the stuff that we did so when I met Jere, we had that in common.

I know when you're working with live instruments, it can sometimes sound too clean. Mr. A.L.I. never sounds too clean.

That's where I think I take a lot of credit, by me being strictly from the dance industry and the deep house community. Some of the people I was listening to in the early days -ÊI was a big Jamie Principle fan, a big Larry Heard fan. Jere comes from the Steve Hurley camp with a very clean sound. And as you know, the Jamie Principle or Larry Heard sound, it wasn't as much clean as it was good. Don't get me wrong - I think the production work on it was great. But it still gave you that dark, gritty underground Warehouse-Powerplant-Music Box feel. Steve Hurley and them gave you more of a cleaner sound. When those two sounds are married together, I think it's a great thing.

Mr. A.L.I. wasn't your first collaboration. How long were you with the Strictly Jaz Unit?

I was with Glenn Underground and Boo Williams in the Strictly Jaz Unit for nearly five years. On the Future Parables album, I wrote two of the songs on there - "Father's Little Girl" and "Medone's Thought". Those got a lot of attention, but nobody really knows who did those records. Everybody thought that Glenn did them. I wanted to branch out and it was then that I met Jere.

Jere and I met in the Spring of 1999, though we didn't start working together until the Fall of '99. It was funny because everywhere that Jere saw me, I was playing records that he really liked. He walked up to the DJ booth five or six times and said, "Man, I keep running into you!" Steve Stewart, who Mr. A.L.I. really owes a lot to, introduced us and told me I should work with Jere McAllister, that he was a really good keyboardist.

The last time we actually met before we started working together, I was DJing at David Risqué's birthday party. I was playing a record and once again, Jere walked up to the booth and said "Who did that?" I said Glenn and I did it. After that, we worked together every Sunday, every single Sunday, and during that time wrote about seven records - basically the entire first West End album -Ê"I Feel You", stuff like "Cast Your Spell" -Êall of those songs were conceived in about a two or three month span.

Where did the idea for the band come about?

Jere and I were looking for a record deal. We put everything we'd done together on CD and met with Radek [founder of Dust Traxx Records] to see if he would advance the money we needed to start recording live. But there was something missing from the CD - I said to Jere that this stuff sounds a lot like Glenn, and Radek already had Glenn. There was a record that Jere had done in Europe that sounded exactly like where we were going. I thought we should put this on the CD in case Radek gives me a hard time about the music. Sure enough, Radek heard it and said, "It sounds like Glenn." I said, "Why don't you go to Track #7?" He listened to Track #7 and said "So how much money do you need?" [laughs] So that's how we started recording live.