Popstar turned jazz crooner reflects on his 30-year career. He plays Seattle this week
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Getting together with jazz singer Curtis Stigers always is a treat — even on Zoom.
The affable jazz crooner who makes his home in Boise, Idaho is a pro when it comes to talking about his music, his at-home “Songs from My Kitchen” performances he did — and continues to do — from his North End home during the COVID-19 lockdown and his growing herd of cute dogs.
But this time he recounted his musical journey from jazz to pop and back to jazz, including record contracts, concerts, international fame, and more.
It’s been over 30 years since Stigers, 56, recorded his first album on Arista Records, a self-titled debut that jetted him to No. 9 on Billboard’s Top 10 with “I Wonder Why” in 1991.
A charmer, Stigers has an ease about him that clicks with audiences. Now it’s coupled with a deeper appreciation for his three-decade career, and the fans who made it happen.
And it’s all on his latest record — “This Life” — an album filled with songs that are near and dear to Stigers, and the arrangements he has honed and burnished through “millions of miles on the road, thousands and thousands of concerts,” he says.
It’s a kind of musical homecoming, he says.
“This is what I sound like now. I’m 56. I’m not the 24-year-old kid that made that first record. I’m a different guy, and these songs ... mean something different to me now,” he says. “They feel different. They sound different, and they speak to the audience in a different way. It’s my favorite record cover I’ve done.”
Stigers will do two nights at Seattle’s Jazz Alley, Tuesday and Wednesday, May 24-25, before heading out to the United Kingdom on a tour opening for Barry Manilow, with a few dates on his own sprinkled in.
The singer-songwriter, saxophonist and guitarist released “This Life” in February in the U.S. on his own Pandemic Poodle Records label. (It’s available on Universal outside of the U.S.) You can get it on vinyl and other formats at The Record Exchange and at CurtisStigers.com.
It’s also getting good reviews, he says with a tinge of awe in his voice.
“The London Times gave this a great review,” he says. “It’s funny, when I was successful, and made a lot of money and played big arenas, I got terrible reviews. But now that I’ve survived long enough and made little enough money, I’m taken seriously. I’m so lucky that I’ve been able to stick around.”
Stigers has made Boise home since returning in 2000. He supports the local music scene, champions other Boise-area musicians, such as Belinda Bowler and Eilen Jewel, and is probably the biggest booster for The Record Exchange, which he calls “the best record store in the world.” He performs regularly for his local fans and promotes Boise wherever he travels on tour to the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and across the United States.
‘This Life’ and then some
“This Life” was seven years in the making. Stigers first started thinking of some kind of retrospective on the 25th anniversary of that first album, but he was immersed in other projects at the time. And, he says, looking back has never been his thing.
“I’ve just kept moving forward,” he says. But as the 30th approached, he changed his tune.
In October 2019, he booked his band and a recording studio and revisited his 30-years-deep songbook.
“When I started making jazz records at the beginning of 2001, I realized I couldn’t stop playing my hits,” he says. “People have asked me, Why don’t you record ‘I Wonder Why’ like you do it now? I was always like, Nah, I’m doing new stuff. I don’t want to do that old stuff.”
The album features those hits from the 1990s, including “I Never Saw A Miracle” and “You’re All That Matters to Me,” alongside his arrangement of Nick Lowe’s “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding,” which was on the massive hit soundtrack to “The Bodyguard.”
The tracklist also includes his steamy, soulful rendition of Emmylou Harris’ “I Don’t Want to Talk About it Now,” and the title track “This Life,” the theme to the hit TV series “Sons of Anarchy,” which Stigers co-wrote and sings on the credits. It was nominated for an Emmy Award, but he lost to John Williams.
Then he goes back even further with a reggae arrangement of the Gershwin Brothers’ classic “Summertime,” which he’s been doing since he was a teenager playing with The Young Jazz Lions at Boise clubs. That one is a tribute to lifelong friend Boise jazz pianist Paul Tillotson, who died in 2017 after a battle with cancer. “Swingin’ Down at 10th And Main” is a tribute to his musical mentor, the late, great Gene Harris, whose name still graces the annual Boise State jazz festival.
He said he recorded “This Life” in three days and then polished it at his home studio during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
This is a deeply personal record, curated by Stigers himself, from the track listings to the cover art — a photo of a delightfully sloshed Stigers taken at a nightclub in Berlin by German jazz trumpeter Til Bronner, who is as well-known for his photographs as his playing.
“Til and I were out at a Berlin jazz club more than a few years back. I was sitting there and he turned around and took the picture,” Stigers says. “You can tell I was having a hell of a night.” (The man next to him is “Detroit” Gary Wiggins, an American sax player who lived in Berlin at the time.)
Stigers has enjoyed a lot of “hell-of-a-nights” in his career.
Opening for Eric Clapton and Sir Elton John at Wembley Stadium in 1992.
Multiple performances on “The Tonight Show.”
Headlining the Gene Harris Jazz Festival in his hometown in 2005.
Co-writing songs with Carole King.
Co-founding the Xtreme Holiday Xtravaganza in Boise with his now-wife, Jodi Peterson Stigers, in 2010. The annual fundraiser brings Boise’s music community together for three nights to benefit Interfaith Sanctuary homeless shelter.
It’s been a great life, Stigers says, and taking this moment to reflect is an interesting way to start looking forward.
“There are so many directions I might go from here,” he says. I’ll continue to make records with my band and tour as a group. But I’m ready to try different things. I’m ready for more of an acoustic record. I’m also dying to make another orchestral record if I can just find the money. I do a lot of shows with orchestras around the world. It’s just so much fun.”
