GRADY NICHOLS RELEASES "TAKE ME WITH YOU"

Contemporary jazz saxophonist Grady Nichols released his fifth CD, Take Me With You.  Produced by Zac Maloy (founder and front man of the MCA Records' modern rock band, The Nixons), the CD features 13 songs including 4 vocal tunes.  Leigh Nash of Sixpence None The Richer added her vocals on a cover of "Every Kinda People."  Nichols also covered "Can't Get You Out Of My Head," a song made famous by Kylie Minogue.   For a fun twist, Grady recruited DJ/Producer/Re-mix engineer Andy Caldwell to create a dance version of the title track. 

Maloy and Nichols co-wrote five tunes and Nichols also teamed up with Grammy-nominated jazz artist Jeff Lorber to write three additional tunes.  Lorber produced Nichols' last CD, Sophistication, which received national radio airplay and many accolades.  Maloy is also known for producing acts such as The Vanished, multi-platinum act Bowling For Soup (Jive Records) and Jonas Brothers (Hollywood Records).  His songs have been recorded by Bowling For Soup, Chris Daughtry of American Idol fame and others.  The result of all of these collaborations is an edgy contemporary jazz CD with a lot of depth.    

"On every CD I've tried to do something a little different and push my boundaries," explained Nichols.  "It has been great to work with artists like Jeff Lorber, Chris Botti, and Bill Champlin on previous CDs.  I wanted to continue offering diversity on my projects and this time I was lucky to get Zac Maloy to produce the CD and co-write with me.  Zac pushed me to take my music in an edgier direction while producing a CD that fans of my previous CDs will still love. 

"One of my goals on this project was to step out into writing vocal songs.  I’ve always written instrumentally and wanted to move into that new arena of adding lyrics to the melodies.  I also wanted to start touring with a vocalist, so obviously it was important to include vocal material on the CD.  When looking for material, I really wanted to cover Robert Palmer's 'Every Kinda People.'  I felt the message was so positive and timely for some of the problems we are facing.  I was thrilled when Leigh agreed to sing on that song.  I've always been a fan of her work.  I also am a fan of house music and had been playing around with one of the tunes as a re-mix.  Then I had the idea of turning it over to Andy Caldwell to re-mix the title tune.  I love what he did!  It's very cool and creative."

The CD is an independent release and is available on i-Tunes and other music download websites as well as CD Baby.com and Amazon.com.