This album comes from the afternoons when my grandfather picked me up from school in his Windstar. Detroit passed by the windows as we drove across the city to pick up my grandmother from work, sometimes stopping at Eastern Market for ice cream, sometimes grabbing food in the RenCen. The one constant was smooth jazz on V98.7 playing in the background, my grandfather lightly drumming along as we waited outside "old" Karmanos.

The sound of this album lives inside those memories. These songs carry that feeling forward through the way I create now, with technology that allows me translate those memories into music. Mixing nostalgia with a few modern twists, blending Motown drums with a hint of salsa for my mom on "Motown in Havana", and capturing my father-in-law Fast Freddy's hustling spirit on "Freddy on the Scene", this project brings different shades of smooth jazz together through my own interpretation.

This album is my way of honoring family and the city that raised me, a smooth jazz Detroit story told through the eyes of the boy riding in the passenger seat.

City Heat

Atkinson in Drift

DMC Rhodes

Linwood and Joy

Shadow on Fort Street

Dusk on Tireman

Motown in Havana

Rivertown Along the Way

Freddy on the Scene

Outside Karmanos

New tracks tagged #v98.7