Raphael Saadiq: The Cream Q&A

Raphael Saadiq is, frankly, one of music’s all-time great collaborators. From his pioneering work in Tony! Toni! Toné! to the neo-soul supergroup Lucy Pearl all the way up to his work on Beyoncé’s epoch-defining Cowboy Carter and Ryan Coogler’s horror-musical masterpiece Sinners, Saadiq has been a team player. Even his solo records, full of distinctive personal vision, are also packed full of the biggest, baddest names in music.

Which makes his current tour, coming to the Schermerhorn on Tuesday, seem even more radical. We’re not just talking about a solo show — we’re talking about a one-man show. Saadiq is leaving his A-Team of all-timers at home and going it alone for this tour, dubbed No Bandwidth. It’s a bold move, but the man is a Tone God, and his strengths are sure to shine in our acoustically awesome little symphony shack. The Scene caught up with Saadiq while he prepared for the final leg of the tour. Our interview was edited for length and clarity.

How is this tour going? It looks so cool.

It's going really good. I'm excited about it. Happy about how it's been growing since we started.

How long have you been working on the idea for this show?

Well, I wasn't working on the idea [the whole time], but I just thought about the idea for over maybe eight years. … I didn't start sketching out [No Bandwidth] until two months before the tour. I just had this idea in my head that I really wanted to do it. Actually, when I saw Mike Tyson's Undisputed show on HBO, I thought it was just amazing. And what Mike did, I was like, “Wow, I want to try that one day.” Also I've always been envious of anybody that could walk on the stage by themselves [like Chazz Palmenteri in A Bronx Tale: A One Man Show last year]. 

Mike Tyson, that show, and also when I saw “Don't Worry, Be Happy.” … I've been watching Bobby McFerrin since I was in high school. I played at UC-Berkeley at this little jazz thing — I was playing, me and a couple friends in my school with my band leader, my teacher, and we met Bobby McFerrin that day. I didn't know what he did, and he walked onstage by himself and just did some amazing work, and I've always had it in my head since back then. And I was like, “One day I'm going to be bold enough to try it.” And then it happened.

What is it like as a musician having to make the decisions for a one-man show? Is it different from putting together a typical show?

It's difficult because you can't play a lot of songs that most of your fans are used to. You come into a concert and count it off, “1, 2, 3,” and it's like blazing songs — every two minutes it’s a new song, and this is totally not that show. So that's the challenge, going out in front of people and having your fans watch you try something else and experience something new. Not just for myself, but also for them too. Because some people have never even been to a play or musical. I haven't been to many myself, so this was a challenge for me and the audience — and also bringing a new audience in too. I've always wanted to keep growing and moving forward and progressing creativity.

What do you struggle with when it comes to making a set list? As a fan, I know I would want some deeper cuts, but there’s not enough time in the day to just get through all the hits.

Yes. We would be there for five hours.

Which would be awesome. I'm not going to lie.

But I mean, yeah, I'll kind of look at it too. Some of the things are obvious and some are not, and it's not a lot of songs. I feel like I'm going to do this in episodes, and the next time I'll do different things. The story keeps progressing.

That's really cool. Do you feel a different sort of pressure doing this on your own?

Oh yeah, all kinds of pressure. I remember when my team asked me — I have a new team that I just started working with maybe a year ago now, and they asked me what I want to do, anything [come to] mind. I said, “The one-man show.” They started looking for the best time slots to do [the shows], started moving faster than I thought they were moving. They gave me the time slot. I said, “Yes, it's a good time," but I hadn't written anything yet. And then they said: “Well, we can start selling tickets at this date. You ready to pull the trigger?” And I said yes. And that's when I started writing. 

So I started writing like that, and it was really funny because I would be walking down the street and I would see people and then go, “Hey Raphael, we just bought tickets.” And I'm like, “Whoa, I don't have anything ready.” So that's the type of pressure I had. I was also working on a book at the same time, so my stories were always being documented. My whole life, I've been documenting everything. And so as I'm writing a book, I started taking things from my book and I called a friend named Eisa Davis … and my team hooked me up with her. I gave her my stories and we just put ’em in order.

Congratulations on writing the book. That's such a huge undertaking and a very different set of creative challenges. It’s really impressive that you could do that work on the book while getting the show together.

Yeah, that was the plan. It's a pretty hard thing to do. The book world is a different world.

What's your favorite part about doing this show? It seems like it's super fun.

I walk out and — the crowd, there's no instrument in my hand … nobody knows what to expect. I don't know what to expect from them. And we are both just looking at each other. I think that's my favorite part of the show, and the testimonies that I hear from different people that they all say: “We didn't know what to expect. We didn't expect what we saw, but what we got was what we needed.”

In all the videos that I've seen from the tour, it sounds like a few thousand people singing all the words simultaneously — a very sing-along vibe, which is cool. And I bet that sounds awesome onstage.

It does. It's a good feeling. It feels like everybody's in my living room.

What is the physical experience of performing a one-person show versus getting up there with a band? With your show at the NBA All Star game, there were a lot of people making a lot of sound in a small space. How does that feel different as a solo performer?

I've never done that before, so it's definitely different. And I'm used to screaming guitar solos coming from the left and to the right and hearing the drums and the snare — hearing it just coming down, pop, pop. And [on this tour] it's nothing. It's just me and everybody, just us getting ready to know each other. It's nothing. There's some instruments on stands, and sometimes I walk up to ’em and play them.

Such a cool, relaxed way to explore it, really. When you've got such a broad, deep catalog, what is it like playing those older songs after all this time?

That's the walk in the park. That's the easy part. Only thing that's different is I'm playing piano, and I just started playing piano. This is my first time playing piano live on the stage, and I've never done it before. And I just really started playing piano during the pandemic.

Really?

Yeah, I had to prepare for it. I started playing more because I knew I wanted to do this show, but I knew I had to be able to play the piano on a few songs. So the songs that I play [on piano] on the stage are really the only songs I know. [Laughs]

When you are a grown adult, you can learn in front of your friends, and they're like, “That's cute, that's nice.” [But] you have to make those mistakes in front of people. It's kind of cool for me, I find it funny. A friend of mine told me that Herbie Hancock told them, “[The audience is] paying for these mistakes.” It's fun to watch people figure it out right in front of you. 

What keeps you excited about moving forward?

Just my love for all creative people. People just creating art, people just creating music. Being on my way to Nashville, I know that's one of the most creative places in the world, as a community of musicians, to really get together and figure things out. I think that's what it's about. Everybody playing together at one time, and just a rich history of music, always keeps me going.