Article from the Burlington Free Press, 2009

The members of Kilimanjaro had visions of releasing their first CD since 1983 long before this.

Those visions happened before the legendary local jazz-fusion group hunkered down in the studio and realized all the possibilities technology and their increased musical abilities provided them in the past 25 years.

“We would work very intensely on one tune both as the group in recording it and a certain amount of post-production to try to bring out the best possible outcome of a certain section of a tune,” said guitarist Paul Asbell, Kilimanjaro’s primary composer. “That’s why it took so long,” added keyboard player Charles “Chas” Eller, who with Asbell is the creative force behind Kilimanjaro. “It definitely slows you down, but it’s a process of weeding out and a process of taking away.”

The recording process began not long after the foursome reunited at the 2006 Burlington Discover Jazz Festival and culminates Saturday, Jan. 31, with a concert at Burlington City Hall. The show marks the release of Kilimanjaro’s new CD, the aptly named “Homecoming.”

Asbell, Eller and bass player Tony Markellis remain from the original group that formed in 1977 and recorded two albums that landed in the top five on the national jazz charts; drummer Bill Kinzie left in the 1980s, and current drummer Lucas Adler joined in 1993. Kilimanjaro, though, had been largely dormant until the 2006 jazz festival.

“By the time we had done all that work for the show it was sort of evident” that the group would make a new album, according to Asbell. “Chuck said the obvious — ‘We’re putting so much work into this, we should somehow record this.’“

The recording process was deliberate, but Asbell and Eller are both happy with the result. Asbell said the group listened to its old albums from time to time during the recording process at Eller’s studio in Charlotte and “we’d look at one another and we’d kind of smirk.

“I wasn’t sure if we were better as a band and musicians, but I really think it sounds a whole lot better in all kinds of ways,” Asbell said. “I think part of it is the idea of us individually being better, but also taking advantage of what technology has wrought.”

“As players,” Eller said, “we have a bigger palette of music history to draw on because we’ve got 25 years behind us since our last CD. With my studio we literally had everything we ever dreamed of now, and Paul has an enormous collection of vintage guitars and amplifiers. “It was really nice to have the ability to say, ‘Let’s try this such and such....’“

The group, which now also includes saxophone player Chris Peterman, will send copies of “Homecoming” to radio stations in hopes the CD catches on and Kilimanjaro can return to the road. “We’re all sort of at a point in our lives where we’d love to go out and play this music around the world if we could,” Eller said.