MUSIC
Cranking Up Alvin and Calvin Waters of The Machine Group Look Forward to New Projects By Den i s e K. Jame s
A lvin and Calvin Waters are looking forward to new projects. The brothers have launched a new division through their company, The Machine Group, which will partner with other Black producers and work toward a com- mon goal: producing musical scores for films, television, and digital broadcast- ing, even video games. Both Alvin and Calvin feel it’s an ideal time for Black music producers to make waves—and, given their catalog of industry contacts, The Machine Group is positioned to take that lead. “The combined team has produced
and written songs for movies such as Dream Girls , Kung Fu Panda , Pitch Perfect , Straight Outta Compton , Get On Up , Shrek the Third , and Burlesque and The Wiz , while working with artists such as Quincy Jones, Cher, Michael Jack- son, Janet Jackson, Rihanna, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Jamie Foxx, Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Snoop Dogg, and more,” Alvin says. You could say that Alvin and Calvin stumbled into being producers by accident— a happy accident, one that has proven fruitful for the brothers themselves, the global music industry, and Black culture as a whole. Or, you could say it was their destiny. Hailing from the small yet musical town of Macon, Georgia, they spent their younger years learning to play brass instruments, with Alvin on the trumpet and Calvin on the trombone. As soon as their natural talent became more appar- ent, however, the two set their sights on bigger things. The brothers decided they could teach themselves to play the guitar and the bass, given their propensity for mu- sic. They were already spending plenty of time around people in the entertainment industry, particularly with their “second dad” David Banks, who was well-known for writing Richard Pryor’s comedy. “We were learning as we went along,” Alvin explains. “Calvin and I always knew how to structure songs. If something was played in the key of C and needed to be in the key of F, we knew how to change that. So, as we played, we learned, and as we learned, we progressed.” After writing their first two songs, a wonderful thing happened: The Waters brothers were offered a record deal through a label in Atlanta. The next thing they knew, they
Alvin and Calvin Waters
Photo courtesy of Matt Odum Photography
were opening for artists such as Parliament Funkadelic and the S.O.S. Band, and, shortly after, they were signed to the famous Motown label. Was it luck? Perhaps a bit of luck, but the brothers maintain it was their hard work most of all. Because the music was creating quite a stir overseas—mainly in Japan and Europe—the next phase of Alvin and Calvin’s career seemed to be following the call of fans across the ocean. They didn’t hesitate to pack their suitcases. “We were filling up venues in Japan and Europe,” Alvin recalls. “As we toured around the Asian market, a lot of K-Pop and J-Pop artists would come to our shows, and Calvin and I were sometimes asked to produce their records. Then, at one show, an artist by the name of Seiko Matsuda asked us to produce three records. Those records became highly popular. That’s when people really started asking us to produce. We ended up living in Japan for four years.” Following the success in Japan, their career started gaining more traction, and as the workload steadily grew, the brothers began asking other R&B artists to produce Asian pop records. Satisfied with their booming enterprise, they decided to come back to the United States —specifically Atlanta—and, for a while, continued to travel back and forth between home and Japan. More
artists were continuously added to the portfolio and more contacts were made. They even had a foray into fashion during the pandemic, helping the creator of the “red bottom hat” get noticed by luxury retailer Neiman Marcus and subsequently producing several trunk shows, including one where they met their new friend Martha Stewart. Though the brothers aren’t at liberty to say what their new division of The Machine Group is working on next—negotiations are still in the works—but they assured me all of this is just the beginning. The production company has lofty ambitions, and, thanks to the booming entertainment business in Georgia, they’re getting a lot of promising feedback. “There’s not another production company like this, especially one with our track record,” they note. “We’re giving top Black producers an avenue to create major musical scores. We know a lot of producers because we’ve always been in this line of work, and it made sense to pool them under one house. It’s an old venture for us, but a new venture at the same time. And right now, diversity is more important than ever in film, television, and music.”
www.themachinegroup.org
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