Father's Day isn't what it used to be for famed smooth-jazz keyboardist Jeff Lorber.
Lorber's two daughters are grown and out of the house.
One lives in San Francisco, the other in Madrid. Neither will be visiting Dad on his special day.
"Hopefully, they'll give me a call," Lorber said in a phone interview from his home in Southern California. "Once in a while they will send me something. It is nice to get that kind of recognition from your kids."
Lorber is cool with his daughters doing their own thing.
"I just want them to be happy," he said. "It is like walking a minefield raising children these days. If they come out reasonably OK, you should be grateful."
Besides, if they still lived with him, he might have spent this weekend at home rather than playing alongside Everette Harp and Jay Soto as part of the Smooth Jazz All-Star Party at the Westin La Paloma on Saturday night.
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Lorber will bring his other babies to the show: a career's worth of original and adapted material reaching back to his Jeff Lorber Fusion days in the late 1970s.
The Philadelphia-born, Berklee-educated player has more than 20 studio and compilation albums to his name. His most recent release, "Heard That," came out last September on Peak Records.
Fun and funky, "Heard That" was created in direct response to Lorber's 2007 project, "He Had a Hat."
"We put a tremendous amount of effort into 'He Had a Hat,' " Lorber said. "I worked with Bobby Colomby on that album. It was a heavy, serious statement and very different from the stuff I usually do. 'Heard That' was a step in a different direction, more blues and R&B-based."
Looking for wider appeal on the project, Lorber recruited production help from Rex Rideout, whose lengthy, behind-the-scenes résumé included working with Luther Vandross on songs for the late singer's Grammy award-winning final studio album, "Dance With My Father."
"Rex had been a fan of my earlier fusion music," Lorber said. "His idea was to take key grooves and elements from some of his favorite tunes and reinvent them into compositions."
The release was a hit with Lorber's longtime fans.
Songs like the uptempo "You Got Something" and his cover of Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" are the album's top sellers on iTunes.
Lorber said some of his favorites include more elaborate and difficult works such as "Night Sky" and "The Bomb."
"When we recorded ('The Bomb'), it pretty much killed us," Lorber said. "It took so much focus and concentration to get through it. We were all basket cases after that.
"Smooth jazz tends to not be terribly technically challenging. I really dig seeing artists jumping on this bandwagon and playing this kind of music."
Lorber received help from some good friends to create "Heard That." Top smooth-jazz musicians, many regular visitors to Tucson like trumpeter Rick Braun and guitarist Paul Jackson Jr., lent a hand. " I look at making a record as an opportunity to collaborate with people I can learn from," he said.
Even a future project with his daughters wouldn't be completely out of the question.
Both of his children went into graphic design, but Lorber made sure to expose them to music growing up.
His oldest daughter, Jessica, helped produce his 1994 Verve Forecast release, "West Side Stories," when she was still in her teens.
"She wanted to make some money so she could spend the summer in Europe," Lorber said. "I said OK, as long as she helped me make the album. It ended up being fairly successful."
If you go
Father's Day Weekend Smooth Jazz All-Stars Show
• With: Jeff Lorber, Everette Harp and Jay Soto.
• When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
• Where: The Westin La Paloma, 3800 E. Sunrise Drive.
• Tickets: $35-$75 through azentertainmentandevents.com. 429-9803.
