Gary Wright, The Dream Weaver, has two new EPs out, Waiting To Catch The Light, a set of new-age compositions, and The Light of a Million Suns, several cuts that harken back to 1980s pop in the new-jack swing vibe as well as Mr. Mister and soul stylings of the era. Our own Mojo Flucke sat down with him to discuss his greatest hits as well as where he’s headed in 2009.

Tell me about the remake of “My Love is Alive” with your son Dorian on The Light of A Million Suns–what inspired that?

I had always liked the song, and there was this producer that I knew …he had done more real pop, kind of hip-hop things, and he was crazy about the song and so he actually put a lot of the track together for me. I thought his take on it was really cool.

My son Dorian’s got a great voice, and I wanted to do something with him, so I decided to do a duet. I think it really turned out good. Eric Clapton did something like that with “Layla” when he did a remix. Sometimes songs are good but they just need a dusting off and they need a new kind of look. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, and people don’t like it, and other times, you know, it’s good. So I just took that chance.

What was the feel you were striving for? A Michael Jackson/Justin Timberlake/new jack swing kind of thing?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Tell me about your new record, Waiting to Catch The Light. How would you describe the sound and style of music?

That was actually done quite a while back–10 years ago or something. I had always wanted to make a kind of spacey, meditation-inducing kind of an album, and a lot of the New Age stuff I heard was, like, people that weren’t even musicians. They’d buy an instrument and they’d just hold the note down and, you know… And I thought, because my background was really in synthesizers — I was sponsored by Moog and was really the first artist to ever get involved with technically cutting a Mini Moog down and then wearing that thing around my neck when I was performing. (more…)