Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sense Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Dave's Schools. You know him as
Speaker 1: the basis for Widespread Panic. He's a record producer, remember
Speaker 1: the hard working Americans and a great guy to boot Dave.
Speaker 1: Great to have you here. Thank you for having me, Bob.
Speaker 1: How you doing. I'm doing well. You know an email
Speaker 1: you said you wanted to talk about the Beatles documentary
Speaker 1: Get Back. So what did you have to say about that?
Speaker 1: You know, I could say so much. We don't want
Speaker 1: to burn all of our time on it, but it's
Speaker 1: it's so important. And I watched it all in one
Speaker 1: fell swoop over Thanksgiving weekend, and I mean I was
Speaker 1: just blown away. And I guess the primary thing for
Speaker 1: someone of my age. I was born in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: and I got turned onto the Beatles when I was
Speaker 1: probably in third or fourth grade, single by single, uh
Speaker 1: gigging into the past. And I went to see the
Speaker 1: Let It Be movie at the late night midnight movie
Speaker 1: when I was in high school, and I realized that
Speaker 1: I feel like we've been kind of lied to about
Speaker 1: the breakup the Beatles. The the editing of the original
Speaker 1: Let It be movie created a cultural shift. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: the Yoko Ono thing became almost like a you know,
Speaker 1: every band has their Yoko Ono um. And what I
Speaker 1: thought was revealed in this Get Back documentary was that
Speaker 1: it wasn't that way. It wasn't an acrimonious scene during
Speaker 1: the recording of this. It was a It just made
Speaker 1: me so happy because it was a band trying to
Speaker 1: get back to something that they had left behind a
Speaker 1: few years earlier, which is playing in front of people, um,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to work up new material and they're
Speaker 1: all getting along and yeah, they're testy and there are problems,
Speaker 1: but it was just amazing to me. I'm like, so
Speaker 1: this is normal. I mean, I've been a and we're
Speaker 1: not the Beatles, but we pull songs together, we fight
Speaker 1: like brothers, we uh strive to get out in front
Speaker 1: of people. And yeah, they were boring parts and there
Speaker 1: are parts that were okay. But when they get to
Speaker 1: that rooftop, that is a band playing and freezing cold
Speaker 1: the best they can to people they really can't see,
Speaker 1: because they certainly couldn't see down on the street. They
Speaker 1: saw people on rooftops as it went on, but it
Speaker 1: was just glorious and I loved it, and I felt
Speaker 1: like nearly fifty years of me thinking things went down
Speaker 1: one way, we're literally washed away in six hours, seven hours. Well,
Speaker 1: I agree really with everything you say, the you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that you go through seven and a half
Speaker 1: hours before you get to the rooftop. What astounded me
Speaker 1: was how great they were on the rooftop, how they
Speaker 1: kicked it up a notch. You know, I've been privileged
Speaker 1: to be with you know, world class skiers. He can
Speaker 1: skive them every day, but when competition, it's they don't freeze,
Speaker 1: they get better. And then you know Paul twisting the
Speaker 1: way he did, and then the way John Lennon kind
Speaker 1: of bounces on its feet like a little bit like
Speaker 1: a frog. It was wow. Really, you know, makes your
Speaker 1: inside flutter. Yeah, you know, as a we agree about
Speaker 1: the power of music, the power to unite people. And
Speaker 1: there's something about a group of guys playing together on
Speaker 1: stage or on a roof or in a studio. When
Speaker 1: something magic happens can't be recreated by computers and production.
Speaker 1: It's a human thing. It's a connection thing. And man,
Speaker 1: it's just traveled across fifty some years of stored film footage,
Speaker 1: and you know, the work they did restoring that film
Speaker 1: and the audio is just it's fantastic. It was palpable
Speaker 1: um and and it's funny because there's a scene where
Speaker 1: Paul says, this is when we're at our best, when
Speaker 1: our backs are against the wall. And then you can
Speaker 1: tell that all the years of training in those little
Speaker 1: nightclubs and those residencies and foreign countries and just being
Speaker 1: together and and sort of suffering as a group, um,
Speaker 1: that never goes away. You know, you might have to
Speaker 1: like chip away, it's some stone to get back to
Speaker 1: it after a few years off the road, but when
Speaker 1: you find it, it's like a spewing fountain head. It's amazing. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: we certainly saw them in depth recording the what ultimately
Speaker 1: became the Let It Be album. That begs the question
Speaker 1: in your band, when you want to make a new record,
Speaker 1: let's talk about white spread panic. Because you're involved in
Speaker 1: a lot of different acts, both as a producer and
Speaker 1: a player. Uh, how do you do it? Does everybody
Speaker 1: come with songs already written? You work it out in
Speaker 1: the studio like they did. Well, it's it's been you know,
Speaker 1: we've been a band almost twelve thirty five years we've
Speaker 1: been a band, and there's an evolution. You know, things
Speaker 1: were different when we started um and we certainly weren't
Speaker 1: ever the Beatles, with our own studio on Seve will
Speaker 1: Row and you know, the best E M I engineers
Speaker 1: at our behest. But there's an evolution to where the
Speaker 1: first time you go into the studio it's just glorious
Speaker 1: and you don't know what's happening. And the first time
Speaker 1: you hear playback on something that you find acceptable, it's
Speaker 1: shocking and thrilling um. And then you get into this
Speaker 1: thing where we got signed. Uh. Well, you know, we
Speaker 1: made our first record, Space Wrangler, with our producer John Keene,
Speaker 1: in his living room of his house. Bit by bit,
Speaker 1: we record a few songs, go out on the road,
Speaker 1: play some gigs, get some more money to record a
Speaker 1: few more songs, and we made the Space Wrangler record,
Speaker 1: and then we got signed by Capricorn really quickly. And
Speaker 1: what happens then is you're in the studio and you're
Speaker 1: kind of under the gun. Budgets were certainly far inflated
Speaker 1: back then, but you want to get it right, but
Speaker 1: you don't have the experience to know that you have
Speaker 1: to just chill and be a band. So for a
Speaker 1: couple of records, it's get it and and you you
Speaker 1: play a little fast and you make some sacrifices. Luckily,
Speaker 1: our producer at the time on those early Capricorn records
Speaker 1: was the great Johnny Sandlin, who had worked with the
Speaker 1: Almond Brothers and all kinds of Southern rock stalwarts. UM
Speaker 1: and that man was a groove detector, and he kind
Speaker 1: of taught us to slow down and listen for that magic.
Speaker 1: You know, the magic isn't in getting it right a
Speaker 1: flawless performance. The magic is that thing that happens with
Speaker 1: a group of guys who can listen and play and
Speaker 1: respond something an X factor takes over. And so he
Speaker 1: would make us do take after take and hold us
Speaker 1: to slowing things down. So then we began to understand
Speaker 1: what we were trying to capture. UM and it's elusive
Speaker 1: and you could burn a lot of time trying to
Speaker 1: find it. And then later, you know, as the nineties
Speaker 1: war on pro tools came in and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden there was this he didn't really have to
Speaker 1: commit drums again to get gritted out. Are we were
Speaker 1: back with our producer John Keene, and we're like, you know,
Speaker 1: I remember a conversation between Mike Howser and John Keene
Speaker 1: where we were trying to play to a click track
Speaker 1: and Mike Houser's tops to take and he goes, John,
Speaker 1: I swear this thing slowing down, and John Keene, you
Speaker 1: just hear this kind of like click, Mikey, it's a machine.
Speaker 1: It doesn't slow down or speed up. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just always an evolution. I think, you know, there's
Speaker 1: what a band can do as a group with the
Speaker 1: tools of the studio, and then there's trying to keep
Speaker 1: up with an interface with this incredibly quick modern evolution
Speaker 1: of these tools. You know, with the digital thing, you
Speaker 1: don't have to commit, you know. I try to push
Speaker 1: young bands I work with to commit to like reach
Speaker 1: down into themselves and find that thing that's elusive. But
Speaker 1: so many of them coming here, like they sing one
Speaker 1: chorus and they're like, okay, so yeah, you can just
Speaker 1: fly that across the rest of the track, right, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, but are you gonna do that live?
Speaker 1: And maybe if they're gonna be playing the tapes, they
Speaker 1: don't have to sing it, But most of us you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to sing it, you know, let's do it.
Speaker 1: We're here in a nice room with good sound. Let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and capture the humanity. Well, the humanity is
Speaker 1: what it makes makes it great, and the imperfections are
Speaker 1: what given edges like velcro to get those little hooks
Speaker 1: you want to get the loops. But okay, let's talk
Speaker 1: about recent recordings. Do you come with the songs finished
Speaker 1: or to what degree of those figured out in the studio? Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's been a change too in the old days.
Speaker 1: Once we stopped living together in the band house. You know, obviously,
Speaker 1: when we're all living together in the band house, we
Speaker 1: we're hanging out right in music and laughing our asses
Speaker 1: off all the time. Uh. We were notorious for rehearsing
Speaker 1: in front of audiences. Um, you know, and and okay, wait,
Speaker 1: wait slow, what would you consider rehearsing in front of
Speaker 1: the audience to be, oh, a gig that we charge
Speaker 1: money for? No? I mean, how would that different. Let's
Speaker 1: say I'm on the other side of the stage. Okay,
Speaker 1: the band is playing, you know, the band might be jamming.
Speaker 1: What would be different between that and what you consider
Speaker 1: to be a rehearsal. Well, we probably wouldn't stop and
Speaker 1: laugh in the middle of a stage rehearsal as it were.
Speaker 1: But you know, we were jamming, and we took chances,
Speaker 1: and and we played a lot of cover songs, and
Speaker 1: as we wrote new material, we kick out the covers
Speaker 1: that weren't that great or that cool, and and gradually
Speaker 1: we just ceased to be a cover band, and we
Speaker 1: kept a lot of the covers that we sort of,
Speaker 1: like some people would use the word interpreted, I like
Speaker 1: to sort of self deprecatingly say, we just weren't that
Speaker 1: good at playing them, so we just sort of had
Speaker 1: our way with them. But we still like a song
Speaker 1: like low Spark a High Heel Boys. That is it's
Speaker 1: right for improvisation. You know, as long as you sing
Speaker 1: the melody, play that counterpoint music, then there are these
Speaker 1: spaces where you can go wherever you want. And we've
Speaker 1: always done that with that song. It's probably one of
Speaker 1: the oldest covers we ever did. But so we'd be
Speaker 1: living in a band house and cobbling these things together
Speaker 1: and tightening them up on stage in front of people.
Speaker 1: We took chances. It's where you kind of found the
Speaker 1: sea legs of a song. We were able to get
Speaker 1: away with taking chances. Our audience allowed that, and in
Speaker 1: fact they expected it. They love the humanity of the band. UM.
Speaker 1: There's pretty much nothing better than stumbling and catching yourself
Speaker 1: with grace, and sometimes it happens if you allow that
Speaker 1: to happen in live music. UM. But then people got married,
Speaker 1: had kids, bought their own houses, and so when we
Speaker 1: come to the studio with new material after that point,
Speaker 1: people came with their own demos. UH. In relative states
Speaker 1: of of finished nous. Mike Howser was had a tendency
Speaker 1: to show up with literally three times more songs than
Speaker 1: anybody else UM, and he just sort of play them
Speaker 1: and show him to us. He might have recorded them
Speaker 1: sitting on his back porch with his acoustic guitar, whereas
Speaker 1: John Bell was he likes to try his hand at
Speaker 1: home recording, so he'd play some bass and he'd put
Speaker 1: a drum machine on it. But he never wanted to
Speaker 1: steer anyone too far in a certain direction. Everybody really
Speaker 1: respected the input of everybody else, whether it was in
Speaker 1: our living room rehearsing, or whether it was with the
Speaker 1: tape rolling in the studio. UM. And now that we
Speaker 1: don't play as much on the road and we are
Speaker 1: scattered all across the country, that sort of bringing a
Speaker 1: more finished demo into the picture is is far more acceptable.
Speaker 1: But everybody is all about plan can change. We can
Speaker 1: pivot at any time someone drops a brick. Hey, that's
Speaker 1: actually sounded pretty good. Maybe that's our middle four that
Speaker 1: I didn't see coming. Okay, you're in the studio. One
Speaker 1: thing that was kind of both tense and interesting watching
Speaker 1: Get Back is the personalities interact. At first, you know,
Speaker 1: Paul sort of the sleeve driver. Then John is kind
Speaker 1: of retiring, and then John becomes were active, George Littley
Speaker 1: quits the band. What about the personalities interacting in the studio. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess the lesson we all learned the
Speaker 1: older we get is communication really is key, um. And
Speaker 1: also familiarity breeds contempt. And thirdly, it's like a family
Speaker 1: dynamic with siblings. So sometimes communication is the hardest part. Uh,
Speaker 1: And sometimes it's hard to break through methods of communication
Speaker 1: that have sort of solidified over decades. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: you can sense that resentment in George, you know, and
Speaker 1: you can sort of sense the like power dynamic between
Speaker 1: John and Paul where at one point it's like you
Speaker 1: used to run the band, but I guess now I'm
Speaker 1: the boss. And then at the end, at the end,
Speaker 1: you know, he says, now we're the boss again, that's right, um.
Speaker 1: And there's also with the end of realizing that the
Speaker 1: end is actually closer than they might think, and it
Speaker 1: looks like Paul is crying and it really gets me
Speaker 1: and I I it's it can be triggering in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways to watch something like that with myself
Speaker 1: having thirty years of history. You know, we are a
Speaker 1: band of brothers. Widespread panic. Um. We've lost two of them,
Speaker 1: they've passed away, and so whatever communication problems or challenges
Speaker 1: that John Bell and I might face, we're constantly trying
Speaker 1: to work through. And there are times where it's more tense,
Speaker 1: and especially after like taking the COVID time off. You know,
Speaker 1: we when we reconvened in Athens, Georgia at the Georgia
Speaker 1: Theater to rehearse um. And you've probably noticed this too
Speaker 1: with people, stuff kind of comes out sideways in unpredictable
Speaker 1: ways after being sort of cooped up and subject to
Speaker 1: pressure all the various outside pressures. We were all sort
Speaker 1: of suffering in solitary UM and it got weird with communication.
Speaker 1: It's palpable, but we've been together for a long time
Speaker 1: and it's worth working through. But those are things that
Speaker 1: definitely they come up in the studio, and the studio
Speaker 1: tends to turn the heat up a little bit. You know,
Speaker 1: that tape might be rolling, or ones and zeros are
Speaker 1: spinning by, the lights are on, Mike's are on, uh,
Speaker 1: And no matter how hard you try to lose that awareness,
Speaker 1: you're always aware that what you say might not land
Speaker 1: the way you intended to land UM, and that can
Speaker 1: be tough, you know, to get back thing it's I
Speaker 1: thought that it was amazing. I literally saw a cameraman
Speaker 1: maybe three times until they got on the roof. I
Speaker 1: literally forgot. I felt like I was a fly on
Speaker 1: the wall, you know. And then how did those guys
Speaker 1: go from I can understand being in a movie studio
Speaker 1: like Twickenham is not an ideal place to to reconvene UM.
Speaker 1: But once they got into their home turf, no matter
Speaker 1: how new it really was for them, they seem to
Speaker 1: have just they forgot those cameras were there. And we're
Speaker 1: not talking about little digital cameras mounted on a stick,
Speaker 1: hidden away. We're talking about big cameras that need film change,
Speaker 1: sixteen millimeter all the time. Uh. It was amazing to me.
Speaker 1: Although at the very end, during the credit when they
Speaker 1: show the clapper and then you start to you know,
Speaker 1: realize that the film crew was more intrusive than you
Speaker 1: thought they were in the beginning of the the documentary.
Speaker 1: But let's go back to being in the studio. You know,
Speaker 1: we live in a world of compromise. Everything's about business
Speaker 1: getting along. But in the movie, especially Paul, he'll really
Speaker 1: drill ree all three of them and say I want
Speaker 1: it like this, I want it like this. And you're
Speaker 1: certainly after George leaves the man and Baul starts acting
Speaker 1: that way, especially in the third uh episode, you start
Speaker 1: to wins and say, hey, this guy is gonna react,
Speaker 1: you know if you keep pushing him. So as a
Speaker 1: band member, to what degree can you stand up and
Speaker 1: say no, this is the way I need it to be,
Speaker 1: or at what point do you say compromise goes Sometimes
Speaker 1: someone has a different opinion. Other times you just feel
Speaker 1: like you're pushing them. Yeah, I think I think that
Speaker 1: in the case of the Beatles, there's a pretty high
Speaker 1: bar that they were always trying to top, so that
Speaker 1: maybe their end goal was a little different, you know,
Speaker 1: as far as like success and relative value of what
Speaker 1: they're doing would make someone push Uh. But I think
Speaker 1: it's a it's a philosophy and a lot of times
Speaker 1: it's it's the way it's delivered. Like for Widespread Panic,
Speaker 1: John Bell is a guy that just wants to get
Speaker 1: his idea into the hands of everybody else, and what
Speaker 1: everybody else changes about it or provides that's unique to
Speaker 1: them musically thrills him. Whereas Mike Howser would. I mean,
Speaker 1: he told me one time, He's like, hey, when it
Speaker 1: gets to this part, can you play this B chord
Speaker 1: instead of what you've been playing? And that's you know,
Speaker 1: it depends on the delivery system, Uh, the way that
Speaker 1: communication was asked. UM. A great example I'll jump to
Speaker 1: when I was playing with Government Mule and Chuck Lavelle
Speaker 1: was playing keyboards and I had known Chuck for a while,
Speaker 1: super sweet guy, one of the nicest, most gent heel
Speaker 1: people in rock and roll UM, and we were working
Speaker 1: up the song compared to what you know that song
Speaker 1: Eddie Eddie Harris song with that amazing extrapolated intro, and
Speaker 1: Schuck wanted to play it and he could certainly could
Speaker 1: play it, you know, and we had played at a
Speaker 1: time or two rehearsed it, and we debuted it the
Speaker 1: night before, and then the next night we were you know,
Speaker 1: at some theater somewhere and sound checking and we're kind
Speaker 1: of running through the intro and Chuck looks at me
Speaker 1: and he goes, hey, you know, Dave, when it gets
Speaker 1: to this part, da da da, I wish you would
Speaker 1: play this. And I was just like, you know, your
Speaker 1: wishes by command, you know, which is different because you're
Speaker 1: right when when Paul starts sort of telling George how
Speaker 1: to play the way he's delivering that, it's making me WinCE.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know this this is a powder keg.
Speaker 1: You could feel it, and certainly with widespread panic it's
Speaker 1: been that way. Um. But we're learning as a family,
Speaker 1: you know, whitebread panic. Everything was d I y. We
Speaker 1: were against the grain. We didn't sound like any other
Speaker 1: Athens band at the time. Uh, you know, we no
Speaker 1: one really cared about a weirdo band from the South,
Speaker 1: So we had to learn how to do everything in
Speaker 1: our own way, including simply how to be a band.
Speaker 1: And for us, being a band was learning how to
Speaker 1: play together. You know, you can you can have the
Speaker 1: way that you play your instrument, and you can be great.
Speaker 1: You can have chops, you can be academically schooled. Um.
Speaker 1: But the worth of a band and the sound of
Speaker 1: a band comes when four people come together and learn
Speaker 1: how to play together and whitchpread panic. You know, we
Speaker 1: all just sort of taught ourselves, and then we came
Speaker 1: together and we taught ourselves as a group, and I
Speaker 1: think that's why we pretty much instantly had a sound
Speaker 1: that was unlike anyone else. I look at a band
Speaker 1: like you two, and if I could be a fly
Speaker 1: on a wall and hear them rehearsing before they got
Speaker 1: put into a studio with a producer, I bet it's
Speaker 1: four guys learning how to make that sound of you
Speaker 1: two together, probably completely unaware that that's what's happening. You know.
Speaker 1: That's the sort of thing where I realized it about
Speaker 1: widespread panic after a few records and looking back and
Speaker 1: hearing other bands talk about how they crafted their sound
Speaker 1: or how a producer helped them find their sound, and
Speaker 1: I was like, huh, I think we just sort of
Speaker 1: we just lucked out, you know, we just showed up
Speaker 1: knowing what we knew, and then the unit, the hive mind,
Speaker 1: sort of took care of everything else. Um and I
Speaker 1: think that there's an evolution in that you can see
Speaker 1: some of it and get back. How revelatory is it
Speaker 1: when Paul sits down and starts strumming that after bass
Speaker 1: like it's a rhythm guitar and pulling the words to
Speaker 1: get back out of the atmosphere. It was like alchemy,
Speaker 1: although I'm not sure that I believe that's the first
Speaker 1: time he did it. Well, you know, was that Phil
Speaker 1: Walden said to us, it's all spoken mirrors boys, mirrors,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. So just talking to you for a
Speaker 1: minute or two, not only are you very verbal, you're
Speaker 1: very intelligent. And what's it like interacting with other musicians?
Speaker 1: You know, Bob Dylan had that song Darre Loan Landlord
Speaker 1: Wich says each of us has his own special gift,
Speaker 1: and you know that was meant to be true. And
Speaker 1: if you don't underestimate me, I won't underestimate you, which
Speaker 1: I've really uses my mantra. Since people have intelligence in
Speaker 1: different ways, there are people who can barely speak, but
Speaker 1: are unbelievable at their instrument. But what's it like for
Speaker 1: you interacting with musicians? Generally speaking? Rock music is not
Speaker 1: a highbrow endeavor. It's not, but it is. And you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right, you know you nailed me. Verbal is a
Speaker 1: very nice way of putting it. When I've gotten in
Speaker 1: trouble working with bands, I think it's because I talked
Speaker 1: too much. You know, uh, if we're gonna string get
Speaker 1: back all the way through. I think that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of great information in the way that not only
Speaker 1: Glenn John's is sort of just allowing the band and
Speaker 1: capturing it, and the way George Martin is it's just
Speaker 1: like laying on the floor writing the newspaper in his
Speaker 1: suit until you know the one clip that I love
Speaker 1: the most, he's you know, Glenn's like, Okay, so the
Speaker 1: idea is we're gonna just capture a song and and
Speaker 1: and it'll be sort of live. And then George cuts
Speaker 1: him off. He's like, here's what we'll do. We'll rehearse
Speaker 1: it and we'll play it. And then he goes in
Speaker 1: the joke Bode and he's like, we'll play it again
Speaker 1: and again and again. We're not gonna edit it. Um,
Speaker 1: I talked too much. It's always been my thing. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's intelligent or anxiety or what,
Speaker 1: but I've learned when working with bands, to give the
Speaker 1: thing the space to happen. Whether it's an artist like
Speaker 1: Todd Snyder that will come in and just he wants
Speaker 1: to just kind of spew his ideas, he wants to
Speaker 1: just throw this haystack. I called it like a haystack
Speaker 1: of golden needles, and we're looking for the platinum one
Speaker 1: in it. Um, why instruct that guy, We'll just enable it. Um.
Speaker 1: Other artists need a little more. What they need is vindication. Uh. Jason,
Speaker 1: my engineer, we were talking about a session we had
Speaker 1: here at the studio and the artist came back a
Speaker 1: week later to throw some keyboards on and there was
Speaker 1: no one around to sort of vindicate what he played.
Speaker 1: And he was sort of looking out of the control
Speaker 1: room through the glass at Jason while he was enabling
Speaker 1: the recording. Um, you know, is this cool? So some
Speaker 1: artists want just maybe the eye contact or a little
Speaker 1: bit of a smile like yeah, that's great. Um. And
Speaker 1: others want to be what their hands really held and
Speaker 1: sort of pulled. They want someone to push them or
Speaker 1: help them separate all their ideas. Uh, maybe me being
Speaker 1: so verbal is me trying to sort through to what's
Speaker 1: most important. Um. And so for the artist that has
Speaker 1: a lot of ideas, maybe they need to spew them
Speaker 1: all and have someone go, hey, that one there that works.
Speaker 1: It works for me, does it work for you? I
Speaker 1: just I want to continue to evolve, bob and and
Speaker 1: I love it when people give me honest feedback because
Speaker 1: it helps me get better at what it is I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do. And all I'm trying to do is
Speaker 1: get better. You know, it would be great if I
Speaker 1: could win a Grammy. It would make my mom happy,
Speaker 1: you know. But really, when I hear an artist say
Speaker 1: that there pleased with what we captured in the studio,
Speaker 1: or that that's it to me, that that makes me
Speaker 1: really happy, it's almost as thrilling as what I was
Speaker 1: saying earlier about hearing my band on the first time
Speaker 1: on playback in the studio. It's like, Wow, it's a
Speaker 1: great feeling. Okay, there's you know this mantra that no
Speaker 1: one can tell a hit. I don't really agree with that.
Speaker 1: Never mind, commercially, if you do something phenomenal, you know. Actually,
Speaker 1: my favorite story on this So I was talking to
Speaker 1: Al Cooper, who's telling me the story of recording Sweet
Speaker 1: Home Alabama. And it was recorded a year before it
Speaker 1: came out, the first album just come out. I said, out,
Speaker 1: did you know it was a hit? And he says
Speaker 1: it was Sweet Home Alabama? You know. So the question is,
Speaker 1: do you know when you're locked in and something is transcendent? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's unlike. It's not unlike the zone that
Speaker 1: athletes say they get into. I mean, you're talking to
Speaker 1: someone that isn't a band that sort of specializes in
Speaker 1: not having hits. We have catchy songs, and we have
Speaker 1: short songs. Um, but really what we're after is the
Speaker 1: word you just used as transcendence. It's a transportation was
Speaker 1: it Jerry Garcia that famously said the Grateful Dead is
Speaker 1: isn't in the music business or in the transportation business. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's to me, that's the thing. And so if I
Speaker 1: was to be interviewed after a concert like an athlete
Speaker 1: after a game, I would hope that more times than not,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, I don't remember what happened. It must
Speaker 1: have been good. And it wasn't because I was fucked up,
Speaker 1: you know it was. It was because I was lost
Speaker 1: in the moment of of that transcendent zone. Um. I
Speaker 1: think me being a huge led Zeppelin fan. And they
Speaker 1: talked about when they took the p a outside and
Speaker 1: cranked the mix of Dancing Days and everybody was dancing
Speaker 1: on the grass. That's the kind of moment, you know.
Speaker 1: It's like true. When I heard that song when I
Speaker 1: was in fourth grade, I it. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: It was like a trip to another world. Well, the
Speaker 1: funny thing is, no one ever talks about that song
Speaker 1: from Houses Holy. A lot of people think Houses Holy
Speaker 1: the best album. I don't agree. But they mentioned all
Speaker 1: these songs, Dancing Days is the one for me. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean, here's a little story about me. I went
Speaker 1: to Vermont in fourth grade for the summer with one
Speaker 1: of my friends and his older brother and his friend came.
Speaker 1: And this was the days where even if you're going
Speaker 1: to Nag's Head for a week, you bring the whole
Speaker 1: high five system and a creative LPs, and so there's
Speaker 1: this whole moving in ritual and everything, and and the
Speaker 1: older boys would go off and do what they did,
Speaker 1: and us younger guys, we'd sneak in. And they had
Speaker 1: a stash of the National Lampoon magazines, which were hilarious
Speaker 1: and kind of edgy for us. And then they had
Speaker 1: to they had their albums, and I remember a Goodbye
Speaker 1: Yellow Brick Road. I knew Elton John I had his
Speaker 1: greatest Hits record, and I had Beatles records. But I
Speaker 1: saw that houses the Holy cover with all those little
Speaker 1: blonde babies crawling up that apocalyptic landscape. What's it? The
Speaker 1: giants causeway um And there's no band name on it,
Speaker 1: there's no information whatsoever. I'm like, this looks weird. Let's
Speaker 1: put it on. And my friends brothers friend's sister had
Speaker 1: written her name in the top corner of the record
Speaker 1: in weird calligraphy, and her name was Lisa whole Grave.
Speaker 1: And so I put the record on. Dance of Days
Speaker 1: comes on, Robert Plant sounds like a girl. I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: who is this Lisa whole Grave? They rock And I
Speaker 1: remember going to UH it was the best products show room.
Speaker 1: You're an East Coaster, you might remember this. This place.
Speaker 1: It was like a catalog place you could go into.
Speaker 1: They had a record department was some very disinterested clerks,
Speaker 1: and I came in there with my dad and, you know,
Speaker 1: my six dollars to buy a record. And I walk
Speaker 1: up and go, do you guys have that Leasa Whole
Speaker 1: Grave record? And they're like, what are you talking to who?
Speaker 1: And I said, you know, it's this weird record with
Speaker 1: these all little naked blonde girls crawling up this red thing.
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, yeah, that's sled Zeppelin. So that's
Speaker 1: my weird story about dancing days. And and I seem
Speaker 1: to have a weird history of listening to classic records,
Speaker 1: starting with Side Too, and it informs the way that
Speaker 1: I forever hear the record. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: started with side to the first time I heard Sergeant
Speaker 1: Peppers it was on cassette at a little sleepover party,
Speaker 1: and uh, for years I thought Within You Without You
Speaker 1: was the first song with Sergeant Peppers. If only it was. Boy,
Speaker 1: what an amazing piece of music. Right, So you are
Speaker 1: upbeat and low quasies. You ever get depressed, you ever
Speaker 1: get down, Bob. You know, I'm a I grew up
Speaker 1: as an only child of latch Key Kid, so my
Speaker 1: best friends were books and records. And yeah, I get depressed.
Speaker 1: I get lonely. I grew up thinking, man, if I
Speaker 1: just had siblings to to torture me, or if my
Speaker 1: best friend lived a little closer. Uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: could ride my bike and hang out. And so I
Speaker 1: sat around and and it's funny because my stasis is solitary.
Speaker 1: You know, when I need to recharge my will, I
Speaker 1: need to do it solitarily. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: my nemesis is being alone, if that makes any sense. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of a weird push and pull with me.
Speaker 1: And as you know, like on a tour, buser's no aloneness.
Speaker 1: The most alone you can get is to crawl into
Speaker 1: your bunk, pull the curtain and hope that the air
Speaker 1: conditioning stays on. UM. So it's it's funny, and it
Speaker 1: can be really really exhausting. But yeah, I get depressed
Speaker 1: and and uh, I gotta tell you that social media
Speaker 1: exacerbates it. For me. I look through Instagram and what
Speaker 1: started as a neat way to see what my family
Speaker 1: was doing and eating, um, and then catch up and
Speaker 1: keep up with bands that I love, friends that I
Speaker 1: have in in bands that are always traveling around. Uh,
Speaker 1: since they started doing the ads, and the AI took
Speaker 1: over what you saw and it stopped being instant as
Speaker 1: an instant Graham, I'm like, I'm missing my god daughter's posts,
Speaker 1: you know, because the AI doesn't she doesn't post frequently enough.
Speaker 1: Whereas you know, quest love is is. He's a good
Speaker 1: poster post a lot and a lot of it's amazing information.
Speaker 1: But a lot of times now I just get depressed
Speaker 1: and uh, and it's funny. It's sometimes times it makes
Speaker 1: me want to give up music. I can't tell you why,
Speaker 1: but that's my own personal down a little bit, Okay,
Speaker 1: the feeling of given giving up music? How much is Instagram?
Speaker 1: How much is this being overwhelmed by social media? How
Speaker 1: much of it is feeling powerless? How much is feeling
Speaker 1: that there's no context? Tell me a little bit more.
Speaker 1: It's it's all of that. I mean with the social
Speaker 1: media thing, I think it's an unintentional comparison syndrome. Um,
Speaker 1: it's really because everybody's putting their best foot forward. They're
Speaker 1: showing you the thing they're most proud of. Very few
Speaker 1: people get on social media and show you the thing
Speaker 1: that they're least proud of, or they're not going to
Speaker 1: post when they're having a bad day. Um, But everything
Speaker 1: else you said, it's true. I think with me it
Speaker 1: can be burnt out. Um, sometimes it's I'm not doing enough.
Speaker 1: You know. If I can get into my happy place
Speaker 1: in the studio and work with somebody, it refills my will.
Speaker 1: I'll never get tired of it. I might get exhausted
Speaker 1: at the end of a really long day, but I'll
Speaker 1: never get tired of it. Um. I do kind of
Speaker 1: miss the exhaustive touring. I missed six and eight week
Speaker 1: tours in a in a nostalgic way, we put it
Speaker 1: that way. But for instance, Neil Cassal was someone that
Speaker 1: when I met when we started the Hard Working Americans,
Speaker 1: we were instant kindred spirits. Were both studio rats. You
Speaker 1: put us in a control room and we're gonna just
Speaker 1: it's like a two kids in a sandbox. We have
Speaker 1: so much fun. And and we also he had such
Speaker 1: great taste, you know, the people that he had worked with,
Speaker 1: the training he got from people like Jim scott Um
Speaker 1: gave him a real great bullshit detector. So we'd have
Speaker 1: so much fun. And after he left Hard Working American,
Speaker 1: we stayed in touch and we always wanted to work together,
Speaker 1: and we're always throwing our projects back and forth at
Speaker 1: each other. And uh, I would tell him, Neil, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm burned out and I don't know if I have
Speaker 1: anything left to contribute. Uh and he'd go, don't even
Speaker 1: think that way, man, the world needs what you have
Speaker 1: to give. Um. So, when he committed suicide and I
Speaker 1: read his manifesto, uh, he was talking about a lot
Speaker 1: of the same things, and I was just kind of pissed.
Speaker 1: You know, there's those five stages of of death, grief,
Speaker 1: five stages of grief and uh. So I was angry
Speaker 1: with him. You know, it's like, how dare you give
Speaker 1: me these pep talks and keep me going when I'm
Speaker 1: having some self doubt or or just burned out and tired, um,
Speaker 1: And how dare you do that? Uh? And and so
Speaker 1: I think it's it's important to realize that these are
Speaker 1: natural feelings. Uh. It's important for me to realize their
Speaker 1: natural feelings, and that there are people that I can
Speaker 1: talk to about it. I don't have to sit there
Speaker 1: and ruminate and fester because my natural stasis is an
Speaker 1: only child whose friends live too far away to like
Speaker 1: just show up. So it's it's something I'm always learning,
Speaker 1: and it was it was really easy to substitute things
Speaker 1: on the road. Start feeling bad or down, you know,
Speaker 1: there's always the next gig. It's always exciting. Uh, there
Speaker 1: are certainly substances I've been down that road. Um and
Speaker 1: in the end, it's really just me trying to be
Speaker 1: honest with myself. But those words of Neil ring in
Speaker 1: my head. It's like, you can't give up. The world
Speaker 1: needs what you have to offer. And uh, okay, let's
Speaker 1: just stop there for a second. You recently produced, very
Speaker 1: recently just came out a multi album tribute to Neil,
Speaker 1: So can you tell us how that came together? Also
Speaker 1: what the expectations might be. I mean, even if someone
Speaker 1: has no idea who Neil is, it's very hit to
Speaker 1: use word palatable because it's not, you know, positive enough.
Speaker 1: But even tribute albums for the best acts tend to
Speaker 1: be unlistenable. And if it's an act you don't know
Speaker 1: and you don't know the material, usually you know you
Speaker 1: can't find your entry point where. That is not the
Speaker 1: case with this project. So tell me about it. Thank you,
Speaker 1: and and this is all I believe me. You're I've
Speaker 1: read you for a long time, as you well know,
Speaker 1: and and uh, we don't have the bandwidth to listen
Speaker 1: to things we you know, you want me to listen
Speaker 1: to your record, send me the best song on it.
Speaker 1: Um So I understand that a forty one song tribute
Speaker 1: record for a relatively unheard of artist is you know,
Speaker 1: a daunting task. But basically the genesis of the project
Speaker 1: was Neil sadly committed suicide in the fall of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and wasn't too quickly after that that his longtime friend
Speaker 1: and manager Gary Waldman called me up and, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: what can we do? And I know that I had
Speaker 1: had fourteen demos sitting on my desktop for a few
Speaker 1: years of Neil, and I was just after him to
Speaker 1: get in the studio and do them. And Gary's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Neil, he made twelve fourteen records in the
Speaker 1: nineties and none of them ever got the attention they deserved.
Speaker 1: So we began to put together this idea for a
Speaker 1: sort of attribute record, and we thought we'd maybe make
Speaker 1: a double record, two LPs, one c D, maybe eighteen songs.
Speaker 1: Find some people that Neil worked with, some people who
Speaker 1: respected Neil, and we began to cobble together an idea.
Speaker 1: And my contribution to the idea where you say tribute
Speaker 1: records are unlistenable. And I know that you're probably saying
Speaker 1: that because you don't know half the artists on it,
Speaker 1: or it's too long, or for whatever reason. But I
Speaker 1: find tribute records to be unlistenable because they're recorded in
Speaker 1: a very scattershot way. Uh. You know, this artist recorded
Speaker 1: in a fancy studio in New York, and this other
Speaker 1: artist recorded it in his bathroom on his iPhone, and
Speaker 1: it's there's no continuity across the sonic landscape. Um, people
Speaker 1: are gonna needle drop one song by the artists they know.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, what if we get a bunch
Speaker 1: of artists that most people don't know, and what if
Speaker 1: we bring them all to Jim Scott's studio in Santa Clarita,
Speaker 1: And what if we provide them bands made up of
Speaker 1: people that played with Neil Um. So, for instance, I
Speaker 1: called up Marcus King and said, how do you feel
Speaker 1: about doing one of Neil's songs? And here's the plant,
Speaker 1: Come to Jim Scott's and take your pick. We can
Speaker 1: put basically Jackson Brown's band behind you was Neil's band
Speaker 1: on his first record, Fadeaway Diamond Time, So that's Don Heffington,
Speaker 1: Bob glob and Greg Lease. Or you can have Circles
Speaker 1: around the Sun Neil's band, or you could have the
Speaker 1: rhythm section from the Chris Robinson Brotherhood Neil's other band.
Speaker 1: Or you could have the hard Working American's Rhythm Section
Speaker 1: Neil's other other other band. And Marcus like, are you
Speaker 1: saying that I could basically have any of those groups
Speaker 1: or any combination of those guys, and I could pick
Speaker 1: any of these songs I want And I'm like, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what I'm saying, And he was like, bang, I'm in,
Speaker 1: And that's basically what happened. The first artist we had
Speaker 1: in was Billy Strings, and we put him with Circles
Speaker 1: around the Sun and he did an amazing version of
Speaker 1: All the Luck in the World, one of a very
Speaker 1: I mean, boy, what a delivery. Billy is a true
Speaker 1: national treasure. He really is. He's for real. But him
Speaker 1: being the first artist and our little experiment working that
Speaker 1: way was the green flag we needed to to be like,
Speaker 1: we can do this um and we didn't have any
Speaker 1: problem getting people. People actually started blowing us up. Can
Speaker 1: I participate? I love Neil? Can I do this song? Uh?
Speaker 1: And we we find you know, we're like, well, we're
Speaker 1: at five LPs now I think I think this is
Speaker 1: the headstone we need. Um. We probably could have kept
Speaker 1: going if it wasn't for COVID. And it's an amazing
Speaker 1: testament to the artists who are involved that once they
Speaker 1: got over their fear of COVID, they found their sea
Speaker 1: legs and they were able to remotely record and all
Speaker 1: those tracks came back to Jim where he mixed them.
Speaker 1: So we have that sonic continuity. And what we hope
Speaker 1: is that someone will drop the needle on the side
Speaker 1: one here Aaron Lee Tashan and just you know, listen
Speaker 1: to the whole thing. It's a daunting task, but really
Speaker 1: what we're trying to accomplish is to further Neil's musical
Speaker 1: legacy because it was underserved and it is fantastic when
Speaker 1: you hear Shooter Jennings deliver a song like maybe California,
Speaker 1: It's for real. Neil was a songwriting master. Um, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of songwriting masters. Maybe he'll get his due now, um.
Speaker 1: But the main thing is we are We've started the
Speaker 1: Neil Kasal Music Foundation, and this record is sort of
Speaker 1: an audio calling card, and what we want to do
Speaker 1: with that foundation is put musical instruments into the hands
Speaker 1: of children in high schools where Neil grew up in
Speaker 1: New Jersey and New York, and we've been able to
Speaker 1: do that. And then the second thing is to be
Speaker 1: able to support resources for mental health. We did a
Speaker 1: big concert at the Capitol Theater um. It was sort
Speaker 1: of the genesis of a lot of the songs on
Speaker 1: the record, and we were able to give a nice
Speaker 1: sizable donation to Music Cares. UH back Line dot Care
Speaker 1: started in the wake of Neil's suicide and they are
Speaker 1: blowing up and they're one of the people we want
Speaker 1: to work with provide support too. Because in Neil's letter,
Speaker 1: he talks about feeling like he's existing on the outer
Speaker 1: rim of the galaxy, looking in at all this exciting world,
Speaker 1: whether he's traveling the world with Ryan Adams and the Cardinals,
Speaker 1: or you know, having fun in the studio with the
Speaker 1: hard working Americans or Chris Robinson brotherhood. He felt like
Speaker 1: an outsider. It's that impostor syndrome maybe, or some hole
Speaker 1: in him and we've all felt that way. You know,
Speaker 1: a little while ago I was I was telling you
Speaker 1: how I felt that way in my own way. And
Speaker 1: there's a there's a real stigma to reaching out about
Speaker 1: one's mental health, and we want to sort of dissolve that.
Speaker 1: We want to destigmatize that and make it okay to
Speaker 1: talk about the way you feel. It's hard, but that's
Speaker 1: the point of the record, and thank you for asking. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back, and it's really ties in and you're
Speaker 1: talking about being on the road for six or eight weeks. Uh.
Speaker 1: Musicians are notorious for getting hooked on drugs and odin
Speaker 1: into a great degree. It's the pressure. So you go on.
Speaker 1: You're a band who you work with, a band mainly
Speaker 1: wedgebread piano that plays for a long time. So let's
Speaker 1: just say, for the sake of discussion, you play for
Speaker 1: three hours. There's twenty one other hours in the day.
Speaker 1: Some of that you have to travel. So you finished
Speaker 1: the gig, let's say eleven o'clock at night. You can't
Speaker 1: fall asleep at midnight. You're lucky if you can get
Speaker 1: any sleep by three or four in the morning. Then
Speaker 1: the sun comes up. You gotta do sound check. You're
Speaker 1: with the same fucking assholes you've been with for thirty years.
Speaker 1: How do you cope? You know, everybody copes in their
Speaker 1: own way, and partying, for lack of a better term,
Speaker 1: is one of the ways. I mean, And I'm only
Speaker 1: going to speak for myself. Uh. I was an uptight
Speaker 1: asshole and in a lot of ways I still am,
Speaker 1: but without the siblings to beat up on me in
Speaker 1: a love way, I sort of projected what I needed
Speaker 1: onto my bandmates. UM, and I don't know that anyone
Speaker 1: can really shoulder that burden. You know, no one's gonna
Speaker 1: take that on uh in a in a good way.
Speaker 1: And so one of my ways was to just be
Speaker 1: the guy that was not partying all the time. And
Speaker 1: it made me really uptight and it it I'd get resentful,
Speaker 1: um and feel like an outsider. And one of the
Speaker 1: ways to sort of break that wall down would be to,
Speaker 1: you know, smoke some wheat. That's a that's a ritual,
Speaker 1: passing the peace pipe around. Sometimes when things would get
Speaker 1: dicey in the early days of widespread panic, we would
Speaker 1: go to this little Mexican joint in Athens called Gus
Speaker 1: Garcia's and it was mainly an excuse to the Mexican
Speaker 1: food was a delivery system for things they served at
Speaker 1: the bar, and uh, we'd have what we call tequila confessional,
Speaker 1: and uh, we just get drunk and let it. I'll
Speaker 1: hang out and we'd get through it later. Like when
Speaker 1: you described the sort of endless daily rotation of being
Speaker 1: not in a bus, you know, we weren't in a
Speaker 1: bus until after the success of the first two Horde tours. Um,
Speaker 1: it was a van and a truck, and before that
Speaker 1: it was a car and a van, and before that
Speaker 1: it was two cars. So yeah, it's a finish your gig,
Speaker 1: go pack into a motel room with you know, if
Speaker 1: you're lucky, there's two or three people in each room.
Speaker 1: But then of course housekeepings banging on the door at
Speaker 1: eight am, and then you got to get up and
Speaker 1: drive another four hours to get to sound check on time.
Speaker 1: Where you hurry up and wait for four hours, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of time to find other things. And I
Speaker 1: went down that road. I found all kinds of other things.
Speaker 1: It's never much of a cocaine guy, but I sure
Speaker 1: liked anything that would remove me from reality. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: psychedelics were a little too intense, although I certainly had
Speaker 1: my fun with those, But it was opiates that really,
Speaker 1: you know, took me away and and they're insidious, they'll
Speaker 1: get their hooks in you, and they did get their
Speaker 1: hooks in me. Be a little bit more specific which opiates? Well, heroin?
Speaker 1: You know, look a little little bit slower intelligence, relatively
Speaker 1: educated guy. How do you start taking heroin? And did
Speaker 1: you get hooked on heroin? Well? You avoid it like
Speaker 1: the plague, because of you know, it's a rattlesnake. We
Speaker 1: all know what a rattlesnake does if you pick it up. Um,
Speaker 1: so avoid it like the plague. But then you start
Speaker 1: with but with a little yellow once delatted, little yellow
Speaker 1: cough pills, crush them up, stored them, feel good for
Speaker 1: a little while, get some sleep. Uh, And then later,
Speaker 1: you know, you play someplace, I don't know, a port
Speaker 1: town like Charleston, South Carolina, or Baltimore, and someone shows
Speaker 1: up with some little whack packets, some white powder in it.
Speaker 1: Do a little hoover. I remember the first time I
Speaker 1: did it, I'm like, this is great. I don't feel
Speaker 1: like I want to do anymore. I remember thinking that,
Speaker 1: and then I got in my own way later with
Speaker 1: a broken heart and found a connection and went pretty deep.
Speaker 1: I went pretty deep for a couple of years. I
Speaker 1: would never shoot it. I'd always snored it. Sometimes i'd
Speaker 1: smoke it. But it it got really bad, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was it was a point of concern. There
Speaker 1: was an intervention or two and uh, finally, you know,
Speaker 1: being the kind of guy that I am, a loner. Uh,
Speaker 1: my moment of clarity was just like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be a slave to something else. That really piste
Speaker 1: me off when I realized that had happened. So I
Speaker 1: saught help, and I went out to Anaheim, California, and
Speaker 1: and got help, and then of course I left rehab
Speaker 1: against medical advice and went right out onto widespread panic
Speaker 1: tour the summer at two thousand and the first thing
Speaker 1: they did was, Hey, you may or may not remember this,
Speaker 1: but the we have a documentary film crew that's gonna
Speaker 1: be up our asses the whole whole tour. So enjoy
Speaker 1: your sobriety with that going on. And did you stay sober?
Speaker 1: And what do you do now? Yeah? What do you imbibe?
Speaker 1: If anything? Now? If anything? Now, I like a good bourbon.
Speaker 1: I live out here in wine Country. Sometimes a drink
Speaker 1: glass or two of wine and it tastes like the
Speaker 1: way the earth smells on a dewey morning. It's really nice.
Speaker 1: But alcohol was never my problem. Um, Like I said,
Speaker 1: wanting to just be at peace and separate from all
Speaker 1: the fault role and the feelings was my problem. UM.
Speaker 1: I like micro dusting psilocybin. That really really helps. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a very positive guy about that. Um. It's not
Speaker 1: for everybody, but I've found that it helps with the depression,
Speaker 1: and it helps with when life comes at you really hard,
Speaker 1: like it sometimes does. Uh. I feel like I'm prepared
Speaker 1: to deal with it. It's kind of like surfing. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: this isn't going to go away, you know, like the
Speaker 1: fact that my homeowners insurance company just canceled, like they're
Speaker 1: canceling so many people out here non renewing because of
Speaker 1: the fires. Um, you know, me like being piste off
Speaker 1: about it like I usually would isn't gonna help me
Speaker 1: get re insured. Um. So I find the micro dosing
Speaker 1: helps with that. Okay, let's go. Micro Dosing is a
Speaker 1: big thing in the news right now. Michael Chaban's wife
Speaker 1: is really into which we are Uh a lot about it.
Speaker 1: Are you doing this under the auspices of an m
Speaker 1: D or you're talking about someone has mushrooms and you're
Speaker 1: just taking a little bit. Uh, well, it's it's measured
Speaker 1: doses of ground up mushrooms and gail caps. I mean,
Speaker 1: I am out here in a ful dead territory and
Speaker 1: there are psychonauts out here. Um, and you know, I
Speaker 1: don't feel like I'm gambling. I stopped taking LSD and
Speaker 1: I stopped the big trip, saying, way back in the
Speaker 1: early eighties, I felt like the key had stripped that
Speaker 1: lock and I had learned everything I needed to learn. Um.
Speaker 1: So I stopped for a really long time. And of
Speaker 1: course after I got sober, you know, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go there. It was very uptight about it. Um.
Speaker 1: But lately I feel good and I love where I live,
Speaker 1: and I love what I'm doing, and uh, it's very helpful.
Speaker 1: What about ayahuasca? Have you done Ayahuaska? Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: a funny story. Back in the way early nineties, maybe
Speaker 1: even the late eighties, we used to play this place
Speaker 1: called the Bayou Club in Washington, d C. It was
Speaker 1: you could see the watergate hotel right down the canal
Speaker 1: was under one of the elevated highways, and this dude
Speaker 1: showed up with a bag of what looked like great
Speaker 1: nuts and he's like, it's ayahuasca root man, you guys
Speaker 1: should split this up and play your gig tonight. And
Speaker 1: we're like, you know, we're not that crazy. Uh So
Speaker 1: we played the gig and then we went back to
Speaker 1: the room and took a tiny little bit of it,
Speaker 1: and uh we called it the root and one little
Speaker 1: grape nut peace or two got the desired effect. I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, dat motherfucker. He just wanted to like drop
Speaker 1: a match into a pile of leaves and sit back
Speaker 1: and watch what happened when his favorite band got on fire. Um,
Speaker 1: but that bag lasted the whole tour. And then we
Speaker 1: had a Halloween party in Athens, played a gig and
Speaker 1: and everybody at the party did the ayahuasca and it
Speaker 1: was pretty fun. But yeah, I've never done any shamanic
Speaker 1: experiences like that. Okay, you said it said a few
Speaker 1: minutes ago. You're an uptight asshole. Go a little deeper there,
Speaker 1: how dare you? Um, you know, I think it's it's
Speaker 1: just do you want me to go deeper in respective
Speaker 1: how the how the hychedelics have helped me overcome this,
Speaker 1: because people that I work with have said, you've changed
Speaker 1: what happened, and and it really it took the uptight
Speaker 1: asshole away because I guess that I would just I'd
Speaker 1: get triggered and my guard would go up almost instantly
Speaker 1: about anything. It took me a long time and a
Speaker 1: lot of therapy to sort of realized that I was
Speaker 1: the one that painted the target on my back all
Speaker 1: those years that other people weren't just shooting arrows at me.
Speaker 1: I put a target there with my behavior. In fact,
Speaker 1: I want to see a shrink who helped me get
Speaker 1: over a lot of this stuff. And the first appointment
Speaker 1: was three hours, and I took up almost three hours
Speaker 1: unspooling the tape of my life story about how I'd
Speaker 1: been done wrong and was so alone and boo hoo hoo,
Speaker 1: and everybody's against me. And she very calmly listened and
Speaker 1: nodded and took notes, and then at the very end
Speaker 1: I finally ran out of steam and uh, I said,
Speaker 1: I guess that's it, you know, And she just looks
Speaker 1: and she goes and what part did you play in
Speaker 1: all of this. Our time is up, I'll see you
Speaker 1: next week, and off I went, going, Well, she just
Speaker 1: you know, And it took me a long time to
Speaker 1: realize that I was creating all those problems. You know,
Speaker 1: for me, life doesn't have any ill will. The ill
Speaker 1: will is like how I respond to things in life,
Speaker 1: and I've tried to apply that listen to everything I do. Now.
Speaker 1: You know, this band that I'm producing, they're not against me,
Speaker 1: you know, this is like I'm having a hard time
Speaker 1: rising to the challenge that they've presented. Um So I
Speaker 1: try to find a positive way to work through it.
Speaker 1: But that's a big lesson overcoming the uptight asshole and
Speaker 1: realizing that I'm perceived as an uptight asshole and that's
Speaker 1: my reality because of the way I respond in any
Speaker 1: given situation. Tough lesson to learn. How many people in
Speaker 1: the music industry actually get to learn that lesson for real? Okay,
Speaker 1: micro dosing, how often would you dose and what would
Speaker 1: inspire to take a dose? Well, it's it's more like
Speaker 1: a routine. I started with, like, point to Graham, you know,
Speaker 1: barely perceptible and do it like five days, take two
Speaker 1: days off and work my way up to it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's generally like a third of a Graham when I
Speaker 1: do it, and I don't even really feel it, I
Speaker 1: know that I did it. I'm not seeing colors out
Speaker 1: of the corners of my eyes. I'm not hearing voices whispering. Uh,
Speaker 1: the walls aren't breathing. Well, let's just assume there's no
Speaker 1: supply and you don't have it for a month. Are
Speaker 1: you what what kind of internal situation you're going to
Speaker 1: be in. I'm gonna be just fine, you know, because
Speaker 1: I I've learned what I've learned now from it, and
Speaker 1: I don't think it's I don't think it's necessary. I
Speaker 1: think like it's surfing. You know, you go out to
Speaker 1: surf and some days you just don't catch any waves.
Speaker 1: Are you a surfer? No, I'm not, but I love
Speaker 1: the metaphor. I just I just spent six months working
Speaker 1: with a band with are all surfers from vents, So
Speaker 1: you see surfing metaphors. That's you can thank Farmer Dave
Speaker 1: and the Wizards of the West. But no, I'm not
Speaker 1: a surfer. I was a skateboarder. Okay, let's go back.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the first things you ever told
Speaker 1: me when we met backstage, if therapeum was that you
Speaker 1: were adopted and you were meeting blood relatives, what went
Speaker 1: on there and what degree do you think that's affected
Speaker 1: your life? Wow, I mean got another hour. It was.
Speaker 1: It's a big deal because, like I said, so much
Speaker 1: of what formed me was being that lonely kid, no siblings.
Speaker 1: And the first thing that happened around was we were
Speaker 1: playing We've been on tour with Blues Traveler, and we
Speaker 1: finished the tour at the Roseland in New York City
Speaker 1: and we opened up for Blues Traveler and looking at
Speaker 1: the room, the ballroom was filled with people in costumes,
Speaker 1: but there was this older woman and too young to
Speaker 1: be there boy standing in the crowd. They stuck out
Speaker 1: to me like a sore thumb. And I even met
Speaker 1: them on the street afterwards and signed like a you know,
Speaker 1: a poster or something. And finished the tour and I
Speaker 1: got home and there was this big, thick letter amongst
Speaker 1: my stack of mail, handwritten, and I kind of just knew.
Speaker 1: I opened it up and this picture fell out and
Speaker 1: it was that woman, that boy and a young female
Speaker 1: and I just knew. I'm like, this is my birth mother. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so I read the letter and that's exactly what happened,
Speaker 1: and she detailed the way it worked, and I led
Speaker 1: her into my life. She probably broke some laws reaching
Speaker 1: out like that, and I had never wanted to find
Speaker 1: out who they were. I was perfectly happy my adopted parents,
Speaker 1: the schools is Bill and Frand did an amazing job
Speaker 1: raising me. Uh. But now my interest was piqued, and
Speaker 1: so I led her into my life and found out
Speaker 1: I had a half sister and a half brother, and
Speaker 1: that was amazing, and it was just it was thrilling. Uh.
Speaker 1: But the one thing that was incomplete was where's the dad?
Speaker 1: Where's the father? And uh, hamden hard And I was
Speaker 1: finally like, after a year of asking, you know, she'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh I lost touch with him and blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, and uh. Finally I said, look, I can't
Speaker 1: go halfway. If I'm gonna this is a sweeping life
Speaker 1: change for me. You can't just come in and be
Speaker 1: in my life and not helped me find my father.
Speaker 1: So she finally produced an address and I wrote a letter,
Speaker 1: and a couple of weeks later I got a letter
Speaker 1: back and it was from my father, and of course
Speaker 1: you've met him, you've seen him, and uh he's like,
Speaker 1: imagine my surprise upon opening your letter on Father's Day
Speaker 1: of all days. So it came to pass that Widespread
Speaker 1: Panic was playing at the Ritz in l A. Was
Speaker 1: it the Ritz? I think it's the Rits, right y
Speaker 1: Roxy Roxy Roxy played the Roxy And that was my
Speaker 1: time to meet my dad. And he showed up after
Speaker 1: sound check and he had two little kids with him,
Speaker 1: which was another half brother and half sister. But the
Speaker 1: amazing thing about meeting my dad was finding out that
Speaker 1: he'd been in the music business forever and ever and ever,
Speaker 1: ever and ever and ever and uh So. The funny
Speaker 1: thing was my birth mother was basically raised by her uncle,
Speaker 1: Johnny Mercer in Savannah, Georgia, and who worked with my
Speaker 1: girlfriends and we have we have a lot of connections
Speaker 1: to the way the world doesn't draw smarter, smaller and smaller.
Speaker 1: But my dad, you know, he grew up in Savannah, Georgia.
Speaker 1: He was born in England. His first memories of music
Speaker 1: are Spike Jones Orchestra being played during blitzes to like
Speaker 1: help alleviate the fact that bombs are dropping on your city.
Speaker 1: And then came to live with an uncle, and Johnny
Speaker 1: Mercer would pick him up and hold him up so
Speaker 1: he could look through the windows of the Baptist church
Speaker 1: while the choir sang, and he remembers the jukebox split
Speaker 1: into race sides and white sides, you know. And uh,
Speaker 1: he he got my mom pregnant right when he decided
Speaker 1: to moved to Detroit to start to produce records, and
Speaker 1: so all of the himning and hawing between them and
Speaker 1: between my birth mother and myself was simply about not
Speaker 1: selling him out. She wanted me to have a fair
Speaker 1: shot of meeting him, and they were afraid that if
Speaker 1: he said I can't raise a son, I just moved
Speaker 1: to Detroit. I'm sleeping on a sofa. Um that I
Speaker 1: would hold that against him, and I really don't, because
Speaker 1: giving me up for adoption was probably the best thing
Speaker 1: that happened to me at that time. And then later
Speaker 1: as a traveling musician, finding out that it's in your
Speaker 1: blood is a real vindication, you know. And I remember
Speaker 1: that show at the Roxy. I was playing like a
Speaker 1: mad man. I wanted to impress my old man with
Speaker 1: his musical taste, and he gives me. He goes you
Speaker 1: play too many goddamn notes. But don't worry. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna send you something to take care of it.
Speaker 1: And so when I got back to Athens after we
Speaker 1: first met, he had sent me that James Jamison book
Speaker 1: um that had all the great people like McCartney and
Speaker 1: Sting talking about Jamison, and it had a cassette that
Speaker 1: you could plug in and if you move the speaker
Speaker 1: balance all the way to the right, you'd hear Jamison's
Speaker 1: baseline juxtaposed against the famous song. If you move the
Speaker 1: speaker all the way to the left, you know you'd
Speaker 1: hear Stings baseline his interpretation. And that was just that
Speaker 1: was great. You know, my dad's got no filters and
Speaker 1: I love him for that. And he wound up running
Speaker 1: a studio and starting a publishing company. He published that
Speaker 1: song the rose Um, and he loved playing music. I've
Speaker 1: stumbled in on him playing a song one time when
Speaker 1: I was visiting, and it was a song called Honky
Speaker 1: read by this artist named Urray McLoughlin that he had
Speaker 1: worked with publishing wise, and I said, what is that song?
Speaker 1: And he told me what it was, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: is it okay? If widespread panic records it and he's like,
Speaker 1: please do and so we recorded it and put it
Speaker 1: on our record called Street Dogs. Um. He's an invaluable
Speaker 1: resource and he's seen it all because he mixed live
Speaker 1: sound for Scott Richardson case opening for Led Zeppelin and
Speaker 1: The Grateful Dead, and you know, had a horn band
Speaker 1: called Rastus that was like competitive with Blood, Sweat and
Speaker 1: Tears and Chicago and the horn band Realm. And then
Speaker 1: he came out to l A in the early seventies
Speaker 1: and work with Zevon. Um, you know, mixed for Bobby Womack,
Speaker 1: all kinds of cool stuff. And what a beautiful gift,
Speaker 1: What a resource. Okay, I have to ask you this
Speaker 1: late date, Hey, when did you find out? How old
Speaker 1: were you when you found out you were adopted? And
Speaker 1: what did you think of that? And now with this
Speaker 1: long extended family, your people who raised you, the birth parents, etcetera,
Speaker 1: how does it all fit together? Um? I guess I
Speaker 1: was probably when I talked to my adopted mom. I'll
Speaker 1: call her friends schools, uh I. I I feel like
Speaker 1: I was probably three or four when I was told
Speaker 1: I was adopted. And she kind of refutes this, but
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how great, her memory might be about it. Um,
Speaker 1: But I remember a book. You know, I was a
Speaker 1: really really early reader. Um, And like I said, books
Speaker 1: and records were my best friends growing up. But it
Speaker 1: was a book that was written for a very young
Speaker 1: child to explain adoption. And then I was loved and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and so I took it in stride.
Speaker 1: You know, in my memory I never harbored any fantasies that,
Speaker 1: oh you know, there was a princess somewhere that had
Speaker 1: to give me up and it was all wrong and
Speaker 1: if I could just find her, my life would be better.
Speaker 1: My life was fine. Um. I got everything I needed.
Speaker 1: I was provided for. I was allowed to experiment. I
Speaker 1: was given music lessons, bas lessons, piano lessons. I went
Speaker 1: to a private school from kindergarten until I went to
Speaker 1: college at the University of Georgia. I was provided for.
Speaker 1: I would never cared or really wanted to meet my
Speaker 1: real parents. But like I said, once my mom got
Speaker 1: in touch with me, then the the can of worms
Speaker 1: was open and I just had to go whole hog.
Speaker 1: And so suddenly I have four half siblings at the
Speaker 1: age of and I got this extended family when I
Speaker 1: got married to my wife, were like, how are we
Speaker 1: going to do this wedding thing? You know, it's I
Speaker 1: got adopted parents who are divorced and they can't sit together.
Speaker 1: And I got, you know, the Savannah side of my
Speaker 1: birth family and the Los Angeles side of my biological family,
Speaker 1: and and we wound up just having a private little affair.
Speaker 1: But when you ask what it's like, it's both wonderful
Speaker 1: and terrifying because so many things that I had always wanted, siblings,
Speaker 1: a family, a larger family um I suddenly had. But
Speaker 1: suddenly having something like that is it's intense, you know.
Speaker 1: It's I'd get calls for cousins I had never met. Hey,
Speaker 1: we want to come see you play it Red Rocks,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, okay, I really want to come see you.
Speaker 1: Work at Morgan Stanley, you know, but I'm working. I
Speaker 1: I don't have no time to meet you, and and
Speaker 1: I don't have the bandwidth. And that was difficult. And
Speaker 1: I've talked to a lot of people who have had
Speaker 1: so many varying experiences when they find their birth parents
Speaker 1: from like literally the I found my birth mother and
Speaker 1: she's still married to my birth father. And I have
Speaker 1: two full siblings. The reason they gave me up was
Speaker 1: because they were in high school. I know a story
Speaker 1: like that pretty well? Is it that a do you have?
Speaker 1: What is that your story? No, it is not my story.
Speaker 1: But friends, and now everybody gets along and the people
Speaker 1: are accomplished. You know, at this point, you know, it's
Speaker 1: all inherently strange because it all happened when this person
Speaker 1: was an adult, that she ultimately found her birth mother.
Speaker 1: But that it's just you resident. Obviously everyone's got a
Speaker 1: different story. Yeah, you know, I mean, but it was
Speaker 1: it was a long balancing act, you know. And I've
Speaker 1: gotten it down to where I'm comfortable. My my biological
Speaker 1: mother sadly passed away. Um, but I'm very close with
Speaker 1: her husband, who famously said the night that she confessed
Speaker 1: that there was a child that he did not know about,
Speaker 1: and he said he got any more and more secrets
Speaker 1: you want to share with me? Uh? And and you know,
Speaker 1: my my my biological father, like I said, we're just
Speaker 1: we're kind of very the same. I believe that. You know,
Speaker 1: he was living in Van Nuys at that time, and
Speaker 1: I went back to his house after that show at
Speaker 1: the roxy I was talking about and I hadn't met
Speaker 1: his wife, and we were in his sort of man
Speaker 1: cave stereo room and just laughing our asses off about something,
Speaker 1: and she had come in and the first thing she
Speaker 1: said was I couldn't tell whose laugh was Who's um.
Speaker 1: We have a very different speaking voice. He's got a
Speaker 1: real wonderful baritone voice. He should he should do narration
Speaker 1: and loop work or something. But uh, yeah, we're both cynical,
Speaker 1: We're both crusty. Uh. I hope that I can be
Speaker 1: as crusty and cynical and full of love and joy
Speaker 1: as he is when i'm his age. And you know,
Speaker 1: he he I met you with Chip Hooper. But I
Speaker 1: do believe that it was my father that said you
Speaker 1: gotta read this email blast. This was like, you know,
Speaker 1: Windows era, When did you start the letter? I started
Speaker 1: in eighty six. He didn't become an email bliss blast
Speaker 1: till the year two thousand. But okay, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: so this has been a long time and and he's
Speaker 1: been around. I think you've probably met him a time
Speaker 1: or two backstage. But incredible, I mean, just it. Like
Speaker 1: I said, it's a balancing act. We all know, especially
Speaker 1: since we're into the thick of the holiday spirit as
Speaker 1: it were right now out how difficult that can be.
Speaker 1: And you know, just like sort of the things we
Speaker 1: were talking about with widespread panic and with the Beatles,
Speaker 1: this sort of sibling thing and the dynamic that exists
Speaker 1: across decades. Um, we're in the thick of it, and
Speaker 1: so all that stuff gets multiplied when I let my
Speaker 1: biological mother and father and their children and their extend
Speaker 1: their extended families. You know, my father had the same experience,
Speaker 1: my mother had the same experience. They were both sort
Speaker 1: of raised by different people. You know, my father's father
Speaker 1: was pushed out of the family during World War Two.
Speaker 1: He wasn't good enough for the daughter, so he was
Speaker 1: sent to like France or Germany to fight. And so
Speaker 1: my dad was raised by his mother in a foreign country.
Speaker 1: And there are British relatives and Irish relatives that are
Speaker 1: close enough to be someone you might want to see
Speaker 1: during the holidays, but it's just sometimes it's all too much.
Speaker 1: I love meeting him. But like I said, my stasis
Speaker 1: is solitude. That's kind of you know, when I go
Speaker 1: back to the egg to recharge, I'm by myself, and
Speaker 1: you know, my wife puts up with it. She's wonderful
Speaker 1: in that respect. She gets it. You know, if I
Speaker 1: come home from tours, she knows I need a few
Speaker 1: days to sort of put myself back together. And uh,
Speaker 1: that's when I'm really happy that there's a seven and
Speaker 1: a half hour documentary that I can watch. Okay, So
Speaker 1: when and how did you meet your wife? Did you
Speaker 1: partake of the goodies on the road before meeting her?
Speaker 1: What keeps you together? And how about the issue of children? Well,
Speaker 1: I met my wife in l A. My half sister, Robin,
Speaker 1: the daughter of my birth father, was dating my wife's
Speaker 1: little brother, and she said, you gotta meet Andrea. And
Speaker 1: so she brought her to a show at the Wiltern
Speaker 1: and we went to Musso and Frank and had lunch
Speaker 1: the next day and I was just I remember sitting
Speaker 1: down beside her. She was the first one there, and
Speaker 1: she's like, you might want to sit on the other
Speaker 1: side because I'm left handed. We might bump elbows. And
Speaker 1: I said, ah, I like it right here. If if
Speaker 1: if your elbow gets in the way, I'll rip your
Speaker 1: arm off and beat you with it. And she laughed.
Speaker 1: And so we forged a relationship that's based on comedy.
Speaker 1: And humor. Uh, like we'd run our favorite Mr Show routines,
Speaker 1: if you remember Mr Show with Love and David just
Speaker 1: groundbreaking and wonderful, wonderful work. And uh we'd laugh and
Speaker 1: laugh and laugh, and we courted in a very strange
Speaker 1: way because I met her. Like I said, it was
Speaker 1: set up. My little sister set it up. And I
Speaker 1: was keeping a blog. Do you remember my Space? I
Speaker 1: had been under the behest of one of the office
Speaker 1: people at Widespread Panic headquarters, like you're a pretty good writer.
Speaker 1: Why don't you keep a blog during this on our
Speaker 1: tour and we'll put it up on our MySpace account.
Speaker 1: And uh so I did, And that's what I was doing.
Speaker 1: And I wrote about the experiences we had in l
Speaker 1: A and and I said and head lunched with my
Speaker 1: sister's adorable friend. And we had moved on up the
Speaker 1: West coast, you know, on tour, and I kept calling
Speaker 1: my sister, going did Andrea say anything? What she say
Speaker 1: about me? What she say about me? And I was
Speaker 1: getting crickets and I was like, oh, this is not good.
Speaker 1: I thought I was I thought I thought we hit
Speaker 1: it off, you know. And and finally I get an
Speaker 1: email from the office guy at Brown Cat Widespread Panic headquarters.
Speaker 1: He's like, I wouldn't normally share these types of things
Speaker 1: with you, but I think you might be interested in
Speaker 1: this one. And I opened it up and it was
Speaker 1: from Andrea and the first line was, oh, so you
Speaker 1: think I'm adorable A So we began correspondence. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're talking courtship here, wooing. And so it was emails
Speaker 1: back and forth, and by time the band got down
Speaker 1: to Down from the Hook, down through the Rockies down
Speaker 1: to Texas, we were having phone calls. And then I
Speaker 1: got home to Georgia and the phone calls were longer
Speaker 1: and longer across time zones. And then I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we got these, uh three nights for doing
Speaker 1: a radio city music hall, wink wink, why don't you
Speaker 1: come out and uh come see some Panic shows. And
Speaker 1: it was also Jimmy Herring's first shows with Widespread Panic,
Speaker 1: and uh, we had rehearsed our asses off, so we
Speaker 1: weren't rehearsing all day before the shows. I had days.
Speaker 1: So she came out and she'd never really been to
Speaker 1: New York before, and we just we had a great time.
Speaker 1: We stayed, we walked, to the shows, get the van back,
Speaker 1: eat some dinner, hang out, have a great time. And
Speaker 1: we never really did anything New York is and uh,
Speaker 1: it was time to take her back to the airport
Speaker 1: and I had a day off. So it's like we
Speaker 1: didn't do a carriage where I we didn't do anything romantic.
Speaker 1: We didn't go to Barney's or the Russian Tea Room
Speaker 1: or you know anything like that. I'm like, I got
Speaker 1: it getting a yellow New York taxicab and I tell
Speaker 1: the guy man, you gotta burn to LaGuardia because she
Speaker 1: is late. She's gonna miss her flight. So the guy
Speaker 1: put on the classic New York City cab ride, you know,
Speaker 1: hawking at pedestrians, gunning his engine. It was thrilling, it
Speaker 1: was great, and and I was it was the end
Speaker 1: of the long cell for me because that was it.
Speaker 1: And you talk about kids, and neither of us really
Speaker 1: wanted them. You know. It's like, I'm a child of divorce,
Speaker 1: she's a strange from her parents. We just want to
Speaker 1: have fun together and so that's what we do. Um.
Speaker 1: And I am not evading your question about the fruit
Speaker 1: of the road as it were. Um, you know, I
Speaker 1: might be an uptight asshole who's working on it. But
Speaker 1: I'm also a silly old romantic and I so I'm
Speaker 1: you know, my wife says, you and your dad and
Speaker 1: your your your dad's kids, you all love love. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know that we're in love with
Speaker 1: the concept of love. I think that we're just we're romantics.
Speaker 1: We like that feeling better than the other feeling of lust.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I refute the feeling of lust, and
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I have not acted upon the feeling
Speaker 1: of lust, but I you know, I want a partner.
Speaker 1: I want someone that I can run through silly comedy
Speaker 1: sketches with. I want someone that's gonna like have joke
Speaker 1: wedding vows to a certain degree. Um. So, yes, that
Speaker 1: low hanging fruit was available, and it was weird to me,
Speaker 1: and uh, And I think things worked out the way
Speaker 1: they did. I had great relationships that evolved and it
Speaker 1: was time to move on. And I would certainly have
Speaker 1: had fucked up great relationships and not fucked up relationships.
Speaker 1: But we've been married for thirteen years now and we've
Speaker 1: been through a lot, and it's worth it, you know,
Speaker 1: it's worth working through it. Um, and it's I can't
Speaker 1: say that it's easy. You were married once, weren't you?
Speaker 1: Of course I was. We can tell my story off,
Speaker 1: not that I wouldn't, but it will take up a
Speaker 1: lot of time. Why do you live in northern California?
Speaker 1: I fell in love with classic rock, you know. I
Speaker 1: I did not get to be in San Francisco when
Speaker 1: it was cooking in the late sixties. But I loved
Speaker 1: all those bands. I saw The Grateful Dead a lot
Speaker 1: when I was in high school and college early eighties. Um.
Speaker 1: I was blown away with what they were doing, and
Speaker 1: I was blown away with the spirit. But as close
Speaker 1: as I got to that was you know, when I
Speaker 1: could go see a Woodstock at the Midnight Movie, which
Speaker 1: is way too long of a movie for a midnight movie,
Speaker 1: by the way. You know it was on it was
Speaker 1: on cable, and I got the Triple Record, and these
Speaker 1: were the artists doing what they did on film. You know,
Speaker 1: MTV was different. I liked some of the music. I
Speaker 1: love the new wave, I love punk. I got it, um.
Speaker 1: But you know when I decided what I wanted to
Speaker 1: do was when I saw Jimmy Page working in his pajamas.
Speaker 1: It's like that guy goes to work in black silk pajamas,
Speaker 1: and that is a cool job. And then when I
Speaker 1: saw John entwhistle, like, that's the pace player that I
Speaker 1: want to I like that guy's style. So when panic first,
Speaker 1: I actually ball backtrack. I came to see a Grateful
Speaker 1: Dead concert New Year's Eve in Oakland. I went with
Speaker 1: a girlfriend of mine who had met the people that
Speaker 1: the grandson of or the son of the folks that
Speaker 1: live in seventeen Ashbury, the Grateful Dead House. We got
Speaker 1: to stay there because of that connection. She had gone
Speaker 1: done to some or class at Berkeley, met this guy
Speaker 1: c J. And they graciously allowed us to stay at
Speaker 1: the house. UM. And I fell in love with San Francisco.
Speaker 1: And this was the San Francisco of Hate Street was
Speaker 1: still oh man Um. And then when widespread Panics started
Speaker 1: playing out here, you know, we didn't just start at
Speaker 1: the war field. We uh we played I think it
Speaker 1: was called the full Moon Saloon or the Moon Saloon
Speaker 1: or something like that. It was on Hate Street, UM
Speaker 1: and other little places, and it just I always wanted
Speaker 1: to be here. And then for a brief time in
Speaker 1: like seven, I dated a girl and we lived in
Speaker 1: the Sunset part of San Francisco. And then when I
Speaker 1: met Audrey, she was going to school in San Luis Obispo,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm ready to move, you know,
Speaker 1: are you willing to to come up to the Bay area?
Speaker 1: So we just started looking for properties. We found a
Speaker 1: real estate agent. We're looking in North Marin and and
Speaker 1: we kept drifting up towards Sonoma. Uh Sebastopol is the
Speaker 1: town where I live. And one day the real estate
Speaker 1: agent goes, why are you so interested in this area
Speaker 1: West Sonoma County? It's got a real yeehaw factor, don't
Speaker 1: you think? And I said, what do you mean by
Speaker 1: yeehaw factor? And he said, oh, well, I just mean
Speaker 1: you know, you see pickup trucks on cinder blocks and
Speaker 1: people's yards and satellite dishes and stuff. And I'm like, motherfucker.
Speaker 1: Alend in Georgia for twenty five years. I feel right
Speaker 1: at home here. And so, you know, she's sort of
Speaker 1: a city mouse. She grew up in Woodland Hills and
Speaker 1: then you know, went to Santa Cruz and then wound
Speaker 1: up finishing and slow and working there. Um, so it
Speaker 1: took her a little getting used to because it's way
Speaker 1: colder and rainier up here, but uh, man, we love it.
Speaker 1: I love it up here. I feel right at home.
Speaker 1: I've I've got a great life, and uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: not San Francisco kind of glad I don't live in there.
Speaker 1: I feel like I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, a
Speaker 1: medium sized city on the East coast. I lived in Athens,
Speaker 1: Georgia for twenty five years. That's a big college town
Speaker 1: on the east coast. And now I live between a
Speaker 1: town of seven thousand and a town of two hundred,
Speaker 1: and if I ever moved from here, it's probably not
Speaker 1: going to even have a post office where I wind up. Okay,
Speaker 1: you mentioned Athens. For those of us who grew up
Speaker 1: in the Northeast, are real first exposure to Athens was R. E. M.
Speaker 1: And we hear about the whole scene, etcetera. You know, certainly,
Speaker 1: growing up in Northeast, like myself, you really don't know
Speaker 1: that much about the South, although I did, uh live
Speaker 1: with a woman romantically from Tallahassee, which is really more
Speaker 1: Georgia than Florida. But what was going on in Athens?
Speaker 1: Explain it to me, man, Athens is uh the best description,
Speaker 1: and I can't say that I coined this, but I
Speaker 1: don't know who did Mayberry on acid. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: I went to college there. I love the B fifty twos.
Speaker 1: That was the first Athens band that I heard. And um,
Speaker 1: but I went to college there because A I could
Speaker 1: get early acceptance so I could be like done with
Speaker 1: that whole college thing. And remember I went to a
Speaker 1: prep school called Collegiate that was a thirteen year prep
Speaker 1: school in Richmond. So by Thanksgiving of my senior year,
Speaker 1: I had been accepted at the University of Georgia. I
Speaker 1: knew that they had a music scene, but I think
Speaker 1: what was more important to me at the time was
Speaker 1: Playboy magazine had named them the top party college in
Speaker 1: the country, and I had gone down there. My best
Speaker 1: friend's dad was like an alumni rep, so he dragged
Speaker 1: us down there to see herschel Walker play football and
Speaker 1: uh a visitation weekend. And there's a place called Legion
Speaker 1: Field where on campus they'd have the big outdoor concerts
Speaker 1: and I saw the psychedelic furs and I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is really cool. And um. So there I was
Speaker 1: Fall of eighty three, moving into a dorm and things
Speaker 1: were cooking. Uh. The guy across the hall was listening
Speaker 1: to w U O G the college station, and the
Speaker 1: band Love Tractor was on there talking about their new record,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, that is some alien sounding cool music.
Speaker 1: Of course, chronic Town had just dropped the famous R E.
Speaker 1: M EP bands were cooking. There weren't that many liquor
Speaker 1: licenses downtown. There was a couple of places to play,
Speaker 1: place called Tyrone's you couldn't get to unless you had
Speaker 1: a car, and then there was the infamous forty Wi
Speaker 1: Club and r M was cooking. In fact, Athens is
Speaker 1: so hip that r M hadn't even put out their
Speaker 1: second record yet, and the hipsters and Athens were writing
Speaker 1: them off. Is too popular to be cool. That's how
Speaker 1: cool Athens was. And it was a miasma of styles.
Speaker 1: There was the thrist door hipsters, people that like literally
Speaker 1: sowed their own clothing. There's the weirdo punk rockers, the
Speaker 1: straight edge guys, and uh, what a great place, What
Speaker 1: a great place. Everybody was in a band. Everybody was
Speaker 1: in three bands, and it was time to have a job.
Speaker 1: You got a job at a place like the euro
Speaker 1: rap Um doing schwarma or the taco stand rolling burritos.
Speaker 1: And your boss knew that you were an artist or
Speaker 1: you were in a band, and so yeah, take two weeks,
Speaker 1: go off and lose your ass playing playing your music.
Speaker 1: That your job will be waiting when you come back,
Speaker 1: you know. And I was lucky enough to stumble into
Speaker 1: working the door at a place called the Uptown Lounge
Speaker 1: um where I saw Black Flag, I saw Camper van Beethoven,
Speaker 1: I saw you know, any number of bands that would
Speaker 1: go on to become stalwarts of the alternative, the Lollapaloosa scene,
Speaker 1: Chili Pepper's Meat Puppets, you name it, and man that
Speaker 1: talk about something where you don't realize you're in the
Speaker 1: midst of something that's cooking, but then you do and
Speaker 1: then it explodes. That's kind of what happened. And so
Speaker 1: Athens to me was this strange, little Mayberian acid kind
Speaker 1: of town. And and it always will be. It always is,
Speaker 1: no matter how homogenized they try to make it. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's an independent coffee shop that exists right next door
Speaker 1: to a Starbucks. You know, there's enough support because you've
Speaker 1: got the kids from the college that will go to Starbucks,
Speaker 1: and then you've got the townies and the the weirdo
Speaker 1: kids from the college that will go to Espresso Royal
Speaker 1: or whatever it's called um and I really I miss it,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that we go back there to have
Speaker 1: business meetings, and we go back there to rehearse and
Speaker 1: so forth. It's it's a very resetting kind of town.
Speaker 1: A lot people don't ever leave, and it's it's very
Speaker 1: easy to see why. Here's a little interesting story about
Speaker 1: Athens in the two thousand and four election. You know,
Speaker 1: George Bush was going for his second term and uh
Speaker 1: and he won. We all know that. We all know
Speaker 1: what happens the Athens Banner Herald that morning. You know
Speaker 1: that Georgia has its counties. It's a lot of counties.
Speaker 1: And on the Athens Banner Herald that morning it said
Speaker 1: Democrats sweep Clark County. And there's a picture of the
Speaker 1: state of Georgia and it is read entirely all these
Speaker 1: a hundred and some counties and this one little blue
Speaker 1: dot Athens Clark County. Democrats sweep Clark County. That to
Speaker 1: me sums up the attitude in Athens, Georgia. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: jump to today. You work on a lot of records,
Speaker 1: but needless just say, in the thirty odd years you've
Speaker 1: been in this game, the landscape is complete. He changed.
Speaker 1: You know. It used to be there were very few
Speaker 1: bands cost money to make records was distribution was a
Speaker 1: big bottleneck. You wanted to have widespread acceptance. What's it
Speaker 1: like making a record today? Why even make a record?
Speaker 1: You know? That is a question that I asked a
Speaker 1: young band that I'm working with. And I agree with
Speaker 1: a lot of what you write, A lot of it
Speaker 1: um and sometimes I disagree, but this one I really
Speaker 1: agree on. Um. You make an LP, it's a vanity project,
Speaker 1: you know, or it's just because of what you do.
Speaker 1: Widespread Panic has always made LPs. That's just what we do,
Speaker 1: and we've done it independently. There have been budgets from labels.
Speaker 1: We were one of the first bands to go with
Speaker 1: Sanctuary Records in the late nineties, and so we had
Speaker 1: a fifty fifty deal because we made all of our
Speaker 1: money selling tickets and so sure, we'll pay for fifty
Speaker 1: of the recording budget and we'll up what we get
Speaker 1: on the end, and that's rate. But for a young
Speaker 1: band in this landscape where all they're gonna make money
Speaker 1: off of is selling tickets and merchandise. Do you really
Speaker 1: have in your coffers enough money to record ten or
Speaker 1: twelve songs? And then if you're gonna make money off
Speaker 1: of you're not selling c d s. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: get paid. Unless you really go viral on TikTok or
Speaker 1: a stream, You're not gonna get paid that way. So
Speaker 1: how are you gonna afford to press and make vinyl?
Speaker 1: Because that is one way that if you can afford
Speaker 1: to do it, you can sell it at your shows.
Speaker 1: You can make some money on it. Why do you
Speaker 1: want to do that? So I asked them, why wouldn't
Speaker 1: wouldn't you rather just like take your two best songs
Speaker 1: you're most confident in and record them really really well,
Speaker 1: make them, use these tools of the studio, and and
Speaker 1: let's just leverage what you got into an amazing recording.
Speaker 1: You know, press a seven inch you can sell that
Speaker 1: people will love. They'll they'll buy LPs and seven inches
Speaker 1: even if they don't have a turntable, because you can
Speaker 1: sign it and they can put it on their mantle.
Speaker 1: Other people who listen to it. That's great. But and
Speaker 1: I encounter it and a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: the younger bands get it. They get that it's gone
Speaker 1: back to it's gone back to the kind of world
Speaker 1: that we grew up in. You know. I'd go to
Speaker 1: UH Standard drug store and they had a wall of
Speaker 1: the top forty singles there, and my dad would give
Speaker 1: me a buck and I'd buy whichever one I wanted.
Speaker 1: Deep Purple createds Clear Order Revival, and then we got
Speaker 1: into the LP world and it was a good world
Speaker 1: for a little while. But we had gatekeepers. Um, we
Speaker 1: had radio stations, some local, then the radio stations went national.
Speaker 1: Heard the same twenty eight songs every freaking day until
Speaker 1: you were tired of it, and then you heard it
Speaker 1: some more. But I don't understand why a young band
Speaker 1: would want to record any thing more than a song
Speaker 1: or two in this day and age right now, unless
Speaker 1: you're so incredibly confident and have such amazing material that
Speaker 1: it's going to go deep. But is it going to
Speaker 1: go deep, Bob, No, it's not. But going a little
Speaker 1: deeper on this topic, how good a studio do you
Speaker 1: have and how much does it cost someone to make
Speaker 1: a record to come into work with you? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm in a really great place. Um, we're at
Speaker 1: a studio right here. I'm talking to you from my
Speaker 1: studio and my engineer Jason. It's we call it space Camp.
Speaker 1: It used to belong to Kataro, the New Age artist.
Speaker 1: He built it by hand and we took over after
Speaker 1: he left. Um. We got a thirty six channel student
Speaker 1: console in here. All kinds of great sense and instruments
Speaker 1: and engineer that knows how to work them and record them. UM.
Speaker 1: So you know, we work with people we want to
Speaker 1: work with. Here. If you want me to produce your
Speaker 1: record and you have a studio and mind, I'll come
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about what it costs. I really when
Speaker 1: I say I'm in a great position, it means that
Speaker 1: I can pick and shoes. This isn't what I want
Speaker 1: to do for a living. It's what I love. I
Speaker 1: love the studio. I love working with artists. It's my
Speaker 1: happy place. Making the Neil Kassal record with Jim Scott,
Speaker 1: the eighteen songs we were able to do down and
Speaker 1: stay on Korita at Pliers, his home studio. Some of
Speaker 1: the happiest times in my life. I'm working with all
Speaker 1: kinds of different artists. I'm meeting and working with heroes.
Speaker 1: You know. I mean to sit around and talk base
Speaker 1: with Bobby glob Come on to get to play base
Speaker 1: with Don Heffington. God rest his soul, give me a break,
Speaker 1: you know. To bring someone like Tim Hiecker and have
Speaker 1: Jim Scott, you know, recording and have a handpicked band
Speaker 1: supporting Tim is wonderful. It's the best thing in the world.
Speaker 1: I don't need to get paid. Doesn't mean I'm not,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't mean I'm gonna work for free.
Speaker 1: But I don't get I don't want to get paid.
Speaker 1: We can work something out on the back end, if
Speaker 1: there ever is a back end, and I don't think
Speaker 1: there's ever going to be a back ever again, really,
Speaker 1: you know. But Jason and I we're here and we
Speaker 1: work on stuff that we love. How far is it
Speaker 1: from your house? Three miles? Oh far? Three miles? And
Speaker 1: where did Qataro go? Why did he sell it? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: he had a divorce and he went back to Japan,
Speaker 1: to his homeland, and then he got snagged there by
Speaker 1: COVID when they're sort of they had pretty severe protocol.
Speaker 1: He kind of got trapped there, couldn't leave. Um. But
Speaker 1: here we are at space camp, and I'm talking to
Speaker 1: you from space camp and you can see this old
Speaker 1: art synthesizer right behind me. And yeah, I actually worked
Speaker 1: on that my college. Yeah, um, we we have we
Speaker 1: love old off. Jason is a circuit bender, built pedals,
Speaker 1: worked able to enlive with Steve Kimok and also TechEd
Speaker 1: his guitars and his amps. So you know, here we
Speaker 1: are making music. I'm ready to make another record for
Speaker 1: my own twisted devices and uh, you know, no commercial potential,
Speaker 1: no hope at all. Just have some fun and make
Speaker 1: some music for me. It's been like twenty years since
Speaker 1: I did that. And uh, maybe it's a soundtrack to
Speaker 1: a movie that hadn't been made yet. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't really care. I'm about being happy, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk finances. You're in a band with multiple members.
Speaker 1: You know, whatever publishing is is, there's not that much
Speaker 1: and it's split, etcetera. How are you doing financially? Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm really good. You know. Widespread Panic has been a
Speaker 1: band that can sell tickets for thirty years. Um, there's
Speaker 1: been eras where we're in the top ten concert grossing
Speaker 1: attractions in Billboard. Now we're to a point where we
Speaker 1: play maybe thirty five shows a year, and we go
Speaker 1: and we do three three night runs, four night runs
Speaker 1: and cities we love, and we get to play our
Speaker 1: catalog and we play our music, and our fans come
Speaker 1: in and they have a great time, and everybody's happy.
Speaker 1: Everybody's happier than they've been in a long time because
Speaker 1: we worked our asses off, Bob. You know, we we
Speaker 1: There were years where we did two d fifty shows
Speaker 1: and then there was a long stretch where we did
Speaker 1: eighty a hundred shows. And that was the best part
Speaker 1: of our career was being in you know, three tour buses,
Speaker 1: three semi trucks, having a modular system where we'd go
Speaker 1: play a shed somewhere that we could easily downsize to
Speaker 1: play an arena or downsize to play a theater. And
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, I love these theaters. We placed
Speaker 1: places like the Beacon, the Orpheum, the Riverside, and we'll
Speaker 1: walk key. We just got done with a run at
Speaker 1: the Chicago Theater. It's it's fantastic um, you know. I
Speaker 1: remember we played two nights at Madison Square Garden for
Speaker 1: Halloween in the year maybe two thousand and four or five,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. But to walk out on that stage
Speaker 1: and literally be on the X where Jimmy Page was
Speaker 1: standing approximately when I saw that movie when I was
Speaker 1: twelve years old on its first run in the theater,
Speaker 1: where I had my revelation about tech guy works in
Speaker 1: his pajamas. I want that job. That was one of
Speaker 1: those moments, you know. I think in the end, our
Speaker 1: lives are are just sort of a string of those moments,
Speaker 1: don't you think, And that was a big one for me. Um.
Speaker 1: But those big arenas, when you can pull them in
Speaker 1: and make them small and unite the audience and get
Speaker 1: into that zone, that is super special. That's what for
Speaker 1: lack of a better label, jam bands f you know,
Speaker 1: they can take a room that large and shrink it
Speaker 1: into a nightclub and they might have an amazing light
Speaker 1: show and the best sound system ever. Uh but that's
Speaker 1: what we do, and that's amazing. And after thirty five
Speaker 1: years to be able to go to a beautiful place
Speaker 1: like the Chicago Theater or to a place like the
Speaker 1: Riverside in Milwaukee where they just treat you so good
Speaker 1: and it sounds so good and the people are right
Speaker 1: up there in your face. Some of those faces I've
Speaker 1: been seeing for over twenty five years. Um, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: What a gift. And I think we just we did
Speaker 1: it on the boards because we just toured and toured
Speaker 1: and toured. You know, you asked me what I talked
Speaker 1: about with young bands in the studio. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of experience that I like to share with them about
Speaker 1: how do you important it is? You know, I'm fond
Speaker 1: of saying, this is a business of relationships and you're
Speaker 1: gonna encounter the same people decade after decade. They might
Speaker 1: all have different jobs than they did when you met him,
Speaker 1: but we've all got each other's back in this whacked
Speaker 1: out business if we maintain those relationships. And so for
Speaker 1: a young band to go out and you know you're
Speaker 1: gonna play those places where you're like, who the funk
Speaker 1: booked us in this pizza joint? There's one guy there
Speaker 1: that you changed his life that night. You make a
Speaker 1: friend out of that guy, you know, give him a
Speaker 1: give him a CD or a single, or get him
Speaker 1: on your mailing list somehow. And you do that long
Speaker 1: enough and the next thing you know, you've got a following.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, what is it? Arlo Guthrie says,
Speaker 1: is you get three and you've got yourself a conspiracy
Speaker 1: right right? To what degree did Phil Walden and Capricorn help?
Speaker 1: And we're any big Phil Walden lessons or stories. Well,
Speaker 1: the one thing we always wondered was how come we
Speaker 1: never saw Phil Waldon and Names Brown in the same room,
Speaker 1: because they had the same kind of charisma to us.
Speaker 1: But Phil was a great mentor. I mean his son,
Speaker 1: Phil Walldon Jr. Was our first manager. He saw us
Speaker 1: playing a frat party that he was a member of
Speaker 1: the frat. It was Phi Delta Theta. I think at
Speaker 1: you g A and uh, He's like, you know, my
Speaker 1: daddy's in the music business, and uh, maybe he'd like
Speaker 1: to hear you guys, And you know he was. He
Speaker 1: was reassembling Capricorn at the time. And Phil Jr. Managed us,
Speaker 1: And I remember we played a place called Elston Square,
Speaker 1: was a rock club in Nashville, and we invited Phil
Speaker 1: Waldon to come see us play, and no one was
Speaker 1: there except for Phil Walden and a couple of the
Speaker 1: guys from R. E. M there in Nashville trying to
Speaker 1: make their third record, and some of the guys from
Speaker 1: Jason and the Scorchers, And we played our set as
Speaker 1: best we could. And we sat down with Phil and
Speaker 1: we and uh, hey, you know, what did you think?
Speaker 1: And he just looked at he said it's a big country, boys,
Speaker 1: which was like, oh, but he was right. You know.
Speaker 1: What he was telling us was get out there and work,
Speaker 1: and it is a big country. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: opportunity to learn how to be a band seeing this
Speaker 1: big country and gathering fans. And then when we made
Speaker 1: Space Wrangler and it went Indie Gold, it was on
Speaker 1: Landslide Records, and it sold a surprising number of copies
Speaker 1: and cemented us as a viable touring force. That's when
Speaker 1: they came after us. Um, Phil signed us and put
Speaker 1: us with Johnny Sandlin and just let us do our thing.
Speaker 1: He let us do our thing. There were great lessons,
Speaker 1: but most of them really didn't apply to us. One
Speaker 1: of the best ones was what did he say? Wait,
Speaker 1: we're asking about the labels involvement in the Carter campaign,
Speaker 1: and his comment was, we put a peanut farmer in
Speaker 1: the White House Rick company out of business. Okay. What's
Speaker 1: the status of the jam bam world today? It is
Speaker 1: continually evolving. Um. You know, I I've always said that
Speaker 1: I hate labels, I think they're more convenient for for
Speaker 1: people who have a product to sell if they can
Speaker 1: put a label on a cubby hole in a shelf
Speaker 1: and put your product on it. Um. So, jam band
Speaker 1: was never one that I thought applied. It's it's the
Speaker 1: state of the jam band world. Is there are the
Speaker 1: the original jam bands are? They're gone now for the
Speaker 1: most part. The Almond Brothers gone dead and company still
Speaker 1: kind of doing it, in fact doing it really well
Speaker 1: in some respects bringing in the young people and getting
Speaker 1: him onto it. But there's a whole scene. There's the
Speaker 1: jam grass scene. I don't know if Billy Strings is
Speaker 1: part of that or not, but bands like String Cheese
Speaker 1: would certainly qualifies. They started out of the jam grass.
Speaker 1: There's the sort of live tronica jam bands you wrote
Speaker 1: about Sound Tribes Sector nine. They were actually on Landslide
Speaker 1: Records too. They were a former Athens band. They're doing
Speaker 1: amazing things. There's a new band called Goose that I'm
Speaker 1: hearing a lot about that. Uh, you know, they can play,
Speaker 1: they're writing songs. Um to me. You know, it's why
Speaker 1: is it led Zeppelin a jam band? Didn't they do
Speaker 1: improvisational jams? Well? Well, let's do the jam band. Let's
Speaker 1: forget the term. Let's just say there are certain number
Speaker 1: of bands that a R bands because most everybody else
Speaker 1: is a solo act and they're doing in their bedroom,
Speaker 1: B or c depending uh is. Guitar is not the
Speaker 1: dominant sound in the dominant recording world. So what do
Speaker 1: we know? If you look at the the road revenues,
Speaker 1: the biggest numbers are pulled by the classic rock acts.
Speaker 1: Some of them only have a few years left before
Speaker 1: they're going to be too old to play. Okay. Then
Speaker 1: we have the Spotify world, the Top forty radio world,
Speaker 1: which is hip hop and pop, and it very rarely
Speaker 1: intersects with guitar based band music. Ed Sharon kind of
Speaker 1: bridges that gap, but almost no one else does. So
Speaker 1: as we march forward, what's the evolution? What do we know?
Speaker 1: In hip hop? It's really about who your friends are.
Speaker 1: Beyond your record, you'll be on mine. And we have
Speaker 1: now seen, unfortunately with Astro World and a lot of
Speaker 1: other things, that they can actually sell tickets, although a
Speaker 1: lot of people cannot. Of the big Top forty song.
Speaker 1: So Adele comes in at this point. It's a force
Speaker 1: of nature. But before it became this force of nature.
Speaker 1: She's doing something completely different and being more successful than
Speaker 1: anybody else. It's not that different if you plug her
Speaker 1: back into the seventies. For today, it's very different. So
Speaker 1: on some level, there's a band world, a guitar world
Speaker 1: that is very healthy, live, but it doesn't dominate in
Speaker 1: any other way. What's going to happen? Is it plays
Speaker 1: out in the future. You know, that's a really good question. Um.
Speaker 1: I try not to concern myself with it. And maybe
Speaker 1: it's just because my own band and my experience in
Speaker 1: widespread panic. Uh, you know, I don't I think we're
Speaker 1: We're never going to dominate charts. I just don't think
Speaker 1: it works that way. And I'm not sure what the
Speaker 1: value of There's so many charts, what do they even mean? Um?
Speaker 1: I think it's about but but let's talk mind share.
Speaker 1: Mind share, that's what I was going to get to
Speaker 1: the people. I think it's the people and the music
Speaker 1: they want to hear. Um, why are the Beatles still popular? Sure,
Speaker 1: there's a segment of younger people that are like, oh god,
Speaker 1: that's what my grandfather listened to. Can't stand it. But
Speaker 1: there are other younger people. I was talking to a
Speaker 1: twelve year old young lady the other day that's like,
Speaker 1: I like the Beatles, but she also likes the fruit Bats.
Speaker 1: And I think that there is always going to be
Speaker 1: a segment of society that listens to music for the
Speaker 1: joy it gives them. Um, And no matter what it is,
Speaker 1: for some people that's guitar based songwriting music, the predominant
Speaker 1: thing is obviously hip hop. Adele is amazing. But what
Speaker 1: was it you said the other day, the demographic that
Speaker 1: buys an adele vinyl? You know, Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: where it's headed. It is so fractioned out now, um,
Speaker 1: and so heavily curated. Uh. I feel like I missed
Speaker 1: the days of the gatekeepers, and we're sort of into
Speaker 1: this world of tyranny of choice. So it's hard to
Speaker 1: find something to listen to without a mentor. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know how important that guy at Gary's Records and
Speaker 1: Tapes in Richmond, Virginia was to me when he said,
Speaker 1: are you sure you want to buy that status quo record?
Speaker 1: Because why don't you try on this Ramon's record And
Speaker 1: if you don't like it, you can bring it back
Speaker 1: and I'll give you back your money. That guy was
Speaker 1: super important to me. I don't know if I ever
Speaker 1: would have discovered the Ramones at that early of an age. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a cultural phenomenon of of hip hop. Uh. Adele
Speaker 1: is absolutely amazing, amazing voice, amazing career. Taylor Swift, you know,
Speaker 1: it's music. I like all kinds of stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, I'm personally seeking, I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to find any way I can. It's hard these days.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to sort through. UM, and I don't
Speaker 1: even really trust the curated playlists. But you know, here's
Speaker 1: the funny thing. In the Beatles documentary, we see them
Speaker 1: passing around that Fender based six guitar, and I'm watching
Speaker 1: Sean Lennon play and like, oh, that's that's great. I
Speaker 1: always kind of want in one of those. And we've
Speaker 1: been graciously working with Fender, who's donated instruments to the
Speaker 1: Neil Kasal Music Foundation. And I write the guys and
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, you guys making those Base six is anymore?
Speaker 1: You know? And and the response the first thing they
Speaker 1: said was after that documentary, we damn well ought to
Speaker 1: be you know, people are like, but Squire still makes them.
Speaker 1: The custom shop will make them and the guys like
Speaker 1: I would surely hope that would put it into production.
Speaker 1: Apparently this documentary is having any effect on people. Um
Speaker 1: and you know, you're very five redd time and time again,
Speaker 1: and I agree. You know, the Beatles came to America
Speaker 1: and everybody suddenly bought an electric guitar, and it began.
Speaker 1: This thing that we grew up in began. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, like I said, it was so
Speaker 1: important to me watching Sir Paul strumming that Hofner and
Speaker 1: the seeds of get Back are coming out, like that's
Speaker 1: that's a guitar. You know that base six is a guitar.
Speaker 1: You can tune it, play like a baritone guitar, or
Speaker 1: you can pick up an acoustic guitar. That's where people
Speaker 1: start piano acoustic guitar. I don't know what the future holds,
Speaker 1: but and I don't know there will ever be something
Speaker 1: as important as of Rolling Stones or Beatles or Bob Dylan.
Speaker 1: I think there will be lots of those, and they'll
Speaker 1: be different kinds of those. They will appeal to certain
Speaker 1: strata that like a certain type of music. You know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Bob, I just I know that there's
Speaker 1: always music that I find that makes me happy. Um,
Speaker 1: and who knows what's going to explode. Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: back to something you said earlier, which is a string
Speaker 1: of peak experiences. There's this woman, Deborah Tannon. I think
Speaker 1: she's still at the University of Maryland. She's an academic,
Speaker 1: so she's not a pop psychologist, and she wrote a
Speaker 1: legendary book forty years ago called you Don't You just
Speaker 1: don't understand differences in conversation between men and women. And
Speaker 1: there are a lot of definitive examples that will lay
Speaker 1: this out, but one thing she said is always stuck
Speaker 1: with me with women, It's about all these experiences, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Where men want a constant upward movement, they want to
Speaker 1: get to a destination. What do we know really? Since
Speaker 1: the explosion of social media, Spotify, et Center in the
Speaker 1: last ten years, the top has been blown apart. The
Speaker 1: top used to be very narrow. So I'm sure you
Speaker 1: had goals. Wow, I'm I play this venue. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: on late night TV. I got reviewed in this paper.
Speaker 1: I'm getting closer to the mental target. Then they the
Speaker 1: target doesn't exist anymore. That's right, So you know, how
Speaker 1: does this affect. You kind of cooks back into an
Speaker 1: earlier question in terms of what you're doing to what
Speaker 1: degree can you go along? So I'm just doing what
Speaker 1: I'm doing, having fun or what degree in the back
Speaker 1: of your mind, do you have a goal, want to
Speaker 1: have a goal, and want to feel that you're progressing
Speaker 1: to something. Well, you know, that's a question that's really
Speaker 1: difficult to answer, and the only way that I can
Speaker 1: think to answer it, honestly is to frame it in
Speaker 1: age and how. And I absolutely agree with with miss
Speaker 1: tannin Uh. There was a goal and it was sort
Speaker 1: of elusive, but it was it came in steps. You know.
Speaker 1: For me, my first goal was I sure would be
Speaker 1: happy if I could pay my share of the long
Speaker 1: distance phone bill. Hey kids, remember the long distance bill?
Speaker 1: And then it was I should be happy I could
Speaker 1: not have to have these roommates and have my own place. Wow,
Speaker 1: I sure would like to buy a car. I sure
Speaker 1: would like to buy a new car. Every it was
Speaker 1: more like life type goals. The band was so entrenched
Speaker 1: in doing what we did that, you know, we didn't
Speaker 1: really get a rest until after Mike Hawser died in
Speaker 1: the year two thousand and two. We had already, uh
Speaker 1: you know, we'd achieved so many goals, but we didn't
Speaker 1: ever stopped to look back. And we celebrated our twenty
Speaker 1: five anniversary. Uh she's ten years ago or whatever it was.
Speaker 1: And that was really the first chance that I sort
Speaker 1: of had to cast back. Um, and I'm being honest
Speaker 1: here doing interviews for the you know, it's like that
Speaker 1: was the angle. So you guys twenty five years old
Speaker 1: now and I'll be like, gosh, that's bone jarring. That's
Speaker 1: that says Hunter Thompson would call that's a meat hook
Speaker 1: reality right there. And uh so then I allowed myself
Speaker 1: the chance to look back. Um. You know, John Bell,
Speaker 1: our our singer, would often say, I'm too busy working
Speaker 1: on the Pheasant and the future of widespread panic to
Speaker 1: concern myself with the past. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: that's apropos for me, but to place that the My
Speaker 1: goals changed as I age and and literally that desperation
Speaker 1: to chase something some elusive uh you know, watermark watershed
Speaker 1: moment of Wow, we sold out Madison Square Garden, you know,
Speaker 1: or we just played you know, our sixtie sold out
Speaker 1: show at Red Rocks. You know, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of it's weird. You know, who who has a
Speaker 1: career like this, who gets to still go out and play.
Speaker 1: I'm about to turn fifty seven years old. Um, who
Speaker 1: gets to go out and do something different every night?
Speaker 1: I do. I'm in widespread panic, and it's amazing to me. Uh.
Speaker 1: We've worked long and hard, so yeah, with the top
Speaker 1: being blown off, as you say, and my goal really
Speaker 1: is just to keep gathering experiences and learning. UM. I
Speaker 1: love talking about it, you know, I love it helps
Speaker 1: me put it in perspective when you ask me a
Speaker 1: good question. I'm sitting here thinking, Wow, do I need
Speaker 1: a goal? Maybe I should think about it. What can
Speaker 1: I do? Like I said, I'd love to win a Grammy.
Speaker 1: It would make my mom happy, you know. It's I
Speaker 1: remember going to see a World Series game at Bill
Speaker 1: Barry's house, the drummer for R. E. M. And in
Speaker 1: his man cave, and uh, he had a little half
Speaker 1: bath and I went in there to use the restroom
Speaker 1: and lining the floorboard of the entire bathroom around the
Speaker 1: toilet where all those little MTV Spaceman statuettes. And then
Speaker 1: he had three Grammy sitting on the reservoir or the toilet,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure what that meant, if there is
Speaker 1: anything other or maybe it's like I've got so many
Speaker 1: of these darn things, this is the only place to
Speaker 1: store them. But you know, I'd be happy. My mom
Speaker 1: would be happy. She could brag to her Bridge friends
Speaker 1: about her son, and that makes me happy. I like
Speaker 1: making other people happy. I think if I can help
Speaker 1: people put their music into the world and it provides
Speaker 1: even just a modicum of the joy that music has
Speaker 1: given me in my life, then I'm doing something good.
Speaker 1: You know. I don't mean to sound as if I'm
Speaker 1: giving this stuff away, you know, or but it really,
Speaker 1: at my age, with everything I've done, it feels better
Speaker 1: than anything. And on that note, I could literally talk
Speaker 1: to you all day because you're a thinker and you
Speaker 1: stimulate me, and that's what I'm looking for in conversation.
Speaker 1: Will have to do this again sometime. There's so many
Speaker 1: other things we didn't even touch on, but Dave, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for appearing here today. Until next time. This
Speaker 1: is Bob left Sex