BM: How else is the band different from Blues Traveler?

JP: Well, this is an experiment with totalitarian rule. Blues Traveler is a democracy. Now granted, I have some pull in the democracy. For instance, in the back of the bus, if I want to get the whole back lounge to myself, in Blues Traveler, I have to fake an injury. With Cycomotogoat, all I have to say is Elvis wants the back lounge and kick them right out.

It’s the same thing musically. All decisions are made by me, which is good and bad. The hardest part with being the source of it all is starting your idea. Everybody’s looking at you going, ‘What do we do?’ The momentum has to come completely from you. I slammed right into that.

It felt like we would never get it rolling. I think it was halfway through the album, I started to realize, ‘It’s working.’ Where I’m good is that I picked the right people, because once they started getting into it in their own way, there was no stopping us.

It’s my favorite thing I’ve done. I always love my most recent album the best. But it was just really rewarding to watch everyone take the idea and run with it. That’s the fun part. The advantage to being an autocrat is that decisions get made very quickly. There’s an efficiency to it. That’s why I’d always planned for the solo project to be a side project to Blues Traveler, because Blues Traveler is an experiment on a higher level. We really have a thing of Congress. If you want to get something done, you have to argue it to death. Things are looked at from all sides. It functions very much like a democracy. I can’t demand that people do something. But when you get to play autocrat, at the very least, it lets me blow off steam by ordering a bunch of people around. We’re talking about a small group of people anyway. It’s not like I have any governmental powers.

Artistically, I think both systems have merit. Being an absolute dictator can help. Prince, for instance, or the Artist Formerly Known As, I think he lives that way and it shows in his playing. You can see his genius at work really. Whether or not I am a genius, it’s not for me to say, but at least I get to pretend. I can have my ‘vision.’

With Blues Traveler, doing the solo thing has made me really appreciate what great partners I’ve picked, because the momentum was never that hard. There’s always somebody who knew exactly what to do. When you didn’t know what to do, you could rest. It was like a great marriage.

BM: You guys playing so long together has a lot to do with it.

JP: Yeah. Oh, we sucked big time way back when. I’ve got the tapes. We were in high school, so I guess people weren’t expecting much. But I can remember when Chan didn’t know how to tune his guitar.

BM: When did you know that Blues Traveler had evolved and arrived?

JP: We felt we arrived as soon as we were paying our rent. We were going to school, because our parents would give us money if we went to school. We were living off Bob’s mom. She lived in Brooklyn Heights. Actually, we fled our crackhouse apartment and winded up moving in with her in Brooklyn Heights. But as soon as we could afford to pay rent, we quit school and told our parents that this is what we want to do. They thought we were insane, but in our mind, we had so much fun. So much of our daily culture revolved around playing music that we were quite certain that we could last forever, and eventually the record deal and touring would come, because we figured out how to survive and play music. Once you do that, it’s a waiting game.

BM: But you brought so much to being in a band. I remember going to see you guys at Nightingales and Mondo Perso and the Cane and writing about you at The East Coast Rocker, right around the time A&M was about to sign you.

JP: I remember that East Coast Rocker article.

BM: You guys had this incredible network and organization that other unsigned bands didn’t have then. They do now, but they didn’t then. Then the HORDE seemed to put that kind of networking and organization over the top.

JP: The HORDE was just a way for us to play outdoors in the summer.

BM: Rather than having to play clubs separately.

JP: Yeah. We had a bunch of friend bands in the same predicament. We all sort of came up with the idea, but we just kept going with it. But the coolest part of the HORDE is that it was strictly accident. It went so far beyond what we planned it to be. Again, it’s like you have an idea and other people start to run with it. That’s when you see something really impressive happening. I marvel when one person’s idea gets grabbed by other people who, in turn, inspire other people who inspire other people. And you watch this chain and before it completely distorts it something you can’t recognize, it really goes a long way. That’s where I feel kind of lucky. That’s what I like about the work I do. That’s the fun part of my job.

BM: Are you surprised by the number of jam bands involved with the scene?

JP: What happened with HORDE … it started as an experiment to get us to play out in sheds. Then it became a source of income. Ultimately, it ate itself. You know, old jam bands and young jam bands.

I think festival tours are dead anyway, because radio shows are cheaper. They buy people with airtime, and they have one in every market. That’s the way it should be. I don’t think the festival tour is a good idea. But what happened in the interim, we didn’t plan. We were happy when it happened, but it really required everyone to be very cool with each other. With the workshop stage, there was the respect that musicians paid each other, and the open sharing that was going on of ideas was just due to the fact that there were a lot of cool people on the road. They helped shape what HORDE became. It was miraculous, the kind of music that went on.

Taj Mahal and Dave Matthews playing under a giant, 60-foot carved whale that some artist did for free. My part of that was trying to figure out how to make the whale travel on a flatbed truck. I never thought in my life that I’d be having to worry about giant, fake whale. But people were just dying to express themselves in all kinds of ways. I feel lucky that we got to play a part in it, but I’m also mystified and in awe of what people are capable of.

BM: Have you seen the jambands.com website?

JP: No, what’s its address?

BM: www.jambands.com (Popper seems to write it down). But when the HORDE started, there was just this handful of jam bands.

JP: There were six of us (also Spin Doctors, Widespread Panic, Col. Bruce Hampton & the Aquarium Rescue Unit, Phish and Bela Fleck & the Flecktones). Bela Fleck & the Flecktones were the sixth band. We didn’t really think of them. We didn’t know them. They were the only artificial flame in our little network of friends.

BM: But there was just this handful of bands. Now, I could write about two jam bands a week playing in the New York area and not run out of bands to write about all year.

JP: We were in the right place at the right time. I hope we’ve inspired people to try some stuff, but you can’t ever assume that you have. You gotta really look at it like you didn’t invent the wheel. If you think about the jam bands before, I don’t think anybody’s come along to top some of those guys. For me, it starts and ends with Jimi Hendrix. That guy’s omega.

I think jam music comes in and out of style. It’s like blues. It’s an aspect of American culture, and there’s times when it catches the popular, contemporary imagination and times when it just goes back to being something people like to do.

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