DB- How long did you spend at Berkelee?

MF- Two semesters.

DB- In that sense you are yet another in that fine tradition of performers who left the school to become working musicians. What led to that decision?

MF- I was antsy. The band was gung-ho, we were writing tunes. We’d had a taste of gigging. We wanted to pursue touring, making an album and writing more tunes. Brad and Andrew ended up staying one more semester than I did. When I was there I was happy to be bombarded by the multitude of students and teachers, the infinite range of music that’s out there as well as the different personalities and takes on music. Music is about communication and synching up with the right players and also about having the most open and free mind possible to put it in the right atmosphere where it can exist and be true. At Berklee I felt that I was lost in a sea of anxious bass players. I felt I had been there two semesters and I had a bunch to work on. So basically I just took it to my bedroom and started shedding like crazy while still keeping as many contacts as possible with the Berklee crowd. I wouldn’t quite say that I owe everything to Berklee but if I did it again I definitely would not skip that step.

DB- What did you work on during that period?

MF- I was listening to a lot of Jaco but I was also getting my foot in the door with some straight ahead stuff. Basically I knew the concept of bebop, and I realized that I would have to take a bite of that cake if I wanted to accept the trueness of being a jazz player, just to have that under my fingers which I felt was necessary. I admired some of the people who changed jazz in the 60’s like Wayne Shorter, Coltrane, Ornette Coleman. I knew that in order to understand someone like Coltrane I had to go to blues and bebop and even Dixieland which is where they were coming from. So in studying music I was chronological. I had a deep interest in Dixieland and early swing stuff and I’m still working on it. Obviously I knew and I still know it was going to take a lot of struggle and time so I’ve just kept at it. I also realize that I’m not playing a trumpet or a tenor sax, I’m playing an instrument that’s new to the jazz world. The electric bass is the youngest instrument in our scene. It had a tremendous impact on pop music. It made pop music cut through the radio waves a little more.

DB- You mentioned that you met Andrew and Brad in high school. That is when you joined the Slip but none of you are original members of the group, right?

MF- Ahh, you know the secret. The Slip started as an institution at the high school before we even attended. It was primarily a cover band. The personnel changed as people graduated. There was one guy named John Myers who was in the original band and he stayed the longest, for about 4 years, which is a long time in high school years. It was a cover band until 93 when Brad and Andrew joined. It was a large band with maybe six people doing classic rock: Steppenwolf, CCR, just the faves. Andrew and Brad have been playing together they whole lives and they’ve always had original music. I can remember watching on the sideline, thinking they were great when it was Brad, Andrew, John and a friend of theirs from Providence, Adam Mutterpurl. Meanwhile I was playing with Brad, Andrew and John in the jazz band or just jamming. They started writing originals and that’s what changed the Slip. Somewhere along the way they invited me to join.

DB- One thing I enjoy about the band is the way you shake things up from night to night. How conscious is that effort?

MF- What’s so entertaining for me and obviously Brad and Andrew is there is no fear of monotony in the live setting. Our concepts run so parallel. Right now we’re talking about the freedom, improvisational freedom that we all love. The three of us all love playing in the pocket and playing arrangements. We have a lot of fun bending arrangements as well, where you have the arrangement set and you know you can add freedom wherever you want. Then we just look for a cue from any of the three of us and we’re back to another segment of the tune. Sonically there’s just an endless realm for us to work with. When we get to touring night after night it gets really fun. It’s all about making frequencies together. The oscillation of sound. The tones that Andrew creates with his tom toms or I create with an interval on my bass. Brad over the top. Sometimes it happens to fall into a rhythm which is good for the audience but my favorite part is when we’re creating totally free.

DB- In terms of cues do you typically use musical cues or visual ones?

MF- I find that a look is almost always enough because everybody knows what’s up next. If you’ve been playing with cats for a long time you don’t need a specific hand signal or anything. Maybe if it gets really complicated. But we definitely communicate as much as we can with eye contact. Once in a while a raised eyebrow is enough. Sometimes I’ll take Brad’s ear while I’m in the middle of a tune and try to explain something that I want to happen that’s improvisational, like “Hey, let’s hit these chords.” Or if Andrew’s in the middle of a drum solo I’ll tell Brad, “When I make this sign let’s just do something crazy in the higher registers of our instruments,” and then Andrew can just react to it at the moment. Basically I do that to surprise Andrew. People like Ornette or Sun Ra were always trying these crazy, spontaneous things.

DB- Let’s move from the stage to the studio. Describe the challenges you faced in creating Does.

AMF- Basically I see the studio as a huge thing in a musician’s life. It’s a monumental task. Someone like John Scofield or Aretha Franklin or Duke Ellington they just went into a big cold room and captured an amazing sound and feeling which is quite a task and it’s very difficult. So that’s what we did, we went into the studio and we tried our hardest. A lot of people were talking live disc but that’s off the mark for me. That’s not where I’m heading personally or where the band should head. We need to get to that point where we can nail it in the studio because anybody I’ve ever respected in the musical world has done it. I would feel like I was cheating myself if I didn’t, if I could only do it in a live setting. It’s a weighty task on my shoulders, on everybody’s shoulders and it didn’t help that we waited three years because we had a hundred tunes in our repertoire. Gecko came out in 97 and we’d been shy with the studio because we’d been touring and recording live shows. We kind of got lost. When we finally went in there we recorded 150 minutes of music on older analog gear. We went way overboard. We went in with maybe ten tunes we wanted to lay down and we came out with twenty-two.

DB- I would imagine it was a challenge selecting songs, especially because your compositions are so diverse.

MF- Well we have some songs that are closer to pop and some that are closer to jazz but I would say that a lot of our peers are doing the same thing with a bunch of instrumentals and some vocal tunes. We try to convey our deep appreciation and love of both idioms, and communicate that to our listeners who appreciate our more straight-ahead jazz playing which is found on this album along with more recent groove type of groove playing which is prevalent on the scene today. There’s a popish tune, and there’s some sounds that were out there- a soundscape which opens the album. I think it’s a pretty good balance and reflection of what it is we do, one take on the Slip.

DB- Does is the first release on Flying Frog. How does that experience differ from running your own label?

MF- As you can see we’re very slow with our decision-making process because we want to keep it going, keep the integrity of the band. We don’t want to change anything because we’re petty content with what’s going on. So we took a long time to decide whether to do this or not. But after meeting with Butch the whole thing just seemed so perfect. It’s out of our hand right now which is good because we weren’t the best record label for us, for all the reasons I just said. We’re so immersed in the music that weren’t ever really a record label.

DB- What are your impressions of Flying Frog at this point?

MF- It’s been very cool so far. Obviously the relationship is in the early stages. The album just came out so we’re getting used to the realness of it all. It’s obviously not a big label thinking we’re something that we’re not. Butch really understands what we’re doing and where we’re coming from which is very cool for a record label president. When you have the president right with you, not to mention him being someone who had inspired us all, it’s very cool. We feel we’re very lucky to be in this situation.

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