D- Speaking of the new album, Kofi Burbidge appears. How did that come about?

H- We’re from Atlanta and we were playing at this place, Smith’s Olde Bar, and Oteil [Burbridge, Kofi’s brother] came up and heard the show. He came backstage during our setbreak and was chilling with us. Amazingly enough, and this is just how things happen with us, we had asked a friend of ours who plays bass to sit in with us that night so we had an extra bass rig and an extra bass there. We asked him, “Would you please sit in with us?” He said, “Okay, but I don’t have my bass,” Well we had all that taken care of it as it turned out.

So we formed this relationship with him. He was an elder to us in a way. It was really inspiring the way he took to us because he didn’t act the way that someone of his stature could act. He was such an open guy and he was such inspiration. Over time he’d come to shows. Once he even sat in with us on drums in Alabama.

Somehow in all of that we met Kofi and we became big fans of his as well. He played several shows with us and we just begged him to play on the album. We’re always begging him whenever we go south, “Can you come play with us?” He’s nothing but a gem in the music world.

D- You guys are very open to adding instrumentation. What are some of your favorite experiences or those you think have been the most successful?

H- Oteil and Kofi of course. We played with Reverend Mosier [banjo] and we didn’t know how it was going to work. He was a friend and we’d opened up for Blueground Undergrass a couple of times so we just asked him to come out to see what happens. We thought it would be interesting, something different. And he just turned it inside out and made it something beautiful. We also toured with this guy DJ Genetic for a while. He’s a good friend of ours and a whiz. We’ve had some different experiences with him. He throws in different beats or samples and he also has a Theremin that he plays so that’s been really fun.

D- You’ve added vocalists as well, right?

H- We’ve always been very open to different people who come on stage. We’ve had women singers, MCs…We’re open to anything really.

D- Moving back to Offered Schematics Suggesting Peace, how did your songwriting differ on this disc from your first?

H-Back then someone would have something they’d been working on for a long time and they’d bring it to the band. One of the songs on the disc I’d been playing since I was 15 years old. I’d been working on it for a long time and brought it to those guys and they made it into what it is today [“H.B. Walk To School”]. Back then but also now we do a lot of improvising where we hit upon conversations that really work out. That’s how “Tap-In” started. That’s the first time we ever played it, the one in the album. Dave went in there and started playing this bass line and we all grooved over it and it became one of our songs. We’re really open to that kind of stuff. However the music wants to present itself to us we’re open to find it. For the latest album we went into the studio with nothing at all and practiced together, wrote it in the studio basically.

Over the last few months we’ve also stepped up. We have a drum machine and music sequencers that we can program and this has given us little studios to ourselves. I can come up with the drums, keys and bass to a track and present that to the band and Zach our drummer can write the guitar part to a song. It’s been amazing because exploring other instruments and sounds has really helped me out with my own instrument- new textures, sounds and melodies. That’s what’s so beautiful about this band, everyone’s open to that. We don’t have any set standards, we’re open to every way that we can further ourselves and the music. We’re constantly writing music. At this point we probably have more than twenty-five new songs- twelve we just recently learned and we probably have fifteen more that we are going to try to incorporate on the road.

D- You recently sold out two nights at the Fillmore. I’m curious what that represents to you.

H- Faith that we’re doing the right thing and we are where we should be. We always had a commitment to each other but we never had set goals. We just wanted to play together and see what happens. No, not even see what happens, we just wanted to play. We got some really lucky breaks and here we are. We coined a term, “It’s not for everybody but it could be” because we don’t do any one thing per se.

D- At that show and at many others you’ve had numerous artists at work during your performance, including a short-story writer typing away on stage. How did that come about?

H- It was funny. When we’d drop down and the music was really light I could hear the typewriter over the cymbals and drums. We want to have a space where others can share their art while we share ours. We feel like we’ve been given a forum and we want to open that up and share it with people, give back a little bit of what we’ve taken from art. We’ve been in contact with tons of people who do what we do in another form and we feel like they should have that opportunity.

D- Have you looked at the stories from that evening?

H- I read a couple of them that night and they were just amazing. They’re on my table at home right now. We’re going to try to share them with people though.

D- Let’s move on to another intriguing aspect of the Sound Tribe Sector 9 cosmology, the Mayan calendar. How were you introduced to it?

H- We were studying the cultures of the world and were intrigued by what the Mayans really took to heart. That’s where our name came from originally. It all began as something we were interested in with all of these free-form conversations among our friends and it evolved into this fun collective journey about natural timing, the frequencies of earth and how they affect you every day. We were interested in that and people who had more information came forward. A good buddy of ours, Raven, an elder who lived in North Carolina was a big influence and explained the moon calendar. There’s a natural way to record time and the way that humans have decided to do it is false. It’s not even, it doesn’t work out. That’s why we have leap years.

Once you pay attention to that you also recognize that there’s a tone that goes with every day. It corresponds with the frequency of the moon, the light of the moon that shines every day. That tone then relates to a note. If the frequency is say, 432, then that’s true A. So then that day is an A. If we play a show that night we’ll start off in the key of A or maybe we’ll play the whole first set in A or maybe we’ll end in A just to give respect.

D- You guys consistently do that?

H- It’s a natural thing. There’s a tone that corresponds to every day and it goes up the scale and it keeps on cycling. It brings one into harmony with one’s environment. It’s about bringing ourselves into that harmony. So through us what someone will feel is natural and it feels good. We’re not trying to push it on someone to harmonize, they just do because they do. That’s what they feel whether they know the song is an in A or that today is A. It’s a beautiful thing and a huge inspiration. That’s what we’re trying to offer- these things that you can internalize whatever way you want to. You can like Sector 9 and not know anything about this or you can dig deeper and see its natural roots and get into it that way.

It’s become a natural thing to us now. Tapping into it was a whole experience and then growing from being tapped is a whole other experience. Now it’s been encoded in us, we’re using it, we’re not so much studying it anymore. We’ve tried to internalize all of this philosophy and now we’re trying to live it. Of course, we’re still experimenting, we’re still open to the whole thing, we’re still learning ourselves. I don’t know anyone who can’t say that.

Pages:« Previous Page