AK- Moving a little bit past the name, when I saw you this last time, I was wondering if you picked up a new kind of effects pedal? Have you always had the same equipment?
BB- I’ve been adding little things here and there; I’m imagining the pedal you are talking about is probably the “Ring Modulator.” Electro Harmonics makes it and I can get all kinds of weird sounds on it, almost like a DJ. I’ve added a few different things over the years, that pedal being one of them, along with an electric sitar. Marc is getting some crazy sounds lately too. Things you just don’t expect to get with a bass. Our philosophy, as often as possible, is to just get these natural weird sounds. That pedal kind of being the exception to the rule. But to do it as naturally as possible, get the weirdest sound you can.
AK- So, do you use any loops or anything like that, I don’t recall you using any at Winston’s…
BB- No. I never have. I have a nice looping device called a Jam Man which is a really actually a cool, nice tool. I write on it a lot, just go home and lay down one thing start to come up with ideas. But I never take it on stage. We sort of, I wouldn’t say we’re anti-loop, we just haven’t found a way to integrate it in an original way. It’s easy to get carried away with that stuff. I’m afraid if I even start taking that thing on tour it’s just gonna. . .
AK- Take over?
BB- Yeah, I’ll just become addicted to it. I’m also not really opposed to it, but you see a lot of people doing it these days, and we always look at ourselves in relation to all the other bands our here. And maybe just the principal of keeping it mostly organic is in some ways keeping us apart.
AK- It keeps you really grounded in the jazz roots.
BB- There you go. I’ve always believed that a strong melody or a chord progression, or just some way in which three musicians are locking up together is always much more enjoyable and much more satisfying than if there are all kinds of effects and loops going on. I mean if we can get it with just the three of us, just our natural sound than I’d much rather do it that way.
AK- I’m curious, I’m sure you’ve been asked this a million times, I mean sometimes when I’m listening to you as a guitar player, I hear some John Scofield, George Benson…
BB- Uh-huh.
AK- And I’m wondering who else has been a major influence in your life, musically?
BB- It’s huge, the spectrum. Well I love Bill Frisell and in a lot of ways he’s everything about the guitar that I love. It’s simple, it’s organic, it’s American, it takes from all these elements, from jazz, from really weird avant-garde noises to just simpler straightforward three chord rock songs. Oh man, and I love his sound. So it’s kind of a struggle in a way because you hear someone you love and initially you want to emulate that but you gotta step back from it. Hmm, but other guitar players..Lenny Breau, He’s someone that most people haven’t heard of that much but he’s tremendously inspiring. And lets see. . . lately I’ve been loving Wilco, they are really a great band and Tom Waits, and Stan Getz, and Fela….I’m trying to think of other stuff we’ve been digging on lately. I love the old blues ya know, Blind Willie Johnson, Muddy Waters.
AK- Seeing as how you guys are in the van quite a bit, what do you have in the car right now? What have you been listening to this tour?
BB- We have a ten-disc changer. Right now we have Ravi Shankar and some AC/DC [with a little chuckle], and there is some Malaysian-African music in there, some killer djembe stuff, some Bach, and of course some Bill Frisell.
AK- How about newer bands? Is there anybody that you’ve been really turned on to that’s kinda new, any DJ’s like Clifford Gilberto, or Amon Tobin?
BB- Oh yeah, actually we have some Amon Tobin in the car right now, and Talvin Singh. Let me see now, younger bands, well I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of The Blue Rags but they’re possibly one of my all-time favorites that we’ve played with…and Soulive…and I always have a place in my heart for the Living Daylights,.
AK- There are two other things that I really wanted to ask you about. First, I find that you guys are able to pull off lyrical music in a way that affects me pretty profoundly. I usually don’t tend to dig on lyrics much. So I was kind of just wondering how the lyrics and the musical aspect of your writing work come together. Is it completely collaborative? How does it work?
BB- The lyrics are almost entirely from me. There are a couple of exceptions- for instance, “The Air Of The Body,” that’s music that Andrew wrote and lyrics from our friend Steve.
AK- I’m curious, is there anyplace where you get your inspiration for the words? They just flow so smoothly and once again that fits your name so perfectly, the way your words sort of meander down a path and create images in my mind.
BB- I can only say that it will take me a while to get the lyrics. It will take me a while of listening to the music. The words always come with the intention of just suiting the music in such a way that they’re almost not something separate.
AK- They just add textures to a particular song.
BB- Yeah, I’ll hear the song and try to characterize the music and vibe of the song. Sometimes the lyrics come because I need a fourth voice, a melody. I take singing very seriously and the lyricists I listen to are masters of it, like Bob Dylan, Steely Dan, Paul Simon…It’s a sensitive area for me and it takes a lot more work than the initial writing of the song and music. I don’t really think I draw from anything specific. I try to show balance and opposites, and the way some things seem one way and come out another. I try to sing about accepting certain things. I’m not a prolific poet, outside of the music so I spend a lot more time trying to master that kind of flow. I mean hip-hop to me is just fascinating. It’s something that probably in the early 80’s and 90’s got taken for granted, how much skill it takes. It’s a beautiful art form too because it’s a totally natural way of social commentary.
In the lyrics I write I want to comment on society, political things, social things, but at the same time it can almost seem unnatural. I mean with hip-hop, they’re speaking and talking and telling you how it is or how they feel. I tend to not really address the politics. I tend to let the aesthetics be a political statement if that makes any sense. It’s something I wrestle with. I want to be direct sometimes but I feel like if you start actually singing about the plight of the Native American people, you might not do justice to the issue.
AK- Another topic I was thinking about is how much of what you guys do on stage is mapped out? Do you have a set list when you go up there?
BB- We usually pick a first song, which is really the only thing you have to do when you’re about to walk on stage. We’ll pick the first song, sometimes the second, sometimes the third. It all depends how quick our minds are working before the show, because once we get up there it pretty much starts to unfold.
AK- Well you can tell it couldn’t have been too mapped out. Just the emotion that you guys are playing with would be impossible to chart.
BB- I guess that’s the thing, we try to leave it open ended. That’s a good question, how much is actually improvised, because for someone who just came out to hear us they would have no idea. It’s not really clear to a first-time listener when we’re making it up. And with our improvisation we try to craft little poems within the songs.
AK- That’s a nice way of putting it.
BB- I’d say we write songs so that we can expand upon them. That’s kind of our writing concept, in the way a jazz composer would write a song. We write a melody that says something and then have the room for our own individual twists on it.
AK- And whatever that individual evening might bring.
BB- Exactly. Sometimes we’ll end up playing a song in a very similar way and obviously a solo from night to night changes, but sometimes it stays within certain barriers and sometimes it has the freedom to go somewhere it never went before.
AK- That’s definitely apparent. I was under the impression that you were looking for that freedom to move within your music.
BB- That’s where a lot of our audience is getting off. They sense that there is that freedom going on. I mean not every note is going to be perfectly placed all the time, although we definitely are striving for that kind of consistency.
AK- In thinking about your interactions in the live setting, I was thinking about crediting some kind of genetics in the way you guys talk without words. But Marc seems to be right on time as well as your brother. Do you guys feel that there’s some sort of hidden communication?
BB- Ahhh, sometimes I think that there’s something going on in this band that you don’t see too often, and that’s why we all stay with it. That’s why we’re so lucky, we just have this good combination. Other times I think it’s more of a life lesson in terms of listening to people. Like you know when someone is just talking too much, repeating themselves…
AK- Or just talking to hear themselves speak.
BB- Yeah and not listening to you, or maybe they hear you say something and they immediately relate it to something that happened to them, which is a natural thing. But actually letting what the other person said soak in, and being able to fully expand upon that is just kind of another way of speaking.
AK- That’s a way of life; I don’t think you can just turn that off and on.
BB- Although sometimes it vanishes. Sometimes it’s out of reach. You know you have the key but…
AK- You have your on nights and your off nights.
BB- Luckily though this tour has been pretty much on nights. Unfortunately, I hate to say this, but in my opinion San Diego was not one of the really on nights. To me San Diego and San Francisco were the two nights that for some reason I couldn’t pull it together. But I know my perception of it is probably a lot different than someone else’s. In terms of my perspective though, I always tell people if they want to know the music, they should find a show we played in Boston, I think its 6/27/00. I would like to recommend it, it’s some of the music we’ve made that I like a lot.
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