Would you say your fight with cancer has influenced your lyrics at all?
Its funny, people have definitely asked me that question because obviously something like cancer is so serious, it’s a pretty life changing experience. But, now I’m getting back to being stressed out with the little things again which I think is a good sign. You know, finally the massive stress is abated and I can worry about the little details again and get all bent out of shape about stupid stuff like everybody else. There was this one song I started working on right before I got sick and the riff was left sitting there forever while I recovered. Finally, I thought, “I think I am going to use this experience and write something about that” and it comes out twisted from a side perspective. I’m not even sure really what the song is saying, but it does pull from that experience of blood sweat and tears and going through major stuff and coming out the other side and being thankful for your friends and loved ones for being around you to kind of carry you through. So that one is the latest one that’s definitely kind of a vibe of that.
It must be a surreal experience to revisit the older songs in the Strangefolk catalogue. You have been with this band since college and now you have all gone through so much growing as people.
To me, it’s astonishing really to look back at all the years of Strangefolk to when it was me and Reid as an acoustic duo back in Vermont. Just thinking that the name Strangefolk has been in my mind since 1991. It blows my mind that this thing is still breathing and really fun and it’s amazing. You realize, as we were going through it, and especially in the early days when we were really trying to succeed and get out there and tour the country and do 10-week tours and stuff and how hard that was and then kind of back-lashing from that a little bit. And then, to arrive now at this space of “well, here we are and we’re still doing it, who would have every figured that.” It’s so much fun and it’s so rewarding and we’re all kind of far apart from each other physically but we’re all really close and talk everyday on email. It’s like a family, it’s a like a community family thing that we have going on that’s so special, and so I feel really lucky to have it.
I think that’s how it is for any band that has clocked in a bunch of years—that things do change around you and the music changes within you. But it’s cool, I still enjoy playing our oldest stuff and it is really fun playing the new stuff. But you do add new twists to it and it evolves along with you. I think it’s really cool how it is an organic thing: the changes are not set in stone.
What would you say is the oldest song in the Strangefolk repertoire at this point?
I think the oldest one is that we still do might be the song “Come on Down.” I think that’s on our demo. That’s one that Erik and I wrote back in ‘93 or something.
And “Whatever” is another one that has stayed in the rotation and grown to become a nice moment in shows. It’s a moment to play a more mellow song and it breathes so that’s cool too.
Earlier this summer Strangefolk co-hosted the StrangeCreek festival with Max Creek. Can you talk for a minute about how that collaborative event came about?
For us, it came from looking for a place for us to do our Garden of Eden show. We had a traditional festival that we did every Labor Day. I think the first year we did it was Jerry Garcia’s birthday. It just happened to fall on it and it moved around. We finally found a home for it on Labor Day. But then as the years went on and after Reid left, we did a little soul searching and tried to figure out, “Do we keep doing it like that?” Things changed enough and then it became a huge gamble. We tried to do it a few times, I think we did it one or two years after that.
Ultimately, it got to be so much stress that I found myself not looking forward to it. So then we sidled up with Wormtown Productions and talked to them about it. They offered to host Eden for us to take the weight off us and let us play music. They would handle the promoting part of it and it was a blast, really fun. The relationship started there and they were great friends with Max Creek. We have known them from over the years as well and so it emerged into, “Hey, why don’t we do this with you two guys?” The name StrangeCreek evolved naturally, and we went from there. I don’t know how many years we have been doing it but someone was saying five years or something. It’s really become this great, great time. The campground there is awesome. It’s probably the only time each year that I go out there and hang out fully. The whole band will be out there in the woods with everyone else. It’s pretty cool, we have always had a good time with that and I look forward to it every year.
Another festival you have been with since the beginning is Gathering of the Vibes. I believe Strangefolk has played the festival every year since its inception.
The band has, I haven’t. I missed one year when I was sick, but the guys played in my stead so I think technically you could say that we have been a part of it every year.
Yeah, it’s amazing. I remember the first year it was so cool because it was like, “What does everyone do know that Jerry Garcia, the leader of this whole pack, is gone and The Dead has dissipated?” Phish of course took the lead. I think the first year it was called Gathering of the Tribe. It was great and it was such a great feeling. I remember moe. was a headliner and seeing those guys. I met David Gans and became friends with him. I met a lot of people there that I stayed friends with over the years, a lot of bands and stuff, and it got huge. I think they have experimented over the years and it’s nice to see moe. back in the headliner spot.
Do you have a favorite memory of your own performances over the years?
Yeah, there was one, I think it was the year we headlined and we did “Feel Like A Stranger” because we have always tried to do a Dead song every tour. And we did “Feel Like a Stranger.” That’s a pretty random song to pick out of your hat but we figured it had the “Strange” word in it and we are Strangefolk, “stranger.” And I think that year at Eden we had done a theme of songs that had the word “strange” in it and we might have learned it for that. But it was such a great moment, I think we were headlining – or Warren Haynes, maybe we were second to headliners – but it was dark and you couldn’t see the end of the audience, it was gigantic. I don’t know how many people were there but I think it was around 10,000. It was just so much power and energy to get up there and hitting the opening chords to that. It just set the mood. It was the set opener and I remember the energy just waved out over the crowd. That was one of my highlights. That feeling of opening with that really bizarre chord and everyone instantly knew what it was. It was like “All right, it is on, here we go” and we played it really well which is always a plus too.
Finally, I read on your blog that you had dinner with Michael Jackson once in 1999. That must have been a surreal experience.
Yeah, totally. For reference, I printed it up on the Strangefolk website because my mom used to ask me so much. And then he died and I was like, you know, I haven’t really told a ton of people about that story and so I think I’ll write down everything that I can remember and post it up there. It was amazing. It was really, really what you would expect. It was so unreal because it’s MJ, like the most famous person in the world, pretty much walking into the living room. It’s like, “Oh hey.” We are in my girlfriend’s house and he walks in the door and makes quite a wild entrance – unintentional, but hilarious – because he was totally terrified of dogs and, as he’s walking in, I think he saw the dog, this most bumbling friend, big old yellow lab that you could ever imagine.
The dog just wanted to say hi and so it came running up to him trying to sniff his ass which made it funnier. He tore off and did a double back and jumped off the steps behind a bush. I was like, “Oh my God, is this really happening?” I didn’t know it was because of the dog. It didn’t really enter my mind or anyone else’s. Like, how could he be afraid of this dog? But he was petrified. I thought, “Man, this guy is such a freak, weirdest time ever.” But he came in, he kind of crept back in, and he told me, “I’m terrified of the dog, can we get rid of the dog?” And we got the dog out of there and then he was fine. It was a really cool night; we just drank a bunch of wine with him and talked music. He was there for many hours so that feeling of “Holy shit” wore off and then you are just hanging with this guy. It seems so normal except that he has white makeup on his face. And it’s MJ. But other than that, he seemed so at ease and normal and talking about music. I think that he was so used to people peppering him with questions so he kept turning all the questions to me.
It is strange to think of him as “a musician” at this point.
Yeah, exactly. And it was cool because it made me feel like, “Wow, I’m a part of the whole thing.” I felt bad because I was a musician so he definitely attached to that. It was a common thing. Whereas I don’t think he had a common thread with anyone else in the room. Unless it was a business tie, because he was there to talk business with my ex-girlfriend’s dad. But, yeah, it was wild, man. There are so many impressions of that but the one that I left with, which was the strongest one, was that he was this poor, trapped, exotic creature so not like any of us. I felt sorry for him basically in the end. “It was like, man, sure it would be fun to be that rich and that famous.” I guess, but maybe not. Obviously, it had warped him to be what he is – which was this physically crazy-looking specimen. I mean, he looked like he was about to fall apart. His face was all…he had putty, it looked like his nose was filled with spackle, all caved in and he was unsettlingly weird. We took this picture together and he looked like a cardboard cutout.
So he was already kind of on the freak path by then.
Yeah, and this was before the major crap that came up. This was after one case that got swept under. He basically bought one kid’s family out for $20 million just to shut up. My girlfriend at the time was oblivious to that whole story so she was still like, “MJ is my God.” I was being all cynical about it: “I’m going to ask him.” She was like, “You better not say anything.” She was denying it and like, “That’s not even true, where did you hear this?” And I was like, “Where have you been so that you couldn’t hear this?” But, that was only thing that had come out at the time. It was probably within that year that all the other stories came out and he definitely went into hiding afterwards. Made the story a little less cool to tell my friends.
The Gathering of the Vibes will return to Bridgeport, CT from July 23-26. Be sure to look for daily updates throughout the weekend on Jambands.com.
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