JPG: Now, do you feel that a jamband audience is more receptive to what you do or is just a matter that when you’re done you can have a little fun?

TS: Both. It’s the people I prefer to play to, and I don’t want to knock people who don’t consider themselves, I guess what you’d say is a stoner maybe or of the stoner mentality or whatever it is that makes people…you can’t really call it a hippie…I’d like to think for that crowd, in particular, I’ve always liked to go and listen to that stuff but it wasn’t until Yonder Mountain String Band started taking me on the road that it felt like that I got introduced. Ever since I started opening for them there’s a good chance there will be girls at my show without their shoes on. (laughs)

JPG: (laughs) When did you hook up with Yonder?

TS: It’s been three years of so. I met Jeff Austin at a bar in Colorado and just hit it off immediately. And then I met them all. I just feel…we’re family.

JPG: The way Jeff’s persona is onstage. If he’s anything like that offstage I could see where you could hit it off immediately.

TS: In fact, sometimes him and Ben [Kaufmann] from Yonder and Vince Herman from Leftover Salmon will come and, if they have time off, we’ve done it twice, they’ll come and back me up unannounced. It’s a lot of fun. It’s most fun when they all fly to my house and the night before we have a big rehearsal at my house.

JPG: I can imagine it becomes like a big hootenanny. At those rehearsals, are you rehearsing your stuff or are you guys just messing around?

TS: (slight laugh) Yeah, that’s why…we touch on my stuff and it usually evolves into messing around and having fun. Playing whatever we feel like playing in the moment and then, ‘We’ll figure this shit out tomorrow night.’

JPG: And all of a sudden you have a lot of empties to pick up the next day.

TS: Yeah, that’s exactly right!

JPG: Back to festivals, I was there and the reaction was good at Bonnaroo and All Good. As a performer you’re normally headlining clubs and theaters, but in the case of these festivals where it’s not geared to a specific type of music and people aren’t very familiar with you, do you have to psyche yourself up? Do things differently?

TS: I guess when I’m playing it doesn’t matter to me. You just sorta trust the PA. But I should say this year at these festivals I’ve been watching and not necessarily…well, I guess, a little of both for the crowd but mostly for myself…I think it was right in the middle of Les Claypool’s set [at All Good] I said, ‘I sure hope I get to play these festivals again next year because I’m gonna bring a band.’ And I’ve been playing with this band, the Great American Taxi. And when I’ve been at these festivals I kept thinking, ‘I think I want to play with the Taxi.’

I was watching Widespread [at 10,000 Lakes] and RatDog [at All Good] and watching Les Claypool. And all three of them I thought, especially Les Claypool, because I got to stand at the side and watch him come out and decide which mask to put on. I was a foot from him as he was rummaging through his masks. It was exhilarating. But, just the way that he arranged it with the xylophone guy and the cello guy…they were making sounds; I don’t even know how they’re doing this.

I used to have a band but we weren’t open-ended like that so it got boring. I was bored out of it about four years into it. You know, the song starts the same every night, ends the same every night and the solo section’s the same every night. And the show is more thought out like say…I don’t want to say a Springsteen show isn’t open-ended but it kinda isn’t. It’s rehearsed and the light parts are rehearsed. It’s all pretty rehearsed. And there’s no part of the song where they look at each other and say, ‘Now, everybody. See what happens.’ That’s the new thing that I’ve been the most fascinated with musically. That’s when those guys are together I say, ‘Show me how we can just let the song go.’ I want to understand that.

You ever see when Widespread, they’ll be jamming and they’ll be jamming and jamming and then for no real explicit reason the whole entire groove will change and I want to go, ‘How do you guys do that?’ I don’t know they do that. Who cues that?’

• JPG: At this point, you see them or a band such as moe. you wonder if it’s almost mental telepathy.*

TS: I think that might be what it is and, see, I would like to be part of some of that. moe. too, I really like them and, of course, Phish. I like Phish, too.

JPG: This is all real interesting because the term ‘singer-songwriter’, which is normally attached to you, one would think that as one of those you wouldn’t want that dancing on the edge of a cliff musical aspect to your material.

TS: Yeah, none of my other songwriter friends want that. I know I’m real drawn to it and that’s where I’m hoping to go in the next few years if I live, if we all live, the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise. I like that. I like the idea of being in a group like that. I always thought that the Grateful Dead, you know that Robert Hunter he was a singer songwriter essentially, and he didn’t tour with those guys but…I would love to find a way to be the Arlo Guthrie of the…you know, he’s a hero to me and in his day he was part of the…I guess you just call it, what’s that magazine?… the High Times crowd. I don’t know what you call it because I’m careful not to call the young people anything because I’m 42 and I don’t want to fuck their buzz up and call them a stoner if they don’t want to be called stoners. I’m careful to call ‘em something but they tend to have hula hoops. Sometimes the chicks have wings and sometimes the guys’ll wear big funky hats or the guys’ll wear a skirt. That’s my idea of a good time.

JPG: I was taking pictures at All Good, but once my time at the front of stage was done I took lots of photos of the crowd because so many interesting things were going on.

TS: I got hang with JB (WSP’s John Bell) at 10,000 Lakes and I told him I was awestruck by what they built and what they had. I think that people, they get all that. They dress a certain way and come to the show. To me it sends a message that this band has spent a lifetime making sure that this crowd knew that this show wasn’t about them. That to me seems heavy. I think it’s about the people listening more than it is about the people playing or at least that’s what it appears to be like to me. Some people you can tell. They’re not going to look up and see that if JB strikes an interesting pose, they’re not going to see it. They’re spinning in their own thing. So, there’s no point in climbing the rafters, which is pretty unmusical anyway.

JPG: It’s interesting to get, not that you’re that much of an outsider, but a point of view from someone who’s a bit outside of the scene.

TS: Yeah, if I had to say I was part of something, I’m an Americana singer. I’d rather be a…I don’t know about that. I love those guys. Their party’s okay. They’re not stoners. I’m the only stoner there. And there ain’t nobody eating no mushrooms over there. Except me.

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