BF: Was there anything on the record that wasn’t already road tested when you went in?
JM: “Peace and Glory” we had never played live. We had worked the song out, and had a skeleton for it, but I wrote the lyrics and did the vocals after the fact. I want to say everything else we had played live, and there are a bunch of B-sides that we’ll be putting out at some point. There’s another six songs that we recorded that aren’t on the record. But everything was pretty road-tested or rehearsed pretty heavily.
BF: What’s life on the road is like for the three of you?
JM: For as long as I can remember, like when I had bands in high school, the dream was to get a gig, play in a bar. And then the dream was like “let’s do like two nights in a row, let’s do a weekend.” And then, it was like, it’d be so cool if we could play in Colorado. It was sort of like this kind of Kerouac… I really dug On The Road and [Pirsig’s] Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and all these sort of books that glorified traveling and ‘flying by the seat of your pants.’ Being on the road with this band is definitely an extension of that. To be able to play for people every night, it’s like I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. It’s the ultimate joy.
It’s amazing and terrible all at the same time; living out of a suitcase, you’re in hotel rooms; you’re stuck in traffic all the time. You know, that’s the job, that’s the work, that’s the crap you’ve got to put up with to get ‘there.’ But to plug in and play the first chord, everything else but ‘there’ disappears. I’ve been completely sick with the flu, feeling like I’m dying, and I’ll play a gig; and for that hour and a half, I feel completely healthy. So that part of it, there’s the two sides of it. Being able to share the stage with Gregg Allman, and the history there, it’s totally a dream come true. The travel can wear on you; I remember flying a lot after 9/11 and it was just like a total nightmare, so there’s that whole aspect of it, but the other part of it is this sort of Kerouac, ultimate dream of just being out there doing what you want to be doing. I totally feel fulfilled.
BG: In addition to all that, one of the things I appreciate the most about being on the road, is this opportunity to really refine your product, either personally as a musician or with the band. Especially as we’re all getting older and we’ve all got other commitments when we’re at home; we’re trying to rehearse as much as we can, but once you’re finally out, and all your stuff is back home, and all we’re doing is driving and then setting up, sound check, playing a set and then talking about it whenever we can. I record a lot of the sets and we listen to them in the van sometimes and we’re just sort of hyper-processing, really refining everything we get to do. ‘Cause you’re just in this mental zone when you’re in the van and traveling; you can keep working on details and details in such a dense amount of time, as opposed to doing a gig every two weeks or something.
BF: You’re much more in a vacuum with it.
JM: It’s a massive vacuum.
BG: And that’s on a personal level and a band level. Just the way I play has changed a lot, depending on what band it is. If I’m with a certain band, it changes how I tune drums, which cymbals I’m bring out, the way I play certain songs. And then there’s also the group dynamic, how we all play together, how we’re gonna construct a set. All sorts of different things that change so quickly in just two or three nights, as opposed to two months for a band that’s only playing a couple times a month.
BM: I guess another side of it for me is that a lot of guys I talk to talk about the “troubles” of being on the road and stuff like that.
BF: Like certain vices?
BM: Certain vices, certain attitudes not matching, like this guy’s jealous that this guy did more work, whatever. For me, I’m the young guy in the band, like I’m a kid out here, wondering “what the hell am I doing, how did this happen?” Just from talking to people, it’s been really interesting being on the road with Jamie and Brian because I feel like, again, they’ve helped groom me as a musician, but also, like there’s been times when I’ve been on the road, and I’m sick as a dog. I have the flu, and I’m in the back of the van with a trash can; Jamie and Brian are willing to pick up the slack and drive, help me carry my amp in, help me set up, and they’re like “No, no, dude, go sleep, don’t worry about it.” Or, like Jamie has to go out front and do his thing, so Brian and I will pack up his stuff.
It’s been this really cool dynamic, the three of us being out on the road, and there’s no [ego]. All of us have an ego ‘cause we’re out here playing music, so you have to have an ego to some extent. But the fact of when we come together, and we talk about the set last night, and Brian says “Ben, that harmony part didn’t work out” or “Jamie, the solo kind of went in a different direction than where I think the tune says it needs to go,” and just be able to openly talk about stuff on the road, like Brian said, it helps us define each song in its own right and really craft out parts to fit the tunes.
I know we’ve recorded this record, but I think it would be interesting to do a tour like [John] Mayer did, where he put out a record, and after the whole record tour was done, he took the band back in the studio, re-recorded everything, and put it out as a live thing. It was just interesting to hear the way it changed. I’d be interested in doing some legitimate recordings to see what the road has done in helping these tunes grow on their own. I don’t know, that’s what the road’s been for me. Like I said, I’m the young one in the band so I shouldn’t be talking about this in the first place.
JM: The guys in the Dirty Dozen always used to say we’re all soldiers, and I kind of feel that way. We’re all on the same team and we’re all in it for the same reason, and I always dug it when they called us soldiers; “you take no prisoners.”
BF: Has this lineup written together on the road yet, as a unit?
JM: Yep.
BF: Are you staging some of that yet?
JM: Yeah. I think we’ll get into the studio again at some point at the end of the year for another record.
BF: As a band that thrives on the live experience, have you found a way to translate that energy into the studio?
JM: All three records, we’ve recorded the band live. Basically, four guys in the room, laying it down, and then obviously overdubbing the vocals and some instruments after the fact. But we are playing it down live like we would on the stage. I’m not convinced that we’ve captured what we do live on a record; I’m pretty sure we haven’t.
BF: Are you fine with studio records being different in nature than live shows?
JM: Yeah, I’ll listen to studio records in general more than I do live concerts. I would like to try to get to that level. The Grateful Dead never really did it; there are a lot of bands that never really did it that are known for their live thing. I think we can do it. I just think when you’re in the studio, you’re worried that it’s not going to be perfect, but that can hold you up. If you’re constantly worried about making a mistake, it’s going to be a little watered down; there’ll be no “balls” to it. Not that that’s what we’ve done on this record, but I know we can have more balls onstage.
BG: That’s an interesting thing I’ve started thinking about a little bit recently; just hearing Jamie say the same thing. There’s some ideas bumping around that I’ve heard other producers talk about. It would be fun just to do a record that is just a trio record, like a Van Halen record, like slim-to-no overdubs in some big live-sounding room. I’ve met some producers who work, like, say you get three nights in the studio, and there’s fifteen songs you want to record. So you just play those fifteen songs as a set, twice a night, for three nights. Then you end up having six takes of each song, but it’s still a part of this fresh thing in that you played this whole hour and fifteen minute set.
BM: I kind of agree with Brian. I think it’d be a lot of fun to take this band and do a record as a trio in a live setting; maybe go into a theatre or something like that, and mic everything up and multi track everything and try it that way, and then go back and overdub vocals. I don’t know.
JM: I like what the Black Crowes did at Levon’s studio [The Black Crowes recorded the double album Before the Frost…Until the Freeze at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, NY in front of a small studio audience]. I mean, it was a concert, and it comes off that way. But yeah, it’s a totally different animal, and I don’t think we’ve gotten it yet, which I’m fine with.
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