Photo by Kelsey Winterkorn
Do you consider the guitar your primary form of expression, more so than your lyrics or voice?
I mean, I can play guitar literally without even thinking about it, it’s a very weird thing. But when I played at Langerado a couple years ago and I just couldn’t play anything right, the outdoor Langerado at the Indian reservation, and the moon was right there, so I stared at the moon and started thinking about the moon and literally didn’t think about my hand at all and about 25 minutes went by and I don’t think I missed a note in that whole area. It’s almost like, guitar playing is all about, it’s all about getting yourself off the notes and out of the—I’m not saying leave the scale, I’m just saying stop thinking about the scale and just sort of follow the notes and where they go.
Music is a different language in itself. So, if you’re thinking about what notes you’re playing and where you’re going in the music, you’re translating, you know, it’s like thinking about Spanish in English. And so you’re not think about, you know what I mean, you’re translating, you don’t want to be translating in music. So I think, if music is a language, anything is a probably language all those things that you need. You want to get to a point where you’re not translating. You do things cleaner and eventually its all pleasure and no pain. And I think that’s what you’re talking about, people, when they think about it, they don’t necessarily think about it correctly, but when they do it, they have enough life experience to do it right ‘cause they know how to avoid the pain, so they just have to get to that place where they know that kind of stuff.”
I actually read a very interesting piece of literature about how computers will become self-aware. It’s something that will just happen. Eventually there will be a computer system that is capable of sustaining self-awareness and just because it’s capable it will become self-aware. The thing’s going to become self-aware on its own, we don’t have to tell it how to become self-aware. Keep building it, keep making it better, keep building it and keep making it better and eventually it will ask you how you like your coffee. Eventually it will learn how to sing for you.
I think that’s true with the Biscuits too, you kind of truck on, like you hurt your hand but the band still goes on.
Well, things were going so well, I had to artificially create drama. Things were just too good and things are not supposed to be too good when you’re a rock musician. [laughter]
The Disco Biscuits will celebrate 15 years on July 4. Do you plan to do anything to mark the occasion?
I don’t like to celebrate that type of stuff and, anyway, the band was under a different name. It is confusing to me because at the time we were students in college so there was no real beginning. We were students and then we actually hit the road during college and did some shows. So when people talk about our first show it isn’t really the beginning of the band. It is not like one day we weren’t in a band, the next day we are in the Disco Biscuits and then all of the sudden we are famous people.
It is funny, in [keyboardist] Aron Magner’s interview for this article he was talking about how excited he was for the band’s anniversary and how exciting it was that the band had been around for 15 years.
He loves the anniversary thing. I don’t know why he loves the anniversary thing so much but makes the anniversary a big deal. He loves birthdays too. I don’t get it. I’m like the old woman. I don’t want anyone to know how old we are. I don’t want it out there at all, but he gets it out there every fucking year, I don’t know why. Like, does Jay-Z celebrate the year he started rapping? Does Radiohead celebrate its anniversary? I don’t like celebrating the anniversary of becoming a derelict or leaving normal society and becoming a madman [laugher]. But I guess you could say that [July 4th weekend] was the day that shit started to get crazy at an accelerating pace. I’ve been playing guitar since I was a little kid. So when was the first day? I don’t know. We played songs that were written before we were a band so for us there was no real beginning to the Disco Biscuits. Aron wasn’t in a band at first and then he joined us so for him there was a day one. For me there was no day one. When I was four my parents knew that this was going to happen, so they’re not surprised. It wasn’t like they called me up on August 1, 1995, and was like ‘What’s this about you wanting to be a musician?’ That phone call never happened. Yeah, they were like, “What do you need now, an amp or a pedal?”
I don’t like dates. I don’t like holidays. For me, New Year’s Eve happens 88 times a year. There’s people in society who need holidays to dictate when they should party. I don’t need any help blowing off steam. I don’t need any help having fun. So the calendar to me, it’s great for the day because people will come to your show and people will join your fun on holidays, so I like holidays, I love New Years, people come out, it’s a better, bigger party, we can do a bigger show, everything’s great and everybody’s in a really good mood, but to me that’s every day, that’s life. You don’t need the calendar to have fun, you use the calendar as a crutch to have fun.
And you know what? This is where it gets nuts right here, if you have a party, not only will everybody come ‘cause it’s your birthday even if they formally wouldn’t come just to party, but some people will apply undue peer-pressure to other people for not going to your birthday—for not obeying the calendar. It’s tradition. And I love tradition and I’m very cool with it and holidays is how you represent tradition a little bit I guess, you celebrate tradition, I’m down with that, but I just don’t take it too seriously. Now that I think about, July 4th I usually hang out by myself, everybody usually goes to the beach and parties on the beach, I usually hang out by myself on holidays ‘cause I don’t get a lot of alone time so I prize my alone time.
Everybody wants to think everything through, but thinking everything through means that like you can predict the future. Like with my wrist, it is like, “Hey, worse things than you expect can happen.” You can’t predict the future, you can say, “OK this could be bad, this could be great, you don’t really know how it’s going to end up, you think you do but you don’t.” So I think to some degree you gotta get out there, you gotta put the gloves on, you gotta get in the ring, you gotta get in the fight and you’re gonna get hit, you know, and you gotta just deal with that. Ever since I started thinking about things like that and the band started thinking about things like that, things started changing for the band, like ever since we started just Zen-ing everything, you know, we Zen our shows now, we Zen everything. So what do we do on stage? Like how do we get from one song to the next? How did we write that song in the studio? I have no idea. ‘Cause it’s like the whole thing is about the vibe, it’s about the process. It’s not about, you know, consciously engineering it from some ego point of view, from a “I want this to happen.” That is a mistake. You know, do you want a politician to get up there and be like “you should do this because this is right,” you don’t elect that politician. You elect the guy who’s like, “Hey, we’re gonna make this happen, we’re just going to do it, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be difficult, but we’re going to do it.” And that’s what it is and that’s what the music business is like right now, it’s a war. And that’s what our music is like right now, like on stage there’s so much going on. I don’t know, that’s my new creed on life.
Does thinking like that help you avoid being emo in your music or is it too hard to avoid?
Lyrically, we’re just looking for cool things to say. And a lot of it is like, you know, there’s a lot of lyrics that you draw from your life, but I’m not sitting there and writing life story stuff—like I can’t tell you what girl I’m writing about. I can’t tell you who I’m writing about and all those things, just the veneer is there, you know. But I feel like in today’s world the veneer isn’t—the veneer will make a comeback just like Earth, Wind and Fire made a comeback. Veneer will make a comeback but I feel like right now the way the world is, they don’t want veneer. Our generation’s rock stars and Facebook and the iPod. I mean we have Radiohead, but the iPod and Facebook are changing the world like the Beatles did in 1964.
How would having a crossover single change the Disco Biscuits future?
That’s not going to happen to us, but it really wouldn’t change my life too much right now, but in 20 years, it really would change my life. In 20 years it would mean that we could do revival tours. Modern revival tours make everybody’s happy. And the Biscuits revival tour is going to be great, we may have to play “On Time” a little bit more than usual but whatever, it’s going to be a good thing. The Dead had their whole career—the last 20 years of their career was a revival tour vibe. And it was just amazing, it was amazing. I went to those Dead shows when I was a kid and Jerry was unbelievable. Jerry would just fucking knock you on your ass without even moving. He would just stand right there in the middle of Madison Square Garden and just literally crush you, you know, and that’s why Jerry was the best. It is cool to be able to do that kind of thing, I mean he was really lucky from that perspective. I know he passed away a little earlier that he had to I think but, you know, he definitely was fortunate that he got to play huge concert and huge concert until he was 55 and that’s pretty awesome.
Dark Star Orchestra is awesome too. And part of the reason that they’re awesome is the songs are ridiculous! So it’s great, it’s cool. So even after the rest of the Grateful Dead band members stop playing concerts, the music is going to survive. It’s cool to be part of a music scene that the music is surviving no matter what, no matter if you have pop success or not, it doesn’t matter because the music of the scene is surviving. The Grateful Dead music is going to survive and a lot of bands making music in this scene are going to survive. We just hope to be one of them.
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