In your role as conductor, what preparation do you make before a given performance or is it all on the fly and in the moment from the get go?

I don’t think about how I want it to sound. I think about who I have as players and that ultimately dictates what happens. I try to be in touch with all the players, just be in communication with them and make sure that everyone’s comfortable on stage, that they can hear well and that they’re fed and happy, so that they’re going to have a clear path to musical discovery.

And then I have this thing of getting everybody to agree to be on the same page of not knowing what’s going to happen and just going for it. And that’s part of my job, different people need different counseling before we get on stage to get into that state of mind in a comfortable way.

Sometimes at festivals people are coming from different stages or just landing from their flights and up until the moment we’re announced and I’m on the conductor’s stand looking at the players, I haven’t had a moment with the group to discuss what’s going to happen. Everyone knows the concept and how I use the dry erase board and the signals that I use and I have everyone take a breath and then go. I’m like a cheerleader for that.

When you approach a musician or management you don’t know to enlist someone new for a certain EO performance, how do you describe what the experience will be like?

I definitely use the phrase conducted improvisation and tell them I act as a facilitator. Early on I’ll mention a few people I’ve worked with and most people will say, “That sounds interesting.”

So much of it though is about personal relationships and being able to talk to musicians at a festival and say, “This is what I’m doing I’d love to have you be a part of it at some point down the road if the timing’s right.” I feel really blessed that for the most part I think the musicians have a fun and interesting time in EO and sometimes they’re very surprised: “That was insane, I loved that.” Sometimes we’ll have that perfect mix of craziness, a perfect moment of almost pop song beauty that we came up with on the spot and some high energy dance music and it’s all just perfect.

Fishman has said that he loves the musical vacation of Everyone Orchestra where it’s a departure of having expectations either within the band or as an audience member, in that literally anything can happen in EO for better and worse. That’s one thing that Ken Kesey taught me and the Grateful Dead taught me, that the mystery of the unknown is what’s interesting and in those moment of searching musically you won’t always land on the golden nugget but when you do it really really shines.

In terms of that pop song beauty you just described, that’s the way a number of bands write music, just through jamming together. Have you ever gone back and listened to past EO shows, with the intent of using those kernels to write songs?

I have thought of it but I haven’t really taken that through to fruition, mostly just due to lack of time and energy. I have so much recorded live EO and it’s a strange thing to listen to sometimes, it’s not like other music to listen to. Sometimes, it’s like, “What’s going on here?” It’s kind of bizarre. It’s about being there, it’s very experiential. I’m also a producer and I like to work in the studio and using these types of tools to work with bands or in the studio is something I’m ready to do more of.

I’m clearing my schedule so that starting in the fall I’ll be focusing exclusively on the Everyone Orchestra and EO related projects and the studio is a big part of it. But to get back to the question, no, I haven’t gone back and mined a tune that was created and use that as a jumping off point to write something. I think a lot of that music could be used for music or TV if edited just a little bit with Ableton and I’d like to do more stuff like that.

I don’t have an EO studio album and the whole concept doesn’t lend itself to the studio album concept because it’s all about live and interactivity with the audience but I am going to do something in the studio over the next six months or so which might have a small audience but it’s basically to come up with a bunch of ideas.

I’ve worked with a band like the Mother Hips where they’ve brought me in as conductor, like a fiddle player. They’re a really refined California rock band and I’ll sit below them and Tim [Bluhm] will make a head motion like he’s turning the conductor on and it’s free reign for me. I’ll stand up, conduct, take them somewhere new and then I’ll give him the signal and throw it back to him. It’ll be at the band’s whim as to when they want to bring the conductor back in. So instead of conducting the whole show, it’s just little segments within the show.

Like at one point in a song if the chorus is repeating I’ll hold up a sign that says repeat the chorus and I’ll have them keep on repeating it and have the audience singing it. Then I might take the band out so that just the audience is singing and then take it a little bit higher and then throw it back into the song. I’ll do little tiny moves like that and then sit down for 10 minutes. It’s an interesting application of the conductor role. I’m working on a couple pitches for other bands to do this in a larger setting because those are some of the most fun shows I’ve done.

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