What was Ryan doing during this period?
Ryan was in Denver. He got married and was kind of settling down [there] and started writing a ton of music. He was sending me music, and it was some of the best music I had ever heard him write. So, we decided, “Let’s put this out as Signal Path. Let’s see what happens.” We did that and booked a couple of shows in Chciago; both did really well. From that point forward we started a Signal Path Facebook page and an e-mail account, and we started getting offers from promoters. We started doing these little one-off dates that were all going really well. Ryan and I were just really surprised and thrilled and it wasn’t something we were trying to force down anyone’s throat—but the opportunities kept coming.
From that point forward we made the decision that this is something we really want to do. So, we signed on with a booking agency and told them, “Look, Ryan and I are both working. We can only do Saturday shows—see what you can do” [laughs]. Our agent booked us an entire fall tour of last year where we basically played every Saturday night, and then worked Monday through Friday, played Saturday, came back and worked Monday through Friday. It was exhausting but all of the shows did well. We were like, “Is this really happening? This is awesome!” I decided it was time to take the next step. I moved down to Denver and started working on the next Signal Path album, which we just released [called Imaginary Lines ]. Then we basically took the entire summer off, not doing the normal festival circuit, and concentrated on putting out the best album that Signal Path has ever released. We were spending 12-hour days in the studio for months on end. The result is something that both Ryan and I are incredibly proud of. So with creating Imaginary Lines it really just felt fresh and good to us. Ryan has always been the lead songwriter for Signal Path. He came up with the name in 2000 and has always been the driving creative force behind this project.
Do you plan to tour as a duo in the future?
We’re bringing along a bass player on this entire tour. In the future, who knows what’s going to happen? We want to be able to reinvent [this project] every tour and be able to do something unique and something cool. It didn’t really come down to, “We have to have a bass player to make the music full or whatever.” We just wanted to do something different. We just wanted to make it feel fresh on stage for us. And with three people on stage there’s just that much more interplay—and that much more inspiration spontaneously happening. It just felt natural and something that we were really motivated to try and do. So we brought on board the bass player, Matt Schumacher, who was the bass player that came with us on the 2007 run that we did with the Pnuma Trio. So we’ve known each other for years and years and years, and he had history with Signal Path—it just kind of makes sense. In the future we may bring along a singer or an MC or a horn section or even a full band. We want this project to be this evolving flow of creative energy based around the music that Ryan and I put together.
How have you seen the jamband touring circuit change in the five years since you stopped touring?
When we first started touring every opening act we had would be a four of five piece jamband that was doing jam music. That is our roots but not necessarily where we were at that time—as far as blending funk and bluegrass into a jazz and rock sound. We were trying to do something different. But there really wasn’t a lot of other bands in our genre, or in every market, that were opening up for us. So we found it interesting that when we came back on the road as Signal Path what we started seeing was the drummer/producer combo, as standard opening act. That shift was huge.
The 2005 Bonnaroo you mentioned earlier was sort of a transitional year for the festival, as it moved from being known just as a jamband event. Have you found that bands like Signal Path that didn’t necessarily want to be associated with the jam-scene have returned to their roots in the past few years?
Well, I think there’s a couple [of] different levels to it. One of the things that’s developed is there’s appreciation in the jamband scene for producers and laptops onstage. A lot of the artists in that genre—The Glitch Mob, Bassnectar—have been embraced by the jamband scene and influenced all these bands. At the same time, Phish just came back a year or two ago, and that’s had a total resurgence of appreciation—and almost pride for— jambands. So I think there are two things that are coming into play here that are really interesting. I think the scene is going to embrace the best of every kind of separation, if you will, in this scene. They’re going to embrace the best drummer/producer duo, the best band that’s doing electronic music and the best bluegrass band or whatever. I think there’s genius on every single one of those levels.
Missoula isn’t exactly a hothead for touring jambands. Can you talk a little about the city’s jamband scene and your introduction to that style of music?
Missoula is a college town and there really wasn’t a member of Signal Path that grew up in Missoula —we met there for school. I grew up in New Orleans—that’s my hometown. So the whole New Orleans scene was a huge part of my upbringing.
We toured with Galactic a few years ago. At the time, that was the hugest accomplishment, musically, that I had ever been a part of. When I was a senior in high school, Galactic was Galactic Prophylactic and they were blowing up in New Orleans and selling out Tipitina’s for the first time, and still playing five dollar shows downtown. Stanton Moore’s drumming was a giant influence on my playing when I was growing up. At the time, I was taking lessons from a guy named Mark DiFlorio, who was a fabulous teacher now based in Seattle, and he knew Stanton. When Galactic’s first album came out there was this one groove that I was trying to learn. I asked my teacher, at the time, and he was like, “Why don’t I just introduce you to Stanton and he can show you?” So I was fortunate enough to be able to study under Stanton a little bit before I moved out to Montana. That was just a huge boost for me confidence wise. I picked up a lot the vocabulary that I use with Signal Path from the New Orleans style of drumming. A lot of that stuff is very New Orleans centric, and I take a great care in trying to put that into our live music.
Ryan grew up in Denver, CO, which is where Signal Path is now based, and everyone knows there’s a fantastic community of musicians here and touring bands that come through. So it really wasn’t like we came from the mountains and then created Signal Path with no influence. We came from different parts of the country and brought our collective influences into the project.
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