In terms of the band’s music, if someone were seeing Max Creek today, as opposed to 10 or 20 years ago, how appreciably different would that experience be?
I think one of the aspects of the band that keeps things interesting for me is the evolution of things. Some of the best songs, some of my favorite things that we do, didn’t start out that way. But as the band’s played them over the years, they’ve evolved.
For example “Emerald Eyes” is song of mine that has this thing at the end that sounds composed but really isn’t. We just spontaneously added a part to it at the end of one night of playing the song and the next time we played it, one of us remembered that we did that and so we repeated it and maybe made it a little bit longer. Then the next time maybe something else was added. And these things develop into these monstrous creations that have just evolved over time.
It’s interesting because in a lot of cases you bring in a song and the energy of playing that song for the first time creates something that you can never get back again. That first time you’re playing a song you’re a little bit nervous and everybody’s a little bit nervous and really concentrating on getting the song together and it has this kind of energy that you can never get back. The second time you play it you’ve already got it once under your belt and it never goes back to that original energy. However, a year later after you’ve played the song 50 times, you can look at the difference between the first one, which might have this intense energy to it, and a year later where it’s developed and everybody’s added their parts.
It’s funny because even recently when we played up in Rochester in February, the guys [in Creek] rode all the way up and they were listening to a tape of us from ’83. So when they came into the dressing room they were all hopped up. They were like, “Oh my God, we listened to this version of”—I can’t remember what song it was, but, I think it was one of John’s, I think it was “Gypsy Blue”—“we listened to this version of this song and it did this and it did that.” And since then the song has migrated and changed, so it was cool because they had listened to it on the way up and then when we played it in Rochester everyone was like, “Let’s try it in the old arrangement, the way we used to do it in ’83.”
I always find it interesting to go back and listen to the older stuff and listen to where things were then and listen to where things are now and listen to how people’s perspective on things have changed, how their playing has changed. It’s a very cool thing. And some of this material is 20, 30, 40 years old and so after playing it that long, you could be bored out of your mind. But the way the songs are, they evolve, they’re constantly changing. And that right there keeps it interesting for us and in turn keeps it interesting for the fans that keep coming back and listening to the same songs over and over again. Even the same songs two nights in a row are not going to be the same and in 10 years it’s going to evolve and change and grow. It’s a very cool thing.
In terms of selecting those songs from night to night, what is the process like of making a setlist? Do you guys generally use one?
We used to work from a setlist, but now we don’t. I refuse to anymore. There are a couple of reasons why I refuse. I always thought that it’s very hard to tell beforehand what the energy of the moment is going to be like in the middle of a set. And there’s obviously guidelines that we have, like what’s good to start a set with, what’s good to end the set and what’s good in the middle of a set. We have these kind of guidelines but even those we try to break out of, we’ll say, “Let’s do the set backwards. Let’s start with something that we normally end the night with and things like that.”
But if you’re jamming two songs together and you know what the second song is going to be beforehand then it’s going to shape that jam in a certain way. And my personal preference is not have those preconceived shapes for the jams. I like the jams to go where they go and end up where they end up without having any sort of focus. That has its downside too as Mark [Mercier] is more than willing to point out. He hates directionless jamming. But I’ll say, “Well no, it’s not really directionless jamming as long as you’re creating melodies” but for me, yeah, I’d rather not have a setlist because I’d rather be able to have a jam go where it wants to go without having some sort of focus on it and in the middle of a set I would rather be able to feel the energy of the room, the energy of the crowd, the energy that’s left behind in the song we just played and pick a song that’s right there that fits the mode, the mood of thing, rather than have something preconceived to go on. I think I’m in the minority as far as that goes (laughs).
Well it sounds like your will has prevailed, at least in 2011.
I think nobody else wants to throw a setlist together, so they just let me have my way.
It’s funny too because when I was in the BK3 I was doing setlists every night. I was like, “We’ve got to have a setlist.” It was a whole different thing though because we had a very limited repertoire. You know Creek’s got hundreds and hundreds of tunes and BK3 I think we had maybe 40 tunes total and we were doing six nights in a row and we were trying not to repeat things. So I was a big proponent of setlists at first in BK3, and then after a while it was like, “Okay, let’s forget the setlist and let’s just see where things go.” I mean even in that project it came back, and I still prefer the open-ended, let’s see where it goes, kind of thing. To me it’s more of open ended creativity thing, to fly without a net.
In Mike’s band how does that play out?
Mike does a setlist every night. He and I kind of collaborate on it. He usually comes up with rough drafts and then we usually go to a café beforehand and talk about the setlist. He’ll show it to me and we’ll talk about it and talk about ideas and stuff like that. And then the other people in the band when they see it, they can make changes and adjustments or whatever. But yeah, with Mike’s band we try to use a setlist every night. He’s not opposed to the idea of not using a setlist because I’ve mentioned it to him before but Mike’s a very cerebral kind of guy. The beauty of that is he likes to be prepared, so he’ll generate a setlist for the show but more often than not we stray away from the setlist. He’ll come over to me in the middle of the set and say, “You know, this next song doesn’t feel right here, what if we do this instead” or “What should we do instead?” So even though he’s a big proponent of a setlist, if I go over to him in the middle of the set and say, “You know let’s do this,” he’s all for it. He’s gung ho.
The differences between Mike’s band and Creek, I find them interesting. Just the approaches to things are different, the approaches to jamming are different. I think I play differently from one band to the next…well obviously because of everything that’s going around me musically, but also the expectations as far as my role in the band and stuff. There’s tons of similarities but I find the differences very interesting.
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