One thing you mentioned is that initially you just called your friends, and a lot of those friends still come out. That’s one of the things I enjoy about Bowlive, the loose vibe where it is a collection of musicians who feel comfortable together and are just going after it.
Definitely. And to me, it’s changed my general view on putting shows together. I love being tight and I love rehearsal, but when I originally went into Bowlive, we tried to rehearse really hard on all this stuff, but then someone else would show up and we’d learn something completely different. It’s not really learning specific arrangements of songs, it’s about just being prepared for whatever’s gonna happen. It’s really just about letting that happen. Where a lot of people might go, “Oh he’s here, but we don’t really know those songs” we’ll say, “We don’t really know that song but we’ve heard it, so let’s try it.” And there are train wrecks and there are certain times where it’s amazing because maybe Alan didn’t know the tunes and he put a whole different beat to it, but it was amazing. We did “West LA Fadeaway” with David Hidalgo and Alan and Neal had never heard it. I was so happy because I had wanted to do Grateful Dead songs for so long, so I had to sneak them in without anyone knowing. They were like, “Oh man, that’s a bad ass tune!” And I was like, “If only I could tell them that it was the Grateful Dead.” It turns out Peter Costello let it out later that it was the Dead.
What was their take after the fact?
Neal was like “I can’t believe you got me to play a Dead song!” Because I was always like, “One of these days you’re gonna play Dead songs” and he’d be like, “Nah.” I think he’s coming around slowly but surely.
Since this is year five, I know that a number of people would like to hear your highlights from previous Bowlives.
You know – just the guitar dork inside me – when John Scofield plays with us I just freak out. Even though he’s my friend and even sort of a mentor, I’m still his biggest fan ever. When I get to hear him improvise over our songs, that’s a big one for me. And moments that I never thought would happen…We did “Flash Light” with Bernie Worrell and he did the intro and we rented a String Ensemble [a synthesizer produced in the 1970s], which is the exact thing he played. Just for this one ten second moment I had him playing my old Moog keyboard and a Rhodes and an organ. We set him up like he had been in the studio, and when he went into that intro for “Flash Light,” we literally couldn’t play because we were freaking out so hard. And he was so amped, too, to be playing it on the original keyboard and all that. That was a moment I’ll never forget, for sure.
On Saturday you’ll be performing an afternoon show billed as Bowlive For Kids. Can you talk a little bit about that?
There has always been a ton of people who want to bring their kids to it. That’s our age now, most of our friends have kids. Then other times there are underage high school kids and all-ages kids that wanna come. We get messages on Facebook and whatever, so we just tried it one year and it was really fun, everyone really loved it. I don’t even know who came up with that idea – probably Shapiro – but we just tried it one weekend randomly and we only announced it a few days before. And it did really well, because all the people that had been hanging out from the scene every night, we got to meet their kids. Also, I have three nieces and they never really get to see what I do or what we do. So they always come and get on stage and dance around and have a great time.
And musically, that’s just a straight-on Soulive show?
We just play our stuff. Sometimes we’ll bring kids on stage. We had George [Porter Jr.] do it with us last year and we played some stuff we hadn’t done before. We did like, “How Sweet It Is” and other kind of tunes that they could sing along with. We don’t edit too much, though, we just do our thing.
The show that night [March 15] includes a special set of London Soulive [a collaboration with the London Souls]. You’ve know them for a while but in terms of the material you’ll draw from, what can people expect?
It’s funny because when you called I was literally just sending them a list of tunes in an email. We’ve done a couple tunes here and there where they will sit in. Actually New Year’s Eve they opened for us and we did three or four songs at the end with all of us together. And I thought that was great so we were like, “Let’s do that at Bowlive.” We have a few songs already that everybody knows but I just sent a few more that popped up in my mind the other week. We’ll probably run through them a few more times at soundcheck, but again it’s just stuff that we all know, plus we’re gonna do one of their original tunes that I did on the record with them. It’s stuff that we’ll just have fun ripping on.
In terms of other guests showing up, who might be unannounced, how many of those do you lock in advance versus just seeing what might come together on the night of a show?
It’s both. There’s a couple I know right now are pretty much confirmed, and then others just show up. Sometimes I’ll just be like, “Hey, wow, this guys in town tomorrow.” Then sometimes people email me or text me and say, “This band’s playing at this place tomorrow, you should invite them.” It happens all different ways, but the ones that I know really well and I know are gonna be around, generally I’ll try to have a night that works with them. Or if other people they know are playing I’ll be like, “Hey come down; we can do this kind of vibe or do this song.” That sometimes will firm up who’s gonna be there and when.
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