How much thought went into deciding which songs you were going pair with these?

Funny you should ask that. Yes, the story goes deeper. I was very specific about which songs I wanted to put with each brand. The first track that came out was paired with Stone, the Super Hop Over the Top. I decided to go with this Billy Preston-esque song. It reminds me of early Billy Preston. Super clavinet-driven, high paced funk song. “Here We Go,” which is kind of an afro-based Paul Simon type song is written for Hoopla. And then my single, which is “Happening Now” is more like ab LCD Soundsystem, more dance-oriented song. Bonnie Paine is also on that song too.

So with all this brewing now, are you first and foremost a musician or a brewer? [laughs]

I am certainly a musician. I’m a faux brewer. You can quote me on that. I brew the best I can at home, but really they do what they do and I do what I do. We stay in our corners.

You’ve got this Brew-R.U.—or is it Brewu?—thing coming up tomorrow at the festival.

It’s a play on words. Instead of “guru”, it’s “brewru.” So the Brewru experience is, I essentially grab musicians and brewers from around to do this. In this case it’s Bell’s Brewery. Then we put a contest online to get some homebrewers involved, and we have a couple homebrewers, and then Joel [Cummins] from Umphrey’s McGee and I have a bunch of open-ended questions that describe the craft and the art behind improvisation and the craft and art behind brewing. So it’s really fun. I’ll talk about balance: it could be the best Warren Haynes solo in the entire world but if it’s ten times louder than the mix, it’s not a good balanced mix. Versus, you know, a beer. It can be a great hop-load, but if you have hops over the top, sometimes it’s just not to your taste. It’s about trying to balance the music and balance the beer.

That’s really cool. Moving on to String Cheese now, how have you guys felt about the release of Song in My Head?

Great. I think all the reviews have been really solid. It’s so funny, because I’ve been listening to it again—I put it away for a while, and I listened to it again—and it totally holds up. It’s very in-your-face for a String Cheese album. I think the biggest challenge for us is to play some of the arrangements that we played on live versus the studio version. Specifically “Let’s Go Outside,” there’s a little bridge section where Jerry Harrison pulled me out to California and we sat down and wrote that bridge together and I remember him sitting over the couch as I was writing the lyrics, being like “That won’t work. That won’t work. Try a different word there.” It’s a difficult way to write. But then taking different aspects of our studio album and transferring them to live performance has been tricky. I’m just so excited that String Cheese came out with a new album. I’m so psyched that—I feel like we’re being more vibrant. We’re producing new music, even if it’s old music, we’re producing music. Meanwhile we have a bunch of new songs, so we’re ready for the next one for sure.

Wow, really? So more songs in the works for an upcoming LP?

Yeah, I don’t know when exactly. I imagine we’ll go in the studio in the next six months. But yeah we could just do it. Do it again, like, have a new album this time next year. You can quote me on that, but don’t count on that.

Would you guys bring back Jerry Harrison for that?

Good question. I think he’d for sure be one of the first thoughts in our mind. It would be nice to have him involved from the very beginning because, as we said, last year we essentially had already recorded everything and then he came and helped us sculpt after the fact. It’d be cool to have him from the beginning with song structure, etcetera.

You guys are obviously hitting up a bunch of festival stops lately. Your Jazz Fest set, which I was at, was fantastic.

I’m glad you enjoyed Jazz Fest—for us it was a bit of a whirlwind. We all showed up the night before and kind of just woke up and were onstage, actually. “Oh who made the setlist, what’s happening?” But the Blind Boys, in my mind, kind of saved the show. They’re incredible musicians.

The Soul Rebels were great with on “Black & White” too.

Anytime you’re at Jazz Fest, it’s great to have musicians to collaborate with. We’re lucky. We’re lucky to be able to do this for a living. We’re lucky to be able to collaborate with this level of musicianship.

So you guys are doing a bunch of festival dates now, is there anything planned for the fall. Maybe a tour on the new album?

Yes, there will be. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to speak about, but there’s definitely a Fall plan, probably post-Halloween. Most likely East Coast, because we’re already there. And then the thought is to do New Year’s and then do another tour in that wintertime.

West coast?

I’m guessing West Coast, because it’s a really nasty time to be on the East Coast [Laughs]. Sorry, nothing against East Coast, but you know, East coast in January, February can be challenging. We’re already there October 31st and on after that. So I can’t really commit to either one, but I imagine that’s the way it’s gonna roll.

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