The sound you guys have live is very expansive for a sax, drums and keys. Obviously some of the instruments are being augmented in some ways. Can you elaborate on what exactly you guys are working with instrumentally?
John is playing a lot of keyboards. He has three different instruments that can produce bass sounds—Moog Taurus pedals, Hammond B3 organ through the Leslie speaker, and then another old analog synth that can play bass sounds. So he has a lot of options available, and he also has a lot of chordal, textural keyboards that can provide those polyphonic ideas. And then I’m playing a lot of chords on the saxophone. A lot of sections of the songs are I’m trying to replicate orchestral parts or horn ensemble parts. So I’m doing that, and occasionally playing melodies, lead lines, and so is John. Then Adam’s playing all these beats, different textures, on drums, and he also has electronic drums and sounds, too. So there’s a lot going on, as any good movie score needs.
A friend of mine described your sound as Bitches Brew era Miles Davis, updated for the 21st Century. With electronic, etc
[Laughs] Yeah, that’s really good. We talk about that. [Lettuce guitarist] Adam Smirnoff came to sit in with us in New York, and he had been listening to that Miles Davis song “Rated X” a lot. He was really into that, so he was bringing some of that flavor. We definitely have some ‘70s Miles in there. But for us it’s more compositional and more of a soundtrack-y kind of thing.
It’s such a fresh sound that I have a hard time pinpointing what exactly the influences might be. Beyond Miles Davis and movie scores, what else are you guys pulling from?
Well Miles is always an influence. But then so Bud Powell and Olivier Messiaen, Taraf De Haidouks and music from Sudan.
So from what I understand, the Brooklyn Bowl show only included two or three actual songs, with the rest being more or less off the cuff. How important is improvisation to what you guys are doing in the live arena?
Well we don’t do anything “off the cuff.” There’s a certain amount of improvising within themes, but there’s a lot of structure to what we’re doing on these shows for sure.
When you say there’s a lot of structure, does that mean you guys working with songs or ideas that are on the record? Are you working other ideas that you guys are bringing to the stage?
Well, structure doesn’t mean songs. Structures can be many different things.
The name, DRKWAV. It seems very appropriate for what you’re doing. How did you land on that?
When we started recording in the studio, we didn’t know what we wanted to do, and then every time we did something dark, the producer, Randall Dunn, he would say, “Do more of that, do more of that.” That just kind of became our mantra. So we started specializing. We’re a specialist, like an eye, nose and throat doctor.
One of the things that struck me, when I was at your shows, was that this needs to be at festivals. This needs to be happening at 1am at crazy festivals. Are there any plans to do that?
I don’t know. I mean, that’s up to the festivals. We don’t book the festivals, the festivals book themselves. I get a lot of fans ask that on websites, social media things, like, “why don’t you guys play here?” Well, we don’t decide that. We have to be invited. Tell the to invite us.
But you are interested?
Oh yeah, I’ll play anywhere, anytime. I love to play.
What does the future hold for you guys? The record’s out now, you’ve got the Jazz Fest show after the tour as well. What’s next after that?
I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see. This groups is very—the music’s very mysterious. So is everything else.
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