Last year when I talked to you guys, you said that you were thinking about releasing another album pretty soon. Can we expect that material to be coming on a forthcoming album sometime in the future?
Yeah, we’ve actually finished recording it, but we’re kind of weighing our options on how it will be released. We’re sort of hanging on to that for a while even though we finished making it a little while ago.
I know last summer, you guys did those Talking Heads deconstructed sets. Those were pretty cool. Any plans to do anything like that in the future?
We had Pan Astral, which is the singer Gabe Otto’s band, out with us on the West Coast. So every night they played with us, we did a different Talking Heads song with them and that was fun to do. As far as another full-blown show, I could potentially see us doing some Talking Heads sets in the future at some point. Especially since we only did it at Gathering of the Vibes and the one set out at Red Rocks. It might be fun to do it in some other cities. As far as doing other tributes to other acts, it would just have to be the right thing. I mean there are a lot of things that makes sense about the Talking Heads. They kind of fit our style and instrumentation and are pretty well-known. Some of the other things that I would be inclined to do I would say would be a little less well-known.
What in particular?
One thing that I would love to do is New Order. The Clash, I think, would also be a lot of fun. But I know, in our band, I’m probably the biggest fan of those. I don’t think the other guys are that big of fans, but another one I’d do, and a lot of people don’t really know, is Brian Eno. Especially the trio of albums he did following his departure from Roxy Music. I think there’s a lot of really interesting material there but, again, that’s something that I don’t think a lot of fans know that music all that well. The last one that would be really awesome would be Television. I’m a huge fan of their Marquee Moon album. It would be awesome to do that one straight through sometime.
Well, I, for one, would love to see a Marquee Moon tribute. What else do guys have going on? Are you working on any side projects these days?
My side project is a little bit dormant. I did some shows in the fall where I was kind of putting together a new system, but Lotus has been so busy this year with recording. We did a massive tour at the beginning of the year, so I haven’t really done much with that. But we have less shows in the fall. We’re looking at putting together some Beard o Bees shows for the fall, so that’s something I’ll probably dig back into at some point this summer.
So we’ve got the Grateful Dead 50th anniversary this year,, and there’s a few big, celebratory shows coming up in Chicago and in Santa Clara. Were you ever a Grateful Dead fan growing up? Do you have any story you could maybe give us about a Grateful Dead experience?
Yeah, I got into the Dead first a little bit when I was in high school and actually saw Phil and Friends at Red Rocks. I think it was ’98 and I believe it was with, I think Kimock was playing, maybe Warren Haynes. I know Molo was playing drums. Actually, I think Kyle from String Cheese might’ve been playing keys. [Editor’s Note: Phil Lesh and Friends with Lesh, John Molo, Steve Kimock, Warren Haynes and Kyle Hollingsworth played Red Rocks on August 13 and 14, 1999]. But, yeah, I wasn’t super familiar with the music and I know he was really stretching out and getting weird with it. I remember there was, I think, “Fire on the Mountain.” It was maybe in 7/8 time, and it seemed pretty experimental. And then, some of the other times in the past 5 or 6 years when we’ve done festivals with Phil, it seemed like he had gone much more, in that 15 years, toward a more Americana sound, but maybe that was just the bands he had with him. But the Dead…they’re iconic. Right now, I feel like I’m hearing way too much about the Dead and it seems like every single night a Dead cover band is playing, so I feel like it’s drowning out a lot of other stuff right now. But it’s pretty amazing to see a band that’s gone 50 years and still holds that kind of cultural cache.
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