Jay at Lockn’ 2014- photo by Dean Budnick

JPG: You were at the Chicago and Santa Clara shows…

JB: Oh yeah. I was the official Fare Thee Well photographer. So, I was at all the rehearsal days, each of the stadiums, all of the shows and the individual portraits that were up during “Attics of My Life.” We shot those at one of the rehearsals a week before the shows.

JPG: Now, your other books that are available to everyone – Guitars That Jam and Hippie Chick …

JB: I had this idea to do this Guitars That Jam book that came about from when I did my JAM book because on the inside cover of the JAM book were all these close-up photos of these guitars. It got so much attention and people were digging those close-up detail shots that I thought I should do a book like that.

At the same time I had been talking about doing this Hippie Chick book. I didn’t think that they would happen in the same year but it just so happened that they did. Timing-wise, it worked out that way. Not the smartest idea to put out two books in the same year, let alone four. Typically, you do a book a year, a book every two years. I’m putting out eight years of work in one year.

Hippie Chick, I just felt strongly that that book needed to come out this year. It’s been kicking around in my head for a long time.

There’s a bunch of quotes in the book. We interviewed 81 women via email with a series of questions and that’s where all the quotes in the book came from. And then, there’s Edith Johnson who I met through Lockn’. She has a blog called Festival Girl. We talked and I brought her on board to collaborate and write the essays.

The book is technically called Hippie Chick: A Tale of Love, Devotion & Surrender. She wrote three beautiful, brilliant essays – one entitled “Love, one entitled “Devotion” and one entitled “Surrender.” Then, she wrote a great introduction as well.

I’m super-proud of this book. I think it’s beautiful. I love this book. I think people that are fans of live music are going to really connect with this book as well. There’s only one photograph of one person playing a guitar in the whole book and that’s Grace Potter. So, it’s a little bit of a departure.

JPG: In the press release you describe it as “visual anthropology.”

JB: I like to call what I do with all my fan stuff visual anthropology. Really, that’s what this is; anthropology being defined as the study of humankind. This is a tribe. Anthropology doesn’t just need to be studying a tribe in Africa that lives in the jungle or in the Amazon Rainforest or in the highest mountains of Tibet. Starting from the Haight-Ashbury 50 years ago in 1965, this is a tribe of people that needs to be documented and makes up an important part of pop culture history.

We’re rock ‘n’ roll people. You’re a rock ‘n’ roll guy. I’m a rock ‘n’ roll guy. This is our tribe. These are our people. This is our scene.

This book represents this one slice of this tribe and who they are and what it means to them to have live music in their lives on a regular basis. These are women who go to festivals all summer long and they go to concerts all year long. These are people that would take off all their vacation days from work so they can follow a band on tour — Phish, moe., the Dead, Phil, String Cheese, Widespread etc. Here are women explaining why and what it means to them in their own words with photos to go along with it.

JPG: Why did you feel that it was a book you needed to put out this year rather than wait?

JB: It was something that had been brewing in my head since I did JAM. So, it was on my schedule in general. It was on there to do before Guitars That Jam. I was already full steam ahead on it. The Lockn’ book isn’t for sale and I had no idea that we were going to be doing a Fare Thee Well book when I started Hippie Chick. It wasn’t even on the radar. When I started it Fare Thee Well wasn’t even announced and I didn’t know about it at the time.

Social media played a big part in it. I’ve been on Facebook since 2008 when my Traveling on a High Frequency book came out. I joined Facebook to try and help promote that book and get the word out. Obviously, Facebook has grown exponentially over the years since then. So, a few years ago I started posting a lot of pictures of all my old Deadhead friends from Dead tour in the ‘80s, and it really struck a nerve. It really resonated with people. I got a lot of really good positive feedback and people were excited to see those photographs. Then, as I kept shooting more festivals and I’d be shooting people raging at shows or hula hooping and I’d post those on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, and those photos were also getting a lot of attention.

Sometimes, I’d put a photo of a band that was playing at one of these festivals on Facebook and get x-amount of views and then I’d put a picture of a beautiful woman hula hooping and get three times as many views or 10 times as many views. So, the light bulb goes off on top of my head, “Hmmmm…” And then you get comments from people, “I’d love to see a book of your Deadhead photos,” and I don’t really have a book of Deadhead photos. I just don’t think that I have that many photos to really make that work but I do have, between new photos and old photos, I feel like I do have enough [for what became Hippie Chick. So, I thought that if I combined what I have from the ‘80s and the ‘90s with the Grateful Dead and what I’m shooting today there could be a cool book here. I kept developing and fleshing out the idea from there. Then, I met Edith and we started talking about content and words.

Many years ago there was an article in BAM magazine. I actually shot many covers for them. Before I started working for them, I believe it was in the late ‘70s, Blair Jackson, who we all know as a Grateful Dead historian among other things was the editor of BAM, and he wrote an article about the Deadheads called “A [Strange] Tale of Love, Devotion and Surrender” or just “Love, Devotion and Surrender,” which is also the title of a Carlos Santana/John McLaughlin album. So, when I came up with the title of the book I emailed Blair and said, “I think I’m going to do this book and I wanted to get your blessing to use the title “Tale of Love, Devotion and Surrender.” He said, “Of course, you can use it but you know it was an album by Santana and John McLaughlin.” I said, “Of course, I know it but my reference to it in terms of what I’m doing is your article in BAM magazine.” He connected those words to Deadheads and I connected them to my book.

Then, one day I woke up and had an epiphany. “Let’s divide the book into three sections – Love, Devotion and Surrender. We started talking about photos that would fit in each section but any photo really fits in any section.

Then, I thought about writing an essay for each section, and even that there’s a lot of crossover. How do you first come to love a band? Then, how do you fall in love with that band? What do you love about that band and the scene?

Devotion is what do you do when you’re devoted to that band? You collect ticket stubs, live recordings and memorabilia and posters and buttons and you travel long distances or you wait in line all day so you can have your spot on the rail.

Then, you get to surrender and surrendering is letting go, letting loose and being in the moment, experiencing it where you’re tuning out the rest of the world and it’s just you and the music or you and your people, you and your family that you’re at the show with.

They really are applicable to what the visuals are because there’s all this love, all this devotion and all this surrender that happens. If you’re going to go see a band like Phish or moe. or String Cheese over and over and over and over again, you need to love what you’re doing and you need to be devoted to what you’re doing and you have to be devoted to seeing when tickets go on sale, arranging your travel and connecting with your friends and, of course, you need to surrender once you get there and just let it be.

JPG: With JAM, Guitars That Jam and Hippie Chick, it seems to be a trilogy.

JB: It kind of is. JAM and Guitars That Jam are certainly very much connected and Hippie Chick is also. I agree with that. I can see that. For me it was also really exciting to do a book that was not about music but is still about music. If we’re counting Lockn’ and Fare Thee Well – I believe Fare Thee Well is going to be my 11th coffee table book – and everyone of them has been about music and musicians, and now I have Hippie Chick, which is about music but not about musicians. This book is super special to me. This book is about fashion and passion and inspiration. Passion and inspiration for me are cornerstones of who I am and what my career is and what motivates me to do what I do because without that passion and without that inspiration why keep doing the same thing over and over again?

So, I get inspired by the bands that I see and the music that they’re playing and the instruments that they’re holding. I’m passionate about it but I’m also inspired by the passion that I see in the musicians or the fans in terms of hippie chick. So, it’s this reciprocal thing.

The girls are the muse for my lens. The girls are the muse for the band. The band is the muse for the women. It goes back and forth. Everybody is inspiring everybody. It’s not this groupie thing. It’s not about that at all. It’s a reciprocal thing. The women are fueling the energy of what’s going on with the band and the band is fueling the energy of the women. It’s a two-way muse. Then, there’s me with my camera. It’s the same thing. I’m inspired by turning my lens on the music and I’m also inspired by turning my lens on the women that are raging to the music.

JPG: That brings up this. When I’m taking photos I’m usually focused on what I want to do, making adjustments while still grooving, to some degree, to the music. You’re usually taking photos throughout the whole set, are you still able to enjoy the music?

JB: I enjoy every minute of it. For me I can’t go to a show and not take pictures. That bothers me more. I can’t enjoy a show if I’m not taking pictures of it. If I’m at a show where I can’t shoot or I’m not shooting for whatever reason all I see are photographs that are not being taken.

Here’s a quote from the book by Jenn Ritchie which I really love. “I see being on the rail or in the pit as a responsibility to be present, to take the energy and music they are sharing, to receive it, to life it, to meet it and push it and them to a higher more massive space and sound.” The picture is of her in the pit dancing at moe.down and moe. is onstage.

There’s another quote by her with the same kind of vibe. Think about how much energy is at a Dead show or a Phil show or a Furthur show or anything like that. “We are all here in the moment, lifting the energy of the space, encouraging the musicians to push the envelope, to give more, to play harder, to shred relentlessly and they do. I’ve witnessed it, and it heals me. It heals us all.” So, there’s that back and forth thing between the band and the audience.

Does that happen at a show where there are no people in the pit because it’s a big rock band and there’s that separation between audience and band? There might be 10,000 or 20,000 people with their hands in the air cheering and screaming, and there might be some people up in the front row singing along to every song but look at some of these jamband festivals where – even some of the smaller shows – the audience is more connected to the band. That energy is going back and forth. Have you ever been to a Phish show where every single person in the room is not standing up the entire show? Have you been to any jamband show where pretty much everybody is not standing up? It’s not like that at other big concerts. People sit. They go back and forth. It’s definitely not like that all the time.

That’s the thing about the jamband world. There’s this energy that’s coming from the audience that fuels the band and the energy from the band fuels the audience. It’s like this mobius strip that goes around and around, sort of like the Lockn’ logo.

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