I wanted to talk a little about your relationship with Tommy Stinson. You knew those guys, The Replacements, when you were younger. And then you played with them recently. How did that relationship form and develop?
Tommy is one of many relationships that I am so fortunate to have that are extensions of my dad’s relationships. He had thousands of friends, man! He was such a great person, and musician and record producer. He was such a great teacher, too; he taught a lot of bands and musicians. He produced Pleased To Meet Me, the Replacements record, back in [1986] they recorded it. That’s when I met him, and they let me play some guitar noise on one song. [Paul] Westerberg and Tommy were always super sweet to me, really nice, and it’s one of my favorite records. Some people don’t know, but Westerberg plays in a lot of open tunings as well. He blew our minds, because he was writing pop-punk rock-and-roll songs in open tunings that we’d never—you know, my dad and I didn’t know anybody doing that. Keith Richards [has his] thing in open tuning, [but] this was even another further extension of using open tunings. Tommy was like 20 or 21 at the time; I was 13 or 14. And we stayed in touch, especially after Dad passed. Chuck Prophet, Tommy Stinson, a lot of different musicians on the scene, they reached out to us, and we stay in touch.
Tommy is working on a new solo record that I played on, and we played some shows together. But I’ve been so busy that I had to pass the gig over to my friend Steve Selvidge, who plays with The Hold Steady. He’s a Memphis guy. His dad, Sid Selvidge, and my dad, they were in the Neutrons together. When Steve and I grew up, because we were little kids watching them, we were like, “That’s cool! I wanna do that.” Steve’s a great guitar player, and obviously more suited for the gig, because Tommy quit calling me as soon as I referred Steve. [Laughs] But I’ll tell you what, man, I play a lot of different types of music with a lot of different people, and usually it’s easy and inspired and just doing my thing. But playing with Tommy was hard, man, because I’m not a melodic power punk-pop player, and I don’t listen to that type of music. Even though Tommy is one of my favorite songwriters and I love his music, I don’t play that style, and it was hard. It was funny: it was humbling, to work on that project and to not do as well as I should’ve. [Laughs] It’s true. The gigs were easy because I could just play my way through, but recording that style—it’s good to know that there are limitations. That didn’t come out right, but do you know what I mean? I can do a lot of different things, but that’s hard.
Speaking of playing with different people, you’ve played with Phil Lesh and Robert Plant, pretty big names. What is it like being on stage with artists of that caliber?
Oh man—Dad used to say, “You have to play every note like it’s your last, ‘cause one of ‘em will be.” And that’s the thing, it’s just being in the moment. The Allman Brothers called it “hitting the note.” You’ve just got to be in the moment and get it together and stay focused on the music. Col. Bruce Hampton gave me the bed advice, and it applies to this: Be it 10 people in the audience or 10,000 people in the audience, don’t let that throw you either way. It’s just your ego twisting you. Either you’re frustrated it’s not a big crowd, or you’re intimidated that it’s such a big crowd, it’s still just your ego getting in the way of your relationship with the music and the moment. Same thing if you’re playing with Phil Lesh or Robert Plant. You’ve just got to concentrate on the music and just do your thing. Both of those guys were so inspiring and intelligent and hilarious. Phil Lesh gave me the best compliment ever at one point: He walked over and was like, “You’ve got the proper type of mind!” I was like, “Alright!” [Laughs] It was so much fun.
The Word got going again last year with the new album and the tour. How is that going? How was that year for you guys, and do you have plans coming up for 2016?
Man, making the Soul Food record was so much fun, and the tour was off the chain. Playing with Robert—Cody and I just adore that. It’s as good as it gets, you know? Robert is such an inspiring player because he’s like me; he’s kind of a destructive improviser. He’ll break the song down just to make something new and fresh happen. He’s happiest when he’s just improvising. That’s what The Word does best, ensemble improvisation. For us, we don’t do that a lot; we improvise a lot within frameworks, based on structures. But just a room full of people improvising free, especially in front of a large audience, it’s really, really fun. I just adore it. For me, my thing is I try to stay out of the way. Keep the rhythm driving, but leave the room. I just do a lot of single-note rhythm patterns, way up high on the neck. We’ve got Medeski’s huge power, and Robert has a huge palate, so keep it moving but stay out of their way. And we’re gonna go to Australia next month, so we’re excited about that.
And with the Allstars—Chris Chew, who has been playing with you in The Word, is still out of the lineup?
He quit the band three-and-a-half years ago. He quit the band to drive buses. He loves driving. He was already a truck driver, then he quit back in ’99 to go on the road with us. Then, on the road with us over the years, he started driving tour buses. He fell in love with it, and it’s a very lucrative job. Drivers make a lot more than most musicians sleeping in the back. There was a time when we’d ask him to go on the road with us, but he was too busy driving, you know? He loves doing it. We played together with The Word, and we do this and that, but Cody and I are recording right now, and the phase we’re in right now is we’re experimenting as a duo. We’ve been using arpeggiators, different keyboards—not playing along with sequences, but interactive arpeggiators. It’s really fun. It’s aggressively a duo record. It’s real aggressive musically and sonically, too. It’s pretty gnarly. It’s our twentieth anniversary. We started the band in June, 1996. So we’ve been recording our new record and we’re finishing up for release later in the year.
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