As you’ve been writing new music for this project for The National, have you found that The Dead’s music has influenced you in new ways as a songwriter? Or has it always been so much a part of your ethos that it’s hard to tell if this project in particular has changed the ways you approach writing for The National?
Aaron: I would definitely say there is some influence in The National, but not so much in terms of being able to pick out. There are tropes and things that are interesting to see, habits that reappear, that kind of thing, but I don’t think they really influence us in the way that we would actually take things and repurpose them in The National. I do think the experimentation and the ambition they had in terms of pushing themselves with no rules, I think it gets the wheels turning in your mind, to forget a little bit about being concise for a second. At this point, I don’t think The National needs to write anything like we’ve already written.
At the same time that it’s a survey of all the style that The Dead touched, in a lot of ways it’s also a survey of the alternative movement moving from, some of these out-there ‘60s composers all the way through a lot of your peers and then some younger bands who are kind of just now making their mark.
Bryce: Well the other thing I would say about that is that one side of the music on this record is at a time when so much other music was immediately being heavily commercialized and the labels were starting to have so much power and marketing. The Dead did have this kind of independent streak where they were just doing things how they wanted to do it, and very often, in kind of non-commercial ways. Obviously, they did incredibly well, but they also, musically, were so committed to their own vision. But I think that spirit, which is in a way kind of punk spirit, is part of what makes them so important and influential to artists in our generation and younger. A certain sticking to your guns and seeing your creative vision through.
I think the way that The Dead have toured and the way that they presented their music is really the enduring legacy, even more than the improvisation.
Aaron: It’s more apparent than ever that The Dead kind of invented the touring rock band and that live legendary performance. The file sharing, the bootlegs, all that stuff is incredibly relevant to where we are today.
Was there a time in the last few years when you kind of felt yourself drift away from the music or were there other sounds that were more interesting to you as you advanced as a guitarist and started writing your own music?
Aaron: We formed The National in 1999, and I think when it really got serious a couple years into it, The Grateful Dead was probably not one of the big influences on the actual music we were writing. The music we were writing was a project of the chemistry between the people in the band, what Matt was interested in, Bryan, Scott, Bryce, and the way we were playing at that time. That had much to do with The Smiths and The Pixies and Tom Waits as it did with kind of the earliest music we took really seriously, which was The Grateful Dead and playing jazz, studying classical music. I think The Dead has retained the passion and the real love for that music that I, Bryce, Scott and Bryan have. I’d say probably 90% of the time the music that we listen to backstage is The Grateful Dead. There’s so much there, listening to live recordings it was always fascinating.
Especially, because that was some of the first music that both you as musicians learned, but also that brought some of you guys together as you mentioned.
Aaron: For sure, I could say the same thing about Neil Young or Dylan, a lot of the music we all listen to, because it was a band, it had a chemistry and a style between them when they’re actually playing.
For the track that’s listed as “Garcia Counterpoint,” which goes into “Terrapin Station Suite,” clocking in at over 60 minutes with some great orchestration, can you talk, one, about the recording of that and some of the compositional work that you did for the intro, and two, about how that connects to the original version of “Terrapin Suite?”
Brian: “Terrapin” was actually recorded in a slightly different, sort of merging of two bands where it was really The National with Grizzly Bear, specifically Daniel Rossen and Chris Bear. Similarly to us, they share this real love of the Dead’s music and have a deep knowledge of it. Part of the ambition of the project, in terms of really getting deeper into it, was we felt like doing “Terrapin” in the classic kind of way for the Dead. The orchestral suite that they composed was the most ambitious in terms of composition, but I don’t think they ever played it all the way through, maybe a couple times. What we did, essentially, is learn the band sections and then we transcribed the original takes and all the orchestration. And then I took that and I recomposed it, so you’ll hear little echoes of it.
“Garcia Counterpoint,” which essentially I composed using live fragments from Jerry. So I’m playing notes that he played live, and then was using them in different ways and layering them as texture.
What’s the track that’s called “Nightfall Of Diamonds?” Can you talk about that track and some of the people involved in that?
Bryce: “Nightfall Of Diamonds,” that’s Cass McCombs and the house band. Essentially, it’s a companion piece to the “Dark Star” song.
*It reminds me almost of the “Circles Around The Sun,” which was Neil Casal’s separate music he did for the Fare Thee Well Dead shows, and it reminded me a little bit of it where you reference all of these classic Dead themes while making new music and music that continues in that catalogue and that canon. *
Bryce: There had been a whole restlessness and creative expansiveness where it was always shifting and we thought it was very interesting that the music was continuing to evolve and is still evolving. We wanted to work in that sense, and in that way, there was a big satirical message at the centerpiece of the record. We’re really happy with how it turned out and the way it sounds.
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