How do you occupy yourself at Camp Bisco when you’re not performing?
I’m in a constant state of preparing for that night’s show. I feel like the entire Camp Bisco for me is just preparing for the show. Even after the show is over then my mind switches over to, “Okay, I’ve got to get back to the hotel at some point soon so that I can get 7 hours of sleep because I’ve got two more shows tomorrow and one in the afternoon. And, there’s this act that I want to see, so I want to get there for that…”
At this stage of our career, I feel like the cool things that happen, kind of do so organically. We can talk about back and forth about covers, but the best ideas come from when you turn on the radio five minutes from the venue and an awesome song comes on and you pose it to the band as a suggestion and they say, “Great.” Or someone plays a lick to a song backstage and you’re like, “That sounds perfect. Let’s do that.”
Those are organic, and I want to allow the time for those organic ideas to harvest themselves. So at Camp Bisco we spend a lot of time in the practice room getting ready for the shows to prep stuff we haven’t really done before. Some ideas work, some don’t. The only way to find out is to try.
You’ve been at this for so long that I imagine some of the musicians on the festival bill grew up as Disco Biscuits fans and maybe even attended Camp Bisco. Has anyone ever taken you aside for a confessional moment to discuss that transition?
Two weeks ago I had that exact type of conversation with the keyboard player in Twiddle [Ryan Dempsey]. He grew up listening to the Disco Biscuits and learning Disco Biscuits stuff. I don’t think Twiddle or his playing sound anything like what we do, but it’s kind of cool that in some way we had some influence on another generation.
That’s kind of what the history of music is all about. You do your own thing and you pass that tradition on and then someone else learns it. In my opinion, you can’t really push the envelope forward with anything in music unless you learn from the past. I’m not saying the Disco Biscuits are a foundation the way that Mozart should be a foundation to any musician but we are a foundation for some people who were influenced by the ethos of our improvisation or by the songs or maybe even by the business plans that we formulated over the years. It’s kind of cool thinking about that and the same way that we were influenced by the ethos of improvisation, and the amazing songs and the business plans set forth by Phish or the Grateful Dead. These are the types of things that are passed on from generation to generation. Right?
Absolutely, and in this case, one can see it. There is a direct lineage.
You’re probably right and it makes me feel good thinking about it like that because to make a generalized interpretation of our conversation, that should be everyone’s existence on this earth—to influence other people, even if it’s just one person, and pass along some type of positivity. So for the Disco Biscuits to do that in a musical fashion, I feel really good about it. On the other hand, I also feel, “Hey, if we weren’t going to do whatever it is that we were doing 20 years ago and continue to do, somebody else would have.”
Maybe. But guess what? You did. I was there. I saw what happened.
And you wrote the book!
So I did…
[To that end, here’s some audio from the Biscuits’ encore at the Jam Band book release party which took place at Wetlands Preserve on 10/23/98].
No Comments comments associated with this post