Shifting from the album towards your roots with The Dead, I know that all the guys minus Matt have various roots in the Grateful Dead world, and the Dessners never actually saw them live but that was some of the music that they really like, and your brother said that he did see them live. I know, obviously, you’ve seen them before. Can you talk a little bit about how you got into their music?
Weirdly, I feel like I missed them at the time. I saw them in ‘93 and ‘94 with my brother, and once, I think, by myself. I don’t really remember the second time. But anyway, not peak period Grateful Dead, but definitely an amazing experience. Really, I was in high school with a ton of friends who were fans, but I was more into punk rock and skateboarding and that stuff in high school. I was definitely aware of the band at that point, but I didn’t see them in the ‘70s, you know what I mean? I had many opportunities to see them, actually, in the last peak period in like ‘89-‘90. I think I went to the Cincinnati Garden, not to the show but just down to the parking lot to see and be like, “This is crazy.”
I had friends who were way into it who were then my roommates in college. We had a house and they lived upstairs and they were always playing everything. Then I kind of got into it around ‘90 onward, and then the end happened in ’95 and it was a bummer. Then, actually, in college, I had this thing with a fan, and then saw a lot of the different other bands in the Dead [universe], like RatDog, different ones here and there. I dragged my wife to a few—much to her chagrin. She’s more of a goth or, you know, that music. She’s like “Yeah, this is my curse. I didn’t like them when I was a kid and now here I am, dating and now married a to Deadhead.” I don’t know, it kind of stuck with me as a thing. It’s always sort of reassuring in a way. It’s a capsule of time, obviously, a 30-year capsule of time. The music, as I’ve gotten older, has resonated more emotionally, I guess.
I was into Phish with my brother in probably ’91. I’m trying to think of the last Phish show I saw…I guess they went on a hiatus in my Phish career. I saw a lot of Phish shows with my brother. That was a fun, totally different thing. I liked it not because of the emotional resonance, but more for the chops. I was like, “Cool, this is an impressive thing.” It was cool. I guess we saw Phish kind of as the Grateful Dead was finishing and Phish was starting, and there was that whole period of time. We weren’t big jamband guys but we were aware of it. As far as going to 50 shows or spending all summer on tour, my brother did more touring with Phish than I did. We went to a couple of New Year’s shows together and here-and-there kind of things. It was interesting to see how it transitioned.
It’s funny. Now kind of looking back, I really appreciate all of this early stuff with [the Dead] and how they were sort of indie-rock, in 1965 through 1980. Then they became the phenomenon. But you kind of love everything about the Grateful Dead in that way, looking back. It’s kind of like a historical document of 30 years. You’re just kind of picking out the little stories and the trajectory of their career and how they invented all of that stuff—the festivals, the sound systems, the whole thing. There is no Bonnaroo without the Grateful Dead.
Have you found that, in the last few years, you’ve been getting more into it in terms of the project you’re working on and also the fact that you’re older and it hits you in a different way?
I think so, yeah. I start to recognize the effect that it has had on my life. Like, all of these things have happened, not because of the Grateful Dead but other things, like new projects and cool little things and meeting new people. It’s a positive thing in that way. It’s always been fun. I’ve always been a fan. It’s kind of nice to see something around it. And I get to DJ their music at a bar!
When The National started and came to mass popularity, I don’t think people would think that you’d have a regular Grateful Dead night at a bar.
I feel like there’s always this thing where the fans and the culture around the Grateful Dead is everyone’s least favorite thing—the larger world’s least favorite thing. The perception of The Dead is based on their fans. I love all of it, but of course I could see people not liking the band or having an idea about the band based around the culture.
It was definitely a divide back when The National started, but I think I went to a typical Midwest, American public school high school. You’ve got everything. You’ve got punk rockers and metal dudes and hippies and the whole thing. It was kind of iconic, that stuff.
We started our Dead night in February [of 2015], the first one. And we were like, “Oh, let’s do it again!” Like, alright. It’s fun to do. People like it. This night, there’s no band, but there are good bands. The first three or four months there was a band. The first time was awesome, because it was like, “Alright, there’s a band coming in at 7:00 to 10:00” or whatever. The band was Gent Treadly, who I kind of knew. As soon as they came in and set up their stuff, it was kind of like this ragtag group of dudes, and we were just drinking, out here smoking, and I was like, “Okay, how is this going to go? Don’t know.” And then they just fucking nailed it. That one, “Help On The Way,” just jazzed out, six-string bass. I was like, “Holy Shit.”
The Freaks and Geeks mixture of people.
Absolutely. So I went to high school—I graduated in ‘91, minus four—and all that stuff was happening at the same time. Some of it was like, pre-that, some of it was happening contemporarily. I kicked myself all the time saying, “Man, if I had just gone in ‘89, ’90.” It would’ve been amazing! The last run and the whole thing. Woulda coulda shoulda. I remember that specific day Jerry died. I was doing laundry in my basement and I heard that and just started crying. Bummer, man.
It’s funny to see people who are contemporary to the sort of peak periods of the Grateful Dead who then started their own music careers based on them a little bit, but also other music and punk that was happening. It’s crazy. Because Yo La Tengo is very jammy, you know? But not like The Grateful Dead.
It’s interesting how all of that has been affected. Fugazi has an archive that’s rivaling the Grateful Dead as far as every show is different and that whole thing. Pearl Jam has been doing this, and Wilco—all of these bands that have very lengthy setlists are all owed to the Grateful Dead.
Do you find that The National is influenced by the Dead in that sense? Because, when I first heard you, it was not clearly four Grateful Dead fans of varying levels.
I think the music does not scream Grateful Dead in every way, but I think the aesthetic and the way of operating, in a way—we’ve always done our own thing and kind of tried to build a little family around working and touring. For me, it’s always been a model as far as keeping it this small thing. Obviously, they were big and sprawled in later years, but, you know, just a family. Our sound guy has been with us for 10 years now.
Definitely, I agree. I think that their model can be seen.
Yeah, they sort of bore all of that. I think some of it was that they thought about it, and some of it just happened, you know? Because it didn’t exist. As far as the music and the way that we play live shows, I always think about it when I’m playing, like, “Oh, wow, this is cool that we’re playing in front of anyone,” for one, and two, we think about varying the setlist. But we’re not a jamband, traditionally. But I think making it different every night and making it a unique thing—we’ll do shows, and especially if we’re in any Grateful Dead venue, like the Fox Theater, it’s like, “Woohoo! Show me the room where…” We’ve never played at Warfield or any of those. Weirdly, Berkeley, we played with Weir there. So I was freaking out inside.
In terms of The National, when you and Matt became friends, was that during your Dead period? Or was it like with your wife, where you weren’t into it and then later on, you’re like, “By the way, I’m this uber dork”?
We drove Matt to a Phish show at Deer Creek. We were in full-on camping mode. I was friends with him in college the first year we met, and we were both in music. He has a lot of funny music that he doesn’t admit to having. He had a Blues Traveler CD. He went to Miami University for a year or two and was in sculpture, and I think he was an RA. He has this little backstory that’s funny. He was definitely, like, an alterna-guy, but he lived in this house and bands would play at frat houses and stuff at Miami University. For a while he was not a huge reggae fan, because there was a lot of white reggae happening. Now he is. He’s into the syncopation now and polyrhythm and all that stuff. He had a Blues Traveler CD, and we were like, “Oh, Blues Traveler. Where’d you get that?” I’d never heard of it at that point.
It was that process of convergence. It was totally happening. The music we actually coalesced around was like Pavement, Guided By Voices, the Pixies, all of that stuff around that time when it was happening at the time. We had a little band in college that was nothing like any of that, but also trying to do that kind of stuff with some friends. We met because he came to see our show at Bogart’s in Cincinnati, and my brother and my friend Mike and myself had a three-piece band out of high school into college, and Matt constantly likes to tease me that I was dressed up as a jester handing out hamburgers. I’m like, I’m pretty sure that was Mike, but cool if you think that about me. That was early on in our friendship and our musical thing. We got into anything that was happening in the ‘90s alt-rock, like Dinosaur Jr. and all of that stuff.
What kind of music was the jester band?
It was like Red Hot Chili Peppers meets some bad funk-ish kind of stuff and some moody alternative stuff from the early ‘90s.
The Chili Peppers could’ve been a jam band if they came out 10 years later after their hits went a different way. George Clinton and Flea obviously could’ve done whatever they wanted.
Interesting to study, because we love Mother’s Milk, and then it became something beyond. Whatever. Music is music.
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