Les, your solo project and side projects have had a large element of improvisation and jamming. Do you guys plan to do some more extended jams on stage or is it going to be on the more concise, psychedelic side of the spectrum?

LC: It’s a healthy mixture of both. Sean’s a freak, and he can be out there. We were all surprised, pleasantly surprised, when he sat in on “Pachyderm” that night. You know a big part of the jam element is the lack of fear and he was pretty fearless out there, he grabbed the ball and ran with it. It was pretty sweet. So I plan on tossing him the ball quite a bit. He’s got a great sensibility and he’s not afraid to jump in and swim.

SL: I would say that, I mean I have a band called Mystical Weapons that’s only improvisation. That’s the band I have with Greg Saunier from Deerhoof. But knowing that I’m going to be improvising with Les, all I can say is I’m practicing. It’s like a Rocky montage.

Les, the last couple years you’ve been pretty devoted to Primus and you’ve done some extended tours with all sorts of people as you’ve said, Dinosaur Jr. and Tool, as well as your own headlining staff. Have you found that this newest incarnation of Primus has shaped or changed your improvisational abilities?

LC: I don’t know. Now that Herb’s back, I don’t want to play strictly improvisational because that’s his world, going all over the place. I think with Primus, especially what’s going on with Tool, it was tighter, and less of the improv stuff. But we definitely have our space sections within certain songs, whether it’s “Pachyderm” or “American Life,” where you just got to take it to the moon. We’re planning on having a large repertoire of material to draw from because between all of us we have a shitload of music that we can bring forward.

As you said you’re all still in the planning stages, are there any corners of your own catalog that you normally don’t get to play with Primus or Frog Brigade or Fancy Band that you think are particularly fit for this group of players?

LC: I was on the phone with Sean talking about the same thing, like what we’re going to do, and I was like, “Okay, let’s just put songs that we want to potentially do and throw them at each other. See which ones seem like they would be a comfortable fit.” There’s a bunch of songs I haven’t played in a long time because I’ve been doing Primus for five years. I was trying to play “David Makalaster” [Frog Brigade] the other day and I was like, “How the hell does that go again?” I had to dust off some cobwebs myself.

Bonnaroo turned 15 this year. Looking back at the first Bonnaroo Festival, do you have any memories of it and how have you seen it evolve?

LC: That was Frog Brigade, full blown Frog Brigade. I forget how many guys I had on the band in that one. That may have been one of the first shows I played with Tim Alexander again, he was in the very first Frog Brigade. He came on that tour and did Bonnaroo and that sort of brought him back to the band. At the time, that brought him back to Primus. It was also rekindling our musical relationship. I think we were like the second band to ever play on the main stage at Bonnaroo. I remember it being very hot and of course, I had on some sort of old, Scottish military jacket on and I was sweating my balls off. It was a freak show; it was a good freak show. I don’t know how many times I’ve played Bonnaroo. Three or four times, I don’t even know.

Oysterhead was part of the reason that I did this project. Primus was taking a year off because it had been going strong for five years and I was trying to fire up the old Oysterhead machine. Anyway, the schedules weren’t aligning. There I was during the tour, hanging out with Sean when I said, “Hey I’m looking for new work to do this year. What are you doing?”

SL: I played Bonnaroo with Shelia Morato once, but I hadn’t been there in a longtime. I love Bonnaroo. Those days it was probably different than now.

Sean, are you still writing toward another Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger record?

SL: Yeah, Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger is my band with Charlotte [Kemp Muhl] and we want to make another record. But this has sort of came up. I’m just playing it by ear. But right now, I’m producing a little for The Blacklist. They’re at my studio, and they’re just recording their record. That’s what I’m spending my time on now before I go off to tour with Les.

Les, you’ve seen the jamband scene evolve. In this day and age, psychedelic rock is bigger than it’s been since Sean’s dad was around. At the same time, the traditional jamband’s model has nearly dissipated. From your perspective, how have you seen it evolve in recent memory?

LC: I have seen the jam scene kind of floating in and out of me. I’m doing my thing with this group of individuals and that group of individuals. When I first got offered that Superjam in New Orleans, not even knowing what the hell it meant, I called Trey [Anastasio of Phish] because I was like, “Oh, he’s a jam guy.” He said he would do a project with Stewart Copeland and me. I think that was him saying, “I don’t really want to do this but if we get Stewart Copeland, then I’ll do it.” I remember going to do the first Oysterhead gig thinking, I’ll just jam on this stuff, let’s not do any of our songs. I think we did one or two covers and they were sort of last minute. Stewart was even worse than me, he was like, “What are you talking about? We’re just gonna jam.” So when we realized, “Wow, there are people out there that like that.”

We used to do that just hanging out in the garage all the time. Just sit with some friends; pack a bunch of shit into the garage, and that was what you did. That really opened my eyes to the notion that, “Hey, there are people out there that want to see you dance on the edge and just see if you can fall off or not. Or just see how gracefully you do fall off, and theoretically land again.” For me, when people would say the “jam” thing, I’d think, “That’s the Dead…and Phish,” not knowing all this other stuff. I knew Galactic because they’re friends of mine, and going into that whole world of seeing different bands. Now it has evolved so much more, I mean we’re talking ancient times now. I mean 2000 and 2001, it doesn’t seem like it, but that’s a long ass time ago. Most of the time, I don’t even know who the hell is who. I see these people at festivals and say, “Oh, that’s cool.” But most of the time I’m fairly oblivious to what’s going on.

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