Tea Leaf Green just wrapped up a pretty sizable tour during which the band revisited a lot of places they hadn’t been to for a while. Were there certain albums or specific periods that the band focused on during that recent run or some sections of the catalog the band decided to un-shelve after a few years?
Yeah, a lot of the new material did fall on the back burner. In preparing for shows, I got really excited for the album Raise Up The Tent, which was their 2008 release. I believe they were in the midst of just about recording it when Ben left the band and Reed stepped in. I’m not exactly sure who is on bass for that album. [Ed note: Mathis appears on the album, which was produced by Cracker’s David Lowery.] That album really struck me, and I felt like it was the most complete album that I listened to at that point. I dug in and charted every song on the album and started there. Then I started to bring my focus onto some other material. One of the other albums that stuck out were Living in Between and Midnight on the Reservoir. It turns out that we focused on mostly that era from 2002-2006 and 2008. I just picked out a bunch of songs and charted somewhere about 60.
They didn’t want me to go overboard and learn the entire repertoire, because they thought it would be more productive to learn around 40 songs really well rather than learning everything and being overwhelmed. We started focusing on that material and it felt great—it invigorated the band to be playing some of the material that hadn’t been played in maybe a decade. I could see the excitement in rehearsals with Trevor and Josh and Scott, because this is stuff that had a really big impact on them, especially in their earlier years when they were really breaking out into the scene. It became really fun to be like, “Oh what else we could bust out next?” Without even really having to try, I just kept bringing some older material to the table.
You are in a unique position to dig into Tea Leaf Green’s catalog and analyze the band’s stylistic ebbs and flows from a slight distance. Are there certain themes or conceptual developments that you observed after completing you pre-tour homework?
Good question. When you look into the albums in succession, you can hear the progression. The band is a two-headed dragon in a way. You have Trevor, whose music and poetry combined are really something special. Then Josh has his own style—a lot of his songs are heavier, but then he has some serious and deep, deep ballads. I feel like they really have a two-headed dragon of personalities coming through the music in a different way. They have this happy marriage between the two. Something very important to me is seeing the way their jamming progressed, especially in the mid-2000s where it’s improvisational but not just one person soloing; it’s collective improvisation. I think they do a great job of that. I do feel, as they progressed, that Reed added a third personality to the top of the music. Not just the rhythm section, which had its own personality; he added a third personality that I think was really strong and really benefitted the music. It was nice to see that, and something I’ve been concentrating on is how we can keep this collective improvisation where even if Josh is shredding over the music, it’s not just him soloing over a band, and there’s actually movement coming from the bass and piano—things that are helping build tension and build relief to that tension as a collective whole. The concept of a solo in itself, by name, is something that focuses on one person, but this collective improvisation has been the most intriguing part to me. It’s something I love in music, because there’s a lot more that someone can do to support a solo that you don’t always find in music. Some people just lay back and play their part and let someone solo over it. This is a lot more sophisticated and has a lot more room for success.
In the mid-2000s, Tea Leaf Green grew from a classic-sounding jamband to more of a rock-and-roll-based band. But it seems seems like, in more recent years, they’ve come back to the jamming you just mentioned. Do you think that was a collective decision or a natural progression?
Just from my opinion, it comes from what I’ve been diving into lately. Before the last few months, I wasn’t around or even technically a fan even, though I enjoyed their music. The band went through a natural period of growth and songwriting—maybe that was the rock-and-roll period. As you get older, you start to blend styles, and you can concentrate on songwriting but also enjoy the parts that involve improvisation and jamming and more of an exploratory platform. My guess is that they ended up marrying the two and eventually came back to the jam thing because of how fun it is to improvise and to make every show different and to really have fun with the music. It grew into a rock-and-roll band with an emphasis on songwriting and continued to grow while bringing the jam back into it.
As we mentioned before, Tea Leaf Green’s recent tour was both their longest run in a while and also their most extensive East Coast tour in a few years. Was there an official band decision to slow down on touring a few years ago, and was there a moment when the band decided to return to the road on a more full-time basis?
Most of that happened without me, so I can only speculate. I was just the lucky soul who got the call. I would say there are two big factors: one of them being that [this is] a band that had done this for about 15 years straight, playing 180 shows a year. You start to spend half your life on the road, and it starts to wear on you. It affects your relationships, like the guys who are married. It grows on you, and I think they were looking for a break. Again, this is speculation, but I’m assuming they just needed a break from touring for a bit. The second part of that, which I think is important, is Josh starting a family. He got married and had twins two years ago—two twin boys—and I think that had a big impact on them deciding to take a break from heavy touring. Those were the main things that I could see from an outsider’s standpoint. As far as moving forward, I think you can’t get rid of the passion involved in doing something you love like this. It’s hard to stay away from it for very long. I think the band was really excited to get back into it and especially back to the East Coast where they built a great following. When you haven’t hit a market aside from a few festivals, when you haven’t hit a market in four or five years…I think they made the decision to go to the East Coast for that reason. Not just to show their appreciation, but also give a nod to what they’ve grown there and give back to the fans by bringing it back there first. As far as the future goes, we don’t know exactly what it will hold, but coming from my standpoint, I’m excited to do whatever they have in mind.
It sounds like the future is not planned out yet, but looking ahead, does the band have any new material they’re working on, and have you brought any original material to the band yet?
I believe that it’s something that will happen in the future. As far as my own material and bringing something to the table, this is so fresh that I’m really concentrating on getting a scope of all the songs and learning all the material, so I haven’t really gone forward with any of my own. I’m in more of a support role at this point, because when you join a band with 200+ songs, there’s a lot to learn. Without it being overwhelming or daunting, you have to sort of pick away at it over time. On this last tour, we did debut one of Trevor’s new songs, “Happy, Rich and Beautiful,” and it’s a song I’ve been playing with Trevor at local get-together gigs over the past year and a half. We did bring that to the table. He and Josh have songs tucked away. So there has been talk about them doing a new album. I just don’t know the details or if I’m qualified to speak on the future of that. But I do know there are songs out there, and we did bring one of them into the new tour. I know the band would love to record a new album, and there have definitely been whispers. We’re definitely looking forward to bringing this to as many parts of the country as we can, as soon as we can.
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