How far are you into your new studio album?

I have about 12 songs that are kind of demoed out, and now I’m changing them over a little bit, realizing that some songs need to be played a little slower or some songs need to be played a little faster. I’m basically in the demo stage—messing around with lyric ideas—and I actually had a little session over here with Simon Felice from the Felice Brothers. He lives nearby and actually he bought a little piano for me to put in his studio, and then I was like, “I should play you what I’m working on, ‘cause I could use some help with this one tune.” And he came over and helped me, which was really nice. I also sent a tune to Leon Michels, the keyboard guitar player in The Arcs. He’s also the horn player—he’s just an overall bad ass. He just produced this band called The Shacks. They’re pretty cool. I subbed for Leon with The Arcs—I did three shows with Dan Auerbach and them in May. It was awesome, a great hang. And we did our previous record with Richard Swift [also an Arcs member]. And I’ve always liked Leon’s stuff. I sent him a tune, and I was like, “I think I could use your help on this one.” And he dug it and he’ll be around next month maybe to help me out. So I would say I’m halfway there, maybe even more. I have this little studio right next to my house, so even if I just come here and work from 10 at night to midnight or something, I can get some stuff done. And I’m always working—I love being out here in this lair sort of figuring out stuff about engineering and producing, as well as just songwriting. Just a wide variety of musical aspect I cover out here.

Do you think Simon and Leon would maybe be on the record?

Good question—I don’t know. Probably just mainly the engineering and producing part, and then maybe a bit of the songwriting part. Then, of course, if the playing wound up being on it, that would be cool, too. But no ideas of that so far.

Last time we talked you mentioned that you were coming into your own with the production side of things. How has that been coming along?

It’s going really, really good. It’s grown a lot more—I feel like I’m really dialed in here. Things happen even faster than they did, which was pretty fast to begin with. Just getting things rolling right away. My drumming has gotten a little bit better, same as my bass playing, and same as my lyric writing as well. So it’s like, if I do whip something together really quick, it doesn’t sound as janky as it did maybe two years ago. [Laughs] I mean, it still sounds demo-y and stuff. Then going into the engineering side of things, after making The Story of Fred Short here, our friend Kenny Siegal from Old Soul [Studios], after having a sort of pow wow with him, knowing how to use the new pieces of gear I got, I definitely feel more on it. It’s great. I can make really good demos in here, and I can even make a record like I did my last one. And I’m planning on doing it again here, but we’ll see how it goes with the collaboration between Leon and Simon and what might be the finished outcome. I’d be okay with doing it somewhere else, but I do like doing stuff here.

At least with Side B of the last album, you said it came out of a long improv session that you then split into distinct songs. Is there any of that this time around?

So far, it’s more song-by-song. Just kind of worked out like that. Although, one improvisation I did I split up into three songs, actually now that I think about it. But they’re not necessarily going to go into each other, they just wound up being three separate song ideas in one session. But there’s no stringing of songs together to tell a story about one guy. So far I don’t have any of that.

Is that how you write your songs a lot?

That’s one way—I’ll set up a drum machine and a couple synths and just hit record and improvise, and a chord progression will come out, then maybe a melody. And I’ll have a vocal mic set up and I’ll improvise the vocal melody, or even just get a quick lyric idea I like to start the song. And sometimes I also just sit down at the piano and bang it out acoustically. It comes all sorts of ways. But I would say, over the last two or three years, it’s primarily been getting “ear candy,” as I like to call it—coming out with these fun synthesizers that I like to have. Because I do like incorporating that sound into our music.

You and Joe Russo are reuniting the Duo at Jam Cruise in January. How much time have you guys had to actually work on that with all the other stuff you’ve had going on?

We got together and had a practice—I was in Brooklyn from like noon to eight at night, about a month ago, and it was really great to hang out and play those tunes again with Joe. It really brought me back to those days—which were some crazy days, for sure. We’re just sort of relearning our songs again. I mean, we only put out two studio records.

And that’s how you guys came to bring out some of that material with Joe Russo’s Almost Dead recently?

Oh, totally, of course. Because we just had that practice and then did some JRAD shows. We were like, “This kind of reminds me of ‘My Pet Goat’” or something. Yeah, we were laughing about that.

It’s the end of 2016, which has been a rollercoaster of a year, so I wanted to get a bit of a recap. Do you have any standout moment or shows from the year?

Man, let me think. What the hell have I been doing? Our friends The Barr Brothers played at Levon’s Barn, and I opened up for them and played with them. I’ve been good friends with them for a while. That was a nice moment here, in my backyard basically. And I also got a chance to play with Ronnie Spector at Levon’s Barn. That was fun. We did some songs from that Phil Spector Christmas record [1963’s A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector ]. I’ve been making a bunch of mixes and putting them online. On Soundcloud, I go as “Mr D,” and then “I’m A DJ Too” is what comes after that. [This Saturday, Jan. 7 he will DJ at Woodstock’s Catskill Mountain Pizza Company]. I’ve been making mixes from vinyl that I’ve been collecting over the years. I made about, I don’t know, 10 or so mixes that are like an hour, hour and a half long. I’ve been getting into that, getting into vinyl—old and new. It was cool to play with Bob Weir at the Fox Theatre in Oakland. That was a nice part of our night there. We sounded really good. That’s all I can think of right now.

Any long-term plans for 2017?

We have two big tours with my own band. Those are some big projects, I gotta say. We’re hitting the whole West Coast, Colorado, basically the whole Northeast. We’re logging in some miles, promoting the new live record, probably testing out some new songs. Those are the two big ones. One big gig that stands out to me is the one we’re [Almost Dead] doing with Medeski Martin & Wood at Red Rocks. You know, I’m staying busy, writing my own tunes. Always searching, over here. Trying to write a hit, you know? One song.

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