Everyone Orchestra has also done a lot of good charitable work. Can you talk a little bit about that and also how it started to become such a large part of your career?
I’m a drummer. I was in a band in the ‘90s called Jambay, so I met a whole bunch of people in the jam scene—before it was called the jam scene. I always say, “Before JamBase, before Jam Cruise, before Jambands, there’s Jambay.” We really embodied the ethos of it all. Everyone Orchestra came out of me looking to do something different, to bring groups of musicians together in a unique way, and it kind of incorporated all my experiences: Growing up in an orchestral household; coaching tennis and running drills and building teams; playing in a band and understanding the band dynamic and jamming with people; and then living and working with Ken Kesey, and him always trying to get the audience involved in a unique way. Then, my experiences with Zambiland Orchestra in Atlanta, seeing how they did it and learning.
I was facilitating drum circles and doing stuff like that, but the whole using signs as an obvious way to conduct and to produce live in the moment, I had an epiphany [about that] participating in Zambiland back then. And, also, trying to do good in the world—I had a mission. Part of my upbringing was being part of this youth group, and I had a life-changing experience as a teenager working in an orphanage outside of Tijuana. It really changed my outlook on the whole world. Ever since then, I was always trying to incorporate some sort of giving back as my path, as my spirituality. Which is undefined—I’m not religious in a specific sense—but helping people through music, combining those things, has always been the dream. In the beginning, with Everyone Orchestra, pretty much all the shows were benefit shows. I brought it together with the concept that it’s going to benefit a nonprofit, and we had all these different components. We did that for a number of years, and it became apparent to me that there was this potential of exploring the creative musical aspect of it deeper, and to put on a huge benefit show every time we do it was too much. I’m always trying to partner with nonprofits, always trying to raise awareness. We still do some benefit shows, but I wanted to focus on the creative aspect of what it was.
It’s been a process of training the audience and the musicians to the new mindset, because it’s different. The group composition through improvisation is a little bit different than playing as a cover band, or just any kind of way. At Summer Camp, I partnered with Make a Difference, so we had this extra intent. We did this Rex Jam for years—it was all raising money for music and schools. It was a natural fit for partnering with Cloud 9 and Positive Legacy to try and bring people together in this unique, improvisational way, with the intent of “Let’s do some good.”
How do you typically bring a a specific Everyone Orchestra group together?
Well, you know, at this point I’ve been doing EO since 2001. I’ve been part of the jamband scene since…God…holy shit, ’92? I don’t even know if Mihali was born yet—[motions to a nearby Mihali Savoulidis]
MS: I was born, man! I listened to Jambay, you guys were awesome.
[Laughs]. Anyway, a long time ago. A lot of the foundation for it came from me calling my friends and being like, “Dudes, I got this idea,” and them trusting me to try it. It spread from there, really. The foundation of [String] Cheese, Fishman, Leftover [Salmon], moe., all those cats I knew from back when I was playing drums. That was the foundation where it eventually grew from. Now, I have a team. I have two other people that run the business with me, two managers. The three of us basically put together lineups, and we have a booking agent, we all have different roles. Some festivals I still do entirely by myself, and they support me. It doesn’t fit into the normal mold of a band or a singer-songwriter with a booking agent, when he just books it—“Okay, we got 40 dates booked and you have to play these songs.” Everyone’s a little different. It’s a wild ride. Sometimes what makes it so beautiful makes it really a logistic-heavy kind of deal.
Do you still do any drumming outside of EO?
I don’t have time. My last drumming gig was with Hot Buttered Rum. Actually, there’s a record coming out that I’m on with The Contribution, which is with Tim Carbone and Jeff [Miller] from New Monsoon, which is a singer-songwriter project. For a couple of years, it was a side project, and then Keith Moseley from Cheese was on bass and I was on drums, and we recorded a bunch of tunes, and the drummer for Widespread Panic [Duane Trucks]. He’s awesome. He sat in one time in EO. The guy kills. Totally kills. It was amazing. I feel like he’s totally elevated Widespread’s thing. We shared the album because at a certain point I was like, “Guys, I can’t travel anymore.” There’s EO, I have two kids—my wife works full-time and I’m raising my kids. I’m a scout master.
I have a studio, and it’s turning into my kids’ studio, and they’ve got a couple drum sets set up, facing each other. Jambay played over eleven hundred shows. That’s a lot of setting up my drum set, taking my drum set down, so I feel like I still consider myself a drummer, and I perceive everything from that place, but I’m not as interested. I don’t have that desire to go out and play and put energy in drumming at the moment. There’s so many other things. The palette of Everyone Orchestra is so broad, and the possibilities are so tantalizing. I know so many good drummers that are so stoked to do that.
Just a last question, and I don’t know if you can answer this—over the 15 or 16 years of EO, are there any big collaborations that stand out, any lineups that you were like, “Oh my God, we killed it that night”?
Truly, every show builds on itself. It’s hard to compare—it’s like apples and oranges. Some of the ones that stand out are the ones where the sound system sucked, or the backline sucked. It’s weird how sometimes you remember the train wrecks. It wasn’t because the musicians were bad or anything; it was things out of our control. One year on Jam Cruise, this storm hit and we ended up having to move to the disco. I had a whole lineup of musicians, and the room was set up so the sound guy is in back, the PA is in front of him, and the band is in front of the PA. It was so fucked up. But we had a great show—it was packed! It was kind of like, “Oh, Jesus, please get me through this.” I just did shows in Colorado that were some of the best shows that I’ve been a part of. I had young musicians, members of Turkuaz and Dopapod and [Michael] Travis from Cheese was on drums, so it was him and I and all these young cats. It was fucking awesome. Oh, and Mihali was on it, too.
There’s this understanding and a deepening grasp of the potentiality of the Everyone Orchestra process. The musical community that I’m bringing together to do this, it’s not just for a superjam. We’re writing, we’re composing music on the spot, and people are bringing their A-game, and they’re so aware to be spontaneous, and we’re just carving these incredible pop songs, if you will, and then jamming them out. They surprise everybody. As long as we keep on doing that, every show seems to be the best one after the last.
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