You have recently performed with Stuart Bogie on a diverse mix of bills. How did you first connect and what attracted you to his playing musically?

He’s been playing a fair amount for the last year. These circles just keep overlapping, and we met doing an EXO-TECH gig a little less than a year ago. It was just one of those great coincidences, because we had a lot of friends in common, but we never played together, and we never hung out.

That was a huge gig. There was 20 people onstage, maybe more. It was in the round, and we happened to be in one corner of the stage. So, there was one corner of that stage that was me, and Stuart and Colin Stetson, so we just ended up playing together more in that corner of the stage that night, because that’s who you could relate to most directly in the moment. We hung out that night, and hit it off, and it was just this thing of—I love the ideas that he comes up with. He’s such an interesting multi-instrumentalist, as a reeds player, his clarinet playing is virtuosic, but he doesn’t play clarinet like anyone else I know.

In the middle of a jam, he’ll pick up his bass harmonica and just do something that is purely textural, and can shift the whole idea of something that’s going on without necessarily doing it in a horn-player with a capital H way. Those are the musicians I get really excited about playing with, so playing with Bogie is always great.

The other guys in the Hooteroll? band, I haven’t really played with before other than Joe. But playing with Joe is one of the most fun experiences I have, because both as a bass player and a guitarist—I hope this sounds right—it’s the perfect mix of easy and challenging . He always keeps me on my toes, but he’s so fun to play with because he’s full of ideas. I never come up dry; there’s always something that’s gonna change, that’s gonna happen next. So, it just happens really naturally. It’s the way that we ended up playing together, on and off, for the last year or two, just getting in a room and seeing what happens.

As a lifelong New Yorker, how would you compare the health of the current DIY and “out there” music scenes to when you were growing up?

The thing that was always so exciting for me as a show-goer in high school and college was seeing that overlap. Going to a show at Irving Plaza or something, and then seeing a trombone player sit in with a band, and then going to Tonic afterwards and seeing the trombone player’s band playing that night, and that constant overlap. Or, going to see Steve Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra play, and then seeing Michael Blake Trio play after them at Tonic, and then Bernstein sticks around and he ends up being in the Michael Blake Band for the night. That co-mingling of communities, and the way that that was overlapping at the time between the groove-oriented jam leaning stuff, and the more experimental free improvised stuff, that was what was really exciting for me.

To feel like there is some element of that that is happening more and more frequently right now between—Bogie and I went to Tennessee, and now we’re going to play my music, and now we’re going to the Cap to play Hooteroll? with Joe. This overlap of similar musicians showing up in different contexts is, for me, one of my favorite things about being a musician, and being an improviser being in these different contexts with people, and getting stretched in different ways. that that seems to be—certainly right now—happening a lot, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

You have deep roots in the jamband world. What was your initial exposure to that music?

I grew up, in high school, studying jazz, and going to left field jazz and jam band shows. So, I’m not sure if I can put a moment on it. My musical education was part going to afterschool programs in Harlem, learning jazz, and then, on the weekends, going to these shows. I went to see the Allman Brothers at the Beacon when I was 15. Does that count? [Laughs.]

And where does the Darkside, electronic influence come into play with all of that?

Well, I ended up in—through a mutual friend Will Epstein—Nico’s touring band for his solo music. Out of that, we started this band, Darkside. For me, learning how to play with Nico and learning how to play in that context was an electronic music boot camp. Being on tour for a couple years doing that was—and we played a lot in clubs—techno clubs in Europe where they would usually just have DJs, and they would put up a stage and then we would play.

It really changed a lot of the way that about improvising too. I learned a lot from playing with Nico—even before we did Darkside—about the structure of electronic music as a different way to think about the architecture of improvising. that was then also a central part of how we tried to do Darkside, no two shows the same, and always trying to push each other, and surprise each other and interact. We were doing it in the context of, I guess what you would call electronic music, but improvisation was always central to that band, so that it was the through line for us.

Also, Nico is a producer, and a composer, and a singer and many, many things, but also a great improviser. When we’d be working on music, he’d sit down at the piano and play these Keith Jarrett inspired things, and I’d pick up a guitar and we’d end up somewhere, and then maybe that could turn into a song, or an idea, or a molecule that could turn into something else.

What would you say you learned about yourself and your playing during that time?

More than anything, that’s how I learned to be a guitarist. [Laughs.] That was my changeover from being a bass player to being a guitarist. I had always played guitar, but not in a serious way; I had never studied guitar. I grew up in high school and college taking upright bass lessons, and playing in jazz combos and studying music theory and stuff. Through playing with Nico, I learned to be a guitarist, and use the guitar to interact and create those musical structures. Also, I started the journey of discovering—that sounds so ethereal and overwrought [Laughs.]—what guitarist do I want to be.

What’s next for you? Are you working towards another solo record after Become Alive ?

I’ve been collaborating with a lot of people on other people’s records. Right now we’re working on a new Visuals LP. I’ve been working with Nick Murphy—formerly known as Chet Faker—on his next record. I’m actually working with Ilhan from Nublu on his new Istanbul Sessions record, producing that and playing on it. We did the recording sessions for that a little while back, and now we’re treating it, and figuring out what we want to turn it into. I love collaborating; that’s why I love improvising. Out of all of this, there is another solo record of some kind that’s taking shape from me in the off-hours, but I haven’t quite figured out what it is. I’m getting there.

You have a project called BLADERUNNER. What’s the focus of that?

It’s funny, I try to draw these subtle, fine-line distinctions between these bands [Laughs.], because they’re all really rooted in improvisation, but they all have a different identity. That one, that’s really a collaborative project with me and Will Epstein, who is the saxophonist and also a great songwriter who introduced me to Nico in the first place, and also, Tlacael Esparza, who is an incredible drummer who I’ve known forever. That’s one of the only other bands I play bass in anymore! [Laughs.] BLADERUNNER is more about exploring the further reaches of psychedelic krautrock, more experimental in nature, and leaning more into the kraut and the psych rock elements as a vehicle for playing freely.

What’s the future of that project?

I mean, we do it periodically when everyone is free and in town. We make sure to try to get in at least two BLADERUNNER gigs a year. that, when the stars align, it’d be great to make a BLADERUNNER record. Nico’s played with us before; we’ve done a couple of gigs with Nico in that band, which is awesome. We did a gig—it was one of my favorite gigs—a little over a year ago where we played with Nico in the band, and another drummer, and a bass clarinetist and Arto Lindsay played with us, which was amazing, and such a privilege and just a joyful anarchy to play with him. My feeling with all these projects is keep doing them, and then eventually they reveal what they want to be. And that, one day, BLADERUNNER will reveal itself in album form [Laughs].

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