You’re also playing with him at Brooklyn Comes Alive this fall, along with a very cool group that includes MonoNeon, who just played a trio show with Joe Russo and Eric Krasno in Brooklyn.
Yeah, that guy’s intense right?
Have you played with him before?
I’ve never played with him. And I’ve never met him. But it was funny—during the first gig that I did with Oteil, he was going on and on and on about this guy MonoNeon, and then I went to his website or Twitter page, and he has hundreds of videos of him harmonizing people talking. It’s one of the most intense things! I can’t imagine the amount of time that it would take to do one of these. Like, he would take this interview and figure out which pitch each word that you and I said was, and then play along with it. It’s pretty nuts. I tried to do it the other day, and I sort of gave up after like a half hour. It’s so intense. And he’s done hundreds of them. So Oteil was going on and on and on about what a fan he was of him.
Speaking of Oteil, you’ll be playing at Peach Fest with Oteil & Friends, and then you guys are also doing a duo set. Could you talk a bit about your relationship with him and how you started playing together?
We hadn’t met before he came and did three nights with Joe Russo’s Almost Dead at the Brooklyn Bowl. We were doing six nights and Dave [Dreiwitz] couldn’t do three of them because of Ween, so Oteil came in. And we set up on the same side of the stage, so we were right next to each other. It was really clear, right from the first soundcheck, that we were coming from a similar place, musically, because everybody’s sort of teasing other songs all the time, and anything that I would play, Oteil was playing stuff that was super complementary. He’s a master-level musician. Some guys just play the right shit all the time, and he’s one of those guys to me. It just feels right when you play with Oteil, and he makes you sound better. He’s a supporter. He’s a rhythm section player—he can play the traditional role of just a bass player, supporting something, but he goes beyond that and contributes to whatever idea you’re doing at the time, and his idea makes your idea sound that much smarter or better. Like we were over there and I played something then he played something, and I could see we were smiling at each at what we each were playing and there was just a muy simpático sort of vibe happening.
So that was when we met, and then he did the Red Rocks gig with us last year, and we had a very similar sort of thing. I remember I played—I think during “Greatest Story Ever Told”—I played “Tico-Tico,” which is this old Brazilian piece of music. It’s sort of obscure, and it had been a long night, but he just looked at me immediately and was like, “Tico-Tico”! He knew it immediately, and he smiled. So we have this great track record. After that, he called and I was just thrilled that a guy like that would ask me to play in his band for a few nights. Then after that, the call came to do some more, like Waterloo Festival and Peach Fest. And I’m just so happy for that guy. Every time I open up Instagram or Facebook or something, it’s like a picture of him in front of a stadium full of people. It’s amazing.
With the biggest smile on his face.
Yeah, and that’s the other thing about that dude—he’s like literally the nicest guy. I hang out with him and I walk away being like, “My god, I should be nicer. I should be as nice as that guy.” And I’m a nice guy!
That’s great that you’ll get to do the duo thing with him at Peach as well. Have you discussed what that’s going to be like, musically?
Oh man, I’m so looking forward to that. I’m not really sure. Everybody’s schedules are so crazy. We’re talking about talking about it. But really looking forward to it.
Speaking of duo shows, you also have a show with Krasno at Rockwood Music Hall later this year. That’ll be quite an intimate gig.
Yeah, it’s small. It’s like an acoustic-sized room. Less than a hundred people. We’ve been talking about doing something like that for probably five years now, but both of our schedules have been kind of crazy. Everybody’s all over the place, but we finally found a pocket of time that it would work.
You’ve mentioned that you’ve been working on the next WOLF! album—what’s the status on that?
Yeah, it exists. It has been birthed. You know, it’s a process making a record because you have to record it and then you have to mix, it which is a very lengthy process, and that’s where we’re at right now. We are in the mixing process. I think it’s the most clearly realized version of what that band does that we have been able to get down on tape so far.
How so?
Well, the band is all over the place. Musically, the band sort of has a perpetual identity crisis. Like sometimes we can focus on country music, sometimes we’ll focus on groove-based music, sometimes it’ll just turn into weird, avant-garde noise stuff, and other times we get into heavy-metal riffage. I think with all the other records, we tried to kind of put it into a box, like, “Oh, it sounds like it’s this kind of a band.” With this one, I just feel like we were pretty good about not judging any of the stuff we were putting down as we were putting it down. It was more, “Did this feel good to us?” as opposed to worrying, “Is this fitting? Is this going to be easy to categorize?”
Any timeline on when that might come out?
No, there’s no timeline right now. We are doing it very casual.
I recently heard from a friend that they spotted you at the Trey Anastasio Band Central Park concert hanging with lyricist Tom Marshall, and it made me curious your current relationship with him after knowing him for years, and also how it is to be with him at a TAB concert.
It was pretty great for me to see Tom. I mean, when I was like 19 or 20, Tom was just putting together Amfibian, and when I was doing a gig in Princeton, NJ, where Tom and Trey are from, at a coffee show called Small World, they came in and heard the band play, and I ended up talking to Trey that night. After the gig, we went outside and we talked for a while, and then we went back inside and Trey sort of looked at Tom and he was like, “I think this is your guy.” I think that Trey was feeling me out—I remember he was asking me about what guitar players I liked and stuff. And that was the first real touring experience that I ever did, with Amfibian around 1999 through 2001 or so.
We haven’t had a lot of time to catch up or to even hang out that often over the years. Again, I’ve been busy. Everybody’s busy. So we hung out for a few hours before the gig, and it was awesome. I hung out with his family, and his daughter, who was a little kid the last time I saw her, is like out of college now. It was just great to be able to catch up with Tom, and we watched the first set together. I’m not super familiar with all the TAB material, so it was super cool to watch it with Tom. The band would start a song, and he’d be like “Oh yeah, this is one of mine. I wrote this.” And he’d be kind of telling me the lyrics in real time. Like Trey is like singing it and Tom’s like leaning over and telling me the words and then kind of giving me a breakdown. It was great. But then we realized that we were talking through the guitar solos, which I don’t approve of at all. [Laughs.] About three songs in I was like, “Oh cool, how’d you come up with those lyrics? What’s the story about that?” He’d be telling me, and then I would start listening again and be like, “Oh, I missed the entire guitar solo.”
That’s great. Is there any other projects you have on your plate that you’d like to shine some light on?
The only thing is that I’m personally very excited to be doing some stuff with Chris Harford [and Band of Changes] at some of these festivals, just because I feel it’s a long time coming. I’ve been playing with Chris since I was a kid, and so have Dave and Joe. We’ve all been playing with those guys for 20 years, so the chance to play his tunes with him at some of these festivals in front of what will hopefully be some festival-sized crowds is very encouraging to me, and I hope people check it out ‘cause it really is worth it. Chris is a very special musician.
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