JW: Did you plan not to do an encore?

TA: That was just talked about after the show. We came off stage and we were standing there and Brad (Sands, road manager) came up and said, “are you guys doing an encore?” And we just look at each other and said “No, we’re not doing one.” It just felt over at that point.

JW: I wanted to go back to what you were saying about spontaneous composition. Is that something that you try to achieve 100% of the time? For example, can you envision busting out a thirty-minute version of “Farmhouse” one night or is there a conscious effort to keep certain songs short and concise?

TA: There’s probably no conscious effort to keep it short and concise, but that being said, there’s a definite feeling that longer is not necessarily better, by any stretch of the imagination. At the same time, just taking that New Year’s show being the last show that we played, there were songs that I don’t think would normally go long that did, you know? We did “Rock and Roll” or something and that was really long and there were some other really big jams, but that just felt so different, that whole night. There was just something that felt bigger.

JW: Were you pleased, generally, with the event as a whole as well as your performance?

TA: Loved it. Loved that night. Loved that weekend and especially that night, all four of us. It was really a rare moment of full agreement by all band members.

JW: It was pretty powerful seeing the sunrise. I had goose bumps.

TA: Wasn’t that just incredible? It just was unbelievable. It really was.

JW: Would you like to return there? Has there been any talk or any plans to go back?

TA: Not yet, but we would love to do something else like that. The only other thing we talked about, and this is just a crazy idea that we wouldn’t necessarily do because we have a million ideas like this, but we did talk about doing a show in an arena somewhere. What you do is you half-sell it, so it’s about half full. Then you black out all the windows. Everybody comes in Friday night at regular concert time and we start playing and we play until Sunday at about 7 O’clock in the morning. So basically, you lose an entire day. So you go in at night and it’s pitch black. We were even talking about having everybody surrender their watches, you know? (Laughs) So nobody has any idea what time it is. There would be food, but we would do weird things like serving the wrong food at the wrong time. You know, you serve breakfast at like 7 O’clock on Saturday night, so nobody has any idea what’s going on with time. The reason it would be half full is that the rest of the room would be decked out with padded places to sit. The other idea we had was to not tell anyone that this was going to happen, just let them in for the concert and then start playing. You can leave if you want, but you can’t get back in. That’s like the one rule.

JW: So if someone had to work the next day or something they’d be kind of screwed.

TA: Well, there’s a bank of phones, but there’s a security guard next to the phones. You can make one phone call, but the only thing you can say is, “I’m not going to be there.” You can’t say anything else.

JW: No one on the outside world would have any idea what was going on.

TA: If you really needed to tell somebody, you could say, “I’m OK, but I’m not going to be there.” (laughs) You could say that if you had to go to work the next morning.

JW: So I guess you’d have to serve a lot of coffee to keep people awake.

TA: (laughs) Yeah, there’d be coffee and anything anyone needed, we would have. It would all be in there. It would all be set up. It would basically be like the indoor version of the New Year’s show, except it would be thirty-six hours.

JW: I’m assuming there would be set breaks.

TA: Well, I don’t know. I was pretty beat after eight hours, but not really. I felt pretty energized. One thing you could do is, which we didn’t get into on New Year’s Eve, but we talked about wanting to get into more, would be that one or two band members could leave for five or six hours and the other two people could keep playing.

JW: Like a Fishman drum solo, which of course he doesn’t like to take.

TA: (Laughs) Yeah, well that would have to be his first drum solo, but it would have to last five hours.

JW: Or you could open the show with “Squirming Coil” and leave Page on stage to play a piano solo for seven hours (laughs).

TA: No, for thirty-five hours (laughs). We’d just leave him. You know, he’d do the whole thing.

JW: That’s a really interesting idea. I hope it comes to fruition. Although the tapers would be screwed.

TA: Oh no, we would have tapes and batteries, but actually there would be like a fishing pole with the tapes, just out of reach (laughs).

JW: Philosophically speaking, do you think it gets harder as the years go on to come up with original songs, not just for you, but for any musician? If you take The Beatles for example, they were geniuses, but pretty much anything they did was going to be innovative at the time. As more and more bands write more and more songs over the years, do you think your options start to get limited?

TA: I find it easier and easier to write music and I’m actually doing a symphony thing next February, which I’ve always wanted to do. It’s like a dream come true.

JW: With a full orchestra?

TA: With an orchestra. I’m going to write for the orchestra. That’s like February 4th. Songs don’t get easier for me, in terms of writing lyrics and stuff, but music gets easier in my mind. I think your life becomes richer, but I guess lyrics have always been a whole different ball game.

JW: What is the orchestra going to consist of? Are you going to play an instrument or are you just going to write?

TA: I’m just going to write. It’s an eighty-five-piece orchestra. It’s the Vermont Youth Symphony. I think it’s February 4th and 5th. It will be in Albany and Burlington. At this point, I’m probably going to do a completely re-written, orchestrated version of “Guyute,” which was originally supposed to be like an orchestra piece anyway.

JW: Oh, really?

TA: I mean in my mind.

JW: Kind of a Celtic kind of feel.

TA: Yeah, it’s just in that type of form. A lot of that music that I used to write sounds like that. You know like the stuff in the middle of “Fluffhead?”

JW: Yeah, I could hear songs like “Divided Sky” or “You Enjoy Myself” being played by an orchestra as well.

TA: Yeah, because your palette is just so unlimited. Ernie Stires, who I’ve worked with for a long time and was sort of my mentor, is writing a piece for guitar and orchestra for me. So, I’ll play that with the orchestra and then they’ll do whatever I come up with. I’m looking forward to it.

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