The members of the Disco Biscuits are currently featured on the cover of Relix. Relix/Jambands.com Executive Editor Mike Greenhaus spent time with the band in the studio when the Biscuits was first working on Planet Anthem in 2006 and followed up with the band numerous times over the past six months. While the July Relix cover story tackles a number of issues such as guitarist Jon Gutwillig’s recent wrist injury, the band’s crossover single “On Time” and the four musicians’ relationship off the stage, a number of topics were left on the cutting room floor. Relix.com and Jambands.com will be rolling out additional interviews not included in the Relix cover story over the next few weeks. Below, Gutwillig gave in early May, shortly after the guitarist removed the cast from his wrist.
A related interview with keyboardist Aron Magner recently posted to Relix.com.
First off, your recently took your cast off. How is your wrist feeling?
It feels pretty awesome, good as new. It’s a little bit stiffer for the right hand, but stiffer is better because you want fast really specific motions for that hand so I feel like that’s better in a way. I’m trying to look on the bright side of everything, you know? I feel like my wrist is going to be great and the last month was really fun.
It has been a few months since Planet Anthem was released. Looking back, did it turn out the way you initially planned?
I think the album turned out great. It is so interesting from front to back—I feel like it’s gotta go classic one day. We set out to make a hip hop album and ended up with something very different. When you were first in the studio [in 2006] you heard some of the really raw sketches and almost none of those songs ended up on the album. We made a lot of songs so it really could have been a lot of different things. The earliest songs on the album were “Fish Out of Water” and “Camouflage Soul,” which came out not on the album but on the iTunes version of the album.
Since you wrote the album over such a long period of time, do you think Planet Anthem connects lyrically?
Good question. I think, lyrically speaking, every song is a sort of a snapshot of a certain idea. It is not trying to be a big cohesive album in terms of the lyrics. It just wasn’t a priority to make the album like a big artistic, Hot Air Balloon style concept. The priority was making the coolest music possible in the studio.
People like can take the lyrics and they can get all emo and stuff like that but that is not what we are consciously trying to do. I wrote a really emo song which was one of the leaked tracks, and it may well make it on a Biscuits album eventually. We’ve definitely had some “we’re having a bad day songs” over the years. I had two “I’m having a bad day songs” that we play all the time now, and I just rewrote the lyrics for them to be not such a bad day lyrics. I try and keep the same meaning just a little different, a little more positive perspective sometimes. I think the lyrics of “On Time” are really, really interesting and unique. We really did a lot of work on the lyrics for this album.
How do you feel social media has changed your relationship with fans?
I mean, I think it is great. I guess you are tearing down the wall a little bit, but I don’t mind that. I love being able to have my own direct line—like people read my status on a Facebook page, I can comment whenever I want. Its just like another kind of freedom, you have the ability to contact large groups of people, you know, whatever you want to say. It’s pretty awesome, you’re making connections. It helps the Biscuits, it helps us get our message across because this album is having a lot of mainstream success. We don’t get a lot of mainstream success in our band because to some degree our music is not very mainstream friendly. But with Facebook, I get out information to large groups of people without needing to change the message to fit the mainstream
But if you want to talk to lots of people, you gotta make the message worthy to send out. Now that I have a Facebook people tell me what songs they want us to play. But we always had a direct connection with our fans—we were ahead of the curve in that regard. I mean, musically we were ten years ahead of the curve as well.
At this point do you feel the Disco Biscuits as an entity is bigger than any one or two musicians?
Yeah, it’s like being a TV channel in a way, which is why reality TV is so interesting. Basically people turning to you to be entertained and, essentially, that’s what being an entertainer is all about. I’m a guitar player and, though we’re attempting to be groundbreaking and take our music to a new levels, at the end of the day I am an entertainer. So while it is psychologically and mentally to our internal dispositions and our egos and other pointless things to make great music, at the end of the day you’re just another model on the catwalk. I’m not a model on the catwalk, but really I am, but I’m trying to, we’re trying to instill as much pride and other things into it to make it what it is. People get what they’re going to get with the Biscuits. The album is shaking them up a little bit and we want to shake them up. We want to give them something a little different.
But, at the same time, the reality story of the Biscuits is sort of awesome at this point because we’ve had so many years of people trying to kill each other—people dying and all sorts of different stuff.
How have you felt the fan reception has been to Planet Anthem?
There is a small group of people who might say Planet Anthem, “Isn’t what I was looking for. I was looking for something a little different.” And honestly, I think those people are sometimes more vocal but are definitely more of a minority. People seem to like change, but there are some people who just want to hear us do what we traditionally do really well. In January and February, there was like five or six Biscuits concerts and they were some of the best concerts we ever played so people still like the music we are making. It is fun to be a fan of the Biscuits. It’s fun to be entertained by the band. I feel like we have a good relationship with our fans right now because they get a really weird interesting album from left field and yet the live stuff is what they except. As far as Biscuit style music goes, which is pure improv, I feel like we’re playing the best we’ve ever played. To some degree we’ve filed it down, shaped up and turned it into something that’s as good as it can possibly be.
I agree. The Disco Biscuits has always expanded its palette, from classical and jamband sounds early on through electronica and now hip hop.
We’ve always been doing that. As weird as that is to sort of think, we’ve always been consistent on that, since the days of Tim Walther [who produces All Good and produced some early Camp Bisco festivals]
The Disco Biscuits are currently working on a few projects with Damon Dash. What has that experience been like for you?
It’s interesting because the process of creating the music is the thing we have in common with the Damon Dash crew I would say. They make a totally different kind of music than us. As much as the Biscuits are influenced by hip hop, we are not making hip hop music. It’s still electronic, it’s still at the right pace, but it’s still a big world of difference from hip hop. But those guys have a similar vibe to us and a similar collaborative process, so we can work together easily. And that’s why Planet Anthem is so diverse because we had so many musicians coming in and out of our studio and the process was to include them and the vibe was to just make everything work and everything great and those guys work on the same process. It’s very interesting to meet people who work the same way, so when I go into the studio and those guys are working in the studio, it’s like working with them it’s like we’ve been working together for years.
They’re taking the Black Keys, which is sort of a bluesy rock band, and mixing what they do with hip hop. Now they are taking what we do, which is an electronic thing, and mixing us with hip hop too to see what it comes with. Hip hop is almost more of production approach so it can go wherever you want. People got caught up in hip hop sounding like what hip hop sounded like in the late ‘90s again and again and again, but there’s been some new sounds and I think there are some cool things going on in hip hop. And I think the reason that it keeps reinventing itself is because, at the end of the day, hip hop is really just guys rapping instead of singing and you can rap over anything. Damon Dash is an old pro at how to make good hip hop. He’s made some of the best hip hop of all time and, besides Jay-Z, he was the most important person in those rooms probably and those are some great albums. So the guy is obviously hip to this. I’m just realizing it right now, but he’s obviously been doing it for a while
That’s an interesting point. Rapping in today’s music is like the saxophone in the classic rock-era.
Yeah, they had a period in the 70’s where they put the saxophone over everything—the Rolling Stones had their saxophone thing, Pink Floyd had their saxophone bit, and everybody had sax going on in the studio. And if we all spoke with the saxophone, then we would be able to do 20 years on that, but since only a couple of us play saxophone, it’s only going to last in our society for a certain period of time. Many more people can rap.
I mean, music goes with technology. There’s things about technology that are re-doing—like the car is just a better horse and carriage, you know, but the technological advancement of it. And music is the same way, to some degree there’s a lot of throwbacks in music, you know, there’s a lot of things plugged from earlier generations. But the sound is always evolving and always getting more advanced.
Photo by Kelsey Winterkorn
Do you consider the guitar your primary form of expression, more so than your lyrics or voice?
I mean, I can play guitar literally without even thinking about it, it’s a very weird thing. But when I played at Langerado a couple years ago and I just couldn’t play anything right, the outdoor Langerado at the Indian reservation, and the moon was right there, so I stared at the moon and started thinking about the moon and literally didn’t think about my hand at all and about 25 minutes went by and I don’t think I missed a note in that whole area. It’s almost like, guitar playing is all about, it’s all about getting yourself off the notes and out of the—I’m not saying leave the scale, I’m just saying stop thinking about the scale and just sort of follow the notes and where they go.
Music is a different language in itself. So, if you’re thinking about what notes you’re playing and where you’re going in the music, you’re translating, you know, it’s like thinking about Spanish in English. And so you’re not think about, you know what I mean, you’re translating, you don’t want to be translating in music. So I think, if music is a language, anything is a probably language all those things that you need. You want to get to a point where you’re not translating. You do things cleaner and eventually its all pleasure and no pain. And I think that’s what you’re talking about, people, when they think about it, they don’t necessarily think about it correctly, but when they do it, they have enough life experience to do it right ‘cause they know how to avoid the pain, so they just have to get to that place where they know that kind of stuff.”
I actually read a very interesting piece of literature about how computers will become self-aware. It’s something that will just happen. Eventually there will be a computer system that is capable of sustaining self-awareness and just because it’s capable it will become self-aware. The thing’s going to become self-aware on its own, we don’t have to tell it how to become self-aware. Keep building it, keep making it better, keep building it and keep making it better and eventually it will ask you how you like your coffee. Eventually it will learn how to sing for you.
I think that’s true with the Biscuits too, you kind of truck on, like you hurt your hand but the band still goes on.
Well, things were going so well, I had to artificially create drama. Things were just too good and things are not supposed to be too good when you’re a rock musician. [laughter]
The Disco Biscuits will celebrate 15 years on July 4. Do you plan to do anything to mark the occasion?
I don’t like to celebrate that type of stuff and, anyway, the band was under a different name. It is confusing to me because at the time we were students in college so there was no real beginning. We were students and then we actually hit the road during college and did some shows. So when people talk about our first show it isn’t really the beginning of the band. It is not like one day we weren’t in a band, the next day we are in the Disco Biscuits and then all of the sudden we are famous people.
It is funny, in [keyboardist] Aron Magner’s interview for this article he was talking about how excited he was for the band’s anniversary and how exciting it was that the band had been around for 15 years.
He loves the anniversary thing. I don’t know why he loves the anniversary thing so much but makes the anniversary a big deal. He loves birthdays too. I don’t get it. I’m like the old woman. I don’t want anyone to know how old we are. I don’t want it out there at all, but he gets it out there every fucking year, I don’t know why. Like, does Jay-Z celebrate the year he started rapping? Does Radiohead celebrate its anniversary? I don’t like celebrating the anniversary of becoming a derelict or leaving normal society and becoming a madman [laugher]. But I guess you could say that [July 4th weekend] was the day that shit started to get crazy at an accelerating pace. I’ve been playing guitar since I was a little kid. So when was the first day? I don’t know. We played songs that were written before we were a band so for us there was no real beginning to the Disco Biscuits. Aron wasn’t in a band at first and then he joined us so for him there was a day one. For me there was no day one. When I was four my parents knew that this was going to happen, so they’re not surprised. It wasn’t like they called me up on August 1, 1995, and was like ‘What’s this about you wanting to be a musician?’ That phone call never happened. Yeah, they were like, “What do you need now, an amp or a pedal?”
I don’t like dates. I don’t like holidays. For me, New Year’s Eve happens 88 times a year. There’s people in society who need holidays to dictate when they should party. I don’t need any help blowing off steam. I don’t need any help having fun. So the calendar to me, it’s great for the day because people will come to your show and people will join your fun on holidays, so I like holidays, I love New Years, people come out, it’s a better, bigger party, we can do a bigger show, everything’s great and everybody’s in a really good mood, but to me that’s every day, that’s life. You don’t need the calendar to have fun, you use the calendar as a crutch to have fun.
And you know what? This is where it gets nuts right here, if you have a party, not only will everybody come ‘cause it’s your birthday even if they formally wouldn’t come just to party, but some people will apply undue peer-pressure to other people for not going to your birthday—for not obeying the calendar. It’s tradition. And I love tradition and I’m very cool with it and holidays is how you represent tradition a little bit I guess, you celebrate tradition, I’m down with that, but I just don’t take it too seriously. Now that I think about, July 4th I usually hang out by myself, everybody usually goes to the beach and parties on the beach, I usually hang out by myself on holidays ‘cause I don’t get a lot of alone time so I prize my alone time.
Everybody wants to think everything through, but thinking everything through means that like you can predict the future. Like with my wrist, it is like, “Hey, worse things than you expect can happen.” You can’t predict the future, you can say, “OK this could be bad, this could be great, you don’t really know how it’s going to end up, you think you do but you don’t.” So I think to some degree you gotta get out there, you gotta put the gloves on, you gotta get in the ring, you gotta get in the fight and you’re gonna get hit, you know, and you gotta just deal with that. Ever since I started thinking about things like that and the band started thinking about things like that, things started changing for the band, like ever since we started just Zen-ing everything, you know, we Zen our shows now, we Zen everything. So what do we do on stage? Like how do we get from one song to the next? How did we write that song in the studio? I have no idea. ‘Cause it’s like the whole thing is about the vibe, it’s about the process. It’s not about, you know, consciously engineering it from some ego point of view, from a “I want this to happen.” That is a mistake. You know, do you want a politician to get up there and be like “you should do this because this is right,” you don’t elect that politician. You elect the guy who’s like, “Hey, we’re gonna make this happen, we’re just going to do it, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be difficult, but we’re going to do it.” And that’s what it is and that’s what the music business is like right now, it’s a war. And that’s what our music is like right now, like on stage there’s so much going on. I don’t know, that’s my new creed on life.
Does thinking like that help you avoid being emo in your music or is it too hard to avoid?
Lyrically, we’re just looking for cool things to say. And a lot of it is like, you know, there’s a lot of lyrics that you draw from your life, but I’m not sitting there and writing life story stuff—like I can’t tell you what girl I’m writing about. I can’t tell you who I’m writing about and all those things, just the veneer is there, you know. But I feel like in today’s world the veneer isn’t—the veneer will make a comeback just like Earth, Wind and Fire made a comeback. Veneer will make a comeback but I feel like right now the way the world is, they don’t want veneer. Our generation’s rock stars and Facebook and the iPod. I mean we have Radiohead, but the iPod and Facebook are changing the world like the Beatles did in 1964.
How would having a crossover single change the Disco Biscuits future?
That’s not going to happen to us, but it really wouldn’t change my life too much right now, but in 20 years, it really would change my life. In 20 years it would mean that we could do revival tours. Modern revival tours make everybody’s happy. And the Biscuits revival tour is going to be great, we may have to play “On Time” a little bit more than usual but whatever, it’s going to be a good thing. The Dead had their whole career—the last 20 years of their career was a revival tour vibe. And it was just amazing, it was amazing. I went to those Dead shows when I was a kid and Jerry was unbelievable. Jerry would just fucking knock you on your ass without even moving. He would just stand right there in the middle of Madison Square Garden and just literally crush you, you know, and that’s why Jerry was the best. It is cool to be able to do that kind of thing, I mean he was really lucky from that perspective. I know he passed away a little earlier that he had to I think but, you know, he definitely was fortunate that he got to play huge concert and huge concert until he was 55 and that’s pretty awesome.
Dark Star Orchestra is awesome too. And part of the reason that they’re awesome is the songs are ridiculous! So it’s great, it’s cool. So even after the rest of the Grateful Dead band members stop playing concerts, the music is going to survive. It’s cool to be part of a music scene that the music is surviving no matter what, no matter if you have pop success or not, it doesn’t matter because the music of the scene is surviving. The Grateful Dead music is going to survive and a lot of bands making music in this scene are going to survive. We just hope to be one of them.
