Matt McDonald with Perpetual Groove at the Georgia Theatre on April 6, 2007
Though Athens, GA’s Perpetual Groove has remained a force on the jamband and festival circuits since forming at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1997, the psychedelic rockers have had their share of lineup changes over the years. After graduating from school, original keyboardist Brett Hinton and founding drummer Joe Stickney both left the band, the latter of whom found success the popular indie-psych outfit Bear in Heaven. Guitarist/vocalist Brock Butler and bassist Adam Perry soldiered on quite literally after their departure and added two active members of the US military to the band’s lineup in 2001, drummer Albert Suttle and keyboardist Matt McDonald. Driven by Butler’s singer/songwriter roots, McDonald’s synthesizer effects and an overall cinematic—and often euphoric—sound, Perpetual Groove released a series of well-received studio albums and even scored a marquee spot at Bonnaroo. In the spring of 2008, the group surprised many fans when they parted ways with McDonald, citing both personal reasons and family commitment. He was replaced by onetime Guest keyboardist John Hruby, another member of the extended Perpetual Groove family.
After a few years of steady growth, Perpetual Groove is about to enter its fourth musical incarnation: Hruby plans to leave the band at the end of 2011, only to be replaced by McDonald. The once-and-future Perpetual Groove keyboardist will join the group on the radio later today and also sit in with the band during their highly-anticipated Georgia Theatre comeback show tomorrow. As he works himself back into the Perpetual Groove framework, McDonald plans to appear for a few songs at Atlanta’s Center Stage on December 30 and 31 and then on a more permanent basis in January.
In a Relix/Jambands.com exclusive, the members of Perpetual Groove explain what happened.
Given that you have not played together in public yet, I was wondering if you could start by walking us through when John Hruby decided to leave Perpetual Groove, through the decision to bring Matt back into the fold.
Adam: We got the news from Hruby that he was having some life-type issues and it was making it difficult for him to function within the band. I can’t really go into it because it is all his personal stuff but we decided that he needed to take care of himself and one of the best ways he could do that was to remove himself from Perpetual Groove. It was upsetting to hear but at the same time we had to respect his wishes and why he was having to make that decision. So we were left in a little bit of a quandary about how best to move forward—we had some discussions and, eventually, we started talking with Matt. He said he was amenable to the idea of being back with the band—it would take a little bit of modification on how we do things and how we tour, though. But all of it—when we talked about it—seemed like good decisions we should have make a while ago. The more we discussed all of this, the more it seemed to make sense. It all happened pretty fast and here we are.
Albert: We all decided that if we were going move forward and continue the only person we wanted to play keys was Matt. So if he didn’t want to do it we may have played our last show.
And it’s been about three years since Matt left originally?
Matt: It has been about three and a half years since I left—my last show was Memorial Day Weekend 2008 at the Amberland festival. We had announced it maybe a month before then. When that all happened—and in that time since, despite public speculation—the guys and I were always close. If you look at my Xbox Live history, Albert and I have played countless games of Halo, and Adam and his family were with my family at Thanksgiving [in 2010]. The week that my son was born last year there are plenty of pictures of Brock holding him so the guys and I have never been closer. We all live between Athens, GA and Atlanta.
For me, I’ve taken care of some of the personal stuff [that led to my departure] and kind of got a break from the road. I work at an orthopedic clinic here in town where I am the work comp. coordinator. They have been incredibly supportive of my decision to rejoin the band. I will be able to do some work from the road—they are giving me a computer to do that. So, fortunately, I get the best of both worlds in that I’m moving forward and I get to go back to Perpetual Groove and continue working there. Honestly, the guys and I are closer than we have ever been before. Adam is a father now as well—we have all grown up in the past three years. Even though it is me coming back into the band, I think musically there is going to be evolution as opposed to a return to a certain sound. We have all grown as musicians as well. As much as I should not look at what people say online, I have listened to some of my critics—being heavy with the loops and what not—but it is going to be an evolution of the band, not a return.
Given that it’s been three years of new songs, new covers and new sounds in the band, Matt, how familiar are you with the music that Perpetual Groove has done in the past couple years? And for the rest of the guys, is there anything from the music Matt’s been doing since he’s been gone from the band that’s been particularly meaningful and could be added to the Perpetual Groove sound?
Matt: They gave me the songs about three weeks ago. I have been working on them on my own at home and we have a bunch of practice sessions coming up before New Year’s—when the official transition is. So I have been doing my homework and making sure I don’t drop the ball on the new songs. I know Brock and I plan to get together this weekend to go over vocals and try to restructure who sings what on all these new tunes.
Brock: [In regards to] The conversations that Matt and I have been having as far as songs that have been written with John at the helm. I feel that the songs are going to reach a new potential. It’s not that they weren’t reaching potential before but there’s an element that Matt— specifically his vocals but also the patches and loops that he was using—would have been a credit to the song. They sometimes weren’t in sync with the sound tapestries and they could be, so I’m looking forward to seeing how we can bring back some of the techniques that were ours.
Matt’s general approach to things—especially his tone selection on the keyboard—is really powerful and these days keyboards can really define a band. I’m excited to try things in a different way, one of our newest songs, “Man Without The Answers,” I know there’s a tone that Matt and I would have put into words, and I think that approaching that song with a certain kind of thickness, a darkness if you will was very appropriate to that song. I’m excited to see the songs have come into existence during Matt’s time away from the group and how he’ll snap into those parts.
Smilefest, July 24, 2004
Matt, do you have any songs waiting to be introduced to the Perpetual Groove repertoire in the next couple weeks or couple of months when the announcement is made?
Matt: Yeah I definitely have three or four I’ve actually written over the past couple of years where I wrote it and I realized, “this is obviously a Perpetual Groove song!” A couple of those were written shortly after my departure, and—whenever I picked up the guitar—I could only hear Adam’s bass part here and Albert’s drums there and, obviously, a lot of the time Brock’s guitar. In the past year or so, I’ve also personally been writing singer/songwriter stuff which sounds like Dawes or Ben Folds, which wouldn’t automatically fit with Perpetual Groove. But I’m really excited to bring some of my stuff to the table and have a group to do it with.
Though he’ll still be a special guest, Matt’s first show back will be at Athens’ Georgia Theatre. Not only has Perpetual Groove played some of its shows there, but you were also supposed to play the theater the night it burnt down, correct?
Brock: Yeah. Actually, we were also supposed to play the first show when it re-opened, but there was a problem in regards to getting the permits in time, which regrettably we were unable to do. Things didn’t work out with us to be the first band that had the honor to grace the stage, but we are still part of the opening celebration. The theater opened when students were coming back to school and we are going to play right before everyone goes home for the holidays. That provides that kind of energy which we were hoping to get.
Matt will also be sitting in for a bit in Atlanta on New Year’s Eve, correct?
Albert: It could be for more than a tune, we definitely have some surprises and whatnot but we have some ideas and a lot of avenues to which we could be clever in song selection regarding the circumstances.
So shifting gears, I know you have Amberland in the spring and I’m sure you’re touring a lot before then. What other plans do you guys have for early 2012? Is it going to be mostly a touring cycle or do you plan to go into the studio or work on some other songwriting projects?
Adam: Well, we have Jam Cruise in the beginning of the year. It’ll be a chance to see the evolution as it happens. As for the rest of the year, I guess you could say we’re taking it one thing at a time—we’re trying to get through this transition and, knock on wood, I think it’s been going pretty smoothly. Once the public gets ahold of the information en masse that might complicate things, or it might speed things along or make things smoother. But really it’s just like Matt said, we need to look at this like an evolution and not a return to the same style of things. We need to be four guys who have aged a little bit and matured a great deal and we’re getting back to the roots of what we used to do, but we’re trying to approach it in a different headspace. As long as we can continue to do that I’m not worried, the nature of things will unfold as they usually do. And we’ll greet it with open arms.
Brock: I’ll tell you one thing: I’m interested in is incorporating more of the dual guitar parts in some of the songwriting and also bringing back some of the covers that we used to do that we weren’t able to do in the recent past. I’m really into the two guitars because you can change the whole feel of everything just by adding a guitar and keeping it up for a song or two.
Adam: And over this time period Matt’s become really proficient on the Moog synthesizer. I also tend to like a lot of bands that seem to have multi-instrumentalists onstage.
You have mentioned that this is an evolution, and I definitely agree with that. You have all grown a lot as musicians, but you’re not going to pretend the last three years never happened. With that in mind, is there anything that you feel John has bought to the band that you feel will carry through—whether it’s a certain style palate or his thumbprint on the songwriting?
Adam: There’s a couple of songs that we’re no longer going to play because they were John’s songs, and we just felt like we shouldn’t play them. If someone’s the main writer or a song is their brainchild, we feel that they should keep that to themselves. We don’t want to go around and play songs that we or the fans identify with a certain person. Stylistically, Matt and John play differently, and there was a lot I missed about Matt when he left the band. It’s not really a situation where it’s an end-all. It’s going to be different, but that’s the nature of the beast I guess.
Matt: Not to backtrack too much, but your previous question where you kind of mentioned the layering of keys and stuff like that that we’ve done in the past, I’m in the unique position of having an outsider’s view as for the past few years. It was really fascinating and humbling to me to see all these younger bands in which I recognize a similar sound—some have even said in interviews that we have directly influenced them.
I guess we’re reaching that age where as a band since ’98 where there is another [generation of musicians] sort of how bands like the Disco Biscuits or, of course Phish, were several years ahead of us. We’re at this point now where we’ve all learned our lessons from going out there and grinding it out on the road, but we’ve got this whole story of a true relationship that’s been built up between all four of us. I think it’s going to shine through the music that’s going to be written—and the stuff that hasn’t been written yet. That’s going to come through not only in the form of the song but in terms of what we were just talking about a minute ago—all of us being more comfortable, me being more comfortable playing guitar.
Guitar was my major in college—I actually didn’t become somewhat proficient on piano until the military needed piano players, and I knew enough to get in. After I got out of that, I could sit down and sight read and everything, and I certainly did enough of that. It would be nice to feel comfortable having a guitar on stage as well and having the songs moving forward. If one of us doesn’t like what one of us does we’re not really afraid or shy to say that, or we’re not really afraid or shy to inject an opinion. We’ve grown tremendously as songwriters, and I’m more excited about that than anything else. I like the idea of even having an acoustic guitar on a softer number like “For Now Forget,” and it opens up a lot of avenues in regards to who plays which instruments on which song, even just for small parts. If Matt lays down a loop and a texture and then he can add lap steel, that frees me up in a different kind of way, and even just having an acoustic up there provides a lot of opportunity.
Yeah, it’s cool that as you guys all expand your palates you don’t have to be confined to the traditional instrumentation of guitar, bass, drums, keyboard or whatever; everyone can kind of do what’s best for that song or that moment in the band’s dynamic on stage or in the studio. Well that’s pretty much all I had to ask, is there anything else you wanted to mention about this stage or the reunion or moving forward?
Matt: Yeah I mean, like Albert said earlier, my first full show back will be at New Year’s and then once we’re officially in 2012 I’ll stay up there longer than a couple of songs. I’m excited that we’re going to have these two nights on Jam Cruise. We may do some more intimate shows before for fans who can’t make Jam Cruise. It’ll be a more intimate venue, and doing a two night run leaves us time to experiment with all the new toys at our disposal. I’m going to be playing a few songs, like Brock said, on New Year’s with the guys that night in front of a hometown crowd, and we’re going to make the news known to the public. I know we have one special cover in mind for the Georgia Theatre, and I’m really as excited as I was ten years ago to be a part of Perpetual Groove. It’s a much different kind of excitement now, and I couldn’t be happier. We have a better idea now about what the reality is ahead of us, and we know how to embrace it.
