Dave Schools shows no signs of slowing down. Even as Widespread Panic approaches its 30th anniversary, the bassist is involved in a myriad of projects with a diverse group of musicians. He spent most of Panic’s 2012 hiatus working with Mickey Hart, and the Northern California transplant has become a regular at Bob Weir’s TRI Studios (The Grateful Dead co-founder described the well-spoken and always thoughtful musician as “quick on the coach” during his Weir Here broadcasts.) In 2013, wry singer/troubadour and lifelong Widespread Panic fan Todd Snider also drafted Schools to join his new jamband super group Hard Working Americans, an all-star band featuring Chris Robinson Brotherhood/Ryan Adams & the Cardinals guitarist Neal Casal, Great American Taxi keyboardist Chad Staehly and Flannel Church drummer and fellow Col. Bruce Hampton student Duane Trucks. The musicians burned through a set of covers at TRI Studios last year and just released a self-titled album on Melvin Records/Thirty Tigers.
The resulting record works material by Hard Working Americans features 11 tracks written by a range of artists that include Randy Newman, Lucinda Williams, Kevin Gordon, Hayes Carll, Kevn Kinney (Drivin’ ‘N Cryin’), Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings, Brian Henneman (The Bottle Rockets), Will Kimbrough, Tommy Womack, Kieran Kane, Chuck Mead (BR5-49), Don Herron and Frankie Miller (Elizabeth Cook) into a conceptual record and outsider story.
Schools and Snider split production duties while longtime Panic producer and Athens, GA musician John Keane mixed the record, leaving his fingerprints on several tracks. John Popper also makes a guest appearance on the album. After a warm-up show in December, Schools turned his attention back to Panic for two high-profile New Year’s run gigs and an appearance at Atlanta, GA’s Fox Theatre as part of a Gregg Allman tribute. (The members of Panic also spent a few days in the mountains collaborating on a batch of new songs for their next studio project.) Schools recently spoke about the Hard Working Americans who just wrapped up a few dates with more to come later this month.
Can give us a little background on the original idea for the Hard Working Americans project?
Well, Hard Working Americans is sort of the dream of Todd Snider. He wanted to take his songwriting sensibility, material by people he thinks have written what he calls “perfect songs,” and sort of collide them into the jamband sensibility. Basically, he said, “Me and my friends can spend 10,000 hours learning how to write songs, and these cats like Neal Casal, Dave Schools and Duane Trucks and other sort of jamband people spent 10,000 hours learning how to connect their fingers to any sound they desire. Why can’t we work together?” And that’s sort of the whole thing—that and using the music to elevate these songs that were written by friends of his.
It was pretty easy to get together, record the record and understand how to do that. We deconstruct the song down to its most empirical melody, and then rebuild it with a different feel that seemed to work with Todd’s rhythmic sensibility, and the key that will work best for him to sing the melody in. By doing that, we became a band in the studio. It was easy to mix a record like that. We played it live in the room, so we just recorded it really well. And then the challenge became: How do we do this live?
Hard Working Americans played a warm-up date in December. Given that this group was created as a studio project, what did you take away from that gig?
We got together in Boulder right before Christmas and rehearsed the material for the show, which was a benefit at the Boulder Theater for Colorado flood relief, sponsored by the Boedecker Foundation. I know that the receipts were matched by a lot of other people. But really, it was, “Okay, so we got these tunes, and we’ve built them in our own image. What do we do now?” And it’s sort of a quandary most bands don’t face because they’re busily writing their own material, learning how to be a band, playing for disinterested bartenders, doormen and maybe some girlfriends, in little bars for years.
We’ve already been through that individually, and we had all this great material that we knew we could play. So it was really like, “We’re gonna walk out on stage in front of 1,200 people who’ve never heard this material done this way or this band before.” It was kind of daunting. But it went really well, and I think it went well because we decided that we were gonna not worry about stuff.
Instead of recording as set of originals, the super group’s first album is a set of conceptually linked covers. Can we expect some original material when you perform live?
In the inimitable jamband tradition, we were going to let the music play the band, as it were. We made some room in some of the arrangements for improv. We brought in a sixth member, Jesse Aycock, an amazing guitar player-songwriter from Tulsa, to flesh out the vocals and other guitar parts.
We also integrated some of Todd Snider’s familiar songs and gave those the Hard Working Americans treatment. Then we made sure we were going go out with a bang by having Hayes Carll come join us on stage for the song of his that we do on the record, “Stomp and Holler.” And so that is the long-winded answer to your question, but that in a nutshell is the next steps. We’re going to add new music; we’re busily writing new music. Todd’s got lyrics, we’ve got songs, we’re going to rehearse and try to add some more stuff. There we’re going to go into the studio in Chicago and start working on the next record after the February sling.
And would you say that, will there be more original material or Todd songs rather than the covers that kind of dominated the first record?
Absolutely, and not necessarily Todd’s songs. I mean, the whole idea is collaboration. That’s something that, you know, songwriters like Todd don’t get much of. Sometimes they have songwriting partners. But we came up with a unique formula that works for us in the way that we would deconstruct and rebuild other people’s songs. You know, Todd is a great melody guy, Neal is an amazing songwriter and a great melody guy, Chad is in the same boat, and as Duane and I have developed, we’ve become real simpatico with like sort of pockets we really enjoy playing.
It really was one of those rare occasions where five elements came together and worked out really well. It didn’t nullify the formula; it didn’t over-catalyze it into an explosion of weird emotions. It just worked, so we’re banking on continuing that.
Your relationship with Todd is unique: he was a Widespread Panic fan who followed you on tour, he achieved success in the hipster-folk world and then, you formed a band with him. Do you remember the first time you met?
I don’t remember meeting him too often in situations I could describe in print. I do remember the first time I saw him and his band, The Nervous Wreck. They were opening for Panic at Cuthbert, which is an outdoor place in Eugene, OR in a park with a creek flowing behind the stage.
It’s sort of an expansive area with lots of places to have picnics, and it’s very beautiful, like most of Eugene is. And, you know, it was a very bucolic setting. There are geese and ducks on the lake and hippies and everything. I remember just standing there watching them play. He was doing that Seattle Talking Grunge Rock Blues song that he had a hit with, and it just, those guys had such a gutbucket sensibility, you know? And he was just really poking fun at the predominant, you know, the alternative, flannel-wearing grunge scene at the time, and there we are just slightly south of where it emanated, in the time where radio was buried up to its neck in that music and a host of imitators of the sound.
And here’s this bunch of long-haired guys that are very rockabilly, gutbucket, garage-y, just sort of poking holes in not only the bucolic setting, but also the predominate fashion at the time, talking about, you know, “I didn’t make it in Seattle, I guess I’ll just take my guitar and move back to Athens.” And it hit me when he uttered that line as I looked around, that, you know, this is a guy that not only had a gift, but, you know, he was a lot like me in that he didn’t mind using that gift to poke holes in things that have gotten maybe too big and too established. And then as I got to know Todd, the gift turned from envy into downright jealousy when I realized that he can poke holes in stuff and the people he’s poking holes in still love him even more. If I tried to do that, there’d be, you know, an entire blog dedicated to railroading me. So I keep my mouth shut and let him do that because he’s really cuddly, and he can tell you how wrong you are and you just want to love him even more.
Yeah, it’s amazing how he can, as you said, poke holes in people, and people still respect him from his kind of jokey attitude.
Yeah, well, it’s real, you know? He’s not putting on airs. He never claims to know more than anybody. He just states the way he feels. And, you know, if it happens to be the opposite of how you feel, you don’t feel accused of anything when he tells you he doesn’t feel the same way. You know, I’ve watched it work with radio people, I’ve seen it work with reporters, you know, who try to pin you down immediately and put you in a box before you’ve even really started the interview. And he lets them know that, you know, that ain’t gonna happen. And the guy doesn’t, like, wind up writing a hatchet piece, you know? So he has a quality that is real, and it’s endearing.
He really does fulfill the role of what songwriters and artists should be doing, which is holding mirrors up.
