Holly Bowling has long wowed fans with her solo work, whittling down massive Dead or Phish arrangements into haunting, intimate performances. However her new project Ghost Light takes her out of the solo setting and matches her with Tom Hamilton, Steve Lyons, Raina Mullen and Scotty Zwang. They will hit the road this month, unveiling not only a new set of tunes but a new kind of creative outlet for the pianist. She explains that the shift from her solo work into Ghost Light is opening a lot of new doors. “It’s the first band that I’ll be touring with and playing in as a solid continuous regular thing,” she said. In the condensed conversation below, Bowling discusses her creative process, her new band and her connection with the Dead.
Ghost Light is your newest project, which is very exciting. Tell me a little bit about your friendship with Tom Hamilton. Do you feel like your two skill sets are really simpatico and complement one another?
Yeah I mean they’re really different, but they work well together. That’s a good recipe in general. You don’t want to be too much of the same thing. But yeah, we’ve been playing together a bunch over the past year and I think every time we’ve been like, “Oh we have to do this again. This is fun!” So, it’s been cool to have the opportunity to spend more time working on building what we want Ghost Light to be. Me sitting in with American Babies with one quick rehearsal versus working on new music together for a week is a whole different thing.
Tell me about those initial Ghost Light rehearsals.
We’ve all been gettin’ together in the studio, working on developing tunes together, writing together and just having this new thing coalesce and take form. Having the opportunity give it the time that it deserves and see what it grows into has been super fun.
As far of the sound of Ghost Light goes, can you kind of give us hints as to what you guys are leaning towards? Sonically, are you and Tom in the forefront?
Right now, we’re really trying to approach it as all five of us on equal footing and coming in and seeing what everyone can bring. You know, it’s still a very much a new thing and a work in progress. But so far, it’s felt very much like something that everyone is equally involved in. We’re writing together, we’re all making decisions critically and creatively in the studio together.
Do you find yourself flexing new creative muscles in terms of writing with and for other people?
It’s definitely different writing for a larger ensemble versus writing for trio or solo stuff. So it’s flexing a different set of muscles for sure, with writing. But it also feels very much like a shift, shifting gears.
When I’m playing solo I’m trying to take all of these parts and condense it down to one place where I’m thinking in terms of like, this giant world and bringing it down into a smaller entity. You know? I can’t play all the parts so I’m kind of trying to paint around the edges and outline this bigger world that I want the listener to hear. I want it to expand in their head even though it’s only this small framework.
And then, to just turn around and work in this other context where I’m not trying to take the whole orchestra or the whole band and put it into this smaller space. It’s more that I get to listen and find what sliver of that and what sections are going to be me, and how that’s going to fit with the others. So, it’s really a complete reversal of what I’ve spent the last few years really throwing myself into, which is cool. And it’s definitely been good to get to dive into the world of Ghost Light rather than, flipping back and forth between that and my solo work. Because, mentally, it’s like a completely inverse experience.
So, you’re going to primarily focus on Ghost Light in the next year or so and not play as many solo shows?
That’s definitely true. I’ll probably do some solo stuff here and there, but in general I want to give this thing the time that it deserves and really throw myself into it. I like to throw myself into things with both feet, you know?
Absolutely. I also wanted to talk a little bit about your connection with the Grateful Dead. In recent history, you played with Phil & Friends. You also played with Bob Weir not too long ago. And you grew up on The Dead. What were those experiences like coming from where you’re coming from?
You know, the biggest take away from playing with them—and I’ve gotten to play with Phil more than Bob, but with both of them—is the fact that they’ve been doing it this long and they’re still into it. It’s amazing. I mean Phil is what, 77? And he doesn’t look it on stage. The energy that he’s putting out is incredible. And at that point, you know, you’ve been at the top of everything for so long that you could easily show up with an attitude like, “Whatever. I don’t need to be doing this.” And it’s the opposite. He shows up and is just radiating joy when he plays. And that kind of thing—finding it in your life and still being 100% tapped into that is amazing. That’s the biggest take away for me. I want to be in my 70s and still finding that joy and that happiness, still having that commitment and that dedication and that drive.
And then, kind of going back to your own Deadhead roots, were there any moments you played with Phil where you stepped outside of yourself and you realized, “Whoa! I’m on stage with Phil Lesh right now!”
The first time going up there, there is that moment of like, ‘Holy shit I’m gonna play with Phil Lesh!” As I was driving to the venue, I started to feel a little nervous and then the minute that we started to play I was like, “This is the easiest thing in the world to slip into.”
Phil’s a very welcoming guy and musically really welcomes you in, but for me I’m like, “Oh, this is the music that I know better than anything else. This is the earliest music I remember as a kid. I grew up on this. This is my world.” You know? “This feels good.”
But a couple of gigs later we were playing at Terrapin Crossroads again, and I had this moment like partway through, where I was like, “I’m playing ‘Dark Star.’ Pinch me!”
And what about Bob Weir?
I played with Bob at Christmas Jam in 2016, and it was just this crazy confluence of things. It ended up being the day that my album dropped, my Dead album, Better Left Unsaid. And I spent the album release day onstage with Bob, which was—to grow up listening to this stuff and then to have this piano project spiral into what it’s become and then have that culminate with “Boom! I put this album out that I’m super proud of and I’m not even paying attention to the album today because I’m getting to play these songs with Bob.” It was just one of those amazing days.
Did either Phil or Bob come up to you and say like, ‘Hey, I heard your version of one of our songs and I really liked it!”
Talking to both those guys, they’ve had nice things to say, which is cool because it’s a weird moment when you’re playing music that’s your interpretation and the person who wrote the original is standing right there. You want to do it justice and you want to do it your own way, but also a part of you is like, “Man, I hope they didn’t think I really screwed that up.”
