In the 1990s, God Street Wine helped define the emerging jamband scene in New York. Along with moe., the group was one of the many improvisational-based bands to score a major label deal in the wake of Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, Dave Matthews Band and Phish’s successes. The group established a national following in the later part of the ‘90s and, closer to home, grew from New York’s downtown bars to headlining shows at Wetlands and Irving Plaza. The members of the band went their separate ways in 1999 but reunited just two years later for a gig as part of the closing of the Wetlands celebration. Rumors of a more formal reunion started to spread after the band picked up some traction on Facebook and frontman/guitarist Lo Faber started posting vintage recordings and videos online. Finally, God Street Wine’s five core members—Faber, guitarist Aaron Maxwell, bassist Dan Pifer, keyboardist Jon Bevo and drummer Tom Osander—came together last summer for a memorial concert and will reunite this summer for shows at New York’s Gramercy Theater (7/9-10) and Irving Plaza (7/16-17).
Last week, Osander walked Jambands.com through the band’s upcoming reunion plans and looked back on the past ten years away from the stage.
God Street Wine will reunite for four shows this summer. With the exception of a few sets as part of a memorial last year, these will be the band’s first shows since 2001. What initially spurred on this reunion?
It came as a result of two things, really. Mike Weiss, who used to work for the band in the capacity of lighting designer, tour manager and everything-guy was diagnosed with MS several years back. He’s done an awful lot of fundraising and helped raise awareness about the National Multiple Sclerosis Society in the States. He sent an e-mail around in October of last year asking us if we could do something to help. I’m the tricky one because of my location in Ireland and because of my work, but it was a very resounding “Yes.”
At the same time, as you said, we did a show last year for a guy named Paul Ducharme. Paul was a very early fan and the very first taper of God Street Wine—just a real character. The closest thing I could compare him to in the Grateful Dead would be our Neal Cassady. He was a bit mad but full of love and absolutely would do anything for music and for his friends. Paul passed away last year in the early spring and when Paul died and the news came to me, the first thought I had was “We should play a show for him.”
I thought, “It is 3,000 miles away, and I’m going to leave Ireland to be at whatever service happens, and I think that the band should probably play.” The band hadn’t played together in eight years since we came together for a closing of Wetlands reunion show in 2001. So last summer we did this day of shows for Paul. We played in Ridgewood, New Jersey in the park—one of the very first places the band ever played outside of New York City—for a lot of very early fans. A lot of our very early fans were all from Ridgewood, which is where our guitarist Aaron is from. So, the area itself had a lot of significance. It was a really amazing day. We finished that evening playing in the basement of a house we played in the very early days of God Street Wine in Wyckoff, New Jersey. So it was all of these familiar faces, albeit, older, grayer and less-haired. We hadn’t rehearsed for those shows so it was a muscle memory kind of thing but still a great time. We ended up playing three sets and just had a blast.
After the shows we all went our separate ways, and I came back to Ireland. But when Mike asked us about doing something to raise some money for MS and honor Paul around the anniversary of his passing we decided to go for it.
How much time does God Street Wine plan to spend rehearsing for these reunion shows?
As of now everyone has been rehearsing on their own but we are going to get together a few days before the shows when I come to New York. Things have changed a lot since we were a band. Thanks to technology we can send MP3s of specific versions of songs around really easily and everybody can work on them on their own. God Street Wine had a pretty large catalogue of original songs and covers. Lo was behind the organization of the songs to pick for these gigs, while others were doing different things to get ready for the shows. I’ve been at the business end of things and organizing the actual dates and the logistics. Lo put together a huge list of songs and then sent them out to everybody. We each got to pick about 40 songs we absolutely want to play, 10 or so we probably should play and a few we absolutely don’t want to play. Then he added, subtracted and mixed around the songs and came up with four shows of music. We might not definitely stick to that list because, though we’ve been practicing those songs and relearning them for a few months, we still don’t know what it’s going to be like to play them together. When we get into a room next week together, and we have some rehearsals, we’ll see where they all stand and we’ll know what’s going to work and what might not and go from there.
What was it like listening to music you had not played in over a decade?
It was interesting revisiting a lot of those old tapes and kind of not as pleasant, perhaps, as I thought. We hear probably far more of the bad stuff then anyone else does—or our youth, I should say. All I heard was our exuberant youth in regard to tempos, tuning and all that kind of stuff that musicians’ ears hear. We’re going to do our best to not repeat songs over the four shows, though I am sure there will be a few repeats. But we are going to do different versions of those songs if they are repeated.
It is going to be a big reunion, not just for the band but for the fans. There are going to be people at the shows there that haven’t seen each other in the same audience for many years and that we haven’t seen from the stage for many years. It’s going to be amazing, and we hope to hang with some of those people after the gigs. I think there was obviously a calling for this—I mean the way the first two shows sold ticket-wise was not something we were expecting. We thought there was going to be a little buzz but it was mind-blowing to what this thing happen with the help of technology. The little viral way that things are done these days really lets the sparks fly.
Of all the members of God Street Wine, you are the only member of the band currently playing music professionally. Can you tell us a bit about your current projects and also what some of your GSW associates are currently up to?
I’ve kept busy. I moved to Ireland in 1999, about a year after I left the band, and immediately found that there was a lack of drummers over here and found work pretty quickly doing a lot of different gigs. I met up with a singer/songwriter named Damien Rice. He was just getting started, and I ended up working with him for about as long as I played with God Street Wine. I made a few records with him, and we toured the world.
He had a singer he worked with the whole time named Lisa Hannigan. When it was time for her to make her solo things happen, I started working with her as well. We’d done some stuff together in the past outside of Damien—some work with Herbie Hancock and some other sessions in more of a jazz setting. We were just waiting for the right time when she had the songs ready to do her own record—and the confidence to go out there on her own. When that time came there was no question that I was going to work on that project. We had a great time making her record and toured that for a year-and-a-half. That’s been my life since the end of God Street Wine.
As for the other guys, Aaron works at a school around New Paltz, New York where he does some music teaching and also, if I’m not mistaken, does some computer work there [ed note: Aaron also plays in a gypsy jazz group]. Dan is an executive at a digital media distribution company and Jon works as a software engineer—the very corporate world of IT.
Lo’s put together a couple of solo bands over the years and has done a couple of CDs. He’s just now moving back from New Orleans where he’s lived for the past nine months working on his doctoral degree in American History.
Lately they’ve all been practicing their butts off getting ready for this. That’s been their night gig.
You and Jon actually left God Street Wine a year before the band broke up in 1999. Do you feel the band has moved on from that tension-filled period?
They carried on for another year and a half or so and then it was time to get a day job and face reality that it was kind of done. I think we’ve had enough time off that all the things that may have made it not work there towards the end don’t matter now at all. For me, it’s always been really important that you’re having fun, hopefully with whatever you do, but especially if it is something that is so enjoyable for both the listener and the player as making music. If that stops then, well, you need to change. Now, doing this, we’re looking forward to it…it should be all about fun and the reunion feel for everyone. There will be a lot of people there that never saw the band probably back in the day. There will be kids of what used to be the kids coming to shows. I’ve already seen people talking about that on the Facebook page. They’re all getting briefed on what to expect.
As you mentioned earlier, GSW came together in 2001 to help close the Wetlands. What was that experience like?
It’s always strange for me because it’s always a bit of a blur with jetlag—kind of arriving in and playing. I know we got together and there were tapes to listen to and kind of refresh ourselves with. I wouldn’t have done a lot of preparation coming in to that as I recall. You know, I was kind of busy with the stuff I was doing here and so it was kind of “Yeah, let’s do that” I don’t know whether the shows were any good. I think there was probably an energy there but I’ve done far more work on these shows than I have on anything since probably the band, as far as in regards to God Street Wine.
In fact, I’ve done far more work on these shows than anything since we all lived together in the house in Ossining, New York, and we would get up in the morning, have our vocal rehearsals, have our breakfast, have bass and drum rehearsal, have our lunch, have full band rehearsal, have our dinner, play poker and get up and do it again the next day or go off and do a gig. It was truly full-time.
While there are a lot of other things going on in my life right now, I’ve tried to get an hour or two every day to go out to the barn, sit down with either the drum machine or old tapes. The music I’ve done for the past ten years has not been ROCK with a capital “R” music, it’s been a lot of delicate stuff, a lot of brush work, a lot of textures and colors. While interesting, you’re not breaking a full body sweat.
Aside from how hot it’s probably going to be in New York in a week’s time, these are going to be three hour-plus shows of good, old-fashioned God Street Wine music. I’ve had to build up some calluses and work on endurance and stuff like that that an old man needs at this point to do that sort of thing. Muscle memory will only get you so far. There are a lot of intricate changes and things like that that even songs I wouldn’t have thought of as being tricky are now that I am listening back.
Do you plan to play any new material at these shows?
No. A few people have asked about that but no, it’s all songs that people have heard before in varying degrees as far as how much we’ve played them. It’s nothing new and there is no talk of doing new things at this point. It really was going to be one show at first. Then it seemed to make sense to add another. I got Jonathan Adelman from Paradigm involved because I didn’t want to be the one negotiating. He’s done great work with both Damien and me in the past. He was generous enough to offer his services, and he thought two shows should be good. I think at one point we were talking to the Bowery at first and they suggested five shows. I was like, “No, no, no. Come on, let’s take this slowly and make it enjoyable for everyone.” I wanted to make sure we don’t jump the gun on it. I hope that if this goes well we can get together maybe once a year for a summer show or a festival. It depends on the interest and, obviously, in this current state of the industry, you’ve got to be really selective about what you decide to go out and do. Granted, our venues aren’t huge but they went really nicely and that was encouraging. So, maybe there’s a calling for a yearly get together for God Street Wine.
Gramercy is a new venue for God Street Wine, but the band has a long history of playing Irving Plaza. Can you talk a little about your decision to play those two rooms?
Gramercy was my first thought, even though the Bowery kind of came calling first. I was more familiar with the Gramercy more recently. I played the Bowery a few years ago with Damien and Lisa, but with Lisa we’ve done the Gramercy two times in the last year or so. I just like it—it’s a great feeling in the room, there’s a great sightline. It sounds good, it looks good and it feels good. So that was my original thought: well let’s do it there. It’s a nice size, around 600 capacity, and I thought it would be perfect. When the first few shows sold out really quickly, the suggestion to play two more at Irving came up and Irving, we have such a history there I don’t know how many times we’ve played there in the past but it was kind of a milestone place for us. We started off in the Nightingale bar, then we moved to the other bars downtown and then, finally, the Wetlands. We became regulars there and the next stop was Irving Plaza. It’s just a proper venue, not that the Wetlands wasn’t, but Wetlands was kind of a funky, different venue whereas Irving Plaza has the big stage, big lights, big sound and a big rectangle room. There is a balcony and chandeliers and all that kind of thing. We did multiple night runs there and even a New Year’s show. It felt like home at a certain point.
I remember coming back with Damien and it feeling so small and having all these memories about playing there with God Street Wine. Of course, nobody in this little Irish singer/songwriter operation knew anything about it but it definitely has a special place. The fact that it changed names to the Fillmore and is now going back to Irving Plaza makes it even more appropriate for our little reunion there. Since the Wetlands is gone, I think this is the closest thing to our stomping grounds for sure.
In addition, God Street Wine is playing Jam Cruise in January. What led to the decision to play that gig?
That’s the only other thing we have booked. I can truthfully say that—we’re not hiding anything from anyone. Jam Cruise came along as soon as the reunion shows in New York were announced for July. People came calling saying, and I said, “No more shows, unless you want to book a nice cruise for me” as a joke. And then we got the Jam Cruise offer so we had to take it. There’s a reason that we’re not a band still, and we’ve all got other things going on in our lives that are the main focus. Let’s keep this fun. We are doing two shows on the cruise. We might consider something for later in 2011 but as of now, that’s it. The four in New York and the two on the water.
Do you have any plans to have Jason Crosby or any of the latter day members of the band sit in at Gramercy or Irving shows?
As far as other members, former members or guest members, as of now there are no plans for any guests to sit in. These won’t be like the last shows we did in ’99 where we had everybody combined at the Wetlands. While fun, that was a lot of people on stage. These shows will be the original five guys and one of our long-term sound engineers, Brian Duffy. He’s agreed to come in from Pittsburgh and engineer these shows in between other work that he’s got going on. That’s going to be great to have him because we’ll have someone who really knows the band out front dialing it all in. And Mike Weiss will be on stage with us doing backline and various things so that’ll be cool.
If people from our past or other guests stop in—if Nels Cline is knocking at the back door and wants to play a guitar solo—I wouldn’t say no to that. But, as of now, there are no plans. We pretty much wanted it to be the five guys reuniting for the cause and as well to honor Paul.
These shows are slightly bittersweet not only because of Paul but another kind of really old-school fan and friend, named Michelle, passed away just a couple weeks ago. It was in her basement that we played last year for Paul, and she died tragically a few weeks ago in Pennsylvania so there will be that element as well. So along with what should be a really joyful time and some pretty high music, these shows will be tinged with sadness because those two people who were close to us, Paul and Michelle, won’t be there. But we certainly will play in their honor and I would like to think that they’d dig that.
