Mike Dillon is a busy man, who seems to be working 24/7, and then some. Just in the past seven months he’s been either writing, recording or touring with the Dead Kenny Gs, Garage A Trois and with former Billy Goat bandmate Earl Harvin. In the past, as an in-demand drummer/percussionist, he’s been drafted into outfits led by Les Claypool and Ani DiFranco among others.
I ended up interviewing Dillon during two different sessions as we discussed two similar yet different acts. The punk jazz trio of Dillon, saxophonist Skerik and bassist Brad Houser, a.k.a. the Dead Kenny Gs, put out Operation Long Leash last month. That is now followed in April by Always Be Happy, But Stay Evil, the fourth album by Garage A Trois, which features both Dillon and Skerik along with keyboardist Marco Benevento and drummer Stanton Moore.
Both are excellent representations of where jazz can go in the 21st century with an ambitious, exploratory spirit and passion for the art of songwriting, musicianship and improvisation that’s equaled by an attention to melody that allows anyone not riveted by instrumental music to find the material inviting.
During the conversations Dillon’s energetic presence matched his unbridled enthusiasm for his nearly three decades as a student and creator of music. The multitasker remained quite aware of the subject at hand while loading the DKGs van for touring duties, ordering a soy latte for a burst of road refreshment or, later, stepping out prior to playing on the opening night of DiFranco’s current tour for a taxi ride and visit to a local Whole Foods Market in San Diego.
[This conversation focuses on the Dead Kenny Gs, with the Garage A Trois feature to run next week.]
JPG: Let me begin by saying you’re the first, and only interview subject that I can say I’ve seen naked.
MD: Oh, really? The Billy Goat days? When we played at the Grog Shop [in Cleveland]?
JPG: No, I booked you at club, Cedars Lounge, in Youngstown, Ohio.
MD: I remember that place. That was a really fun show. That was the only time we played Youngstown, Ohio, too.
JPG: There was a production of “Oh Calcutta!” a block away from the club and there was all this controversy about the nudity. And then, we not only had nudity with Billy Goat but you brought your dogs out after the show, which was probably another violation. Overall, it made it a fantastic night. Once I discovered that, it all came together.
MD: I know. A lot of people they’ll discover, ‘Oh my God! That’s that dude who was in Billy Goat who used to run around naked all the time.’ It’s always funny when the light bulb goes off. There’s a thread between those bands I’m in now and that stuff. Hopefully, energy and more so with Hairy Apes BMX or Go-Go Jungle. But even in Dead Kenny Gs I’m playing drums and rapping and talking shit on the mic and getting in people’s face. That sort of attitude.
JPG: When I looked at what you’d done since then, you were the frontman jumping and dancing around, singing and playing percussion in Billy Goat but after that you’ve played a lot of supporting or non-frontman roles in other bands. Kind of like the opposite of Phil Collins who went from playing drums to being the frontman. Was it a difficult adjustment?
MD: When Billy Goat happened that band was never ever supposed to be anything other than like a one-time event. It was like, ‘A friend of mine’s got a gig and he needs an opening band.’ So, we did it and the next thing you know people freaked out and within six months we were drawing 1,500 people in Dallas. It was an anomaly. It never happened in my career since. And it was just the time period, being 1990 and there wasn’t the internet to take everyone’s attention span away. There weren’t iPhones for people to look at all the time. They were forced to look for things in their community. And then we started touring.
I had been a classically-trained percussionist. Billy Goat came along and I was always wrestling in my head, ‘Oh man, I’m getting naked and I’m being the fool onstage.’ I never took myself that serious. I was just having fun. ‘This is cool. I’ll go with it.’ I never really aspired to do that. It was a happy accident, but I learned a lot doing it. Whether it’s Garage A Trois or Dead Kennedy Gs at some point in the evening we are here to entertain people and get it going. Miles Davis, he’d have his crowd to his back but he knew how to entertain people. So, no matter what kind of music you’re playing…having that to bring is just another tool, really, whether it’s playing rhythm changes or talking shit on the microphone. It’s all good to me.
JPG: You mentioned about being classically-trained. I saw you play with Garage A Trois last year at All Good Festival and then Dead Kenny Gs open for Primus in Cleveland. What really struck me and made me want to talk to you was when you played the opening of “Computer Crimes” on vibes at All Good.
It was hypnotic. You were like a machine. And I thought at the time that you just had to have a trained musical background. Where did you study and were you thinking of moving on to an orchestra before heading to rock ‘n’ roll?
MD: My mom was school teacher and she got me started with school band when I was 10 years old. Then when I was in high school I was in youth symphony and had good teachers. Then, I went to University of North Texas, and they had a really good music program. I was there three-and-a-half years doing jazz band, drum line, percussion ensembles.
The song you’re talking about there, “Computer Crimes,” funny that you bring that up. The concept on that is very minimalistic Steve Reich where you sit on this one thing to the point of monotony but you don’t move very much ‘til at the very end r when the release. That song definitely comes from that world, classical world.
University of North Texas has a pretty renowned music school. I was in this band called Ten Hands before Billy Goat and we started gigging all the time. The next thing you know, ‘I’m a musician. I don’t need a degree to play music. I might as well just stay on the road.’ That was ’87 or ’88. There was this thing there One O’Clock Lab Band and I was playing percussion. As far as North Texas goes and the jazz club that was sort of like what everyone who went to North Texas wanted to be in. There were guys who got off the road, like Maynard Ferguson’s band that would come play in that band. So, it was a semi-professional band. I did that for like six months and I was like, ‘You know what? I’m just going to play in bands.’ That’s when this all started.
In North Texas they had a really comprehensive jazz program. It was more like the Berklee [School of Music]. You look it up and they’ve got a great jazz program and classical program. And the percussion instructor there, a guy name Dr. Robert Schietroma, he was very well-rounded. A lot of people when they go to school, there like, ‘I just want to play drum set’ or ‘I just want to play mallets.’ But at North Texas he made us take drum set lessons, all the classical stuff. I played hand percussion and steel drum, gamelan. This was in the eighties. He was pretty ahead of the curve. It used to be you’d go to Berkelee to learn jazz. He had you learn everything. He started bringing in the African, Gamelan, Brazilian, Indian. That’s where I first started studying tabla. That was the foundation of the lifelong pursuit of percussion and musical knowledge. He taught us that you’re going to learn for the rest of your life, you’re never done learning. That’s the thing about music that a lot of people don’t understand. It’s not like a degree in economics. This is an ongoing continuing education. Everyone I play with studies and they practice all the time. You look at Coltrane. Coltrane was at the height of his powers and was taking lessons from Ornette Coleman. That’s a big lesson in humility for all of us. That’s where it all it comes from.
JPG: Obviously, you play vibes but did you learn to play xylophone with the single mallet?
MD: Oh yeah! That was the first thing. It all started on the glockenspiel and xylophone and then marimba. The jazz side of my playing didn’t really start until the mid-‘90s. When I was in college I took a few classes of jazz improv, just basic. I did learn that when I was in the jazz program. I understood the concept behind 2/5 and all that.
JPG: With music programs you run into a lot of students who are either devoted to classical or jazz only but rarely, at least how it was years ago, were they open to the world of rock music. You seemed to be the exception, using jazz with other elements.
MD: Oh yeah, man. I was 10 years old when I bought my first Led Zeppelin record. A lot of my friends, their parents might have been into big band or jazz but their big brother was into Led Zeppelin or Hendrix. Billy Goat, that drummer you saw, Earl Harvin, was a prime example of that. His dad used to see all the guys back in the day and grew up seeing Count Basie and all that stuff. So, Earl heard that but his sister was into Hendrix. And at a young age he was hearing all that music. This guy is an amazing bebop jazz drummer but he loves Bad Brains and Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones and he can play both styles really well. Look at Brian Blade, he plays with Wayne Shorter but he plays with Daniel Lanois and Joni Mitchell…He’s with all these different people. It seems like people of my generation…we want to rock, and especially in a lot of jazz it’s starting to happen.
The Dead Kenny Gs are more or less a poignant statement about Kenny G, just how jazz became this soulless commercial bullshit. It’s not just the smooth jazz but the stuff that they were teaching at the jazz school of music. This is guys in topsiders and khaki pants. It was like, ‘Man, what is this shit?’ The old jazz guys, they were shooting dope, the original punk rockers just getting their asses beat by cops and that was my perspective. I was like, ‘There’s something wrong here.’ Obviously, I was 22. Yeah, you’re glamorizing Charlie Parker’s smack use. He ended up dead at 35. Think of what he would have done without the smack. He was a genius before he got in a car accident and started doing dope. It just seemed like what they were teaching in school everything was becoming homogenized. Tons of great players but it was just conceptually bankrupt. So, I think a lot of people were looking to the eighties punk rock stuff like Bad Brains, just all these bands with energy and it was like, ‘Man, there’s something fresh going on here.’ Glam rock and all that stuff was dead too from my point of view. It was interesting being 20 in the mid-‘80s because there was cool stuff that was coming out of California and there was the Butthole Surfers… Being a guy with a jazz background and classically-trained, in some ways I was an outsider within those guys. I would know a lot of ‘em but…From the beginning all my bands we haven’t been totally accepted by cool punk rock kids like Gibby [Haynes] and his crew [in the Butthole Surfers]. And we were outsiders in the jazz world, obviously, as well. So, we were just some sort of mutant misfits. Pretty funny. Somehow they ended up throwing us into the jamband realm. That’s cool. Whatever. Labels are labels.
JPG: When you mentioned about the early jazz musicians, it reminds me of, I believe it was a live Benny Goodman album. I mentioned to someone that you could hear how it predates hardcore as far as the incredibly fast pace of the music.
MD: I know, it was. Jazz hardcore. That’s cool.
JPG: Speaking of the jazz world, what is the reaction to the Dead Kenny Gs? Are musicians supporting the ideas behind it or…?
MD: Living in New Orleans I’ve become friends with some great musicians. And at the end of the day, it’s all music. What did Thelonius Monk say in that one interview? ‘What kind of music do you like?’ ‘I like good music.’ The guy goes, ‘Even country music?’ ‘I don’t think the man understood me. I said I like good music.’ At the end of the day with all musicians you get to the point you realize, from your perspective, whether it’s good or bad. That being said, when they announced Kenny G at Jazzfest I was actually getting calls from some New Orleans jazz musicians going, ‘You guys have to play late night. I can’t even believe that they’re hiring Kenny G to play New Orleans Jazz Fest. It’s an embarrassment.’ Even New Orleans Jazz Fest, as great as it is and how much love they give to the city of New Orleans, I may be putting my foot in my mouth for saying this but they don’t give a fuck about promoting…everything is just…it’s a bullshit game. That’s all I’ve got to say. They book rock bands and that can draw millions of people and now they’re booking Kenny G. What does Kenny G have to do with New Orleans Jazz Fest other than musical necrophilia with Louis Armstrong in that one video? I’ve seen some great things about that. Go to our website and read that.
Some of ‘em support us, some probably think we’re clowns just like most musicians who are very judgmental. I mean, the Dead Kenny Gs name is a joke in a lot of ways. We don’t take it that serious.
JPG: It’s openly provocative, but if you get the joke….
MD: We love the Dead Kennedys, too. It’s like the Dead Kennedys and Kenny G. A friend ours gave us that band name. We were like, ‘Oh my God! This is perfect!’ So, the punk jazz thing, it just seemed to be the perfect name for our punk jazz project when we started. Of course, our problem has always been that we play too many…we’re all over the map. I love Ween for that reason. They’re all over the map. A lot of people can’t stand them. If anything I would say we don’t just play punk jazz.
The first song on the new record starts off with this weird epic rock styling, Steve Reich themed, and it runs the whole gamut. There’s not as much actual punk jazz on this record as there was on the first record. It’s more like a heavier rock record. We did the record with this guy Randall Dunn who worked with bands like Earth and SUNNO))) [pronounced sun] and he’s a really well-respected black metal, Southern Lord imprint, that label. Have you ever checked out Earth or SUNNO))) ?
JPG: Earth sounds familiar, not SUNNO))) .
MD: Check out SUNNO))) . Super-heavy, no drums just drone. Then, you realize these things are composed and they’re doing these seven-minute pieces of giant quarter/whole notes. It’s a complete different discipline. This guy Randall Dunn, he’s really into sonic textures and he grew up with John Zorn and all that stuff. So, we acquiesced to him. We had a bunch of songs we had written and he listened to everything. He took control of it which was nice. He had a lot of ideas about the recording process. Skerik is very happy with the way the record it turned out. We did the whole thing, recorded it in three days, mixed it in five. That’s the downside of all these kids pirating music and not paying for it anymore.
JPG: This record sounds tighter compared to your debut. Is that a matter of your intent or Randall’s influence?
MD: It was probably us.
JPG: In your press release, it mentioned the Minutemen. I spoke with Mike Watt recently and we discussed the Minutemen ideal, which he used on his new album, of a song just making its mark as quickly as possible, saying what it was to say and then being done.
MD: Is that his concept? Is that what he said?
JPG: I’m paraphrasing but his new album has 30 songs on it and I don’t think of any of them get past two minutes.
MD: I have to say I love that about the Minutemen and Watt. He inspires me on a lot of different levels. I read an interview how he writes songs all the time. It sounds like he’s saying he doesn’t get too precious about it. Write a song. Do it. Write another one. I tell people that all the time, younger musicians, ‘Just write songs. Just do it. Write song and put ‘em out. You’re going to get better as a songwriter.’
JPG: Back to the new album, Operation Long Leash, there are elements of funk, Steve Reich, but I also hear Frank Zappa and, maybe because I was listening to them lately, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Todd Rundgren in there. Just wondering if I’m going in the right direction or if that’s just my frame of mind.
MD: I think you’re completely on the right track. The way I look at it is like, my tabla teacher he always said, ‘You’re not in this business to manufacture a feeling. You just the best job that you can. When the painter painted his painting he’s not telling the people what they’re supposed to do when they look at it. He’s just painting a painting.’ He was driving that into my head for a long time. When we first started recording music 20 years ago I was always in the studio going, ‘I want people to feel like this when they hear this song.’ That’s just absurd! I really enjoy hearing whatever influence people are drawing from our songs. Truthfully, like rock bands I’ve been into like Queens of the Stone Age and Black Flag, and you said Zappa. So, I love that it ended up you heard that connection because Zappa was the first guy I heard who was doing cool stuff with odd times – “Black 5” it starts off at five and goes to six. And it goes back and forth between that.
I’ve been really into Elliott Smith as a songwriter and Todd Rundgren’s a great songwriter. Elliott’s been my main influence, learning his songs.
JPG: That’s real interesting. I wouldn’t think that such a singer-songwriter type such as Elliott Smith would have such an influence over this type of mainly instrumental music. Is it the idea of melodies?
MD: Exactly. I just really like the melodies that guy writes. Works out really well on the vibes. It’s like Miles [Davis] was with Sinatra. Something about Elliott’s phrasing that I love.
JPG: Now, when you are writing, are you using a piano, guitar, vibes?
MD: I mainly write on piano. Vibes are on my keyboard that I have in my room.
JPG: Now, the song “Black Death,” I imagine it’s a result of you living in New Orleans.
MD: It was really hard this summer. I remember the town post-JazzFest. I did a gig with James Singleton, Brian Coogan and Johnny Vidacovich. These guys have been there forever. Johnny grew up in New Orleans. And we were talking about how the city’s on the rebound, everything’s on the up-and-up. That was about two weeks after the oil spill. Just a week later, while in the van, when the first thing they tried, the cap didn’t work, the depression level in the van and in the city it was really bad. Obliterated that city again. I would say it’s rebounded. I don’t know if it’s denial in the seafood industry. Everyone’s saying, ‘Everything’s great.’ Whatever they did, it’s pretty amazing with the general population. ‘Oh, they capped it. Everything’s fine.’ To me the thing’s absurd. I go to restaurants, the only meat I eat is fish, whether that’s a good thing or bad thing I don’t know, but occasionally I eat fish and I’ll say, ‘Is this Gulf fish?’ And the chef will be offended. And I’m like, ‘What?! There’s like five gazillion gallons of dispersant and oil in the water and you’re looking at me like I’m an asshole for asking you that?’
So, that song we were on tour with Primus and we wrote it as a group effort. That was really cool because there were quite a few songs that were written as a band. That’s what I love the most about Dead Kenny Gs and Garage A Trois is that everyone in the songwriting and has come full circle as far as where they are. It used to be like, ‘Aw man, I’m a special musician. We don’t need to rehearse. We don’t need to practice.’ And our whole ethic has been. ‘Let’s take this back to the garage.’ The way we were when we first started playing music and you’d get together and rehearse for a few weeks before your gig. That ethic’s been around for the Dead Kenny Gs. Getting back to your question of why this sounds tighter we actually rehearsed for a couple weeks and played gigs. Based ourselves out of Austin. We were writing a tribute to the Bad Brains, and this is the way that the record ended up coming out, balanced. You know, a lot of bands don’t practice anymore. If you don’t get together until you’re in the studio it’s going to sound like that.
JPG: “Jazz Millionaire,” the title sounds satirical as far as the name but the song itself isn’t a take on smooth jazz. It’s much better.
MD: That’s a Brad Houser composition. That was a song that he had. He brought to rehearsal. We played it a few times. I think there was some reticence, ‘Why are we playing this song?’ a lot between Skerik and I. And then just being open-minded and we’re like, ‘No, let’s be just do it and see how it sounds.’ Randall really made it sound like an old smoky recording. The title is a reference to the joke that there aren’t a lot of jazz millionaires. When you’re playing jazz or instrumental music you make a hundred bucks a night and you’re stoked. So, for a long time, the original Dead Kenny Gs keyboardist, Brian Haas, he was always going around saying, ‘Jazz millions. Let go make some jazz millions.’ There are some jazz millionaires out there, who will be nameless, and I’m not talking smooth jazz millionaires. I’m talking about there are some jazz millionaires who make lots of money playing jazz. So yeah, it is a satirical title.
JPG: Just to make sure, are the Dead Kenny Gs playing Jazzfest in order to purify the atmosphere of Kenny G’s performance?
MD: We’re going to have the banishing ritual, the pentagram in the Dragon’s Den the night before he plays so, hopefully, we can disperse the antimatter will be enough to counter…We’re going to play the night before but not the night of. We were trying to line up a show the night he played but Skerik’s got a gig booked he couldn’t get out of.
JPG: For yourself, playing with Dead Kenny Gs, Garage A Trois and so many other bands, getting things straight. Do compositions or solos sometimes blend together or do you a system where you can completely focus on the current project and be in the present moment?
MD: Yes. Exactly. It’s all about the Moment, going from one tour to another. I leave a Les Claypool tour and go right to an Ani DiFranco tour, completely different. If play what I play with Les with her then I’ll get fired. You have to play for the gig. If you stay in the moment then right away you’re listening to the music and what the musicians around you are playing. It’s real natural. That’s the best thing about touring and probably why I’m addicted to fossil fuels and the Black Death because the music gets better every night. Three people are up on stage giving it their heart and soul, and you find that magic you’re seeking. It’s inexplicable. Still amazing.
I was listening to Dr. John talk in this interview from ‘73, ‘If you don’t think the way that we think, that’s cool but come on over here and listen to some music, man. Free your mind a little.’ That’s just the whole free your mind and your ass will follow thing that he’s talking about. They’re playing music for reasons other than the dollar bill and keep doing it because there is that moment when everyone in the room, hopefully, forgets the life situation we have. Everybody’s got life situations they’ve got to deal with. Music helps.
