Photo by Stuart Levine
Although Yonder Mountain String Band has been off the road in late August, Jeff Austin has kept himself busy. He is in the midst of a tour with The Here and Now. The band, which references a classic Ram Dass book in its name, also features Danny Barnes, Larry Keel and Jenny Keel. In addition, he performed a couple dates as Jeff Austin and Friends with Barnes, Eric Thorin (Matt Flinner Trio, Brother Mule) and Allie Kral (Cornmeal). Here Austin talks about both of these quartets, while also discussing Yonder, 30db, the Grateful Dead, Phish, the creative process, sobriety and just what his plans may be on December 30.
The following conversation took place just prior to one of his performances with Barnes, Thorin and Kral.
So what inspired this project?
Really just to play with my friends that I don’t get to see often. I only see Allie Kral at festivals in passing and Eric Thorin has been super busy with a lot of stuff with Molly O’Brien. He produced a record for her, and Danny I get to see more often than not which is fortunate, but I’ve never gotten this conglomeration of people together before. Eric thinks he and Allie met years ago, but Danny had never met her and it’s so fun to watch people I love dearly connect, and we laughed from the minute we met to just to seconds ago. It’s like laughter tour. We were driving in today, just cracking up.
What made you think this would be the perfect combination of musicians?
We’re on the same kind of page as far as energy goes and where we like to put the rhythm, and I’d been wanting to do something with Allie for awhile and then with her transition going out of Cornmeal, and this and that, it was the perfect time to bring her in. And then with Danny, he and I play mandolin and banjo so much that I looked at this project and thought, ‘Man, there’s no guitar, but Danny Barnes is an amazing guitar player.” I asked him and he was said he would because he doesn’t get to play guitar that often.
Did you have any specific desires for this project or is it more just for fun?
It’s more just for fun. I mean this is total gluttony. I would travel to any of their houses just to sit in their kitchen and play, but we get to drive up to a beautiful spot like this with a bunch of people. This doesn’t really seem like a job, but sometimes it can become work, and sometimes it’s just sheer pleasure. And the whole point of this is that there’s no drama. Nobody is pissed off at somebody for something they did three weeks ago. It’s all fun-based. There’s no tension, no stress, no worrying about it. None of that. It’s only based in having fun and trading licks with each other.
You’re also playing some shows with different musician friends of yours. How does this change the feel of the music or the sound when you change who is playing with you?
This is something I was so curious about…how it was going to feel and sound. The project with Larry and Jenny and Danny, well, we’ve done that together and we wanted to do it again just because of how we felt with it happening. We had such a genuine connection that we said, ‘we’ve got to do this again’. We played that one gig at String Summit-that Garcia set-and we walked off stage and Jenny Keel was jumping physically up and down saying, “That was so much fuckin’ fun”! So we said, “Let’s make it happen again,” and then all of a sudden this spring when we did those few dates together, at the end of the third date, we recorded that second show and it ended up on my website as a free EP. There was such an energetic approach and that was just the second night. So, at the end of that run we thought, “What would happen if we got on road for two weeks?” So we said, “Screw it, we’re gonna make this happen,” and it happened. Then the opportunity to do these Mumford festivals came up. It’s good for me, it’s a different identity.
How is the creative process different on this project from when you are playing with Yonder?
(Laughs) Well, in truth, what a narcissistic thing to say but I get to truly lead the project. Yonder is a democratic world where everybody gets a voice, and that’s what makes that band unique. There are four people who can write, play lead, sing lead, at any moment. People call me the front man of that band but there are nights where I’ll sing and then I won’t sing for the next nine songs. And, then I might sing the last forty-five minutes of the show. Most of my material is in circulation with that group, but it is democratic, and sometimes maybe democratic to a fault. I’m just riffing here.
But with this project I go, “Here is this material, and I wanna play these songs that I wrote for this project.” As far as with Danny and Larry, they are such prolific song writers and have such a unique catalog. Of course this includes some of their stuff, but I get to kind of steer the ship. I was a bit hesitant, but Jenny grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “we want you to lead us.” She said “Don’t be hesitant, don’t be worried, if you want something tell us because that’s why we are here.” They have so much success on their own, and so much respect, that the fact that they came in on their own and are willing to give that to me is an amazing thing. There are points in Yonder where you demur to the larger scene. In this I get to conduct the energy a little bit differently.
So Yonder is more like the band, the family, and this is more of the time that you get to create.
Yes! That’s exactly it! (Laughs) Now does that mean you’re happy in one and not happy in another? Well that’s a whole different interview usually done on a couch for $120 an hour.
How is this different from other solo projects that you’ve done?
People are always like, “Why are you all of a sudden doing solo stuff?” And I’ve always been doing solo stuff. I’ve gone to a festival and been a guest, or I flew out with moe. I’ve always wanted to do that because I have more material than not. I think I’ve become really focused. At first I used to do the Jeff and Friends thing and there would be like thirty people on stage, and that was kind of chaotic. And then I started to really want to hear Larry, Jenny, and Danny on this song. I want to hear Cody Dickinson and Eric Thorin on this song.
...specific musicians that you wanted to play with.
Very specific things. There is a record that we’re editing down the songs because I’m going to be putting out a record next year, which is a very big endeavor for myself as a solo artist. But, I think what has happened is that I’ve become very focused on what I am looking for.
Who is going to be playing with you on that album? Is all that still in the works?
Still in the works. I have a ghost editor, my mysterious wizard behind the curtain who is helping me edit and we are just wrapping up our summers and we’re going to come up with a list of songs that speak to each other.
Will they be originals or covers?
Originals. Well, the majority of them will be originals that I have written. Some the people have heard and some that people have not. If it is a cover it will be a song from someone I know. Maybe Danny Barnes, or Todd Snider wrote a song. Who knows. Maybe Sarah Siskind wrote a song. And not to let the cat out of the bag, but there’s one song in particular of hers that we are looking at cutting and we have gotten her blessing.
The one thing it probably won’t be is a bluegrass record. Whatever the tone of the song as I wrote it, that’s what it will be-like “What The Night Brings.” I didn’t write that as a bluegrass song at all, not even close. I sped it up out of necessity. So that’s a song that we are looking at putting on the record, but everything’s up in the air right now. I’ve got this person that is willing to help me edit this in a very honest place. But, I would say you can be rest assured that Danny, Larry, Jenny, Cody, and other musicians I’ve worked with recently will be on it.
Is this Here and Now project going to be something that you’re only doing this summer or continual?
Continual. Eventually I think my name will be get stripped away from it and It will just be called The Here and Now. I like the idea of the Here and Now because it’s very self-defining. It’s what’s here and what’s now. There’s no mystery behind the name. I’m a big fan of Ram Dass’ Be Here Now, which is very important to me. It’s helped me in a lot of ways. It brought me to Colorado, helped me in hard times, that book helped me to ‘be here now’. So The Here and Now is a nod to the impact of a book like that and what the ideas of those brown little pages in the middle have given me strength with.
Another project you worked on was 30db. Do you have any plans to continue work on that?
Yonder was on tour, and we had a few days off, so I spent an afternoon with Brendan trading songs. We are going back and forth. We’re doing the same thing, and doing the editing process for each other.
Will it be more so just acoustic stuff?
We don’t know. You know I love that record! I go away from that record and then I come back to it and I think, “Fuck! this is a good fuckin record!” We recorded that record mostly live. My vocals were mostly entirely live, and Brendan recorded live vocals. The tracks were live. We didn’t take this and this and squish ‘em together. They were no click tracks, they were all live. They was very little fixing or tweaking. How it was how it was because it was raw music. We thought it’s got to have a raw edge to it. But, yeah, he just sent me a song and when I get done with this run I have four weeks off, so I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.
Remodel another bathroom?
(Laughs) I’m gonna finish remodeling a bathroom, watch ‘em install a deck, and find out the sex of my future child!
Congratulations!
Yeah, right?! Woo! The baby!
Is there going to be any sort of musical reunion with Brendan Bayliss on December 30th [both Yonder and Umphrey’s McGee are in the midst of Colorado New ear’s Eve runs- Yonder at the Boulder Theater and UM at Denver’s Fillmore, yet neither group has announced a show on the 30th]?
(Laughs) Everybody’s wandering. You know, I have to be frank with you I’m kind of curious as to why we aren’t playing on the 30th too. I brought this up the other day. Something stinks about this. Are we doing someone a favor? Does someone have naked pictures of me? I don’t know what’s going on. But, no there will not be. I do know that we’re there.
So you’re not playing anywhere, or it just hasn’t been announced yet?
That’s up in the air right now.
But there won’t be anything going on with Umphrey’s?
No. Unfortunately no. That’s not going to be the thing that’s happening. I did mention on twitter That we have kicked around the idea of doing an entirely Barry Manilow set with the YUM tour, the Yonder Mountain Umphrey’s McGee tour. All Barry Manilow, the “Copacabana Reprise” is going to be outstanding…..I’m totally kidding! People thought we were serious. I said, it’s Twitter, it’s an illusion, don’t believe everything you read.
I probably shouldn’t say too much, but it’s a Monday. There’s the thought of people needing the day of or people that actually have to work on the 30th. So I would say that If we did anything as far as Jeff speaking from Yonder’s perspective more than likely it would be donations to charity or we would do a show, at maybe a smaller venue with a higher price ticket, and donate all that money. If I’m going to play that day I don’t need to get another paycheck. It’s the end of the year, it’s a hard time for many people. I’d rather take that and raise up money and give it away.
How do you go about writing new songs? Do you write the music and the lyics at the same time? Find the words later?
Either one. The key thing this is not to become frustrated if you have a lyric, but no melody for it, don’t fucking stop, because you can always edit it. There are a few songs, like “What The Night Brings,” I have the original lyric sheet, and there is one line crossed out and everything else is written as is. That was melody and music and words all at once.
So there’s no particular order.
Yeah, it doesn’t matter. You can come up with a lick. I was in Belize diving two years ago, fifty feet under water, and all of a sudden I came up with this lick, and I was on this forty-five minute dive and I had to sing this lick the whole time and the I got in the boat and I asked my dive master for a pen. He said, ‘Were you thinking about that the whole time?!” I said I was thinking about turtles and sting rays too.
You were working on a new studio recording with Yonder and you finished that. Do you know when that’s going to be released?
I think it will be ready for the Fall tour. I just saw the artwork, and it’s so cool. Four songs, one from each of us. It’s just an EP. We’re just trying to figure out with Yonder how to release records. I read a comment the other day about how it sucks we haven’t had a new record. And if you want to talk about the un-fun part about any business..well if you love going to a restaurant, and you love the food, but you sat down with the chef and talked to him he would have you so bummed out because he would be like, “Well the sea urchin came in, and it was fuckin sour” and this and that. Any business you want to talk the brass tacks about, it’s not really fun. Records don’t get made for free. And, if you don’t make that back, and you do it three or four times…when you’re doing smashing your head against the wall you go, “Hey that hurts, I’m going to stop.” That’s the un-fun part of the business. So when fan say that I say, “Let’s talk about the fun part.”
Sometimes on stage you have this dark, almost devilish passion that comes out. Is that something that comes when you’re feeling it the most, or just another mode that you have?
I just try to stay open. I try not to affect anything. There may be a song that puts me in a mood. There may be a theme I’m interested in going with and I just tap into that and let it happen. Method singing, basically. This song has kind of cocky, funky groove into so it so maybe I can put that air of persona into the way I deliver it, like a “King Ebenezer.” Sometimes there is a tension behind it, like if it’s a murder ballad, and I want to make it dark then I let myself go there. I’m not afraid to go there. There’s times when you know when to pump the brakes, and that’s just learning from experience. I’ve been singing since I was five, that’s thirty-four years. And I’ve been doing this for fifteen years, and playing with Dave two and a half years before that, and performance my whole life. So it’s just experimentation and time.
One thing I respect deeply about you as a musician is you have the ability, when you’re up on stage, to break through a barrier of just performing into the pure creation of real music and people feel that. So what does that experience feel like for you when you’re up on stage? Do you experience a shift of, “Okay we’re playing…” and then, “Woah, what’s going on here?”
When I think about it that’s when it all goes to hell. Like I’ll be in the middle of improvising something and it’s going somewhere and it has form, suddenly form and structure being created out of nothing, and a vocal phrase and creating a verse and really creating a scene, and as soon as I stop and my brain goes, what’s next? That’s when it stops, and it’s gone. Every time that’s ever happened I stumble and it’s gone. So for me it’s almost something I can’t really enjoy in the moment because I just have to let it happen. When it’s done and I step back and I see our front of house engineer flip his light and go, “Yeah! Fuck yeah!” Or he’ll go, “What was that?” At the end of the night he’ll say, “Well I wasn’t counting on you writing a brand new song on stage during those extra eight minutes of ‘Snow on the Pines.’ So I get to enjoy it on the after effect.
Are there certain elements mentally or with your environment that you feel have to be in place for that to happen? Or can it be any time anywhere? Does it have to be good energy?
It can happen anytime anywhere. Sometimes bad energy is just as inspiring as good.
Sometimes bad energy can inspire you as much as good. Girlfriend dumps you and you’re like, “Oh fuck it here we go.” Or, I found out I’m going to be a father. That’ll inspire you. That will take you to a whole new place.
How does it feel to be the one giving that experience to people?
It’s a gift. It’s a total gift that I’m receiving. It’s not a gift that I’m giving them, no, it’s a gift that I’m receiving…to look out and with a word be able to turn people on their heads. There was a moment a few years ago at All Good Music Festival. There were 25, 30,000 people there. We were doing something and there was a pause and I said, “Go!” I couldn’t help it. It was totally cheesy. It’s a skeet shoot. “How you folks in Philadelphia doing?” (Mimes a skeet shoot) Of course you’re going to get a reaction. But, when I said that, just “Go!,” there was this moment where the crowd went, and there were 30,000 hands just pulsing in the air, and I thought, this is why we do this! This is why we do this. It’s a total gift from the people and in turn I want to keep that cycle of energy going. I get to do it here tonight, in solo shows, when I’m with Yonder, or just by myself.
Do you remember one of the first times that you were an audience member and you had that feeling?
There were numbers of times. When I was younger, like 1983, standing five rows back, and thinking, this is some powerful stuff. And of course the experience of watching Jerry Garcia Band in Buffalo in the late eighties early nineties, having those epiphany moments. Right before I left college, before I dropped out of school I went on Grateful Dead tour and I was standing in the Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill and I was just kind of standing there and I had a genuine moment. I was going to go back and go to school and going to audition for this off Broadway show and I was going to go to New York and work hard and get on Broadway and do musicals. And I stood there and the exchange between band and crowd, I was in the middle of it and I thought, “I want to do that.” That was a big one.
Phish at the Murat in ‘93. Standing there and going, “Oh man, look what this band is doing to people. What an immediate exchange.” In theatre you do your bit and you get it in the end. You get it from the audience when you make them cry and react or laugh. But, that exchange was something I couldn’t deny I wanted to do.
How is the inspiration you get from the Grateful Dead different from the inspiration you get from Phish, because they’re totally different sounds.
One example, and it’s not something to be proud of is I did 98 Dead shows from 87’ to the last one at Soldier Field and I wasn’t high at a single one of them. I didn’t do drugs, smoke pot, mushrooms, acid, none of that. I might have afterwords in the campground, smoke some pot or whatever, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t want to miss a moment of the experience because when my mom introduced me to them she said, “Embrace every moment of this.” And I listened to my mom.
Now, at Phish…(laughs). So that was a different connection, experience. I would like meditate before Grateful Dead shows and then to be at Phish and maybe under the influence, it can be a different thing. And also it’s a different genuine energy. The Grateful Dead is a lot of people soloing at once to lift up everybody. Phish is like, you have Trey soloing for four minutes and then Page, and Mike, but it has a different kind of a focus and I let that affect me differently.
It’s like the way that I do my touring now. I’ve been drug free for a year. No pot, no this no that. I make weird faces on stage all the time. I’ve been sober for a year and I still make weird faces. I’m not high. I just make strange faces. People are like, “You’re so coked up.” Well, no, you knew when I was, because I wasn’t around. Or I was around making an ass of myself.
But the fact that I tour sober, play sober, well some people want to have the illusion that I’m still blasted. Well, if you want to, go for it. You paid for the ticket, think whatever you want to think. But for me it’s like experience between Phish and the Grateful Dead, and for me now is I used to play shows with seven shots of tequila in me and now I’m playing sober. I stopped smoking pot for over a year and a half, and over a year for anything else. It leads me again to a different place. I used to play like this, and now I play like this. I love the playing like this now because that’s a different connection. I don’t miss a moment. It’s like the Family Guy episode when they’re high and they think they sound great and they sound terrible. They’re doing the folk duet. I’d be like, “Man that show was really great,” and it just didn’t really go anywhere. And now that I’m sober it keeps me in this place of really being in the moment really with it.
