Within a couple of minutes of sitting down for lunch with Marco Benevento, the Woodstock-residing keyboardist shows exactly why he loves living in upstate New York. “Midwinter Farms! I know those guys!” he proclaims out of the blue while perusing the menu of the farm-to-table Manhattan pizza joint. An old friend of the couple who runs the farm that supplies this and other restaurants in the city, Benevento may have even helped harvest some of the food we order. Just another random connection that the New Jersey-born keyboardist has made in his five years living in the country. Just to name a few, he now counts Amy Helm, John Medeski and New Pornographer A.C. Newman and more as friends and collaborators.
Benevento, who’s used to playing sideman and collaborator over the years in bands like the currently red-hot Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, is now focusing on the release of his newest solo effort, The Story of Fred Short, out April 1 via Benevento’s own Royal Potato Family label. The album finds Benevento finding his voice—literally—in the form of a classic two-side record, with the B-side consisting of the Fred Short story proper, a seven-part opus that came out of one night of improvisation. Here, Benevento discusses how his passion for recording continues to be fueled by living the country life, who Fred Short actually was and why he wrote an album about his story and what future plans there might be for other projects like the legendary Benevento/Russo Duo—plus the story of the time he almost hung out at a horse show with Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie.
This is your second album with vocals. How do you think adding vocals in changes the songwriting process?
I guess, now when I come up with chord progressions—when I’m sitting down, coming up with a song idea, I’ll have a drum machine going and I’ll be sitting at the piano—now I’ll have a microphone set up, and I’ll come up with a progression. I’ll start humming or singing a melody idea, whereas, maybe five years ago, I’d be sitting down at the piano and a drum machine and there wouldn’t be a microphone. I’d just come up with the melody on the piano and find out where it should go. Then the melody would just be done on the piano or the synth or whatever. But now I’m sitting down and I already know that I want to incorporate the voice into the songs.
For the most part, all the songs involve lyrics and vocal melodies now. It’s more involved. Now I have to come up with lyrics and come up with the change in the lyrics to make it so I don’t say the same word again. Now I can see the frustration that singers have with songwriting, because there is a lot going on. There’s more than just melodies and cords. There’s chords and more of an arrangement thing happening now too. But I like the challenge, and I like that we have songs with vocals and that sort of a vibe. We have four records before this that are all instrumental and this is only the second record with vocals, so when we do our shows—realistically, half the show is instrumental, half the show is with vocals. So there is still that balance going on.
Do you still write instrumental stuff?
Yeah. There is a song on Swift called “Coyote Hearing,” and I was trying to come up with words and melody for it, but it just didn’t work. That just became an instrumental song. I’m not avoiding the instrumental stuff, I’m just intuitively drawn towards writing melody lines with the vocals.
Was it a conscious effort to start writing vocal parts?
The way the whole vocal thing started was with Kal [Traver] from Rubblebucket. The song is called “This Is How it Goes,” which is on our record TigerFace. I had that song structure written out, and I had a melody line. Then I started writing lyrics to this melody line, and I thought, “Oh, I should sing this.” It was sort of out of my range, and I kind of imagined a girl—like a thin, high voice—singing it anyway. I had seen Rubblebucket that week at a festival, and they sounded amazing. I immediately wanted to link up with Kal. And linked up with her, showed her the words. I sang a mock version of it, and she killed it. We went into trial studios and she sang everything, the lyrics and the melody. She added some things she was hearing as well. That was the first time I had ever heard any of my music with a vocalist, so that’s really where it started, TigerFace, even though the majority of the record is instrumental. I remember listening to that song in my studio, with her singing the words, and I smiled and thought, “I’ve never heard any of my music with a singer.” I’ve never followed through with that idea. Even some of the old Benevento/Russo Duo recordings have very catchy melodies but no words. We sung some “Oohs,” some syllables for one song, but we never followed through with any words or vocalists. Somehow it finally came out on TigerFace, and I knew that I was going to do it again.
Then when we were making that record Swift, the one before this one, I had the phone in my hand and was about to call Kal, “Hey, so I want you to sing again.” And I had this thought: “Dude. You should figure out how to just do it yourself. You’re not going to be able to take her on the road. You’re gonna have the vocal part on the record, but when you play it live, it’s gonna be missing. So, I thought I should finally do it, bite the bullet and sing it myself. That’s where the whole vocal thing started on Swift. For this record, I sort of took my time a little bit more figuring out where my vocal sweet spot is, where my range is. I really changed the songs a lot on this record so my voice would fit better. I think I’m just learning more about adding the vocal into the mix and how I can do it better.
Did you sing before you started writing songs with vocals?
Yeah. In high school I sang. I sang “Magic Carpet Ride” in my sweet 16 band, and I sang “Love Her Madly” too. I was in the men’s choir in high school, but then I got into jazz and stuff in college. I got into the Meters, funky stuff, and like Miles stuff and traditional jazz stuff. I just got into the playing side of things, so I didn’t do any singing in college. Then I graduated from college and had a lot of instrumental bands—played with Joe a lot—and didn’t need to sing. And lately people have been like, “Oh man, we want you to do the James Booker thing for Jazz Fest. I’m like, “Well I have to sing that.” So I sing it. Or, “We want you to do ‘Such A Night,’” The Dr. John thing from The Last Waltz. So I sing that.
So I guess I just felt a little bit more confident to do it [on this record]. The songs kind of lend themselves to having those vocal melodies and stuff. I just felt like I should go for it. I’m glad I did. Although, you know, I hung out with Charlie Hunter like two years ago at Jazz Fest, and he said, “You know how it took you like 30 years to play the piano? It’s going to take you 30 years to learn how to sing.” And I was like, “I know that, but I have to start somewhere.” He wasn’t trying to be discouraging, he just wanted to let me know that it’s another new instrument that you need to learn. I actually took my first vocal lesson the other week. I had a vocal lesson with this guy up in Woodstock, sort of just showing me how to use my body and how to use it right. I’m excited to practice that instrument and get better at it and feel more confident with it—say to people, and even to my-self, that I’m a singer. Sometimes when you’re singing you’re like, “Well I’m not a singer. I’m singing like I’m not a singer.” You have to sing like you’re a singer. I’m learning how to be more confident with it and not be self-conscious about it. Once you get over that, then things seem to be a little easier.
The record is kind of a two-part thing, with the second part being the story of Fred Short. Are the first four songs also a part of that idea?
No, they’re sort of separate. They’re singles. Although “Dropkick” was actually in that original improvisation, it came out sounding such like a different song that I just extracted it and put it on side A. Side B is more the improvisation of Fred Short that started out as me in the studio. I recorded and hour and a half worth of music and then went back and extracted the song ideas but kept everything in order. It shrunk down to 30 minutes. I would turn the drum machine up a little to start segueing into the next song, then again to the next song. It sort of happened in one magical night with Fred Short in the studio, and I thought, “What if I can actually follow through on this and come up with all these songs that go into each oth-er?” The first thought was to keep that improvisation in a row, but rerecord the song ideas and put them back together again without all the fat, the wandering that happens around the improvisations.
So where did the idea for Fred Short come about? Was that before the improvisation?
It was sort of around that same time. I live on Fred Short Road, and every time I give my address to someone, they’re like, “Who’s Fred Short?” There’s also John Joy Road right next to me. When a lot of the English settlers came, like Henry Hudson, they renamed all the Native American people, because they couldn’t pronounce their names. So they were given very obvious names like Fred Short and John Joy. It turns out, he owned a lot of the land that I live on. He was like a shaman, a vision quest guy that had ceremonies and people over for dancing and things like that. He was a musician.
I collect pianos off Craigslist, and I went to go pick up a piano, put it in my van, and this old guy was like, “Where do you live?” I’m like, “On Fred Short Road,” and he’s like, “This piano was in their family.” This old piano. It was from 1880 or something. I remember having the piano in the van and driving home being like, “This is so weird.” Then I did that improvisation that night, and I just had that on my mind. He had premonitions that the world was going to end and we were going to destroy it with all that trash and garbage. You know, like a spiritual Native American leader being like, “Stupid fucking white man” kind of thing. That’s why in one of the songs it’s like, “The sun is almost over.” He had visions that the Earth is going to be over before we know it, and the suns going to die out. We’re going to be darkness, and we’re all going to die. Happy stuff.
Did that piano make it onto the record at all?
No, actually. I wanted it to so bad, but it was so janky.
Speaking of the Woodstock community, what is it like to live there with all the history and the musical community and things like that? How long have you lived up there, and how has that affected your career and your writing?
For five years. Well, I have a whole new group of friends now. I’m close with Amy Helm, and even John Medeski I see every once in a while. I’ve played with him at Levon’s Barn a couple times. There’s a bunch of studios up there. There’s Levon’s Barn, there’s Applehead Recording, there’s Dreamland, there’s Isokon, and even Old Soul up in Catskills. So there’s a ton of musicians up there who collect gear and do gigs and record a lot. I’ve recorded on so many peoples’ records since I’ve moved out there. I recorded on Carl Newman’s record, from The New Pornographers. That was one of the first projects I did when I moved out there. He came over and we did three days of keyboard overdubs in my room. My friend calls my room “Keyboard Kingdom.” It’s like a 20 foot long by 16 feet wide little house, just stacked with keyboards.
How many do you think you have?
Like 30 or more. So I did the whole record in my studio. That was the first time I’ve actually followed through with that. I basically wrote all the structure of the song—like recorded the drum machine part, the synth part, the vocal part—and then I’d do a mock bass part and a mock drum part, then have Dave [Dreiwitz] and Andy [Borger] come up and rerecord my parts, casually. They’d come up for dinner. We’d eat, we’d put the kids to bed and then we’d record from nine at night to like two in the morning and really hone in on the parts.
Speaking of that trio, the lineup changed a bit more in the earlier days, but it’s been pretty solidified the past few years. How do you think that changes the process? Is it more comfortable with those guys?
Yeah. Those guys—if Dave has a musical idea for the bass part, he’ll just intuitively do it. And I’ll think to myself. “Oh. Well he’s doing that, maybe we should do this. ” Or if Andy does a fill or certain drum thing, I’ll think, “Oh whoa, that was a good idea. Let’s do that.” I’m definitely into collaborating with them, but for the most part I have this whole vision of how it should go anyway. And they’re very good being like, “Dude, we wanna help you with your vision. What do you want?” It’s really great. And yeah, we’ve spent so much time together in the van touring and playing that it’s just a comfort zone for sure, and I know that they’re going to do a great job playing their instruments. I’m going to get out of them what I want. So yeah, it does help.
So obviously Dave is doing the Ween thing now, and you have Karina Rykman coming in on bass.
I’m excited about Karina. Dave felt bad because Ween came through on these dates and that he was missing the gigs that he told me he could do. Well of course I’m like, “Dude, Dave, what? You’re in Ween. I understand.” And he insisted that Karina be on the gig. She came highly recommended. Dave kept on asking, “Did you call Karina yet?”
I love Dave. I gotta say, he is one of the best guys to be on the road with. He’s an encyclopedia of musical knowledge. He’s also really easygoing, and he knows so many songs. So, in a night, if I just decide to start playing some Beatles song, he’ll know it. Without even flinching, he’ll know all the changes. He’s a pro. I love touring with that guy. Same with Andy. They’re not going to stop playing music ever. They’re going to play music forever. And they know sometimes venues don’t have green rooms and sometimes the hotel is kind of far away. They know the rigmarole of touring and how kind of horrible it can be, and they know how to just roll with it.
Let’s talk a bit about the David Bowie tribute you’re doing at Mountain Jam, with Superhuman Happiness. How did that come about? And I’ve heard that you met David Bowie one time?
Well, he gave me my diploma. We shook hands. Smiled. I got a picture of it in my parent’s living room with my regalia on. That was it. I could have had lunch with him because my FedEx guy Vinnie knows him—probably because he’s a FedEx guy. He’s probably delivered packages to him and gotten to know him. He’s into all sorts of music. He’s like, “Hey man, I’m going to Ozzfest this weekend.” I gave him my CD, and he really liked it. So we would always just chat over the years. I think David Bowie came up because I was doing the Hunky Dory thing—we played the whole record at the Knitting Factory last summer, and I probably mentioned that to him. So he was like, “Hey man you wanna go to lunch this weekend?” I’m like, “Aw man, I’m on tour. Thanks.” I thought that was kind of funny—I was like, “Oh now my FedEx guy is asking me to go to lunch?” And he’s like, “Yeah. I’m having lunch with David Bowie.” And I was like, “What? Wait a minute I think I’m free.” I had the opportunity to go to lunch with him, but I was on tour, which is kind of a bummer.
That’s pretty amazing that your opportunity to have lunch with David Bowie was with your FedEx guy.
Then the funny thing is, when I got home from tour, I was like, “Man how was that?” He’s like, “Oh, he’s not looking so good man. He doesn’t look so hot, but do you know who else I ran into? Bruce Springsteen!” I was like, “What? You were hanging out with Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie?” He’s like, “Yeah!” There’s like a big horse show up in Saugerties called HITS.
Bruce is into horses?
I guess. Maybe his daughter has one—it’s like that sort of thing. [Jessica Springsteen is a show jumping champion, in fact] Maybe Bowie’s daughter has a horse, too. Anyway, I just thought, “Wow. I missed that epic day of hanging out with some inspiring musicians.”
That would have been a crazy story. Anyway, so how did this tribute come together?
Well, living up in Woodstock, there’s of course a bunch of musicians I’ve met—and studios—but I’ve also met the guys who are on the radio station, the guys who run Mountain Jam, these people in the business. And Gary [Chetkof], this guy who runs Mountain Jam, he calls me up and he’s like, “I wanna get you involved in Mountain Jam, but maybe do something different than last year. Can we do some-thing a little special, a little different?” And I said to him, “Well I did Hunky Dory with Superhuman Happiness at the Knitting Factory. Maybe we do a Bowie thing at Mountain Jam.” And before I knew it, it was confirmed and we had a name for it and everything.
I mean, he’s such an inspiring songwriter and artist, Bowie, so I love doing it. Ideally, I’d like to be doing my own thing all the time. It’s kind of funny how so many people want the Grateful Dead thing or the Bowie thing or The Band, the Dr. John thing or the Booker thing. Honestly, as a musician, it’s great to learn all that stuff and to learn the secrets—like why that song was such a hit—learn the subtle arrangements to each songs. But in the end, it’s more work to do other people’s music, because you have to learn all their stuff, then you have to present it in the way that they would, and you don’t want it to be bad. So you really practice it, and that takes you away from what you’re doing on your own as an artist. There’s a bit of a push and pull—I like it, but I also wish people would stop calling me to do other people’s music. I’m like, “Dude, I wanna learn how to write my own music, too.” But it’s very fun for a festival or a certain thing. It’s cool to throw something different at the audience.
Do you feel the same way about Joe Russo’s Almost Dead?
Yeah. It’s super fun, and I’m playing with my dudes, but, in the end, the satisfaction level sort of caps at a certain point. I mean, it’s fun, and the jamming and improvisation is where you get to put your own spin on things, but for the most part, it’s like, [sings] “Come, hear Uncle John’s band.” And you’re like, “Right. We’re playing someone else’s music.” It’s fun, but, artistically, it’s not where it is.
Do you think playing other people’s music professionally—getting deeper into those songs—influences your own playing or your own writing?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, after learning a bunch of Dead tunes and Bowie tunes, I wouldn’t then go to my studio and write a song that sounds like the Dead or sounds like Bowie, but like I said earlier, you can kind of get into the formula. What is it about the song “Heroes”? What is that subtle change in that song that Bowie did to make that interesting? Or “Here Comes Sunshine” by the Grateful Dead. Why is that song so good? So when you learn it, you realize, arrangement-wise, it does a certain thing—the intro, the little subtle changes, when the bass drops out. You don’t realize that until you learn it yourself—like there’s a bridge to that song and it does this thing, and then the whole band drops out and it’s just guitar, then the second verse comes in and it’s in a different key. And you didn’t realize that when you first listen to it, but when you learn it you’re like, “Oh wow. There’s all these subtle changes in here that I missed.” And I think that’s the biggest thing you get back for your own music. You realize that there’s all these subtle things that you can do to make it interesting, without doing too much.
Is it similar to that when you sit in on other people? It’s still playing other people’s music, but it’s not a cover band or something like that. And you’ve always sat in with a lot of people—including with The Arcs in April.
But sitting in with The Arcs versus sitting in with moe. or something—not quite the same thing. moe. would maybe want me to be a freak and do the crazy piano thing and really jam in there with them, but with the Arcs, they want me to play a certain organ part at a certain time and do all the parts right. Maybe there’s a little room, like one song with an extended organ solo, so there might be a moment to do certain things like that. Generally, if I sit in or play with people, or even record with people, they’re like, “Dude, just do your thing. Do what you want to do. Do that thing you’re hearing. Play that sound that you want to use.” It’s really great to hear that from someone—“Just do the Marco thing.” So I like that I get hired as me, instead of as a keyboard player, which is nice.
Do you generally find that it’s easy for you to kind of wind your way into bands like moe. who bring you in and say, “Do whatever you want”?
Yeah, I find it very easy. Especially when they’re looking at me smiling. Like, “We want you to come up and play with us.” It almost seems like you can’t do anything wrong, just come up. But again, with The Arcs, I don’t really know those guys. I know Richard [Swift] because I did an album with him. I got a text from Richard that was like, “Dan [Auerbach] and I think you’re the only guy. Besides myself, you’re the other guy that I can trust covering these parts.” They know that I can handle the job and do it without it being stressful or whatever.
Have you played with them yet?
In a month or so we’re gonna do a rehearsal. I’m basically gonna be on a gig with Leon [Michels] and rehearse with Leon and the band, and then Leon’s gonna do the gig and I’m going to be there. Then Leon’s gonna fly home, and I’m gonna do New Orleans, Austin, and Memphis with them. So it’ll be good to do a rehearsal with their keyboard player and see what he does. They gave me a bunch of live shows I’ve been checking out. The thing about The Arcs, or a band like that, is that you have to do the right thing at the right time. There’s a specific place. Whereas, say, the music of the Grateful Dead, like JRAD, we had another bass player fill in for Dave, because Dave had to do the Ween gigs. So we had John Shaw, and I was like, “Man you’re doing a great job.” He’s like, “Well, you know, when you think about all this stuff, Phil [Lesh] never really plays on the one or the root so if I’m a little confused where the change is, I can just sort of lay out and then figure out where it is. It’s not that bad.”
With the Arcs, or a band like that, you have to play the note on the one. Otherwise, you don’t know the song, you didn’t learn your part. It’s more challenging to do something more arranged and more subtle, like the Arcs, than do a Grateful Dead thing. Even though there’s tons more chords and the songs are 20 minutes long versus three and a half minutes long, there’s almost something harder about doing this finesse game, to do the right thing at the right time. I listen to this stuff, and I’m like, “Yeah I know it.” And then I start playing along with it, and I’m like, “Oh whoops, I need to know when this organ part comes in.” It’s a good challenge.
So this summer makes the 15th anniversary of the Benevento/Russo duo’s first performance.
Really?
Yeah, it was in 2001, the Madonna performance at Wetlands. How did that happen?
Right. Well Joe and I played in this Moroccan place called Tagine in Hell’s Kitch-en. It was me, Joe, a percussionist and a saxophonist. It was B3, drums, percussion and sax. That was in 2001. Then Joe got a gig that Jake Szufnarowski gave him every week night at the Knitting Factory, after doing those Tagine gigs. The gig paid 100 bucks, so Joe’s like, “Why don’t you being your organ down, we’ll duo, we’ll each get 50 bucks.” At the time, somehow, that was like grocery money for the whole week, which is crazy to think about. That’s how the duo started, and somehow between Tagine and the Knitting Factory residency, that like Madonna thing came up. That was the first time we did the two of us. Man, I would love to hear a recording of that. I have no idea where that is. It was filmed for something—there were cameras all around us.
You guys knew each other in New Jersey, earlier in life, when did you reconnect?
Joe and I grew up together. We learned Rush tunes and Led Zeppelin together in like seventh or eighth grade, then we split up and went to different high schools. He came to visit me at Berklee, because he was thinking about going there, but I think he saw the dorm rooms and was like, “No way.” He just wanted to perform and tour and live out in Colorado and do that thing, I guess. Then I didn’t see him for a while, graduated from college, and moved to New York. I was on line in front of Tonic to see Medeski Martin and Wood, and I drank a bunch of beers before so I was itching to go to the bathroom, and I ran across the street to this bar to use the bathroom, and they were like, “The bathroom is in the back.” I went in the back, and there was band playing. Russo was there playing with all of my friends from Berklee. I was like, “Oh my god! I haven’t seen Joe—and that’s my friend Peter. What?” I saw Joe and was like, “Dude! You’re playing with all my friends from Berklee!” Then I got his number, and we reconnected. It’s kind of funny.
Speaking of random encounters, you met God Street Wine’s Aaron Maxwell through your daughter’s school. How’d that happen?
I don’t know what Aaron’s story is, but he moved up to Woodstock. He got a job as a music teacher, teaching at the Woodstock Day School, where our kids go. Someone was like, “Oh, that’s Aaron. He’s from God Street Wine. So of course I had to go up and meet him. I was like, “Hey, when I was in high school I had your tape.” It was like the Dead, Phish and God Street Wine, those were the three big bands you heard a lot about in my high school in New Jersey. Then we ended up connecting and playing a bunch of benefits and a bunch of little gigs in Wood-stock. He’s a great singer and an amazing guitar player. He can do the Django [Reinhardt] thing really well. He is one talented mutha fucka.
Does stuff like that happen a lot up there, meeting random musicians who are down to jam?
Yeah, because if you see musicians up there and they’re home, they’re home. They’re not on tour. So they’re like, “Yo man, let’s have dinner and hang out.” It’s really fun. So Aaron and I have played at the house a bunch, Tracy Bonham has come over and we’ve recorded a bunch. It’s amazing up there. There’s a lot of space to do whatever it is you want. A lot of people have their own little studios too, their own little separate house to record in.
I wanted to ask you about future of some of your projects. I know you’re busy, but have there been any talks about other projects like the Beneven-to/Russo starting back up?
No. Whenever we do JRAD tour, we’re always talking about how we’re gonna try to pull it off. We come so close to booking a gig and, in the end, I’ll write to him and be like, “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like the right thing. Should we wait?” It’s like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, when the guy’s like, “You can’t put the pussy on a pedestal.” You can’t put the Duo on the pedestal. We haven’t been able to find the right time. The duo is like wrapped up in an action figure box that we haven’t been able to open up yet. I’m very focused on my own band and recording and touring. There’s a certain about of investment you do, realistically, to make a record. So I wanna really try to promote that, before I start abandoning things I’ve been work-ing on and focus on something else. I just want to focus on this project right now, and then there is the JRAD stuff, which has taken up a lot of calendar time, too. We were talking about all the other things, the sit-ins, The Arcs, the studio stuff, other things that also come into play. So it’s hard to throw it in there, but yes, we do want to do it. I said, “Joe. Why don’t you come up to Fred Short, and we’ll record and rehearse? Let’s make a record and tour a new record.” Instead of going out and doing a one off. Like I said, the duo is on the pedestal. We’re probably overthinking it. We could have done a Brooklyn Bowl show by now, but we haven’t.
And other projects—Garage A Tois or Surprise Me Mr. Davis?
Garage A Trois there’s no plans. That was a great band to be in, I gotta say playing with Skerik and Stanton [Moore] and Mike D [Dillon]. Those guys are genius, they’re so smart. They’re really intense, and the music’s really visceral and energetic. There is no time to space out and float around on the keyboards. Skerik look at me and be like, “Dude, we’re playing now. You have to jump around and sweat and play that bass line really heavy. Let’s go.” He’s an intense dude, and I like that about that band, because it’s just like rock power.
Then, Surprise Me Mr. Davis. I go so far back with Brad and Andrew [Barr]. We’ve known each other since Berklee. I’ve known them since ’95. Davis could be this thing that happens later. I don’t know. I love that band, and I love Brad and Andrew and Nathan [Moore] and Mark [Friedman]. All that music is so good. It’s unfortunate that we haven’t done more shows. But it’s the same thing with the duo. The Barr Brothers are super busy, Mark Friedman is busy with Ryan Montbleau, Nathan is busy with his own thing, I’m busy with my own thing. So it’s hard to get everyone together. But man, what a band. I have to say, Surprise Me Mr. Davis is top shelf for me. I love those guys.
Do you think that’s the top group you’ve been in?
The reason why it’d be the top group I’ve been in is just the history that we have together. Also, the music is so great. Nathan is such a great storyteller and singer. So is Brad. It could be like a Wilco kind of group—like great new rock band with kind of classic, timeless songs. I just get to do like rock band piano or organ. I’m not like a leader in that band or anything, much like JRAD. I’m just laying down the organ parts, whatever needs to be done in that department. But I love playing with those guys, man. I wish more Davis would have happened.
Does it have to be something you all plan out months in advance since every-one is so busy?
Yeah. We did a Davis show at High Sierra, and we didn’t have any time to re-hearse. We met an hour, two hours before our gig and kind of ran over stuff in the trailer, green room at High Sierra and had one of the best gigs we ever had. It’s just a juggling act. It’s hard. Realistically, Relix is probably the only magazine that knows who Surprise Me Mr. Davis is. Nobody knows about that band. We don’t really get giant offers to play rooms because nobody knows us.
Anything you have coming up or anything about the album that you’ve been dying to say to people?
I guess—I’ve normally gone into the studio and recorded, but this record I did all in my house. It was good to steer the ship and do all the driving and commit to all the sounds myself without anybody being like, “I don’t know about that.”
This time I recorded everything in my house. I used the tape machine to balance a lot of tracks and really committed to the sounds of everything. I needed to make that record with Richard Swift to have the confidence to do it myself the next time around, because Swift had a very humble set up in his place, much like mine. Couple of great mics, some good EQs and you’re good. I’ve gone into so many studios and it’s like, the shape of the room is acoustically sound and the lights don’t buzz, the amps are all regulated. Everything works great. You’re in this la-boratory kind of room. So it was nice to know I can do it. I actually had some help from Kenny Siegal who owns Old Soul Studios in the Catskills, which is where a lot of people have made their records. Ratatat shacked up there and made all their records.
Kenny came over and was like my training wheels, just to make sure I was doing it right. “You just wanna make sure that things aren’t out of phase. You wanna make sure you get a good drum sound.” He helped me out a lot, but for the most part I did it all on myself. I wasn’t relying on anyone to tell me how it should go. If any-thing, if Kenny said something about how it should go, I was like “No” [laughs].
Are you excited going forward to keep doing things on your own?
Absolutely. I’m excited to learn more about my room. As you’re recording and capturing music, you’re also learning about stuff—preamps and mics and amps and how far away things should be. It’s a constant experiment. It’s a whole other art form that I’ve been learning—like signing. It’s another instrument that I’m learning about.
