For many years, Mark Karan was best known as RatDog’s guitarist. But since Bob Weir has shifted his attention from RatDog to Furthur and TRI, Karan has retained visibility as a member of the extended Grateful Dead family. In recent months, he’s not only played a few RatDog reunions, but also toured with Grateful Dead singer Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay, played with JGB keyboardist Melvin Seals and participated in various Phil Lesh & Friends events at San Rafael, CA’s new Terrapin Crossroads. He’s also hosted numerous ramble-like events of his own during his residency at Mill Valley, CA’s new Sweetwater Music Hall. During his busy summer, Karan discussed these gigs, his own solo work and Marin County, CA’s current renaissance.
I’d like to start with your residency at Sweetwater. How did that run of shows first get started and what was the process like of choosing the residency’s core players?
I’ve been doing the Jemimah Puddleduck thing for a lot of years, and it’s just a buttload of fun. I really love that band, I love the guys and I love the music that we make. But we all live pretty far apart, and we’ve run into a lot of difficulties with getting together on a regular basis. I just wanted to play more, frankly. I wanted to play more regularly and music is kind of what I live for. So when Sweetwater opened, I got a hold of them, and I had this idea that I wanted to do a residency. Initially, it was really just kind of an excuse for me to meet some new musicians and try some new ideas, which it still very much is. It’s kind of turned into a whole thing—much to my surprise. It started selling out and a lot of buzz came from it. I thought I was going to be doing this low-key, mid-week thing and it has turned into something pretty special. I called up my drummer I’ve been using for the last couple of years with Puddleduck—a guy named Billy Lee Lewis—and then the rest of the guys are pretty new to me.
I’ve been using Danny Eisenberg, who plays with Mother Hips and who used to play with Ryan Adams. I met him, actually, when I sat in with the Hips. We really enjoyed each other’s company and decided to start playing together a bit so he’s been playing keyboards. Then, there is a local guy here named Paul Olguin, who I’d heard a lot about as a bass player. I called him in to be part of the core thing. So it’s sort of been those four guys with some variation as the core band every week. I kind of look at different tunes and different flavors of tunes. Maybe we’ll have a somewhat acoustic orientation one show or one week might be a little more guitar oriented, and I’ll bring in an extra guitar rig down and invite some friends to play guitar. I’m just trying to keep it really honestly musical and fun and different every week.
The idea was to have something midweek which was early and a blast and inexpensive. In this economy, especially, I think people need a good time. They need to be able to go out and have fun without having to buy a 25 or 30-dollar ticket. And that’s kind of all what I’m all about. You know, music to be available for all of us. It’s turned into a very cool thing. I’ve had people as diverse as Huey Lewis, blues hero Tom Castro, some of the Furthur singers, some of Bonnie Raitt’s guys and the guys in Mother Hips and ALO. I had Jackie Greene’s keyboard player the night before last. It’s been a real kick.
You’ve mentioned that this is an opportunity for you to play in a lot of different settings. Have you been using it to kind of introduce some of your own new material? Or have you been mostly focusing on the canon of songs you’ve played with your variety of projects in the past?
Well, I haven’t had a whole lot of new material to introduce recently in terms of my own. I’m not what you call a prolific writer. I write but I’m not one of those guys that can’t live unless I’m writing five or ten songs a week. New material often winds up being, “Hmm… what would a cool, obscure cover I haven’t even thought about in years sound like if we tried it?” or, “What’s a song that I just heard recently that’s got me all lit up and excited? I wonder if we could interpret it differently and have fun with it.”
So the material has been less important than what we do with it. We just gather up tunes each week. I certainly sprinkle it liberally with my own stuff—I’ve been doing that for quite a while, and we just approach that however it winds up being that week and then, liberally sprinkle it with other stuff. When Levon [Helm] passed, we worked up a couple of extra tunes from The Band and whatnot. When my dog died recently, we kind of had a send off for her there and did “Will the Circle [be Unbroken]” and stuff like that so it’s different every time and the material is really a springboard.
The Marin area is quite the hotbed of local jam sessions with TRI, Sweetwater and Terrapin Crossroads. Have you noticed the emergence of a new community of musicians?
Lately yes, and I’m stoked about that. I was in L.A. for about twelve years when I first hooked up with the Grateful Dead scene and all that, but I grew up in the Bay Area—most of my life was spent in the Bay Area. One of the reasons I had moved to L.A. was because the music scene in the Bay Area—the places to play and stuff—had really shriveled up and blown away. And now it’s great because there are all these new venues opening up and, even right here in Marin County, I think there are currently five or six happening music venues. It’s wonderful.
Speaking of those venues, you’ve been also a regular at Phil Lesh’s Terrapin Crossroads, playing in all different kinds of settings. Can you talk a little bit about that experience? Are there formal rehearsals for his Rambles or is it a more loose jam session?
It’s a lot of fun but it’s also a whole boatload of work because of what Phil does at the Rambles every week. It’s a new series ech week and a new combo of guys each time. Some of us have a handle on some Grateful Dead songs and some of us don’t. Some of the guys that he calls up haven’t really played much Dead stuff in the past. And even for those of us that have a long history of playing Grateful Dead music, it is different—my history is with Weir. So then playing with Phil, it might be a song I’ve played for 12 years with Weir but, all of a sudden, I’m playing it with a new key and Phil has some different ideas about how the arrangement should be or how to approach the song overall. Maybe, suddenly I’m having to learn a new vocal harmony. So even songs that we’re already familiar with are a pretty good challenge for everybody. And then there is always brand new material that none of us have ever heard before: Ryan Adams and Zac Brown and all kinds of really interesting sources for material. So every time there is a Ramble series, there is a series of several days of rehearsal where we put in a lot of hours getting to know each other and getting to know the tunes. And then we generally have a pretty extensive sound check before the show. So it ain’t loose. It’s a lot of fun but it’s also a whole lotta work.
It takes a lot of preparation to have a loose Ramble.
Well, yeah because he’s kind of reinventing the band every single week, you know? And additionally, when you think about it, we’re doing three Rambles a week generally speaking and, in the Grateful Dead tradition, no repeats. So for a Ramble series each week, each musician is working on somewhere between 60-75 songs.
You mentioned something I was actually going to bring up. You have a long history playing Grateful Dead music but most of it has been associated with Bob Weir and his various projects. You have played with Phil and Friends and the Other Ones and in other settings, too but can you talk about how Weir and Lesh approach their bands differently?
Bob and Phil approach “Help/Slip/Franklin’s,” particularly “Help/Slip,” very differently. Also, Phil and Bobby do “Mississippi Half-Step” in two different keys and there are a lot of chords in that song. After having played it in Bob’s key for twelve years, it was kind of a challenge playing through all those chords in a completely different key and not just sort of autopilot-referring back to what I’d done for twelve years.
It’s like learning a language in two different dialects.
Exactly. And it’s been quite a bit different playing the stuff with Phil because, in addition to the general cast of characters, [Furthur guitarist] John Kadlecik has come down and [Dark Star Orchestra’s] Rob Barraco has played some shows. Quite a few of the people that we normally associate with Grateful Dead-flavored music are there, like Furthur/RatDog keyboardist [Jeff Chimenti], and they have their own ways of playing this music. Then, you have people like Jon Graboff from Ryan Adams’ band and Chris Robinson and some of the guys from the Chris Robinson Brotherhood. It’s been cool because there’s a bunch of guys that have been coming in that don’t necessarily come from Grateful Dead music, so they have a very different way of interpreting those songs.
It’s interesting that both in terms of your residency and a lot of Phil’s residency, Ryan Adams and members of the Cardinals have become such a core part of the Dead family. In a lot of ways, they feel like they’ve been living a parallel existence for the last couple of decades and, ever since Phil played with Ryan and the Cardinals at the Jammys, those two worlds have combined. Everyone’s covering each other’s material and people like Jon Graboff, who come from a different background and world, are now associated with this material.
Oh yeah. Jon and I really hit it off. I have a feeling that we may do something together when I head east. I’m always trying to figure out ways to get back to the East Coast, and I think that’s the most viable way to do it these days. I have more or less let go of Jemimah Puddleduck, like I said earlier. I think I will be able to pull it out as a special events thing, but keeping it together as a viable working band just doesn’t work. So what we’re thinking about quite a bit, frankly, is coming east and hooking up with players who are already back that direction. Maybe doing something with somebody like Jon, maybe pulling in somebody like Andy Hess. Whoever it works out to be. This Ramble stuff has been really good for that, too—I’ve been meeting all these players that I wouldn’t otherwise know for when I head back there.
Looking at your schedule, you have quite a diverse mix of projects coming up with a lot of different players. I guess while we’re on the Grateful Dead, you are playing with Donna Jean this summer, filling in while Jeff Mattson plays with Dark Star. Can you talk a little bit about how you guys first connected and a little bit about your history and experience of playing in that band, which incorporates a very different side of the Dead and also Jerry Garcia Band?
I actually don’t remember when Donna Jean and I first met. It’s been quite a while I now. We always hit it off. Right from the very beginning there was a real warmth and sense of camaraderie and kindred spirits. So when she first invited me to come back east a few months ago—or a year ago or whatever it was—I was like, “Heck yeah! I don’t know what the music is gonna be like but I get to go hang out with those guys! How fun!” That’s the way it’s been, that’s the way it’s developed. It’s nothing that we are taking terribly seriously because, as you mentioned, Jeff is her normal guy. I’m just sort of filling in and it’s great because it feels good, and it’s not a lot of hassle and work. We’re doing material that we’re all pretty comfortable with. It’s really just a chance for me to get back east and hang with my friends and play good music.
And would you say with Melvin Seals, it’s a similar type of connection? That you guys knew each other over the years and it just made sense to do some gigs and some touring? Because I know you’ve been on the road with him as well.
Yeah, we have connected through the years. There was a period a few years ago when we briefly did a bunch of shows with Bobby Vega and John Molo under the moniker Avalon Allstars. But in recent years, Melvin and I haven’t had much opportunity to play together because he’s pretty busy doing the JGB thing. I sat in with them a couple of times just as a one-off but, generally speaking, that guitar chair is pretty well covered. So Melvin and I haven’t had a whole lot of opportunity to do stuff together. So when I got called a few months ago to go to the little run with Melvin, the guys from the Schwag and Terrapin Flyer, I jumped at the chance because it was a chance to go play with Melvin and also a chance to get out to the Midwest, which I don’t do very often these days. We had a ball. And then out of the blue, I got this outreach from the Grateful Garcia Gathering, saying that they wanted to add me in as sort of an additional member there.
I’ve read some interviews in the past about your long association with Grateful Dead music and you’ve said that when you were first were getting into it, it was some of the early ’70s and late-‘60s material that was the music you first learned as a fan. In terms of the Jerry Garcia Band stuff, did you have as deep of an understanding or has there been a learning curve to understand that side of Jerry’s playing and Jerry’s repertoire?
Well, interestingly, when I was a kid, I grew up being around the Haight. I was 11 years old in 1966 and hanging out with all my pre-adolescent friends in the Haight, and we would get to go see the Dead and everything in Speedway Meadows, and we were there when they closed off Haight street and had the concert that’s depicted inside Live/Dead and stuff. So, you know, I grew up listening to those songs. But I also grew up listening to all the music of that era. That was my era as a kid and a teenager. And that is mostly what Jerry was culling from for material for his band: a lot of Motown stuff, cool old R&B tunes and cool old bluegrass tunes. So a lot of the songs they do with JGB, I don’t know them as JGB songs but I know the songs. So not a huge learning curve for me in that sense because they’re all songs that I really love and all songs that I can really relate to.
It was a similar thing for Jerry. He was choosing songs that he loved and he related to and that he didn’t have a platform to play in the Dead.
Exactly. You know, one of the things that I’ve noticed that cracks me up is that I fancy myself eclectic. I fancy myself as kind of an arbiter of unusual music or music that sometimes goes forgotten or un-played or didn’t get played that much in the first place. And so whenever I’m looking for cover tunes to some degree anyway, I try to look at having at least a third or half the material be material that hasn’t been done to death. Even if it’s a great song, if fifty bands do it every night of the week, the song gets a little tired after a while. And when I find myself looking around at new material and kind of racking my brain for some song I haven’t thought of for ages or whatever, I’ll come up with something and go, “Ah! Awesome! I bet nobody has covered this in centuries!” And, I’ll look it up on the internet and sure as hell, either the Grateful Dead or the Jerry Garcia Band has covered it at some point. They’ve just done everything under the sun. The breadth and scope of cover material that’s been done in that scene is amazing.
I guess you have to keep going to Ryan Adams and Zac Brown Band and Jackie Greene to get new material.
Well, I think that what Phil’s been doing is whatever song he stumbles across that lights him up he will play. It doesn’t matter if it’s a classic from 30-40 years ago or a hundred years ago or if it’s something that’s just come out last week, if somebody has happened to turn him on to that and lit him up, he will play it. And I’m sort of the same way. There’s a song called “The Story” by Brandi Carlile, and I believe it was at my very first Sweetwater show; I opened the show with that song solo acoustic. I don’t know, I might have had a couple of people looking at me sideways. I didn’t have any idea but I loved the song and I didn’t really care.
That’s great, it kind of opens up everyone’s mind.
Yeah, that’s the hope. I think a lot of times, at the risk of say biting the hand that feeds, and I mean this in the most loving way possible, Deadheads can kind of limit their options. They get so wrapped up in the ‘Grateful Dead thing’ and the Grateful Dead music being the only thing that matters, so they wind up missing an awful lot of other wonderful, wonderful stuff. And I’ve always been on a mission—while embracing the music of the Dead and being incredibly thankful and grateful that I was brought into this family and that I’ve gotten to spend all of this time playing this great book of music—to try to remind everybody out there that there is a whole buttload of other music and that the Grateful Dead were first and foremost music fans. Those cover songs that they do didn’t just come out of the ether. They respected the music of other people enormously. That is why they did so much of it. I’ve said this before in interviews, but it always cracks me up. I’ll be talking to some really hardcore Deadhead and they’ll tell me they hate country music. I’ll just start cracking up and I’ll say, “Well, who do you think ‘Mama Tried’ came from?”
Exactly! All this is originally American roots, country and folk.
Yeah, exactly. But somehow if it isn’t done by Merle Haggard or Buck Owens, it’s, “No, no, no, go back to the roots man.” Check it out! You know, the tree isn’t very strong without its roots.
Speaking of Americana and country music, the other band that I see you’re playing with that I wanted to talk about a little bit is Great American Taxi. Have you played with them before?
No, I’ve never played with them before. In fact, we did several shows in the early days of RatDog with Leftover Salmon and that is about as close as the connection gets. I was very surprised and pleased to get the phone call. It just came out of the blue. My booking agent reached out to me and said, “Hey, these guys have expressed an interest in having you join them for this show,” and I said, “Hell yeah! Let’s dive in!”
Was that a similar way that the Mother Hips connection came about?
No, that’s more because I had met Tim and Nicki Bluhm—I think around the Jackie thing. Tim had come down to a few of the Phil things I’d been involved with and also Jackie’s Fillmore birthday shows that I had been involved with. We hit it off; he enjoyed my playing and whatnot. So he invited me to come sit in with the Hips at a local theater called the Mystic, and we really enjoyed each other and that was how I met Greg Loiacono and Greg and I wound up doing a bunch of stuff together. He’s been down to two of my Sweetwater things now.
I guess this kind of brings us back to what we were talking about earlier: Because all these new venues have popped up and this sense of community seems to be kind of reemerging, there’s been so many new projects emerging.
Oh, thank God! Like I said, I grew up here and my history is around this place. There have been a couple of dry spells. Like I said, I moved in the late ‘80s early ‘90s to L.A. because it got so dry around here, shocking to say. Right now it’s really, really fruitful, and I’m really enjoying it because that’s how high I hold this area. That’s what this area has always been for me. It’s been a hotbed of culture and music and art and sort of forward thinking culture, and I like to see it coming back into full fruition.
You guys did those two RatDog reunion shows earlier this year. Can you foresee any RatDog shows or revue-style performances in the near future?
You know, that’s a question for Bob, frankly. I’d love to see it happen. I think most of the guys in the band would love to see it happen—if not all the guys in the band. We had gotten to be pretty close friends and brothers on tour, and I’m sure we all miss each others’ company. We had developed a pretty extensive language as a band after spending 12-plus years together, with basically the same combo of guys. I miss that sort of enlightening musical communication that we had developed. That sort of insta-mindmeld. I would like to see that happen. I just don’t know if it’s what Bob has in mind and, frankly, it’s his baby so he can do with it what he will.
How is Robin feeling? Have you spoken to him recently?
Yeah, I just played with him last night in fact. One of the other things I’ve been doing around here, and it’s been a lot of fun, is that there have been, almost by default, a couple of bands that have developed. One being the Ghosts of Electricity, which is an all-Dylan kind of a revue-thing I’m doing with Stu Allen, Mookie Siegal, Greg Anton, Robin and Pat Nevins. It’s just a really fun band of all Dylan stuff.
The other is a band called the Rock Collection that we put together at Oregon Country Fair last summer. For the original gig, we had a guy called Paul Lamb play bass but we were going to do it as a one-off and now it developed into something that we are actually taking out and doing a few gigs with. We brought Robin aboard and we actually did a show with him last night, we’re doing another one in about a week and a half.
Robin is feeling better. He’s still a bit under the weather and, of course, he’s still awaiting a transplant so he’s not going to be feeling optimum until that happens. But he is definitely feeling better, he is definitely playing a lot more music and, like a groundhog, he’s sticking his head above ground and seeing what’s going on.
