With the Core Four of the Grateful Dead split up at this moment, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, took to the road with the latest incarnation of the Rhythm Devils. As has been custom for each of Hart’s non-GD musical excursions the lineup this time around varies the previous Devils’ roster. Besides Hart and Kreutzmann, they are joined by Mickey’s longtime drumming collaborator Sikiru Adepoju plus guitarist Davy Knowles and bassist Andy Hess. Living out a Deadhead dream, Keller Williams received his horns and joined the outfit during its first leg. The Mother Hips Tim Bluhm joins them for the second leg, which begins on Aug. 21 at the Hoxeyville Festival.
Speaking from his home during a break between tour schedules, Hart, as usual, is ebullient in tackling subjects that range from why the Dead aren’t touring to the current Devils lineup, the neurological element of the concert experience for artist and audience and the Jerry Garcia Tribute Night at the San Francisco Giants game which took place two days prior to our conversation.
JPG: Catching up on recent events, at the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark, At&T Park…
MH: We set the world’s record kazoo ensemble. It went great! It was good vibes all around. Giants won. And Rex Foundation made a lot of money. Now, we’re about to give it away and Jerry is smiling. He lost weight in heaven. They had the bobblehead Jerry dolls. He was thin. He must be working out in heaven.
JPG: Well, It’s heaven. The food doesn’t have calories.
MH: I guess not. I guess they don’t have the calories in heaven. Milkshakes and hamburgers either.
JPG: That’s why they call it ‘heaven’.
MH: I hope they treat me that good. (laughs)
JPG: Just curious. Why kazoos and not some sort of drum ensemble or rhythmic handclaps with the crowd?
MH: It’s not about the kazoos. It’s about “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” It’s really hard to drum “Take Me Out the the Ballgame.” It’s a waltz. Rhythmically it’s challenged, but it’s the anthem, and it’s doable. Kazoos cost pennies compared to drums, and 9,000 kazoos… It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It’s really hard to say. It was just a thought I had. And I thought Jerry would like the oddness, the weirdness, of doing kazoos. It just came to me in a moment. And then going for the Guinness record seemed like the right thing to do. I can’t really explain it more than that but he’s smiling.
JPG: Does it amaze that 15 years have passed quickly?
MH: It has actually. It seems like it doesn’t seem that long in some ways and in other ways it seems like forever. He’s always with me. When I think about him I can hear him. He’s with me. I can see him smile. I hear him all the time in my left ear, the ear he deafened.
JPG: I’ll get to Rhythm Devils in a moment but you reminded me of something. I was watching the Bruce Springsteen DVD and noticed how Max Weinberg maintained a laser like focus on Springsteen for 99.9% of the show. For you with so much happening onstage, your focus when you were playing with Jerry was it mainly on him or was your antenna moving to other places?
MH: The bands are very different. That’s Springsteen’s band and they’re playing Springsteen’s songs the way he wants to play ‘em. In the Grateful Dead it was more of a conversation, the way I see it. So, I listened as much to Bill and Phil as I did to Jerry. It was really important, first of all, to lock the rhythm in down tight. Phil was my first priority. Then there was Jerry and Bill, and Bobby’s in there in the middle. I try to listen to everybody. It’s really important. You can have a real intelligent conversation, something that’s interesting.
I don’t know if those guys jam very much. It’s a different kind of music. We’re more interactive, they’re playing the song. They play ‘em well. It’s not a jamband. You can get away with that and focus on the leader and locking up with the guy who’s writing the songs. I would assume he’s doing the right thing. Max is an excellent drummer and he knows his focus. Perhaps, if I was in a band like that I would be totally focused on Springsteen as well. It doesn’t serve us really well to do that because that’s an isolationist kind of a view, musically speaking. It isolates you from the conversation and everybody else’s thing if you’re totally focused on one person. Then, it’s just you two guys, and there’s the rhythm and there’s the lead and everybody else is tracking that. That is one way to do but it’s not our way.
We’re listening all the time and focused totally on the whole group. It’s all about the group if you don’t get a group sound then you’re just playing the song, and that’s fine. But it’s built for different things.
JPG: You mentioned Phil and Bobby, and it makes me want to cover this before we get to Rhythm Devils, the fun stuff. Did you expect to by touring this summer as part of the Dead and…?
MH: No, we didn’t have any expectations at all.
JPG: I guess after Spring Tour went so well, fans may have been thinking that something next would happen.
MH: Yeah. We just said we were going to do it when we did it. That’s all. Bill and I really want to do this. We have things to say and places to go that we wanted to do alone.
JPG: So, it wasn’t some phone call where you said, ‘What?!? You’re doing what?!?!?!’
MH: No, no, I wish them well and I feel that they wish us well. I just saw Bob, and we had a great time the other night.
JPG: I recently read some comments that Bob made in regards to Furthur moving forward musically and that such a thing couldn’t happen with the Dead due in part to expectations that come up when the four of you play together.
MH: I didn’t read anything. I don’t know anything about any of that. Expectations, I don’t understand.
JPG: Well, there’s a degree of expectations when you’re performing as the Dead as far as comparisons to the Grateful Dead whereas playing in Rhythm Devils some of that baggage isn’t there.
MH: They come to hear Grateful Dead music and they come to hear adventure and exploration and a fresh take on it. Expectations you only want to play into that so much because you want to grow and this is not the Dead. Their band is not the Dead either. These are both works in progress, different takes on the same music. But we also have a Rhythm Devils side which is we have our own songs, new songs by Robert Hunter. We’re stretching it. We’re taking it out there a little bit from where it was in The Dead. There were expectations in The Dead, yeah, if that’s what you mean. But, in this band there are certain expectations because you want to give people something that they’re familiar with and we love the songs. We think that we can really do the songs justice and really play ‘em the way that we think they should be played or else we wouldn’t be playing them. And then we work really hard on the Rhythm Devils songs, which are new and inventive, electronic, cutting edge stuff and having a great time at it. Smiling our way through it.
Bill and I are playing better than we’ve ever played before. I really mean it. We’re locked tight. Solid. Expectations, yes? But, there’s a bright future for the music that we’re making now.
JPG: Besides you and Bill, there’s Sikiru from previous Rhythm Devils lineups. How did you come up with the other musicians to bring into the current version?
MH: I asked for recommendations because we wanted to make a hot, snarling band. Then, I auditioned all of the on Youtube, talked to people and listened to what they played. Then, we put this band together. Bill and I just said, ‘Oh, Andy’s great. Let’s see if Andy wants to play. How about Keller? How about Davy Knowles or Tim Bluhm?’ We recruited all these guys, one-by-one. We just knew it was going to work, just clicked. As soon as we got in the room you could feel the energy. Bill and I would just really lock tight. It just worked. It was chemistry, right from beat one.
JPG: Now, Keller was with you on the first leg and you’re moving on…
MH: Right, he can’t make it. He’s got his own world. Time and Davy, wow, their vocal blend is beautiful. They get along well. They play like real devils. The devil’s in both of ‘em. That’s for sure. And Sikiru transfers some West Africa, that juju feeling. He’s just a love to play with, and, of course, he’s played with me in Global Drum and Planet Drum and he’s been with me for many years.
JPG: I see that you’re playing the first show on the second leg in a little over a week, so have you had rehearsals with Tim?
MH: Oh yeah, we had rehearsals a month ago with Tim and then we’re going to have some more in Chicago hit the trail again. It’s gonna be a well-rehearsed band. This is not like a thrown together thing. We’re on it. Just to reiterate that we put a lot of time into it.
Before that we sent mp3’s back and forth. So, everybody is totally on board and we have a lot of songs. We’re adding some more songs that I’ve been writing with Hunter. We’re going to have some big time fun in the second leg, especially because we now know the songs and expand.
And Keller did grr-eeat. Keller’s a delightful guy, a beautiful creative musician and we honor his Devil service. He’ll always be a Rhythm Devil and we’ll be meeting up with him, maybe Steve Kimock, maybe Mike Gordon, all the people who have been a part of the Rhythm Devils experience over the years. Once they have their horns they are always welcome.
JPG: I like that, “once they have their horns”…
MH: Yeah, I mean, these are good Devils. These are very happy, creative Devils. The Devil made me do it. Devildom.
JPG: This is the third Rhythm Devils lineup. Is there anything you seek with each one, whether it is continuity in some areas or differences you seek?
MH: There is a continuity. Bill and me and Sikiru are the core of it. Rhythmically speaking. It’s not the Guitar Devils. It’s not the Vocal Devils. It’s the Rhythm Devils stupid (laughs) As long as you got the rhythm, you got it. You got the songs. We’ve got all of our Grateful Dead songs and all of our Rhythm Devils songs, we work really hard on ‘em to make it a new and exciting experience. We’re not just playing the catalog.
JPG: I was listening to the Gathering of the Vibes show on archive.org prior to receiving your phone call. Let’s go through a few titles here I’m not as familiar with. There’s “Strange World…”
MH: I wrote that with Warren. I wrote the words and Warren Haynes and I wrote the music.
JPG: “Wrecking Crew”
MH: I wrote that. Hunter wrote the words, I wrote the music.
JPG: “This One Hour”
MH: I wrote the music, Hunter wrote the words. I’m doing good so far.
JPG: “Comes the Dawn.”
MH: Hunter wrote the words and I wrote the music.
JPG: “Voodoo Zombies” and “See You Again”
MH: Me and Kimock, I think, wrote that one. And Hunter wrote the words.
JPG: Since his name keeps cropping up. The new material written by Robert Hunter. Tell me about the writing process with him because one usually thinks of a songwriting team of, for example, a lyricist and a guitarist or keyboardist. Do you play other instruments?
MH: I play bass. I compose mostly on bass or on a keyboard.
JPG: With these newer songs, how did it come about?
MH: How it happened was I sent him music, that’s one way to do it. Sometimes he’ll send me a lyric that he thinks I should use. But most of the time I send him a few songs, sometimes one song, and then I just wait by the computer for the songs to pop up. There was a time when he sent one back in an hour. Other times it’s days or weeks. But he’ll always respond. Then we talk on the phone and so forth. We’re friends. That’s usually the way it happens. But there are also time when he’ll have a lyric and he’ll just think it’s for me. I think that happened with “Wrecking Crew.” I don’t know if I sent him the music first. “Wrecking Crew” is really one of my favorites. We have a lot of new material we’re trying out. We’re working on the Dead material as well. We love it and we want to play it and we know the fans come for a good shot of the Dead.
JPG: As far as adapting the material for each lineup. You can take one particular Dead song, how does it work itself out with the new players?
MH: Bill and I just picked out the songs we wanted to play and we gave ‘em to different people who wanted to sing those songs, whether it be Keller or Davy. They made their preferences known and then we evened it out. They came into rehearsal knowing the song. That’s the best way.
JPG: Does it become some amorphous being where you just feel that it works right away in rehearsal and then it morphs into something else when it’s played live?
MH: That’s right. Then it grows and matures in performance, just like the Dead. That’s how the songs really become songs, they become personalized. The song is the song, anybody can play the song. To get at the essence of it, to own the song that takes time playing it and finding things that make it peculiarly your own and make it very personal. And that’s what Bill and I like and we do. And that’s what these folks have the ability to do as well. So, that’s what we expect and that’s what happened.
JPG: You were brought up performing in concert and that reminds me of something I read where you brought up the idea of “entrainment” (synchronizing the rhythms of two separate entities). I think you were getting towards the idea of the concert experience and how a sense of entrainment between performer and audience.
MH: there are a lot of different kinds of entrainment. There’s visual, there’s sonic. There’s entrainment with the people you’re playing with onstage, to be able to be in sync with that. And then there’s the connection or entrainment that you have with the audience. Once you have yourself together on the stage and you’ve created an intimate musical moment, then you can give it away. If you don’t have it you can’t give it to anybody. The idea is to get it onstage, make yourself feel good, and get the feeling. Once you get the feeling then the audience catches on and then you play with the audience. You become one big throbbing organism. And when that happens, you’re there.
JPG: How does that link to Trance?
MH: Redundancy is the basis of trance. A certain kind of redundancy where the mind, the ear relaxes and it’s able to go with the groove. And then you start moving into altered states. That’s what trance is all about. It’s about transforming the consciousness using in this case a social and sonic element. So, the sonic mode is really important. Once you get that feeling, and the mind and the ear relaxes you can start moving into different stages of trance or ecstasy. If it’s a quiet zone you’re moving into another kind of trance, the quiet side. What we do is more like auditory driving, like driving the whole nervous system and once that’s all pulsing then the body entrains with itself and its mind. It’s a neurological function, basically. You’re stimulating the synapses that fire and move you in and out of these consciousnesses. And that’s what trance is all about. It’s not something that we invented but when you go in and out of it as a musician you really can feel it. Also, when people have experienced that in concerts, they understand when they’re moving in and out of these very precious moments.
JPG: I’ve lost count but I think this is the fifth time I’ve interviewed you over the years. And through all those times it always seems as if you have developed a strong balance between the two sides of your brain, bringing creativity and analysis together. Would that be a good description of how you live your life?
MH: Yeah, it’s a balance. You have to be able to balance that spirit and make it come out in some way, but you can’t see spirit. You can’t really see emotion. It’s invisible, just like music, and you’ve got to translate that in another form. In this case it’s music. So, that’s really the right/left brain kind of thing. You have to be able to realize the stuff that’s invisible and be able to share it with somebody, not only yourself but those people out there. It all starts at home. If you’re not able to do this and be able to devote a lot of time to this…It doesn’t come easy. You’ve got to really focus to be able to play. You have to work to play (slight laugh), you know what I mean. It doesn’t come free. There’s always work to be done— skill, being able to relax at very important moments, intense moments perhaps, stay in shape physically and mentally and spiritually and be able to address the drum, your instrument whatever it is, in the most meaningful way. Every time you touch, it has to have meaning in your life. It’s a turning system. That’s what music is, and that’s what gives you the ability to move in and out of these states without getting hurt, without losing it. Remember, these are very delicate places. Now, you’re dealing with deep consciousness stuff. The music does that. And you’re able to navigate in those waters and then you have some real fun. I’ve been able to practice it for a long time, so I’m getting it now. (laughs)
It’s about all of those things. To live a healthy life you have to be in rhythm. To me it’s all about the rhythm, stupid. That’s what happens when I open up my laptop computer. “Morning Mickey! It’s the rhythm, stupid.” That sets me straight. So, I realize what priority is, get the good rhythm in life. Be happy. Be healthy. Do good things, good things will happen to you. Be nice to people when you can. And all those things help. Drum well. Take your music seriously, but not too seriously. Don’t take yourself too seriously. You’ve got to take it just right in order to be able to be on the edge.
Garcia always liked that. He called me an “edger.” He said, “You like the edge.” That’s one of the things that we had in common. As a matter of fact, that’s where I got the name for “Drumming at the Edge of Magic” [Hart’s second book]. He came up with it. We were riding in a limousine and I go, “Wow, what am I going to call this book?” At the time it was going to called…“The Art of Percussion” or something like that. He said, “No, no. You’re on the edge of magic, man. That’s where it is. You’re on the edge.” And I go, “Yeah, right. Exactly.” And he said, “That’s what we’re playing with. We’re playing with magic, music magic.” And he was right on. That’s how I look at these things. That’s how I play it. Looking for magic. Magic is the big payoff. You have to be playing the songs to do it. That’s where you start, and then, hopefully, it moves into those alchemical zones, what we call “magic,” things that you can’t explain that is happening that are just marvelous and mysterious.
JPG: That move beyond you.
MH: Yeah, it’s beyond you. It’s not exactly what it looks like. It’s something, perhaps, larger.
