It has been a busy few years for Mike Gordon to say the least. In 2008 alone the bassist started preparations for Phish’s reunion, released the solo album The Green Sparrow, put together a permanent backing band, got married and had his first daughter. Gordon has spent the past two years juggling his two primary bands and new family responsibilities—finding a happy middle ground between his roles as band leader, collaborator and family man.
In the midst of a fall tour with Phish, Gordon will release Moss, his third solo album, on Rounder Records. A true solo album, Moss features material written and recorded between 2002 and 2010—but sculpted into a cohesive album by Gordon and his longtime collaborator Jared Slomoff. Some of the album’s tracks stem from drum and bass sessions Gordon culled over the years, while others were part of a 2007
songwriting project where the bassist would go to a coffee shop
outside Burlington and attempt to write a song a day. One
collaborative track, “Can’t Stand Still,” was even created with Jon Fishman and Page McConnell as part of “The Meteor Jam” project the Phish members recorded for Trey Anastasio while he was living in Saratoga Springs, NY in 2007.
While in Charleston, SC for Phish tour, Gordon discussed the album’s evolution, his most recent peak experience and his current balancing act between Phish and the Mike Gordon Band.
Let’s start by talking about Monday’s Mossery event at Kenny’s Castaways, which is actually the club where Phish played its first New York City show. What made you choose that venue in particular and can you talk a bit about what we can expect?
I’ve been really liking my album so I just wanted to do some unique and creative stuff around it—rather than just going the normal promotional route. I just wanted to sort of play around with the concept [of the album release show]. I had a vision for this event where it would take place on street level and and people could wander in off the street and play some music. We had looked at 675 Bar [in New York] and that was sort of downstairs but they weren’t used to having live music.
With Kenny’s, I like that it’s right in the thick of things in Greenwich Village and there are windows for people to look in and see what is going on. Also, people who have never heard of Phish—or heard of me—might walk by and see a room filled with moss and craziness and pop in. The entire room is going to be covered with moss.
Speaking of Moss, I was reading the album’s credits and noticed that portions of some tracks were recorded as far back as 2002. Can you give us a little background on how the album came together?
Some of these songs originated with some jam sessions—especially bass and drum jams—that I had done with different people since 2002. I have all sorts of jam sessions and writing sessions I’ve record and cataloged [with people like Joe Russo], and I later used certain key moments from those jams and worked them into songs for Moss.
Those recordings changed a lot to feel current and resonate with the “2010 Mike,” but that’s why it says 2002 on the album. Then in 2007 I had my big songwriting year where I didn’t tour and just wrote music so there are songs on Moss from that era as well. We utilized a lot of different processes for this album. I feel like I’m actually in a transition place where I’ve done a lot of writing by improvising and then reworked the best moments of those improvisations into songs. I still have some jam sessions left over that I’ve started to work with and am very excited about those, but I feel like I’m sort of at a cusp of changing eras to not do that as much. I’m reaching an era where I just want to sit with a guitar, like other singer/songwriters, and not work with material from jam sessions or computer files or anything.
So, right now, I am at the cusp of that and sometimes the cusps are the coolest place because I’m still able to use some ideas that germinated in different ways and apply this new sensibility—changing sensibility—where I want it to really be able to change and really be able to resonate
When we talked in 2008, you mentioned that you experimented with several different writing processes in 2007, including an experiment when you and Jared Slomoff tried to write a song a day for an extended period of time. Did any songs on Moss originate from that series of writing sessions?
There are some from that month where Jared and I were writing a song a day but they have changed between then and now, too. Jared and I went through and we looked and we still had probably had 20 or 30 jam sessions left over from all the different writing situations: various bands, me and one other person or me and Jared. We went through and we decided, “Well, since it’s feeling like a different era, let’s just take one or two of these songs that are really crying out to be used.”
The song “Can’t Stand Still” is a co-composition with Jon Fishman, Page McConnell and Jared? What is the origin of that song?
“Can’t Stand Still” is a good example of how I’ve applied this new songwriting technique to [an old jam]. That song actually stemmed from this thing we were calling “The Meteor Jam.” [While Trey was in Saratoga Springs, NY in drug treatment from 2007-2008], Fish, Page and I created this mini-album for Trey’s birthday present, actually. It was 43, 43-second loops for his 43rd birthday. It was a jam session that we had carved into loops, and I used those for the basis of “Can’t Stand Still.” Trey could and can still use them if he wants, but he never really had to—it was just a gift. But I decided I would take a couple of those loops and work them into songs and “Can’t Stand Still” was one of them.
What was the process like of working those loops into a song?
Originally it was just a free-form improvisation—and not just the chord progression, which was quite simple—but the melody, too. Page was playing on the clavinet and then Jared actually took it and wove it together into song form. So it was pure improvisation. But when it became the song—the elements of the song became much more important than the jam had been: putting it in the right key for singing and having the instrumentation and the groove really match the sentiment of what’s being sung about. The lyrics are about this can’t stand still feeling—this feeling I have when I go on my run everyday, and I just want to go faster. I don’t go too fast but I want to. And I run through lots of people and see lots of things and, with this song, I wanted it to be like a movie where scenes are flashing by. I have this feeling in my life too, you know? Clearly I’m not satisfied just having my Phish career. My solo career is as important to me, and I want to just run with it as fast as I can, though maybe it is actually going pretty slow in a certain sense. “Can’t Stand Still” represents the feeling of just doing a lot and that song and that meaning became more important than the original jam session.
At this point in your career do you write songs specifically for Phish, your solo bands or one of your collaborative projects or do you just write to write?
I would say more write to write. I just have to follow my muse and then if I’m playing with Phish or I’m playing with my band decide where the songs should go. We have talked about it over the years where Trey will bring a song and he’ll say, “Well, I played this in my solo band but it’s just crying to be a Phish song.” But I don’t know. Round Room was like that where I wrote the song “Round Room” [during the first hiatus].
The middle section of that song—even though I wrote it and I’m proud of the way the instrumental part came out—it sounds very Phishy to me and sort of Trey-ish to me. So it fit Phish well. But then I had my first solo band in ’03, and we played it and I thought it really sort of flourished and the groove became deeper. Maybe it is because we played it more times with my solo band, and we gave it a chance. But then after my solo band went out I remember Phish played it, I think, at a New Year’s Eve show—maybe it was just the sound check—but then Phish played it better than ever and that was a really deep pocket. So my experience of having played it with that solo band actually infused me with some energy and that made it better with Phish.
In that sense, who was playing it didn’t matter as long as it was getting fleshed out. I loved that band in ’03—we had trombone and pedal steel and tap dancing—but every project I’ve had outside of Phish has been short-lived until now. The difference now is my goal with this band that started 2 ½ years ago is for it to last indefinitely. I really want to work on this project becoming a real band. We’ll bring in the Phish influence, and whatever other influences, to the table and then try to transcend the influences of those ideas into a band identity. Ideally, a good band sounds like itself.
So the long answer to your question is that there are certain songs that I thought of for Phish that might work better with my band because it will get played a lot more because there is less material coming and there are certain songs that I thought of for my band that might work better for Phish. I know that with my band I’ll have more opportunity to play a lot of my songs a lot—there isn’t as much opportunity per hour to do that with Phish. It is different—with Phish I’m often reaching nirvana through getting into bass lines and improvising.
Phish has played two songs off Moss already: “Idea” and “What Things Seem.” Did those songs find their “band home” yet?
When Phish were recording Joy we brought 30 songs to the table from all the band members and I think we played “What Things Seem” with Phish then, before I recorded it with members of my band. So it’s definitely not so clear cut. I kind of like the freedom of being able to say “Ok, well I’m on tour with Phish now, let’s play one of these songs now.”
Like The Green Sparrow, Moss features some members of your solo band, as well as other outside contributors and songwriting collaborators. In that sense it is a true “solo” album. Is your next goal to make a Mike Gordon Band album?
I don’t know if that’s the next thing but “the band album” it is one of the things that I like the idea of. The next thing I’d really like to do is work on an album with a producer—someone that I respect and who I would be able to do more letting go with each phase of the process. With this album I think I did a good job—a better job than before—of that. But when you are writing a song or recording it or mixing it—at every phase, you’ll tend to say, “Well, maybe this song shouldn’t even be here or maybe this song should be different or re-recorded in a different way or rearranged.” Then maybe some songs would be recorded for that project with my band.
[Mike Gordon Band/Max Creek guitarist] Scott Murawski and I have also had some songwriting sessions over the last eighteen months and there’s some really cool stuff that’s been coming out of that. [As I said before], even though I’m sort of gravitating away from that mode there’s still some jam sessions that are really worth using and then there’s some ideas that I feel like they’re too good not to use. I also have some bonus songs for Moss and re-mixes that I am working on,
Are you working on any songs now that you are particularly inspired about?
A lot of people talk about writing from ideas they have in dreams, and I actually had a couple dreams that I’m turning into songs. I had this one dream on Summer Phish Tour—I don’t even know where I was—it became lucid at the end so I knew I was dreaming but it was really long it had about ten different scenes to it. Each one had plots and background décor and then a reason you need to run to the next scene and at the very last scene there’s this dance party. It was a crazy, almost one of those mindless dance-y kind of songs with a chant and that’s just an example of something that it’s still on my computer desktop. I like the little melody that I had sung into my phone when I woke up and so there’s all theses different ideas. I would just like to bring a whole bunch of ideas to the table and then surrender the control, that’s one of my fantasies.
In the Reel Time interview you did with Relix earlier this year you mentioned that Inside In was a very dreamy album, The Green Sparrow was about being very much awake and Moss falls somewhere in-between. Is there a reason you decided to explore this middle ground?
Well, ironically there is that state where you’re in between being awake and sleeping
where a lot of creativity happens—where you’ve just woken up and you’re still half asleep or you’re about to go to sleep and you’re in an alpha state or something and the subconscious can take over. A lot of music has been written that way for centuries from what I’ve heard. I think really I just wanted to let the album have its own mood and it sort of took on this contemplative mood, you know? I definitely want to rock sometimes, and I listen to some mellower, more pared down, sparser music and at other times. I enjoy going to the ends of the spectrum but then I sort of realize that some of my favorite albums live in that middle ground where the tempos are kind of medium, and it’s actually the unassuming quality of the grooves that makes me want to crank up some of those albums really loud and dance around my house.
At one point we were gonna call this album “The Medium Bank.” I didn’t want it to be apologetic sounding, but when I was growing up a neighbor said to my mom said, “anything not in excess” is good. My mom, being sort of a radical artist herself, thought that that was the worst thing she had ever heard, and she told me that I was not to live my life with that mindset. If I’m in the middle of a peak experience of jamming then I don’t want it to end after 6 minutes— I want it to end tomorrow. I like to find the place in life where there’s extremes so when I say that all the tempos are sort of medium tempos and the moods are sort of contemplative, it doesn’t mean that I’m being apologetic about that, it means that I think that I’ve actually honed in on something.
When is the last time you had a peak musical experience in the now classic canon of “Peak Mike Experiences?
Over the years they might change in their quality, or from tour to tour, but I still have these musical peak experiences. They’re different kinds now, though. In terms of the all consuming peak moment where I surrender control—I think something does happen to people when they’re around college age, whether or not they actually go to college. There is a point where you have kind of moved away from home and you’re not sure what you’re going to do with your career. You don’t necessarily have a family yet and there’s this sort of freedom that comes in that era of people’s life where if you’re at a concert and you have a peak experience or if you’re making music and have a peak experience it really is your whole being.
I remember a lot of times having this feeling of being at home on stage and feeling ‘this is much more at home then my home, then my bed at home or my living room at home. This IS home’ in the truest sense and ‘this jam that I’m in, this represents my home emotion’ and that’s a peak experience. It’s a self-actualization and it’s a bonding with everyone else around you at the same time. And this week [in Colorado], I’ve been on tour with Phish and there have been times that just felt incredible in every way, where the groove—the music—was playing itself. The muse had taken over. Even if the music started as a song arrangement with lyrics all that kind of stayed in the background but gave way toward the soul of the situation and the muse. I wrote in my journal about it— I’ve written e-mails about it this week and text messages and tweets and picture messages. So it’s definitely still happening.
At the same time, I would say it was just a great week. In Colorado we had three days of playing, plus the benefit and every night we got into these place where the jams—just the music—started playing itself, and I re-learned the lesson again that, “Oh wow, this is what I’m supposed to be surrendering to’ and thank God I stopped thinking and using my mind and yet never stopped playing at the same time. My family isn’t on the road now [in Charleston] but they were in Colorado and everyday I made sure to carve out time with [my daughter] Tessa, who is almost 2 years old now, and we walked around Pearl Street for hours everyday. We scheduled it so it was just me and Tessa and that was a peak experience too. I ended up writing in my journal that “she’s just so fun to be with” and “it is fun just seeing the world through her eyes, even if it is just a brick on a building.” We passed a tractor and she said, “Tomorrow I’m gonna drive a tractor, and I’m gonna dig rocks.”
I love seeing the world through a tiny set of eyes and then people would walk up to us and say, “Great show last night.” Sometimes I don’t agree with them when they say it but this time I did. The sun was shining and I had my soy chai and Tessa had her soy vanilla steamer that we got from the [Trident] Book store, and I had this feeling of “This is amazing. ‘I’m here with Tessa and my wife and family and it’s pretty here and the playing has been good, and I have an album about to come out that I love ,and we’re doing all these other creative projects that are engaging me creatively.” It just sort of felt like, “Well, this is heaven on earth basically.” So there are different kinds of peak experiences—it’s hard to compare them from one era of your life to another.
Has having a family influenced the lyrics of your songs?
I’m sure it does, indirectly. I try to find more direct paths—some people talk about having a traumatic experience and then they are able to write a song about it and vent that way. For me, it usually takes a few more steps of processing where it’s not so direct. I know that people will have a daughter, a little baby, and they’ll write all these songs for the baby but I don’t know. I do want to do that, actually, I would like to do that, but I’m not so direct.
Stuff has to kind of compost in my subconscious before it comes out as a song that I can relate to. We were at Austin City Limits Festival and I actually went running along the river just to see JJ Grey and Mofro. He has this song about his daughter, and I was thinking, for so many years people talked about how special it is to have kids, and it just wasn’t in my consciousness. It might have been in my subconscious but, because I think I always knew subconsciously that I would want to have kids, but now that I have one I suddenly feel like all those people that I would just not talk to because I was sick of hearing about their kids. It is hard to imagine loving someone that much. I can see why you’d want to write songs about that because songs—or poems or paintings—are ways for people to take their subconscious and express those ideas more directly.
Speaking of influences, let’s talk about some of the other artists that are influencing you right now and your recent cover choices?
Let’s see [Gordon organizes his iTunes by most played]. I tend to listen to different things and then I get in practice modes where I’m not listening to anything but my own music or Phish or whatever that I have to be working on. [Referring to Phish’s Halloween show] there are some songs on here I am listening to that I am not allowed to talk about.
But I’ve been kind of getting into that sort of masculine, growly, bluesy way of singing and that’s why I wanted to see JJ Gray. I thought he was really doing a great job of delivering his songs. The last few covers I have brought to Phish and my band were by female singers. [With My band] we did Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight at the Oasis” and then I did Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man in Paris’ with Phish, and I did this New Orleans-y song by [Rita Clark]. Then I was thinking everyone has a masculine and a feminine part and I wanted the masculine part to be able to thrive a little bit so I’ve been listening to some Johnny Winter. I’ve also listening to [French singer] Serge Gainsbourg and that album that David Lynch did—and some Orchestra Baobab.
I also went to see Pat Metheny’s new Orchestration Project. It’s pretty wild. He takes a room full of instruments, such a big room actually that he can’t even fit them all on the stage and so he does most of them. So he’s working on that concept and it’s really pretty cool. I like to be inspired in that way— to see people pushing the limits, whether it’s a kind of music or a kind of technology or sometimes it’s just a stage set. I had that feeling when I saw Tool a few years ago and what they were doing with their backdrops, not to mention having 3D glasses built into their album cover. I’ve been having a lot of those experiences lately.
