In 1988 a new quintet burst onto the New York City music realm, invigorating and ultimately helping to define what became known as the jamband scene. God Street Wine was known for breathtaking shows at Nightingales and the newly opened Wetlands. Affiliating with other fledgling talent like Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler, GSW seemed destined to take the high road to success. Fate had other things in mind and after a decade—GSW called it quits. Now, after a recent string of extraordinarily successful reunion shows benefiting the National MS Society—GSW returns musically mature and ready to rock for a new crowd on the upcoming Jam Cruise 9. Front men Lo Faber and Aaron Maxwell speak candidly about their past and look eagerly to some special acoustic duo shows just on the horizon.
The pair will performing at Mexicali Live in Teaneck, NJ on November 5 and again at New York City’s Sullivan Hall, on December 3 supporting George Porter Jr. & Runnin’ Pardners.
What led to God Street Wine reuniting this summer at the Gramercy and Irving Plaza?
Aaron: Basically, we did a couple of shows after we broke up in 2001 at the Wetlands or something. We really didn’t have any plans to do anything. Our drummer Tomo (Tom Osander) was playing with Damien Rice and lived in Ireland—everyone was doing their own thing. Then I had a good friend who I grew up with in my town pass away—Paul Ducharme. It was such a shocking and sad event.
Lo: Dave DeWitt asked us to play the memorial.
Aaron: I don’t think we even hesitated. As it turned out we all decided we could do it. I rehearsed with Dan (Pifer) and Jon (Bevo) in Brooklyn one day, but the overall thought was not to worry about it and just gather and play in tribute. For me it was a cathartic process of dealing with the bad circumstance. It was amazing to me how good it felt to play—the baggage wasn’t there that had gathered near the end of us playing together as God Street Wine. With that experience being so good, when Mike Weiss, our road manager, asked us to do the benefit shows for MS it felt like, “Yeah, as long as we’re doing it for the right reasons we can approach it in a way that is an enjoyable experience for all of us—then it makes sense to do it.” Every step of the way the benefit shows seemed to retain that element of purity. There was no fear about what the next step of our lives was going to be. Was there going to be food on our table if we play these gigs? That wasn’t there.
Was that one of the lynchpins behind the bands original break-up? Did you feel as if you had come to the end of the road and everyone had a separate agenda?
Lo: I think we were having a very difficult time of our lives career-wise. We were in a horrible situation with our record label—Mercury. They got bought by Seagram’s and so everyone that we knew at Mercury got fired—we had no support. They had us make a record they had no intention of putting out. We were under contract for one more, so we were like, “what the hell, let’s go make a record.” And it still has not been put out to this day. I think that nobody in the band wanted to move forward because we didn’t know which direction we were going.
Now you two are going to be performing as a duo—will you be playing GSW songs differently when it’s just the two of you?
Lo: It won’t be as loud.
Aaron: And I’m using a capo on some of it—which is fucking me up left and right, but that’s OK. The answer is we don’t know. It’s unfolding before us as we do it.
Lo: And we’re also connecting with our career before God Street Wine.
Aaron: That’s right, it’s coming full circle. We had a duo in Provincetown, Massachusetts for a couple of summers called Dos Heteros. We would play jazz standards and stuff and we’re doing some of that in this incarnation—throwing in different standards and types of songs that we wouldn’t do in GSW but is fun for us.
The Gramercy and Irving Plaza reunion shows must have been gemstones in your crown of achievements. How was it to be back onstage as a band?
Aaron: I felt more present at those shows than I did in the whole 11 years of GSW. There was nothing to lose. I felt like I could focus on the music—completely enjoyable from the beginning to the end.
Lo: I would agree.
There was some comments by fans that GSW focused on the early years of their catalogue during the reunion shows. Was that your favorite era of songs?
Lo: I liked all our different eras, but we did stress the early stuff at the reunion shows for several reasons. One is that we have an affection for those songs because they were from an earlier time when we weren’t on our record label—we weren’t consumed with the business side of things. And that was the era most associated with Paul who was one of the reasons for us getting back together. I think our fans have a sentimental attachment to our earlier stuff and so do we.
Have you been more recognized since the shows?
Aaron: Yesterday I was in New Paltz, NY and I was apple picking. There was a festival going on and I ended up at the face-painting booth with two-year-old twins. My daughter wanted her face painted and my son was reluctant to do it. I told him that I would get my face painted if got his painted. I had just gotten a spider web painted on my face when this guy comes up to me and says, “Hey, are you Aaron? I love your band. I saw the Irving shows and you are so awesome.” I was standing there with a spider web on my cheek and it was kind of an embarrassing moment.
Lo: I don’t get recognized at Princeton. There is a handful of people who knew the band and we already had that conversation. But I get a handful of emails every week from God Street fans who apparently had no idea about the reunion shows.
They still want to know when you’re getting back together.
Lo: We don’t have a lot of exposure in the media. So if they didn’t see the Facebook group—they probably would not have heard. And that Facebook Bring Back God Steet Wine page deserves mention.
Aaron: It had existed for a while with a few dozen members and then it started ballooning in 2009 with a few thousand members—so we knew that if we did a couple of shows at least we would get some people showing up—not just us and a few dozen drunken guys.
GSW is as a cornerstone of the early 90’s NY scene—but there was no real jamband scene in the post-Garcia years. How did you see yourselves?
Aaron: That term didn’t exist when we first got going. Jambands became a marketing tool for the scene that was happening. I think being part of a newly formed scene was helpful for us, as our live shows were our bread and butter. It seems like we were always on our own when it came to that. History says we were a cornerstone of that scene, but at the time we didn’t lump ourselves into any category or type of band.
Lo: I know I did, and I think all us were resistant to the jamband category because we thought it was silly. All the music we listened to was improvisational. Aaron and I and Dan all came out of the jazz program at Manhattan School of Music—even the classic rock we listened to jammed. So to say jambands were some new thing somebody just thought up seemed absurd. In retrospect I shouldn’t have had such an ambivalent attitude towards that term because it turned out to be an incredibly great marketing device to describe a certain types of bands and helped us find an audience. My connections to it seem a bit pedantic.
Aaron: We struggled in writing music where the song came first, working on the melodies and crafting good songs—we thought the term jamband took away the focus on the song. I think we had a bit of a conflict with being labeled. We stretched out our songs every night, we never knew what was going to happen—but that wasn’t just the focus of what we were doing.
Lo: In my opinion, any band that plays regularly live is a jamband. Because they all put variations on the songs—unless they are incredibly more disciplined that we were—eventually they start changing around the setlist and playing with the song. You get bored doing a carbon copy of your songs every night!
Look at Dylan. He would break down the songs and rebuild them every tour.
Lo: That could be really enjoyable for the audience or really alienating. Fans want to hear a certain song and then you change it up—it’s your prerogative but it doesn’t always end up being the greatest experience for an audience. Although that shouldn’t be the total focus of a band.
Aaron: Lo and I, by doing an acoustic show we are taking a different approach to our music—so it feels really fresh for us.
Lo: It’s definitely a challenge.
Aaron: Yeah, it is a challenge to find the essence of the songs. Acoustically you can hear the words and the melody and you can actually hear the theme and it’s a different kind of delivery than when you are playing with a whole rock band behind you?
Do you feel any pressure with GSW’s upcoming performance on Jam Cruise? At your reunion shows you played to the faithful, but on the boat you will have an audience of diverse music lovers.
Lo: Sometimes the faithful can be a very demanding audience.
Aaron: Honestly, we don’t know what the hell we are going to be doing after the cruise, so again, we have nothing to lose.
Are you getting calls from management? Thoughts of more shows?
Aaron: We are really spread out. Tomo lives in Ireland/Berlin. . .I’m open, I can only speak for myself—I have no grand illusions. I’m taking it as it comes. We all know we enjoyed what we did. We enjoy working for a good cause and the right reasons.
Lo: They say time heals all wounds and it really does feel that way. We have come back together with so much time passing by we now only look at the positive.
