Bonnaroo 2009 – photo by Dean Budnick
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it can be very easily done
-“Highway 61 Revisited,” Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan band member, Saturday Night Live bandleader, Kennedy Center Honors bandleader, Hall & Oates guitarist and early MTV video pioneer, signature Telecaster honoree, and, currently, Moonalice guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, and tribal member known as Hardwood, G.E. Smith has had such a wide berth in the music industry that one would be hard-pressed to gather stories in an entire day, much less a brief interview.
Originally interviewed for a series of quotes about Moonalice for a Relix feature, Smith presented Jambands.com with a warm and friendly overview of his career, as well. The guitarist is a seasoned vet, and a self-descibed “cynical, jaded music biz guy,” but he left those attributes somewhere else while the musician graciously spoke about his past work, which helps shed light on his current preoccupations—music, and otherwise.
RR: Let’s start in with Moonalice. How did you meet [bandleader] Roger McNamee?
GES: The way I met Roger McNamee—you know, he’s the heart and soul of Moonalice; it’s completely his conception—was through Jorma and Jack [Kaukonen and Casady] because I had known them for a long time. Somehow they got to know Roger, and then I got to know him so that’s how I got there.
RR: I saw the band in a small venue in Arizona, and what I noticed was the obvious chemistry between the members. Not just when you were playing within the song structures, but when you got into the meat of the songs with the improvisation.
GES: Yeah, well, thank you. We have a good time. I mean, look—we’re grown ups, right? So, if we didn’t enjoy each other’s company, we wouldn’t put up with it. When you’re young, you’ll put up with a creep being in the band if he makes the band good. But not when you’re grown up. I just can’t, anyway, deal with it. These are all really good people, and I really enjoy being on the road, and working with them.
RR: What was impressive to me was the whole concept of a traveling road show hitting your town. You had Steve Parrish coming out to MC at the beginning of the sets, and then you’ve got Roger telling the legends of Moonalice. The whole concept of the band appears to have a foot in the past, and one in the present, as well.
GES: Yeah, it is that, and, again, I have to credit Roger with really thinking of that. They’re all based—Jack [Casady], not so much, or [John] Molo, they’re Los Angeles guys—in the Bay Area. I still live in New York City. But definitely the real inner core of the band is somewhere in that late 60s San Francisco thing. And I loved that music when it came out. It was a big influence on me, as it was on most people who were paying attention at the time. So to use that as a starting point, I think was a great idea. Then, of course, because it is 2009, we have the freedom to do whatever else we want to do, and add to that.
RR: You’ve been the musical director in various bands and formats, and the man on stage that was a conduit to the other band members. In Moonalice, what I noticed was that sometimes, you’d step out front, sometimes, you’d step back, and then, of course, there is the situation that everyone gets a chance to play the bass.
GES: Yeah, if Jack’s not there, we all take turns on the bass. When I was 15, 16, and I’d go to the Fillmore East and see bands, one of the things that I loved was, occasionally, one of the guys would just leave, just walk off the stage. And I’d think, “That’s so cool.”
At the time, I didn’t know what the guy was doing. Maybe he was going to take a pee; maybe he was going to get high; I don’t know. I just thought, from my viewpoint in the audience, that’s so cool. There’s nobody in the band that’s so important that the band can’t go on without. I think that for this particular band that’s a good thing.
RR: There is a distinct difference between Moonalice’s debut album and the live show. What were the origins of the record, T Bone Burnett’s involvement as the producer, and how does that contrast with the live presentation?
GES: Well, I knew T Bone, casually, from way back in the late 80s, early 90s when I played with Bob Dylan. Obviously, they had been friends for a real long time. T Bone would occasionally turn up on the road to say hello. Then, Roger knew him from somewhere. Through a long period of time, starting with the previous band, which was called The Flying Other Brothers, it grew into this thing that “O.K., we are going to record these songs in Los Angeles, and T Bone’s going to produce them.” I said, “Great. That’s good. Let’s do that.” We did that, and, of course, by the time the record had gone through its various processes, and T Bone had done his work on it, then we had been playing the songs for another year, live. So, of course, the songs had changed into something else.
This isn’t a band that goes out and plays a song the same way every night. There’s a few that are like that, but most of our stuff is pretty loose. We go out, and we start, and somebody feels like playing something, they play it. Sometimes, it works; sometimes, it doesn’t, but it’s nice to have the option.
RR: Let’s talk about the songs you brought to the album—covers and otherwise. “Eileen Aroon” is a powerful adventure, a journey of an old favorite song.
GES: That’s an old Irish song. I learned it from hearing Bob Dylan sing it. We played it live, and me and him used to do it with just two acoustic guitars. I loved the song, and I asked him to tell me the words so he told me the words. Then, I made up a little arrangement for it. We were in Ireland, again with Bob, and he’s friends with Liam Clancy of the Clancy Brothers, and I gathered—I don’t know this 100%; I know this 98%—that Bob had originally learned this song from Liam.
RR: “I Ain’t Satisfied” and “Dusty Streets of Cairo.”
GES: It’s just a great Steve Earle song. I love that song. (laughs) He opened a bunch of shows for Bob, and I used to hear him singing it. I’d go out and sit on the side of the stage and watch him. Finally, I just started joining his band to play it. So, I got that one right from the source. I wrote “Dusty Streets of Cairo.” It’s just a combination of a bunch of ideas—gospel ideas, Dylanesque ideas. Obviously, Bob is a big influence on me.
RR: Do you want to talk about your years playing with Bob? I don’t mind.
GES: Yeah. I mean…I kind of have been. (laughter) I still now…let me see—I haven’t played with him since ’92 or somethin’, and I still will be playing a gig and get an idea and go: “Yeah, that’s kind of like when Bob played this, or Bob said that.” For me—he was a tremendous…like going to graduate school in American music. Four years playing with him—that’s my quote. It’s like going to graduate school in American music. (laughter) It was.
He knows the songs. There was a little bit, a few months with him, where we were talking about Civil War songs. And every night, me and him would go out and do an acoustic set, just me and him, and he would do a different Civil War song. We’d do one, and he’d say, “Yeah.Yeah.You like that one? That’s about the two brothers. There’s another version, and we’ll do it tomorrow night. And tomorrow night, we’ll do the other version, and then a third version where one brother gets killed, instead of both of them.”
So [Dylan] is fantastic for stuff like that. That was a great opportunity for me to be there, and I enjoyed it.
RR: I saw Dylan in 1986 with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in Sacramento, and the next time, I saw him was in 1989 at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles when you were the guitarist in the band. What I noticed was that your version of the band had a much stronger live presence. The whole group appeared to be moving forward in the moment; whereas, with Petty, it seemed more scripted.
GES: This was a much smaller band you saw in ’89. Think about it. When you’ve got more guys, you’ve got to script it a little more. It’s inevitable. Even a great band like Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers could step into any situation and cover it, but you still have to have some signposts. With that small band that we had, Bob would just start anything that he wanted, and we’d just, you know, go with it.
RR: Yes, that’s true, but I also noticed that—and this extends back to when I saw you play with Hall & Oates in the early 80s—you have a warm and charismatic vibe on stage. I liked that tone as a dichotomy between you and Dylan. I mean, for all intents and purposes, Dylan was the Legend on Stage in the Flesh.
GES: (laughter) Right. Yes, I guess neither one of us can help who we are.
RR: Sure. When you were the bandleader on Saturday Night Live, that ability to be such a positive, dynamic and well-known guitarist gave you the opportunity to have many guests sit-in with the band. What were those experiences like for you?
GES: Well, obviously, it was like some kind of dream, some kind of late 20th century golden opportunity. I’ve been very lucky. The great thing, which you just touched on, was after the show got rolling, we started to get decent ratings the third year I was there [1985-1995] whenever any guitar player that I liked would come to town, I’d invite him to sit-in. And it wouldn’t matter what genre he was from. We had everyone from Lonnie Mack, Johnny Winter, Buddy Guy, David Gilmour, Eddie Van Halen—all kinds of different guitar players. I’d invite them to sit-in. It wouldn’t be announced. It wouldn’t be in TV Guide. The camera would come up, and there’s David Gilmour. People would go “WOW. Cool,” and we’d get to play some fresh and, hopefully, good music.
RR: You also worked with Buddy Guy on a project about 12, 13 years ago.
GES: Yeah. It grew out of that. I invited Buddy to sit-in with the band. He came. Of course, he was Buddy Guy. He was great. And he liked the way the band sounded. He liked the horns, and, you know, there were a lot of good players in that band. We did two nights in New York, and two nights out in Chicago at his club, and recorded them all, and it turned into a CD and a DVD.
RR: Going way back to the 1970s, you seem to be able to play any type of music.
GES: I can’t play opera, man.
RR: That was actually my next question.
GES: I’m struggling with opera, man. I tried. I tried to get to like it. I had my classical friends take me to really good opera. I can’t get with it. I can’t help it. I’m down.
RR: You stole my thunder. I was going to ask you about that. I’m disappointed.
GES: No, man. When they get up there and start singing the lines, I just don’t understand it. But the lack is in me, not in opera. Let me be clear, O.K.? Because opera’s obviously a great thing. I know people that I really respect who get opera and love it. I don’t get it.
RR: That leads me to the fact that you’ve got a signature Telecaster series out.
GES: Yeah. First of all, I’d like to know how the opera led you to the signature Telecaster, BUT…no, I’m teasing. I’m with you. I’m kidding. (laughter)
When I was 11, I was starting to work as a guitar player, and I told my parents that I needed a good guitar. I had a cheap electric guitar, but I knew that it was holding me back. My mom took me down to the little local music store in Pennsylvania, and thank God they had a used Telecaster, and she bought it for me. I still have it, and here I am.
Fender, eventually, was kind enough to make that G.E. Smith signature model, which I don’t have the adequate words to express how honored I am, you know, because my whole life is based on playing Telecaster, right? Since I was 11. You’d have never heard of me. I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t own the house of the backyard I’m sitting in unless I was a Telecaster player. So for them to make a guitar with my name on it, and a little input, is just fantastic. I just can’t believe it.
RR: The way I can connect opera with your signature Telecaster is that opera requires the musician to be a smaller component of a much larger whole. I’ve always seen you as someone that—especially in rock ‘n’ roll—has to jump out of that role so you can establish your own sound on that Telecaster. In opera, you’d be almost faceless.
GES: Almost. I guess unless you’re Pavarotti, or somebody. You know—it’s interesting that you say that. Two comments that I will have about that. In the past 15 years or so—I’ve been doing this for a long time so 15 years isn’t the whole of my career by any means—I’ve thought about it: “I don’t just play the guitar. I play the band.” You see what I’m sayin’? If you just think about yourself—whatever your instrument is in any band—and what you’re playing, well, you might play great, but I’ve really tried to think “what’s the ensemble sound like? What do all of our parts sound like together? What can I contribute to that? What suggestions can I make?” That’s where I go—from that.
RR: That’s an amazing way to look at it, and leads into my thoughts that you are not only passing on that knowledge through your input on the Telecaster, but with your continuing work as a guitar instructor at Jorma Kaukonen’s Fur Peace Ranch.
GES: Yeah. It’s great. I love it there. I’ve been there for 12 years. I think I came in at the second set of classes that they did the first year they opened. Recently, that’s where I was, up in the Catskills, when we couldn’t get a hold of each other. I was with Jorma.
RR: Have you had a chance to work with Levon Helm at his place in Woodstock?
GES: I’ve never gone there and, again, it’s something I have to do as soon as I have a little time. I’m on the road a lot, but as soon as I have a little time, I have to get over there. I’ve met Levon. I’ve got to play with him a couple times, and, obviously, again, one of the cornerstones of American music.
RR: You’ve participated in many tributes to artists including events like the Kennedy Center Honors where you’ve been a musical director and bandleader. To name a few: tributes to Dylan, Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson, Muddy Waters, and one dedicated to Mark Twain. That sounds like a fascinating series of gigs.
GES: Right. The ones that I was involved in, they did for PBS. They would pick different people like Steve Martin, mostly comedians, to do a tribute. I would lead the house band. Somewhere along the way, I got known as a bandleader. That just kind of ballooned into all these other things.
RR: Including your involvement with numerous bands at Live Aid in 1985.
GES: Right. I was working with Daryl Hall and John Oates. They were going to be on the show, and we had a really good road band that had been out on the road for a few years. We knew great horn players. We had David Ruffin and Eddie Kendrick from the Temptations actually out on the road with us so we had the best background vocalists in the world. It was a natural thing to fall into us being there if somebody needed a band.
RR: You were with Hall & Oates during their prime years from ’79 to ’85.
GES: They were writing great songs and great records. But, in ’81, MTV came on, and they were ready for MTV. They were aware of it, along with Tommy Mottola, their manager. We had already done a few videos, then MTV came on, and they were ready to take that shit over. And they did. That’s what really turned them into a worldwide phenomenon. Like I said, they were already making great records, but not that many people would have heard the records—not those millions and millions of people all around the world.
RR: You seemed like you had a fairly substantial presence in the videos, as well. You weren’t just the guitarist in the background of this great duo’s band.
GES: I don’t know. I was there. They afforded each guy in the band to do what he wanted. I don’t know. (laughter) It’s tough. We were just doing it. Now, I can look back on it, and sound knowledgeable and real profound about it. But, at the time, it was just what we were doing. “O.K. We just made a record. Now, we go on the road for nine months. Let’s make a couple of videos before we leave.”
RR: You’ve also been able to step out and do your own solo work, as well, over the years. Your most recent solo project was an archival DVD called 50 Watt Fuse.
GES: Right. My wife, Taylor Barton, who is also a singer/songwriter, and has a really good CD out called Spiritual Gangster, did that, she did the DVD. I lived my life before that so they would have the archival footage, but I didn’t know it was going to be for a DVD. She did all the work on that. All I did was, like I say, go to the gigs.
RR: Do you have any pending solo album projects for the next few years?
GES: Yeah. I’ve got a bunch of stuff almost finished, and I’m just really lazy. First, I was a folkie before I got a Telecaster, before I got an electric guitar. From ’59 on, I was into that folk thing that happened. I was a finger picker, an acoustic guitar guy, I was learning all these old songs, and coming at it from that. So, I’ve got a bunch more of that type of stuff, traditional stuff, recorded and I want to get that out because it’s so easy to get things out now with the internet. The record company would never touch that, but I could just put it out. I hope to have that out soon.
RR: Jorma seems to have an easy time of releasing loads of material like that lately.
GES: Yeah. We played together recently, just the two of us, on a small stage, no microphones, no plugged-in guitars, just two acoustic guitars. We just took turns singing songs, and in the middle of the song, if I felt like playing something while he was singing, fine, I’ll play it. If he wanted to play something while I was singing, fine, too. It was if we were in each other’s living room, and we really had fun doing it. Because he’s into that traditional music, too, obviously. We had a ball.
RR: You’ve probably had some nice jam sessions with your wife, Taylor, as well.
GES: She writes really good songs. We were playing earlier today, and we got into the middle of one of her songs, and I was thinking: “Wow—Moonalice could do this song. We could do this. I could sing it, and it would sound great if Molo played this drum part on this bridge.”
RR: Speaking of…coming back full circle to Moonalice, let’s talk about the band.
GES: Moonalice is, I think…I mean, I’m in the band. It’s hard for me to talk about it. (pauses) But, it keeps getting better, and it’s gotten better beyond my initial expectations. And that’s pretty exciting. I’m like this cynical, jaded guy, music biz guy that’s been around for a long time. I thought: “Well, this will be whatever it’s going to be to a certain extent. We’ll have fun. We’ll play.” But it’s gotten a lot better than that. And, now, a lot of nights, it’s pretty exciting. I’m always excited when I’m going to play. It doesn’t matter what I’m going to play; I’m always excited. But now I’m excited when I come off. And that’s a good thing for me.
RR: Moonalice comes into town with their rock ‘n’ roll circus caravan, and one never knows what to expect from the band, but it may just be pretty damn amazing.
GES: On any given night, it has the potential to…uh…I can’t compare it to anything, and that’s not fair, but it has the potential to be something pretty special.
RR: I would think you are also looking to continue to be inspired at this point, too.
GES: Yeah. I’m 57 years old. George Carlin, the last couple years of his life, he’s a legend, right? The last couple years of his life, he walks out on stage, and the audience would stand up and applaud for two or three minutes. He points at his watch and says, “I don’t have time. I’m 70. I don’t have time.” That’s how I feel. I don’t have time to waste it on any bullshit projects. Let’s just do something good, and I’m pretty happy with what we’re doing right now.
