If you went to Lockn’, odds are you saw, or at least heard about, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong’s Saturday afternoon set. It had something for everyone: unrestrained funk jams, silly onstage antics, a tease of “Shakedown Street” and hordes of dedicated fans, known as The Flock, singing along to every word. From their formation in 2009, the Baltimore funk foursome’s fun-loving spirit and unabashed sincerity have won over crowds from coast to coast. And thankfully, with a new album due this fall, they show no signs of slowing down.
We caught up with Greg Ormont (guitar, vocals), Jeremy Schon (guitar), Ben Carrey (bass) and Alex Petropulos (drums) backstage before their Lockn’ set. As soundchecks thumped in the background and stage techs wandered in and out of the band’s green room, the guys were in their element, more than happy to discuss their sound, their upbeat ethos and their new, fan-funded record, Pizazz.
What are your impressions of Lockn’?
Greg: For most of us, this is our first time even attending Lockn’, let alone playing, and I’m blown away by the site. It’s gorgeous. And we got lucky on a year that’s only 79 degrees. The weather’s really been nice and I like the way they lit up all the trees around the site. It’s got a magical feel. Kind of a once-in-a-summer vibe.
How does it feel sharing the bill with all of these epic names in the Jam community?
Greg: It’s pretty crazy. My dad’s favorite Dead album was Terrapin Station so to be playing our music in the same place Bob and Phil played theirs is not something I ever expected to do, and not something we take lightly. So we’re gonna put the pedal to the metal and show these veterans that the new kids on the block are ready to hit it hard and take the baton somewhere.
Alex: It’s awesome, being able to be on the same bill with those people we look up to and are such fans of, not only from a musical standpoint but as fans as well. I love all the bands here. I’m a huge Umphrey’s fan, so I was really excited to see them play multiple sets. Everyone’s been great. A lot of bands as well that I’m not as familiar with, they’ve all been great too.
Jeremy: It feels great. It’s awesome to get to see a lot of our favorite artists throughout the weekend and get to hang. It’s definitely cool to share the stage with a lot of people we’ve looked up to over our career.
Greg: It’s really cool to be able to share the stage with these veterans but it’s even cooler to share a backstage with them. You’re just sitting there drinking a coffee or a beer and out comes Phil Lesh or any of our other musical idols milling about and being normal people backstage. It’s even more of a surreal moment than being on the bill with them. Sharing the stage is cool but sharing the backstage is surreal, when you’re talking about members of the Dead, and Widespread Panic and all the other Mount Rushmore members of the jam scene.
You guys played a full summer tour, and you have dates announced through December. You’re obviously road warriors. Talk to me about the joy of playing live and why you guys are driven to perfect your live performances?
Alex: We love playing every night and we’re still at a point where we get to experience a lot of new places as well as returning to a lot of places. And having that contrast is really awesome, because you get some venues where you get to recognize the fans who have been there all along, and then you get the new venues where you meet the new faces and get new fans. We’re also lucky in the style of music we play. We get to switch up sets and be able to explore musically night to night and try new things.
Jeremy: We love playing live. That’s why we do what we do. We really enjoy playing music for people. Our number one motive is we like to have fun on stage and watch people have fun in the crowd. We radiate positivity to them, they radiate positivity to us. Touring is fun. We get to mix it up every night, play to a different group of faces. Being in the world we’re in musically, we can kind of do whatever we want. The setlist is always changing, the songs are always evolving, the jams are always different.
Following up on that, how do you guys craft a setlist?
Jeremy: It’s usually a day-of thing. Sometimes we’ll have a super solid setlist that’s written with all the transitions and everything down to a T, but other times we’ll have a list of songs and we might not play any of them. Once we hit the stage we go with the flow and see what makes sense. A setlist is sort of a guideline for us. Something so we don’t get lost.
Greg: Fortunately jam music allows each song to take on a new form each time around, and I guess that’s why we play up to 200 shows a year. Because even if we are rotating a catalogue, we have a new experience with it each time. Each song is its own beast and new jams are born nightly. We also have a new album coming out that the entire fall tour will be supporting. It’s called Pizazz, and it’s helpful to play those newer songs in front of crowds and tour that album around and bring it from coast to coast. Put it into the flock’s ears.
What’s the balance of work and play for you guys?
Greg: We love our jobs and it’s funny to even call playing music a job sometimes because the natural highs we feel onstage are worth every drop of blood sweat and tears to get there. I find that the more work aspect of it is just travelling and driving. As a result it’s always wonderful to take time off. We just played two shows in Colorado, two sold-out ragers, and then we all stayed in Colorado, and did our own thing. We disappeared into the mountains and let them swallow us up. Some of us jammed, some of us didn’t touch our guitars.
Were those Colorado shows the ones with Twiddle that were supposed to be with moe.?
Greg: Correct. We were supposed to play Red Rocks, but the jam gods said it wasn’t our time yet and that’s okay with us. We know that everything happens for a reason and we’re even more determined to get back there and keep things moving in an upward way. So we pivoted and played two awesome sold-out shows. One at the Boulder Theater with Twiddle, and that included a special Twigeons set, a collaborative encore set that was a ton of fun, playing each other’s music and a couple of covers. And then we did a really rare intimate show at a small venue in Denver that we don’t get to do a lot anymore. Here at Lockn’ we’re in front of, fortunately, a few thousand people, but in Denver we were in front of 200 rabid ragers. And that was a sweaty party to say the least. We were excited to salvage the Colorado shows and have an unbelievable time with our friends and then take in the sights.
Let’s talk about the new album, Pizazz, which you guys funded with a Kickstarter campaign. Talk to me a little bit about that experience and the overwhelming support that you guys got in favor of the new record.
Greg: The outpouring of support really took us aback and we were beyond grateful and thankful for the contribution from our fans. It also inspired us to put forth the best album we have yet, and we really poured our souls into it. It’ll be the first album with our new drummer Alex, who’s been crushing it with us for over two years now. It’s about time he’s immortalized onto wax. It’s finished, it’s fantastic, there are some surprises that our fans will be thrilled about. It comes out in the fall, we’re going to announce the date very soon.
Alex: It’s super exciting for all of us. As Greg said, it’s my first time doing a studio album with these guys which is so exciting for me. Luckily, I’ve had some studio experience before in the sense that- it was new being in the studio with them, but it wasn’t totally a new experience. We were able to work with each other on the experiences we’ve had with each other in the studio and on our own in the studio. I’ve had so much fun playing with these guys, it’s been the time of my life. And to be able to put that on an album after two years feels great. I’m super excited for it.
Jeremy: We’re eternally grateful to our fans for helping us make this one, our best album yet. We really really are excited for this.
Greg: Just like playing shows all the time and making albums, we just try to get better by our standards in each thing we do, every time we do it. Hopefully, every show is better than the last, hopefully every album is better than the last. It doesn’t mean that we’re saying we have the best album of all time, but our goal is to just get better every day and do our best to work hard on our own so that we improve. I think that’s all you can ask for in life, is to just try to get better.
The songs on the record, have they been brewing for a while? Where did that material come from?
Greg: The songs that are on the album we have played live before because we feel like the crowd is really a part of our music and the more we play songs for our crowd the more the song will develop and take on a life of its own. So in that respect I think all the songs have the fans’ energy in them. It’s almost a collaborative effort in the studio. When we record we miss seeing our smiling fans’ faces. Since we’ve played some of the songs live, we were able to close our eyes and transport ourselves to [our fans] and get their energetic feedback and try to convey that on the album. If that makes sense.
Alex: One cool thing about the songs, like we touched on earlier, most of our songs are constantly evolving. So some songs on the album we may have started to establish a lot longer than other songs. It’s cool to see how they’ve evolved. And on the other side, it may be cool to see where some of the newer song we’ve recorded may evolve to in the future.
In the studio setting were you all playing together, capturing a live recording? Or was stuff tracked individually?
Greg: We originally recorded everything as a group, all four of us together, like we do live so we could convey that live energy and replicate how we feel onstage. And from there, the studio allows you to fine tune everything and add layers that you couldn’t because as much as I’d like to, I can’t play guitar twice at the same time. But in the studio you can add layers and harmonies and we also invited some guests, and there are some fiery horns on a few of the tracks.
Can you name those guests? Anyone specifically?
Greg: For now I will call them the Double D Horns of Baltimore.
To finish up, what was your first exposure to funk? What made you fall in love with this style of music?
Ben: Growing up my dad put on Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and to me it was old people music, but then I would listen to it more and get down to the grooves and [bassist] Victor Wooten turns out to be one of the more incredible bass players of our time, or ever, and that was what I soaked in at a young age. Feeling the bubbly nature of music writ large is what I like about our approach to funk. And just the moveability of the whole thing. It’s all movement oriented, whether it’s internal or external.
Greg: I started with Stevie Wonder’s clavinet when I grew up in New York, and got a rebirth when Phish was playing Plinko funk in ‘09. I saw them 10 times and that was the best. I thought they played great at the Baker’s Dozen but the Plinko funk of ‘09, or maybe it was 2011 was the best. That is the best period.
Did any of you catch any the Baker’s Dozen shows?
Greg: Yeah, I caught the Lemon show where they did the Radiohead stuff and that was a unique experience to say the least. We had awesome seats for that. And Jeremy caught Boston Cream and the Glazed finale. We also streamed it quite a bit. We’re big Phish fans and we thought they were pretty locked in. Even though they’re not at Lockn’ they were locked in. We’ve got to keep Plinko funk alive!
