Reid Genauer has been a part of the Northeast jamband scene for decades since starting out as one-half of then-duo Strangefolk in 1991, while still a student at the University of Vermont. After an eventful decade of music, Genauer left the band after the turn of the century and ended up forming a new collective, Assembly of Dust, in 2002. But although the Northeast is where his music roots took hold, Genauer has now found a new start in Northern California, where he has been welcomed with open arms into the community that contains the Bay Area-centric extended family of the Grateful Dead.
Now about a year into his life on the West Coast, Genauer has jammed with Phil Lesh, welcomed keyboardist Jason Crosby into Assembly of Dust and recently cut a live album, Tales from the Oregon Trail with AOD and former RatDog guitarist Mark Karan, and although he still prefers to be seen as a songwriter as opposed to a jammer, he’s the first to admit his connection to the jamband scene, professionally and spiritually. Here, he discusses these things and more, including what ties the East and West Coast music scenes together and why revisiting Strangefolk years later is like putting on “an old but cherished suit.”
Have you found a new musical community out there?
Yeah. It’s interesting—I probably know as many musicians in the Bay Area as I did in New York, or near to it. I suspect in part because of the style of music I play. I wonder if you were in an indie band that toured for X years, whether you’d find that same correlation or not. There’s a huge New York, bicoastal current, and that accounts for a lot of it. I remember playing in Strangefolk in the 90s, showing up in San Francisco and having a fan base here, having it be one of our better markets—better than Rochester, NY, by orders of magnitude. Culture travels; culture finds culture. With Strangefolk, we could go to any place that was likely to be early adopters of technology, that was likely to over index in Birkenstocks and vegetarians, and that was probably a good spot for us. I think that probably has a lot to do with it, a similar mechanism if you will.
It’s interesting to see how the Northwest corridor and the West Coast kind of talk to each other, musically, over the middle states.
Even more so than the north-south flow. You tend to sort of lump the East Coast as everything from Maine to Alabama, and it’s not, really, as far as music as an indicator of culture and migration of people and ideas. But it’s very strong between the Northeast and the Northwest.
What do you think that is, the influence of the 60s and the 70s and general San Francisco music scene?
I think it probably has something to do with it for sure. If you look at the macro level, the general populations tend to be densest along coastal regions in any country, because that’s where all the action is at. If you just look at how the climate lines up dictating culture and the ecosystem—there’s mountain culture on the Northwest, there’s mountain culture in the Northeast and there’s mountain culture in Colorado, and there tends to be a highway of people that travel from one culture to another. New York certainly doesn’t fit into that generalization. Like you said, there are financial and cultural tectonic shifts that had taken place [in certain areas].
Trying to take a historical view of it, if you look at the folks in the covered wagons, pioneers, they were coming West after Lewis and Clark, coming to see the Pacific Ocean. The goldmining rush and the 60s—it wasn’t a financial pull as much as a cultural one. If you look at the pioneers, you could argue it was a combination of both, they were seeking opportunity, but they were also people looking for an adventure. Then of course Silicon Valley and the pull of technology. It’s similar. All of those—the pioneers, the gold rush, the 60’s and the tech industry—have elements that are similar, people who are looking to redefine the future as opposed to rehash the past. People who are excited by possibility and change, risk-tolerant and adventuresome. That is the thing that I notice the most. On the East Coast, we spend a lot of time tying ourselves to the past—Plymouth Rock and Ellis Island and European ancestors. Even the industry there, it’s Old Navy and finance. Here, it’s very little emphasis on the past and a lot of what the future is, and it’s always been that way.
Have you found that moving out there has affected your musical space in any way, your songwriting or anything like that?
Yeah, I feel inspired by being out here. Partly it’s a beautiful place and the climate is so much different than I’m used to. Walking out and seeing a sunny day, more times than not, certainly affects you. It plays into some of that optimism. Most importantly though, there’s a very tight group of musicians playing in the jamband world and the sort of new bohemian world. If you were to look at it pound for pound, there’s probably as many or more in New York, but as a percent of the total musical population, it’s higher [here]. It’s a very networked group of musicians. A lot of them I knew—guys from The Mother Hips, New Monsoon, Hot Buttered Rum, to name a few, and of course the guys from Grateful Dead and those in their side projects. I just wound up knowing a lot of people out here in that scene. I’m inspired by watching them come together and play in all these different formations. There’s like ten different bands made up of thirty different guys, a rotating cast of characters. I felt inspired by seeing that kind of community and that kind of frequency with which they’re playing. There is optimism and an openness and a flexibility about what can be, without necessarily defining it. Some of these bands are and will make a run of it, and some of them are experiments.
Obviously one of the best parts of the jam community is that all these bands come out and play together and they’re all friends, especially in San Francisco and New York. Phil Lesh is a big part of that in the Bay Area, and you played with him recently at Terrapin Crossroads. How did you come to meet and start playing with him, and what is your current relationship with Phil?
I met him years ago at the Gathering of the Vibes. I played ‘tweener set, a solo set before his, and he happened to catch my set as he was prepping for his. This was early 2000, relatively new into what would become Phil Lesh and Friends. Somebody was nagging me when I was getting off the stage and pulling at my shirt. I remember getting kind of annoyed that someone was being aggressive with me. It turned out they were coming to convey the notion that Phil wanted to introduce himself and say hello. I went and spoke with him for a half an hour in his trailer, and it was awesome for me. I am a longtime fan and definitely was happy to meet him and happy that he had taken notice of me. Later that week, I got a call from his manager asking if I might want to come and sit in for a tune at Jones Beach with Phil and Friends, so that was awesome. I got a chance to meet him again and to play there. I’ve just been sort of hanging around Terrapin Crossroads and have played there formally and informally.
That’s one of things that’s cool—there’s this whole spectrum of the ways that people gig. Again, it happens on the East Coast as well; I just wasn’t as connected to it. I’ve been more formal in my gigging for all these years where there are dates on the calendar months in advance, everybody knows it and we rehearse for it. We talk about setlists and travel plans. It’s kind of weighty—expectations for tickets sales and travel. There’s a lot. If you look at Terrapin as a microcosm of that spectrum, you’ve got the Grate Room, where those of us who are not Phil Lesh can have a real show. Assembly of Dust played there, and I played a solo show there with a backing band when I first got here. I’m expecting and hoping that Strangefolk will play there. That’s a gig. It’s a performance space. It’s a hard ticket. Then he’s got the bar, with great musicians playing in there any night of the week. It’s still a gig, but it’s really loose. People are calling songs on the stage and airdropping each other charts with iPads, learning the tunes in the moments before you play it. There’s a lot of just, “Hey, do you want to come sit in on my gig and play a song or two?” I actually just came across Phil most recently in the latter. It was Jason Crosby’s gig, and he had a whole cast of guys to play with, Jason Crosby and Friends. Phil happened to be one of his Friends and I happened to be one of his Friends. Jason was musical directing the whole thing and was good enough to put me on “Althea” with Phil. It was great. It felt kind of serendipitous and causal and everything that the first encounter wasn’t, which was ten thousand people at Jones Beach—a different kind of energy than a pick-up gig in what’s sort of become the local hang.
Can you talk a little bit about Assembly of Dust’s decision to release that recent live album? You’ve got Mark Karan from RatDog in that, and you’ve talked about how this album is influenced by the West Coast improv spirit.
Mark is one of those guys that I had met over the years numerous times in different places, because we’re playing the same style music all of these years. We’d always gotten along and sort of socialized backstage and had a high degree of mutual respect for one another. We were doing this run, before I moved out here actually, invited him to come play. I think he had run into Crosby, who had already moved out here, and they were vibing over the fact that they both had connections to AOD. We invited Mark to come play the run with us, and he learned a bunch of tunes. He fit right in for the same reasons that all these musicians that circulate through Terrapin Crossroads and Sweetwater and just kind of percolate around Marin and San Francisco do. They’re singing from the same hymn book, so to speak, or praying to the same rock gods—whatever euphemism you want to use.
There’s an aesthetic and an approach and a philosophy that traces its lineage back to the 60s and 70s, broadly and specifically to the Grateful Dead. He got it. He just understood the songs, understood the vibe, understood the playing and understood the cues. It was as if he’d been playing in the band for years. In particular, he and Adam [Terrell] had a blast playing leads against each other and finding impromptu, Allman-like harmony lines. At that point, there are three guitars, and that’s a lot of instruments on stage. He did a great job of finding space and not making it feel crowded or cumbersome, which can happen, and not making it cacophonous, which also tends to happen with a lot of sit ins, because people are excited. You come in and you’re trying to understand the dynamic of the band. Nine times out of ten, whoever’s sitting in, myself included, overplays and over performs for all those reasons. You’re somewhat disoriented, you’re excited and you want to wow the audience and wow the band. A lot of times a sit in can be challenging and disruptive to the flow of how a band performs and communicates on stage. He wasn’t at all. It was just like a rabbit out of a hat, and here I am.
I’ve always talked a lot about songwriting and singing, lyricism, and I tend to do that because it’s the part that grabbed me and stole my interest at an early age. As a result, it’s the area that I focus most on. I think what I’ve often passed over in an effort to communicate is where I’m coming from and how important that is to me. I think, in part, jambands get so berated for lack of structure and lack of emphasis on songwriting. I’ve probably overcompensated over the years. It’s hard. We may not be Phish, but AOD is a great group of musicians. I look at it objectively—sure I have some subjective lens through which I’m looking—I almost see myself as this little pod, this little canoe floating on top of the wake that [my band] creates, and they’re fantastic and they always have been. This is really the second line up. It’s not new that there are long and well-articulated improvisational sections. I think my broad objective [with the live album] was to point out what a great group of musicians they are to be playing with and how great they are as individuals and as a collective. This is a new line up, so there’s a chance to say, “Hey, listen to how the group is performing in our live shows” with some pomp and circumstance. You can listen to the shows on archive, but the quality may or may not be good. Here’s something we can bet on, quality-wise, that were proud of, in terms of the performance. And having Mark, of course, is the cherry on top.
Speaking of this newer lineup, how do you think the two forms of the band are different?
Much like you mature as a person, you mature as a band. There are elements that are consistent. First and foremost, myself and Adam Terrell and John Leccesse have all been there since day one. There’s a strong spine that is constant, and the songs are cumulative. It’s a new flavor of Assembly of Dust, and the differences are nuanced to be sure. It’s not apples and oranges; it’s Red Delicious versus McIntosh. One thing that is different and the same—both line ups have had exceptional keyboard players, which is not status quo. There are a lot more ripping guitar players than there are jamband keyboard players. I’m not sure why that is, by the way. I guess guitar has always gotten hero status in rock, or maybe piano players are drawn to other kinds of music. We’ve had two exceptional keyboard players. We played for over a year without keys, because I felt like Nate Wilson, the first keyboard player, made such a special contribution and really led the band musically in a lot of ways, so I was reluctant to find a replacement for the sake of finding a replacement. I figured fate would find me if I left myself open to it, and sure enough it did in the form of Jason.
I met Jason personally through a mutual friend. We hung out and checked each other out on a personal front before we did much of anything playing-wise. It’s a funny story he tells and it’s true: I went to his apartment to meet him, and we hadn’t gotten to jam. I think maybe I was anxious or I was just having fun. I was mildly over-served, and we never got around to jamming. It was like a botched first date. Then, in the spirit of what I was describing, it happens organically. We said, “Why don’t we give it a try, no need to make heroic commitments.” It just wound up working really well, personally and musically. The challenge has been his star has been rising alongside his time with Assembly of Dust, and I think if you asked ten different people what band Jason Crosby plays in, you’d get ten different answers. We’ve been able to make it work for four-plus years, might even be five. Every once in a while, we have to find a sub, but not a lot.
In terms of the differences, they’re just stylistically different. They’re both very gifted and brilliant musicians, and I feel privileged to witness both of them. Nate sort of drove the band in a way. He had a strong hand in songwriting, and a lot of the compositions he had ownership of. His style of playing is just more, for lack of a better word, aggressive. Probably because he wrote so many of the tunes or co-wrote with me, he was more structural in his approach and more central. Jason tends to be more subtle and more about weaving this sort of tapestry and creating color and texture and fiber as opposed to spine, if that makes sense. I wouldn’t say one is better than the other—they’re both amazing—just different. It plays out differently in the chemistry in the band.
Dave Diamond joined us, the drummer, and the two of them have been buds and musical collaborators for a long, long time. It makes for a good hang. Everyone sort of has a long history, and even though they have their own little thing, it fits nicely with ours. Having that kind of a friendship in a band strengthens the band most times. Putting aside the fact that Adam and John and I have played together forever, when two members bring with them this secret handshake, it’s awesome. Jason will start doing his thing and Dave will hear a run of notes that he recognizes or an energy about a passage when Jason is playing and it’s familiar to him. He’ll do the secret handshake drum fill, switch to the toms, four on the floor beat, Jason recognizes that, which drives him to behave a certain way musically and the whole thing takes on this alchemy.
Switching gears and bands, what are the plans for the future of Strangefolk now that you’re back together?
I don’t know, to be honest. The thing I know for sure is that we had borrowed a page from Phish’s book and done an annual camping hang every year from early on in our inception. It started in Eden, VT, and we called it Eden. Eden, VT, is the middle of nowhere. It was beautiful, and it was early on in the band when we started having some network, when there was a pulse and you could feel that something was happening. I remember that first year—six hundred people showed up to this random spot in Vermont, of which two-thirds were not from Vermont—the “heads” showing up to hang. The difference between what we had always done and so many of the festivals that you see out there is that it was always a Strangefolk hang. It makes it, by definition, smaller and more intimate. It’s also more focused, and it feels like a wrinkle in time because of this singularity of people’s intent for being there. So we did that for years and went from six hundred to five thousand people over the course of those years. It’s always been sort of the heartbeat or the proverbial rock dropping in the water causing the Doppler Effect, the stone core of Strangefolk. We’re doing it again, and we haven’t done it in earnest in many years. I’m super excited about that. We’re doing it at Jay Peak, which is true to form. It’s nestled in the mountains alongside a river and really in sort of the wild of Vermont. Since Jay Peak is a resort, it also has the creature comforts of being able to get a hotel room and a hot meal if you’re an aging bohemian like me.
Assembly of Dust came after Strangefolk fell by the wayside for you. What is it like for you kind of having both bands in your life now? Do you think they influence each other?
I think one thing that has influenced my playing and that transfers from Assembly of Dust to Strangefolk is just doing it for a long time. You develop a comfort and a confidence and, like anything else, you get better at it. I think that for me, personally, it plays into how I approach Strangefolk today opposed to how I did then. If you do anything with consistency over a long period of time, you learn to do it in an age appropriate way. I think what would have been harder for me, had I not played in AOD all those years, would be to jump back into Strangefolk and figure out how 44-year old Reid fits into Strangefolk versus 24-year old Reid. Gigging all those years, I more or less already knew the answer. That helped when we rebooted. There was a degree of terror for what I just described. Is it going to work? Is this old car going to run? I can’t speak for the other guys, but for me that definitely informed my confidence and my willingness to step out there and try on an old but cherished suit.
Back to some of the other stuff I was talking about, nothing replaces enthusiasm in anything that you do, whether it’s a friendship, a romance, a night out on the town or a band. If nothing else, when Strangefolk started out, there was an enthusiasm and intensity that came with it, both within the band and within the audience, that you can’t manufacture, it just was. It was so strong that it’s lasted all these years. A part of that is what propelled me through Assembly of Dust all those years. It’s this positive reinforcing loop. You see it in the bands that you love. To think that we can bring the same quality to the music as middle-aged dudes as we did as college kids would be unrealistic. The confidence that I was talking about is learning how to deliver a performance and hopefully deliver the intent and the intensity of what you feel in a way that is age appropriate.
