Photo by C. Taylor Crothers
Reid Genauer has opted for something slightly different on his latest recording with Assembly of Dust. Rather than focus on material interpreted by the band in the studio, he opted to draw in additional musicians to join the group on every track. Mike Gordon, Keller Williams, Richie Havens, John Scofield, Al Schnier, Bela Fleck and Grace Potter are among the participants on _ Some Assembly Required_. Reid and AOD are on the road now in support of the disc, joined by the Emmitt-Nershi Band, who are promoting a new record on their own. In the following interview Genauer discusses the genesis of the new disc, describes the moment when Mike Gordon moved him to tears and offers a tidbit of interest to old-school Strangefolk fans.
Some Assembly Required features you and your band with a guest musician or musicians on every track. At what point in the process did you decide that this was going to be your approach?
I had it from the outset. At one point I was thinking about a solo record where I had a different band back me on every track which is flipping the idea on its head. But as I talked to a couple people about it, it struck me as logistically impossible. However, I was still sort of stuck on this idea and so a record was born.
Once you had some idea of which musicians you wanted to participate, how did you approach them? Richie Havens, for example?
It started with just brainstorming who would be appropriate. I had my go to list that I thought would be killer. Richie, I always knew who he was and had him parked somewhere in my brain but truthfully I wasn’t up on what was going on with Richie Havens. Then, as you know, he participated in the Jammys and started dipping his toe in the jamband world. He came back onto my radar through that.
The concept of the album was bringing in a collection of virtuoso musicians and singer-songwriters in the name of adding breadth and texture to the record. So if that’s the job description then Richie Havens certainly fits in. With Richie I spoke to his manager first and then he wanted to hear the song. He was very concerned with the lyrics and wanted to make sure the lyrics sat with him. So the final part of the courtship was literally me typing out the lyrics on a blackberry, sending it over and explaining what they were about. Twenty minutes later, he was in.
In terms of the recording process, did you typically send tracks to the guests or were they recorded live in studio?
Some were live and some weren’t. This particular one was live and it was one of the more robust sessions. I met John Scofield in the morning in a studio north of here, up in Katonah. Then we broke for lunch and Richie came up. It was s special day for me spending that much time with both of them, elder statesmen and both highly respected for what they do. It was also really neat to see the two of them interact because John stuck around to meet Richie, which was cool. And standing in the control room seeing Richie Havens singing my song was spine-tingling. I mean he’s a spine-tingling performer anyhow because he’s so soulful and so present. But the fact that it was material I had spawned was spine-tingling.
Did you approach each artist with a specific song that you offered them?
If it wasn’t a song, it was two. I started off by sending two: “Here are a couple songs you might want to consider.” But then it dawned on me that I had a pretty good grip on what would fly and what wouldn’t, so it would be easier to say yes or no if I sent one song. Rather than first you have to decide whether or not you want to do this and then you have to decide about the song. I think a lot of the fuel for success was they could hear the song and decide if they felt that they could be part of it comfortably and in a meaningful way.
What about “Borrowed Feet,” what led you to select it for John Scofield?
He was pretty easy because so much of the music was Americana rootsy folk stuff and that was one song that had some grit. It had a beat that felt like it could be on A Go Go or something. It had a deep groove, so that one was obvious. There was only one or maybe two songs that I think would have made sense to have him play on.
Some of the other choices were more challenging. Bela Fleck was pretty obvious because the guitar part Adam [Terrell] was playing before having Bela on the recording sounded like a banjo part. But Grace Potter, for instance, she could have done anything.
How about Mike Gordon and “Arc of the Sun”?
That was another fairly easy one in that I wanted songs where it felt like they could make a meaningful contribution and that’s a bass-driven song. The bass part is the standout piece of that tune.
Did you record that live or send him the track?
I sent him the track and then I went up there. He had gotten well into it by the time I was there but I did go to his home studio and that was a lot of fun. First of all, it’s just a really cool studio. I got to hang out in his house, have dinner with his wife, meet his cat and make rock music. And then he came out that night and played the tune with us live at Higher Ground, so it was a really neat night.
So what did you work on at Mike’s studio?
A lot of it happened a couple days before I got there. He listened to the song and we talked about two approaches. The first was him going off and doing whatever he felt the song needed and the second was working from John Leccese’s bass part and then making it his own. So he tried the two approaches and he felt that the latter served the song better. To John’s credit, Mike was using John’s creative ideas as fodder for his part so that was neat.
Then I asked him to sing on it and there was conversation about the lyrics and about how he might approach it. And in this process it dawned on me how responsible he is for Phish’s sound. Trey definitely is the alpha male but when you hear the bass part and you hear the vocals [on “Arc of the Sun”] it’s like, “Wow, it sounds like Assembly of Dust meets Phish.”
So he had me over and showed me around. He’s pretty proud of that studio and if I had that studio I’d be proud too. Then he sat down at the board and brought up the mix and where he was at and played it screamingly loud. Talk about chills, I might have gotten teary-eyed. It was just so awesome. Not just the music but also the amount of energy and attention he put into it and the outcome was really powerful. That’s what led in part to my thinking about how much he contributes to the Phish signature sound because he did what came naturally and it was fantastic.
As I listen to the lyrics on “Arc of the Sun” and most of the songs on Some Assembly Required, there is much more emphasis on images and abstractions, as opposed to the more linear narratives of the story songs that have been a big part of your earlier work. Was this a conscious decision to strike out in a new direction?
It was intentional, just as the story-writing part was intentional. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve always been a fan of Robert Hunter’s lyricism. I’ve always loved his story-telling element and the rich sense of place you always get from some of those songs like “Brown Eyed Women,” “Tennessee Jed” or “Scarlet Begonias.” So that’s something I’ve always tried to model after. But I think creatively I had an itch to do something different and I wanted this record to be more my own. I think one of the challenges of any artist in any medium is that human thought and creativity is built on the back of history and the real challenge is how you incorporate your influences and yet have a voice that’s your own. That’s what I was shooting for broadly and one of the by-products of that was the lyrical content was more amorphous and less literal.
In terms of tracks you sent out, who most surprised you with what they sent back?
Hands down Martin Sexton. I asked him to sing on it and he came back with an electric vocal part which was him singing through a microphone with a bunch of distortion and delay which sounded like a slide guitar. It’s mind blowing. If you didn’t know it was a voice you’d think it was an electric guitar, so that was really cool.
Were you concerned that with the different personalities on each track, the album might lack a certain unity?
There were a few things I was afraid of. First that it would be too schmaltzy, like the Ray Charles duets album Genius Loves Company, which is a cool record but there’s a cheese element to it. The second was that the guests would overpower the band, and it would become all about the guests. The third was that it would become some Frankenstein collection of songs. I guess people will interpret it as they will but from where I sit, it feels like a coherent statement, sometimes at the cost of the guest musicians nesting in the song. I think we downplayed them in some cases more than we might have.
Your voice is really the defining element of AOD’s sound, yet on the very first track [“All That I Am Now”], Richie Havens joins you on vocals, which I have to admit I initially found jarring. The song with the most active guest vocal presence comes first. Was that a conscious decision to set the tone for what would follow?
It just felt like a triumphant, anthemic song, like a set opener.
Now that you’ve recorded these songs with the guest players and no dubt listened to them many times over, have you found any of the songs challenging to work up in the live setting without those contributions?
We are, for lack of a better word, seasoned road hogs. Playing songs live is what we do. So if anything it’s always been the other way around- how do we take what we do live and capture it in the studio. I will say though that “All That I Am Now” has been the one song that’s been most challenging. There was a dynamic in the studio that’s tough to replicate live, although I think we’re starting to find the groove. But that’s been the most challenging one to bring to life live.
Can you talk a bit about the challenges of being an independent artist putting out a studio release in 2009?
The difference for me was this is the first record with AOD that I did without a label of any sort. It was liberating in a lot of ways because we were able to do a lot of things that labels don’t typically like, such as giving away half the album prior to release. The deal I’d made in the past was in exchange for some sum of money and marketing and support, I’d give them the right to my songs. This time instead, I made a much healthier deal with our fan base which was, “Here are the tunes, do with them what you will.” So either way you’re giving something up and I’d much rather give it to the fans and prospective fans than to a bunch of dudes sitting around a conference table.
So you likely would put out the next one yourself as well?
Unquestionably unless some other factor flew in. I’m a human being, I’m not impervious to temptation and possibility. But I think this was a great success and exposed our music to a lot of people who didn’t know who we were. Plus we had so many great players and big names on the record that part of the thinking was it’s an endorsement, a kiss, and let’s use that as a gateway to who we are at our core as a band.
One of things that the major labels traditionally have offered is radio support. How important is that to you and do you think that means something different today than it did 5, 10 or even 30 years ago?
It used to be the center of what major labels did. But in my class of musicians the folky grassroots career musicians there are different formats. Maybe if this were 1978 I’d be on my yacht eating shrimp and trying to recover from my drug addiction. But mostly the musicians making music like I tend to make end up in the less commercial formats anyhow. It’s really Top 40 radio that drove the music industry of old and that has perished in the new world. It’s still a piece of the puzzle and I feel privileged that radio programmers have seen merit to the song craft and have embraced it because a lot of my colleagues in the jamband world don’t get that opportunity. So I really feel proud of that and privileged.
I’ve noticed that there are some additional tracks floating out there that aren’t on the disc. Can you talk about those songs and explain where people can find them?
There are some live tracks but really two album tracks are probably the main point of interest.
One is an old song, one of the first songs that I wrote when I was 16, if not the first one. It’s called “Crest of My Wing.” Jon Trafton from Strangefolk joined us on that track, which was kind of a cool circle. And then Bill Nershi and Drew Emmitt who are touring with us joined us on “Hell’s Kitchen,” which sounds like a Band tune. “Crest of My Wing” is on iTunes and “Hell’s Kitchen” is on Amazon.
Why didn’t we include them on the album? Well for one, it just started getting really long. There are 13 songs to begin with and you worry about the pacing, dynamic and cadence of the record. And there are more slow songs on this record than any other record I’ve ever made, which was scary in and of itself. So I thought that throwing two more on there ran the risk of making it sluggish and sleepy. Also, for better or worse I caught Bill and Drew at the end of the process, so it was timing too in both cases. And the other thing is that the services like to have an ace up their sleeve and it gives you some special treatment to give them something that you’re not giving everybody else. So it was a great way to get some attention on iTunes and Amazon.
You mentioned you’re now touring with Bill and Drew. How well did you know those guys from over the years?
I’ve known Bill better than Drew in that we played a lot with String Cheese in the early days and we’d gone out and done a couple weeks with Honkytonk Homeslice on the West Coast. So I’ve gotten to know him real well in the past few years but I’ve always known him.
I always ran in the same circles as Drew. I’d met him once or twice but I don’t think he remembered me. I’m actually a big fan of his. I have his three solo records and a couple Leftover Salmon records so I felt I knew him pretty well. Their band is phenomenal and in a lot of ways it’s very traditional but also current as well. They’re great guys. Our bands are cut from the same cloth. Everybody has the same wardrobe and sense of humor and everybody’s having a fun time just playing music together and hanging out. It’s been like summer camp.
There were guest appearances on many of the initial shows as well, although not at the one I saw in Boston where I heard there were some travel problems. Is it fair to assume that people can expect more collaborations over the course of the tour?
Absolutely. I think it’s been the highlight of the show for all of us. Everybody gets off stage with a shit eating grin. The only nights we didn’t do it were when it’s been rushed or the stage wasn’t big enough logistically, so that people were frazzled. But I’d imagine we’ll do a lot more of it.
You mentioned coming full-circle by recording with Jon Trafton. I’ve heard some buzzing as of late that you might perform a show with Jon and the original Strangefolk. Are you tempted to do so?
I am and I’d love to. I think it would be fun and we’re past any of the drama. It’s just that there are a lot of personalities involved. There are four guys in my band and five guys in that band and one thing we haven’t figured out yet is how you do that without being disrespectful to all the involved parties. So we just need to chew on that and then we’ll figure it out. But nothing but love there and I hope we do get a chance to do it.
