After a superjam set up by a local club promoter during Jazz Fest 2003 led to unexpected chemistry, Dragon Smoke—made up of Galactic’s Stanton Moore and Robert Mercurio, as well as New Orleans funk legend Ivan Neville and singer-songwriter Eric Lindell, decided to take their act on the road. Despite only playing a few sporadic dates, (including every Jazz Fest since 2003) Dragon Smoke has decided to enter the studio to record an album. This past Friday Dragon Smoke appeared in New Orleans at Tipitina’s, and on Wednesday the quartet will begin a four show California tour with stops in Los Angeles (The Mint, Dec. 7), Santa Cruz (Moe’s Alley, Dec. 8), San Francisco (The Independent, Dec. 9) and Sebastopol (Hopmonk Tavern, Dec. 10).
Jambands.com sits down with Galactic bassist Robert Mercurio to discuss the recording process, the upcoming tour, and goals for both projects in the future.
JS: Let’s start with the basics. How did Dragon Smoke get their start?
RM: A San Francisco promoter named Alex [Andreas] from the Boom Boom Room put it together as a Jazz Fest nighttime concert, kind of in the classic super jam format. It was made mainly to give it a better title than just a super jam, we titled it Dragon Smoke. The other reason is because it was happening at the Dragons Den, which is a super tiny bar over in New Orleans. It was in 2001, and it was one of those super jams that actually works out. Afterwards we were all like “Damn man, that was kind of cool!” so we kept it up as an annual event every Jazz Fest on the same evening, we always do it on the Tuesday evening between the weekends. Every once in a while we get together to do some extra shows.
JS: So how did you guys decide on the lineup of the group? Did the promoter set it up, or were you guys friends who decided to play together?
RM: It was all the promoter, I have to give him credit. [laughter] I mean we were all friends before but he seems to really have a knack for that. Some promoters do things that look good on paper but don’t actually translate live that great, while others know what their doing when they’re picking bands. Just because a person is a great musician doesn’t mean that they’re going to perform well with other musicians. But that’s not always the case, and we felt really good about it, so we decided to keep on doing it.
JS: What made you decide to get back on the road this month?
RM: To tell you the truth, it’s something we try to do as often as our schedules will allow it, but with the four of our schedules, we’ve been trying to get together to do this since last December! [laughter] It would be more frequent if we could, but with four different peoples’ schedules it’s hard to accomplish. It’s a nice time of the year, December seems to be kind of a down time for people on the road and it’s easy to get everybody to get out and do some gigs on the west coast, it’s so nice out there.
JS: Is that why you chose the four California dates instead of any other part of the country?
RM: Yeah I mean, we seem to have a following from there. I think there’s a strong connection between the west coast and the New Orleans Jazz Festival, California in particular. We’ve already gone there a couple of times and we know that it’ll do well. Someday we’ll make it up to New York and do some gigs on the east coast, we’d love to that.
JS: So going along with that, do you guys have any more future touring plans beyond these four dates?
RM: The next gig we’ll all do is the Jazz Fest gig at One Eyed Jacks, with Galactic we’re about to release an album and tour behind it, so it’s not something that I like to do. I don’t really like to add too much to my tour beyond what Galactic does, it becomes too many weeks on the road. We’ll probably get together again around late May.
JS: How did you decide what songs will get played? Is it a group effort or do each of you guys pick a song to play?
RM: It’s kind of a group effort, there’s some suggestions but since Ivan [Neville] and Eric [Lindell] are the guys that are going to have to sing the song, we mostly leave it up to them. It’s a lot more vocal-oriented, I don’t think we have any instrumentals. They have to feel the tune and feel that they can internalize the lyrics. We’ll do some of our originals as well, but another thing they said was that they wanted to do a Galactic song so we might be figuring out one of those to do on the upcoming run.
JS: A recent press release said that you were planning on releasing a studio album. Can you tell me more about that?
RM: Most likely it’ll be recorded at the Galactic studio in New Orleans, we all live here so it’ll be an easy thing to accomplish. Hopefully we’re going to do it in the little pockets we have between the upcoming Galactic run.
JS: Are you guys each going to be contributing a song or so for the album?
RM: Yeah I could imagine that. Eric is a really prolific songwriter and there’s probably going to be a couple of covers and some Eric songs, so we’ll probably all collaborate on some stuff.
JS: So how often do you guys practice, or is it more of a “go up there and play” kind of thing?
RM: We got together one day last week before the Tipitina’s show on Friday night, we practiced for a few hours just so we knew what was going on. If you’re just winging it then it limits the ability to play some tunes. Some songs take a little more involvement and some more discussion and practicing. It was really great, people were saying “Man you guys sound like a band, like you play all the time!” It’s a good feeling to feel confident like that.
JS: A lot of the recent Galactic shows have been heavy on bringing out special guests. Are there any special guests you can see joining Dragon Smoke on these California and New Orleans shows?
RM: There always is, the other night we had people at Tipitina’s. I think it’s just the nature of a New Orleans band I think. People always seem to bring their instruments with them to New Orleans, and that’s a great thing. I think that transcends to New Orleans bands even on the road. I don’t really know any confirmed guests coming up, but like I said, there probably will be.
JS: It seems like Galactic has a pretty extensive tour ahead of you. Are there any shows you’re looking forward to in particular?
RM: Well, the Mardi Gras shows which we haven’t announced yet, those will be around the release of the album. I’m looking forward to the two nights at The Fillmore at the end, we’re also doing some dates with Steel Pulse in New York and Boston, which is going to be killer. When you’re on a big album tour like that it’s really exhilarating. It’s fun to have all that new material and new stuff going on, on a tour like that each night is really awesome.
JS: So sticking with Galactic, can you tell me about the songwriting process for Carnivale Electricos ? How was recording this album compared to previous ones?
RM: I mean it was pretty similar of a process in regards to the songwriting, we do a majority of the writing in the studio. We’ll record Stanton usually when he’s in town over a few day period, get a ton of him and we’ll write to his stuff. We all kind of contribute our parts and then we usually figure out the final direction of the song, whether we want to go instrumental or if anyone has a vocal part that will fit. Usually Stanton will come back and play along with it and we’ll add a more live element to it. That’s been kind of the process, it’s a little different then when we started but it’s facilitated to the point that we can compose a lot more and don’t all have to be in the studio together, which has become harder with everyone’s schedules and whatnot.
JS: Are there any tracks on the album that stand out the most to you? It seems like you guys have a lot of special guests sitting in, I didn’t even realize Mystikal was still making music.
RM: [laughter] Yeah, well he just got out of jail, he was there for five years or something. I really dig the Mystikal track, as well as the single “Hey Na Na” that we just put out. There’s also this Brazilian song called “Magalenha” which I think came out cool. I like the tracks with War Chief Juan Pardo, and then we wrote a final track called “Ash Wednesday Sunrise” which is kind of a more ballady song for us, it’s in the vein of a track we wrote years ago called “Quiet Please” it’s cool to revisit that vibe, we don’t do it very often. I thought that was a cool way to end the album.
JS: So tell me about your New Years Eve plans, it’s cool that you’re bringing out both Corey Glover and Corey Henry again.
RM: Yeah I love those guys. We just announced on the 30th that we’re playing as well, two nights at Tipitina’s. It’ll be great, I just played there on Friday night with Dragon Smoke and I just love playing that place. It’s so home to me, I feel so welcome and I know what to expect from everything, it’s definitely one of my favorite places to play. Being there on New Years Eve like we’ve done the past few years is such excellent. It’s a great set up, all our friends are there and we get to go home at night to see our families. It’s funny, Eric Lindell is actually opening up for us on New Years Eve, so I’m sure there will be some “Dragon Smoke-esque” moments that night.
JS: Do you guys have any special plans for the setlist that night? I saw Anders Osborne is going to be sitting in as well.
RM: Oh yeah, he’s going to be there too so there’s going to be some additions with tunes that he’s going to play with us. Corey Glover is coming in a day before so we’re doing a day of rehearsals so we’re going to whip up some new tunes and some intros that we’ve been working on. There’s going to be some new tunes for sure, and some special surprises.
