Photo by Dave Vann
In August of 1999, the Disco Biscuits debuted their Camp Bisco festival to 800 hale and hearty fans at the auspiciously named TuneTown Campgrounds in Cherry Tree, PA. Seventeen years later, the 2016 edition of the fest kicks off today at Montage Mountain in Scranton, PA. Earlier this week, Biscuits keyboard player Aron Magner took some time to reflect on the thriving event, as well as his own development as a keyboard player and his recent efforts to “push myself out of my immediate comfort zone.”
For the first time ever, folks who can’t attend Camp Bisco can watch a live broadcast from the festival, with the full details available here.
To hear more from Aron, you can check out his Relix Conversation with theNEWDEAL’s Jamie Shields.
When you close your eyes and think back to that very first Camp Bisco in 1999, what image jumps into your mind?
String art. I remember string art. The crew we were rolling around with at that point in time, and this is kind of the way the Disco Biscuits still are, is there’s a blur between fan and friend—fans eventually become friends and friends have sometimes ended up being fans. We didn’t have the ability to hire a professional crew, so the crew that we had were our friends, who were smart and motivated and learning on the job.
The Biscuits were learning how to tour on the job, how to figure out everything in hotel rooms on the road. One of our crew members, Damon Cawley, was really fascinated at the time, and probably still is, with sacred geometry. So for our backdrop on stage he built a frame of 2×4’s, put in nails all along the perimeter of the 2×4’s and then wound string from one nail to another nail on a different 2×4. It was all perfectly geometrical and symmetrical, forming these incredible objects of string.
That was our first backdrop for Camp Bisco, and when I think of the first year, the immediate vision that comes to mind as I close my eyes, is sacred geometry string art by our good friend Damon Cawley.
The festival has evolved in any number of ways since its debut. Can you share your perspective on that growth?
I definitely have been quoted saying this before, but Camp Bisco is our baby. It was something that we realized we could do in 1999, as young kids and, I suppose, young entrepreneurs. A hodge-podge of other festivals existed at the time, but the mega-festivals, aside from Europe, didn’t really exist here yet.
We thought “we can do this,” we just needed to figure out how to get the money to bring porta-potties in and hire a team that would bring security in and that type of micromanaging. We still have the same passion and drive and care for our festivals. Along the way we’ve introduced our fans to musicians and DJ’s and bands that we like and our fans have introduced us to musicians, bands, and DJ’s that they like and we’ve reached out to them to put them on the festival.
In some ways it’s a similar type of care to raising a child and getting ready to send that child off to college. We’ve seen Camp Bisco graduate to different levels of success over the years. We watched the festival grow from 800 the first year to 1,600 to 2,500 to 5,000. I very specifically remember Jonny Zazula [former Biscuits manager and founder of Megaforce Records] telling me, “Once you see 5,000 the next jump is really easy to 10,” and he was right. It only took maybe one or two more years to make that jump from five to 10.
Once we got to 10,000 we were a veritable festival. Then with Camp Bisco 8 we got Snoop Dogg and then suddenly we felt, “Wow we’ve got some other major headliners on this thing.” That was definitely another turning point of Camp Bisco, once we got Snoop Dogg and later LCD Soundsystem, it felt like that put Camp Bisco fully on the map.
It seems to me like there’s been an ebb and flow over the years in terms of the Biscuits being the headliners for all three nights versus giving someone else the closing spots, at times. How would you characterize that development?
I don’t think that anything was a conscious move. When we took that jump in ’08 getting Snoop Dogg or LCD Soundsystem [in 2010] we understood we’d need to make room because those types of big headliners wouldn’t play unless they were in a headlining slot. And it’s not like we always need to go last or we always have to play the time slot that is the best. There are so many moving parts in putting on a festival. There are so many personal requests that other acts have and I feel like we play ball in order have the best festival experience for the Disco Biscuits, our fans, fans of Camp Bisco, the other artists that we invite to perform, and fans of those artists.
We are not puffing up our chests and saying, “We have to do this, we have to do that.” It always seems to work out. It’s not like we’re playing at two in the afternoon…until we are! Saturday we’re playing at 2 in the afternoon. It was kind of a fluke how that started. We wanted to do something special one year, an afternoon set, not thinking we were creating another permanent slot for ourselves throughout Camp Bisco. One year this Saturday afternoon slot opened up, we thought we could do something special and people enjoyed it so much we were like, “Okay, well why can’t we play in the afternoon?” It’s kind of fun to do some sort of matinee performance that we wouldn’t usually do anywhere else. So that’s how those things come about.
How do you occupy yourself at Camp Bisco when you’re not performing?
I’m in a constant state of preparing for that night’s show. I feel like the entire Camp Bisco for me is just preparing for the show. Even after the show is over then my mind switches over to, “Okay, I’ve got to get back to the hotel at some point soon so that I can get 7 hours of sleep because I’ve got two more shows tomorrow and one in the afternoon. And, there’s this act that I want to see, so I want to get there for that…”
At this stage of our career, I feel like the cool things that happen, kind of do so organically. We can talk about back and forth about covers, but the best ideas come from when you turn on the radio five minutes from the venue and an awesome song comes on and you pose it to the band as a suggestion and they say, “Great.” Or someone plays a lick to a song backstage and you’re like, “That sounds perfect. Let’s do that.”
Those are organic, and I want to allow the time for those organic ideas to harvest themselves. So at Camp Bisco we spend a lot of time in the practice room getting ready for the shows to prep stuff we haven’t really done before. Some ideas work, some don’t. The only way to find out is to try.
You’ve been at this for so long that I imagine some of the musicians on the festival bill grew up as Disco Biscuits fans and maybe even attended Camp Bisco. Has anyone ever taken you aside for a confessional moment to discuss that transition?
Two weeks ago I had that exact type of conversation with the keyboard player in Twiddle [Ryan Dempsey]. He grew up listening to the Disco Biscuits and learning Disco Biscuits stuff. I don’t think Twiddle or his playing sound anything like what we do, but it’s kind of cool that in some way we had some influence on another generation.
That’s kind of what the history of music is all about. You do your own thing and you pass that tradition on and then someone else learns it. In my opinion, you can’t really push the envelope forward with anything in music unless you learn from the past. I’m not saying the Disco Biscuits are a foundation the way that Mozart should be a foundation to any musician but we are a foundation for some people who were influenced by the ethos of our improvisation or by the songs or maybe even by the business plans that we formulated over the years. It’s kind of cool thinking about that and the same way that we were influenced by the ethos of improvisation, and the amazing songs and the business plans set forth by Phish or the Grateful Dead. These are the types of things that are passed on from generation to generation. Right?
Absolutely, and in this case, one can see it. There is a direct lineage.
You’re probably right and it makes me feel good thinking about it like that because to make a generalized interpretation of our conversation, that should be everyone’s existence on this earth—to influence other people, even if it’s just one person, and pass along some type of positivity. So for the Disco Biscuits to do that in a musical fashion, I feel really good about it. On the other hand, I also feel, “Hey, if we weren’t going to do whatever it is that we were doing 20 years ago and continue to do, somebody else would have.”
Maybe. But guess what? You did. I was there. I saw what happened.
And you wrote the book!
So I did…
[To that end, here’s some audio from the Biscuits’ encore at the Jam Band book release party which took place at Wetlands Preserve on 10/23/98].
Jumping to more recent endeavors, last week you were part of a Prince tribute in Denver. You played a similar show in May. How did those come about?
The week after Prince died, Mike Greenfield called me up and told me about this Prince tribute thing that was coming together in Brooklyn. He mentioned the musicians that had been confirmed so far and asked if I wanted to do it. I was very much on the fence. I always liked Prince and I wasn’t afraid of doing the work but I was not familiar with the scope of his music. Then a few days later he said to me, “I’m not going to twist your arm, but it’s either yes or no.” And I thought, “Sure! I’ll learn some Prince songs, we’ll drive up together, my friend Mike Greenfield and myself, and there we go…”
We basically had 24 hours to learn 15-20 Prince songs, some of which I’d never heard before. I had a good time with it. It was really cool digging into a catalog that I wasn’t altogether familiar with and being impressed. Obviously it’s Prince, I always liked him but I discovered that he made a lot of cool and unexpected choices. He often wouldn’t use what someone would think of as the common funk keys. I also found a lot of the harmonic movements to be real interesting.
So I drove up to New York, I didn’t know all of the other musicians, we didn’t really have any soundcheck—the first time that we played these songs was pretty much at the show—and it was so much fun. I had an absolute blast. So I went from one side of “I don’t know if this is something I want to do” to “Wow, that was so much fun. We need to do this in Denver.” [laughs]
I became the person saying “Denver needs this show” because Denver is just such a petri dish of music-loving fans, why wouldn’t we bring it to Denver? Then the conversation became “Is this too late? We don’t want to drive this into the ground.” It’s one thing to do a tribute show the week of his death, but two months, three months after his death is it still appropriate? And the answer is “Yeah, it’s awesome music. It’s fun to dance to, you’re honoring an amazing musician and you’re in bringing other cool musicians. So, of course.”
Another reason I wanted to commit to it is that I made a conscious decision in the last year and a half, maybe two years, since I started doing the Billy and the Kids thing, to push myself out of my immediate comfort zone. Even still, the Billy and the Kids stuff is kind of in my comfort zone because I’m passionate about the music of the Grateful Dead but it’s also out of my comfort zone because I’ve never played it. Growing up I was never in a Grateful Dead cover band. The Biscuits played a couple Dead tunes, but that was it. So although I knew all these songs so well in my head, it was the first time that I was really having to learn them.
And at the same period of time I was doing some shows, Matt Butler would call me up to do an Everyone Orchestra show, which I’m only able to do every now and again when the stars align. It was a run of shows and that pushed me out of my comfort zone. I was playing with musicians that I didn’t necessarily know. And by getting out of my comfort zone I’m able to have these realizations about myself. I’m able to find myself playing in another genre, find myself playing musical tennis with another tennis partner and figuring out that their moves are different than the moves of the people that I usually play tennis with. That was particularly cool to me and I definitely had a little bit of an epiphany with that kind of mentality.
Lately I’ve been asked to do a solo piano gig or a jazz trio or something like that. That’s how I grew up, playing jazz, but it’s not something that I’ve done in literally 20 years. So while I might have an immediate resistance, what I always find is when I get out of that comfort zone and I just do it—sometimes it takes learning and preparation and practice—that like anything in life, I’m always rewarded by it.
So when presented with an opportunity to do this Prince thing or another Everyone Orchestra show or any of these other opportunities, I’ve started to commit to them because I realize, “It’ll work itself out because it always end up being a learning experience, which is usually rewarding.” That’s how that whole Prince thing came about.
You hit on something that I was about to ask. Back when you were a high school student, you played what I’ve always thought of as cocktail jazz gigs in Philadelphia. Is that a fair characterization?
Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what it was. When I was in high school I realized I had a passion for playing jazz. I quit piano when I was maybe 10 years old and then picked it back up again when I was 13. A teacher by the name of Peter Simpkins introduced me to jazz and I immediately dropped my classical studying with him and wanted to pursue the study of jazz with him. Once I discovered that I liked it, then all of a sudden I was fully immersed in it. Three years later a teacher named Michael Frank introduced me to the Philadelphia jazz scene and he threw me gigs every now and again that he couldn’t make. They were both killer players and incredibly influential in my life as instructors.
I liked the scene, especially when I realized I could get paid 300 bucks by doing a private party. Or I would go down and play the local jazz club. I made my jazz contacts with other high school kids and kids in college. That’s the reason I stayed in Philadelphia to go to college, which is where I met the Disco Biscuits. I’ve felt, “Of course this is how life should go”—I met this piano teacher who introduced me to jazz so that I could be introduced to the other jazz players in Philly so that I made the decision to stay in Philadelphia to maintain my jazz contacts so that I could go to the University of Pennsylvania so that I could meet the other members of the Disco Biscuits.
What would my life be like if I had decided to go to school somewhere else? Would I have met other musicians and have another band that’s been as successful, when it comes to longevity, at least? I don’t know. Or would I be a professional in some other field…
[Speaking of the Biscuits’ career span, Aron wanted everyone to know that the group is finally releasing a vinyl version of its debut album, 1996’s Encephalous Crime, and intends to take pre-orders at this year’s Camp Bisco].
Have you been tempted in recent years to play jazz in a live setting once again?
In the same way I made that conscious decision to push myself out of my comfort zone with the realization that I’m a better, more rounded individual and musician once I get to that point, I’ve had the realization, “Why can’t I go down to like the local clubs? I don’t even need to assemble the Aron Magner Trio. It doesn’t have to be that. I could go play some jazz with friends that I have who I know are going to be down there, and just sit in. Or maybe at an open mic night at a jazz club where people might not even know who I am—that’s even kind of cooler for me.
I’ve had a recent resurgence of that motivation. When the Biscuits did a few shows with horns, I worked with a young horn player who was charting the arrangements by the name of Sam Greenfield. He’s an incredible player and that’s what he does, what any jazz musician in their early 20’s should be doing, which is playing at any opportunity. And he’s good enough that he has his own music with his own amazing arrangements, and his own network of the next generation of young jazz musicians from Philadelphia. He’s doing these shows all the time, playing Club Time every Thursday and that type of thing. That’s the type of motivation that I feel like I need in order to get me out, where I could still be somewhat in my comfort zone because I know the sax player [laughs]. But yeah, I think about it often.
Last question: What can tell everyone about the current state of the Disco Biscuits and what the four of you have planned for later this and next?
I feel like over the past 12 months the Disco Biscuits have been having a lot more fun with our music. The 12 months prior to that it was definitely starting to build but definitely over the past 12 months there’s been a fun resurgence of playing music together on stage. I feel like part of that is the comfort level that we have, not with each other necessarily, although that definitely plays into it but more so I feel like we’re comfortable being who we are as the Disco Biscuits.
We might have lost focus a little bit in 2011, 2012, maybe 2013 too, during the height of the DJ as the biggest pop star on the planet. There was a resurgence of electronic music, and that was good because envelopes are finally being pushed in the electronic world. I think that, number one, we felt like black sheep because we play our instruments. But we also may have felt, whether we acknowledged it or not, that we wanted to see whether we could emulate the type of power that DJ’s have, with preprogrammed music. Without going into the conversation of button-pushers or anything like that, when you spend the time to preprogram music in the studio, it can be really powerful and you might not be able to replicate that with a band. But we were trying and it wasn’t necessarily our own voice.
I think because of that, we lost focus of who the Disco Biscuits really were. Then somehow in the last 12 months or 24 months, we kind of regained our focus and became comfortable with what we do and that allowed us to take the necessary musical risks that we take and the comfort level that made us realize that it’s okay to be the Disco Biscuits. And once we realized Of course it’s okay to be the Disco Biscuits, this is who we are, the music became really good and we became comfortable doing whatever it is that we wanted to do.
The music became better and because of that we’ve been enjoying it more and looking forward to it more because we want to create music together. That’s pretty much how the Disco Biscuits formed in the first place. We were musicians in a band playing music that we wanted to hear. And it just so happened that there was an audience out there that also wanted to hear the type of music that we were creating. So that was the genesis. It was the type of music we wanted to play and luckily there were other ears that agreed with us and that’s helped us have a career.
