Derek has had one hell of a first year hitting the festival circuit, and blew up the crowds at Bonnaroo, Rothbury, Camp Bisco and more.  His live performances along with his drummer Corey are an absolute must see.

Pretty Lights has been releasing free albums (with option to donate) on PrettyLightsMusic.com, so you definitely need to grab yourself some of his albums.  If you need a great soundtrack to drive around to on a beautiful sunny day, Pretty Lights is the way to go!

Be sure to check out the new MoeTrainsTracks.com for an all new Tracks experience…  So we bring to you… The man who moves the feet…  Derek Vincent Smith, from Pretty Lights.

Derek Vincent Smith (Pretty Lights) Interview on Moe Train’s Tracks

Monty Wiradilaga and Brian Kracyla (MTT)

Moe (MTT):  This is your first festival season right?  How’s it treating you?

Derek (Pretty Lights):  I had no idea what to expect coming into it.  I was very excited about it.  And to be honest, I’ve received nothing but love at all, it’s been really cool.  Even fifteen minutes before the show, when the tent’s empty and I’m feeling kinda nervous about if people are going to come check out the set, they’ve never let me down.  Everyone has been really cool, it’s been packed, lots of energy.  People obviously come to festivals to listen to music and dance and get down and I’m glad that I can help them do that.

M:  You guys run an interesting improv angle with your music, you always have an evolving sound.  How do you work to create an evolving musical journey throughout your set?

PL:  That’s a cool question.  A lot of people look at me behind a table and think that I’m a DJ, and to be honest, I’ve never spun a record in my life.  I could probably match beats with records, but I’ve never even tried it.  All the music is original, using original productions I should say.  I’m using software and different devices to trigger different parts and arrange it on the fly and to affect it and manipulate it and play some of the layers live on top, like melodies and samples and stuff like that.  But back to your question, how do I look at it as a set, as a whole, I try to think of it more as how a DJ would as far as tempos.  I really try to bring the energy up and back down smoothly.  Even if it’s a real hype hip-hop speed track, I don’t like to play it after some more up-tempo electric track because it just doesn’t feel right.

M:  Don’t want to burn people out?

PL:  Yeah.  Also I like to produce a lot of different styles of music, of a lot of electronic kind of music, but they also vary in energy a lot.  But rather than just have my live shows be all high energy dance music, I like to bring in some of the more organic down-tempo, more emotional kind of tracks.  It does take some consideration of where to bring that in and where to play it or not to play it.  Honestly, as I play more and more, I’m getting better at being able to do that. Because I never have a set list, the songs have a level of improvisation, but the sets are always improvised as far as the order.  Like last night, these people had grabbed a set list off the stage and I could see people were kinda arguing over it and I went down and said, ‘That’s not even my set list!  That’s the set list for the band that hasn’t played yet.  You better put that back up there, they’re not gonna know what songs to play.’

M:  Well you and Corey worked together in another band before this, so I guess you guys have a good chemistry going.

PL:  Yeah, we worked together before Pretty Lights in a band and actually when that broke up, when that kinda ceased to exist, that’s when I started writing the first Pretty Lights album.  There was really a period of time for about two years between when that band ended and when the first Pretty Lights show that I actually invited the drummer up to play with me.  I wanted that element live and I feel like it brings a certain kind of hands-on, live energy to the show.  Also, I like to be able to play off another individual.  So that’s when I collaborated with him and started doing the shows with a live kit.

M:  You basically formed a sort of sign language on stage, sort of tipping each other off on what’s going on?

PL:  Yeah.  When we first started playing it pretty much was only two hand signals, like ‘cut out’and ‘come back in’.  But as we played together more and I’ve written more music in a way that it can be performed differently each time, utilizing the different technology like Abelton Live with the different kind of features…

M:  Is that what you use?

PL:  That’s what I use live, yeah, in conjunction of a device called a monomer.  We use signals like, I have different hand signals to switch drum beats, or switch high-hat speeds, or switch to ride signals, or we’ve got one for switching to an off-beat snare pattern, or losing the snare and keeping the kick and high-hat, or different things for bringing the energy up or bringing the energy back down, and things like that.  It’s definitely evolved, the way in which we communicate on-stage.

M:  So how do you think the live performance brings your audience a different experience than what’s on your albums?

PL:  It’s all about the energy, about hearing the music in a different sort of setting.  It’s good car music, I think it’s good bedroom music but a lot of…

M:  Bedroom music, huh!  Getting the beds rockin’?

PL:  That’s what I’m saying, man! People have told me that I’ve gotten them laid.

M:  There you go, to your credit…  Put that on your resume, ‘Getting People Laid!’

PL:  (Laughing)  Back to that question, what I was trying to say was that it’s not all me, or us, the people on-stage, creating that live experience.  It has so much to do with everyone coming together and experiencing the difference of the live show energy but also within a congregation of people.  And it also has a lot to do with, nowadays, the light show and bringing the visual medium.  Which has evolved, but I’m looking to take it a lot further.

M:  Just an all encompassing experience.

PL:  Exactly, a multi-media experience.  A lot of people think that when I named it Pretty Lights that I named it exactly for that, some crazy laser light show, but that definitely wasn’t in my mind at all when that name kinda came to be.  It was more about personal experiences of pretty lights, I’m always on the look at for that kind of thing.  But I’m definitely trying to bring the whole live light/video aspect of the show to a whole ‘nother level, and just keep pushing that, keep pushing the production so that people can really have a cool experience that’s far different than listening to the record.

M:  We are doing a show on Michael Jackson.  How did he affect you, if at all?  With his passing, it hit us all in the music industry in one way or another.  Did he affect you at all?

PL:  Yeah, he did.  Not maybe at the same time that other people, especially at my age, might have been exposed to it or hit by it because, honestly, I grew up in a family that, when I was a kid, I wasn’t really exposed to a lot of music.  Being born in the eighties, I think a lot of people my age heard a lot of Michael Jackson growing up but it was a different experience for me because it didn’t get into to it until I was able to find it myself as a late teenager.  In junior high I was like ‘Oh, I know who Michael Jackson is, he’s the King of Pop’ but I wasn’t really exposed to his music.  When I really started getting into music, and getting into production, and really going back and listening to it with fresh ears, a lot of it is just unbelievable.  It’s just incredible music.  The records he did specifically with Quincy Jones, who’s one of my icons as a producer, have been very inspirational, not only in how I create music but also in a personal way.  That combination of artists was really able to create some pieces of music that made you feel.  And that’s what music has always been about for me, creating emotion and always having people be able to feel something from the music, inside.

M:  Where do you see Pretty Lights evolving to in the near future?

PL:  I have a lot of ideas that I want to manifest and to make happen in my career, wherever it goes.  Right now, and in the recent past, I’ve been doing a lot of collage sample producing, where I’m taking different snippets from vinyl and bringing them together to create pieces of music.

M:  Like Girl Talk style?

PL:  Not like Girl Talk at all.  Actually, nothing like that.  More like DJ Shadow, a big influence for me.  The whole idea is more obscure pieces of music and just little pieces of it.  So you can still really implement melodic creativity and create feelings and emotions that didn’t exist in the song that the sample was taken from because you’re getting pieces from all these different not only artist but different decades.  As far as pushing the project and the show and the music in general, I feel like the sampling phase of my career is kind of dwindling because I have the means to create that stuff on my own.  Before, in that two year period I mentioned between the prior band and Pretty Lights, I worked as an audio engineer in a professional recording studio and did a lot of records with, not only local bands, but some bigger artists.  I did some work with Lyrics Born and Greyboy Allstars and stuff like that.  I want to be able to capitalize on my experience as an audio engineer and working in the studio producing other musicians, just how we were talking about Quincy Jones.  I’m actually already looking into getting my own vinyl press and buying analog tape machines, so I can really create the sound that I want, which right now I’m getting by taking it from vinyl from other decades.  But I want to be able to create that in the present day.  As far as future records, I’m looking to work with networks of musicians and really utilizing recording techniques to hang on to that golden age of music where everything sounded so warm and awesome.  As far as my records, that’s where I’m looking to take things, but also I’m looking to make it very multi-media.  I do a lot of video editing and stuff on the side and haven’t been able to really bring that to the show yet.  So one thing that I’m looking to work on in the near future is also realizing audio/video compilation things, not just records but records and video accompaniments and the same time.  But, anyway, you’re letting me babble on, which I appreciate.

M:  That’s cool.  I asked the question.  Hey man, thanks a lot for being with us.  I appreciate it.  We look forward to your set tonight.

PL:  Yeah, me too!  It’s been a pleasure.   Thank you so much.

Interview with Toots Hibbert (Toots and the Maytals)

Brian Kracyla, Jacob Little and Monty Wiradilaga (Moe Train’s Tracks)

Hey, what’s going on reggae fans worldwide, you’re listening to a special reggae royalty edition of Moe Train’s Tracks.  In this very special show, the Tracks has the honor to bring you one of the most memorable voices and performers in all of music, Mr. Toots Hibbert from Toots and the Maytals.

We had the opportunity to interview the man with the golden pipes about being a part of the establishing scene of reggae, coining the term reggae, being great in an amazing scene, finding his voice, and tons of other topics.  Toots was definitely one of the most endearing and genuine musicians that we have interviewed over the years.  Toots and the Maytals just released their latest album, Flip and Twist, and we’re sure that it will further his legacy as one of the top reggae artists of all time.

So Moe Train’s Tracks is honored to bring to you, this very special interview with the legendary Toots from Toots and the Maytals.

Moe:  Absolutely amazing set today.  Were you really having as much fun as it looked like you were having?

Toots:  Yeah, a lot of fun.  The people are so nice that when you sing for them you have to have some fun.

M:  Feeding of the energy…

T:  Yes, that heart energy.

M:  After a long weekend like this, everyone’s energy is going down, but when you got out there…

T:  Everyone just liked it.  It’s a nice day!

M:  Your voice is one of the most recognizable and classic sounds in all music, where do you draw all of your positive energy from to bring it into the music?

T:  Well, my music is from good spirits, good spirit from the church, and from the people that come to my show with a good understanding to learn the ways of reggae music.  That’s part of my energy too.

M:  Your community of musicians, back in the day in Jamaica, included the most legendary performers of all time.

T:  Yeah, mon!

M:  Skatalites…  The Wailers…  How was the community of musicians back in the day when you coined the term “reggae”?

T:  It’s a good fellowship in music from that time until this time.  When I coined the word reggae it was just like now but people lived different.  It took a little time for people to know about my music and they are really into my music now.  So, it’s a good t’ing, the times have been changing and music has been better for Toots and the Maytals.  When I coined the word reggae, when I sang the song Do The Reggae, the music was already playing in Jamaica all over but nobody called it reggae.  People were searching for the name reggae but couldn’t find it.  People used to call the beat in Jamaica “blue beat” and “boogie beat” and those are the things that spread from America to Jamaica.  Boogie beat, blue beat, and “ska”, it’s like a slip.  My two friends, Jerry and Raleigh, we sat down one morning and the word came up.  We used to use a word in Jamaica called “streggae”, when the girl was looking so good you call her streggae, if she dressed raggity, you know.  So, maybe the word comes from that, but I was the one who said let’s Do The Reggae!  R-E-G-G-A-E.  Reggae was spelled a lot of different ways in those days, but this is what it’s spelled like now.  R-E-G-G-A-E.

M:  Did the community feel that there was something huge happening?  Because your music is universally recognized across all genres.

T:  Yeah, that’s why I have 31 number one records in Jamaica.  In those days, as it came out, people enjoyed it and knew that it was good.  I have a couple of number ones, 31 number ones in Jamaica, and on vinyl in those days.

M:  What was it like recording in Studio One?

T:  It was strange.  But, I started from Studio One.  I was a good t’ing.

M:  The whole process, working with Coxsone, was it just…

T:  It was great, the process was good.  Sing for very many, no good for many maybe, choose the songs.

M:  I heard that you have some members of your family in the band.

T:  My daughter and my son, my son play the bass and my daughter back up for me.

M:  You’ve got to be proud.

T:  I’m never proud of myself.  I know it’s good, but it’s not good to be proud, because the Lord says that you should not be proud.  You just know that it is good and give t’anks.

M:  Your music has been covered by some of the most recognizable names in all of music, like the Clash, the Specials, and Sublime.  What’s your take on their covers of your music?

T:  Well, I think it’s good, it’s a good t’ing to do.  If a song is good, you can cover it.  You can put your own line, your own style on it, and it’s still good.  A lot of people cover my songs, I never really say which one is the best.  I know I appreciate it, and they appreciate it also.

M:  54-46 is an amazing track…

T: I don’t even want to talk about that prison business.  I’m tired of talking about that crap…  It was a number one song though!

M:  Well, some of your tracks… When they think of you… They think of certain tracks…

T:  When I just came in, when I was like fifteen or sixteen…  Those things happened when I was getting my first tour abroad, to go to UK.  So I hardly talk about those t’ings again.  It was a frame-up.  When I didn’t get to go to UK, they sent a different group in my name, which never worked out for them.  It was a thing that was planned.  I just sang a song about it and it went number one.

M:  You have the Toots Foundation…

T:  Well, we planned this foundation for helping the youths, not only in Jamaica but wherever help is needed.  My foundation is going to be bringing a lot of assistance.  We founded it a few years ago and it’s been doing well.  We did foundation things for the children in Jamaica, for the hospitals, for the blind, for the cancer society.  We gave to the schools, we gave to the old age homes.  We gave to the school in Clarendon, where I was born.  The foundation is going good and I hope that we can give a helping hand whenever I do my show, which charges one dollar extra to go towards the foundation.

M:  What does it mean to you to be able to give back to Jamaica, to give back to your country?

T:  It’s been good, that’s why I do it.  I couldn’t do it by myself, not without the people in America and all over the world.

M:  We are also doing a special on the passing of Michael.  How has Michael Jackson affected you musically?  Or do you have any stories dealing with Michael Jackson?

T:  No, his music never affected me.  His music refreshed me.  He was a cool guy, I liked him.  I loved him too.  It’s a pity that what happened happened, but it’s like you knew something was going to happen too.  I figure he’ll always be innocent for me.  He will always be missed by Toots and the Maytals.

M:  With your music, with so many albums, so many number ones…  When you are looking at your career as a whole, how do you think it lays in the history of music?

T:  It’s history.  My music is history. It’s antique… and it’s unique… and it’s good.  It’s fattening.  It’ll make you strong.

M:  (Laughing) That’s the best quote I’ve heard all weekend!

T:  It’s full of love and happiness.

M:  How much longer are you going to be doing it?

T:  Well, I’ve got no limit.  We have to live good to one another, whether you’re black or you’re white.  Show love to one another.  Show respect.  Learn to say good morning again, and good evening, good afternoon, good night, hey how are you doing, hello.  Just be good, be nice, be Rastafari.  That’s the way God would love we to do.  His name is Rastafari and I’m just a son of God.  I look at myself as an angel and a son of God.

M:  So you’re looking to further the message…

T:  My songs will always be a message of spirituality and happiness.  My words have to be positive, if the words are negative than its not real reggae.  They have to be positive, that’s the fulfillment of reggae music.

M:  So, you just draw from the energy, from that positive energy, and put it through your music to your listeners.

T:  Yeah, because it’s for real.  Music is for real, for Toots and the Maytals, it’s for real.  And love is for real.  It’s not just “one love”.  True love and real love is for real, there’s more than one love.

M:  And that fuels everything you do?

T:  Yeah.  I love to do this, I love to do that.  So many love, you know.  What’s love is real… So make it reveal… Whenever you feel… It make you feel good!  Wake up in the night and rejoice that you’re gonna live to see another day.  There’s no limit in my career.  I do it as I can.  You will always hear about Toots and the Maytals.

M: What’s your responsibility to all your listeners, to the world, through your music?

T:  My responsibility to the world and for everywhere is that I’m truly responsible to the people and my music is to be positive, as it used to be and as it is right now.  You have to be positive, that’s my responsibility, to make music positive for the world and for God to give us more blessings.  He gave me the talent.  (Singing)  And I sing everything I talk!  Hey-aay!  (speaking again)  I have to give thanks for giving me that kind of voice.  I can sing it without music, I can sing it with music.  It’s a revelation, a message of salvation.

M:  Getting your start, how did you really come to find your own voice?

T:  I give praise, I grew up in the church with my parents.  Over the radio, I listened to Ray Charles, I listened to every artist, and I listened to every artist in Jamaica also.  I founded my voice, and I have to learn it more, and I have to do things with my voice like (making sounds with throat).  It’s a thing you have to do, like practicing a guitar.  (making yodeling sounds)  It’s thing that’s coming for the church, from the Lord God Rastafari, and I have it.

M:  Absolutely.  When did you know that ‘this is my voice’?

T:  Well, I haven’t got one special voice, I have a lot of voices.  I can make it turn to sing any kind of way.  I know that I can sing, and people call me great, but I don’t think I’m great.  I just want to be simple, and make people think I’m great.

M:  (Laughing) Gems…  I’m loving it!  Is there anything else that you want to do in your career that you haven’t done yet?

T:  Yes, there are a lot of things I want to do that I haven’t done yet.  I wanna make a straight-up R&B record, well it will have some reggae in it, but mostly R&B flavor.  I’m doing that.  I want to be able to extend my foundation’s reach.  I want to do things in Africa where a lot of black, and white people, is also, cuz there are a lot of white people born in Africa also.  They’re African, so it’s not a black t’ing.  If people need help, you help them when you can.  My plan is to spread out my foundation and see what people think of it, and they can donate things for my foundation, and I could help.  From American to Jamaica, and from America straight to Africa, all over the world, I want to do something for some people who need help, each and everywhere, north, west, east, and south.  That’s my plan and my good thought and my wish.

M:  That’s excellent.  Thank you very much for being with us.  It’s an honor and we appreciate it!

T:  Yeah, mon.

We’re headed back to the vaults for an interview with Matthew O’Brian, the former lead vocals and guitars for the roots reggae and dub outfit called Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad. Although Matthew and the band have parted ways, this interview gives a great insight into the mind of one who has created a thriving and perpetually touring band

A big welcome to all you rastas and reggae heads.  We’re headed back to the vaults for an interview with Matthew O’Brian, the former lead vocals and guitars for the roots reggae and dub outfit called Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad.

Although Matthew and the band have parted ways, this interview gives a great insight into the mind of one who has created a thriving and perpetually touring band.  Have a listen as we discuss the vibe of their band, brushes with the great Toots of Toots and the Maytals, and their green stance.  We wish both Matthew and Giant Panda the best in the future, so be sure to check them both out when they hit your area!  So from the vaults, the Tracks bring to you… Matthew O’Brian, former vocals and guitars for Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad (giantpandadub.com).

Interview with Matthew O’Brian (Formerly of Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad)

Brian Kracyla and Monty Wiradilaga (Moe Train’s Tracks)

Moe (MTT):  We’re sitting back here with Matt from Giant Panda.  What’s going on, man?!  How are ya?

Matt:  Very well.  Nice to see ya, Monty!

MTT:  Awesome, great set today.

M:  Thanks.

MTT:  How is the Rothbury experience compared to your other festival experiences?

M:  We’ve gotten to experience it since Thursday night, we had a whole day and a half of anticipation for our own set.  Everything has been super-exceptional, super-clean, and the vibe is real strong.  The experience with the set was great.  We played first so we got an excellent soundcheck full.  We were ready to go, all dialed in before we hit the stage.  That’s better than most festivals where you’re rushed to get on.

MTT:  Your music draws from the roots, dub, but you guys also mix in improvisation.  How important is it for the band to take the listeners on a musical journey?

M:  It fulfills our own musical desires and our own creative desires to be able to take those risks in the live setting and really feel like we are pushing our selves and challenging ourselves.  For very many people, it’s apparently one of their favorite things they get to experience at the Giant Panda shows as well, the improvisation.  It’s been openly confirmed recently that we really want to bring that to every show.  We really want to have that experience of not knowing what’s going to happen next, no plan.

MTT:  So, you feel that your live show is really the bread and butter of your music?  Or do you feel it’s your recordings?

M:  We tour and do 180 shows a year.  Our live shows are our bread and butter.  The history of reggae is a studio history.  A lot of the sweet reggae we have heard over the years is all produced in the studio and rarer live.  We’ve sought to bring true roots-sound and that real vibration to the live scene as much as we can, that’s our contribution.

MTT:  Speaking of which, you’ve shared the stage with some legends.  How have they really influenced your sound?  Do you have any stories with the classics?

M:  Their sound influenced us for our whole upbringing.  Lee Scratch Perry was influencing our sound before we knew what recordings he had influenced so much.  You listen to the old Bob Marley and that was all black art, that was the finest Lee Perry productions.  Toots sets a wonderful example because Toots’ music is some of the most uplifting and positive of that roots era.  His voice is so rich, but he also is so positive and so giving of his own energy to his audiences.  He’s very, very musically disciplined and his band is one of the sharpest.  He really lives up to his reputation.

MTT:  Do you have any stories with him?

M:  We lived down on State Street in Rochester, NY and he was staying at the Crowne Plaza, directly across the street from our apartment.  We played with Toots at one of the biggest shows we’d ever done at the time, in Rochester, at a big outdoors jazz-fest thing.  Toots headlined and at the end of the festival blew it out in the street, and we got to open for him and then we were heading to Bonnaroo that night, the minute we were done with the set.  We were running late, running around, and we found ourselves back at our house getting our last things together as Toots was pulling into his hotel.  Dylan, our guitar player who’s met Toots before, ran over and said “Hey man, nice to play with you.  It was a great honor.”  And he turned to us with both of his hands in the air and just like (pumping both hand in the air), all the way as we were driving away he was pounding two hands in the air!  He gave us the best energy we could get to hit the road with.  We were just proud to be there with him, let alone the fact that he acknowledged us like that.

MTT:  Speaking about legends, we’re doing a show on Michael Jackson.  How has Michael Jackson influenced you personally or musically?

M:  Michael, to me, means quality, top quality from the time the public was aware of him.  He was five years old and making untouchable high quality music and it never wasn’t untouchable, high quality.  I have nothing but the utmost respect for Michael’s music.  I think that with somebody like Michael Jackson, the influence is so thick, so ingrained in everything, it gets taken for granted as a part of reality.  It’s a culture of his own.

MTT:  It was definitely a shock.  It felt like a part of our childhood was taken away, well not just childhood but our whole life.

M:  It is, its part of everybody.  He’d been there 45 years of his 50 years!

MTT:  The band (GPGDS) takes a very green stance.  Are you guys are participating in the (Rothbury) think-tank?

M:  We are participating in the think-tank.  They asked us to do that, I guess they picked up on the green stance.  We’re not too preachy about it or anything but we, in our own lives and travels, have made choices and changes.  The Sprinter runs on diesel and we’ve converted it to run on waste veggie oil.  It’s been a process getting to know the whole scene but we put a lot of thought and a lot of money into getting it real right.  This is the first summer, so we’re just getting it under way.

B:  How do you get the oil for it?  Do you go to restaurants and try to get what they let go of?

M:  More and more you can buy filtered waste veggie oil.  You can get waste veggie oil from places that preferably don’t use any fat.  Some places just fry tortilla chips or just fry potato chips.  You want as much of the clean stuff as you can get in the first place because then you have to filter it, let it settle out through all these filters, and then you put it in your van.  It goes through a little bit of a filter putting it in, but you put it in and then you burn it like diesel fuel.

MTT:  HOW MANY MILES TO THE GALLON DO YOU GET?

M:  I can’t say a specific number but to give you an example, Rochester, NY to Burlington, VT, one forty gallon tank of waste veggie oil.  That’s like a 8 hour drive sometimes.

MTT:  Where do you see the evolution of your band, where do you see your future?

M:  We see ourselves asserting our right to, you say we take a “green stance”, we take an “everything stance”.  We feel a responsibility to bring the highest that we can bring.  We feel the responsibility to give the audience, and give people that take the time to enjoy and experience music, the best of what we can give them.  We treat our lives that way and we try to keep ourselves in good shape, we make good choices with our bodies and with our lives, in our actions and with the way that we speak to people.  I hope that our band can keep reflecting that and keep getting more gigs like at Rothbury to reflect that and stay true to our roots.  We always want to be able to be who we are and maintain creative integrity and to talk to more people like you.

MTT:  Thanks very much for being with us.  We appreciate it.

M:  Yeah, thanks Monty!

———————

Matthew and Rachel (also a former member of Giant Panda) have started a new band called Thunder Body.  Check them out on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/THUNDER-BODY/111078485595149?ref=ts

Tad Kubler (The Hold Steady)

Interviewed by Monty Wiradilaga and Brian Kracyla (Moe Train’s Tracks)

Moe:  Hey we’re sitting backstage with Tad from The Hold Steady.  Thanks for being on the show, man.  Appreciate it.

Tad:  No problem.  Thanks for having me.

M:  You guys have gotten so many accolades, including “Best Live Band in the World”, what has it taken for you guys to get to that point?

T:  I think just for us to continue to go out and try to have a good time with what we’re doing.  Obviously, the audience has gotten larger, and the shows have gotten bigger, and the venues have grown in size, and I think as things continue to happen for us it would be easy for us to go out and phone it in every night with as much as we tour, we play anywhere between 200 and 250 days a year, but I think the most important thing for us is to constantly remind ourselves of why we do this in the first place, and that’s to go out and have a good time.  So I think that’s the most important thing about what we do and that’s hopefully one of the reasons that we what do translates so well live, the enjoyment of what we do.

M:  Speaking about translating live, your live album that came out is phenomenal.

T:  Thank you.

M:  Was there additional pressure to capture that live essence in putting out that album?

T:  No, I don’t think so.  There were a lot of times where a bit of time passed in between when we did the actual live recording to when it came out, it came out during one of the tours for Boys and Girls in America.  There were a couple of songs on the record that we were in the process of writing for Stay Positive, so it was nice to go back and listen to how they kinda changed in between the writing process and the actual recording of them.  For us, there wasn’t really a lot of pressure other than just making sure that there wasn’t a lot of mistakes.  The live record took place on Halloween in Chicago and we were all in costume and during the mixing of it I remember hearing parts where it was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s wear I’m shedding parts of my costume, I think I was trying to get the poncho off!’, or whatever I had on.

M:  What were you wearing?

T:  We were all dressed as kinda banditos.  You know, fake mustaches and, not sombreros, but some kind of weird hats, and cigarillos and stuff like that.  Nothing we do is that deliberate, but I think sometimes it’s taken that way.  But, like I said, what we do is try to go out and have a good time.  And usually good things come out of that.

M:  Yeah, the live stuff seems like it’s your guys’ bread and butter.

T:  In terms of being able to sustain playing in a rock band right now, it’s certainly financially our bread and butter, as I think it is with most bands.  You gotta stay on the road.  It’s obviously very hard to sell records right now.

M:  Speaking of which, one of your albums leaked really hardcore…

T:  Stay Positive, yeah.  It leaked really quickly.  It was somewhere overseas where the promo copies leaked right after they were manufactured.  That is what it is.  We really didn’t expect it to leak as rapidly or as widespread as it did, but I guess that’s something that just goes with the territory.  I think these days you kind of have to be prepared for that.  I think, luckily for us, when we were in the studio we recorded so many songs and there was so much material that it was still easy for us to go ahead and alter the actual release itself to make it a little more special than what had leaked.

M:  With that leak, does it help with viral marketing?

T:  It’s frustrating obviously because when you do a record you want to present it as a whole piece with everything you’ve done.  You work so hard to keep the sonic integrity of it, and to have it leak onto crappy digital MP3’s that are out of phase and that are kind of an inferior product to the actual record itself, it can be frustrating.  But, it’s the nature of the music business now.  It’s kind of expected at some point now.  The one thing that it did do was show us the demand that was out there for the new record, it was a pleasant surprise.  So, you gotta take the good with the bad.  That’s something that, in this day and age of technology and the way people consume music, it’s unfortunately just part of the plan.

M:  Going back to Boys and Girls in America, it was one of my favorite albums.  It just tells stories, it seems like just sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

T:  Well, a lot of people have said that but Craig’s lyrics, I think what I take away from them, and I’m as big a fan of his lyrics as anyone, is that there’s a lot of hope and I think that a lot of it deals with faith and those kind of topics.  I think that even in some of the darker Hold Steady songs, lyrically, I think there’s a lot of hope involved as well.

M:  How did Michael Jackson influence you?  Or do you have any stories as a kid?

T:  His fame and celebrity I think was probably very different than his body of music and performances.  I think that the Quincy Jones stuff and some of the earlier records that he did were great.  Also, keep in mind that Michael Jackson is somebody that always brought in great guitar players to play on his records, from Slash to Eddie Van Halen.  So I think that he did a great job of blending a lot of musical styles.  I think that that’s one thing that everybody can take away from any Michael Jackson record.  The production was always fantastic and, in terms of the scope of music, there was always something there for everybody.

M:  How important was it for you guys to mesh styles, to mesh modes of play in your music?

T:  It’s fun for us.  You spend so much time on tour performing and promoting an album, to get back in to the writing process and the recording process’s and stuff, it’s fun for us to try new stuff obviously, and to try to grow as a band, as songwriters, and as players.  There’s influences that really have a broad span.  We obviously get the Springsteen thing a lot, and Led Zeppelin, and we’re a pretty traditional rock band in a lot of senses, but there’s a lot of influences that come from, not just different things in terms of musically, but also just from people you meet that make an impression on you, with the traveling that we do, just being in different parts of the world.  You take all that in and then you go in and make a record.

M:  How’s the chemistry with the band?  Working together as a cohesive unit, ups and downs, how’s it been?

T:  It’s been great.  One thing that’s really fantastic about The Hold Steady is that everybody still gets along well and there’s a real bond.  There’s a lot of complex friendships with all of us in the band.  I think that has really helped us be able to stay emotionally healthy, especially with the kind of schedule we keep in terms of touring and recording and stuff.  That’s not always the case with a lot of bands, there might not be the kind of friendships that you find with The Hold Steady.  I think that really translates into that sort of joy and celebration that goes along with our band.

M:  So, down the road, when it’s all said and done, what do you hope to see as the legacy that you guys have left on the music scene?

T:  I don’t know.  You try not to think about that too much.  I think that the most important thing for us is to kind of stay in the now and just stay present and enjoy what’s happening for us in the moment that it’s happening.  I think if you start to think about that than you start to lose sight of what you’re actually trying to accomplish, which for us is to have a good time and enjoy what we are doing.

Related articles:

• Listen free to the Hold Steady’s new album, Heaven Is Whenever (guardian.co.uk)
• The Hold Steady Evolve (But Stay The Same) On Heaven Is Whenever (mtv.com)

Moe:  We sitting back stage her with Jeremy Stein, promoter and creator of Rothbury Festival.  Thanks for being with us.

Jeremy:  Fantastic being here guys, thanks.

M:  How did you go about putting together your vision of the Rothbury Festival?

J:  That’s good question.  I think it came together really over a course of years.  It’s funny, I was reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and there’s a big thing in there about taking 10,000 hours of work to really get a vision for something and think that’s what happened over the course of a decade.  We were putting on a lot of different events; 5,000 people, 15,000, 20,000, all over the world and also had a lot of different artists under our management firm who were traveling the world at festivals.

So I had this kind of rare experience to be able to go to festivals across Europe/Australia/Japan, and really make notes on all of them, and see what was working, and combining that with a general attempt to have a cultural event at Rothbury, and an art event.

Obviously music is a magnet, no question, but it’s so much more than that for everyone.  Some people even have trouble putting their finger on what that more is, but it’s so much more.  You combine all those factors and it almost surfaced organically.

M:  Last year, we called Rothbury ‘Festival of the Year’; for the lineup, for the atmosphere, for the people, the total experience.  How important was it for you to create an all-encompassing experience for your guests?

J:  The general idea is that it’s an immersive environment that people come to live at.  A lot of festivals, not for good or for bad but just the way they are, are generally daytime into the evening events and they shut down, and they’re not camping festivals so everyone goes home at night and they might come back the next day.  This kind of event is different.  Not only is it a big holiday weekend (4^th of July), and people are really looking forward to getting off work and they’re out of school and all those types of things, but they are living here for four days.  And when you’re living somewhere for four days, you get to know the people next to you, and you make some new friends out there.

Not only are you obviously here for the big shows and the big dance events and all that kind of stuff, but most of the time you’re not at a big show, you’re relaxing.  You can’t just be on level 11 for 24 hours a day. (Moe giggles)  So, that’s a big part of what the forest turned into, it’s a daytime lounge.  And when people can get that downtime in a shaded, cool environment with their friends, they have way more energy for the rest of the day and they’re not just totally burnt out at the end of the show.  That’s a pretty exciting scene.

M:  Did you take the forest idea from Fuji Rock?

J:  I’ve been to Fuji Rock a lot and there’s no question that we are kindred spirits.  Especially on their recycling.  They were doing that recycling before just about anyone else that I’ve seen out there.  They weren’t doing composting but the teams that we working at the cans and everything and having a strong green scene.  That was just more a part of the culture there than anything else but they were a little ahead of the curve.  I’m friends with those guys and it’s probably the closest relationship of a forested environment for a festival that I know of.

M:  In the future, what do you see for Rothbury and what is your perfect headlining act?

J:  Wow, that’s a tough question.  I think year to year, there’s no question that the headlining acts give a little bit of their own identity to what that year of the festival is, and some of them are available some years and just not another.  There’s no question either that there’s a top 25 names out there and we all know who they are, there’s no big secrets.  So, one year it’ll work for Rothbury and one year it won’t.  We just gotta go where the wind takes us.  I care just as much about the music, I’m not afraid about the music though, we’ll get the right music every year.

I think that now we’ve hit a critical mass where the industry knows what it is.  It’s just as exciting to the artist as it is to everyone else and they want to be here.  So, we’re gonna get there on the musical side.  I care as much about the community building, the interactive environment, and getting more people involved in the show.  The more everyone’s involved in the show, the more the entire grounds become the stage.  It’s not just you come to watch something, you come to be a part of something.  That’s what I’m after.

M:  Thank you very much for being with us.  We appreciate it.  The festival’s been killer.

J:  Great guys, good luck.  Have fun out there.

Related articles:

• Rothbury 2010 Canceled; Midwest May Gain Bamboozle Fest (rollingstone.com)

Flogging Molly Interview on Moe Train’s Tracks

Nathen Maxwell (Flogging Molly)

Monty Wiradilaga, Brian Kracyla ( Moe Train’s Tracks)

Moe:  What’s going on man, how are you?!

Nathan:  Aw, I’m having a great time, Moe!  How bout you?

M:  Having a blast!  What do you think about the Rothbury scene?

N:  Right on brother.  Man, it’s cool, it’s different for us.  I’d call it kind of a hippie festival but it’s great that our music can be a part of this.  I think we fit in.

M:  Well your music is not traditional Celtic music, obviously you put your own twist on it.  I’d say you guys put a little dose of balls into Irish music.

N:  Yeah, thanks man.

M:  How does the Irish culture take your music?  How do the people take your music?

N:  Well, people think that we’d be huge in Ireland, and I’ll tell you it’s not the case!  (laughs)  And one of the reasons, like someone told me, is because there’s 34 million Irish in America and there’s about 4 million Irish in Ireland, you know!  I think the youth in Ireland too, they grow up with traditional music, it’s not such a novelty to them.  I mean we’ve got great fans in Ireland but it’s not as big as it is in the US and other parts of Europe.

M:  You’re appealing to the Irish, you’re appealing to the punks, you’re appealing to such a wide audience.

N:  I think that’s the thing about our music, it’s for everybody, young and old.  I was just talking to this lady behind me, she was just saying that one of the things she loves about Flogging Molly is that it’s one of the only bands that her and her father agree on.  I think that’s a big part of it too.  I grow up a punk rocker, but this music it transcends scenes, man.

M:  I heard you guys take a “deadly serious” approach to your music, what’s that all about?

N:  When I say a deadly serious approach to music, I mean that this is all we have.  This is our life, it’s everything to us.  But at the same time, we don’t try to take ourselves too seriously.  You gotta have fun, you gotta laugh at yourself, man.  You know what I mean!

M:  Absolutely.  Irish pride, what role does that play in your music and how does it affect your interaction with your fans?

N:  Well, our singer Dave is a Dublin-er, born and raised, and he’s ginger as well, so he looks the part.  I think the Irish pride thing is biggest amongst our fans.  Dave’s obviously proud of where he’s from and we’re all proud of where we’re from.  I’m from L.A.  I’m proud of that, Cali’ pride.  But for me, I think it’s human pride, you know, we’re all one big family.  That’s the way I see reality.  So I think the Irish pride thing is bigger amongst some of our fans then it is amongst the band.  I’ve got Irish blood.  But I also have Mexican blood, Polish blood, German blood;  it’s a human thing for me personally.

M:  Yeah, we’re sitting here drinking Guinness…

N:  Yeah, thank you by the way.

M:  Absolutely, you are welcome.  I was going to bring over some Jameson but I didn’t want to be responsible for you guys getting shit-faced before your show.

N:  Oh we already opened the Jameson bottle on the bus!

M:  Ah, okay, guess I should have brought it then.  You guys have got to have some drunken Irish stories.

N:  Well, I can’t remember the last time I blacked out.  How bout that?

M:  You can’t remember?!

N:  I can’t remember.  What did we do last night?  I don’t know.

M:  Exactly.  So do you guys always get tuned up before you play?

N:  Yeah, well, most of us.  Our drummer stays pretty sober but the rest of us like to kinda hit the sauce and get that swagger on before we hit the stage.  And then we just continue on through the night and party.

M:  So what’s your definition of swagger?

N:  Just walking the walk, you know, just being yourself.  Don’t try to copy anybody, just be yourself and own it.

M:  We’re also doing a side-show on Michael Jackson.  Has he influenced you in anyway?

N:  Sincerely, absolutely, Michael Jackson has been a part of my life ever since I can remember.  All my family loved Michael Jackson, I grew up listening to Michael Jackson.  I love Michael Jackson.  I think Off the Wall is one of the best albums ever made.  It’s a real loss.  I’m not here to judge, I don’t know about all that drama he was going through the last decade and I don’t have an opinion on that and I’d like to keep it that way.  To me it’s a shame that he never got to, if he was innocent, redeem himself in the eyes of the public.  It’s a shame that he died so young and I think that we lost a great talent with Michael.

M:  How has “D.I.Y. or Die” played a role in the success of Flogging Molly?

N:  It’s been everything for us.  We didn’t stand a chance in the world in the beginning.. People used to tell us we were shit, that we were just a bar band, that we’d never make it, just another bar band.  We were like, yeah whatever we started at a bar, we like to drink but come on, we could play for anybody!  So we had to do it ourselves, there was no one there to help us.  We financed our first two records ourselves.  We got lucky to become friends with a great indy label SideOneDummy, we’re still with them today, they put us on the Warped Tour.  It’s all been about do-it-yourself.  I’m here right now, I feel like a pretty successful person with Flogging Molly, and in my personal life I blessed, and it’s all been because I’ve done it myself.  I wasn’t handed a goddamn thing.

M:  So what would you say to people who are trying to get there start?

N:  Just do it man.  Believe in yourself first-and-foremost.  If you don’t believe in yourself ain’t no one gonna believe in you.  Believe in yourself and just do it.  Don’t take no for an answer.  If you get knocked down, get right back up.  It’s pretty simple.

M:  That’s right, Irish Ethos right there!  (both laugh)  Finally, as you said, we’re at a hippie festival, we bounce around at different festivals and, well, you can smell the patchouli oil out there…

N:  And the weed!  I like the weed smell!  The patchouli I could stand to do without, but the weed’s good.

M:  So, who would win in an epic battle here at Rothbury, the trippin’ hippies or the drunken Irish, and why?

N:  Well, here at Rothbury, I go with the hippies!  There’s a lot more of them.  I think the hippies are definitely outnumbering the drunk Irish.  Plus, you know, when you’re on that LCD you get super-powers!  I don’t recommend it, kids!

M:  Thank you very much for being on the show.  We’re looking forward to your set.

N:  Cheers, brother!

MGMT Interview on Moe Train’s Tracks

Andrew Vanwyngarden, Ben Goldwasser (MGMT)

Monty Wiradilaga, Brian Kracyla (Moe Train’s Tracks)

Starlight Ballroom – Philadelphia, PA

Here’s a great interview that was rescued from The Tracks’ vaults…  Back in early 2008, MTT caught up with Andrew and Ben from MGMT in Philadelphia, PA.

MGMT had just gotten a major break in the music scene with the widespread critical success of Oracular Spectacular.  Keep an eye on MoeTrainsTracks.com for tons of great new content!

Moe:  We saw you guys down at Bonnaroo for your set, it was a great way to open up the weekend.  I was a pretty epic show if I must say.

Andrew: Yeah, it was fun.  We had been to Bonnaroo before so it was good to see it from the side of the artist instead of the person in the crowd.  It was only our second festival show.

M:  Oh really, where was the first, Coachella?

A:  Yeah.

M:  So how do they compare?

A:  I don’t know, Coachella was crazier for us because we were more nervous.  Bonnaroo was a little more relaxed and cool.

M:  You guys just started tour together with a band right?

Ben:  We started practicing with them about a year ago.  I think we were kinda thrust into exposure a little too quickly for our taste.  We played on national television after we had only been touring with the band for a couple of months.

M:  Was that on Letterman?

B:  Yeah.

M:  You looked a little nervous.

B:  Yeah, we were very nervous!  But we’re getting more comfortable and we don’t have to think as hard when we’re playing, its kinda getting to be more natural.  We’re getting used to playing for crowds.

M:  Did you guys have sound problems at Bonnaroo in the beginning, what was going on?

B:  Yeah, well, the festival thing, we hardly ever really get a sound check so it’s always a little weird starting out.

A:  I think the monitors were pretty messed up.

M:  (to Andrew) Oh, by the way, you had on some pretty fucking crazy pants.  I remember walking up to set and saying ‘holy shit’, those bright blue ones!

A:  Tropical floral bellbottoms, yeah.  Really big bellbottoms. 

M:  They looked comfortable though!

A:  Yeah, they’re real comfortable.

M:  Saw you guys backstage, you guys looked pretty chill, pretty relaxed, so I guess you feel like you’re falling into place with everything.

B:  We’re good at hanging out.  We’re good at relaxing.

M:  Any standout moments yet from your recent successes?

B:  We just played at the Oxygen festival in Ireland and that was really crazy.  There were all these people climbing up the towers that were holding up the tent and we had to stop the show because this girl made it all the way to the roof of the tent so that you couldn’t even see her anymore and everyone was yelling at her telling her to come down.

M:  Did she take a spill?

B:  No, it would have been ugly if she had!  That was probably at least 60 feet up in the air or something.  It was pretty crazy.

M:  I saw a video of you guys at some festival in Scotland that you guys were playing and you were walking around the grounds, checking out the scene; Andrew you like the thrill-rides?

A:  As much as I’d like to keep the myth going that I like thrill-rides, I’m new to them.  I’ve been on like Space Mountain and most of the Disney rides, and I like those a lot.  I was like twenty when I started going on roller coasters, so I don’t think I’d go on the Slingshot thing.  I would vomit.

M:  You guys got together at Wesleyan, and you were actually making music that you thought would be annoying?

A:  We knew it was annoying.

M:  Just to fuck around, just playing, just to amuse yourselves?

A:  I dunno…  We were young and foolish.

M:  You were freshman?

A:  Yeah.

M:  So it was basically putting that freshman energy, that drunken and banged up energy back into the music.

A:  Yeah, exactly.

M:  What’s up with the clothing optional dorm?

B:  At some point it was designated a “clothing optional” dorm but there aren’t many people walking around naked there.  There were a few, and we were friends with most of them.

A:  I did naked calisthenics with Vin Popper on time.  (all laugh)

B:  Nice.

M:  Tell us about some of those early dorm session jams.  We used to do the same thing.  We’d go out to parties, get all fucked up and come back and just grab our instruments at like 2 o’clock in the morning and start jamming.  So what was it like with you guys getting together?

B:  It was a lot like that.  It’s was just kinda very casual, just having fun.  We had a lot of other friends that we played music with and we were both in other bands at the same time.  It wasn’t like we started a band in order to get successful and get fans and all that, we just started it for something to do and didn’t really care if anyone liked it.

M:  You guys just probably wrote the album for yourselves.

B:  In a way, I mean, we know we were writing it for other people because we had signed a record deal at that point, so we had a delivery date, so there was a little bit of pressure on us but when we were writing the songs we didn’t think that anyone was actually gonna hear the album, so it was pretty much just writing it for ourselves.

M:  So I guess its still a surprise with all of this going on?

B:  Yeah, its still a surprise.  And, I don’t know, it keeps getting crazier!

M:  When you guys were first recording you guys had a pretty gritty sound right?  I mean, if you were recording back in your dorms you’re going to have that unintentional gritty, natural sound.  Did you guys try to replicate that sound?

B:  In a way it was the other way around because we were doing a lot of stuff just on computers, so a lot of it was very electronic and very clean sounding.  I think we’ve tried to get dirtier.

M:  You had the producer who worked with the Flaming Lips.  Did you guys pick him because he had that psychedelic background?

A:  We kinda just chose him because we talked to him and we’re fans of the Flaming Lips and other stuff he’s done, like Sleater-Kinney and Mogwai.  He’s not the kind of producer that wants to mold the band into something, he kinda just lets them do their own thing.  So, he was good for us.

M:  So did the album come out exactly how you wanted it to come out?

A:  At the time I think it did, yeah.

M:  Looking back now, what do you think?

A:  I’m sure now if we listened to it a bunch, we’d probably change stuff.  But we think it’s good that we can’t because it captures that moment.

M:  I see you in a lot of pictures wearing sunglasses, you’re not becoming Bono are you?

A:  I hope to God not!!  If I am you should stab me…

M:  What’s your beef with him?

A:  Nah, I just don’t like him.  I heard he’s a great guy, and he seems like he’s got good intentions.  I think it’s really the sunglasses that piss me off the most.  So, now I’m never going to wear sunglasses again.

M:  Will you burn them in effigy?

A:  We stabbed an effigy at our senior recital.

M:  Ben, you said, “To give music meaning you have to have your back up against something”; What, you don’t remember?

A:  (laughs) You sound like Thoreau or something.

M:  Yeah, I guess you were being pretty introspective.

B:  I guess maybe just having some resistance kind of helps.  With us, when we got signed and we had to deal with all the kind of big-record-label bullshit for the first time, I think it kind of forced us to look at what we’re doing and try to give it as much meaning as possible and try to ask ourselves why we were doing it in the first place.

M:  So what’s your validation?

A:  I don’t think we’re validated.

M:  No?  What will be your validation then?

A:  If aliens approve of our music.  So, we’re waiting for contact.

M:  Waiting for the return in 2012 when the earth ends?  I know you guys are joking around about your future, about what will happen hen things will come, but we’re sitting inside of a big tour bus.  Obviously this is probably five times bigger than your dorm room was.  You said that when the fame comes around and you get the big label money that you would go get blow jobs, you would ride horses to your gigs, and go get castles.  What’s going on with the success?

B:  Yeah, we’ve both gotten blow jobs before, which is cool.  We’re working on the horses and the castles.

M:  What have you benefited from just by being in the business?

A: We get a lot of free clothes, a lot of free stuff.  And we both got haircuts for the first time in a long time.  We used to cut our own hair and now we can afford real haircuts.

M:  If you guys think that everything musically has been done before, how does MGMT stray away from the norm’?

B:  I don’t know if everything’s been done before…

A:  All the good stuff has.

B:  Yeah, all the good stuff’s been done before but pretty much…

A:  You could string your guitar with celery or something, but that doesn’t mean it gonna be good music.

B:  Any new good thing I think comes out of recycled ideas and using them in creative ways.  Rock and roll is a pretty basic, simple form of music but there’s so many possibilities with it.

A:  You don’t have to make up your own language to write a good poem.

M:  Who is it that does that again…

A:  Sigur Ros!

M:  Oh yeah that’s right.  Did you guys see them at Bonnaroo, what’d you think?

A:  I heard for somebody that it’s much better to see them in a wide open cathedral-type space, like an indoor space, and I could see how that’d be true.  It didn’t translate that well to the festival thing.

M:  Yeah, it’s pretty grand I guess.  So, what’s the future of MGMT, or have not realized the present yet?

A:  We have trouble comprehending what’s happening at all times.  But the future should hold good things.   We’re trying to get a cabin somewhere in the woods.  James is gonna cut firewood, I had a vision of him walking towards me with an arm full of firewood and I’m gonna smile and then our dog is gonna lick our faces.

M:  (laughing)  Alright guys, thanks a lot.

M:  Mr. Bill Kreutzmann, of the Grateful Dead, thank you very much for being here on the Tracks.

B:  Yeah, nice being here, thanks for having me.

M:  Legends… The Grateful Dead… Obviously if you think about American bands, you think about the Grateful Dead.  How do you feel the Grateful Dead’s influence and responsibility to the fans has been over the years?

B:  The responsibility lies in the love of playing music and trying to play the best music you possibly can.  For years and years we never pitched politics until this last horrendous eight years came up.  We’re always pretty much a-political and we didn’t tell the fans anything, we just entertained.  We just played music, that’s all we cared about.

M:  So you said these horrendous past eight years, how are the next years going to happen, how do you feel about it?

B:  I think the next eight years are going to be incredible.  At least it’s going to be a lot different, a lot better.  I got to meet President Obama and he’s real, man.  I stood closer than you and I are talking right now and I looked right in his eye.  He’s also from Hawaii so I kidded him about his surfing.  There was a picture of him bodysurfing and he had really good form, he was on his side and had his arm out like you’re supposed to have when you bodysurf.  I was kidding him about it, and he didn’t know where I was from, he thought Grateful Dead, he must have lived in the states or something.  He looked me in the eye real close and said, “You’re from Hawaii, aren’t you?”  That cat’s smart, man.  No, I really see a freshness.  We played the inauguration.  We played the Atlantic Ball.  He came and he met us there the first time and it was terrific.  The guy really took time to come and meet the people that helped him because we had played at Penn State to about 16,000 people, a young audience, college educated people, and that really helped.  I think the

young vote really helped him.  And the way he did his campaign was so smart.  Dave Axelrod is a wonderful person and he lead President Obama down the right path.  He said, “use computers, use the internet, don’t get lobbyist money, get donations” and that was smart.  Now he doesn’t owe any one person something, like some big corporation or something.  Of course, you know all about lobbying, I don’t want to get into all that nonsense, I dislike that myself.  That’s not politics.  You hire somebody from your state to be your senator and then they’re paid for by something

else.  That’s no good.

M:  So the Dead influenced the voter’s vote?  (laughs) Did you get him into office or what?

B:  I think we influenced them at Penn State for sure.  What happened to me is, about four or five years ago, I read his second book, The Audacity of Hope, and I said, my God, this is a dream if this guy can be president.  So I’m really happy with it.

M:  The show on New Year’s Eve is in the Bay Area.  The rumor is that that will be the farewell show for the Dead.

B:  That’s a rumor.  We have actually talked about that yet.  I’ve been asked a few questions today about plans and records and stuff but we haven’t actually gotten together and had a sit down about what we’re going to do yet.

M:  Well, thank you for the music for all these years.

B:  You bet, man!  It’s been fun!

M:  You’ve made a lot of people happy.

B:  It’s made me happy.  That’s probably why I’m still alive!  (laughs)

M:  Appreciate it.

B:  You’re welcome, man.

Related Articles:

• The Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead (futurelab.net)
• 7 Walkers Tour: Papa Mali, Bill Kreutzmann, George Porter Jr. (jambase.com)
• Bob Weir, Phil Lesh keeping the Dead alive with Furthur (pbpulse.com)

Minus the Bear Interview

Jake Snider (MTB), Monty Wiradilaga, Brian Kracyla

Manchester, TN – Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival

Moe (MTTracks): All right, we are sitting back here in some alley at Bonnaroo with Jake Snider, lead singer, guitar, from Minus the Bear…

Jake Snider (Minus the Bear): Howdy. Hello there.

Moe: Thanks for being here.

Jake: You bet. Thanks for having me.

M: Hell of a performance today man.

J: Thanks man, I appreciate it.

M: How’s the vibe of Bonnaroo compare to the other festivals you’ve played?

J: It’s definitely laid back. Everything runs pretty much perfectly, so its seems like seems like everyone’s just got it down. It’s just super easy, the crowd it just awesome, one of the best crowds I think of any festival that we’ve played.

M: Why do you think it’s one of the best vibes?

J: I don’t know. Maybe it’s the location, or maybe it’s just the history of the festival, the vibe that people expect from it. You know, kind of a more free-form situation probably.

M: You played a good bit of tracks from Planet Ice…

J: Yup.

M: I think that an album’s true test is how it translates live…

J: Yeah, that’s definitely a good record. Live is usually better, hopefully. That’s the idea at least.

M: With listening to your music, I get sort of a sense that you incorporate a bit of jamminess into it. It feels like you’re translating that live performance into your albums and vice versa. You’ve changed your writing style lately haven’t you?

J: The last record, Planet of Ice, is a little more broader sounding I think. A little bit more ambient. It’s just not a tight as the other ones. Yeah, I don’t know, there are songs that are really fun to play live. And I think that that’s what our goal was, to write a record full of songs that we really enjoy playing live…and don’t get sick of.

M: Well, before didn’t you have more regimented songs. Didn’t you cut it short because you thought it would go on too long, and with this record didn’t you change your writing process to let certain parts just flow? Let um go where they had to go…

J: Yeah, totally. We kinda just laid back on that stuff. We used to be really concise, and it is really a lot more fun live and especially to be able to explore things a little bit more.

M: So, do you like this process a little bit more than what you were doing before?

J: Yeah. It’s a lot more fun.

M: What made you go in this direction?

J: I don’t know. It just started coming out that way, I guess. We’ve been playing together for years and years and years, and a lot of the same songs. At that point in time we felt like we needed to try some new shit, you know, basically.

M: It seems to me that you live a bit vicariously through your music…

J: yeah…

M: First of all, I’m not gonna go into your funny song titles and all… (Laughs)

J: Okay, cool.

M: I know that you’re probably sick to death of hearing about it.

J: Yeah, totally.

M: What are the main topics that you think in your head that you like to live vicariously through?

J: A lot of the songs are about sex, and a lot of those are kind of fictionalized. So, I do kind of live vicariously through some of those songs. Mostly those songs. I guess most of the songs are about sex on some kind of level, or getting wasted. But all that stuff is just another way to imagine life I suppose.

M: I’ve heard you say that after every show there’s a disco. What are some of the craziest moments you’ve had being out on the road, being on tour, whatever?

J: Well, usually Florida’s pretty brutal for us. We have had some run-ins with the law in Orlando. One of us got a little too drunk one night and ended up getting arrested.

M: Oh yeah, what happened?

J: Oh, nothing. He went to jail for the night. We got him out. And then hauled ass to the next show. He had to pay a fine, or whatever.

M: A little rowdy?

J: Yeah, just a little rowdy.

M: Did you really have a site called Friction USA?

J: Yes.

M: What was the deal with it? Was it a Suicide Girls…

J: Yeah, it was similar to that. It started almost exactly the same time as Suicide Girls. Just did it for a couple of years. My wife, it was her idea basically.

M: And it just never materialized or what?

J: It was good, the music thing just started taking over. Once I got into the band, there was just no time.

M: Well, you’re from Seattle, how’s the Seattle scene THESE DAYS?

J: It’s always good. It’s an amazing town for music.

M: What are some of the big things going on in Seattle THESE DAYS?

J: These Worms Are Snakes is a great band. I can’t even think about it right now, I don’t know why, sorry.

M: Question, have you done any sleep walking through walls lately?

J: Nope, only when I was a kid.

M: What happened?!

J: Yeah, my parents were building a cabin, and the walls weren’t sheet-rock yet. My bedroom was right on the hallway for the stairs, so basically, you would walk through the wall and fall right down the stairs, into the bottom of the stairs…

M: Holy shit.

J: Like a full story. So I slept walked through the studs and fell.

M: What happened?

J: Got a concussion and broke my arm.

M: Jesus Christ, that’s a pretty big fall.

J: Pretty brutal, yeah.

M: You’re band has a pretty distinctive sound. A lot of it comes from Dave’s guitar taping techniques. What do you think sets your band apart from the others?

J: I don’t know. We are always trying to find parts that we find interesting and try not to right the same stuff over and over again. I don’t know, that’s a tough question. The combination of personalities, it’s pretty hard to come up with something different. I think it’s just kinda crazy.

M: You guy are definitely always evolving with changing the lineup. How’s the new cohesive unit working?

J: Better than ever.

M: So, what’s next for Minus the Bear?

J: Um, next is a summer where we’re gonna play a few shows. We just re-released our They Make Beer Commercials Like This EP on Suicide Squeeze. That’s also out on vinyl for the first time now. And we’re writing a record…

M: How’s that going?

J: Starting it off, just getting it started, you know…

M: With the new album are you evolving to a new level, or is it something with the same equation that you’re doing now?

J: I have no idea yet.

M: It just comes together.

J: Yeah.

M: Awesome. Thanks a lot for staying with us.

J: Yeah, I appreciate it man.

Philly meets Philly when The Tracks interviews G. Love backstage while in Chicago at Lollapalooza…

Philly Meets Philly – Interview with G. Love

Garrett “G. Love” Dutton and Monty “Moe” Wiradilaga
Friday, August 3, 2007
Lollapalooza – Chicago, Illinois

Moe’s Intro: When you think about Philadelphia, you think about a few things… Philly Cheesesteaks, the Eagles, the Flyers, the Phillies… And when you think about music from Philly, you think about G. Love.

Moe Train’s Tracks Podcast had the chance to sit down with G. Love backstage at Lollapalooza in Chicago, Illinois, where we talked about his music… the advent of the “hip-hop blues,” the Summer Haze Tour with Slightly Stoopid, G. Love & Special Sauce, and Ozomatli, and even a bit about Philly.

Make sure you check out the Summer Haze Tour when they hit your area! So here’s the Moe Train’s Tracks interview with G. Love at Lollapalooza…

Moe: G… What’s up, man? How ya doing? I’m Moe. Nice to meet you.

G. Love: Hey, how you doin’ man? Yeah, how ya doing man?

Moe: Philly meets Philly!

G: Woo! You from Philly?

Moe: Yeah man. Well… From the ‘burbs.

G: Right on.

Moe: Definitely been listening to your music for a long time…

G: Thanks.

Moe: It’s finally good to meet you. Got your new DVD out right? What, it was released this week right?

G: Yup, it just came out. It’s called A Year and A Night with G. Love and Special Sauce. It’s really cool. It’s definitely like an in depth look at the band on the run, you know, like a band on the grind. ‘Cause we’ve been grinding it out for like fourteen years so…

Moe: You’re always touring right?

G: Yeah. We do like 150 to 250 shows a year. And so that’s a lot of time in the bus, and as we did eight years in a van to start out, so definitely…

Moe: A bus is nice!

G: Yeah. A bus is great! I’ve definitely seen this whole country, man.

Moe: Yeah. I’m really noticing a progression in your music, but than again, recently it seems like you’re going almost back to your roots. Tell me about the beginning of G. Love and the “hip-hop blues.”

G: Okay. You know, I grew up listening to hip-hop, just like any other kid. You know, like, the Beastie Boys, and L.L. Cool J, Run DMC and you know like a whole lot of other stuff too. And I was like, grew up in Philly, which had a pretty strong hip-hop culture so… You know, we were getting into trouble and like writing graffiti, and break dancing, and skateboarding, and doing all this kinda like city stuff and, playin’ basketball. So that was like one side of me. And the other side of me was I had played acoustic guitar since I was like eight years old. I got really into the blues, the Delta Blues, when I was in high school. I was always kinda searching for something original, and when I found the Delta Blues that was like, no other kid in my high school was playing the Delta Blues. I had something that, you know, was making me stand out from the crowd, which I think is like really important you know. Now basically one night, I was a street musician, and I was just shuckin’ on the guitar, and I started rappin’ Eric B. and Rakim… Paid In Full…

Moe: Paid In Full!? (Laughs) There ya go!

G.: Yeah… (Laughs) And I was like, ‘Oh that was something.’ And then I wrote my first rhyme like that week and then I was like ‘Okay, you know, I can do this,’ and I felt like, you know, it was real. It was like a real expression for me. Also at the time, the early nineties, like that was kinda when hip-hop was like at it’s peak, you know, like the late eighties, early nineties, so that was what I was listening to.

Moe: Right. Well, you play a lot of improvised chords don’t you? Lots of blues chords, not the real standard chords…

G: I basically got a lot of my chords from… I would try to learn like a Lightning Hopkins record, or Muddy Waters, or Robert Johnson, or whoever blues, you know. There wasn’t like you could Google ‘Robert Johnson Tablature,’ when I was in high school, so you had to learn that shit off the record. (Laughs) Yo, you don’t know what tuning he’s in, so got to make up these weird chords to try to find the sound that he’s getting! So, I had all these weird chords so, I’d always make these chords and then I just be like ‘Oh that’s cool.’ Then I’d make a song with them ya know.

Moe: Well, you’re saying you’re always performing… Do you think the live performance is the way to hear your music?

G: Yeah, I mean, definitely. You know, we love playin’ live and that’s what it’s always been about for us, you know, and being in front of people and…

Moe: Your albums are recorded a lot live aren’t they?

G: Yeah, well, what we do, we record in the studio live, you know. You can get something different on a record than you can get live, it’s all about what you like to, you know like, certainly there’s nothing that beats… Oh, Slightly Stoopid’s just going on…

Moe: Yep.

G: Nothing beats, but you know like, but you know there’s also nothin’… To me, I’d rather listen to a record than a live recording.

Moe: Yeah.

G: Except my new live recording which comes with my DVD!

Moe: That’s right. (Laughs) Explain ‘Everything’s a hustle.’ I heard you say that one time, you said that ‘everything is a hustle.’ That’s definitely Philly-style, the streets… You used to play a lot on South Street didn’t you?

G: Yeah.

Moe: I remember that. I think I saw you actually a couple times, yeah.

G: Really!?

Moe: Yeah… Explain ‘Everything’s a hustle.’

G: You know, I mean, it might not be the most positive outlook on life, but I mean, you know, like I think people are in inheritably selfish you know. So, it’s like, you gotta hustle for everything you get. And you gotta realize that people most likely wanna get something outta you, so, you know, you gotta make sure you don’t get hustled. And everything’s a hustle, like whether it’s the music business, or your job, to get a job… It’s a hustle to practice your guitar and get good enough to play, but you gotta hustle to get that gig, man! You know, and then once you get on stage you gotta let it be about the music, but the music business is all about the hustle you know. And then everything’s a hustle but love. When it’s real love, you know, and neither party’s trying to get up on each other. It could be love for music, or love for a person, or whatever you know what I’m sayin’.

Moe: Right… Well that seems like the mentality of independent music these days.

G: Yep.

Moe: People… They’re taking back the power from the labels and doing their own thing… More so, I guess it’s a hustle to take back that power.

G: Yep.

Moe: The question is…Pat’s, Gino’s, Jim’s, or a big ol’ slice of Lorenzo’s pizza?

G: (Laughs)

Moe: (Laughs)

G: Jim’s and a slice of Lorenzo’s pizza.

Moe: Wiz or without? Or “witout?” (Side Note: There IS a proper way to order a Philly Cheesesteak.) Excuse me…

G: Well, no… I get provolone. Provolone, onions, hot peppers on the side, baby!

Moe: (Laughs) What the hell is going on with Philly sports these days?

G: (Whistles)

Moe: Are we ever gonna win something? Is McNabb gonna stay healthy?

G: I don’t know I just…

Moe: Ryan Howard gonna do something?

G: I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. But I just moved up to Boston ’cause my kids up there and they just got Kevin Garnett and I’m like… We just got rid of A.I.! (Allen Iverson) (Laughs)

Moe: My co-host said to say to you that he ‘loves your music but Charles Barkley doesn’t beat Larry Bird.’ (Laughs)

G: (Laughs) No, but we said that Charles Barkley dissed Larry Bird.

Moe: Oh, okay.

G: It’s basically like, well Dr. J and Charles Barkley are the, I mean Dr. J and Larry Bird had the fist fight. But I think at the time Charles Barkley dissed Larry Bird somehow on microphone… I don’t know… I don’t know what he did! (Laughs)

Moe: All right, one last thing. You always give love to Philly…

G: Yeah!

Moe: How’s Philly been treating you?

G: Well, you know, Philly’s like a hard-love. Philly has hard-love. They show kinda hard-love I think, but you know that’s where I was born and raised, and that’s where my studio is, and I still live there part-time, and Philly’s a great city. Philly shows its love, man! We sold-out two Electric Factory shows last year.

Moe: There ya go!

G: And this summer we’re doing the Festival Pier (In Philadelphia). So, I gotta say, it’s still one of our best cities to play, and you know, it always means a lot to come home.

Moe: We’ll be bringing a crew to the festival pier to see you guys.

G: Ok, cool!

Moe: And good luck on your tour.

G: Thanks!

Moe: We’ll see you then…

G: Cool… All right…

Moe: Thanks a lot… Appreciate it, man.

G: Cool, man, appreciate it.

Chris from OAR talks to MTT about staying “independent” on a big label, Madison Square Garden and more at Bonnaroo.

Chris Culos (O.A.R.) Interview on Moe Train’s Tracks

Chris Culos, Monty Wiradilaga and Brian Kracyla

Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival

Manchester, TN

June 15, 2008

Moe: We’re back stage here with Chris of O.A.R. How’s it going man?

Chris: It’s going good man. We just got here, I’m really excited. We’ve got some gorgeous weather out here.

Moe: Oh, it’s beautiful out.

Chris: Yeah.

Moe: It’s the first day of your new tour, is today the first day?

Chris: We just started our new tour today. So excited about it… A big summer.

M: Supporting the new album that comes out next month.

C: It comes out July 15^th, yes, and actually our single is called Shattered. And we’re actually getting some radio play already, which is exciting. It officially goes to radio tomorrow and fans can get it online. They can get it starting June 16^th on iTunes and stuff like that, exciting.

M: How’s this album compare to your others?

C: It’s a little bit of everything. I think by calling it all-sides, it really is capturing the all encompassing thing of O.A.R. It’s got the rock, the lighter stuff, it’s got the reggae, it’s got a little bit of everything. I think the song writing is really strong. I’m really proud of all the guys in the band, our song writers… You can really see their growth. But also the musicianship side of stuff, we feel really comfortable in the studio. That was always the thing. I think our audience really gravitated to our live stuff, and they liked the studio stuff, but they didn’t think it compared to that energy. It’s was only natural. We’ve played a couple of hundred shows a year but only made a handful of CDs. It’s still a lot of time in the studio, but for us we’re still learning.

M: Is that why you guys have encouraged the taping of your live shows?

C: Absolutely. But not just that reason alone. We’re proud all our stuff that we do in studio but as far as our live shows, that’s our bread and butter. That really is what we do best, and where we feel the most comfortable. I think by encouraging taping of the shows it creates more of a community interaction, you know for people who wanna come out and see us multiple times. It keeps us on our toes to create new set lists, and change the arrangements, and jam-out, and have fun. It’s also fun for the audience because it gives them something to talk about. It’s not the same show every night, not the same version of the same song every night. It’s a lot of great things.

M: Talking about live shows, how’d it feel standing on the stage at Madison Square Garden, at a sold-out arena, at one of the most important influential venues in the whole world?

C: Yeah, it was pretty much the highlight of our career. I can’t lie. It’s just weird because when we started this band, god, we started it 12 years ago in my basement, you could never imagine, you could never think of playing Madison Square Garden. I mean, all the things you could dream about, that’s just ridiculous to think that. So, to be standing on stage, it was so surreal. To be honest, it’s the only time I’ve ever been nervous playing.

M: Really?

C: Yeah, we’re really comfortable with what we do. Every night we go on stage, we get really excited about before we go on, and walk on, and that’s just what we do best, we’re comfortable. Going on in Madison Square Garden man, it was a whole other thing. It was a whole other ballgame man, I can’t lie.

M: I saw that. You could see the vibe in the place, it was just awesome.

C: Yeah. But, as soon as we started, yeah, we felt comfortable again. But it was the only time I’ve been nervous.

M: So what was the most memorable part of that performance? Anything stand out in your mind?

C: You know… It flew by. Most of the shows, some nights take a little longer than others, but that night flew by. I remember it being a little more lit up inside, just because we were filming it for DVD. You could see people. We can always usually see the front row, a couple rows back, but now look at and actually get a gauge of just how many people were there, and it was freaky. No, it was cool, ‘cause you could look out, we had a lot of our family there. I could look out and see my parents, my grandparents, and aunts and uncles, and cousins, and friends, and all these people who traveled from all over the country to watch us in New York. That was the coolest part.

M: Yeah, it had to be amazing for sure. So, with the new album, I know that you’re with a major label now; you were with an independent label before. Are we go to be seeing the independent O.A.R.? Or are we going to see a new incarnation?

C: We’re always independent O.A.R., man! No, see, here’s our deal. We started as a basement band, you know, when we were in high school. We went to college to really try to make it. We went to the biggest school in the country at the time, Ohio State University, and we went for four years. Not everybody graduated, but a couple of us did.

M: You did right?

C: Yeah, I did. Woo-hoo!

M: Ha, there ya go.

C: Then we started the band and we’ve been touring full time for eight years. So we’ve been a band for 12 years and everything been a real slow growth, but it’s been growing upwards steadily since the beginning. It’s given us time to learn and make the best decisions and really pay attention to what’s going on around us. And I think we really us that to our advantage, because if something happened over night, I don’t know if we’d know exactly how to deal with it correctly, and not to say that most people don’t, but who knows. For us, we’re really happy that we got to surround ourselves with great people. Our manager Dave Roberge, our singer Mark’s older brother, he started an indy label for us when we were in college. It was really just something on paper so that we could get a distribution deal, so we could get our CDs in stores like Best Buy and stuff. It wasn’t even a real label. But he grew it into an actual full functioning label with a full staff, moved to New York City, opened up office space, pretty amazing. And from what this label, Everfine Records, was able to do, it raised us up enough profile to actually get major label attention. And we had sold enough CDs on our own that when we went in to talk to a major label; we did have a little bit of leverage. Not to say that it was all in our favor, but to be honest it was a business decision to go with a major label. We just wanted to get our music out to more people. And so when we signed with, it was Lava Records, which was under Atlantic Records, which has since folded, now we’re moved over to Atlantic Records, but it’s all the same thing. We did sort of a joint-deal Everfine Records and Atlantic, so that Everfine would always be a part of us. It’s synonymous with us, it was created by our manager for us, by us. Everything about it, the mentality, will stay there. And they’ll continue to oversee most of our live releases while the major label will put out our studio releases. Sorry for the long answer.

M: No, it’s cool. Because I know that the fans are always concerned when a band makes that leap. They’re not sure if they’re getting the same band that they grew up and loved, or something that’s manufactured.

C: Of course. I mean, we’ve seen it with our favorite bands too. If anything, it’s a stepping stone for us to be able to continue what we always done in the past. If we have to put out something that’s more geared towards pop-radio, somewhere where you see us on film or television soundtracks or stuff, it’s not to say we’re playing the game and selling out, it’s to say that we wanna do that stuff to be able to continue to do the rest of the O.A.R. stuff that we love.

M: Do you consider yourself frat-rock?

C: You know, the term kinda bothers me. I don’t exactly what it is. It gives you, it’s not that it bothers me…

M: Is frat-rock a stigma?

C: It’s just used in a negative connotation. It’s not like anyone says, ‘God, these are my favorite frat-rockers!’

M: (Laughs)

C: It’s always somebody writing an article about us who pawn it off as frat-rock, as if that’s a bad thing. I’m really proud of the fact that we are able to attract fans from diverse things, whether it’s a frat, whether it’s a sorority, whether it’s just regular college kids, whether it’s high school kids, you know, older adult, any walk of life I think it sort of reaches out. I guess it is a bit of a stigma. I don’t know, I mean at first it was jam-band, and that’s really cool because some of our favorite bands are jam-bands, but we don’t consider ourselves a jam-band at all. We just don’t do that. So, to get labeled a jam-band is just I think a little misleading. So, the frat-rock thing, I don’t know, it’s just used in a negative connotation. I don’t have a problem with it if someone was using it in a praising way. Whatever.

M: Does it bother you that your band’s music makes the beds rock in collegiate America all across the US?

C: Hell no, dude, that’s the point, c’mon.

M: We’ve got a lot of comments about that, ‘Dude, you’re interviewing those guys! We’ve had sex to that music all the time!’

C: Sweet!

M: Oh, congrats on being one of the top 100 most influential indie bands.

C: Oh, thanks, performing/song writer, what an honor, we are really excited.

M: There are a lot of big names on that list.

C: Honestly, I can’t put it into words, I was a little bit speechless. We’ve never really won any honors; we’ve never really won any awards. I think, in the past, people who know about O.A.R. know about O.A.R., and everyone else outside this world has sort of ignored us. It’s given us, I don’t want to say a chip on the shoulder, but it’s made us feel like we’re a little bit of the underdog, wanting to always prove ourselves. It doesn’t bother us but it makes us want to work that much harder. So to get some recognition like this, it’s really satisfying.

M: Another congratulations in order, you just got married.

C: Thank you, I’m actually about to get married.

M: Oh, I’m sorry, you’re about to get married.

C: In three weeks, it’s the countdown.

M: So what’s your thoughts?

C: Man, I’m really excited. I’m most excited to be sitting on the beach on the honeymoon.

M: Where ya going?

C: We’re going to Hawaii. And neither of us have ever been. Have you been?

M: Not yet, but this year. I think we’re going to a wedding. Apparently it’s supposed to be amazing.

C: Yeah, I can’t wait.

M: You still gonna be the same guy or what?

C: I’m gonna be the same guy, yeah.

M: What’s your most revolutionary moment of O.A.R.?

C: You know, again, I would have to say Madison Square Garden. It was pretty amazing. When we were in college, we played at a place called the Newport Music Hall. It was when we got to college and we said, ‘God, one day we’re really gonna tour, we’re really gonna do this for a career.’ And the biggest venue on campus was called the Newport Music Hall and we said, ‘One day we’re gonna play there.’ And we ended up playing there many times throughout college, and we sold it out almost every time. It was really satisfying the first time we saw our name on the marquee.

M: You guys always seem to show up with Dave Matthews. And I guess your ending the tour with them…

C: They’ve treated us well throughout the years. Honestly, we haven’t had a chance to work with that many large bands. We feel like we’ve always sort of gone out and toured on our own. They’ve been good to us, a lot of opportunities.

M: Pick up any pointers from Dave?

C: Yeah. That’s the best part of it. When I was a kid, they were probably my favorite band. I would watch them in concert all the time. So to be able to be backstage and watch a show is amazing, but really the coolest thing is to be able to be backstage and watch how they operate as a business. Most people don’t think of those things, but to see how they operate with the personnel that they hire, their road crew, the way that they handle the trucking and setting up of the equipment, and what kind of gear they use, and all that stuff. For us, that’s really the best part, I mean, we can sit there and learn from the best, you know. That’s the business model we would strive to be, if there was one.

M: Absolutely.

C: It’s an empire they’ve created.

M: Yeah, absolutely. So tomorrow, I guess you guys have your first live interactive on-line show, or concert, what’s going on with that?

C: Yeah, so it’s called Deep Rock Drive and we’re actually filming it at a studio in Vegas. There actually will be somewhat of a studio audience in there. It’s a really cool thing that we have never done before where we post a bunch of songs and people can vote on what songs, and the set list and what order they want it to be in, and people can type real-time questions into us. It’s a completely interactive show. Totally new, I’m really excited. I know they’ve done a couple shows but other artists, but it totally new for us and it’s relatively new technology that they can do all this stuff. I’m just really looking forward to it.

M: Cool. So at the end of your career, what do you hope to have accomplished?

C: Oh man, I don’t think that way. That’s a good question. Honestly, we feel like we’re just starting. If that’s another answer, I don’t even know. We just wanna be the biggest band we can be.

M: So what’s that mean?

C: I wouldn’t say awards or anything like that. I think that when I was a kid I would have loved to be on Saturday Night Live. I would love to be nominated for a Grammy, I don’t wanna win a Grammy, just maybe just one time be nominated for a Grammy. What about cover of Rolling Stone, that’s a classic you gotta go with as a band.

M: So you have your checklist.

C: Checklist, yeah. You know, seeing that platinum record up on the wall, which we feel very fortunate that we’ve gotten a couple of gold records. If you’re asking, I guess that kinda stuff, but I don’t really know. We just want to fucking play.

M: I got it, man. Thanks a lot for being with us, we appreciate it.

C: No problem, man.

MTT and Ghostland discuss capes, sexual dancing, James Brown, Daft Punk and more while at Lollapalooza.

Interview with Ghostland Observatory

Thomas Turner, Aaron Behrens, Monty “Moe” Wiradilaga
Friday, August 3, 2007
Lollapalooza – Chicago, Illinois

Moe: We’re sitting backstage with Thomas and Aaron from Ghostland Observatory. How you doing guys? That was one of the best sets I’ve seen in a long time.

Thomas: Thanks a lot.

Moe: You guys started off with three people right?

Thomas: I think Ghostland, like the first official Ghostland show, we used two people. We were in other bands before but…

Moe: How did you guys get together, what was your meeting?

Aaron: We just met in the bands previously that we did. He answered an ad in the paper and we hit it off. The other guys went and took a break for a while and me and him just kept going at it and we found what me and him love to do together, you know?

Moe: Absolutely. You guys are from Austin correct?

Thomas: Yes, yeah.

Moe: And they’re saying that it the “live music capital of the world.” Is Austin really that strong of a live music scene?

Thomas: When we tour other cities, you can kind of tell like, in Austin, you can go out almost every night and see any kind of genre of music you want to, at almost a hundred different clubs. And most cities don’t have that you know. If want to see blues you can see blues, you wanna see rock, indie rock, punk rock, electronic, DJ shit, whatever, you know, you can go see it in Austin almost any night of the week.

Moe: You guys definitely have an interesting combination of styles. First of all, what’s with the cape? I gotta know what the cape is man! (Laughs)

Thomas: My wife made it for me, so I wear it you know, I sport it.

Moe: I was lookin’ for what stage you guys were playing on, I saw the cape and said, ‘Oh there they are.’

Thomas: (Laughs)

Moe: What did you guys grow up on, what were you really listening to? ‘Cause it sounds like you go from little bit from the dance genre, but then you go from rock, then you have a little rap, just a combination of so many different styles. Aaron, what’s your take on this?

Aaron: I grew up listening to, you know, my dad had a lot of like seventies, sixties-seventies rock, like Jimmy Hendrix, Zeppelin. Grew up listening to them… And then I got into eighties, and my mom had like Huey Lewis and The News, Prince, you know, all that good stuff. And then, you know, in the nineties I got into gangster rap…

Moe: There you go. (Laughs) NWA!?

Aaron: Snoop Dogg, NWA, Onyx…

Moe: Eazy-E! Yeah, there you go!

Aaron: Eazy-E, yeah all of them.

Moe: What happened to Onyx anyway? (Laughs)

Aaron: I don’t know dude. I think Sticky Fingers got into acting for a while, so I don’t know… But then I, you know, then I moved to Austin, and Thomas introduced me to electronic music, so yeah.

Moe: Yeah, it’s just the blend, the blend happened right there.

Aaron: Yeah… The beautiful blend man, you know, so..

Moe: Did you listen to a lot of James Brown?

Aaron: Oh, a lot, yeah, I love James Brown… I love James Brown… Yeah.

Moe: I know you know everyone says it… They draw your dancing style to James Brown…

Aaron: Oh, that’s a huge compliment, I love J.B…

Moe: It is. Those are big shoes to fill, but, tell you what… You never stop, you never stop! (Laughs)

Aaron: Oh man, I’m tryin’, I’m tryin’. (Laughs)

Moe: I could tell through the set, people were getting into it more and more. You guys know everything was just starting to build up, and I don’t know if you noticed the crowd, but the hands started going up and by the end everyone was just rockin out. Ahh. It was great.

Aaron: Yeah! That’s good!

Moe: You guys basically just leave it out, all on stage, just balls out…

Aaron: Yeah, we really try. I mean, like I said, me and Thomas, “The Wizard” over here, dude. You know, he just throws down all this, it’s just, everything crazy on top. And it’s just, like we’ve said before it’s like, he just allows for me to get crazy on top of that, but he’s just pushing me man. With all those sounds…

Moe: Just feeding off each other.

Aaron: Yeah! It’s just real feeding back and forth. It’s just not talking, it’s feeling between both of us, you know.

Moe: What do you feel about the musicians that are doing that little shortcut with laptops and all that in their music?

Thomas: Yeah, I guess people do whatever they’re comfortable with. Maybe, you know, they started out with a laptop, and using virtual synths and things like that, and that’s just how they do it. I mean, I don’t hate on them for doing that. I just prefer having a synthesizer and, like, really getting inside of a synthesizer, and learning it inside and out. It’s the harder way to do it. You know, that’s just what I feel comfortable doing, and I like it. I enjoy it a lot.

Moe: Did you grow up more with the rock stuff, ’cause you’re playing drums, and you’re doing the synths, doing them together, just meshing the two. Did you grow up more in rock, or did you grow up more in the dance styles?

Thomas: Well I guess when I really started getting into music I really fell in love with electronic music, that’s where my heart is. But I played drums when I was younger… I used my knowledge of playing the drums and creating beats, but I never thought that I’d have to play drums again. It just so happened that I got the opportunity, and we just rolled with it, you know.

Moe: Does it feel natural though? I mean, if you were doing the drums, and you were doing the beats… Was the going back and forth, working with the synths and the drums… Was it natural, or how’d that work in?

Thomas: Yeah, yeah I think so. It feels good to be able to do both, you know? I like it.

Moe: Well like I said, we’re gonna see you guys at Vegoose… The rest of my crew’s coming tonight. What should they expect when they see you guys for the first time? How would you describe your set?

Thomas: You just have to be there to witness it. I would say, go in expecting nothing, and be the judge for yourself, and see how you feel when you leave. Hopefully, you’ll really, really love it. Or you’ll really hate it. There will be no in between, like ‘Ahh… It was okay.’ None of that. Its either you’re really into it or you’re not, you know.

Moe: Aaron, your dancing is obviously very, very sexual.

Aaron: Yeah.

Moe: You don’t doubt that right?

Aaron: No.

Moe: Not whatsoever. (Laughs)

Aaron: It’s a very powerful energy!

Moe: Yeah, so what’s the craziest thing a girl has done to try to get in your pants after a set like that? (Laughs)

Aaron: Well, honestly, I haven’t really had to deal with that, because I really don’t put myself in situations to deal with it, you know. A lot of times people will try to get on stage, and you know, dance with me and stuff. But the thing is, it’s like, that’s cool, but I’m like in my own world. I mean I definitely do it for the people and I like entertaining up there, and it’s wonderful that they get inspired to get down with me and everything. A lot of it, it’s a lot of personal release. You know, it’s a lot of personal energy getting out, flowing out of me. So, I really haven’t had anything crazy, you know, or anything like that. And I think a lot of my fans know that. A lot of our fans know that. They respect it. And it’s the same thing; I don’t expect anything from them after the show.

Moe: However, you should have heard the comments from those girls that were standing next to me. Oh shit, you would’ve been like…(Looks and points) Yeah, point to em’… (Laughs)

Aaron: (Laughs) Girl, you’re dirty! Girl, you’re nasty!

Moe: Yeah exactly!! They were getting dirty nasty, that’s right. You guys are very independent…

Thomas: We don’t have a manager. We hired a publicist just for a short period of time, just to help promote the upcoming festival season, the new record that’s coming out, and just like to help the press-related things kind of go our way as opposed to just random things happening… Have a little bit more control of that. But, yeah, we’re very independent. We don’t answer to anyone. We agree on things and that’s what we do. And we just stick with that, you know. And we really don’t do many press-related issues either you know so…

Moe: Well, thanks for… thanks a lot, I appreciate that!

Thomas: Yeah! Yeah! So we stay under the radar, we basically leave the people to decide whether they like our performances or like our albums, and that’s that, you know. We just let them figure it out for themselves.

Moe: I definitely see a trend in music today. “They” want control of their catalog. I spoke to Ziggy Marley at Bonnaroo, and he went independent now. He was saying how he wants control of his things. Slightly Stoopid, who I just spoke to, also said the same thing. So, what do you guys think about the trend of music? Is it people taking the power back from the labels? Why is the trend like that?

Thomas: I don’t know. There are some bands that are very comfortable being on a label and they enjoy that lifestyle and the perks that come along with it, and having tour support, and having a marketing team and publicists and everything like that. And than there’s other people, they just really wanna do things their own way. And I think if you really want to do your own thing bad enough, you’ll find a way to make it happen, and I think that’s what a lot of bands are doing.

Moe: So you have a new album coming out soon?

Thomas: Yes, yes. We’re finished writing. Now we gotta get into the studio the end of August, early September and then bang it, bang it, bang it, bang it!

Moe: Yeah man. If you guys could collaborate with anybody, Aaron who would you collaborate with? Anybody, doesn’t have to be dance-related, anybody. You’re biting your finger; you’re probably like, ‘I don’t know.’

Aaron: I really don’t… I really don’t know. Because, it wouldn’t be the same, you know? The thing is, I think, Thomas and I enjoy the kinship we have with our music you know.

Moe: That’s a good thing.

Aaron: To add another person in the room, or someone else in the collaboration, I don’t know if we’d function the same, I don’t know if… It breaks up the connection.

Moe: Do you think it would water it down?

Aaron: I think it would water it down. I don’t know. Certain circuits run a certain way, Thomas and I have to be alone and in silence, and if anybody’s added in there it doesn’t work the same. It doesn’t.

Moe: So when you guys are doing your writing sessions, is it just like you’re on stage? You guys just start rocking out?

Aaron: There’s a lot of silence and then a lot of sound.

Moe: A lot of rockin?

Aaron: Yeah!

Moe: You guys definitely have a real big sound for just two guys. I thought you guys were gonna blow out the PA system, did you hear it popping at one point?

Thomas: That’s good! I like that! (Laughs)

Aaron: Yeah, that’s good! (Laughs)

Moe: Yeah! I heard it, I was like, ‘Oh shit, there goes the set.’ ‘Cause you guys did blow out a set, where was it?

Thomas: Sasquatch.

Moe: That’s right!

Thomas: We blew out the entire power in the whole freaking festival.

Moe: No shit.

Thomas: Yeah… It wasn’t too fun though when it happened. We were like, ‘Oh, that’s not good.’ You can’t even talk in the microphone, nothing.

Moe: Did they get it back and going?

Thomas: Yeah, but it took a while. It was just like, at first, it’s cool, like ‘Oh, yeah they blew out the power’, but then you can’t crank it back up you know, you gotta wait. Then they get the power running again and you’ve got to start over and try to get back to where you were. But the crowd seemed to respond really well to it, so it ended up working out.

Moe: That’s cool. So you guys gonna be around for Daft Punk tonight?

Thomas: Man, we have to play another show tonight! So we gotta go sound check…

Moe: Oh, where is that by the way?

Thomas: Schubas? So we gotta go sound check right now.

Moe: Maybe I’ll show up for that one, after I figure out where the hell it is.

Thomas: If we can’t make it, we’ll try. Man, we drove all night to get here, and it’s pretty crazy, yeah.

Moe: (To Aaron) If you we’re gonna be there, you should be on stage as a dancer for Daft Punk, and suddenly you show up on stage, and people are like, ‘What the fuck is going on here!‘

Thomas: (Laughs)

Aaron: (Laughs) They would probably blow me up with their electronic stuff. And that’s the same thing, ya know… Daft… They would, yeah… I don’t know what would happen. (Laughs)

Moe: (Laughs) You just might have to show up for just like a couple minutes and then head out! Guys, thank you very, very much. Can’t wait to see you guys at Vegoose…

Thomas: Thank you!

Moe: And maybe we’ll see you guys tonight.

Thomas: Okay, sweet deal man!

Moe: All right guys, thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

Prior to a friendly batting-cage showdown, MTT’s Moe and KinG B (Team Excelsior) interview Raul, Trey, Jiro, and Asdru of Ozomatli.

Interview with Ozomatli (Moe Train’s Tracks)

Tre, Raul, Asdru, Jiro (Ozomatli), Monty Wiradilaga, Brian Kracyla

Manchester, TN – Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival

M: We’re sitting backstage with Ozomatli…

R: I’m Raul. I play guitar and sing some songs.

J: My name’s Jiro. I play percussion.

A: Hi, I’m Asdru. I sing some songs and play trumpet and play piano.

J: Yeah, you’re at Bonnaroo!

M: Main stage at Bonnaroo, what were you thoughts, looking out?

R: Yeah, man, it was nice. The last time we played here we were the first band on the main stage and people were barely awake. It was a lot nicer. It’s a great festival.

M: What do you think about playing with all these amazing bands the whole weekend?

R: These festivals are always good for that. You run into, it’s funny, you may know a lot of musicians actually over the years but you never really see each other, except for at spots like this. Now you actually get to see each other, maybe have a moment to check each other’s music out. And I always like to come here and see what’s happening and what’s new that I haven’t seen.

M: Do you guys bounce around to the different shows?

R: No, we haven’t had a chance all day. We’ve been running around.

B: Yeah, sorry we’re making you guys miss B. B. King right now.

R; Yeah, thanks a lot dude.

M: Hey, we can all go over there and just watch it right now if ya want to. Don’t Mess With The Dragon been out for a little while now, how the reception been for the album?

R: I think it’s been cool. The interesting thing about us is that none of our records have been like top of the charts or anything like that but it’s always pushed us into different into different audiences, it’s always helped us grow. So that’s what we do. We’re barely starting to get some new songs together for more recordings and hopefully that’ll start happening soon, ‘cause I’m definitely ready to start doing that.

M: What do you think about album sales versus being culturally-relevant?

A: Album sales is kind of a weird thing nowadays. It’s almost a thing of the past.

R: We don’t really look at it that way because I can name a few bands that don’t need that and they survive just fine without it. We’re a traveling band. We’re a live show.

A: I think what would probably fit us more is having a Vegas show with dancers.

J: Well, selling records is not necessarily longevity. You can be at the top of the charts, be here today and gone tomorrow, you know, and that’s one thing about our band is that we have a live show and so, whether we sell one record or not, we still make a living from that.

M: And have a good time doing it too.

J: Yeah, and having a good time to. We here at Bonnaroo!

M: There’s a lot of shitty bands that sell a hell of a lot of records but are done next year. You’re like, “Who in the fuck was that?!”

J: But don’t get me wrong, we like to sell records! (Laughter) We just don’t.

M: You’re guys show encapsulates a lot of different genres; Reggaeton, Banda, Duranguense. Think about your influences over all those genres…

R: When we first got together it was a bunch of individuals who showed up and we just kinda like, well, what do you know, what do you know? And if you didn’t really know, you just kinda figured it out. As people and as musicians we were just open to different things. I don’t think we’re purists in the sense where we have to play styles exactly traditionally. I think that we respect music enough to learn a little bit about it but we’re open. Wherever we go, wherever we travel, we’re always looking for new music. We’ve taken a lot of trips this year. We’ve been all over from India to Nepal, parts of South America to the Middle East, and we ask the locals what they like, what they listen to. There’s a music called Murga, it’s this African music in South America that I’ve really been into lately. We just get into it. That’s kinda the way it works for us.

M: What’s it sound like?

R: It’s definitely like this Africa carnivale music, but it’s slower. It almost sounds kinda drunk. It’s kinda like…(emulates the sounds of the music). It’s really cool.

M: You guys are into the political movement, your guys music opening doors. You guys were one of the first bands to go into countries and play in Nepal, or play in Timbuktu, or wherever it was…

J: Katmandu!

M: Katmandu, yeah, that’s right! How was it going into those countries and being one of the first?

J: It was great. This past year we have gotten to a lot of cool places that a lot of bands don’t get to travel to, like; Tunisia, Egypt…

M: Indonesia too?

J: Yeah, Indonesia.

M: That’s my background.

J: Oh, cool. Yeah, we were just in Indonesia. We got a chance to play with bands like Slank, who we had never heard of before, and they’re huge there. We got to make a song with them. That’s part of the beauty of traveling the way we do is that we get to meet musicians like that, local musicians, and get to interact like that and get to meet people from all around the world.

M: What was it like to see those hot Indonesian chicks singing your song?

R: It was a song called Can’t Stop and it was a radio contest. The girls who won showed up in these little nursing outfits…

J: It looked like something out of Speed Racer, it was a trip.

A: It was really cool man. It was an honor for them to learn the song and actually sing it.

M: I was pretty impressed. I was heard the song and I was like, wow, they’re singing this really well. Then I sent him (gesturing to B) the video of it and was like, see, there’s hot Indonesian chicks.

B: Wait, I never said that there wasn’t hot Indonesian chicks, don’t pigeonhole me like that! (Laughter)

M: Your writing process, it’s gotta be pretty crazy. You guys have had so many members of your band, all those influences like you say, you’re drawn from so many different angles, how in the hell do you guys finish a song?

R: It is a long process for us because I think people need to feel connected to it. When you bring in music it has to inspire everybody else. That’s kinda that songs that get picked to record, the ones where everybody looks at each other and says. “Oh, yeah yeah, I get it.” The ones that half of the people say, “Ah, I don’t like it” and half of the people say they do, it’s just not worth the battle. So we say, okay let’s pick something else.

B: So, you’re approaching thirteen years now, are you guys sick of each other yet?

R: We love each other. It’s like we’re family. You know, there’s ups and downs all the time but we are totally committed.

A: Well, it’s nice that some of us live really so away from each other. So we don’t have to visit each other or ride in a cab together.

B: Oh, you guys don’t picnic together every Sunday when you’re not touring?

A: No, we all have our own lives. The three of us are dads here. You see us, it’s kinda crazy.

R: You see the person you work with more than you see your lady at home, that gets weird.

B: Yeah, the wifey’s not too happy with me being down here with him (gesturing to Moe) all the time either but…

R: But you do what you gotta do!

M: I’m single. I get to go places, he’s (makes whip sound). Nah, it’s not bad.

B: Alright, rather than asking you guys questions about yourselves, I want to get your guys opinions of each other. Asdru, why don’t you tell me a little bit about Jiro.

A: Jiro is probably one of the sexiest guys in the band. I think that, if I went that way, I wouldn’t mind.

B: (to Jiro) How do you feel about that? You guys have to share a bus together.

J: Hey man…

B: Jiro, tell me a little bit about Raul.

J: Raul is hurting right now. He’s burning up, but he’s a trooper because he’s out there doing it no matter what. That’s a little inside… see he went running the other day, running right through a patch… see he was on a roll, he was like, “I’m running as far as I can today!”, and we were at a festival in Kansas and he went through the woods and I think he was taking a leak or a crap or something, came back with a little rash. (all laugh) That’s what he tells us at least. It looks like it’s true.

B: If it has three leaves, don’t squat near it!

R: Dude, the truth is, I am hurting. And I am a trooper!

M: Yeah, I saw you walking over pretty gingerly. I was like, what’s a matter, did he fall off the stage or something.

B: I think it was you (gesturing to Asdru) that I heard doing a little acapella when I was walking by earlier. Do you guys do anything like that in the back, any specific acapellas or something like that, that you guys do to warm-up?

A: We should! All these years, you’d think that we’d learn that that we be a good thing to do. But no, we don’t. Maybe as individuals we do, but not as a group.

J: Check us out next week, we’ll see what happens.

R: Yeah, we’re a regular barbershop quartet before we go on stage!

A: I prefer warming up voice then warming up my trumpet, even though I should be on my horn a little more. It works out somehow. If everyone else worked out enough of their stuff then we would sound great. I think we could sound better, we always could.

M: Saw you guys playing on Dancing With The Stars.

A: That was hot, that was dope. I learned two things. Number one, I’m not in shape. I mean these people were like amazing. And number two, I don’t know how to dance. Nobody in the band can dance compared to these people. I got to give it up, there was this one couple that came in who were guests and they were these champions, and I saw this dude, he started from the floor, she was lying on top of him, and with one arm he got up on one knee and with a fluid motion stood all the way up and stretched her out into the sky.

J: I can do that.

A: No, the way that he did it, nobody can do that shit. I can throw somebody but I don’t think I could do it as graceful as this cat did.

M: Was it weird being in that situation where you guys were on TV with people dancing?

R: It turned out way better than I thought. At first I was like, that’s corny, but then we were there and everyone was really nice. The other half of the band said there’s twenty million people who watch it. I said, okay then, I guess we’re gonna do this. It was cool. It was totally like the magic of TV. The stage set itself, it doesn’t look really nice, there’s kinda these bleachers, but on TV, you see it on the camera, it looks awesome! And the great thing is all these musicians, there’s all these bad-ass musicians from L.A. who are on so many records. It was kinda cool to be hanging with them all day.

M: I wanna know how in the hell you guys kept your concentration with all those hot girls shaking their asses right there in front of you?

A: The twenty million people watching was kind of a big motivator.

R: Yeah, if you fuck up, these twenty million people are gonna be like, “What did you do?!”

B: It’s definitely not like you guys weren’t having fun up there. You stand up, you’re doing kicks back and forth, you’re just partying. It really comes through that you guys really like what you’re doing up there. I’d have to say that you guys had the most fun, more than any other band I’ve seen so far (at Bonnaroo).

R: We always do. We play this stage, we play the small stage afterwards. We’re just having a good time. We’re playing music, it’s not brain surgery, we’re not digging ditches, and there’s people here to enjoy themselves. We’re very happy that we get to do this for our lives.

B: I must be the only guy, probably on this farm, who didn’t know who Beetle Bob was…

J: And now you do.

B: That was awesome that you guys gave him a shout and had him come out.

J: He’s funny.

B: He said he’s seen like 50,000 shows!

J: He’s from St. Louis and he’s… I don’t know if anomaly is the right word… he’s kind of a thing all to himself.

M: He’s an amorphous being.

J: He’s just a lover of music. He comes out to all our shows, so we give him props.

M: Asdru, you say, facial hair and a beard is a key to success! (Laughter) First of all, how stoned were you when you made that video?

A: Oh, you saw that. It’s funny, I wasn’t stoned, I was actually…

M: Tired, delirious?

A: No, I actually was really depressed at that point there, I was in Jakarta (Indonesia) and I had too much time to kill. So I started listening to all the classics and I came across Michael McDonald. Then I started watching this old podcast, I guess they got a cease and desist order at some point, and it was just a whole spoof on how smooth music came around. They all had this facial thing going! Like Kenny Loggins, Michael McDonald, they had that really cool facial hair, the Bee-Gees.

M: So you tried to grow a big massive one or what?

A: Well, I tried but then I started looking kinda funky and my wife said, “You gotta cut that shit.”

M: How am I doing?

A: You’re doing great. See, that’s Kenny Loggins right there! But that was the thing, because I realized that all these cats, like the Beach Boys, the Beatles…

M: So how’s got the best beard at this festival? Willie Nelson, probably.

A: Yeah.

M: Anybody else?

A: B. B. King. I like his, it’s classic.

M: Wait…

J: Yeah, he’s got facial hair, but it’s on his back! (Laughter)

A: It comes in a V-neck.

M: Raul, I was gonna bring my German Shepherd to the interview but…

R: Ha. Yeah, he’s (Moe) watched all the videos. Yeah, I got bit when I was a kid by a big ass German Shepherd and ever since then I’ve always been freaked out by dogs. I’ve had to learn how to really chill out around them. I’m learning.

B: You guys are, right now, in your longest tenure with a label. How’s that relationship?

How does it compare to Interscope?

J: Oh, it’s much better. What happened with Interscope is that we kind of fell into them. Our first label was Almo Sounds. Jerry Moss and Herb Alpert kind of got out of the business and in doing so we kinda got folded into Interscope. With them we were kind of a round peg in a square hole. We didn’t really fit into that machine really, along with September 11^th and a bunch of other excuses, so we got dropped by them and got picked up by Concord. Concord is music lovers, they just bought Vanguard, Stax, all these classic catalogs. They give us space and let us make our music. They give us suggestions and stuff but they’re not like, “Where’s the hit?!” They’re not like that. They say, “We love this record and we’re gonna put it out.”

M: I know you guys recorded for the Dodgers…

J: We took a song of ours that they actually liked, they came to us, they were like, “We like the song but can you change it into more of a Dodger theme?” So we changed the song Magnolia Soul into Go Dodgers Go! (Laughter)

M: But you’re wearing a Yankees shirt!

J: Oh, this isn’t the baseball team, this represents being American more.

R: A yankee go home kinda thing. (Laughter)

M: Hey, we’re yankees.

J: They asked us to put it out there and they’re playing it this season.

M: Awesome. I don’t know if Brian told you guys about our plans but we’re gonna take you guys over to the batting cages and we’re gonna challenge you guys, Ozomatli versus the Excelsior crew, to a hitting contest.

J: Aw shit!

R: A hitting of what, baseball?

M: It depends! Either way, we can go a couple of rounds! Let’s do it.

At the batting cage:

R: I used to play when I was a kid. My father was a coach. I played all the way up into high school. But I never really practice or anything. I was good, but I haven’t really played since then. I haven’t really swung a bat since last time I was here probably, which was like two years ago.

B: Trey, let me talk to ya for a sec dude.

T: Alright, cool, let’s do this.

B: You need to get some mic time. Gimme a prediction about how Asdru’s gonna do (in the batting cage). He’s taking it pretty seriously!

T: I know, he really focused!

B: He’s dialed in.

T: This is crazy. I’ve never seen him this focused about sports!

B: So, Trey, how did you get involved with Ozomatli?

T: I was actually hanging out with G. Love, of G. Love and the Special Sauce, and he was like, “Yo, Trey, why don’t you come and jump on stage with me.” So I went and I got up on stage with him and Ozo was there and they were like, “Yo, man, why don’t you jump up with us.” I was like, alright, cool. So, I jumped up on stage with them.

B: So what did you do, did you freestyle? Did you have a couple of things in your pocket?

T: I had some rhymes to share so I said I’d do it. So we did that and then the next day they were like, “Yo, why don’t you come with us to Santa Barbara?” I was like, fuck, alright, cool. On that day they were like, “Well, hey, what are you doing? Cuz we might need a MC to travel.” I was like, I’m not doing too much of anything, so if you want me to travel, yeah no problem, now’s a good time. So that’s how it turned out. It’s pretty awesome.

Moe’s Intro – We have got a podcast of truly legendary proportions here on Moe Train’s Tracks. I got an opportunity at Bonnaroo to sit down with the legendary Bobby Weir of The Grateful Dead and Ratdog fame. I’m tellin’ ya, when Bobby Weir stepped onto the scene in the media tent, it was mass hysteria. Everyone wanted a piece of him, everyone wants to talk to a legend… Fortunately, we at Moe Train’s Tracks got to sit down with him backstage, and we got to pick his brain about music… about his philosophies…

I know Bobby always speaks about the music scene, but I decided to take it a different route. When I told Bobby that I really wanted to talk about music, more than the music scene, Bobby’s eyes lit up. That’s a sign of a TRUE musician.

Also, you know you have an interview of truly legendary proportions when two legends are in the same room, interviewing each other on the mic! That’s right… We had a little surprise on Moe Train’s Tracks when Jack Casady, a founding member of Hot Tuna, walked in during the middle of the interview, and Bobby Weir stood up and started to interview Jack Casady with our mics! I’m telling ya… I was absolutely shocked! I think Bobby’s manager was shocked too! As soon as Jack and Bobby were on the mic, it was like the paparazzi was let in… There were so many cameras going off… It was insanity! And we got it all on the mic at Moe Train’s Tracks podcast.

So it is with our honor… That we bring you… Bobby Weir!

Moe – I know you always talk about music “scenes…” Let’s talk about music itself..

Bobby – Music what?

Moe – Music itself as a subject.

Bobby – Uh huh!

Moe – More importantly than a band… Of course you were in The Grateful Dead… You helped to form music itself.

Bobby – (Smiles) Yeah, so I’m told!

Moe – (Laughs)

Bobby – You know, I’m told that The Grateful Dead were the “Godfathers of the Jam Band Scene,” though I don’t see it that way. You know, I think what we do goes back at least to Buddy Boland, the legendary New Orleans trumpet player back around the turn of the last century. I think that basically jam music in Western culture comes from at least that far back. We… The Grateful Dead managed to bring rock and roll, or what they call rock and roll sort of in that direction. That may have been our crowning achievement, perhaps. And in that regard, I guess we have contributed a bit. I think that people have found inspiration in what we did and I think you can hear at Bonnaroo a lot of bands who, like I said, found inspiration in what we did and are sort of carrying that torch.

Moe – Absolutely.

Bobby – So… you know, I think that’s good ’cause the more adventure there is in music, the more I think the rewards are.

Moe – So it started back in the late 20’s and 30’s with Jazz… With Louis Armstrong or earlier than that…

Bobby – Yeah… Louis Armstrong… Those guys. You know, particularly Louis Armstrong.

Moe – Right… So you think it really progressed when The Beatles brought electric to the scene… They made it mainstream, do you think?

Bobby – The Beatles were more mainstream. Their arrangements were tight, but there wasn’t a lot of room for improvisation in what they did. They were awfully good at what they did, but I wouldn’t have called them a “jam band” by any means or a jazz band or anything like that.

Moe – Duke Ellington mentioned about jazz having no rules… no form… it can be held down to no laws. How do you feel that it applies to your music?

Bobby – Well, you know, it’s 100 percent applicable to what we do, though that’s an awfully high standard to set.

Moe – Of course.

Bobby – No rules… no form… It’s almost impossible to live up to that on a “good night,” and we have “good nights” pretty regularly in my band these days! We go to places where we’re really starting from go. We don’t even know what tempo we’re going to start with. Tempo is a rule. A key is a rule. A tonality is a rule. Then a melody is another rule. Rhythm is another rule… And all that kind of stuff… And to make music that people can actually enjoy listening to, you have to conform to a lot of those rules.

Moe – Right.

Bobby – Though like I say, on some evenings, we can throw all that stuff out the window and be really free, and still make music that people can get into. We’re trying to do that nightly.

Moe – You have a setlist of almost 200 songs, correct? Or is it more than that?

Bobby – Something like that.

Moe – How decide how to go from song to song? Are moving more to setlists now, or are you still doing improvisation? What is your approach these days?

Bobby – I usually do a setlist for this band. It’s real hard… We like to keep playing. We like to keep a meter going. See, if we start a show at 100 beats per minute. We like to keep that meter going for a while and change up the rhythms… Change up the keys… Change up the songs. Given that, it’s real helpful to, you know, to consult a list of the songs that we do that are in that meter, and pick from there. I’m working on making a software program that will allow me to do that on the fly.

Moe – Oh, very nice!

Bobby – But for the time being, I still write a setlist. And when I do that… I have a database of all the setlists that we’ve done for the past decade or so, and I’ll go back and look at… If we’re playing in Memphis, I’ll go back and look at the last two or three times that we’ve played Memphis, and all those songs that we did are automatically out. And then I’ll look at the last week or two that we’ve been playing on this tour, and all those songs are automatically out. And then I start from there.

Moe – Even when you were with The Grateful Dead or Ratdog, you still have a different show every night, don’t you? Do you keep switching? People follow you around from city to city..

Bobby – Yep.

Moe – And they’re getting a unique experience almost every single time, unless… I mean, of course, you can duplicate it every once in a while, it happens, but…

Bobby – You know, we’ll play a given tune two or three times on a tour, and that’s about as often as we’ll play it. We have enough tunes so that we can keep the rotation going, and that way… You know, when a tune comes up in a show, you know that it’s gonna be your last crack at it for a while, so you’re gonna put a little more of yourself into it. Besides that, you haven’t played it for a while, so maybe you’ll have some new insights into how to interpret it.

Moe – It keeps changing? Does it keep evolving?

Bobby – Yeah. So you know, every show’s going to be different. I really doubt that there’s ever been a show that’s even been coincidentally the same as one that we did two or three or eight years ago.

Moe – You always have different projects. You always seem to keep yourself very, very busy, no matter when you were with The Grateful Dead, you’d always have a side project, or you were doing your solo album.

Bobby – Right.

Moe – How did you go putting together Ratdog?

Bobby – Ratdog just happened. I, you know, started playing with Rob Wasserman… We did a benefit together and had a lot of fun, and decided to go out as a duo for a while, and that lasted for a few years… and then we decided to add a drummer, because we’d done a session with this guy and we both enjoyed working with him. And so we added Jay Lane, and we were a trio for a while. I think I’m actually gonna start playing that trio again.

Moe – Oh very nice! Where are you going to start that?

Bobby – Because, you know, I did a benefit a couple weeks ago with those guys… a school benefit in San Francisco. And it was you know… I remembered how much fun that was…

Moe – Excellent!

Bobby – And so I’m gonna start doing that again I think.

(Tent opens, and in walks the legendary Jack Casady… Founding member of Hot Tuna)

Bobby – (Surprised… stands and smiles) Look at this guy!

(Many photographers come into the tent and start to rapidly snap pictures…)

Moe – (Stands wide eyed and laughs in disbelief)

Bobby – (Turns his mic to Jack Casady) We’re doing a podcast here, so you’re on!

Jack Casady – Oh hi, this is Jack Casady, I’m coming in to see my old buddy, Bob.

Moe – (Laughs in further disbelief at the events which are unfolding in front of his eyes)

Jack Casady – How it goin’ Bob?

Bobby – Well, pretty good! Where are you playing?

Jack Casady – We have played… We played at 2:30 today, but we’re (Hot Tuna) gonna sit in with our buddies, Gov’t Mule at 12 midnight to 3 in the morning.

Bobby – I’ll be there too.

Jack Casady – You’ll be there too…

Bobby – You bet!

Jack Casady – And we’re gonna do a little thing over here… Jorma’s around the corner, Barry’s around the corner, Eric’s around the corner… What are ya gonna do?

Bobby – All right!

Dennis (Bobby’s manager) – Say hi to Jorms…

Bobby (To Jack Casady) – We’re gonna finish up here…

Moe – When my friends and my listeners learned that I was going to be speaking with you… They wanted to know one thing. They wanted to know what are some of your craziest memories of your whole music experience… not just Grateful Dead, but your whole music experience. Anything stand out particularly?

Bobby – Uhhh… Let’s see. The musical experience. The one that stands out the most is the time that we uh… the first night that we played… I guess it was actually the third night that we played… well it was a blend of all three nights that we played in Egypt back in ‘78, I think it was. It was with The Grateful Dead, and we had done our sound check… It had taken us a week to rig the Son Et Lumiere over there which is you know, thousands and thousands of year old ampitheatre built back in ancient times at the foot of the Sphinx which is at the foot of the Great Pyramid, and it’s all lit up real pretty these days. Word had sort of filtered out that there was going to be a rock and roll band playing there… It was a first time happening. Like I said, we spent a week setting it up and getting electricity out there, getting it reasonably reliable. We went on stage to play and it was just at dusk, and we started playing, and the lights came on and we were the brightest and warmest thing around…

Moe – (Laughs)

Bobby – This was down by the river… The Nile. So the mosquitoes came right for us. This is something we hadn’t planned for!

Moe – Oh jeez… (Laughs)

Bobby – I look at this cloud of mosquitoes around us and I saw them landing on me right and left, and I figured, ‘Welcome to hell, this is going to be throughly un-enjoyable!’ (Smiles) And then something flashed before my eyes… Some dark form… And then another… And then another… And then I looked around and I saw that these great big bats were flying around the stage and they were gulping down the mosquitoes…

Moe – (Laughs)

Bobby – You know… (Laughs) They knew a good thing when they saw it! You know… It was a good thing for them! And then I realized that there were like hundreds, if not thousands of them… there were of course thousands of mosquitoes, but these bats were just… They were saving the day!

Moe – (Laughs)

Bobby – And so, you know… In my mind’s eye, I sort of backed off from this… So here’s this rock and roll band, just hitting the groove, just starting to hit the groove… And they’re on this ancient stage… at the foot of the Sphinx… at the foot of The Great Pyramids… And the dunes on either side were lined with Bedouins on their camels, with guns over their shoulders… They’d heard about this, and they’d come in to check it out… Full moon was rising… and all this surrounded by a cloud of bats… BIG cloud of bats! And I was thinking to myself, ‘Take me now Lord, I want to remember it just like this!’

Moe – (Laughs) That’s amazing! That’s amazing… Mr. Weir, thank you very, very much for your time.

Bobby – You bet!

Moe – I appreciate it. Thank you for all the music for all the years!

Bobby – The pleasure’s mine!

Interview with Sam Totman from Dragonforce on Moe Train’s Tracks

Sam Totman, Monty Wiradilaga, Brian Kracyla

Rockstar Mayhem Festival – Philadelphia, PA

M:  First of all, let me give proper respect to one of the top shredders in the scene.

S:  Aw, you’re too nice.  I’m sure you say that to every band.

M:  We’re with Sam Totman of Dragonforce.  Thanks for being with us today.  First of all, congratulations on having the new album.  Did the band think it was a tough task to follow Inhuman Rampage, one of my favorite metal albums of all-time?

S:  Yeah, it’s always hard.  Obviously, it’s not very hard on the first one ‘cause whatever you do is always going to be kind of original, or original for you I guess.  But yeah, it was really hard, we actually thought that when we made Inhuman Rampage, we thought how are we going to make something better than something like Firestorm.  You don’t really know if it’s going to be better until you’ve done it.  Like when I wrote a bunch of songs for this new album and everybody was like, “They’re rubbish” but I knew what they were going to sound like at the end so I was like, “It’s gonna be cool.”  You still don’t really know what it’s gonna be like.  I might write a vocal line or whatever, and I might think it’s going to work really well, then when the guy goes out and actually sings it, it might not turn out as well as I thought it was going to be.  The whole thing is like an endless kind of job, basically.  It took us seven months in the studio to get the final result.

M:  So, with the writing process, it’s you and Herman, or is it mostly you?

S:  Yeah, it’s mostly me.  Herman does more of the gear.  I don’t know anything about gear.  He works it out to make the album sound good.  I do mostly more of the writing and he does more of the gear side of things.  Yeah everyone’s got their own job to do anyway.

M:  When I heard Hereos of Our Time for the first time I had to stand up during the chorus and put my fist in the air!

S:  There you go, that’s the idea.

M:  In victory, ‘cause I felt victorious after hearing the track.

S:  Good, it’s supposed to make people feel happy.

B:  Very epic.

S:  Epic, yeah.  People keep saying, “Well, what’s the difference with this album?”  I say it’s more happier sounding, ‘cause it is.  But apparently if you say “epic” it’s a bit less gay.  (Laughter)

M:  Well, a lot of bands say their next album’s gonna be heavier, faster.

S:  Or more melodic, that’s a rather classic one.

M:  What’s the bullshit?  Isn’t that just saying the same thing over and over?

S:  Exactly.  How can you be more melodic?  It’s either melodic or it’s not.  Yeah, it’s stupid, oh well.

M:  So what do you say to power-metal purists that down your guys style, that say it’s not the norm?  I say fuck ‘um.

S:  Yeah!  Well, to be honest, the power-metal that we used to like ten years ago, when we first started, doesn’t really exist anymore.  All the bands I listened to ten years ago there albums are crap.  I’m not trying to be a big-head saying that we’re so much cooler than anybody.  I think we sort of come to the point now where I don’t really think that we’re part of a power scene or any other scene.  I think we’re on our own.  I don’t wanna sound like blah blah blah, I’m cool, but I really think it is, it’s so different.  I listened to the a Stratovarius album the other day, which is something we used to really like, I still do, and I was like, this sounds nothing like us now, it sounds almost like an eighties band.

M:  You must have punk influences because I a lot of pictures with you rocking out the black Rancid cut-off t-shirt.

S:  Yeah, I listen to that as much as metal.  People say I’m gay ‘cause I listen to Blink 182 stuff all the time, just as much as I listen to Slayer or something.

M:  Well, you wrote a lot of catchy songs, there’s a pop influence with that.

S:  Yeah, it’s the same thing essentially.  A lot of my vocals and stuff, I listen to a pop music as well, and if you listen to that kind of stuff, I mean, the vocal melodies and chord progressions are not that much different from what we do to say a pop punk band.  It’s the same four chords and certain notes that go over those chords that work.  A lot of metal people are like, “Nah, that’s gay, that’s gay” but they actually don’t realize that it’s actually the same thing.

M:  So when are you gonna have Tim and Lars on stage with you?

S:  Yeah, well, they probably think we’re gay.  (laughter)

M:  With the new album, it seems as if you’ve taken the tempo down a little bit.  I don’t know if it was a conscious change or what was it?

S:  Yeah, it was in places.  Obviously, with all our songs on the last album they were like 200 beats per minute, it kinda made it sound like the same thing, which was cool at the time because that’s what we wanted to do.  But now we thought that we’ll put different tempo bits, like for example, there’s more middle sections that are playing over a different drum beat because it forces you to do different guitar solos because there’s only so many licks you can do over a sort of bap-bap-bap drum beat.  It’s more to give us more ideas for guitar as much as anything.

M:  When you’re writing your dual solos with Herman, what’s the process with that?

S:  Well, basically if I write a song, I’ll know there’s gonna be like six guitar solos in this section and I’ll write a bunch of chord progressions and I’ll be like, alright, that’s solo one, that’s solo two, that’s solo three, and then we just decide, alright, who’s gonna do the first one?  After that it just alternates.  We don’t actually sit there and write guitar solos together.  I’ll write a bunch of chord progressions and then we just solo over them.

M:  I saw one video of you doing an instructional video of how you guys trade off during your solos.  I guess you do certain chord progressions but work other hammer-ons and …

S:  Yeah, exactly.  We tried to get away from it a bit on this album but on the previous album… basically what we do is just solo over the verse.  If you see a song that is normally pre-chorus into the second pre-chorus into the chorus, the solo section is usually just soloed over that, ‘cause then it kinda builds the solo up in the same way as you would build up a vocal section up to the chorus.  Obviously, the solo over the chorus is the most catchy and it’s over the nicer chords.

M:  Sometimes it seems like you guys are almost having a battle with the guitars.  I’m sure it’s always mentioned to you about the video games, that you have that influence.  It seems like you guys are having an epic battle!

S:  I think that yeah it sounds like a battle when it’s finished but I just think that six guitar solos one after the other is a cool thing to do.  I thought it sounded good when I listened to bands when I was growing up.  It was usually like one guy would do one solo and the other guy would do one and that would be it.  I thought that was sort of cool.  You’d hear one guy play it and then the other guy would play it, it’s was kinda like a duet between a singer and a female singer.  So I thought, let’s increase that, take it to like six each.  It’s not really a battle, it’s just to make it sound good, but then when you listen back to it you kinda say it is a battle.

M:  Speaking of battles, I’ve seen a lot of battles caused by you guys, not by real guitar but of course by the video games, Guitar Hero III.  How’s it feel to have Through The Fire and The Flames be the holy grail of all songs on that video game?

S:  I think it’s cool.  It’s obviously, I don’t want to sound like I have a big head again, but there’s not that many bands that have got as much complicated guitar playing in them.  You can listen to someone like Steve Vai who’s a hundred times better than us but then, in my opinion, I don’t think he’s got very catchy songs, you know, he doesn’t have very catchy chords.  The guitar’s great but there’s no great singing…

M:  No fists in the air!

S:  Yeah.  So, yeah, it should be the holy grail of that game.  I’m starting to sound like a real wanker now.

B:  Have you actually tried to play it (on the video game) yourself?

S:  I tried it once and I was pretty crap at it.  It’s not really my style of game to be honest, not because it’s for the guitar, it’s just not my style of game, I prefer other games.

M:  What like Final Fantasy?

S:  Yeah, or I like strategy games, Company of Heroes, that’s really cool.  Shit like that.

M:  Thinking about video games being a new platform for bands to get their music out, on MySpace last time I looked you had 11,614,019 listens.  That was last night, you probably have 20,000 more by now.

S:  Really?  That’s cool.

M:  What does it mean for the music biz to have new outlets like this?

S:  Well it’s cool yeah.  Obviously, you sell less records now then you would have in the eighties, we would have sold probably something like 5 million then, because it’s just the way the music business is going.  I suppose it all kinda works out, everything balances out.  Supposedly more people will hear it but less people buy your records these days.  In the end you have the same number of fans I think.

B:  More people go to the shows.

S:  Yeah exactly, so I think it’s pretty cool.

M:  The metal scene is pretty interesting.  We mostly cover “indy” music festivals, Bonnaroo, Cochella, that kind of stuff.  They have their own scene, metal has it’s own scene.  How would you describe the metal scene and the people in it?

S:  Lots of fat dudes and no chicks.

M:  And black t-shirts.  (Laughter)

B:  I stuck out like a sour thumb walking around in my white shirt!

M:  Speaking of chicks, how’s that situation going?

S:  Pretty grim.  Well, obviously you only need one each day, unless your really greedy, but you can usually find one.  It might not be amazing…

M:  You get drunk enough it doesn’t matter.

S:  Exactly.  They’re not going to be stunning at a festival like this (Mayhem).  But we’re not fussy, you can’t be.

M:  I know you’re a big fan of the beer.  We were going to bring you some Coors.

S:  Coors Original is the only one I like.  Coors Light doesn’t do anything.

M:  When are we going to see you on stage with a beer helmet doing a solo?

S:  When I really need one because I’m completely bored, it’s getting there.  It’ll serve two purposes.

M:  What if we brought a beer bong, would you do a beer bong on stage?

S:  To be honest with you, I wish I could because I think it looks cool and you look quite tough but I actually can’t do a beer bong.  I can’t skull back a beer.  I can drink like twenty in a night or whatever  but actually can’t skull back beers.

M:  Have you tried though?

S:  Yeah, totally, but I always puke.  I wish I could, I think it looks really cool.  I’ve been bombed out since I was a kid, I couldn’t do it.

M:  What is your crowning achievement?  Is it the Ibanez Sam Totman Signature guitar or what?  And by the way do you have an extras you can spare?

S:  I’ve only got like two myself!  They said I could have a bunch of them but there kinda both just sitting around my house.  Yeah, I suppose that’s quite cool.

M:  What was your first guitar?

S:  It was a classical one actually, ‘cause I learned classical music.  Then about ten years later this skinhead guy I lived with smashed it over my head!  (Laughter)  That was my first guitar, I felt really bad.

M:  You felt bad?!

S:  No, I got it when I was ten!  This lovely guitar that my parents bought me when I was ten years old ended up getting smashed on my head by a nutter.

M:  Finally, I think Dragonforce is the epitome of being triumphant.  Your music makes me want to pump my fist in victory and I envision the mighty Pegasus soaring over the clouds of Olympus!

S:  Yeah, that perfect.  That’s what we want to do.

M:  What is your vision of the story of Dragonforce?

S:  Basically the same as that.  It just supposed to make you feel happy.  I like the music that makes you feel happy so that’s what comes out when we write songs.  It’s something that’s uplifting.  If you’re sad, it’ll make you happy.  If you’re happy, it’ll make you even more happy.

M:  There you go.  Thanks a lot for being with us, appreciate it.

S:  Yeah.  Cool.

MTT and RFK Jr. talk politics, the environment and the power of Bonnaroo’s people.

Interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr on Moe Train’s Tracks

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Monty Wiradilaga, Brian Kracyla

Manchester, TN – Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival

M:  I’m here with Mr. Robert Kennedy Jr…  Why are you here at Bonnaroo?

R:  I’m here at Bonnaroo because this is a festival that famously has a very strong environmental ethic.  The people who come here, generally speaking, have very strong ethics.  I’m going to talk to people about coming to Appalachia this summer and getting arrested to stop the coal industry from cutting down the Appalachian mountains, which is the biggest crime in American history.  And my kids come here every year, so I wanted to make sure and see them.

M:  To appeal to a younger audience, what does that mean to your cause?

R:  The people who come here, generally speaking, have a very idealistic vision about this country.  They want our nation to live up to its historic destiny of being an exemplary nation.  They want America to be everything America promised everybody that it was going to be.  And it’s important at this point, particularly with coal, to remind people that coal represents the subversion of our democracy, the corruption of our public officials, and the destruction of our most precious national heritage, the historic landscapes where Danny Boone and Davy Crockett roamed, a place that so much of our culture, our history, our values, are rooted in those landscapes.  And we’re cutting them down.  We’ve already cut down five hundred of the biggest mountains in West Virginia.  We’ve buried twelve hundred miles of streams.  We are going to cut down an area, flatten an area, the size of Delaware and they’re not going to be able to tell their kids, to take their kids to the Cumberland.  It’s criminal and it’s illegal.  We got a court order saying it’s illegal but the industry was able to corrupt officials in the public, the Bush administration, and get them to reverse the court order.  The entire business plan for this industry is based upon their capacity to corrupt public officials, subvert our democracy, and get away with illegal behavior.  Their product is not cheap, it’s hideously expensive, and it’s not clean, you know, that’s a dirty lie.  All the claims about coal by the industry are lies and they are destroying America.  And they’re destroying the planet as well.

M:  How do you feel the Obama administration will deal with this national crisis?

R:  I think all of us had great hopes with the Obama administration.  There’s a lot of heartbreak in Appalachia today and a lot of heartbreak in the environmental community because the White House just released its Mountain-top Removal Policy and it is, to say the least, extremely weak.  It’s going to change nothing on the ground.

M:  Mr. Kennedy, thank you very much.

The Tracks and Greg from Dillinger speak about camaraderie, DIY or Die and more at Bonnaroo.

DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN INTERVIEW WITH MOE TRAIN’S TRACKS

Greg Puciato, Monty Wiradilaga, Brian Kracyla

Manchester, TN – Bonnaroo 2009

You never know what’s going to happen during a Moe Train’s Tracks interview, as Greg Puciato, frontman of Dillinger Escape Plan, has his own interview with a dazed and confused girl, we speak about the camaraderie of the scene, how “DIY or Die” fuels his band, their new lineup, and next year’s upcoming album.  Enjoy.

M:  What’s going on man?

G:  Nothing, just hanging out, just walking around checking some stuff out.

Random girl:  (to Greg) Can you point me in the direction of the Rendezvous Tent?

G:  Umm. (Laughter)  What is your name?

RG:  I’m Caroline.

G:  Caroline, I’m Greg from the Dillinger Escape Plan, and we are doing an interview right now.

C:  Okay.

G:  Um, and I have no idea where I am right now either.

C:  I’m supposed to have a rendezvous at the Rendezvous Tent.

G:  That what you do at the Rendezvous Tent, right, but you don’t know how to get there, which poses a problem.  I don’t know either.  (to random passerby)  Do you know how to get to the Rendezvous Tent?

RP:  I don’t know how to get there.

G:  What good is trying to rendezvous with someone if you can’t get to the Rendezvous Tent?!  (all laughing)  Caroline, good luck trying to get there.

C:  Thank you.

G:  Wow!  How many drugs did that girl take?

M:  Welcome to Bonnaroo.

G:  Seriously, that was amazing.  She was higher than a kite.

M:  (Laughter) I think that’s the general consensus with most people here right now.

G:  Most people I look at here, if they don’t have sunglasses on, you can just look in their eye and be like, “You’re on some other thing right now in some other place.”

M:  Exactly.  Earlier today, when you guys came on, it was like, “Wake the fuck up Bonnaroo!”

G:  Dude, I can’t believe how siked people were.  I thought for sure, in general at this fest’ because it has a reputation for being more of a hippy peace-love type of thing, that as soon as we come out and start screaming at people and doing cool shit, people are going to turn around and just walk the other way, but people were siked, at one in the afternoon on the last day!  It was honestly, we were talking about it after the show, the best big show that we’ve ever played in the United States.

M:  Really?

G:  Yeah.  We felt like we played well.  People seemed stoked on us.

M:  Yeah, the reception was definitely great.

G:  This type of vibe, it just doesn’t exist that often in the U.S., this type of festival vibe.  It felt very European.  In the United States, when you think of a festival, you think of Ozzfest or Warped Tour, and it’s like the same thing all day long.  But this is cool because yesterday was Nine Inch Nails and today, if you wanted to, you can see the Dillinger Escape Plan and then Erika Badu.

M:  She’s still on right now.

G:  I really wanted to see her…

M:  I’ll cut it short then.

G:  It’s okay.  It’s cool because it seems like, for a very long time here, people have been very into the mind-set of like, “I’m only listen to metal” or “I only listen to hip-hop”.  Now, it’s cool to see so many people turn out for such an eclectic thing.

M:  Exactly.  It’s just always weird to see the different  the different scenes clashing.

G:  No, it’s cool, it’s very cool.

M:  In watching your set it became evident how camaraderie really works its way into your music.  You don’t see often where you can throw your mic into the crowd, let them sing, and when you call for it, they throw it right back to you.

G:  I think something about our music, we’ve been around for ten years, I think there’s some aspect to it, besides the obvious insane energy and aggression of it, there’s a vibe of everyone knowing that it’s not the easiest thing in the world to listen to and it’s not the easiest thing in the world to get.   For as many people who are siked on it there’s a lot of people that just probably hate it.  I think that makes the people that are into to it have this really us-against-the-world type of vibe.  We’ve always tried to be really hands-on with our fans and really communicative and never to-cool-for-school and always talk to them and do cool stuff with them.  If they right to us online we try to write back to every person.  I think, over the years, it’s created now a point where we have this really cool synchronous type vibe with our fans.  It’s neat man, it’s really nice.

M:  It’s also basically crossed the line from camaraderie to trust.

G:  Yeah, that kid could have stole the mic and ran away with it, but he threw it back.  That’s the other thing, I think when you have confidence and you give someone some responsibility and your cool to them, they feel obligated to be cool back.  If that kid had tried to run away with the mic I probably would have jumped on him and killed him.  But it feels good and it’s interesting, I have a lot of people say that our shows, even though they are so aggressive and so violent, it feels like the overall vibe is still positive in a way.  So, yeah, that’s really cool.

M:  Absolutely.  Also, not just that, but you doing stage diving and your guitarist stage diving with his guitar!  Now that’s trust.

G:  Yeah.  To me, we just try to take the vibe of playing in a basement to twenty people where we came from and try to get that to translate to bigger places and the only way to do that is to be as hands-on and as physically in people’s faces as possible and force them to wake up a little bit.  It sad to see so many people have such a rock star complex that the only time that they engage their fans is if they do some kind of scheduled meet-and-greet or a signing or something.  You know, hang out for a little bit and shake some people’s hands or jump into the crowd or do something.  I do know man, you (the rock star) are no better than anyone else. This is going to be over for us one day and who knows what we’re going to be doing.  So to try to act like you’re cooler than school is silly.

M:  Hippies versus hardcore kids…

G:  It’s two sides to the same coin because the whole hippy vibe and the punk rock thing, which is what hardcore came out of, are both very socially aware movements.  There both very communal, we’re all in this together versus some type of exterior force type of vibe, and one just took a much more aggressive approach than the other.  It’s kinda like one is Malcolm X and one is Martin Luther King Jr.  They want the same thing but one is like, “I’m gonna smoke you out” and the other is like, “I’m gonna kick you in the fucking face!”  But we want the same thing, so I think that’s why it translates.  It’s not like we’re just knuckleheads trying to incite the crowd to beat each other up.  I’d like to think it’s more intelligent than that.

M:  What do you think about the term “DIY or die” and how’s that relate to your band?

G:  Well, for us, that’s pretty much exactly how we try to do everything.  We don’t have a manager, we self-manage ourselves.  We are very hands-on, there’s no merch’, there’s no poster, there’s nothing about our band visually, sonically, how we are represented in press, anything, that we are not the seed of and have the final say in.  As much as it drives us nuts and we spend every waking moment of our lives working on this, I know that there is absolutely nothing out representing us that we didn’t see from its inception to its finality.  I think that it’s another thing that our fans appreciate.  If they get a t-shirt from us, they aren’t getting it from some graphic designer that works for the record company that we were just like, “Yeah, whatever, that sounds cool, how big is the check we’re gonna get?”  That thing has to look like something that I would wear, that means something to me, that’s looks cool.  I think, especially in the climate now where the record industry is just collapsing completely, that the people that can do the most DIY are the only ones that are going to stay afloat.

M:  That’s basically how the trend in music is going these days.

G:  It has to be.  It has to go back to that.  If you’re forced to be in a position financially to cut back every bit of slack you possibly can and to try to do as much by yourself as you possibly can, it’s gonna weed everybody out.  The only people that are going to stay alive are the people who really give a shit and the people who care enough to put in the time to do everything themselves.  The days of being a kid, and thinking that your rock star fantasy is going to come true and someone else is going to wipe your ass for you and do everything for you and you’re just gonna get a check at the end of the day, are completely over.

M:  Hit the road and promote yourself.

G:  Yeah man, go out and do the shows.  Don’t suck live.  Don’t write shitty music.  Put out cool shit and you’ll last.

M:  So what’s your favorite lyric, the one that means the most to you?

G:  You know what, it’s probably a lyric that’s going to be on our upcoming record because, for me, lyrics are snap-shots of where you were in your life, and you don’t want to be there forever.  So when we sing songs from our past records it’s like looking at a picture of myself in an auditory way.  I’ll be singing a song, and I’ll remember writing that song, I was twenty-three, I was in my basement, this is exactly what I was talking about.  I might not relate to it now.  Hopefully, you’re in a different place, especially when you’re yelling and screaming and pissed, you know.  You shouldn’t still be pissed six years later at the same thing.  The trick is to find a kernel of that memory and hone in on it, you can still mean what you saying and you’re not just spitting out consonants and vowels.  That’s for someone else to decide.  I know that’s a shitty answer, but I don’t have a favorite one of my lyrics.  I know they’re all pretty piss-poor, to be honest with you.  (laughter)  If you want to listen to lyrics, you should probably listen to Dylan or something.

M:  So when’s the new album coming out?

G:  February or January of 2010, which sounds like a long time but it’s realistically like 6 months away.  We do three more weeks of touring and then we go home and start recording in late July, early August.  January, February at the latest, we’ll get it out, and we’re siked man.

M:  What can we look forward to in the new album?

G:  Well, we got a new drummer, and that’s the biggest difference.  Our new drummer is just on fire!  He’s twenty-four and honestly the best drummer I’ve ever played with.  He wants to crush everyone.  He’s got this fire in him that he needs to prove to the world he’s the shit.  That’s kinda cool because he’s pushing us, and we’re really hard on ourselves so to be pushed by someone who is brand new is a really good feeling.  I can honestly say, after being in this band for a decade, that the stuff we’re writing now is the most inspired stuff we’ve ever written.  It’s hard to know whether you’re still going to be able to do stuff without becoming a caricature or parody of yourself.  The fact that we can still have something to say, ten years into it, with essentially the same style music, to me is nice, the fact that people still give a shit.  I think everyone will like it.  Anyone that likes us should be pleased with the new record.

M:  Awesome.  We look forward to it.  Thanks a lot for being with us.

G:  Definitely dude.