Dead World Roundup

Jackie Greene: New Album is Out; Touring with P&F and Solo

Analise Dubner — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:04:37 -0700

These are exciting days for Phil Lesh & Friends singer/songwriter/guitarist/keyboardist Jackie Greene. Not only does he have a truckload of dates with that group planned for the spring and summer, but he just released his much-anticipated new album, Giving Up the Ghost (on the 429 label, a subsidiary of Savoy) and will also be playing shows all over with his fine solo band.

For anyone who has followed Greene’s remarkable pre-P&F career, the depth and excellence of Giving Up the Ghost will come as no surprise. Over the course of a handful of superb albums through the years—each a revelation in its own way—Greene has shown himself to be a unique and formidable talent with strong connections to a variety of musical styles—blues, rock, soul, folk, country; pretty much the whole American roots cornucopia. His lyric style is similarly eclectic—he moves easily and naturally between straight-forward musings and more abstract poetic rambles; he can be amazingly forthright and self-revelatory or deliciously opaque—sometimes within the same song! He’s written incredibly simple, delicate love songs and complex journeys into the darker parts of the human psyche. Just in the songs of his that he’s performed live with Phil & Friends, you can get a sense of the range of his writing (and singing): The marvelous, folksy “Gone Wanderin’”; the lusty “Tell Me Mama”; the exotic Latin-flavored “Mexican Girl”; the big bounce of “So Hard to Find My Way”; the dark power of the rockin’ “Cold Black Devil”; the infectious soul of “Like A Ball and Chain.”

That dynamite last tune—certain to be a radio favorite if there’s any justice left in radioland—is one of several tracks from Giving Up the Ghost that Phil & Friends have played live. (The others are “Don’t Let the Devil Take Your Mind,” “Downhearted” and “Prayer for Spanish Harlem.”) No doubt others will find their way into the repertoire this spring and summer. The album was recorded in the fall of 2007, before, during and after P&F’s tour. Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin, who co-produced Jackie’s 2006 masterpiece, American Myth, with Greene, once again was at the helm for Ghost. It was recorded in Sacramento, San Francisco (at the studio Jackie shares with Tim Bluhm of Mother Hips, called Mission Bells), L.A., Chicago, Brooklyn and Portland (where Berlin lives). As was the case on Myth, some of the tracks feature a band made up of L.A. session musician friends of Berlin’s who collectively go by the name Jackshit: guitarist Val McCallum, bassist Davey Farragher and drummer Pete Thomas (of Elvis Costello fame). On half the tunes, though, the basic tracks were laid down by Jackie’s superb band: guitarist Nathan Dale, bassist/guitarist Jeremy Plog and drummer Bruce Spencer. Guests on a track or two each include the incomparable pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz, Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo, drummer Cougar Estrada and Berlin on various instruments, horn players Mic Gillette and George Brooks, P&F string wizard Larry Campbell (on violin, mandolin and vocals) and Phil Lesh—he recorded a bass track for the song “Animal” backstage at the Nokia Theater in New York during the band’s ten-night run there last year.

It’s an album of many moods: There’s the dark, atmospheric love song “Prayer for Spanish Harlem” (“Hot night, Spanish Harlem / full moon creeping low / I was standing at the bottom / your blue window”), and the light, Steve Miller-catchy Cajun romp “Another Love Gone Bad”; the driving and menacing “Don’t Let the Devil Take Your Mind” (“Temptation’s like a crooked finger / calling for us all”), and the acoustic guitar-driven anthem “Uphill Mountain,” in which he optimistically sings, “tell John Henry and Cassius Clay / swinging iron for a living is a hell of a way / but whatever you do don’t let your hammer stray / and I believe we’ll be just fine.” Jackie has said that perseverance is one theme that’s running through the album, and that’s something he knows a thing or two about, having had his share of music biz setbacks (like his last label, Verve Forecast, flaking out on him) even as his following has grown each year. It’s never been more hazardous to predict success for someone in the music industry, but Giving Up the Ghost feels like it could be his commercial breakthrough: There are solid hooks galore, a wide variety of unusual guitar and keyboard textures that always keep things interesting, and, typical of Jackie, his chameleon voice is amazing throughout—soft and gentle here, gritty and soulful when needed. All in all it’s a varied and vital work; certainly among the year’s best. And if you’ve enjoyed his tenure in Phil & Friends, by all means come out and catch one of his shows with his band—they put on a great show. (He also tours from time to time with Tim Bluhm as the Skinny Singers, playing other material, and has been known to work as a duo with guitarist Nathan Dale.)

Although I’d interviewed Jackie a couple of times last year for dead.net (and reviewed American Myth back in 2006), I’d never actually met him until I went to his funky-but-functional Mission Bells studio, located above a Peruvian restaurant, in February. Dressed head-to-toe in black, save for white socks, he was open and engaging as we talked shop about the recording of the new album, Phil & Friends and even a bit about his youth and teenage years.

I like the new album. I had to adjust to it a little; I’m not sure why. American Myth had a certain intimacy to it in songs like “Love Song 2 a.m.” and “Walking Away” that made it feel very personal, and this seems to be a little less folk-y.

It’s a little more abstract. It has certain kinds of sounds and a different quality of the sounds. It’s a little more lo-fi, you might say, on purpose. We did things like put vocals through a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder—used the preamps just to fuck ‘em up.

How Tchad Blake-ian! [Tchad Blake is a sonically adventurous engineer/producer who recorded many of Los Lobos’ classic mid-period albums.]

Exactly! Just mess with it on purpose to add a sort of glaze to the whole thing that blurs it a little bit; makes it a little ghost-y.

Tell me a bit about your approach following American Myth. Are these songs all ones that were written since that album, or are there tunes that date farther back?

They were all completed since that record. And there are some songs that are over a year-and-a-half old. I keep a lot of notebooks and I’ll dig around in them when I’m looking for songs, or I’ll listen to old demos and think, “What about that one—anything I can do with this one? Nah. How ‘bout this one? Well, maybe.” If it seems interesting I’ll probably do a lot of re-writing of it. With this record in particular, though, they’re fairly new.

But you didn’t write them in the studio.

Not really, no. Though “Another Love Gone Bad” was kind of written in the studio because all I had was a demo and melody for it and a couple of verses, and I sort of did it on the spot.

Do you write on guitar always?

Mostly, because that’s what’s always there. Like, if your on the road in a hotel room, I don’t have a piano in there. [Laughs] I will write on piano occasionally, though, and sometimes on something I don’t play that well, like the banjo or mandolin; something where I don’t really know what I’m doing.

Well, that pushes you in some interesting directions. Garcia used to say he liked writing on piano because he didn’t play it well.

Right. It limits you: What can I make out of these three chords I just learned on this instrument? [Laughs]

How elaborate will your demos be? Steve Berlin told me that “Animal” started out as one of your demos.

That’s right. In fact we used a lot of stuff from the demo on the finished track. Almost everything you hear is something I played originally on the demo, but later we went back and put a better drummer on there, and added a few other things. For that song I wanted it to be a certain way, with fake strings—mellotron and other things around the sides.

Where do you found a mellotron in this day and age?

You find them in some studios—like Sonora down in L.A. has one. Or you can get pretty good samples of mellotrons now. On “Animal” I wanted to have this big fat groove in the middle that’s almost like some lo-fi rap groove.

Well, that tune and “Ghosts of Promised Lands” have that sung-spoken thing happening.

They do. It’s a little Lou Reed-ish I guess.

Are those things you write out as poetry first and then fit to a tune?

Not “Animal.” That was straight-up a song. I just started singing it and had the mind-set of sort of rambling on with it, and I pretty much wrote it down all at once. And “Promised Lands” was the opposite—it was from various writings and piecing it together with the structure of a song, and it fit, so I got lucky.

Tell me about the process of making this album. I know you went initially to a studio called The Hangar in Sacramento, where you cut “Look Out Cleveland” for the Band tribute album, and then also did a few tracks for what would become this album.

Right. We did the basics for two or three songs there. We probably did 2/5 of it here [at Mission Bells], 2/5 in Sonora and 1/5 at The Hangar. Then the overdubs happened in all kinds of studios.

In this studio, all the basics were done on that one-inch tape machine, which arguably is the noisiest format you can use, but there’s some kind of charm about it that I like; again that kind of mid- lo-fi thing. All of it was done on tape in the beginning stages and then moved onto Pro Tools [digital workstation].

It was a record that was made in many cities because it was kind of made on the Phil Lesh tour, which was definitely different than anything I’ve done before. You know—waking up Chicago and Steve [Berlin] calls up and says “We’re in CRC [Chicago Recording Company] today!” “What are we working on?” “Well, we need you sing this and this and do this other overdub.” “OK!” [Laughs] We did that in New York, too. It was like being in touring mode while recording, so when I listen to it there’s a certain sense of restlessness, like you’re not at home.

Well, that’s kind of a theme running through your work, from Gone Wanderin’ on down.

That’s true. And I don’t mean it in a negative way at all. Maybe I hear it more, too because I know how it was done. [Laughs]

Are there things you and Steve wanted to avoid that you’d done on American Myth?

Not so much avoid, as certain things we wanted to go further with. When we talked about it, we decided it had to be different and darker than the last one.

When you say darker do you mean sonically or thematically?

Both.

Are you in a dark space right now?

No, I’m not, but the songs are, I guess. [Laughs] But particularly sonically. Like on “Don’t Let the Devil Take Your Mind,” instead of acoustic guitar, we have a clanging Dobro playing chords, instead of slide. It’s a little more sinister; things like that.

Ultimately it was going to be what it was going to be.

I was surprised when Steve Berlin told me that originally Verve didn’t want him producing the album after American Myth. I don’t know what their complaints were.

The former president of Verve doesn’t like Steve, and it all boils down to an argument they had many years ago. I’m like, “C’mon, you guys, act like adults!” It was retarded.

For better or for worse, I’m glad I’m not still with Verve. It became sort of a sinking ship and I got the chance to jump ship and I did. This record label [429/Savoy] loves Steve, so everybody’s happy.

How did you pick the songs that ended up on the album? I know you write a lot…

Steve definitely has more say than I do. There were like 20 songs that he had demos for and he starts saying, “How about these?” and I say, “But this one has to be on there,” and so I’ll get my one song on there. [Laughs]. I’m kidding—for the most part we agreed. It was sort of obvious which songs we should do and which ones didn’t quite fit or couldn’t be done.

How about in terms of which musicians to use on which tracks. Was that obvious, too?

No, it wasn’t obvious. It came down partly to time. The guys in my band knew some of the songs, because they’re ones we’d been playing [live], so it was obvious they’d do those.

Let’s see: “Ball and Chain” is Jackshit, “Shaken” is Jackshit, “Animal” is my band, “I Don’t Live in a Dream” is actually just me…

I like that tune, with the cool percussion; it’s kind of hypnotic…

There’s actually two drum kits, with me playing the main kit, and then on the bridge Cougar Estrada of Los Lobos comes in with a completely separate kit that sounds all room-y. Then there’s a phffft! and it sucks back to the main kit. The bass is not actually a bass but the low-end of an organ.

Doors-style.

Right. And then the percussion is Cougar played congas and I played cajon.

“Uphill Mountain” is my band, but also, in the chorus, Pete Thomas plays kick and snare to double it, so it’s a little beefier.

How would it occur to you or Oz [Fritz, engineer] to do that?

It occurs to all of us when we listen to the chorus and determine it needs to sound a little fatter. When we recorded it here [at Mission Bells] we taped a tambourine to the snare, we used ride cymbals as hi-hats and fucked up the drum kit to make it not feel like a regular drum kit, but when we got to the chorus I wanted to have a snare sound, and who better to overdub to an existing drum track than Pete Thomas?

“Don’t Let the Devil Take Your Mind” is my band, “Spanish Harlem” is my band. “Downhearted” is Jackshit, “Follow You” is Jackshit, “Love Gone Bad” is Jackshit, “When You Return” is my band, “Promised Land” is Jackshit. So it’s about half and half. And there’s intermingling, too—like Val, the [Jacksit] guitar player, plays on just about everything, and Greg Leisz is on there, too.

How much do you play on there?

I play guitar or electric guitar or electric piano on everything. On some tracks I have a couple of guitars on there. On “Uphill Mountian,” I’m doing a couple of guitars and Val is doing baritone guitar and Nathan [Dale]’s doing another kind of guitar. On “Devil” I’m doing the acoustic and electric guitars in the bridges. It’s a little like painting.

When you have a song that’s you’ve worked out with the band onstage, is it difficult to then re-imagine it in the studio in a different way?

No because the guys in my band are really good at de-structuring, too. So if I say, “Oh no, let’s try it way slower or way faster, and on that last turnaround let’s do it twice,” they can do it like that. They’re all pros.

On a song like “Follow You,” when we started playing it live, even though it was the other band [Jackshit] that did it, it’s a lot different live. When you play something a lot with a band you definitely get into a certain comfort zone: I’m used to playing this guitar in this spot because we know it sounds good and the crowd likes it, but that doesn’t automatically mean it’s the right thing once you get in the studio. You might listen back and think, “God, that guitar is really awful!” [Laughs] So you have to keep an open mind about it.

What’s the studio in L.A., Sonora, like?

We did a lot of American Myth there, too. It’s smallish for an L.A. studio and very, very state-of-the-art 1972 sort of place. It’s got a great API console. They have a great Studer 2-inch [multitrack tape recorder] and loads of funky compressors and a bunch of stuff with knobs and lights, and really great-sounding drum room and a great piano. They also have an apartment piano which is this little thing with something like 76 keys and it only has two strings for each hammer, so it’s very Beatles-sounding and it’s also great when you squash it with a compressor. I want one of those so bad for this place now.

I know you’re a Tom Waits fan from way back; I was going to ask you which era of Tom Waits—the folkier stuff at the beginning or the more idiosyncratic later stuff?

All of it! It’s not fair to ask me because I’m like a Tom Waits freak; I like everything he ever does, touches, smells…I pretty much like it. [Laughs] So I’m not objective about it at all. I like the weird shit, I like the normal shit. I like the pre-gravelly voice, I like the super-gravelly voice.

I haven’t heard much Tom Waits or anything else recently because for the last six months all I’ve been listening to is Grateful Dead music. [Laughs]

Besides Waits, who are some of the people who have influenced your aesthetic. I’m guessing Tchad Blake…

Definitely him.

He likes the weird keyboards and altered vocals and strange drums…

He does! There’s this record that [Los Lobos’] David Hidalgo made called Hound Dog that sounds almost as if every microphone had a sock over it; everything’s really muted.

Well, the Latin Playboys were like that, too.

They were, but this is even more so. It’s fuzz violin and super drugged-out drumming that’s way behind the beat. [Laughs]

Well, then I’ve gotta ask you how you can square that aesthetic with your professed desire to have a real hit…

I can’t! [Laughs] I guess that’s the weirdness of me. Certainly I want to have successful records—who doesn’t?—but I’m not willing to make anything other than what I want to make it sound like. If this is not considered commercially viable, so be it. But if there’s a song on this record that for whatever reason ends up catching the public’s attention, I’m totally for it.

I thought “Ball and Chain” was the obvious radio focus track; I was sort of surprised to hear your record company thinks it’s “Shaken.”

I chose “Ball and Chain,” too, just because it so jumpin’.

In the studio, do you tend to do many takes or try to get it down when it’s fresh and not belabor it?

We do a few takes, but a lot of times we’ll listen back and it’s “Oh, the first take was the best.” I have kind of short attention span for that kind of stuff, so we’ll do maybe five takes, ten tops, before I go “Screw it, you guys can do it without me and I’ll go smoke a cigarette.” But it usually ends up being one of the first three takes because of that sense of freshness and spontaneity.

Do you always do a scratch vocal with the band?

Almost always, and sometimes I’ll even do a final vocal with the band. On American Myth there were a couple [of basic tracks] with final vocals. On this one I don’t think there are any.

I heard the studio in Brooklyn was really nice.

That’s probably my favorite studio I’ve ever been to. It’s one thing to have great gear, which they definitely have—but the most important thing to me is the space; not only how it sounds, but how it feels. It has this beautiful, skinny long room with all this light coming in from the windows on the outside and it’s great-sounding, and they have lots of great instruments.

You have no compunction about going into a studio and picking up a guitar you’ve never seen and an amp you’ve never heard before and recording with it?

No, I love it! I’m not like I’m a Fender guy and I have to play a certain guitar and amp combo.

Hey, it says on your albums you play Gibson guitars!

Well, yeah, I am, because they hook me up! [Laughs] But if the Les Paul through the Vox doesn’t sound right for the song, I’ll use the Strat through a different amp or whatever…

And then not tell Gibson!

Of course not! [Laughs]

Where did you get your gear knowledge? I gather you’ve been recording forever.

I’ve been an avid home recordist since around senior year in high school. I started out with a [Teac] Portastudio and then I used to get little quarter-inch reel-to-reel machines and sync them together. I’d record on one, bounce it to the other one and keep bouncing back—to multitrack.

Hey, it worked on Sgt. Pepper!

There you go. I’d sit in the garage and do that. I had a crappy little mixing board and I’d learn how to bus things out of the mixing board to get four tracks on one track. Then Pro Tools came along and that was amazing. I was kind of late getting into Pro Tools because I was so used to knobs on a mixing board, but I eventually got an Mbox and I started doing demos on that. Then I realized I wasn’t really satisfied with the process of using that, so to this day I still use the Tascam, too.

Did you have your own studio?

No it was just a bunch of stuff piled in my living room. A lot of this stuff here [at Mission Bells].

How did you know what to buy and how to use it? Osmosis?

I read a lot. Things like Tape-op [an ultra-dweeby tech mag]. Also, using other people’s stuff. Most studios had certain pieces of equipment, and you learn that way.

It must be an advantage to be able to articulate what you want to an engineer.

Definitely it’s helpful if you can speak that language. You don’t have to say, “I want it a little more ‘purple.’” [Laughs] I can say, “Let’s use a 20:1 ratio on the compressor and input gain high; output—squash it.”

How does your early stuff sound to you now?

Like shit! [Laughs] No, it is what it is. Rusty Nails was done on a one-inch machine and even some ADAT. Sweet Somewhere Bound was done on ADAT, and Gone Wanderin’ was basically done on an Mbox. It turns out that I prefer tape, and it’s not just the sound of tape—because Pro Tools sounds so good now you can get it to sound any way you want—but the workflow is completely different. I like the fact that on this Otari MX-70 [multitrack tape] machine there’s 16 tracks and track 3 is fucked up; in fact two tracks are broken. So you have 14 tracks to work with, so everything counts. I like to commit things to tape. Committing yourself to a certain thing, like a reverb or effect, is helpful because then you build around that initial color. It’s like building a painting. If you put a giant thing of red in the middle—oh, you’re screwed now! [Laughs]

“Oh, this is going to be one of the red paintings.”

Right! You build around it. I like that. Because otherwise it seems ambiguious. I love Pro Tools, because it’s a life saver, but I hate it because you can sit there and wank on the guitar for 40 tracks and never have to make any decision about it. At some point you have to erase them and get one part that’s right. If you’re working with tape it forces you to do that. Tape is definitely more expensive than hard drive space, of course, but it’s still worth it to me.

When you were going from city to city adding parts to the album, had you plotted out: “Well, this song needs another acoustic guitar and an organ and this one needs a backup vocal?”

To a certain extent. We had roughs that we listened to and we’d decide what we needed to do, and because our time was so limited, we had to be fairly serious about sticking to what we wanted to do. We had an agenda and decided what we had to do on the road and what we could do once we got back. Like, we knew we wanted Larry Campbell to play violin on “Shaken,” and we knew we’d do that in New York because he lives there and we were going to be there for however many shows with Phil.

Did playing any of these tunes with Phil affect how they came out at all? You played “Ball and Chain” a few times with Phil…

That’s true, but we actually did the recording before I started playing it with him. Or the basics at least. Phil had the roughs of some of the songs and that’s how he learned them.

What’s the experience of playing in Phil & Friends been like for you?

It’s been great! It’s super-tiring and it’s a lot of work. It’s a really different way of playing music and it’s really interesting.

I would imagine it’s done things for your guitar playing.

Are you kidding? [Laughs] You have to step it up! Larry Campbell’s out there and all these guys are such great players, I can’t fuck around now. I’ve gotta really try and do something. I’m a glutton for punishment. I don’t mind getting my ass kicked by Larry every night because I’m learning so much from him; I’m stealing all his licks! [Laughs] It’s humbling.

Is it still fun to do even though you’re on the eve of the release of your own thing? You’ll probably be going back and forth working with him and your own band and whatever.

It’s definitely fun because the two projects are intertwined at this point. We’ll do some of these songs with Phil & Friends and they’ll have that vibe, and then I’ll do them with my band and it’ll be different. But the song is still the song; just a different cast of cretins. [Laughs]

I love playing in Phil & Friends. Playing those Jerry songs… I kind of feel like I love a lot of those songs like they’re my own songs, and I want to treat them as if they were mine.

You’ve certainly connected with “Sugaree.”

Yeah, that’s a big one for me. I love “Sugaree”!

What is it you love about it so much?

It’s a perfect soul song. I see it as a very bluesy and soulful tune.

What do you think when you have to perform some of the more lyrically abstract songs, Like “China Cat” or even “St. Stephen”?

I love “China Cat”! And “St. Stephen” to me just fuckin’ rocks; I love playing that song. It’s only abstract in certain parts—in the sort of B-section part, like “lady finger…”—and Phil sings that. But that’s part of what makes it a great song. If it was just the rock part it would still be a great song, but then all of a sudden there’s this weird part that adds so much to the overall song. “China Cat I love because the groove is so infectious and the way the parts go together is really cool.

So you’re committed to working with Phil & Friends though the rest of the year?

I am. We don’t have the final dates for the year, but there will be summer stuff around and after Bonnaroo and then some fall dates as well. And by the end of the year I’ll pretty much be dead, because my band is also doing a lot of stuff in both the spring and the summer. [Laughs]

I noticed quite a few Dead Heads at your band’s Great American Music Hall gig [in December], so it seems like you’re attracting some of that crowd to the base you already were building.

It’s great. I love it. I really want to make the right move and still play some Dead songs in the shows with my band, because there are a bunch of songs I feel really close to. “Sugaree” is definitely one of them, of course. In fact, at this point in time it’s probably my favorite song. I also really like “Bertha”; I’m not sure why.

What I figured out about that song a number of years ago is that it’s basically a bluegrass tune.

It is! But with a straight beat, and then it’s got that half-time feel at the chorus; it’s great.

So do a lot of your friends think your freak for playing with Phil: “What are you doing with that old hippie?”

No, everyone’s been really supportive. Some of them don’t really know what it is before they hear it. And I guess I was in that category, too. [Laughs] But most people are really stoked.

Was playing ten shows in one place[the Nokia Theatre in NY last fall] an interesting experience?

It was. It was really cool. It sounds great in there. You’d think it would be easier because you don’t have to leave and go anywhere, but what happens is Phil just makes the shows longer! You leave the show, you get back to the hotel and you get up at noon…

And then there are the famously long soundchecks.

Right, like a two-hour soundcheck! You wake up, “Shit, I gotta go to soundcheck!” You end up being there for like eight hours—it’s like working a 9 to 5 job except it’s even more stressful and tiring! [Laughs]

Well, that’s what you get for playing in a band with a medical marvel.

I don’t know how he does it, lugging those big basses around. I’m choosing the lightest guitars I can. It’s been really cool, though.

Are New York fans crazier?

They definitely wait outside longer and through more weather before and after the show. But they’re really nice and they seemed to take a liking to me, which made me feel calmer. With a lot of these Phil shows I feel like I’m trying out for the Lakers every night, because I don’t know these people and I’m going to sing a lot of these songs they love so much and I don’t want to let ’em down. So it’s a lot of anxiety for me.

It doesn’t show.

Well, then I’m a good actor. But I think I got through to them.

What’s the story with the Skinny Singers?

Well, it’s me and Tim [Bluhm], my partner in the studio and it’s all songs we’ve written together. Tim is one of my favorite songwriters of all time, and a great musician. I was a fan of the Mother Hips and we were both in New York—he was playing a solo show and we were there and had the night off, so I went to see him at this little coffee shop called Jack Stirbrew and they had him sitting in this little window. We had never met but we’d talked on email, and afterwards we went out for pizza and beer and we’ve been friends ever since. It turned out we were both into home recording, and it turned out we both had Tascam one-inch machines, and at the time I lived in Sacramento and we started recording at my house there and at his house in Sacramento and we decided we’d get a space together.

Did you feel like you’d gone as far as you could go in Sacramento?

I have nothing against Sacramento. I just wanted a change of… More than a change of scenery, I wanted a change of attitude and that’s a big reason I moved to San Francisco. It seems like I run into a lot of creative people down here, a lot of musicians; there’s so much going on.

I’ve been to every great restaurant in Sacramento, but I haven’t even been to a quarter of the great restaurants in San Francisco. That’s something I like to do. [Laughs] But most of all it was this studio, which was called Wide Hive Recorders, which did hip-hop records, I think. Before that I think it was a bank. It’s been really great for us. For a low-end studio we get a lot of people working here.

I have a couple of questions about your deep, dark past. I know your mother is Japanese-American. Is Asian culture anything you identified with growing up?

Not really. My grandparents on my mother’s side basically came over from Japan and worked in the sugar cane fields in Hawaii before ending up in California, and they were fairly traditional.

Were they in the internment camps?

Yes, they were. But my mother married a white guy and culturally she was always more tuned into American culture. I mean, she grew up in San Francisco and used to go see the Grateful Dead, so she was pretty Americanized. But I like Japanese things, sure. I really like Japanese stationary. [Laughs]

When you were growing up in the foothills of the Sierra [in Eastern California], did any of that Western vibe seep into your life? I mean Placerville [where he went to high school] was a Gold Rush town.

Right, it was called Hangtown. Oh yeah, you can’t escape it up there. It was kind of neat to grow up in an Old West kind of town.

But it didn’t make you predisposed to like country music or anything…

No, because most kids didn’t. Honestly, most of the suburban and rural white kids seemed to like rap.

You were born in 1980, so when you were about 12, which is a formative time usually, is that like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and all that?

Nirvana and Pearl Jam and rap. I was really into Pearl Jam growing up. Then, later, when I got out of high school, I discovered ’60s music and then moved backwards from The Beatles, Zeppelin and Stones, and then when you get into that and you’re sitting around reading liner notes, you say “Who’s Willie Dixon?” and then you find Muddy Waters and wow—I became this guy really into the blues. Then I got into old-time folk stuff like Doc Watson, and also bluegrass.

Who are some of the people who influenced your guitar style?

I’d say definitely for a lot of the fake flat-picking that I do—because I’m not that good at it—Doc Watson. For the bluesier stuff, Buddy Guy. I used to go see him play in high school. I couldn’t drive and so I’d drag my friends with me and make them drive so I could see him play. I’d be saying “This guy rips!” with all the 50 year-old drunk guys. [Laughs]

There was a moment at a recent Phil & Friends show when you and Larry were playing some blues tune that I thought you guys sounded little like Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop in the Butterfield Blues Band.

I can see that. I had a couple of Butterfield albums.

I think it’s time for you to do “East West.”

That’s a great song, for sure!

You could have the harmonica goin’…

With the harmonica mike! I had one of those with Phil & Friends but the sound guys thought it was too hard to control. I’d love to use it on “Caution.”

Your keyboard playing is an underrated part of your game. Who were your influences there?

I was really into Tumbleweed Connection-era Elton John, but in terms of playing, every blues lick I know I learned from Ray Charles. I found these vinyl records in my basement, and the first one I put on was The Genius of Ray Charles and I was like, “What the fuck is this?” [Laughs] I was totally thrilled that there was this kind of music. This is before I’d heard Buddy Guy. Before that I was sort of playing pretty piano stuff.

Did you have formal piano lessons?

Only for about three months. I always played by ear, sort of figured stuff out, so I put on this record and it was a revelation: “Oh, I see—you have to slur that key; it’s like bending a guitar note, but on piano. That’s rad, man!” So I just sort of copied Ray Charles. Later I got into Herbie Hancock jazz, some of the funkier stuff, but I’m not really good enough technically to pull that off. I understand it from the ear perspective but those guys are just so damn good.

What sort of cache did playing in bands give you in high school and a little beyond? I remember thinking that my high school friends who played in bands were very cool.

Well, for a long time most people didn’t really know that I played because I kind of kept it to myself. People thought I was a decent guitar player, but I wasn’t trying to play Green Day or whatever was popular at the moment. Instead I was trying to like Doc Watson: “That’s stupid, man.” “No, it’s not stupid it’s actually really, really hard!”

I had a Spanish teacher who had mandolins in his class, and banjos, and I’d sit there during breaks and try to figure out stuff on them. He’s the guy who got me into bluegrass and gave me all these tapes, and I’d sit there and try to learn these licks: dit-dit-di-di-dit-a; rewind play it again, over and over. So to answer your question, being into that kind of music didn’t get you laid in my high school. [Laughs] It wasn’t cool. But it was what I liked and it’s what moved me. I wasn’t moved by most of what was on the radio.

What’s the earliest song that you wrote that you still play?

Gee, I don’t know. Probably “Rusty Nails.” There were a few songs from before that that we used to play; but I can’t even remember what they are now.

When you perform a song, do you tend to get in the space in which it was written, or do they evolve with you?

They totally evolve.

Does it sometimes seem like a different guy wrote them?

Absolutely. I don’t even remember writing “Gone Wanderin’” any more. It seems like I’ve know that song forever. Songs always take on different flavors when you play them a lot over many years. And sometimes we’ll purposely change things so that they sound completely different than how they were originally written. That’s fun, too. “Tell me Mama” is one. That used to be like this fast jump tune, and now it’s become like a Ray Charles blues.

Has your life gotten crazier as you’ve become more successful?

I wouldn’t say “crazier.” But between doing interviews and being on the road and recording and helping out on other people’s projects and any sort of promotional activity, like a radio visits, it’s much busier and its harder to find time for yourself—not just to write but just to be by yourself.

I’ve been painting a lot lately. I was into painting a number of years ago. I just recently learned that Jerry Garcia painted; I didn’t even know that. So I was looking at some of his stuff online and it’s good. So that partly inspired me to get back into it.

I dated a girl who was a really good painter and I liked watercolors and she was an oil snob and she told me that watercolors were for wimps—“You just don’t get the right colors.” And I was like, “Oh, OK.” I couldn't really argue with her because she was really good. She turned me off to it. So I’m into watercolors now. [Laughs] Now that I don’t see her, I’m like, “Fuck you, I happen to like that they’re messy and you can see through them!”

How often do girls come up to you and say, “I know you wrote that song about me.”

Never, because I hide it really well, so they’ll never know. They can assume whatever they want but if they ask me I can say, “God, aren’t you egotistical?!” [Laughs]

* * *

For tour dates and news about Phil & Friends, go to www.phillesh.net. For news about Jackie’s concerts (plus lyrics, merchandise—musical and otherwise—and a whole bunch of other cool stuff) go to www.jackie-greene.com.

The Education of Robin Sylvester

Analise Dubner — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:07:14 -0700

RatDog’s genial bassist has come a long way since his days with the London Boy Singers

Just from seeing him onstage with RatDog the past few years, and with Missing Man Formation earlier, I could tell that Robin Sylvester would be a nice guy. He just exudes a certain warmth. He always looks like he’s happy to be onstage, and indeed that is the case. Robin also happens to be a really outstanding bassist, who helps hold down the bottom with drummer Jay Lane, but isn’t afraid to get creative, either—he can “space” with the best of them!

Alan Hess / www.shotlivephoto.com

He’s also a fine harmony singer. Indeed, I think it’s fair to say that since he took over from Rob Wasserman five years ago (my, how time flies!), RatDog has been on an upward swing that continues to this day. This band gets better with each tour.

Before I met Robin for an interview up at his Sebastopol (Sonoma County) home in mid-January, I knew virtually nothing about him, and I’m guessing many of you are in the same boat. So…sit back, relax, and get to know this fine Englishman.

You were part of the post-War British baby boom, I guess.

I was born in London in 1950. There was still rationing and things like that going on, bomb sites that they still hadn’t gotten around to rebuilding. I was lower middle class. Both my parents had jobs and we lived in the suburbs of North London—in Finchley.

I don’t know Finchley. If they didn’t make fun of it on Monty Python I probably haven’t heard of it.

Well, some of those suburban street scenes on Monty Python might have been filmed in Finchley. Like Hitler standing on a corner plotting to take over Europe from Finchley, or something like that. [Laughs]

Were your parents musical?

My father could play anything on the piano by ear in the key of C; he was an expert at that.

Well, it’s a good key to know.

Indeed! And there was music around. He would play show tunes—My Fair Lady and things like that.

Robin, with Rickenbacker bass, holds down the bottom with RatDog drummer Jay Lane, 9/17/06.
Photo: David W. Clark © 2008

What did he do for a living?

Both of my parents were actors when I was born, but he had a lot of different jobs—he worked with the Actor’s Union, the Writer’s Guild, he did some writing. He had some acting jobs at the BBC.

So, I picked up piano, too, by ear. I had a couple of lessons but the teacher said, “I can’t teach him. He doesn’t do anything I say. He just plays what I play.” Which I thought would be a good thing, but he didn’t see it that way. I had a couple of classical guitar lessons and it was much the same thing: I started copying the teachers and they all wanted me to get the rudiments down instead. But I came out of that with some finger technique which I still use. Sometimes people ask me about where my weird right hand technique comes from—classical guitar. I read that Sting spent a year changing over to that style, so maybe I was a bit ahead of the curve.

I was bought a guitar when I was 6 or 7—this was still pre-Beatles, of course, and I played classical guitar. I also sang with a choir, and that was my serious musical background. It was a professional boys’ choir and it was very serious; Sir Benjamin Britten wrote things specially for us and was a patron of the choir.

I had quite a choirboy career. We sang at Covent Garden; some very prestigious places and at some major premieres.

Was it the classic high-voiced boys’ choir, like the Vienna Boys’ Choir?

Yes, the London Boy Singers was the name of the choir, and we were the equivalent of them.

And the repertoire was what—classical? Motets?

All that. It was all a capella. We even made an LP at Abbey Road [EMI Studios] of Christmas music.

Actually my first recording—and only British people would find this funny—was called Sacred Songs By Harry Secombe—who was one of the Goons [comedy troupe], along with Peter Sellers. He played a lot of the sort of straight characters and sang a nice Welsh tenor. So it was hymns by Harry Secombe. That was maybe 1958 or 1959.

So what happened when your voice changed?

I was trained so it would change as late as possible, so I was relieved! [Laughs]

What do you mean?!

I don’t know exactly what the training was, but the diaphragm and larynx exercises they did were supposed to make your voice change slowly rather than suddenly. And I guess it worked. But by the time I was 15, I was involved in exams and not interested in being in Midsummer Night’s Dream at Covent Garden as a fairy. I didn’t even tell my friends about that one. You don’t have to put that in the article.

Oh, I will!

[Laughs] It’s funny when I read about Phil and his background in classical music. What is it with these bass players?

Well, in both your cases you probably learned a lot of theory, so that helps with understanding roots and keys and all that…

Right. I did indeed take a lot of theory. I went through several summer schools, including the Royal College of Music summer school for arranging and orchestration, which I loved. I also went back there for composition but I just hated the rules. By the time I’d read Schoenberg’s rules I was ready to quit.

Were you listening to popular music during this time?

Not really until The Beatles, if you want to know the truth. I’m trying to think…I remember going to a local fair and there was a band there with electric instruments and I remember liking the sound of the electric guitar, but I wasn’t that thrilled with the music.

By the time The Beatles came along, I was already playing in a jazz trio, and suddenly there I was teaching people Beatles tunes, which I found remarkably easy.

Did you like The Beatles?

Loved them, yes! I saw them three times: Once in “Pantomime,” which is an English Christmas show tradition. They were in costume, playing silly characters, making very bad jokes and then playing four or five tunes at the end of the show. And I saw them twice at the Finsbury Park Astoria, which was later the Rainbow [where the Dead played in 1981] in package shows…

Where a bunch of bands would play a few songs each?

Exactly. Everyone was on and off pretty quickly—including The Beatles!

Were they already successful?

Oh, yes. I’m afraid I didn’t see them when they weren’t famous. I did see a lot of bands in the late ’60s before they became popular, but not The Beatles. They were fantastic, though you couldn’t hear them that well, except for the bass and the cymbals.

Did you find that pop music was at variance with the tradition you were already established in, and did you feel conflicted about it?

That’s a good question. Thinking back, I was actually in two different worlds. My school didn’t have much interest in music, but I found one teacher who guided me through the A-level advanced university entrance exam—University College School. I knew most of the theory already. But he’d take me to concerts at the Albert Hall—Bartok and modern things I’d skipped when I was with the choir. I saw Jacqueline Du Pré playing Elgar’s cello concerto. Then I was going home and listening to The Kinks, my local band.

Did you know them?

No, and little did I know that when I was walking around on Hampstead Heath after school, Ray Davies was wandering around after school, too. I learned this when I read his book. But I saw The Kinks a number of times. They were the band I used to stand outside the pub and listen to when I was too young to go in.

Between 13 and 17, I used to go to the Marquee club a lot because they didn’t have a bar and I could see all the bands—The Yardbirds, with Spencer Davis Group opening…Steve Winwood was probably all of 16, and he was already amazing.

Was it obvious who the good bands were, and are they the ones who made it? Or is there the great forgotten band you used to go see…

There was a band that used to open for Spencer Davis called the Mark Leeman Five, and Mark got killed in a car crash. I always thought he was really good. The Action was a good band, but they were mostly covering soul tunes. The Creation were kind of like Led Zep, with a featured guitar player. They were great because they used to do oil paintings onstage! The guitar player was quite well-known for playing with a bow—before Jimmy Page—and he’d get this incredible feedback.

The “name” bands played on Tuesday nights. I remember late in ’68, Yes had a Thursday night residency, right before they signed—and I remember a total of 11 people there one rainy night! Still, it was obvious they would make it. I also saw Fleetwood Mac grow from a 3- to 4- to 5-piece; I followed them all over town.

By ’67, too, there were clubs like Middle Earth and UFO that I’d go to.

Did you like the psychedelic wing—Pink Floyd and such?

Yes, I saw Pink Floyd in their first year with Syd [Barrett] maybe three or four times; I loved that. And then, inevitably, we get to Hendrix.

In the end of ’66, when “Hey Joe” came out, it created such excitement amongst us all, and he was playing a warm-up gig—before he played the Marquee—in Golders Green, North London, which was very local for us, at a place called The Refectory. So we all went down, and we were too young to go in, but we stood outside, and we saw him coming out later. Then he played the Marquee a few weeks later, which I could go to, and uh…WHOA!… I’ve seen musicians mention in their resumés that they were at that gig: “After seeing Hendrix at the Marquee…” [Laughs] It really was that mind-blowing. To this day! It’s hard to explain—just the sight of him running his hand over the knobs of his Marshall amps and making these incredible loud noises by doing who-knows-what…Nobody had ever heard anything like it. At that point, too, he was doing a lot of soul cover tunes, very few originals, if any. So in a sense the best was still to come. But it was still so completely amazing what he did with the guitar.

Was hearing all these rock bands what made you take up the bass?

No, the bass had been there all along. When I was at school I was able to use the double-bass if I played in the orchestra, which I did but I was not good with the bow—I was very scratchy. Also, before I was in the rock thing I played double-bass in a jazz trio that played sort of Oscar Peterson-type jazz. We’d play “Satin Doll”—standards, maybe an original or two. It was called the Dave Lund Trio.

I can’t remember when I played my first electric bass—I might’ve been 16 or 17…

I see you were in a band called Ora in the late ’60s…

Right. That was my high school band. And a guy in Ora had a bass, a Hofner [like Paul McCartney’s violin-shaped bass]. I bought it from him, and it got stolen. I also had a lot of bad imitation Fenders and Vox basses.

Did you start listening intently to what other bassists were doing?

It was so much Paul McCartney.

He’s a tough one to learn off because he was so different than everyone else.

Well, that may be true, but there he was, and everyone was hearing him and he’s a great electric bass player. I hated the guy in The Kinks—I thought I should have had his job! [Laughs] Even when I was 13.

And John Enwistle [of The Who] was very different as well.

Yes, more like a lead bass player. I did see The Who and I always liked them a lot.

Ora did some recording, too.

We recorded some songs in December 1968, which I remember very well because that’s when the famous anti-war demonstration that Bill Clinton was at happened. [Clinton was then a student at Oxford, and not inhaling.] I remember coming out of the studio and wondering what was going on. It was wild.

Does the fact that there’s a reissue CD of Ora mean that your group was a cult favorite?

Not really. It’s one of those things where somebody in Germany or Spain who wants to hear everything from that period got a hold of us and then put it out. Most of these are demos. Ora was never that popular and didn’t perform very much. There was my friend Jamie who had a lot of songs, but not much ever happened with that band. I found [the reissue CD] in Cambridge so I bought it. Nice to have it.

You also worked as an engineer in a place called Tangerine Studios beginning in the late ’60s. How did that come about?

[A person I knew] decided to build his own studio. He was a man of independent means and he owned a bingo hall in the East End of London and he basically had his two workmen build a studio. He didn’t know anything about acoustics or anything, but he had part of the corner of the bingo hall walled off. I was very keen to find out what was going on at the studio and one of the first sessions at the studio, one of the main guys didn’t turn up and I said, “I can do that!” A few sessions later they made me chief engineer. It was 8-track. The first studio I worked at that was 16-track was Trident [also in London].

How did you learn engineering? You weren’t a “boffin” [tech nerd], as they say in England, were you?

Not really, no. But I had a small tape-recorder from about the age of 11, and my stepfather had one of the very first cassette players and I used to do sound-on-sound backwards and forwards. My stepfather also had a Bang & Olufsen [reel-to-reel] that you could do sound-on-sound with, so I figured out a few basic things. I also used to build electronics projects from scratch, so I had a pretty broad understanding of that side, too. You know, a studio in 1969, the challenge was just getting it on tape. It wasn’t, “Did it sound great?” It was, “Did you get it?” And I was good at getting it. [Laughs] The technology was still quite primitive by today’s standards, of course.

Did being an engineer affect your music at all?

Hmm. Yes. If we’re talking about when I got the job at the studio in ’69, well, I didn’t really see daylight again until about 1974, so my music kind of disappeared. But what I was doing was hearing professionals 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I was extremely underpaid, but I still appreciated that I had a job in music. I loved it.

One thing I learned from working with so many groups at that time was how there was a sad lack of good arrangers and good bass players. There were a million great guitar players—Les Harvey, Peter Frampton; lots of great people playing sessions. But not that many bassists.

So I was just a working my butt off as an engineer for five or six years; hardly got any sleep, hardly made any money. I did lots of prog rock, lots of blues, lots of jazz. There weren’t many independent studios in those days, and we were one of the cheapest.

Robin in 1976, when he was part of the band The Movies.
Photo courtesy of Robin Sylvester

Any acts that stand out?

Sure, a few. I worked with The Move, who were a really good band. Byzantium was another one; I produced them—they made two albums for A&M. I also worked quite a bit with Rory Gallagher, who was great.

And you’re playing occasionally, too?

Not very much. I did play bass for a singer named Dana Gillespie, who was sort of connected to David Bowie at the time [Bowie helped out on her Weren’t Born a Man album in 1973 and they shared management].

In 1974 you moved to the States. How did that come about?

Dana Gillespie put a band together to come over here. We were going to open for Bowie, but that’s right when he split his management, so that didn’t happen. Instead we played a few clubs in New York and Philadelphia, and that was all it took for me—I was hooked, basically. I’d never been to the U.S. until that Thanksgiving of ’74. The first tour was fairly short. Then there was a second tour, about four months later, and she brought me back but not the rest of the band. Instead we auditioned musicians in New York, and we also used Earl Slick from Bowie’s band, because they were on a break.

So you went back and grabbed your stuff and then moved to New York?

Right. I went back and got a few things—basically just my bass and some underwear. [Laughs] A while later in New York I joined a band called The Movies, which was an Arista band—we were actually Clive Davis’ second signings after Melissa Manchester.

What kind of band were they?

The wrong band! Wrong place, wrong time! [Laughs] It was 1976 in New York City, and we were this nice three-part harmony group, with a kind of Lovin’ Spoonful vibe. We had some good-humored material. We lived in a loft on West 22nd Street, which was not fashionable then.

That was an interesting time in New York because on one side you’ve got the whole punk/new wave thing exploding with Talking Heads, Blondie, The Ramones, Richard Hell and all those others. Then on the other side there’s the whole disco phenomenon, with Studio 54 and all that. Did you align yourself any particular way?

Not really. Stylistically, we didn’t really fit in. But everyone played at CBGB’s. The Movies played many times with The Ramones. We played with Blondie. We were playing every club we could because we weren’t getting much from the record company.

At some point, though, we left New York because our management decided we had to move to L.A. because were supposedly perfect for television. We did all the major TV shows back then—Midnight Special, The Tonight Show, Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas. But there wasn’t much club work in L.A. We played the Whisky, the Starwood, the Bla-Bla Café, the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, the Roxy.

I know you saw the Dead at Alexandra Palace in ’74, did you continue to follow that stream at all.

On and off. I’m one of those people who thinks side one of Anthem of the Sun is one of the greatest things ever made. But I’d listen to every Dead album, yes. I liked Ace very much.

Would you have gone to see the Dead when they came through New York?

I probably couldn’t afford to. We didn’t have any money. It seems like the only bands I saw were the ones we played with. In L.A., I had a connection at the Roxy so I would see people there.

Eventually The Movies was forced to do the bankruptcy thing and I was left with an amp, my fretless bass and my double-bass.

You asked about disco, well, I played some disco in Top 40 bands in L.A. That’s how bad it got. I was playing disco covers on a fretless bass; very strange.

I didn’t know you were a fretless bass guy.

Oh, that’s what I mostly played for about 15 years. I played some on the last RatDog tour with Kimock because he was playing a fretless guitar. It was a little gimmicky, but it was fun. But I don’t like playing it at loud volume because it distorts pitch so much.

So what brought you to the Bay Area? Was that your next stop?

Yes, San Francisco. I lived in the city for nearly 20 years—Bernal Heights; a lovely area. Rory Gallagher was the connection. Elliot Mazer was trying to produce an album with him at His Master’s Wheels [which had earlier been Alembic Studios]. I’d been up here a few times. We played the Boarding House [club] with The Movies.

There was a lot going on up here in ’77-’78. Besides all the punk/new wave, Santana was doing well, the Starship, Van Morrison was still here, and then there was the whole Commander Cody country-rock thing.

Those were more or less the people I ran into. But my first real connection here outside of Elliot Mazer was probably Scott Matthews. I did a bunch of work at his studio, The Pen. Actually I was surprised how hard it was to make money in the San Francisco scene…

Well, it was always been more about self-contained bands than actual sessions with outside players.

That’s what I learned. Elliot helped me out a bit. But it was a strange period for me. I was doing a bit of freelance engineering at the Automatt [Studios], and also doing some playing here and there.

What were the ’80s like for you?

Slow. [Laughs] Actually, there were a few interesting things that happened. I played with Marty Balin in a couple of bands.

Around the time of “Hearts”?

Right after “Hearts.” It was fun. Marty is one of the sweetest guys I’ve worked with. He’s one of those guys who I trust instinctively. It wasn’t that lucrative a period because Marty didn’t tour that much and he didn’t really play much around on the West Coast either.

I was working a lot back then, but not making a whole lot of money. I got on the oldies circuit and toured with Mary Wells, The Shirelles, The Coasters, Billy Preston…

Playing bass?

And in the ’90s I started playing guitar sometimes, too.

Some of those oldies groups were a little dodgy, weren’t they? Didn’t The Coasters have no original members?

Actually, their bass singer was still there. But The Drifters I played with, although they weren’t the real Drifters, were better than some of the real Drifters that came along later that I played with—but that’s another story. [Laughs] I played with Peter Noone [of Herman’s Hermits fame], and that was actually quite a lot of fun. His attitude was great. He knows exactly where he’s at. He’s not at all pretentious and he’s a really nice guy.

Wasn’t it a little depressing—maybe that’s too strong a word—to be just playing these simple cover tunes all the time? It’s not very challenging musically.

No, that’s true, but there would be great moments, too. When Mary Wells would step up to the same mike that a bunch of other people had already used, it would suddenly be magic! Sam Moore [of Sam & Dave] was the same way. He could be magical. Billy Preston was a great performer, too. I worked with Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry…no comment on Chuck! [Laughs]

You should have a T-shirt that says, “I survived playing in Chuck Berry’s band!”

More than once! [Laughs] I was playing with him once in Reno at a big show there and at one point he went over to the keyboard player and he says, ‘Yeah, play more! Play more!” Then he goes to the mike and says, “I want you to turn the keyboard player off in the P.A.!” OK, Chuck! [Laughs]

Well, it sounds like at least there was a bit of variety to playing that circuit.

Definitely. I played a lot of rock ’n’ roll and R&B and I’d already played the disco covers earlier. I played a little with Freddy Fender. All that rounded me out a bit. But the money never got any better.

Fortunately, by the time the ’90s came along, I had a work-partner who was really good to me: Steve Douglas, the sax player. He used to tag me onto just about everything he was doing for a few years, including sessions with the Beach Boys and Phil Spector. He’d take me to L.A. with him.

What was working with Phil Spector like?

Brief. [Laughs] And kind of bizarre. It might have been one of Phil’s last sessions. He had decided to try to get the Wrecking Crew [his giant band of L.A. session players that created his famous Wall of Sound] back together to make a record. It was what you’d expect—two of every instrument except guitar players—there were eight guitar players! [laughs], including Barney Kessell’s son and Todd Rundgren, but all they were doing was E-strum, E-strum… It was a lot of fun, but he ended up canceling the session after about two hours and 50 minutes, so there wouldn’t be any overtime [if it went over three hours]. We never even got a complete take, and it never came out. But I did get to hear him telling stories for hours afterwards. Phil Spector talking about Ike Turner—how surreal can you get?! [Laughs]

When did you move to Marin?

I left San Francisco in 1998 and moved up here to Sebastopol.

Let’s move up to the Tale of RatDog. Your first gig is March 2003. How does that come about?

At the end of 2002 Mark Karan called me at a non-existent phone number. I guess they’d been looking at new bass players but hadn’t found one.

You knew him just from being around?

Yes, we’d played in bands on the same bill, and I think I even called him for a few oldies gigs in there, too. He remembers doing Little Anthony with me.

Anyway, I heard through the grapevine that Mark had been trying to get hold of me and was wondering why I hadn’t called him back, but he had the wrong number. Eventually he found me and by then they were on the second round of people they’d been trying out, and they weren’t quite decided.

So I went down [and auditioned]—Bob was in Mexico, so it was the other guys—and it felt pretty good immediately.

Had you ever seen them when Rob Wasserman was their bassist?

Yes, I saw RatDog at the Fillmore a couple of times in the late ’90s. I also remember Rob and [David] Grisman as a duo playing the restaurant circuit the same time I was.

Wasserman was such a distinctive player, really into his own thing, for better and worse, so when you come in you’re not so much replacing him as you are bringing in something new…

Exactly, and that’s what they wanted. In fact, I brought my fretless bass and wanted to show them what I could do on that, but that didn’t interest them at all: They wanted a more meat-and-potatoes bass player, which I can do, as well.

I went back to play with them two or three times and Bob still wasn’t there, and in the end he kind of left it up to them. Of course he could’ve vetoed their choice, but he didn’t. So here I am.

Did you know Bob at all?

I must’ve shaken hands with him 20 times over the years, but he didn’t remember. [Laughs]

In fact I met him at the Lyceum in London 1972. I’ve never had this conversation with him, to see if he remembers—I doubt he would. There was a duo of songwriters, these two Scotsmen, that Jerry was interested in recording: Roddy and Jeff; I don’t know what they called themselves. I’d been playing bass on a few gigs with them, so their manager took us all down to the Lyceum and we met Jerry. He was kind of busy that day, but Bobby was interested and he and his girlfriend at that time, Frankie, sat there and listened to us perform three or four songs, but that was the end of it—we never heard anything else.

Before you joined RatDog you played some Dead music with Missing Man Formation. I was a huge fan of that band.

Yes, I was in Missing Man, Mark II.

Still a very good band, even without Kimock and Prairie Prince…

It was. My connection to that group was through the sax player, Bobby Strickland. He was trying very hard to get Vince inspired after the original Missing Man had fallen apart. He’d bring Trey [Sabatelli], the drummer, and me up to play with him, and then very slowly, it turned into a real band. Every guitar player in the world was auditioned—including some quite well known names who couldn’t quite cut it—but John Wedemeyer ended up being perfect, and we had a really a good band there for a while. Eventually, though, it just sort of petered out and it became too hard for him to keep the band together financially. It’s a shame.

Playing Dead tunes with RatDog is obviously a different thing; a little closer to the source, as it were…

Oh yes, absolutely. That’s true.

What’s been your experience of getting into these tunes as a musician?

Well, it’s the great American songbook really. The Hunter and Barlow tunes have so much depth and there are so many ways to play them… and we’ve tried most of them! [Laughs] It’s fascinating, it’s surreal. It’s very exciting because there are so many places you can go with them all. And of course there are all the wonderful other [cover] tunes as well.

Do you feel part of some great continuity?

Oh, I don’t know. Maybe…or maybe some of it’s the childish thrill of “Oh, look, I’m playing ‘Help on the Way’!” [Laughs] I still feel that way—it’s one of my favorite tunes.

Seriously, though. I’m very happy to be part of this, obviously, and I do respect the history behind it. But look, I don’t have any illusions that I’m some big-time bass player like Phil or Jack Casady. I’m more of a music lover who likes to play bass. I’m not trying to be self-deprecating when I say that. I’m not that modest. [Laughs] But I feel very privileged to have so much fun playing bass in such circumstances.

Was it fairly easy fitting in? You were coming into a pretty established group in midstream…

Well, they made it so easy. They’re so friendly and have treated me so well. And they really know how to tour…

Meaning what?

Bobby’s been at it so long that there are no rough patches. Every little detail is taken care: food and hotels and supplies, leaving the town after the show going onto the next town. I don’t have to do much besides turn up on stage at the right time. And they’ll give me my bass in tune!

Steve Kimock told me that during his tenure with the group last year he really looked to Jeff [Chimenti, keyboardist] for musical guidance in terms of learning arrangements and how way the band works…

Well, Jeff is the encyclopedia of what the correct chords are and things like that, yes. He’s not the type of guy who will say, “OK, now we’re going to try this and then that…” Bobby is still the guy who’s making most of those decisions. But yeah, he was definitely the guy who worked most with Steve. And he obviously did a great job.

What did you think of Kimock as a guitarist on those tours?

He was wonderful. Understand, I’m not making any comparisons here when I say he’s one of the greatest guitarists I’ve played with—his tone, and being in the present moment, and even technically, which you don’t always notice immediately, until he really gets going.

It must’ve been quite a blow, though, when Mark Karan went down.

Oh, it was! That’s the horrible flip-side of this whole thing: “This is sounding good, but boy, I really miss Mark!” I’m really looking forward to playing with Mark again. He’s looking and sounding great.

It must be nice to have so much latitude in the arrangements. It seems like you can go in just about any direction.

That’s true. In fact, there’s so much freedom that I have to really watch myself. I’ll listen back to shows sometimes and think that I should be more like a [traditional] bass player: I’ve got to lay back a little more or get in the groove a little more.

I was going to ask you about that, because it seems like in this group, sometimes there’s a pocket and sometimes everything is the pocket—it defines itself by whether anyone chooses to go there.

Even in the blues tunes, which you’d think would be pretty straight-forward, we sometimes all go a little crazy. But I enjoy that aspect of it—that it’s always unpredictable. Sometimes I get a little self-critical and think, “Somebody should be holding [the bottom] down there.” Then I’ll listen an old Dead show and think, “Well, I really have nothing to worry about!” [Laughs]

Jay’s not a conventional rock drummer certainly.

No, but he’s very steady and you never have to worry about him pushing the tempo or whatever. It’s a very easy pocket.

What’s been the process of integrating new tunes, like “Money for Gasoline” or “Just Like Mama Said”?

It’s a pretty typical process: A good jam will get remembered by somebody…

By Bob?

Quite possibly, but really any of us, or maybe even Mike McGinn, our sound person. He has a good memory for that sort of thing. “Money for Gasoline” was a little Latin-y jam in the middle of something, and then we extended it, Bobby took it away and came back with some words he and Gerit Graham did.

What’s your experience of playing “Stuff”? Is anything pre-discussed there?

No. Once in a while you’ll get the look from Jay that he really wants to do a drum solo, so we stay out of the way for a bit, but beyond that, nothing is spoken. I love that part of the show because it’s always so open-ended; it can go anywhere. It’s also fun when you get other people involved—like Warren Haynes comes to mind. He was playing with us one night and it came around to “Stuff” and he starts to leave the stage, so I said, “Hey Warren, this is where you get to do whatever you want!” And I swear in two seconds he was back and making the weirdest sounds you’ve ever heard! [Laughs] Some people just get it.

It’s nice to have a malleable band that can assimilate people.

We like people sitting in.

What are some of you other favorite tunes to play?

I can’t think of any I don’t like, really. But I love to play things like “Crazy Fingers” that don’t have obvious bass lines and that you can always find new things in.

What can you say about Bob as a bandleader?

He is most generous of both spirit and material. He likes to look after us. He’s very concerned about our personal well-being. He has some specific things about tempos, quite famously.

What do you mean? I think of him as liking more deliberate tempos…

That’s right. Even if we’re feeling the tune a little faster, we’ll defer to Bobby. He knows what he wants. Having said that, once we start a tune, he’ll let us take it anywhere and be encouraging along the way. He’s very open-minded and fair and considerate…I sound like I’m on his support committee or something. [Laughs] But I have worked in bands where those were not traits of the leader.

Do you wish the band toured more?

I could go for a little more. It would be nice to tour in a few different places. We’ve been going back to more or less the same places back East since I’ve been in the band. I could do three weeks on three weeks off year ’round and be happy. That probably won’t happen.

Were you part of any of RatDog’s European tours?

Yes, I was there for the ’03 tour, which was a lot of fun.

Did you mom and dad come out for your London gig?

Yes, and the sisters and the old school friends. It was great! That band I produced years ago called Byzantium was very Dead-influenced, so it was funny to see some of those guys again.

Would you like to be able to go into the studio for three months and make a proper album with RatDog?

Yeah, I’d be happy to go into the studio for a week with RatDog; I don’t think it would take three months to make an album. It’s just a question of knuckling down and doing it. We have most of the material.

But look, I’m not complaining at all. I know I’m very, very lucky to be in this band and I’m very appreciative. So whatever we get to do I’m happy about.