Furthur

[Superfreakie]

Birdman and SF are on a present collision course. Destination: Orpheum Theater. Event: The Cosmic Unfolding. 

[Buffalo Budd]

Birdman and SF are on a present collision course. Destination: Orpheum Theater. Event: The Cosmic Unfolding. 

You boys should include a little skiing as well.

[Superfreakie]

Birdman and SF are on a present collision course. Destination: Orpheum Theater. Event: The Cosmic Unfolding. 

You boys should include a little skiing as well.

i don't feel like going back to the office on my vacation.  :hereitisyousentimentalbastard :hereitisyousentimentalbastard

[Buffalo Budd]

Lame, you're takin' the fun out of it.  :-P

[Superfreakie]

Lame, you're takin' the fun out of it.  :-P

I only ski for fun now when there is 20cm or powder or more or it is sunny and warmer than -5 c. I've truly seen too much snow in my life.....hence the career change.  :hereitisyousentimentalbastard

[Buffalo Budd]

Lame, you're takin' the fun out of it.  :-P

I only ski for fun now when there is 20cm or powder or more or it is sunny and warmer than -5 c. I've truly seen too much snow in my life.....hence the career change.  :hereitisyousentimentalbastard

I'm one to talk, it's looking like the only time I'll get out this year is to hike a back country hill. 

[birdman]

Birdman and SF are on a present collision course. Destination: Orpheum Theater. Event: The Cosmic Unfolding. 

Giggity

[Superfreakie]

Interview with Russo from dead.net

http://www.dead.net/features/news/furthur-adventures-joe-russo-drum-monster

The Furthur Adventures of Joe Russo, Drum Monster
By Blair Jackson

OK, I admit it: I had never heard of Joe Russo before I saw Furthur for the first time at their debut shows at the Fox Theatre in Oakland in September 2009. Some folks I was dancing near that night explained that he was from the Benevento-Russo Duo. Who? "You know, and he also played in GRAB." What's that?

By the end of those three shows, though, I certainly knew who Joe Russo was. "That guy's a beast," I remember saying to a friend. And that's when he was still sharing the Furthur percussion slot with Jay Lane. By February 2010, Jay had departed to join up with Les Claypool in a new incarnation of Primus (which Jay co-founded) and left Joe as the lone drummer in Furthur. That's when things got really interesting: It turns out the guy is a total drum monster, good at every style the band tackles. If you happened to catch the Furthur Festival in Calaveras last spring and saw Joe handle "King Solomon's Marbles" and the entire "Terrapin" suite with incredible power and precision, tunes like "Mountains of the Moon" and "Sunrise" with a wonderfully gentle passion, and rousing numbers like "Uncle John's Band," "China Cat" and "Dancing in the Streets" with unbridled verve and spirit, you knew he was the real deal. And he's only gotten better as the band as a whole has matured.

Subsequently, I've gone back and checked out Benevento-Russo and learned to appreciate their NY hipster jamband instrumental sound, and also looked in on GRAB, the short-lived group he and keyboardist Marco Benevento formed with Phish's Mike Gordon and Trey Anastasio. Some great stuff there, as well.

But he's knockin' just about everybody's tie-dye socks off with his playing in Furthur, so I figured this would be a good time to have a chat with him. At 34, he's the "pup" of the band (as he says) and his youthful energy is downright infectious. He spoke to me by phone from his digs in Brooklyn the week before the recent Colorado Furthur shows. Very cool guy; you'll like him!
* * *

Tell me how you got into drums.

I started playing drums when I was 8, and back then basically just wanted to be in Kiss.

This is in northern New Jersey.

Right, about 25 miles west of New York City.

Did you ever see Kiss?

Just recently, like a year-and-a-half or two years ago. I went with Dave Dreiwitz, the bass player for Ween. It was amazing!

Was your brother a musician?

No, but my parents had bought him one of those little snare drum-and-cymbal combos back in the '70s, and when I first started wanting to play the drums, I begged my mom to find them in our basement, and I remember busting it out and setting it up. This was a crappy snare drum and a little cymbal coming off the side, and the first thing I played on it was "I Love it Loud," by Kiss, trying to re-create the beat.

Drums are not usually a parental favorite for kids learning music...

No, they're not. I think drums and violin are pretty harsh for parents. Once you get pretty good on them, though, it's usually OK.

At least you had a basement.

Right, and by the time I was 9, my dad got me a used kit. At the time I think I thought it was total garbage — but it was probably some amazing thing I'd pay ten grand for now! [Laughs] My parents were cool. They said, "Show us you're gonna practice and take lessons, and then we'll work out getting you your dream kit."

So you took lessons?

I did. I wasn't a very good student. I wasn't the most prepared student. But I would take away certain things from every lesson. I played with a guy named Sonny Coronado who's this North Jersey swing band drummer, but all I wanted to do was play like Metallica.

What bands were you into back then?

I was big into Motley Crue; loved Crue. Judas Priest, Metallica. Always been a Zeppelin fan, even when I was going through my hard rock phase. I always loved [Zep drummer John] Bonham. He was my guy. Once I understood the smallest amount about drumming, I was trying to figure out what he was doing.

So are you in your basement playing along with records?

Yeah, yeah. My dad had a stereo store and we had this whole "old school" pair of big-ass hi-fi speakers and he had them doctored up to this boom box so I could put my tapes in and play along. It was great! My parents were so supportive and encouraging. My dad would be so psyched when he could go down and rig something up for me so I could play along. I played along to everything — I went through the traditional North Jersey teenager Rush phase, of course.

Neil Peart; he's the man, I guess...

I went through my prog phase... Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Yes and Rush.

Not my favorite bands, but they're all certainly great players and I can see how it would be valuable to listen to them as a budding musician.

For sure. I think being young and being into that stuff for any instrument helps you develop this technical ability which has served me very well through the years. But I think it's something you might need to grow out of, as well, when you get into more musical things, or things that require some looseness or swing. I remember, now that we're talking about this, getting The Big Chill soundtrack [nearly all Motown hits] and trying to play along to it and I couldn't. I could do 64th notes around all my toms and but I couldn't play a Motown groove right.

Did you have two bass drums?

I did. There's some pretty classic video of me at school band concerts and talent shows where I brought my whole rig down, this giant kit...

Might there be a mullet in a few of those shots?

Oh, I would say probably in all of those shots. Hey, man, I didn't know any better. [Laughs]

But no actual big, teased hair a la Motley Crue or Poison, right? Tell me right now: Did you or did you not ever wear eye-liner onstage?

I don't think I've worn eye-liner. I did try some serious Kiss make-up, of course, a couple of times. And I put glitter on my cymbals on occasion.
Photo: Jay Blakesberg/
blakesberg.com ©2010

Well, that could be cool, I guess. What was your first actual band?

My first band was called Detour. I was in seventh grade and the rest of the guys were in eighth grade and we did classic rock covers — some Zeppelin tunes, some Rush tunes. It was the standard thing of everyone trying to figure out how to play with another person. We'd play the middle school dances and Sweet 16 parties and whatnot. I'm still very close with one of the guys who was in that band, Steve Vidaic. He's now the keyboard player for Citizen Cope. Then the next incarnation, also with Steve, was called Lady Rain, which I didn't realize until about ten years ago was from a Hall & Oates song. The singer for that was Constantine Maroulis [of American Idol and Rock of Ages fame], who went by the name of Dean at the time. It's been really cool seeing him do so well. I'm really proud of him. Steve and I went saw him in Rock of Ages and I got a little weepy. It's exciting to see your buddies succeed.

In later high school when you were in bands, was that considered a cool thing?

Totally! I don't think it could ever be uncool to be in a band. It helped me get into social situations that otherwise were only for the ultra-popular kids or jocks.

When did you first hear that all drummers are crazy?

[Laughs] Fairly young, actually. Maybe 8 or 9. After seeing Animal [of the Muppets] they put a tag on all drummers. He was most people's understanding of what drummers are like.

So in late high school did you have any serious bands where you thought, "Man, we're gonna break out of this old town and go down Highway 9 like Bruce Springsteen"?

Well, Lady Rain was one of the most popular high school bands around, and we did gigs at bars, which was my first experience of that kind of thing. Everyone entertains dreams of grandeur, but it was still basically just a high school band with everyone trying to figure out how to be high school people.

At one point you had planned to go Berklee College of Music but decided not to...

My mom had just died when I turned 18 and I was kind of confused and devastated by that, and my friend Steve [Vidaic] and his girlfriend Melissa, who's now his wife, had moved to Boulder. I was all set to go to Berklee and I'd gone up to visit and everything — I actually ran into Marco Benevento up there, who I hadn't seen in years; we were friends in middle school. But before school was starting I went on a trip to Boulder to see Steve, and I'd never been off the East Coast before...

It's pretty sweet out there!

Oh, my God! There are mountains and beautiful girls and avocados... They didn't have avocados in Jersey! [Laughs] I went out there for ten days, fell in love with it. I think I saw Medeski, Martin & Wood at the Fox there—what the hell is this! It was this whole new world and it made me think that if I experienced that much in ten days, there must be a whole lot more there for me. So I flew home and told my dad I wanted to move to Colorado and he said, "Great!" I moved out there ten days later.

Did you pack your drums in the car and everything?

No, not that time. My dad shipped them out to me a few months later. I was going to go to school in Colorado, but I met this band out there called Fat Mama that was looking for a drummer, and I ended up going and joining that group. So I ended up putting school off for a semester, and that turned into many, many years. [Laughs] We started touring and making records, and I think that was really my first taste of actual professional music — if you can call it that when you're each making five dollars a week. But it was a real band. We were playing a lot of Herbie Hancock tunes and Miles tunes and we did some Crusaders songs. It was very cool, and the guys in that band completely redefined my scope of music. I'd never heard Miles Davis really, especially his '70s stuff; all the crazy shit. So they just kicked my ass. They were all music students.

And I bet your prog rock training suddenly came in handy, right?

It did a bit, but what really happened is that I started to realize how to blend some of the chops I got through my prog and my "quest for perfection," Modern Drummer style, and then realizing how lame that was and realizing that Al Foster [of Miles' '70s bands] is the shit and so were all these other guys who play the hell out of the kit but it isn't this meticulous, pristine bullshit. It shocked my whole system: "Whoa, the drums can be such a beautiful part of a musical situation and conversation." I owe my world to these guys, because it gave me a 180 on what I thought good drumming was all about.

Did you then start getting into jazz drummers from earlier periods, like Art Blakey or Elvin Jones?

Definitely! Philly Joe Jones, Max Roach, Blakey, all sorts of great guys. Honestly, when I was with that band, it was almost like a study session 24/7. We ended up living in a house together and they would just put on records: "Listen to this, man!" They schooled me. It kicked my ass in the best way and it also made me nervous as hell because I thought, "I don't play like this. I don't know how to let go like these great drummers." Because I was very contained, and really trying to work within the lines and do it perfectly. So having this other world presented to me really blew my mind, and I recall the night I finally felt I was comfortable in that world it was such a great feeling. We started doing some crazy free shit on this Miles tune we used to do, and I remember I used to feel like I had no idea what to play on it. And this one night, I can picture the club, I had some internal conversation with myself where I said, "It doesn't matter what you play; whatever, nobody's gonna die if it isn't perfect." And I remember this looseness coming over me and I was suddenly playing over time, nothing mattered, and it was this incredible moment for me — this realization of moving through time and not having to be at any certain point and enjoying the freedom you can have. The damn had burst, and from that moment on I've felt free-er and I've been growing in confidence.

What made you move back east?

Fat Mama started touring in '97 and broke up in 2000, and it was a long three years. It was a seven-person band, we didn't make shit for money; it was hard, hard touring. Fun, looking back. We made three records, two of which were live records that were pretty dope — I'm still proud of those. But we got sick of it, basically, and we were all still growing as people and eventually we just needed to get away from each other. We lived in Rhode Island for a little while because one of the guys in the band was going to school at the New England Conservatory in Boston and another guy's family had a place in Rhode Island, and I slept in garage with no heat — which wasn't the first time — and it was like, "I'm over this." [Laughs] So I moved to New York City for the first time and I moved in with this dude Topaz, a pretty popular saxophone player, in the Alphabet City area [Lower East Side].

Lovely neighborhood. I grew up in the suburbs of New York and we were told never to go near Alphabet City.

[Laughs] Good call! It was pretty nasty when I got there and it was probably a lot worse earlier.

How do navigate your way around such a huge music scene and then end up in that jammy Wetlands club world?

There were connections I made through Fat Mama and through touring with other like-minded bands that were dubbed "jam bands," but were more on the jazz or funk side, or what was turning into the early drum 'n bass scene. I just started gigging. I tried to do sub work wherever I could. And I was lucky enough to have some good friends who were able to help me out and plug me in a little bit. I only had a handful of guys I knew in New York, but they introduced me to people and we'd play, and the family gets bigger and bigger. I got very close to Jake Szufnarowski, who used to book Wetlands, and he helped me out tremendously, booking me on anything he could, basically. Then he started doing the Knitting Factory as well. That was my home for a while when the Benevento-Russo Duo started. They had the Tap Bar at that time, which was this tiny bar in the club where they always had free music, and Jake let me play there like three nights a week with different bands. And the one that kind of stuck was the duo with Marco. We had done a few random gigs together in different configurations. So we went in [the Tap Room] with a drum kit and an organ and got 50 bucks each every week and all the Heineken we could drink.

I've always wondered: were you ever hip to Lee Michaels and Frosty, the great organ-drums power duo of the late '60s?

Dude, totally! But not until after we were doing it. It was really funny because people would come down and ask me about Frosty. I'm like, "Who?" So we got turned on to it and it was "Whoa! These guys were great!"

So, Marco and I ended up doing that for ten months [at the Knitting Factory] and it became a place where a lot of heavy guys would come down and check us out or sit in. It was the perfect time to be there. At that point we were looking at doing a tour, and Marco booked us like a ten-date tour across the country — we literally got on Route 80 and played every night and ended up at the High Sierra Music Festival [2003]. It was pretty cool. Then, through our friendships with people like Stanton Moore [of Galactic fame] we started getting opening gigs, because we were the easiest opener to have — two guys, one with a be-bop kit and the other a chopped Hammond organ. Very little equipment. If they wanted us to set up on the floor, we could even do that in front of the stage. It was really easy. Pay us a couple of hundred bucks and we're stoked.

And you were both writing...

At that point we were mainly still doing the improv thing; grooves and that sort of thing.

I would think it would be hard to sustain that for a long time, night after night.

It was hard, and it started getting to me after a while. I mean, Marco was just amazing and we were having a great time, but I was starting to yearn for something else, and after playing with Fat Mama and then getting into the improv Duo thing, I was really missing rock music and also missing songs and composition. Even though jamming was so fun and we definitely had a special connection, something was missing. So I had some songs I had written on guitar for my hopeful future rock bands, and I brought this one to Marco that became "Sunny's Song," which was like our first foray into this instrumental rock kind of thing. We made that work, and then I got this sampler where I would sample some of Marco's single notes and I turned it into essentially a nine-note keyboard for me, and I could play counter-melodies to his melodies and we started adding all this equipment, and then he started writing these great songs and we'd write songs together and it led to another of these periods of self-discovery where we were cranking out these songs. It was combining our instrumental nature and tapping into this thing we were missing, which was songcraft. So we put out our first record and it was awesome!

Earlier, you mentioned Medeski, Martin & Wood. Were they a big influence?

Without wanting them to be, they were. They were incredible, and certainly in our earlier days we were like a poor man's version. We were doing the funky grooves and had the ripping organ player, and though we weren't necessarily hoping to go in that direction, we went that direction. [Laughs] And that was actually another thing that brought on the change we made. Medeski, Martin & Wood were already out there. We were like a louder version, with a similar aesthetic, but maybe a little more of a rock attitude, when we were doing our improv stuff. We'd get into these super-loud punk sections. I went through a John Zorn thing and lots of Naked City [a Zorn band] stuff where it's like Japanese screaming over death metal into swing. [Laughs]

You guys developed a pretty good following there.

We did. It got to be a really nice spot for us and we had some amazing, amazing experiences.

Tell me a little about your period when you and Marco played with Mike Gordon of Phish and then the whole GRAB band with the three of you guys and Trey Anastasio.

The Mike thing kind of came out of nowhere. Marco and I were doing our Duo thing and we'd put out our Best Reason to Buy the Sun record on Ropeadope. Mike had also released an album on Ropeadope [Inside In] and was looking for a touring drummer, so Andy Hurwitz, who was the president of the label at the time, suggested me to Mike. I believe he had come to see us play at this small jazz room in Philadelphia. Then one day I got a call from Mike. I'm like, "Why is Mike Gordon calling me?" Because I was definitely into Phish in high school. I thought, "This is pretty cool!"

Really? You were into Phish? How did you justify that with your other influences?

Well, I went from the hard rock and the metal and the Zeppelin, and in high school your tastes change and you find your hippie friends, so I started getting into Phish, while other friends were getting into the Grateful Dead, which I did not get into at that point. So I went to see Phish a bit. I probably saw 12 shows between '95 and 2000, so I was definitely into them. I loved [drummer] John Fishman's playing and I was also really into their compositions — that Zappa-esque, through-composed stuff. So I had a history with Phish, which is funny because Mike calls me and he's thinking I'm this jazz cat! So I went to his apartment, which was, coincidentally, above the Knitting Factory, and he and I and his friend Jared [Slomoff] got together and jammed and played music. After, we were sitting at his table, and he had no idea I'd ever heard Phish, and he's there trying to describe jamming and Phish to me, and he was so sweet. I was thinking, "I can't tell him I know who he is, that I own Phish records and have seen them numerous times." But he was so cool and so humble in really trying to describe his world to me.

So we played together, but it ends up I don't go out on the road with him. I was actually playing with [keyboardist] Robert Walter at the time — the 20th Congress — and Mike was looking at a couple of others guys at the time, so it didn't work out. That's cool. Let's stay in touch and let's play music again together some time in the future. Awesome. Cool.

So a few months go by, and then HeadCount, the voter registration group, got in touch with me about this benefit show they were putting together, and we were wondering what we could do that would be cool. And I said, "Well, I met Mike Gordon of Phish a while ago." "Whaaaat?" They were very excited. [Laughs] I said, "Maybe he'd be down for doing something with me and Marco." And the guy's like, "Dude, here's the phone, call him right now!" So I called Marco first to see if he was in — "Totally!" This is a guy who used to make his own Phish shirts! [Laughs] And I call Mike and say, "Hey, man, we're doing this thing...would you be into playing like a 40-minute set with us?" He says, "How much rehearsal?" I said, "Absolutely none." He says, "I'm in!" Mike is so chill and laid-back; he's just great!

So we get there and we play and frankly I wasn't expecting it to be anything more than, "Oh, that's neat those guys are playing together." But we ended up having such a great time! We were all saying afterward, "You know, I didn't think it was gonna be so cool!" And that turned into us doing a proper run — The Duo featuring Mike Gordon — and we did a few mini-tours like that. People started calling it GRaB — Gordon, Russo and Benevento.

You'd do some Benevento-Russo material and some Phish stuff?

Yeah, and a couple of random covers. It was really fun and super-playful and I think it was fun for Mike because it was so normal—back to the van and back to the 600-person clubs.

And then you get the large "A" for GRAB... Anastasio.

[Laughs] That's right. The large A calls. This is quite a bit later now, maybe 2006, and Trey had been hearing about Mike playing with Marco and me and he was making a new record and he wanted us to come in and play on two songs. So we went over the Trout Recording in Brooklyn and we did a couple of tunes, and we all got along really well. We did some jamming and it was cool. And then all of a sudden it's like, "Man, we should go into the Mercury Lounge [a hip NYC club] and play!" We're all like, "Yeah, totally!" And then two weeks later we're doing a co-headlining tour with Phil Lesh & Friends playing amphitheaters instead! "OK, that happened." [Laughs] All of a sudden it became this thing. Phish was on hiatus and now two guys from Phish are playing with these two other guys.

Was this the first time you had played with someone who has that public aura around them like Trey does? He has this incredibly devoted following...

Absolutely. We'd had our experiences with Mike, which in itself was eye-opening: "Wow, this dude is famous." But it really was something to behold when we went out with Trey, for sure. We'd be going out for dinner or something, and man, a lot of people know who those guys are! It was cool, though. It was definitely tasting a little bit of that rock 'n' roll dream, you might say. We're playing with Phil & Friends, and those guys were all so nice to us. And Marco and I got to open every night, playing for more people than we ever we'd played for before. We didn't just want to be the guys who were playing with the Phish guys, so we had 30 minutes at the beginning of each show for Marco and me to go out and do our thing, which was incredible. We had the dope tour bus, the whole thing.

The only down side of it, if you can even call it that — and some things I've said about this have been slightly misunderstood, I think — is that before this Marco and I were on a certain trajectory that didn't necessarily need to get bigger than it was. We were happy being this group that was somewhere between an indie band and a jam band. We didn't have much of a stamp, and we were completely in control of our scenario.

You were noted hipsters!

[Laughs] We were doing pretty well. We were maybe selling out 400-person places, and in some markets doing more than that. We were making a good living, we were getting great reviews from the press, we were stoked. The live show was together, the recordings were together... And the unfortunate thing that happened — and this is completely removed from Mike or Trey or Phish and that whole experience — is we released our second record in the midst of this and it completely got lost and under-performed, or whatever.

Because you weren't there to really promote it right.

There was no attention to it, and when we went back a couple of months later and started playing after the GRAB experience, our old crowd suddenly wasn't there as much, and who was there was Phish fans — which was great: "Yeah, come to our shows and check it out!" But they're yelling out Phish songs and asking us why don't we sing and all this stuff. In the end it sort of felt like we'd maybe tried to do too much [by doing the GRAB tour] and maybe we'd lost part of what we were trying to do with the Duo.

In hindsight, though, I can see that we were pretty burned out. I was drinking too much. Marco and I weren't having that much fun playing together. There was this feeling of "We have to keep doing it!" and we did for a while but it wasn't quite the same. When I've talked about this before it's come off to some people that I don't like Trey, which is crazy. I never said that. I loved playing with Trey and Mike. And it was obviously a tremendous opportunity. There just happened to be some collateral damage to the Duo.

So, how did the Furthur thing come about?

Well, we were out with Phil for a lot of that tour in 2006. In the summer of 2009, I get a call from Bob Weir's manager, Matt Busch: "Would you be interested in playing a little with Bob Weir and Phil Lesh? Call me back." It was so out of left field; it was a weird call to get. The Duo had stopped playing in 2008 and I was back to some pickup gigs and doing some odd tours here and there and starting to cultivate some stuff in the UK. But I thought, "OK, let's see what this is about." So I get in touch with Matt Busch, and he asks if I can come out there to the Bay Area for this thing that's happening in September. At the point I thought it was going to be some kind of benefit show. They gave me a list of nine songs to learn. I got off the phone and I was complaining to my lady, "Shit, I have to learn nine songs!" [Laughs]

Then, in between the phone call and what eventually became like an audition, were e-mails back and forth with people in the organization. "Oh, also check out this song and that song." And all of sudden there were 50 songs! [Laughs]

How familiar were you with any of them?

[Laughs] I was not.

You had not been a Dead Head in any way.

That's right. Back to high school, one day I'm wearing my Metallica T-shirt and then all my friends started wearing Steal Your Face t-shirts! But not me. I knew the Dead a little — obviously I was in the stoner group in high school — and they'd sometimes be on in the background. But it isn't where I was at that time. I'd heard "Sugaree" and "Scarlet Begonias" — the obvious classics you can't avoid hearing...

Much as you tried...

Really. It wasn't my thing; I have to be honest.

Back to Furthur. Had you gotten to know Phil at all on the GRAB tour?

Not really. Just to say hello. He was always very nice. At Bonnaroo we played together at the "superjam" — we did "Goin' Down the Road" and "Casey Jones" and I had no idea what to do. "How does this end?" [Laughs] But it worked out pretty well and it was fun. And we played one other time together at the Jammys¬—it was Marco and myself, plus Mike, Les Claypool and Phil.

A basstravaganza!

Exactly. It was a band that didn't have a bass player — Marco and me — now having three!

So anyway, I get this huge list of songs and I'm busy and I'm gigging and doing all these things I'd planned. And I was still confused: What's going on here? And my girlfriend says, "I think it's an audition." "An audition for what? The Dead just toured." So I said, "OK, I'm just gonna learn these songs and not worry about it."

Did they send you Phil & Friends versions or Grateful Dead versions, or what?

They just sent me the titles! So even though I wasn't supposed to tell anybody, I had to go to my closest Dead Head friend, Pete Costello — he's one of those "Oh, yeah, 12/4/72 they played this amazing version of this song" guys — and I asked him to help me get recordings of the songs on the list. And he was psyched, of course! He was aware of my non-involvement with the Dead through the years, so he thought it was hilarious. My friends in high school now are all, "You're playing with who?" They can't believe it. So Pete helped me tremendously, and then I went to iTunes and I tried to get the record version, and then something live from the '70s and something from the '80s. That was a lot of songs to listen to and figure out what things were constant and what things were improvised, what things came and went. I started realizing, "Whoa, they played this as a ballad here, and now it's much faster here." So I tried to pick a version I would learn, and the gamble worked on most of them. There were a couple where I learned the wrong version.

Through this process I started thinking, "Wow, this is some bad-ass stuff!" These songs are really cool! I finally got it! And it took sitting down and actually listening to this music, and having to listen to it on the level of trying to understand what every single instrument's doing to really know the music. "Fuck, this is incredible!" It was a humbling moment when I realized, "I don't know shit about this band." It was something I hadn't given the time of day to before, and now here it was blowing my mind. It was beautiful and complex in ways I didn't think it would be.

So what was the audition like and where was it?

It was at Bobby's studio in Marin. I get in there and the whole band is there, I think.

And, of course, Jay Lane [RatDog drummer] was part of it, too, then.

That's right. I'd known him a little bit from the Duo touring with Les Claypool's band. We weren't super-tight, but it was a great thing to have somebody I knew there. Because, otherwise, I was the guy coming in from not that circle. The singers weren't there yet; it was just the dudes. So we started playing — I think the first one we did was "Playing in the Band" — and it was pretty rockin'; it was cool and really fun.

Had you ever done any extended work with a second drummer?

Not really, no. Fat Mama had a percussionist and I had done some double drummer gigs — some I'd loved some of them I didn't. But playing with Jay was awesome because he's a bad-ass. There was maybe a slightly strange dynamic, because he was Bobby's drummer, but I've gotta say, he saved my ass for a long time in that band because he was so well-versed in it, and I've got cheat sheets all over my kit. [Laughs] It was a lot of material for me to learn.

What sort of cheat sheet does a drummer use?

Essentially what I try to do is write the name of the song on the top, I write the style of the song, and then I write the name of a song it sounds like to me. Like, I think there was one song where I wrote "Son of a Preacher Man groove." I've done this for tons of gigs: "Four bars this happens," or if there's something on a specific lyric — like on "spent a little time on the MOUN-tain," I know I'm gonna hit that a little heavier. Anything I can do. Little reminders.

So we played that day. It was really fun, then we played another day; also really fun. We went through "The Other One," We went through "St. Stephen." We did "The Eleven." We did "Terrapin" — not the full suite. "Unbroken Chain." A lot of the musically involved songs; the stuff with lots of sections: Can we swing doing these hard composition things? And it was pretty good, I've got to say, right away.

Then, after a few days of that, we were informed, "Well, Bob and Phil are interested in doing something [besides The Dead] and they want this to be the band." Cool. All right! And they told us they were doing these shows at the Fox Theatre in Oakland and then we'll probably do a few shows later in the year and next year. Obviously it turned into something much more. It certainly exceeded my expectations by a lot.

How did playing with Phil compare to listening to him? Mike is obviously a fantastic bass player in a different way.

It was really fun. But I will say, I think it's lucky I played with Mike before I played with Phil. Mike has been outspoken on how much he loves Phil's playing, but he doesn't copy him in any way. But it's got some of that flavor. With Phil it's all just super-intuitive and it's really a listening game. It's very playful with Phil. He and I will crack up so many times onstage because we hit the same thing at the same time. It sometimes feels at the time like we're trying to mess with each other, to see how far we can push each other and still hit it, and that's really fun. There was a certain amount of that in the audition process which has developed into this really playful musical friendship, which is such a treat. A lot of it's subtle; sometimes he and I are probably the only ones who know what happened, but we'll be cracking up. It's a great feeling to make that kind of musical connection.

I guess it was at Phil's 70th birthday gig [3/12/10] that we first got an inkling that Jay wasn't going to stick around. There you were alone out there for the last set...

It was little weird, I guess. But I really do believe that everything worked out for the best. Jay is a monster musician, an incredible drummer, and I'm so psyched he's playing with Primus, because I love Primus. I grew up studying Primus — I grew up studying Jay Lane! So I'm happy he's getting to be the monster that he is. It was, frankly, slightly uncomfortable being in the position of being in a role that didn't highlight how brilliant he is. In a sense, he went back home, because he really helped create a lot of that early Primus stuff. He's rockin' it. It's totally cool.

So, how did it feel once you were the only guy out there?

Honestly, pretty good. I'm used to being the only guy out there, so I felt I was able to spread my wings a little more and maybe tap into what I naturally do more than I could when there were two drummers — because you never want to play over your teammate, and I think Jay I were both conscious of being respectful to each other and letting each other shine, as well as working together. I'm sure if we'd gone on together it would've become something totally crushing in a different way, because our intuition was really clicking. But anybody would want more freedom, and that's what I gained, so I got to truly interpret this music on my own: Here's my voice on this.
Photo: Jay Blakesberg/blakesberg.com ©2010

How was it learning things like "Slipknot!" and the "Terrapin Flyer" stuff, which is fairly written in a sense, but complex — there's a rhythmic tightness there you have to conform to...

That's where I dipped back into my prog. Their material is all over the map. But I've had an experience to match each one — whether it was growing up playing the prog rock stuff that helps me play certain grooves, or playing with my Americana band, American Babies, which helped me play other styles. Or playing with Marco and having to improvise. It's really cool—I feel like it was a lot of life leading up to the moment where I could be involved in playing this kind of music. I learned a million things playing with this great singer-songwriter named Chris Harford at a little club in New Hope, Pennsylvania. I learned how to play a ballad with conviction and leaving space. And I learned X, Y and Z from all these other people.

With "Slipknot!" and that part of "Terrapin," it's tapping into that kind of through-composed, angular, twists-and-turns music I grew up on. And that was one of things that shocked me: I would have loved the Dead if I'd heard songs like that back in the day! "Kings Solomon's Marbles" is another one they sent me before the audition. "This is the Grateful Dead? Holy shit!" They literally would've been my favorite band! [Laughs] But maybe if I had been a fan all that time, I wouldn't have approached this the way I did and maybe I wouldn't have been right for it for some reason. I think it helped that I had done what I did before I got the place in life where I could appreciate this thing and really understand what's going on.

Do your old Dead Head buddies fill you in the on the lore? Do you understand the importance of "St. Stephen" in their history, or understand what "Dark Star" means to people?
For sure. I'm still learning. JK [John Kadlecik] helps a lot. He knows a couple of things about the Dead. [Laughs] In a way, though, it's kind of fun to not be in the know about some things, and just go with it and get that feeling of discovery. I've just been exposed to one of the classic American songbooks at age 32. How cool is that? I just feel so blessed to have gotten the opportunity. The folklore is cool, too, and I like it dripping out a little bit at a time.

At the same time you're sort of developing a repertoire that belongs to this band alone — some of the new songs, covers the Dead didn't do, things like that.

I'd love to see that side of it [new songs] mature even more. I love writing songs and I'd love to someday be in the mix on that. But it has to happen organically.

Write these guys a prog rock instrumental! They could play it.

I won't lie, I'm working on something. If it comes to pass, cool. I love the act of creating, and it's a different side a band has to develop, as well. I feel we've got out improv skill together, we've done our stage stuff together. We can rock out this material. I think songwriting and writing as a band is another skill-set we are in the midst of developing.

What do you notice happening in the band from tour to tour in terms of developing either tightness, or maybe its actually relaxing more that's affecting the music?

The biggest thing is trust. When we were first going I felt like I was being looked at by Bob or Phil on every song—which is fair; we had just started. Now it feels like the trust is there and it really opens up that door I was talking about earlier—I can play whatever I want and nobody's gonna die! So, trusting myself and trusting them and realizing that if I fall on my face for second, who cares? It's better to go for it. I love that they appreciate that idea, and are actually from that idea. Like putting yourself in uncomfortable situations for the excitement of getting out of them—sometimes you fall on your face, and sometimes you do things you never ever, ever dreamed of doing, and that's the pay-off.

Is it hard to listen to everyone at once? That's part of the Grateful Dead skill-set.

I pride myself on my listening ability. That's something I look for in the people I play with; that's the way I enjoy music—hearing the interplay between the instruments. I have to say, I have such a blast listening to Jeff [Chimenti]. He's great, and he makes me feel very comfortable and very at home in the way he plays, because I think we come from a similar place. At the audition, he soothed me by saying he had never really never checked out the Dead before he started playing with Bob. And also, I think I'm in tune with that instrument from having played with Marco all those years. Jeff definitely sparks a lot of things for me, so even if everyone is playing at the same volume, he might be a notch above in my consciousness.

What are some of your favorite songs to play?

God, there are so many. Definitely the ballads—I love playing at a whisper volume in an arena. "Comes a Time." "Must've Been the Roses." I love "Row Jimmy," which I think we've only done twice. That's one of my favorite songs by anybody. And then it's always really fun to do things like "Help on the Way." I love playing "Touch of Grey," which is a legendary song. It's just fun. It depends on the night, on the mood and the song we played before it. They all can be a favorite song on a given night.

Do you think you'd ever incorporate electronics in your setup?

I have with other bands, but I really wouldn't want to in this. It just feels weird to me.

Mickey did it!

I know. I play electronic music when I'm not playing with these guys, and I feel like there are certain places for certain things, and I personally don't hear that with this music; that's just my take on it.

What's it been like seeing this level of fan appreciation?

It's cool. There's nothing like it. It's overwhelming. It's astounding. Sometimes it's kind of funny, but not in a bad way. You see four generations of people at a concert and it's a trip!

That must have been something playing Madison Square Garden.

It was incredible. It's hard to even say what it meant to me.

It's what northern New Jersey kid would dream of.

Absolutely. I walked into the building with my fiance for sound check and I started crying. I thought, "This is ridiculous!" It's where I came with my parents to see Ranger games. It's where I saw concerts. This is the Holy Grail that wasn't supposed to be touched. I always wanted it, but never expected it. So to have that happen and to have it happen with this band, which is this whole other extreme of musical legend... and to have all of my family there and my best friends—all the people who had seen me homeless and broke and stealing Ramen noodles from the grocery store—to be in that audience, and then be surrounded, literally, with these fans giving the most incredible energy I've ever felt... It was completely overwhelming. I found myself tearing up quite a bit, especially that first night. It was unreal.

So, where do you see this going? I know Phil is famously not into looking down the road too far...

I honestly have no idea. I know we're planning to play a lot of shows this year and I'm really excited about that. I can't believe that over a year has passed from the inception of this—it's been a total whirlwind. It keeps me on my toes. I just hope it stays being something that feels really great and creative. And I love that the team is into finding cool places to play and keeping the ticket prices down and using smaller promoters. I'm excited to see what happens. I'm really looking forward to this tour coming up and the fact that we're playing multiple nights in smaller places, which means we're going to have to really dig into the material. There are a number of songs we haven't done on the last couple of tours that I love. I'm stoked!

[qop24]

^ cool interview, thanks for posting.

Really enjoyed the bit about him and Phil's communication on stage, his attitude towards what Furthur is doing has me very pumped for hampton!

[gah]

cool interview...

[sls.stormyrider]

thanks for posting!

[birdman]

thanks for posting!

Are you going to any of the shows at the Orpheum this weekend, SLS?

[sls.stormyrider]

no- I wasn't motivated when the tix went on sale. I'm kinda regretting that now
I'm going skiing Sunday and Monday (hopefully the prediction of rain on Sunday will be wrong) so it's all good.

I'm going to try and meet up with SF downtown somewhere on Saturday before the show.


you going?

[redrum]

didn't think i was gona be able to go tomorrow night, turns out i can now.
anyone know of extras? i'd take 2 or 3..
thanks in advance..

[gah]

Interview with Russo from dead.net

http://www.dead.net/features/news/furthur-adventures-joe-russo-drum-monster

I like this part:

What do you notice happening in the band from tour to tour in terms of developing either tightness, or maybe its actually relaxing more that's affecting the music?

The biggest thing is trust. When we were first going I felt like I was being looked at by Bob or Phil on every song—which is fair; we had just started. Now it feels like the trust is there and it really opens up that door I was talking about earlier—I can play whatever I want and nobody's gonna die! So, trusting myself and trusting them and realizing that if I fall on my face for second, who cares? It's better to go for it. I love that they appreciate that idea, and are actually from that idea. Like putting yourself in uncomfortable situations for the excitement of getting out of them—sometimes you fall on your face, and sometimes you do things you never ever, ever dreamed of doing, and that's the pay-off.