We're sitting in this room in my studio, which we call The Nook. It's where Jared and I usually hang out, or I hang out when I'm songwriting, and then the bigger room, which is not that big, but it's round -- right through the glass here -- is used when other musicians come in and we record them. So in this little room, or maybe in that room, Jared and I, between '07 and now, I can picture us taking that song and saying, "Well, the chorus is too short, for the long phrasings of the verse, and we have to get from the verse to the chorus, so let's try this chord progression." I'll try some chord progressions and Jared will say, "Well, I don't really like that major 7 chord. It just doesn't sound right." And I'll go, "Okay, I'll take it out to the round room," and I'll sit there and try a few things and tape record them on my dictaphone and come back and say, "Ahh, how about this chord progression?" Every little part of the song just got tweaked and tweaked.

With this album, as much as possible, we're trying to let the songs tell us what they need. That was sort of a long example of trying to do that. But as Jared said, other times it was editing different aspects. Some of the songs started from jam sessions and taking the jam sessions and saying, "Well, maybe the tempo should be slowed down or one part of the groove that we took from part of the jam session should be changed in its meter to match the other part that we used." It's all different layers of the song that are sort of evolving.

JS: I think largely the part I play is as a sounding board. I think the strength is, or the trick is, to be able to be subjective enough where I understand where Mike's coming from and be able to be a good listener, and also be objective enough to have another voice. The songs don't have to have to resonate with me. They don't. They can just resonate with Mike. They could be deeply personal. And that's okay. But if they do resonate with me, maybe they would resonate with other people. And if you want to communicate with other people, then [another voice] could be helpful.

Sometimes that could relate to a lyrical idea or a musical idea, or an editing concept or arrangement. It's a matter of communicating. We've been working together for almost ten years now, so a lot of it becomes non-verbal. We can just get in the flow and get creative. Often we don't really have to say a whole lot about it. We just kind of work together and see what happens.

As Jared said, we've been working together since '01. Jared came on to help do sound for a movie project, then more than sound -- even video editing -- on what became Rising Low, one of the feature films that I made. Since then, Jared and I have done countless projects. We've done several albums, several movies, and then he's helped set up and manage two studios now. Also a lot of smaller projects that would take a couple days or a week. It would actually be interesting to make a list of everything we've done, because it's been quite a range of stuff. Like taking some dictaphone humming and changing them into an orchestrated piece. Or one day, we took an Eagles song and added sour harmonies. As the song progresses you hear it disintegrate into sourness, because it just needed to be done. You wouldn't believe the... My point is we've done so much together and Jared is an incredible asset in the Cactus Unlimited empire, as we call our production company. Jared is Cactus Unlimited. It's because he mixes a lot of technical knowledge with a lot of musical knowledge; he's just very inspired about the arts in general. Even the way that we will be inspired by a painting or a movie or a video or something. He's constantly giving me links to check out.

When we're working on a song, he wears both hats at the same time. Where he'll be able to mic things up and edit them very quickly and get good sound, but it's really Jared's musicality mixed with his taking in a lot of music and a lot of understanding of what's making music work. When I have an idea and I bounce it off of him, I don't know if he's going to like it or not -- and he's going to have ideas himself, too. And he's going to send some ideas back at me. My point is, it's not someone who's gonna just fluff me up and make me feel good. He's going to give an honest opinion. And that's gonna, that honesty is what's going to push these songs into becoming what they want to be. As Jared said, sometimes it doesn't have to be spoken. It's amazing after nine years how it's become intuitive like that, where one of us has an idea and we're sitting at the computer and we say, "Oh, let's just try it. It's weird, but let's just try it." And neither one of us has to talk, once we hear it back, to know whether we like it or not. It's innate. Either it was good or it wasn't, and we know. And then sometimes we have to argue points out, but that gives it the venom too. So it is an interesting working relationship. It's a special relationship.

JS: Oh, definitely. You pick your battles for sure. We have a lot of common ground now. I think when we started, our aesthetics were a little further apart. What's interesting is sometimes the roles reverse and I'll be seeking out something that's a little more disorienting and Mike is looking for a little more clarity. It's suddenly, "What's going on here?"

What about the musicians on Moss? How did you decide who would come in and play on the tracks?

MG: I keep saying this in different ways, but with this album, we're really trying to pare things down to the essence of the song. More than ever before. It's a natural progression for an artist to be able to carve the sculpture closer to what it wants to be as they develop and mature. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to take extra time to see what's needed and what isn't needed -- and erasing things that aren't needed. So we didn't go out and try to find a bunch of musicians so we could list them in the liner notes. In some cases, someone happened to be on the track already and it fit just perfectly, and other times we thought… well, for example, with "Got Away," we needed some percussion. There are plenty of great percussion players in Burlington, but there's this guy [Ken Lovelett] in New York who has, for decades, designed and invented his own percussion instruments. And he's a master percussionist. I mean, he could play a wastebasket or a Scotch tape canister or something and make it sound incredible.

This song called out for something different, because the percussion was gonna be the key enhancement to a song that was otherwise featuring the bass. So we didn't want to get in the way of the bass, but needed to get something interesting and very unique going. This was the guy. So we brought him in from New York, and he's not someone who's going to sell more albums because people, know all about him -- but they should know all about him.

"Babylon Baby" stems from a jam session with me and Joe Russo, bass and drums. A lot of it is just that jam session, although it was fiercely edited. There's that and there's some singing and Page plays some Clavinet. Marie [Claire], from Honky Tonk [Tuesday], did some singing. But it's very pared down. We could have added all kinds of stuff after that, but the thought was that this album kind of features the bass more and the song. This was a really unique bass line and we don't just want to cover it up with a whole bunch of musicians and a whole bunch of other sounds.

MG: We can do whatever we want. We try to do whatever we want. The only thing that Phish being back together changes is the schedule. It's not that we're touring that much, but there's stuff in between touring: there's practicing and recording... Last year was a very heavy year, our first year back. And [Jared and I] hoped to be able to finish this album last July and then it turns out I'm doing Phish stuff all July, even though we're not on tour.