[laughs] The guy who wrote that song.
Oh‚ OK! Well‚ yeah‚ every once in a while. I had this thing when we were first starting to get the band together‚ when Chuck and I first started up the band‚ where he and I both worked for the same guy‚ doing landscaping and stuff. I would get some of my best material when I'd get locked into these repetitive tasks at work. I'd come home with a new song.
The thing that I like about a lot of that material from those days is it just reminds me of that time in the band and what we were going through. It was a real fun time for us. Not so much the actual song material‚ but more what it reminds me of‚ how it was written and where it came from. And that's kind of how I get through it. [laughter] That's a part of my life and I'm not going to ignore it. It was great‚ great fun.
Going back to the album‚ what was the discussion like with "Tailspin‚" using the Bush and Rumsfeld samples? Was there a discussion about whether that was a good idea?
It's so funny you say that!
I actually think it's cool. I think it represents the times. You're putting out a statement. It's an album. Here it is‚ 2006/2007‚ and what's going on? What have we been dealing with? The samples kind of put a stamp on it. That's where a lot of us are. We deal with this shit on a daily basis. And then there's the other part of it: every time I listen to the album‚ I have to hear that fucker's voice. [laughter]
Yeah‚ sorry 'bout that.
That's why I'm curious if the same thing was going on when you guys thought about this stuff.
There wasn't a lot of discussion about it. It was something Al [Schnier] really wanted to do‚ as the song is basically about George Bush. More about his whole administration‚ where you get spin-or tailspin-on everything‚ or how they were able to spin everything. I think Al just sort of wanted to hammer the point home a little harder by doing this. There's a version without the samples‚ too. That song went through a bunch of different edits. Finally‚ when it comes down to it‚ we kind of leave it up to the guy who wrote the song to decide which version he wants on the album. The discussion was just like‚ you know‚ let's fucking try it‚ and we don't have to use it if we don't want to. We ended up liking it. If it was any other song‚ I don't think I would've been into it‚ but the fact that the song is topical and the sound bites completely relate to the actual song‚ it seems like as good a place as any to put it.
And the outro has a kind of hopeful‚ optimistic vibe. It seems to come out of the doom and into a major key with that beautiful guitar line. It works.
Yeah‚ when we play that I can always hear some crazy Sgt. Pepper's arrangement of that last part‚ with French horns and some backwards guitar solo. It's got a very majestic ending. I'm not really sure how those two things go together. My take on it is sort of like what yours is: "Well‚ we'll get through this." But there are also the points we made‚ where these guys probably think they're fucking royalty‚ and this is their death march. [laughter] Or their coronation.
Can I ask you a little bit about just the playing now‚ some of the stuff that's happening onstage? I know you're probably continuously working on improvisation‚ and I thought the third set at Radio City was just fantastic. It was right on.
Thanks‚ man.
And some of the stretching out I thought was great. "Recreational Chemistry" really went to some interesting places. [laughter] So I just want some of your ideas: where you're at right now with the group improvisation or if there's anything you're really thinking about.
I've kind of gotten to a point where I feel like we've pushed the limits‚ as far as squeezing as much out of segues and improvisation as we can. So what I'd actually like to start doing is working out interludes and longer experimented parts that can eventually become their own songs. And then the beginnings and the ends of those would go into other songs. I'd like to start seeing whole pieces where there's a song that you recognize‚ but with improvised sections where it's not going to ever be the same‚ and then a new section that was an improvised section that becomes a standard musical interlude. Then maybe we can come from that with another improvised thing‚ into something else. That's what I want to start to focus on doing: writing out these jams that we get live‚ starting to listen to them and thinking‚ Oh‚ here's a good reference point. We could turn this into‚ you know‚ a sonata or something. [laughter]
So is that the idea‚ to do that and see where you can stretch out from there?
Well‚ basically. I'd like to be able to do that and then orchestrate those sections‚ to actually take it from the improv part into a guitar‚ bass and vibraphone four-part harmony written-out section. And then have that section have some sort of switch that we hit at the end‚ where we can all just start going in our own direction again and that can be something that can work with five or six different songs. So you can just use it like it's Legos or something; you can take this piece that fits in the middle of "Rebubula" and take it and put it in the middle of "Mexico‚" too‚ or at the end of "Mexico." It's the same piece but it can be modular. There can be all these different modular bits that we can take in and out of songs and put them in other songs. I guess that's the way I can describe it.
I was listening to some of the bass lines on the new album and I noticed how spread out they were. And I was thinking that was another thing that just naturally happens‚ I guess‚ where you stop playing so many notes and you let the thing breathe a little bit. I hear some of these bass lines and there is so much space in between the notes. Probably five years ago‚ there would have been two or three notes in between. In a lot of ways I think that translates to what you guys are doing live.
Well‚ when you're live‚ you get amped up and you hit great notes and you play the fifth a lot and you do stuff like that‚ but it's not really completely needed. And a lot of it‚ too‚ is if I'm composing something as opposed to playing my bass. If I'm playing my bass and we're onstage‚ sometimes I'm playing a couple different parts. I'm thinking while I'm trying to keep the groove; I'm pretending in my head like I'm playing the trumpet or something and adding stuff to it. Even though‚ if anyone's hearing it‚ it's just gonna sound like me playing a lot of notes on the bass. [laughter] But when I'm really sitting down and trying to write stuff out‚ a lot of the times I keep the bass to just bass. Then I take those other parts that I was playing and put them on something else. I might make it into a keyboard part and say‚ "Al‚ can you play something like this?" Or just‚ "We need this here."