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Interview With
Dave Schools
Bass Player
Widespread Panic
7/14/98
AMZ - Could you give me a little background on how the band got
together?
DS - We sort of snowballed at the University of Georgia. John
Bell was playing songs acoustically by himself. He was joined
later by Mike Houser, and then I forced my way in, and we formed
a three-piece. We found Todd, the drummer, about a year later
(he'd played in a band with Mike in Chattanooga when they were
in high school together). Domingo Ortiz sat in with us one night
in 1986, and he's been with us ever since. T. Lavitz was playing
keyboards for us in 1991. He played for about a year, we had
a mutual parting of the ways, and John Herman came zooming in
out of left field. That's the way it's been since 1992.
AMZ - Admittedly, you have six different players with six totally
different influences, but when you play live, it sounds so cohesive.
Was it like that from the beginning or did it develop over time?
DS: That's the result of just having played together for a really
long time.
The early, individual, influences are sort of shrugged off in
favor of
what we hear every day - which is each other. Over the last decade
we've had a bigger influence on each other than any outside artist
has. I think that's where the cohesiveness comes from. It's a
six-way conversation, and we've learned each other's languages,
so to say.
AMZ - I think your music comes across a lot better in the live
arena, because of the interaction with the audience, and because
of the improvisational stuff you do. When did the idea for the
live album come about, and why has it been so long in the coming?
DS: Well it's something we always wanted to do. We obviously
noticed the symbiosis with the audience a long time ago. But
to say a good thing here in Capricorn's defense, they wanted
to break us as a studio band. They felt that our songwriting
was strong enough to overcome this live band stigma which tends
to haunt all of us jam bands. I do think that we write some of
the best songs, and I think that we've had more success in capturing
what we do live in the studio than a lot of the other bands.
Capricorn has always wanted to put out studio records. They tried
to put a live album out in 1991, but we weren't happy with the
performance. It took so long because we wanted it to be exactly
right.
AMZ - I think people that haven't had the opportunity to see
you live, have missed out on something, even though you do a
good job of capturing the live element in the studio - and I
think this album will give the audience a better feel for that.
DS - It's definitely a Whitman's sampler. We tried to get one
whole
Performance, but between the technical viability of a lot of
the tapes, and our memories not working in tandem with the truth
that was laid down on tape, it became sort of an impossible task.
We just selected from different shows in 1997.
AMZ - How hard was it to cut down to the final 19 songs?
DS - It was tough. It was a long process and it involved a whole
lot of
different things other than just "Is this a good song? Is
this a good version of the song?" It involved things like
how the signal goes to the tape, and had we perfected our digital
recording system yet. We went through about a year and a half
period where we were doing things not exactly the right way and
having trouble getting proper signal to the tape. It came through,
and we'll probably release some of that as a vault thing someday,
but for what this album needed to be, which is top-notch, top
quality all the way through, it was precluded. John Keane (producer)
played a big part in it, by simply being an outside ear - and
also through the tortuous task of having to mix 56 tracks down
to 2 tracks. That's rough to listen to. He'd already heard everything
once, at least. He played a big part.
AMZ - One of the interesting things on
this album was Branford Marsalis as a guest on "Picking
up the Pieces." How did that come about?
DS - Well, we were doing some shows with
his acid jazz band, "Buckshot LeFonque," and that was
the third of the three shows we did with them. On the first show,
they just listened to us and found out that we were sort of like-minded
musically. In other words, there's always an opening for competent
and willing musicians to come join us onstage. The second night,
in D.C., Branford joined us for "Aunt Avis" and another
song. We had so much fun that the third night, in Boston, we
had him come up onstage for that. What's not on the record, is
that we had his DJ come onstage on turntables and scratch on
a couple more
dance-oriented songs. It just worked out beautifully. "Picking
up the
Pieces" is an example of what happens with this band. There
is usually just a keyboard solo there, and what happened was
some good interplay between Branford and Jojo.
AMZ - I agree. It actually sounded like they had been playing
together for years.
DS - That's what a good musician can do. He speaks the languages,
all the languages to an extent, where he can speak with anyone.
You know, if you're fluent in French, you can get by in France.
So, if you go to Europe, the more languages you speak, the more
fun you're gonna have. That's what it's all about. That's what
we try to have happening - enough of an understanding of different
languages to where anyone can come speak to us, and join in our
conversation.
AMZ - Speaking of Europe, ya'll just recently toured over there.
How was that experience?
DS - Actually, the recent tour was the return trip. We'd already
been
there once in March and February, and it included Australia and
New Zealand, as well as Europe. It was successful enough that
here we are back again not six months later, moving up to larger
theaters and festivals in Germany. The Europeans really have
a great thing going with their summer festivals. Here we are
on the bill with Santana, Dave Matthews, Meredith Brooks, and
Matchbox 20 in one gig, and the next day we're with Bjork, Iggy
Pop, Chumba Wumba, and German bands like Guano Apes and Rammstein.
They really put together an eclectic selection of music.
AMZ - That's amazing, because it seems like in this country,
with these
festivals, they'll put one or two headliners, and that's all
they'll put as
far as big-name bands.
DS - Right. It takes a lot of jack for one thing, and I guess
it also has
a lot to do with mass transport, you know? With everything there
oriented to trains, you can get 100,000 into a small town in
the middle of nowhere between Hamburg and Club Lenz. Literally
100,000 people, and you won't see near that many automobiles.
AMZ - With your music, there is a lot of audience interaction.
Do you enjoy playing in front of the larger audiences, or do
you prefer a smaller crowd?
DS - I prefer an audience that knows what's up, and that could
fall into the category of stadium or nightclub. Just as many
times, an audience that doesn't know what's up could be an audience
of 100,000 people or an audience of 12 people. The great thing,
is playing to the audience that becomes part of the show, and
size has nothing to do with that. Obviously it's thrilling to
play in front of 100,000 people, but at the same time, if they're
not paying attention, you'd rather be back in a nightclub playing
in front of 20 people that are having a great time dancing, giving
you some energy.
AMZ - How do you develop the song lists
during a concert? I know you don't begin a concert with a specific
set list.
DS - <chuckling> You want a magician to tell you how he
saws that lady in half?
AMZ - True. Good point. Let's hop over a bit then. How do you
go about
deciding the covers you do, because ya'll do a very interesting
selection of cover songs.
DS - The covers are basically songs that personally influenced
us or that we liked, or that are fun to play, or maybe that even
say something about the story of the band, what we're trying
to get across. My favorite covers are the ones that we do that
are written by friends of ours...Like the Bloodkin songs "Henry
Parsons Died" or "Can't Get High," or Vic Chestnutt
songs like "Aunt Avis" or "Light." We just
added a Jerry Joseph song (another songwriter friend of ours),
called "Climb to Safety." We like doing those because
we feel that people deserve to hear them, and maybe we can convey
that song to more people than the original artist.
AMZ - Speaking of that, and I hate to interrupt,
I remember reading,
concerning other friends of yours, Col. Bruce Hampton and the
Fiji Mariners (though he was with the Aquarium Rescue Unit at
the time....I misspoke...), that when the first H.O.R.D.E. festival
was being put together, it was basically Widespread that insisted
that Hampton's band be brought on board.
DS - We paid them. <laughing> We
convinced Blues Traveler to cough up some money too. There was
no question that Bruce Hampton wasn't going to be involved in
a scene that he was basically the patriarch of. Those first two
H.O.R.D.E.'s were great, and the Aquarium Rescue Unit was a great
band that needed to be heard. That's definitely along the same
lines. We love playing with Bruce, and we love to be able to
expose him to more and more people.
AMZ - As far as the songwriting goes, how
do you develop the ideas? Is it done individually or is it a
collective effort on the songs?
DS - It's collective. Everyone puts forth their own ideas, of
course, and some of our ideas may be more developed than others,
but basically the whole band gets together in our rehearsal space
in Athens, and we usually have some intensive work. We do two
or three days where we're there eight to twelve hours a day working
on one or two songs. We got together for a week and we hammered
out the three songs that we developed at our Athens show back
in April. That was a conscious effort on our behalf to get three
brand new songs, that have never been heard before, ready, so
we could break them out at that show, and then play them during
the summer so we could get used to playing them to go and record
them in January.
AMZ - Are there other bands that you feel
influence your music now?
DS - Yeah, there obviously are. You know we all like the Radiohead
record. That's something we've been listening to a lot on the
bus. We really like that Branford Marsalis Buckshot LeFonque
record, to the point where we play it at set break. But, you
can't help but be influenced by something that you all like,
that the whole band, all six of you, can sit around and say "Man,
that is an amazing record. Amazing sound. That's a new step in
a new direction." You can't help but be influenced by something
like that, because there's some part of you inside that's cheering
for someone that's taking the chance, the risk of playing something
new. So many people these days want to play it safe
and regurgitate formulas that are proven.
AMZ - I think that's what makes your band so much above average.
DS - We can't do that. It's as if we have some sort of built-in
device that
won't let us write pablum. I'm damn glad about it.
AMZ - It's a great thing for music, and especially Southern music
in my
opinion.
DS - Well that's all we do. Southern rock ain't what Southern
rock was twenty years ago. R.E.M. came in and proved that you
could be literate and write Southern pop rock, and certainly
Marilyn Manson is from the South, and they've got their own way
of doing things. Southern rock ain't what people think Southern
rock is. It's more than just Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers,
and the Marshall Tucker band. It's more than just Charlie Daniels
singing "The South's Gonna Do It Again." It's the whole
new South, the southern gothic thing. Listen to what Vic Chestnutt
has to say about the South, or go see one of Billy Bob Thornton's
films.
AMZ - Thornton directed one of your videos, "Aunt Avis."
How did you like working with him?
DS It was a pleasure. It always has been a pleasure. In fact,
his directorial debut was our "Live at the Georgia Theater"
documentary, which we made back in 1991. He came to Athens and
he interviewed people who had nothing to do with the band, and
who didn't even know what the band was, and he wound up, consequently,
really being able to represent this small Southern town we call
home, much better than if he only interviewed people that were
coming to our show and shot straightforward footage of us. He
talked to people who had worked at the Georgia Theater back in
the 40's, selling popcorn and stuff like
that. He's definitely one of those people that understands that
truth is more entertaining, if not somewhat stranger, than fiction,
especially in the South.
AMZ - I know you're going to be here with
G. Love and Special Sauce, and Galactic. Are there any other
bands that you'd like to do live shows with?
DS - Sure. But at the same time, after
doing a tour with all of our friends
like this one, we're getting ready to get back to doing just
our show....an
evening with Widespread Panic. That's what I like best, and that's
just my opinion.
AMZ - That's true. When you're doing shows with several other
bands, I know you can be limited in the time you can be onstage.
DS - Exactly. We only do one set on this tour in most places,
though in the South we are doing a lot of two set shows, but
if people had stopwatches they'd realize we're on stage pretty
much the same amount of time in both instances. We just take
that attitude break in the two set shows, which is important.
One of the things I really like is having the chance to make
up for a bogus first set.
AMZ - That's one thing that probably occurred on the H.O.R.D.E.
festival. It seems like, at least this year, most of the opening
bands are limited to a one hour set at most.
DS - Part of the reason we left the H.O.R.D.E. was that that
understanding of allowing the bands to do what they need to do
was lost when people realized that a profit could be made on
these bands. The spirit with which we formed the first H.O.R.D.E.,
equally with Blues Traveler, the Aquarium Rescue Unit, the Spin
Doctors and Phish, was lost somewhere around the time of the
second H.O.R.D.E. when people realized that...."Spin Doctors....hey,
H.O.R.D.E. launched them....Maybe that would work the same with
Dave Matthews or the Samples." We couldn't have it be that
way. The reason we're out here playing music is to be out here
doing our thing, so we don't have to take orders from
anyone else, and we do what we want to do in a band. In the long
run, if
anyone is going to decide it has value, it's going to be the
people that come to see us, and not someone who's counting beans.
And that's the whole story.
AMZ - Would you ever consider doing a show like that with one
or two other bands where each band plays as long as they want?
DS - It would be cool, but you know, unfortunately it's a material
world out there. It might not be cost-effective to pull that
off. Suppose us and Phish played a tour where we each did two
sets every night. The chances of us being able to pay for the
time and the venue would probably make the tickets go up to sixty
dollars, which basically penalizes the fans for the reason that
we're doing it. It's a catch-22. It's hard to work in this business
world out here as a band that only wants to do it for the music
and the fans. It's hard not to have to compromise, and when compromises
are made, we try to make sure that they lean in favor of the
fans. We may have to tighten our belts as far as the things that
you don't see backstage, so that the folks that come to see the
show have the impression of getting to see the full show. That's
the whole point. To get out there and make the fans happy.
AMZ - It's obvious that the appreciation is there as far as the
fans go. As far as bands who have strong followings, Widespread
Panic probably has one of the strongest, if not the strongest
following out there.
DS - I think they're pretty in there. They have enough confidence
to play an April Fool's joke on us, and I think that's pretty
cool. When your fans get together and can play a joke on you
as a whole, that's saying something, I think.
AMZ - How did the Athens show go, by the way?
DS - The Athens show went better than it even could have. For
having 120,000 people there, there were less than 30 arrests,
and most of those were for drinking beer in public. There were
maybe three injuries and those were drunk people falling off
walls and out of trees. There were some sprained ankles and a
broken leg, I think, and that was it. Other than all of the garbagemen
in Athens having to get paid triple overtime to clean up the
mess....It was a great show, and we've made a film that we're
busily editing as we speak, which should come out in October.
AMZ - Wow! I'm looking forward to that. I wanted to go to the
show, but due to scheduling problems was unable to.
DS - Well, there you go. Here's your reward. And it does include
a disc with four live songs on it, and I don't think any of the
four songs are on "Light Fuse, Get Away," so it's an
extra bonus added attraction.
AMZ - That sounds great! Well, I really appreciate you taking
the time to do this, and I look forward to seeing you live soon.
DS - Sure, man. Thanks.
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