Trey Anastasio:
More from his interview and the mic list from his band's Fall, 2001 tour

What issues of stage setup, dynamics, and other concerns are you facing with the nine-piece band that weren't on the table with Phish?

That's something you've got to learn just by plugging forward and learning. Just this morning I was on the phone with our production manager because I had an idea for our stage setup. I didn't think it was very fluid last time, and I wanted to get into a situation where I could communicate with everybody. So I've been drawing out these curved risers, where the horn section would wrap around the back of the drummer. That way, if it goes to a straight rock song where there's singing but no horn section, I'd love it for Jennifer to take just one step forward to be next to me in the middle of the stage, where I can give hand signals and all that stuff. I learned a lot about that through doing Guyute [pronounced "guy-you-tay"], this orchestral piece for the Vermont Youth Symphony in October. Every composer already knows this stuff–I'm such a beginner at this–but it turns out that the speed of sound is a real issue [laughs]. How do you get them to groove? There are certain kinds of grooves that orchestras have a problem with. I wrote all this stuff, with triplets broken up between brass, percussion, and low strings; they had a hard time with it, even though we used to do stuff like that all the time in Phish. I didn't think about the fact that the brass was sitting all the way over on the far side of the stage.

Talk about how you put your band together.

Well, first of all, there were a couple of people I'd almost hired for certain spots who I didn't hire because I could tell that I didn't want to sit on a bus with them for two months. Instead, I picked people I thought would get along with everyone else. I'd bring them all up to the barn and have them hang out together. I can't tell you how important that is. Of all the decisions I had to make, I'm especially glad that I only picked people I knew would get along with each other.

You really can't practice that in hopes of getting a gig; you either are or are not that person.

Exactly. As a bandleader, I was putting this band together, I knew I wanted to tour, and I've got to be on a bus with nine men and women. There's one guy in particular–I won't say who it was–who would have had the job if I wasn't absolutely sure that he would have been fighting with a couple of the other people.

He played well …

Incredibly well, actually.

… but he just wasn't right for the bus.

No, nor the stage, nor the band practice room.

How did you decide on drummer Russ Lawton?

I chose the drummer based on who the bass player wanted to play with; that was important.

Had they worked together before?

They had, a little bit, but they had always wanted to be in a band together. Some of the stuff that ended up on the last Phish album [Farmhouse] was the first stuff that I wrote with Russ and Tony. There's a song called "First Tube," there's a song called "Sand," and a song called "Gotta Jibboo." "First Tube" actually shows the direction very clearly of where this thing was gonna go.

How did you find some of the other members of the band?

First, you've got to understand that all these people are from Vermont, something I've very proud of. This is a Vermont band. There are so many great musicians in Burlington who are, by all accounts, much better than any of the four of us in Phish. Sometimes I think, "Why the hell am I getting so famous?" I'm sure they've thought this a million times, but maybe it's nice for them to hear that I think it too [laughs]. So in putting it together, I was trying to make a point that you don't have to go looking for people who are hotshots. There are plenty of wicked musicians in every state; it's just a matter of making an atmosphere where they can feel comfortable.

Did they come to you through cold auditions?

Never really a cold audition, but maybe auditions without anybody really saying it was an audition. They would just come and play. Andy Moroz, our trombone player, was another very young guy–just 18 when we first went on tour. I had him come over to my house with Jennifer Hartswick, our trumpet player. I was a little bit concerned about his age, but his chops were phenomenal. He could play anything you put in front of him and play it all night, as fast as you like. Of course, he didn't have a lot of experience, and there were big holes in his music history, which become evident very quickly on the bandstand.

What kinds of holes?

He was very oriented to straight-ahead jazz, very unfamiliar with funk playing. He hadn't listened to a lot of Tower of Power, hadn't listened to a lot of Sly or James Brown. You know those little walk-ups, where the baritone sax sets up the horn hits, like in Tower of Power? [Anastasio articulates quick bari sax ascending lick, followed by horn stabs.] Well, Andy has such an amazing ear that he would harmonize that baritone sax line–this is during open improvisational stuff onstage. It's cool … if you know it's not normal. If you don't know that, it just doesn't sound heavy. It's especially weird for Dave Grippo, our baritone player, who's like, "Whoa, what are you doing?" So at the end of the last tour it was real obvious that Andy had missed some things, but because he's so young and enthusiastic he called me and we had this big conversation. I said, "This is what you need to do. You have to go out and get this disc, that disc, and this disc. Next time I see you, just know all that shit." I guarantee you that a guy who could play all those Charlie Parker lines in his sleep is going to be able to figure out all that other stuff.

Maybe you should send him out to go dancing at some club where a funk band is playing.

Exactly [laughs]! It's really cool, because he's there to learn. We can sit on the bus, listening to this heavy Latin and Cuban music in the back lounge, and everybody is soaking it up because they're young musicians. That just makes the gigs better every night. If I had hired people who were more set in their ways, they wouldn't want me to tell them what to do. I can understand that; it's a tradeoff. In my horn section there are two older, more experienced guys: my tenor/flute player and my baritone/alto player. They know it all. Then I've got a 19-year-old trombone player and a 20-year-old trumpet player. It's perfect–half and half.

What about other members of the band?

It was weird. The keyboard player was this guy who used to play in this group called Viperhouse; his name is Ray Paczkowski. I sat in with Viperhouse four or five years ago; we were in Winston-Salem, I think. That was a big band, with horns, and we were on opposite sides of the stage. But I still hooked up with this guy; it was like chemistry. Right after the show, we were both like, "We gotta get in a band together." Oddly enough, he was one of the last people to join, even though I'd been dying to get him into the band for years. It was the same thing with Tony.

Talk about Jennifer, your trumpet player.

A saxophone player that I know recommended her because he'd just seen her in her high school jazz band, so she came and played on this session I did. It was for this weird little solo album I put out through the Phish newsletter, called One Man's Trash. On it there's a piece called "At The Barbecue," which is a strange kind of jazz progression broken up into arpeggiated parts; nobody ever plays a note at the same time. That's the first time she ever played for me, and she was incredible. She came 15 minutes early and knew the stuff already. She was playing with 40-year-old guys who were twice her age, with five times her experience, but she just stepped right up and played. It was very impressive. Again, instant chemistry, though probably more with her than with anyone, even though she was just 16 or something. We sang a couple of things together, and that's one of those things you just can't fake. I really could harmonize with her, and she was just funny and cool. So, again, I logged her into my memory. And as soon as the opportunity came and Phish went on hiatus, I started calling all these people. Everyone else just filled in.

Talk about arranging the orchestral parts for the record.

Some of it was written already, because I had written it and played it with Phish. For the rest I used a Kurzweil K2000, which has orchestral sounds and a multitrack recorder and sequencer, so I could reference the parts and hear how they'd work. From that I wrote it out on score paper with pencil and took it to Troy Peters, the conductor. We typed it all into Sibelius notational software, and we'd make changes. He'd say things like, "Do you want to hear this bass line or do you want to feel it?" I'd say, "I want to hear it," and he'd say, "Well, then you can't have it just in the bass. It's got to be the bass and the bassoons." Then he'd say, "What are you trying to do in this section?" There was, for instance, this one section where I was trying to get the sound of the music in "Dance at the Gym," from West Side Story, where they fall in love. So we'd take out the score from West Side Story and look at it. Many, many times, when you look at the scores, there are a lot more people playing than you think. So he helped me fill the whole thing out. Then we went to rehearsals. Because it was for a youth symphony, we had the luxury of being able to rehearse for a month. The stuff that wasn't working, we just changed.

What about other logistical issues?

One thing I've found out is that it costs a lot to take a nine-piece band on the road [laughs]. There are some shows on the upcoming tour where I don't think I'm gonna make any money.

Why not?

Some of the venues are very expensive, like Radio City. Add that to hotel rooms and so on for nine people. But that's cool.

And you get to play Radio City?

Exactly.

–Bob Doerschuk

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Trey Anastasio Band–Mic & Input list

Here's the input list from Trey Anastasio's fall 2001 tour. On the new tour there will be additional mics for percussionist Cyro Baptista.

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