Interview with Guster pre-Beacon Shows (Jambands.com)

http://www.jambands.com/features/2009/12/11/guster-ten-years-lost

Guster has come a long way since playing the Midnight Café coffee house in the Lewis Hall dormitory at Tufts University. Now five albums deep into its career, Guster is now wrapping up a tour that marks the ten year anniversary of the band’s Lost and Gone Forever release. Then it’s off to Nashville to lay down the tracks for an upcoming record.

I arrived early to my scheduled 3PM interview at New York’s Beacon Theatre before Guster’s Friday night sound check. The venue was almost completely silent, save for the efforts of crew members prepping for this evening’s merriments. I ventured behind the stage and rode the service elevator up to the third floor where I soon sat with lead singers Adam Gardner and Ryan Miller.

How’s the current Lost and Gone Forever tour going thus far? Starting to get tired as you near the end I assume?

RM: We had this big long break so I’m just tired from Thanksgiving. I drove from Baltimore last night. It’s just a real hard transition. It’s a lot easier when you’re in the zone playing shows. But now it’s like, “Fuck, we have to play again [haha].”

AG: Yeah, also this hasn’t been a long tour. It’s really a ‘detour’ more than a ‘tour, tour.’ I think we’re at that point where the first few shows are like ‘Oh my god this is so cool to do this!’ Well the first two shows are really like ‘This is really hard, holy shit, how are we going to get through these songs that we haven’t played consecutively for ten years?’ And then we reach the point where it’s like, alright this is really fun, I can just play and enjoy. And this is NEW YORK.

How has the turnout been throughout this tour? How is it being received by the Guster faithful?

RM: Well, we did two weeks and then took a couple weeks off. So those two weeks went really well, much better than I expected, actually. You know there’s something about playing this record and playing two sets. People seemed really psyched and it turned out great.

AG: Definitely, it’s awesome man. Every show has been sold out so you can’t really ask for more than that.

This entire tour has lied on the East Coast and includes a lot of sentimental venues that have been platforms of success throughout Guster’s history. However, why did you pick this specific route, which kick-offs in North Carolina and close out at the Beacon?

RM: I don’t really know. I think, with this tour especially with the Lost and Gone Forever angle, we didn’t want it to be too long. We knew it would sort of lose its specialness if we did a 40 day tour, so we figured that 10 shows would probably be the right amount. So we try to stop before it starts to get really far into the boredom part [haha].

And why only the East Coast?

RM: We just haven’t had our year together, just us. We’ve been doing a lot of last minute stuff because our record has been up in the air. If we had a year in advance to prepare, we probably would have tried to do some West Coast dates and some in the Midwest. But we scrapped together what we could and everything came out really well, so…

And there’s a real special connection between Guster and New York City around Thanksgiving weekend, is there not?

AG: We’ve played here at the Beacon. I’m not positive, it must have been two or three years ago right before they had done all the renovations that they’ve just completed. I think we were one of the last shows before they did all that. I just remember being like this is really cool; we have to come back here. And traditionally, yes, we have done the Thanksgiving thing in New York. We’ve done it a bunch.

Are you seeing a similar fan demographic? Have you found that many original Guster fans have come back for these anniversary shows?

RM: It’s hard to say. I mean, some of the crowd skews a little older than normal just because we are playing a ten year old record. They’re not 13, well some of them are, but it’s always been a Dazed and Confused scene. So it’s a college thing that we tend to cluster around. There are also high school kids and kids out of school, but it usually clusters around the college scene. I don’t really have my fingers on that so much though, so I’m not absolutely certain.

The album Lost and Gone Forever was produced by legendary producer Steve Lillywhite, who’s worked with reputable bands like Phish, U2, Dave Matthews Band…the list goes on forever. Would you ever consider teaming up with him again for another project?

RM: Yeah, he’s going to play bass with us tomorrow (Saturday the 28th) on a song. We’ve definitely been talking to him about finishing the record we’ve been working on for a while. He’s pretty much the only guy we’re speaking to. We’re just figuring out a way to make it work. It’s been really interesting getting back in there and hearing this record, and playing these songs, and figuring out what it is that people liked about it. It’s definitely interesting.

Do you credit him with a lot of the success that came from Lost and Gone Forever?

AG: For sure. Before that we made two records independently with varying success, just because we were young and didn’t have a big budget to work with. It was the first time that we made a record that accurately captured what we were doing live. We were one of those bands where people were like, “yes, you can buy their record but you really have to go to their show to understand what they’re about.” I feel like Lost and Gone Forever was the album where the feelings were mutual that the record’s good too. He did a great job of capturing that, especially when I think of where we were as a band musically. I think he really elevated it. He did more than just take a snapshot of where we were he really elevated it.

This album was released 1999 and featured guests Page McConnell and Karl Denson on tracks. How did those collaborations materialize?

RM: Page was through Lillywhite because he’d worked with him on a Phish record. Karl…hmm. I don’t remember exactly how Karl came. I mean, he was doing his Tiny Universe thing and maybe he’s still be doing it, but it was going on then. So he was kind of the go-to-guy…

And he’s badass as hell…

RM: Yeah, he was awesome. It was sort of a reaching out process—seeing who we can get.

For many years you guys have dismissed the jamband label, but this year you played at Gathering of the Vibes and Rothbury. Have you finally washed that guard away, or have the jam and indie scenes sort of morphed together as one?

AG: You know, I don’t think it was ever a guard. I just think that it wasn’t accurate. I think that label became about in the beginning because we had a live following before we had a label or anything like that. We had no radio play so there was no explanation for why we were bringing people out to shows. People thought, “Oh, they must be one of those jambands that everyone goes to because that’s where they can go and do whatever.” And that just wasn’t accurate, even though of course we were a grassroots touring band. We’ve played the Wetlands and we play all those clubs, so I wouldn’t say we were fighting necessarily against the label. We just didn’t think it was accurate. If anything, though, we were nervous about it because none of us are particularly good at jamming [laughs].

As in not good musicians?

AG: No as in we’re songwriters. We write 3 1/2 minute pop songs, and we don’t really stretch out our songs. But I think with bands like the Flaming Lips and a couple other acts that embrace the jam scene, they cut the path where we are able to play as a non-jamband to a jamband audience. What’s cool about the whole jam scene is that people go there to listen to the music. They’re all real music lovers. We’ve always been excited and never been afraid to play in front of a jam audience, even though we’re not particularly proud of our skills as players. I hope most folks in the jam world can get into what we’re doing. At first we were surprised and then we realized that it made sense. So when there are opportunities to play Vibes and festivals like those we definitely try because it’s always a very warm and welcoming audience that will spread the word if they like you. It’s a great audience to plug into.

Ryan, do you hold the same sentiment about submitting into the jam scene

RM: [laughs] Well, no. I mean, I love playing those festivals. Those specifically, well Vibes, which was probably the most jamband friendly thing we’ve done. Rothbury had Broken Social Scene and definitely a few indie-rock bands. To talk about what Adam said and about the merging of the scenes, Bonnaroo sort of blew the whole thing open a long time ago. It brought together all these these touring bands from different genres and that’s what independent music is. The Beasties and all that stuff perform together now. As far as how we fit into it, I mean I love playing those types of festivals. Gathering of the Vibes was so interesting to me because we really didn’t have a huge contingent that was there for us. The most rewarding times for me are when we don’t really have anyone there for us. You can sense it and you can see that you’re winning people over. It’s like you’re totally doing it on your own merits. There’s no bullshit, there’s no hype, it’s just you playing and you’re either going to win or you’re not based on your performance. I also agree with what Adam said about the jamband crowd being a lot more into the music. Not only that, I feel that they are even more open to allowing new sounds and styles in. Rather than immediately hearing something, judging it and then expelling it forever.

RM: Yes, I think playing those festivals keeps you and makes you much more aware of your dynamics. I do think people are much more into the music at these shows. It’s less ‘sceney,’ I mean it could be as ‘sceney’ for sure, but also some of the slots that we got at least I could sense that when we were doing something right, it would go really right. And if something wasn’t appropriate, it just wasn’t going to happen. It’s like hitting your head against the wall [laughs]. So it was cool, it was very revealing. I think I said this year’s ago, that I’ll play the moe.down, you know what I mean? I’ll play it all. If there are music fans out there then there’s enough of a crossover because it’s similar to what a lot of the real godfathers of the scene have done. I mean the Dead, they jammed, but they wrote great songs. And I think we strive to be great song writers too. So there’s enough of an overlap.

Last spring you guys recorded a session in a New York studio. Is that the material for the upcoming album you speak of being produced in Nashville?

RM: Yea, it’s an album that we’ve been working on since last year. We started in December [of 2008], and we’ve just hit a couple bumps. Then we were touring and such. I guess we got a little lost in this one, and we’re finally finding our way out of it. So next week is the official gathering. We got our shit together.

How are the collaborative efforts in Guster when creating an album? Is everything group consensus lyrically, musically, etc?

AG: Definitely lyrically it’s mostly on Ryan. Brian will do some lyrical stuff, as will Joe occasionally. I try to stay the hell away from it…lyrics wise [laughs]. Musically we all come together on stuff, and it all goes through this really laborious process involving all of us. Basically it’s a consensus process. Sometimes a song can literally come out of thin air where someone starts a bass line or a drum groove and it turns into a song. Or someone brings in a melody idea. Some stuff is more flushed out by one of us. Other things just get completely thrown out to everybody right there on the spot. But all the songs, no matter how they originate, go through this consensus process. It’s a difficult thing to do, but at the end of the day we end up with music that we are proud of and feel ownership of.

And now that you’ve revisited Lost and Gone Forever, have there been any thoughts of going over any of your previous albums and reworking them?

AG: I don’t know. We’ll have to see. You know the concept of doing an anniversary album tour happened when Parachute turned ten. And we decided that we didn’t like that record enough to do it [haha]. That would be painful for us. So we didn’t, but we liked the concept. And then when it came to Lost and Gone Forever we felt that this made sense, this seems to be where a lot of our fans meet in the middle; some of the old schooler’s that have been here since the beginning and people that are newer to the party can all agree on that record. Every record we do we try to make pretty different and there’s definitely been a progression. This record seems like one that the old school and the new school can agree on.

RM: Yeah, I don’t know if we’d ever revisit another record. Like Adam said, this record was special in the sense that it was our first record that we really felt like we could get behind. Our first record was just sort of us not knowing what we were doing. It doesn’t really hold up as well. And our second record really, it’s not great in our opinion. Lost and Gone Forever for a lot of people is when they discovered the band. And I feel before that we were sort of known as a live band, ‘you know they don’t make great records but they’re a great live band.’ And so from that point on I felt like alright we make cool records and put on a good show. It’s funny. Our fan base is not unilateral, and it’s not like with some bands that everyone loves this one record and the rest are whatever. They’re definitely a lot of people who didn’t really get into our band until our last record or until Keep It Together. I feel after Lost and Gone Forever there’s a real distinct change in the direction in the band…

Like what per se?

RM: In terms of Brian’s stuff on percussion and that we all learned how to play bass. We almost completely hanged the way we approach music. So, I don’t know, I mean I don’t know that there would be the same enthusiasm to do another record live like this. Not so much that it was our best record, but it was a seminal record. It was really a breakthrough. So, I’m interested because I felt like this album on this tour has held up pretty well for the most part. We can play these 11 songs and be like, it feels like it’s a set, and I was really worried that after the novelty wore off that we were going to hit these lows. If it’s a shitty song and you have to play it every night in slot 7, it’s gonna hurt. But really it’s held up pretty well, which I’m excited about. Every night I wonder if we played Keep It Together where the lows would be and where the highs would be. But we’ve been playing a lot of these songs, with the exception of 2-3 songs on Lost and Gone Forever, all of them are on rotation of the songs we play so there’s nothing crazy radical about what we’re doing.

And doing an album front-to-back live is incredible in my opinion. I mean, when I saw Bruce in Jersey, he used the same approach and it blew my mind. I’m not sure if all fans are like that though.

RM: As a fan I had heard about bands doing this, starting with Van Morrison doing Astral Weeks a year and a half ago. And that’s my favorite record of all time. When he came to New York I was the first one in-line. It was both the best and totally disappointingly awesome [laughs] because it’s a 40 year old album. The whole concept of this to do an album, it’s a total bandwagon thing and everyone’s doing it. We certainly aren’t innovators on this front. but it’s a cool thing for fans indeed.
Well the idea of going completely through an album live is particularly amazing because it seems in this day and age people are also forgetting about the concept of an album.

RM: Well, the music business is changing, and how they monetize music as well. I can get behind it; I can pretty much even get behind giving away our music for free. I steal music and I get all that and I understand the trend, but the one thing that sort of bums me out is what you said, that the album is being lost in this. The fact that there’s a whole generation of people growing up that have never bought an album doesn’t depress me as much as the fact that there’s a whole generation that can’t get the concept of an album anymore. It’s like playlist, and this song, and this song. And I think celebrating an album format is something really special. It is a complete thought in the way you sequence an album. It’s the only time in the whole sort of move forward I feel like a grandpa. I get vinyl and all that but I don’t fetishize all that stuff, but I still fetish albums. Not all the time, I listen to my iTunes on shuffle every day, but it’s cool; the album as a unit to come out and be like ‘this is an album, this is a snapshot of where we were in a point of time, this is what we’ve crafted.’ I think that it’s really a cool document and something that’s worth fighting for. So the fact that we’re sort of in this day and age and still have people listening to the album of our band is amazing. I hope people still make records and not just singles.

It got depressing in the early part of this decade, but I am seeing a sort of revival in a positive direction. I mean, I’d like to believe this…

RM: Yeah, I don’t think it’s as bad as I’m making it out to be. Now just due to the pure ambiguity of music and how music is disseminated for now, our tastemakers like Pitchfork and our top ten lists every year are still talking about albums. So really the guiding hands are still consuming music in this way. Promotional cycles are built around album releases and things like that. So it’s not completely gone, but then people will cherry pick a few songs and forget about the album, of course. You know, whatever… it’s sort of what we’ve been doing forever. I mean Steve Miller Band? I don’t know that dudes albums but I know his greatest hits really well [haha].

The band is going on almost 20 years. Where do you feel Guster would be today if the band had formed in the modern indie rock era?

AG: If we were just starting recently?

Yeah, like ten years ago when the indie scene began to take full charge.

AG: There’s so much more now. I mean it’s amazing when I think about what we had to deal with. I remember us sitting around, there was no email really, I mean there was but not in the real way. It was for communicating with your friends who went abroad. That was kind of it. So the whole reaching people and fans online that didn’t happen. So we would sit there and write out postcards and pay for postage. We would have label sticking parties where we would all sit around when we all lived together. We would bring all our friends over, buy pizza and beer and stick some labels on all these postcards we had to send out to our fans. It was expensive, it was time consuming. Now it’s like send out an email, blast a tweet from your phone and you’re done.

Since you guys have been together for 20 years, is there any desire to go solo and participate in other projects? I know Adam does the Reverb thing…

RM: I mean Joe’s made a solo record, and I think he’s kinda working on another one. As we get older with the kids thing we can see changes. Adam’s Reverb thing alone is an 80 hour week job whether he’s on the road or not which is amazing and crazy. Not only that, he can quit Guster tomorrow and still work harder than he’s ever worked in his life, so he’s all set up. And Joe built up a studio in his house in Nashville so he’s producing bands, writing with other people, making his own records. I wrote a movie and scored it last year with my buddy, and I’m really sort of interested in doing more stuff like that. Even now as we’re writing this record, I’m really interested in doing a lot of stuff and finding a lot of ways of doing it. As much as there’s bullshit, Guster’s still our best chance for achieving all the things we want. I could shit in the woods and no one would know, it doesn’t mean anything. Ryan Miller isn’t going to sell thousands of albums. So I would much rather have my creative energy go towards the band at this point. It’s definitely a situation where the sum is greater than its parts. There wouldn’t be four dudes having the impact that we have now. I think it’s a real easy situation and years of hard work giving us the breathing room to take time to make albums. We know that there are going to be people that will always be interested in our music.

What about you Adam? Besides the Reverb gig do you have any solo plans?

AG: You know I had an opportunity to do something sorta solo. It was just this fun idea that I did a couple years ago with Dave Shneider from the Zambonis. They were opening up for Guster. and we were talking about being Jewish. It was actually spring time; I have no idea why we were talking about holiday music and Hanukkah. We thought, “man, there’s all these great Christmas songs but why aren’t there any great Hanukkah songs?” So he and I wrote the album, Hanukkah Rocks and the bands called The LeeVees. It’s one of those things; it’s not something that we took seriously at all. It was more like, “Let’s have fun with this.” So we wrote the songs in a week when we were on tour together. We started crunching numbers and saw that, shit if we just sold 2,000 of these that’d be fine. But then Warner picked it up. It didn’t sell crazy amounts but it’s a nice thing that happens every year. That Fox show, Cleveland just licensed a song from us. There’s this other gig, this isn’t really a solo project either, but it’s fun to play with another band sometimes. There’s this ski band that I’m in [laughs]. It was based around this Warren Miller movie. So it’s me, Stefan from Dave Matthews, Ed from Barenaked Ladies, Dee Snider from Twisted Sister, Eric the drummer from N.E.R.D. and then Jason Biggs on cowbell.

Wow, what a collaboration.

AG: [laughs] It’s just this random assortment of dudes. It’s a cover band, a bunch of us fucking around. The most fun ski cover band you’ve ever seen! Every year we do that, we’ll get together and ski for a week someplace and play a gig. Yukon Kornelius is the name of that band.
I know during a lot of your live performances there is frequent crowd participation.

How did that come about? Was it promoted by the group or did the fans truck their way into doing it?

RM: It’s very organic. I don’t know that it happens all the time. There hasn’t been a ritual like that that’s come up in the last couple albums. I don’t know it can happen at any time. It speaks to the dialogue of what goes on with our fans. We are very much plugged into how people are receiving stuff, and we sort of feed off of that and go back and forth. There’s something in that continuum that’s sort of powerful and interesting.

I see that the band has toured internationally. I know, from my own experience, that I grew up with Guster and grew to love them as they matured musically with me. How are you accepted in Europe being that you are one of those bands whose fans grew with you as you’ve progressed through the years?

AG: We don’t go there that much, actually. To be honest we’ve been there rarely. It’s expensive. We’ve gotten used to a certain set up here. So it’s hard for us to go to Europe because a) it’s expensive and b) there hasn’t been a lot of support from the label. We had these amazing opportunities a few years ago to play Australia with Ben Folds and John Mayer… Maroon 5 was an offer but we didn’t have the tour support as the time. So we did some shows in England which went great, but you have to keep the momentum going and we just haven’t done that. So we have a lot going on in the states. We’ll go up to Canada here and there where it makes sense like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, but that’s it. We’re not going to Saskatoon or anything.

What else besides the upcoming record do you guys plan on doing in the near future? Will the habitual touring continue?

AG: As long as people still give a shit about us and want to see us play music and hear our stuff I really don’t see any end to it. Like you said, it’s almost been 20 years now so I think we’re all really happy to be making music still and feel that our best ideas are ahead of us. We still have a lot more to create together. We’ll finish this record, we’ll put it out, we’ll tour on it and make another record put it out and tour on it. I don’t really see it ending. It’s funny, when we first started I’d be like well, you know, let’s give it two years and see how it goes. And I would say it almost every two years, oh two more years, you know I’m happy but you never know. At this point I just don’t see this really ending, but maybe that’s when it will finally stop…