Other Projects

KVHW

SK
Yep.

Note: Rumor has it that a fifth member has joined this group, and that the band has continued rehearsing while Steve has been on the road with the Other Ones.

X
Are you happy with that right now as an outlet for your music, for music you're writing or that you're writing with other people?

SK
Yeah. That works good.

X
The group came together here at Studio E?

SK
Yes. We were trying to send Kene to Paris. Kene's gal was up in Moscow and she couldn't get back here, and they were going to meet in Europe. And so we went, OK, kids, let's put on a show, and me and Bobby thought we'd have a gig here. We decided this on a Monday and booked a gig for that following Friday. Alan showed up on Wednesday, Ray showed up on Thursday, and we did the gig on Friday. So that's the entire amount of preparation we had.

Calico
How did Ray fall in there? Does he live around here?

SK
Ray's an old friend of Bobby's and we ere thinking who could we get, and all of a sudden it was going to turn into another Zero gig, so we said, No. Let's try Ray. So, we did it. It worked great. We've got a video of the gig, the very first time the thing turned a wheel. We video'd the whole thing. It's nice.

I love playing with Bobby Vega. Bobby and I have been playing together for years and years and years. We lived together. I have a lot of respect for Bobby's playing and have done my best to get inside his stuff, and he does his best to get inside my stuff. So we know each other real well, and we really enjoy playing together.

X
So that's a core that you're building on?

SK
Yeah, just some stuff for me and Bobby to do. And Alan is a fabulous drummer, and Ray is the perfect rhythm guitar player. He's like Bobby. When in doubt, he's funky. So it's great. And he's a great singer. If we play something that sounds like it ought to have words, he makes them up. Improv lyric and melody. It's cool.

X
So how different is it to play with a rhythm guitarist versus being the only guitar voice in a small group? Does it change your approach? Do you figure someone else is holding down the changes, or the rhythm?

SK
It doesn't change it that much. It opens stuff up a lot. If you have two singers you have twice as many singers, and if you have two drummers you have twice as many drummers, but if you have two guitar players it's like having 11 guitar players. And in a way it's kind of nice not having the keyboard, as much as I like keyboards. It's just more open.

X
More space.

SK
You have to use different kinds of sounds and different kinds of guitars to cut through certain things. It's real different playing with a synthesizer than it is playing with another guitar. Texturally and timbrally, there's more stuff you can do. It's more open like that.

Once I've accomplished this Other Ones task, which is essentially not dropping over dead before I finish the tour, I'd like to put some attention on the KVHW thing.

DG
So you might be touring?

SK
It would be nice to go out and do some work with that. I also very much would like to get the Zero thing back on the road in some kind of shape that allows it to do what it does best.

X
Would you ever consider playing solo, just you and the guitar in jazz clubs or small clubs?

SK
Sure, yeah. I'll do that at some point when that's what I feel like doing. It changes every month, what I feel like doing. Every thirty or sixty days, it's something totally different, so that'll come up.

X
Is that your only solo project right now. In other words, going under your name?

SK
Yeah.

SK&F

SK
No, there's been a couple of parties and stuff in there, but the Kimock & Friends thing was supposed to be something I could do on my time off, kind of like a card game kinda gig, you know? Get together with the guys, smoke cigars, and play cards. I never intended it to be something serious, just something fun, and I guess it just didn't work out like that. Everybody expects it to be some friggin' spectacle or something.

X
So how did the album come out, the one SK&F album that's out there?

SK
Steve Fink, who used to come and tape the Zero shows - he would help me get to the shows and stuff, and help book the gigs - had a little four track machine, and he'd stick it in the back of the pickup truck when we'd run the mic lines in the window. So we just went to a couple of bars, like the very first time we played the tunes, again, and recorded it. We did a little noise reduction on it, and did a little mix on it, a little eight-track thing. It sounds great. But that's it. We only printed a couple, two thousand or something like that. I think they're gone.

X
I got mine already.

SK
Good. I have no idea where mine are, or if I even have one.

X
I couldn't figure out if that was your signature live or printed on it. It's signed.

SK
Oh, yeah, I signed 'em. I signed every single one of those myself. I signed them all, signed and numbered every one of them.

Group Improvisation and Narrative Solos

SK
Well, there's two things about that. One is, that's the only shape that group improvisation takes. If you're talking about form in music, and you talk about group improvisation, it's always the same thing. There's a slow gathering of energy till the thing finds some direction, then there's some kind of peak, and after that it falls off at a much quicker pace than it ramped up. That's the basic improvisational form. It's really, really hard to come up with another form for improvisation. Occasionally when somebody does actually come up with a long piece of improvisation that doesn't follow that form, it's significant. Like Miles Davis' In a Silent Way, for example, is really horizontal and layered.

Also, those introductory spaces that I try and get into my own tunes are part of the raga form thing where there's like an introduction to the material. The basic material that you're going to work with in the improvisation is stated. I'm not using a scale-specific thing like they do with a raga, but the basic form is the same. You do it first without time, and you show the things you're going to hit. Tangled Hangers combines these two basic forms: the raga thing, and the standard jazz tune where you've got a head and a blowing section. I try to get that in there when I can, because I think it's a nice head space. The material that's played initially does comes up later on

X
So it's like an overture, in classical music? You run through the high points or the touchstones?

SK
Yeah, it's kind of like stating the material. We're going to go this way, when it comes together. It sets up some expectations.

X
Trying to stay on that idea of drama, or as in theatre, the way you present art, there's a--

SK
In theatre, the way you present art is you bang nails all week, hang lights, and read cues, and carry shit around, and unpack big boxes, and stuff like that.

X
Sure, but the goal is to tell a story, ultimately, right?

SK
The goal is to do all the things you need to do to get the story told, whether you're telling it or not.

X
Is there a narrative thrust to your playing? Is there kind of a story that you're telling, when it comes time to speak your piece?

SK
Necessarily, the rhythms and constructions that stick in people's heads are speech based. When you allow for that, there's some underlying form, as if it were storytelling. There are characters that move around, and come in and out of the thing.

X
Not literally, like Peter and the Wolf?

SK
Not literally, like Peter and the Wolf, but certain moves or areas of activity that represent things get juxtaposed in different ways, have relationships to each other, just like people in a play might do. The rhythms, again, are speech based. If you play music, then for a lot of the rhythms, there's some vocalese that describes different rhythms. Whether it's: dead ant, dead ant, who parked the car? dead ant, dead ant.

X
Rented a tent.

SK
Rented a tent, yeah. So there's gotta be some storytelling aspect to the improvisation thing just for those reasons. That's how we're used to hearing and constructing stuff. Everybody is. That's our cultural preconditioning.

X
I've noticed, and you're not nearly the only musician for whom I've noticed this, that you sometimes appear to be singing the part that you're playing.

SK
Well, it helps you not get too busy with stuff, and it helps get the breathing in the right places . Stuff that's hard to sing is hard to hear. Stuff that's easy to sing is easy to hear. If you keep a little bit of that vocal thing going, it's easier for you people to hear it, and if you're also doing a vocal, you realize you have to stop and breathe. I have done it where I've set up a nice long space like that, and let it build, and breathe and everything, and then watch the people and go right over some spot where I'm supposed to breathe (because I don't have to because I'm playing) and watch everybody go [puff, wheeze], like twenty people in the first row have to stop and catch their breath because they're singing along and hearing it. I've actually seen that happen.

Don't Give Steve a Sarod

X
What is a sarod, now?

SK
It's an Indian stringed instrument. It's fretless, you play it with your fingernail.

X
And you have one and have been playing it or you'd like to get one?

SK
No, if somebody brought me a sarod, I would stop playing the guitar, and I would sit around with my legs crossed and play the sarod for the rest of my life, because it would take me that long to learn to tune the damn thing. They sound great. They're my favorite stringed instrument.

X
We're gonna make sure no one brings you one.

SK
Do not bring me a sarod. If you want to hear me play the guitar, do not bring me a sarod, because I will never play the guitar again if I have a sarod. It would be pointless.

X
Did you ever play a sitar?

SK
Yeah, I played a sitar. Sitar's cool. But sarod's just got it. That's the axe.

DG
How did you get hooked into that?

SK
I accidentally moved to California, and the very first place I lived was right behind the Ali Akbar College of Music, and so I got up the very first day I was in California and there was all this music coming out. I was like "Holy shit, where I am? This is incredible." So, since that time, I've been hanging with different people down at the school and listening to specifically Ali Akbar Khan's playing. Unbelievable stuff. He's the king.

X
Have you ever played with a tabla player?

SK
Yeah, I've done a little stuff with tablas. I'm nowhere even near the training-wheel level of actually doing that stuff, but it's been an enormous influence on my general approach to doing music at all. It's improvised music with what in the West we admit is a 2000-year tradition for the Indians simply because before that we say it's prehistory, when by their accounts it's more like a 10,000-year improvisational tradition, passed down from father to eldest, not just eldest son, but eldest worthy son. It's just an incredible tradition, incredible music.

The Future of Zero

SK
Yeah, of course. There was never any intention of not doing that. Before this came up, to do the Other Ones trip - and God bless 'em for letting me on board for a minute - what I wanted to do was make a Zero record. I kept going, We gotta take some time off, and write, and we've gotta make a record. It was the like the band had gotten into this working grind about going out and playing a gig for a thousand dollars is cool, or going and playing in Santa Barbara on Tuesday night. We all know what the good Zero gigs are, when we park our butts in some place for a day or two and play, and let people come from all over the place. They're weekends or some kind of hippie high holy days, like Summer Solstices, where people want to go and do the Zero thing. I think the Zero band has just allowed itself to crunch along doing whatever comes up workwise, without doing the real mature work that's on the plate in front of us. I'm hoping that that's what we get to after this. It's purely speculative, but you would think that the additional press and stuff would help leverage the thing up a little bit.

I wasn't looking for a big gig, I was looking for a big job. I want to do a big job, a job that you've got to plan, like making a record, getting material together, creating a body of work, that kind of stuff.

X
A project.

SK
Yeah, not like going to a bar and playing. My God! That would be work when you're eighteen - you know, Can I get in? - but not when your forty something and playing in a bar. It's ridiculous. So the Other Ones thing is a big job, and getting the Zero thing straightened out enough to make a great record and get the touring schedule together, that's a big job, but the band was not in any kind of mental or emotional shape to do that, and we were ready to take a break anyway. So here's the break, and I'll do my best to leverage the thing up from outside the band.

I'm sure we'll continue. I've been doing the Zero thing most of my adult life. There's no reason to stop doing it now. There's every reason to think that recently it's been starved for the real attention it needs, which is the writing and the more creative booking thing. I don't think anything's going to happen to the Zero gig in the future except that it'll get a lot better for everybody, because we know how to do a good gig. We know how many people you've got to get. We know where and when you've got to put it. We know what we've got to do, to do that. We just don't do it consistently enough.

The Perfect Size Audience for a Gig

SK
There's an upper limit, audience-sizewise or room-sizewise, for doing something intimately. There's a couple of guitars and singing. It's essentially chamber music. It's improvisational. There's no reason to think you can do that in front of many thousands of people and have it be the same thing at all. I don't think you can do it for more than one or two thousand people at the same time. This is something that I've talked to some of the guys over the years in the Grateful Dead organization about: What are the ethics of doing this music in front of 10,000 people? You can't even dot a quarter note in that room! You're playing in a damn hockey rink. When's the tail wagging the dog, here? I want to play in a room that sounds good, with a bunch of people and some energy but without going down to some mob-level mentality forcing you to play a certain way. I know what I think is good about that, and I know exactly - the kind of fans you're talking about - what they think is good about it, and we're in total agreement about it.

X
I have heard speculate about it would be nice to see Zero at the Greek Theatre.

SK
I think that would suck! [Laughs]

X
Fans think that's an intimate space, even though it's not enclosed.

SK
It's gotta be a couple thousand. That's really big. I'm only guessing, but I would think that beyond four or five thousand people, it's a big rock-show entertainment, production kind of thing. I'm guessing that at a certain point you lose some of the real intimate part of it that really does make it magical, when the band's own dynamics are holding itself together. When you've got a room that's so big that the delay time on it is like crack, [wait] crack, and the ambient audience noise is already 90 dB, what are you doing for tempos? What are you doing for dynamic range? What are you doing for being able to hear yourself play?

X
How many does the Fillmore hold?

Calico
1300

SK
That's fine. The Music Hall is nice. That's why I want to do that KVHW thing in the Music Hall, because I think that we can actually play like human beings in a good-sounding room, and get some people in there and have it sounding good and feeling good.

X
It's like a circus after a while, just a big extravaganza.

SK
Well, this Other Ones thing is the first time that I'm going to get to go and see what it's like to do something on that kind of scale. I'm sure I'll learn a lot about it, but I don't think it's going to change my mind about what circumstances best bring up what I think of as an authentic musical experience.

Calico
The show at the Warfield was just amazing. We don't get a nuggie like that that often, but with these Phil & Friends gigs we've sort of had Fat City around here.

SK
I tell you what, man, I'm really looking forward to those Fillmore shows, because I know that room, and it's not going to be an Other Ones thing, and - I don't know who's going to have to kick and scream the most, but I'm not going to do a gig outside of the Other Ones thing with those headphones or earphones or anything like that. Keep it in the room, you know?

DG
Have you been fitted for the little earphones?

SK
I've been fitted, man. I'll show you exactly what happened. [Stands] I was fitted for my earphones, I was handed my little box, and I took the little box like this, and looked over at the console at Mike, the monitor mixer, and I went [phssht] and I fired the little box to him, and he put it away somewhere.

DG
Are you going to be wearing headphones then?

SK
No, I'm sure when I get to the gig in Atlanta, Mike will go [phssht] and flip me my little box back.

Note: Steve has been observed wearing headphones at the first several Other Ones gigs, so perhaps the in-ear monitors have not panned out.

X
Don't you want to try to get comfortable with it, if that's the interface everybody's working through, to hear each other?

SK
Yeah, if that's the way they want to do it, that's the way I'm going to do it. I'd like to think that I'll be the very first guy to figure out how to do a good job with those damn things on. That's my attitude about it.

When everything really gets going, there's something about using your ears, right? [Snaps fingers] because your ears can help you locate a sound - the shape of your head, the distance between your ears. There's a whole psychoacoustical thing that happens that allows you to locate stuff. So when that's gone, it's kind of difficult to direct your listening to a place. If I'm on a stage with a real band, and even if it's noisy and I've got to listen all the way across the stage when I want to hear the Leslie, I can - like a bat - kind of get there, get to the Leslie. You can't really do that with these things on. They don't give you a location.

X
It's an imaginary space.

SK
Right, there's no panorama really. There's none of the reflection off the outsides of your ears. There's none of the time difference between one ear and the other. So the locatedness of it is gone, which makes it a kind of cloudy image.

DG
Don't you lose the feedback?

SK
Well, the instruments are all still in some ambient field. There's still sound around. There's giant sound coming out of the speakers in the front and everything like that. It's just not as direct.

It will be over like [snaps fingers] that. I'll be onto the next thing. I won't worry about it.

At the End of the Tour

SK
Details, details. [Yawning] I'm not the tiniest bit worried about it. The Fillmore, man. What a great room! It almost doesn't matter who we get.

X
Well, we should probably call it quits.

SK
Put something cool together out of that, Christian.

X
I'll do my best.