BayFest

On Aug. 12, many music lovers tuned into A&E to see that Blues Traveler hasn’t missed a beat. Over time, it hasn’t been a surprise to see Blues Traveler have a steady rise to popularity. Their manic soul sound fueled by front man John Popper’s unique voice and furious harmonica as well as the formation of the legendary H.O.R.D.E. Tours (Horizon of Rock Developing Everywhere) has made them gods in the jam world. As they were preparing to embark on the road to BayFest, keyboardist Ben Wilson had time to answer a few questions in between packing his bags.

SC: You guys are getting ready to head out on the road. How do you prepare for something like that?

BW: Well, you know I spend hours and hours and hours thinking about what I’m gonna wear for two months, and I put it in my suitcase, and I show up at the gig.

We have played together so much that we tend not to put a lot of rehearsal in as a band, but the expectation is that you’ll stay on top of your game individually. So, we’ll get together, and frequently what happens is the first couple of shows, we might not be as tight as we normally are, but we have so much enthusiasm from not having played together that those can be some of the funnest shows.

SC: Blues Traveler is pretty much an icon in the jam scene. The band has been going strong since the early ‘90s, and you’ve been with them for almost a decade. What are your impressions of the modern jam scene? What do you see different when you go out on the road?

BW: I think it’s just cool that there’s such a wide variety of what’s the “jam scene” now. There weren’t as many bands doing it, and it was more kinda a la Grateful Dead back in the day. Now, you got the whole soul jazz thing like the Soulives of the world, and you got more world people like Soundtribe, then there’s people that are more like total Grateful Deadish.

Of course, I can’t remember the name. It’s not Leftover Salmon, but then there’s the Mule and Widespread doing their thing. There’s just so many different types of avenues that people who kinda dig people who can play their instruments and like to hear improvisation, but maybe they don’t like it as hard as Blues Traveler can be, but they don’t like it as soft, of course I can’t think of the name of this band right now.

Or they like it down the middle or like it jazzy. You can find what you’re looking for. The cool thing about jam fans is once you’re in with them, they’re just a loyal, loyal following. They’ve been real good to us.

SC: Tell me a little about the “A&E Private Sessions” that you guys did.

BW: It was cool! We had just finished our greatest hits acoustic record that’s coming out here fairly soon that we did mostly acoustic. For us, that meant primarily, me on piano and Chan on acoustic guitar as opposed to electric guitar. So, we had all these cool, new arrangements that kinda fit in perfectly with the vibe that A&E was trying to get across. You know, they came in and sat down with us, and we did some chatting and did some planning and did some chatting and did some planning, and it was cool. Anytime you’re on TV, and the cameras are rolling, it ups the ante a little bit, so you’re that much more focused. It was a ton of fun.

SC: When can the public expect this acoustic greatest hits?

BW: They can expect a curveball! It’s way stripped down for Blues Traveler. It’s very focused on John’s (Popper) voice, but they’re only a few tunes that sound the same when we originally released them including some of the hits. We slowed down and totally bluesified ‘The Mountains Win Again.’ ‘Hook’ has a very poppy feel that is different than the original. We went for a Motowny, old school kinda run-around sound for “Runaround.” We kinda had some fun with it and tried to make the songs sound different than they were the first time around, but I think it’s real, quality stuff. I think there’s a good feeling there and a good energy. It really breathes, and hopefully, we can take some notes and bring it to one of our studio records.

SC: You’re last album was called “Bastardos!” What’s the story behind the album’s name?

BW (Chuckle): That was just five guys being dorks. John had always wanted – what did he say? What was the album title? He always wanted to say, you know, “Blues Traveler, Those Bastards!” He wanted the name of an album to be “Those Bastards!” like, “Aw man, here they are again, those bastards!” like, Dang it!”

We all thought it was kinda funny, but we didn’t want it to be that straight up. So, we bantered around a little bit for a couple of weeks, and kinda just came up with saying it in Spanish, because we had done the whole record from start to finish in Austin, Texas, which is where I live now.

We had done rehearsals there; we had done kinda the pre-production there. We found a producer; we found a studio. We did the record there. Just everything kinda happened there. We just decided to give it the Hispanic feel of the place in Texas.

SC: You tapped Jay Bennett from Wilco to man the production chair for this. What was it like working with him in that capacity?

BW: Awesome! He’s just one of the most musical guys that I’ve ever met in terms of just raw creativity and ideas. I think sometimes too many ideas, and we had a hard time tearing them down on the final project. For me as a keyboard player, which was not his primary instrument when he played in Wilco, he had a ton of ideas for me to try as well. A lot of our previous producers had been all about song structure and, “Let’s tighten the song structure down and tighten the song structure down.” He wasn’t as concerned with song structure. He was more about vibe and ideas. It was just really enlightening to work with him and feed off of that creativity.

SC: One last question, and I’ve been wanting to ask one of you this for years. When is there gonna be another H.O.R.D.E. Tour?

BW: (laughing)

SC: Noticed that I did not say “festival.” I said “tour.”

BW: You did say “tour,” didn’t you? Well, we’ve been talking about, and people have been talking to us about it. There’s a lot of inertia there that’s gotta get turned around. All I can say at this point is that we’ve definitely been talking about, people have been talking to us about it. We would love to do it, but we gotta make sure that if we do it, then we do it right.

Stephen Centanni is Lagniappe music editor. Contact him at scentanni@lagniappemobile.com.

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