9 Questions With Chris Chew of the North Mississippi Allstars With North Mississippi Allstar’s Chris Chew

Describe your favorite trip to Vegas. My favorite thing about Las Vegas is the pretty girls. The first time we were there sucked. We played a really small room and they kept telling us that we had to turn our instruments down because we were playing too loud.

The weirdest thing you’ve seen from the stage is…? A naked guy painted up. It was at Wakarusa this year. But naked girls are okay.

One Vegoose band I’d love to collaborate with is… I would have to go with Trey. He is very talented and melodic in what he does. I have always liked his side projects a lot better than Phish. Trey and Dave, Oysterhead, and his side band have always been much better, in my opinion.

What is the worst thing about living on a tour bus? No sleep. It’s all good and could be a lot worse. It would be good to be able to get away from everybody some days but on the tour bus you just can’t, so you just got to deal with it.

What is the biggest misconception about your band? People think that we are a rich-ass rock band. The fact of the matter is that we are just a hard-working band, like a lot of other bands. People think we’re rich and don’t have our heads on our shoulders cause we have our own bus. So fucking what we have a bus—it’s not like each of us has our own bus or anything.

What is the best album you’ve heard in the last year? That’s a trick question. There is this bass player that I am really digging a lot, his name is Tony Grey. He is a jazz guy from England. I have been listening to his record, Moving, a lot and it is incredible. He has only been playing bass for 11 years and he is as good as anyone out there.

Which one of your own songs are you definitely not going to play at Vegoose? “Drinkin’ Muddy Water,” because we haven’t really played it in probably six months.

What’s the longest stretch of time you’ve ever stayed up? Twenty-seven hours, a couple of months ago. We were driving from one side of the country to another. It was from like Atlanta to Colorado, I think. The drive itself was only 20 hours, but with stops and time for the bus driver to rest it took about 27.

Any words of advice for aspiring poker players? I don’t really play poker, I’m a dice player. I don’t really have a tip, though; just go to work. I like to shoot dice on the corner, not on a table, get grimy and sweaty.

The North Mississippi Allstars play the Joker’s Wild stage at Vegoose, Sam Boyd Stadium, Las Vegas, NV on Saturday, October 29