Features

Mike Gordon: Access Me

As Phish continues its June tour, we’re dipping back into the Relix archives. Here is an interview with Mike Gordon that originally ran in November 2005.

Photo by Dave Vann

Mike Gordon has spent the past twenty-two years in the public eye. In that time, he’s grown remarkably as a musician, songwriter and onstage personality, yet, some of his biggest changes have only arrived in the past eighteen months. Since parting ways with Phish, Gordon has moved from New York, toured with downtown groove gurus The Duo, started work on a new home studio and recorded his second album with guitar legend Leo Kottke. A sharp departure from the veteran guitarist’s previous work, Gordon and Kottke’s latest collaboration found the duo expanding to a trio with the addition and percussionist Neil Symonette, best known as the house drummer at Nassau’s Compass Point Studios. As expected, the trio’s results, Sixty Six Steps, explores an exciting new calypso direction and includes an odd selection of covers ranging from Aerosmith to Fleetwood Mac. More recently, Gordon and Kottke have also embarked on an extended tour, which will take the paired performers to clubs, bars and festivals across the country. After a busy night in San Francisco, which saw Gordon perform a 90-minute set with Kottke at The Fillmore, and join The Duo for a handful of songs across town at The Independent, Jambands.com polled the busy bassist on his current outing with Kottke, his forthcoming solo project and life in general since Phish’s final gig.

You’ve been known to keep well-detailed journals while on the road. Have you written extensively about any particular gig from your current tour?

Well, I’ve kept journal entries only when I am inspired to. If a show is just mediocre, I tend not to jot anything down. But, I do have some notes, which are building up from this tour—-there have been some incredible moments. It’s the first time I have been out on the road for a month since Phish. In L.A., we changed our setup around on stage and it really made for an incredible gig. We don’t have any amplifiers or monitors onstage, which is radical for me. It makes the sound very sensitive, so even when we were sitting a few feet apart, I couldn’t hear Leo’s guitar so well. So, we decided that we’d stand up—-which we were doing half the time anyway—-and that we’d stand about eleven feet away from each other, partly facing the crowd and partly facing each other.

What would happen is that we would have these incredible jams in the hotel room, but onstage it wasn’t really as incredible. It came down to how we were hearing each other. We had some long talks about that during the day in LA, and we decided that we’d switch it up and it worked out really great.

In both Phish and your own solo band you made a point to change your setlists on a nightly basis. But, for the most part, with Leo, you focus on the same selection of songs. Has this changed your performance approach?

That’s an interesting question. There are some things about Leo’s background that I’ve been catering to because he’s been doing it for so long. He does mix up the setlist a bit, but not a lot. We change the song order from night to night and rotate certain songs, but a lot of the set is based on songs we are doing most nights. I think it’s not just important to change the setlist for fun, but it’s important for variety, and, for me, it’s an unspoken rule that’s being broken. It’s actually one of a few that we’re breaking this tour. But, on the other hand, something really cool happens. The same songs are evolving in subtle, but big, ways from night to night. They get tighter for one thing and I’m not playing the same notes from night to night. I’m finding new things to do in the same songs in a way that I couldn’t if we weren’t playing the same songs from night to night. I’m able to go deeper with those songs, so that’s sort of been cooler than I’d expected. We also have some songs from the new album that we’ve rehearsed that I’d like to be playing, but Leo would rather play our more familiar songs. But, again, I am kind of glad about that because it means that we can really be confident and soar with it.

What other ‘unspoken’ rules have you broken this tour?

Well, with Phish, we tended to do some extended jams—-well, a lot of extended jams [laughs]—-though there were phases when we didn’t do so many. With Leo, we don’t do so many extended jams, though we could do them. We have in the past—-our hotel jams can go on and on and for me it doesn’t really get boring. But, there are parts of songs that really feel like the kind of jams we would do with Phish, but only shorter. What happens in that shorter amount of time, for me, is really intense. That happened a couple of times last night [at San Francisco’s The Fillmore] early on in the set. It was almost like a funk jam, but it was only 32 bars or something, as apposed to twenty minutes. It was so free during those 32 bars. So, I guess that would be the second rule: less extended jamming.

The third rule would be the overall length of time for the set. We are doing one 90-minute set, which works out really well, but, some people expect longer and we are playing early. Phish played early too in the end, but that’s because we were in arenas or whatever, but Leo and I are playing early in bars—-we are playing from 8-9:30. Some people have tickets and they show up at 10 [laughs]. It’s not really a rule, it’s more of an expectation, but that’s the fourth rule.

Okay, the fifth rule [laughs]. I always recommend that people go to see Leo by himself because he is so entertaining as a solo performer. When he is by himself, he tells these really long funny stories—-that’s half the appeal, these morbid stories. When he is with me, he tells some stories, but not as many. Last night was perfect. He told some stories, but not that many. I have a theory that if people are standing up he should tell shorter stories and if they are sitting down he should tell longer stories. But all the talking is something that is very different from the Phish world. But, people are appreciating it. When he is on, Leo’s stories are really fresh and he’s telling stories I’ve never even heard before.

Have you worked on your own stage banter at all?

Yup, a little bit [laughs]. I can be funny sometimes, but I’ve turned into the wing man, throwing in a jab here or there. I’m like Andy was on Conan O’Brien or Ed McMahon

Over the summer you toured as a trio with Leo and percussionist Neil Symonette? Why did you revert back to the duo format?

Well, Leo’s ears are very sensitive [due to a freak childhood firecracker accident and a stint in the Naval reserves]. Its not really the volume of the drums because he had earplugs in and we limited Neil to using percussion. It was more of the idea that it made it into a busier, bigger thing to contend with. We had some great gigs as a trio, but at this point, we’re finding that its more intimate to play just the two of us. There is something really special about a duo, though Neil was really great on the album. We did an Downbeat interview recently and the interviewer said something I really liked: “well with one person you can do whatever you want, and with a band you can sort of fall back on each other, but with two people you sort of have to bounce off each other.”