Features

Chris Kuroda Still Shines (Part One)

Do you have any pre-show discussions about the show with them at this point? I know they don’t really know specifically what they’re going to do, but are there ever segues or the like that are discussed ahead of time?

CK: No, not lightwise. No, that’s not true. I mean, there’re a couple of cool ideas we all worked on together and talked about. The fact that this could happen and do we want this to happen. The song “Steam” we’ve got some smoke machines and there were some thoughts about how we wanted to handle that and the band was very involved in that stuff, but in general, no. We talk about songs a little bit before the gig and what songs might work and what songs might not, but you know Phish, we can talk about 20 songs and they’ll go on stage and they won’t play any of those 20 even if we just talked about them an hour ago. We talk, but it’s all kind of as brothers, and as fun, and bouncing ideas off of each other. There’s no real serious air to it. At this point, we’re dialed after 20 some-odd years. We all know each other’s philosophies, and let’s go.

How has your style evolved in the current era of Phish?

CK: Well if anything it’s made me need to be more precise. There’re no more 45 minute guitar loops where you basically can do anything and it looks fine. It’s made me need to pay attention more to what they’re doing because the jams are way more thought out now. They’re not just reckless and out there. There’s a lot of precision to them, if you pay attention enough you can really listen and understand the musical thinking that’s going on at any given live moment. And it’s a lot more intelligent than it used to be. So I try to be more precise with what I’m doing based on that philosophy.

The trend of the fans holding up these signs, do they ever block your view and prevent you from seeing the visual cues from the band members?

CK: Yes, absolutely, all the time. Is there anything I can do about that? No. Do I want to send a security guard down there to take the sign away from that person? Yes. Will I? No, because it’s a kid having fun at a concert who doesn’t know that they’re blocking my sightlines 30 rows in front of me. So again, that’s a tolerance thing. It’s like beach balls. Beach balls get in my way too. Glowsticks—I bought a GrandMA2 light board and a glowstick cracked my center screen. Am I mad about it? Yes. Do I understand it? Yeah, it’s a kid throwing a glowstick at a concert. How can you be mad at that? It just happened to break my light board. What are you gonna do? But there were people around me that were freaking out and going completely insane and trying to find the kid and I told everybody to just calm down. How are you even going to figure out which kid threw it for that matter? There’re a thousand kids throwing glowsticks right now, you know? It’s all attitude, you know? Whatever.

Maybe people should hold up signs that say “Don’t Throw Glowsticks.”

CK: Possibly. [laughter]