Jackie Greene’s new album, Till the Light Comes, is going to surprise a few people. The songwriting is, as you might expect, uniformly strong, freely moving from the personal to the more opaque, often within the same song – or even the same line. Over the course of six albums, Greene has established himself as a first-rate singer, capable of delivering wispy ballads, uptempo rockers or deep blues with equal authority, so the quality and diversity of his lead vocals is to be expected, too. No, what’s most different about Till the Light Comes is the overall sound of the album, which leans heavily in a ‘60s psychedelic pop direction. There are glistening harmonies that recall The Beatles, Byrds, Beach Boys and other groups, rockin’ Rickenbacker (and a million other) guitars, Mellotron, swirling B-3 organ, even electric sitar! Greene’s previous two Steve Berlin-produced albums – American Myth and Giving Up the Ghost – certainly had their share of adventurous sonic touches, but nothing quite like this.

I sat down with Greene in the control room of his Mission Bells recording studio in San Francisco for a far-reaching interview about the album, his deep creative connection to Tim Bluhm of The Mother Hips, the influence of his tenure with Phil Lesh & Friends on his current music, and how his ever-increasing fame is affecting him.

Several nuggets from this interview appear in the July ’10 issue of Relix, but we thought his rabid fan base might enjoy seeing (nearly) the whole interview in the relix.com exclusive.

Tell me about how work on Giving Up the Ghost and the way tunes from that album evolved over the last couple of years affected how you worked on this new album?

One of the main differences is the last record was done in pieces in many different studios and with different players, so there was an element of… unrest, maybe. It ended up being fine – I’m pleased with it – but this one was all done here, top to bottom. And the other thing I really like about it is it’s like a record that was made between friends – like what you saw when you arrived and Tim [Bluhm] and I were having lunch? That’s sort of how the record was made. It’s Tim and me and/or Dave [Simon-Baker, engineer/singer] and the drummer and the bass player from the Mother Hips, and the guys from my band, and that’s pretty much the guys on the record – all the guys who play on it are people I know well personally. So it was really comfortable.

As far as playing the songs from the last album live, there’s always a sort of after-the-fact evolution of songs, some songs more than others.

Like “Animal” is a song that seems to have developed and gotten richer since you recorded it.

“Animal” is a good example. A lot of it is just understanding where you can take chances with something. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it isn’t. And some songs, just by the nature of the song, aren’t really going to change that much.

These new songs we haven’t really played a lot of them live yet, on purpose because… Well, for one thing it’s such a different set of tunes for me that I didn’t want them to get out on the Internet right away. I wanted people to be surprised by them when the record came out. It’s a sort of Old School thinking that I don’t necessarily always subscribe to, but it was important for me because we put a lot of effort into making these the definitive versions of these songs. There are only a few songs we’ve played live. We’re saving some of them.

What inspired the production direction, which some might call “psych pop” – it has a lot of that Beatle-y, ’60s-ish vibe?

The paradigm is really ‘60s San Francisco bands. We’re here, we made it in San Francisco…

Really? It sounds more British to me.

[Laughs] Okay, that’s cool, too! I love that stuff! But there’s a definite influence from playing in Phil’s band and taking some chances and realizing I can do whatever I want to do and nobody’s telling me I can’t. Like, I can have an outro that’s different from the rest of the song. You can’t be afraid. The psychedelic stuff is where my mind has been going a little bit lately, largely due to Grateful Dead influence.

But to answer your question, the production is out of necessity, doing it here, and also Tim was involved in co-writing about half the songs, so it’s a record we really did together and it has that influence.

It still sounds like you.

Right, I’m not saying it sounds like a Grateful Dead record.

There’s only one moment on the record where I even thought of the Grateful Dead and that’s on the little guitar solo on the outro of “Holy Land,” which is kind of unexpected. It sort of skips along at a Garcia-ish tempo and gait.

That’s all done by design because that’s what it wanted to be. There are a bunch of tunes on there that have odd outros. I don’t know what the musical term for that is…

*I’d call it a coda, because they’re all so different than the main song that precedes them. When I was listening to the coda on “Til the Light Comes,” I thought of “Layla.” But then, there’s a noble tradition of codas in rock, from “Hey Jude” to Donovan’s “Atlantis.” *

“Layla” is definitely the paradigm for that sort of thing to me. I thought, “How do I get it in there?” Oh, I just cut it in! [Laughs]. I’ve always been attracted to music like that because it paints a sort of grander picture. It’s just something I’m into right now. Who knows – next year it might be two-minute pop songs.

What’s the nature and level of collaboration between you and Tim in terms of songwriting?

Well, half the tunes we co-wrote together. I guess in terms of the level of collaboration, in most of those cases I had the tune and structure but maybe I needed a bridge or help with the chorus. And I probably wouldn’t trust anyone else to work with me on that kind of stuff.

*It’s like The Beatles – “Give me a ‘middle eight,’ Paulie!” *

Right! [Laughs] I just wouldn’t trust anyone else but Tim, because something like that is something you can’t really entrust to just anybody, because it’s your record. One time, we went up the coast on a sort of camping trip and we sat with a few tunes and he helped me finish them. The greatest thing about doing that with someone you love and respect is that when they come back at you with an idea, even if it’s not something you’re going to use, it’ll often set your mind in a different direction and help you come up with something new and original of your own. That’s not something I’ve ever really had before.

You’re not a natural collaborator.

I haven’t been in the past, but I’m a whole lot more open to it now. I’ve definitely never collaborated with anyone as closely as did with Tim on this project."

In the Skinny Singers, is a lot of that material co-written?

Some of it. A lot of it is separate stuff we had and we put it together. On this record… well, “Grindstone” is a good example. Tim pretty much wrote the lyrics for the chorus, and I wrote everything else.

Was that written on piano?

It was. That’s actually a tune I’ve had for about five years and I made different demos of it and I could not figure out what the chorus was supposed to be. I got so pissed off at myself about it. I played it for Tim and he immediately said, “Oh, why don’t you do this ?” and he sat with it for a while and worked out a different chrorus. “Great! Love It! Let’s do it!”

And the title came out of it.

The title came out of it; exactly. It’s cool to have a guy like that. It’s a little bit like the old Jeff Lynne-Tom Petty sort of thing.

I thought of Petty on the opening track, “Shaky Ground,” and a couple of other places.

Yeah, that’s definitely got some Petty vibe. I’ve been listening to a lot of Tom Petty, too. That might seem odd: Tom Petty and the Grateful Dead? There’s a lot of power for me in those punchy Tom Petty songs – real simple, meticulously recorded pop songs. There’s something really great about that, too. Not everybody can do that. That’s one reason Tom Petty is Tom Petty.

I like some of those retro keyboard sounds – the Vox organ…

Yeah, the Vox Jaguar. I bought one of those a while ago. It only does one thing but it does it really well. Waaaaaa! [Laughs] It’s that ’60s garage band sound.

Some people have said the new record sound dense, but it’s not actually dense. There’s not really that much to it. It’s mostly a couple of guitars, bass, drums and keyboard. Really, it was about figuring out the parts for everything. To me, psychedelia comes down to how instruments are played rather than the actual sounds they’re making, so we spent time on figuring what was appropriate for each song.

Which guitar and amp to use?

Yeah, and what are the parts? How does this all fit together? How does this puzzle work? I daresay we figured it out. It took a year to make this record – all of it here. All the basics were me, a bass player and a drummer. Most of the demos were pretty fleshed out in terms of parts. I made demos at my house, so there was already an idea of where to go and then we’d build on those ideas. And then it became a full realization in high fidelity.

There is a conspicuous absence on the record – your guitarist and partner-in-crime… Nathan Dale.

I know. He didn’t play on the record. He didn’t want to play on the record. He heard the first cuts I did on the record with and Paul and with the Hips and he loved them so much – his words were, “I’d rather be a fan of this record.” And it took me a while to figure out what the hell he was talking about, and then I finally understood. He’s sort of a real spiritual guy. He said, “I don’t want to mess up any vibe that you and Tim have going,” because he really liked what was going down. I’m all, “What are you talking about, dude? I want you on my record!” [Laughs] He says, “Dude, it’s not just about playing on the record.” So I had to respect his decision and not have him play on the record. He’ll be doin’ ‘em live, of course. But it kind of blew my mind because it was a really thoughtful thing to do if he really felt like he might screw it up in any way; he didn’t want to do that. I don’t necessarily agree with him, but he thought that.

I like the way the violins are mixed so subtlety on the couple of tracks where they appear.

They’re real basic and also in places they’re mixed together with Mellotron, so it’s real strings and fake strings.

Do you have a Mellotron?

No, I use a sampler.

What’s the sound that sounds like an electric sitar on “1961” ?

It’s an electric sitar. That’s me playing. It’s a copy of a ‘60s one. I want one of those Coral ones. It’s fuckin’ cool!

On “Take Me Back in Time,” is that backwards guitar?

It’s backwards electric sitar. It’s a tape trick – you flip it over. That whole Revolver backwards tape thing – I love that stuff. When it’s the right notes, especially!. I had to do it a bunch of times before I got one that worked well in there. It’s pretty random.

I used to have a real sitar that I tried for a while to learn how to play. It was really hard.

Your George Harrison period.

That’s right. I couldn’t do it, so I got the electric sitar.

In terms of the songwriting on here, how revelatory do you think it is of your current state of mind?

I’d say it’s pretty revelatory. It’s definitely pretty current. I don’t know – I find it hard to talk about my own work. It’s hard to step back and view it; it’s so close. I feel a little like a protective mother about this record, for some reason. A lot of it is because I know how hard my friends and I worked on it. It wasn’t about money or anything; it was about making the best record we could.

It took a year but now it feels really fast and it’s hard to recall things. It goes through so many changes along the way. Not to mention all the politics of dealing with the label. There’s a bunch of sides to it. You can’t just make the record and that’s it. It’s a drag. I mean, you could, but no one would ever hear it.

I really like “Take Me Back in Time,” which has so much of that psych-pop thing we were talking about.
That’s cool. I’m glad you like that. The weird thing is that was the one song we might have cut. It’s sort of a simple song – let’s sing three parts over the whole thing, and it was a perfect candidate for the backwards stuff.

The guy’s a little paranoid. He wants to be in a simpler time.

Here’s my Barbara Walters question – do you ever wish you had lived at a different time?

Absolutely. Every day. On the one hand you’re born when you’re born, and actually anyone who’s lived through the last ten or 15 years has lived through different times, because of all the changes, even just in technology. I am old enough to remember when nobody had the Internet and nobody had a computer. And I do sort of miss it because it was simpler – for me anyway.

Without getting into the deep psychoanalysis, onstage you have a certain swagger and confidence that’s cool and believable, yet so many of the characters in your songs – many of them I presume based on you – are confused, depressed, possibly even suicidal…

Well, the truth is those are all me, too. I’ve had all those phases. I don’t want to talk about the suicidal stuff – and that’s probably a bit of a stretch – but I definitely have a flair for the dramatic. [Laughs] I gravitate toward either end of the emotional spectrum. Then, on the other hand, the song “Grindstone” is about being bored and being average. But most of the stuff that turns me on is one way or the other. Nowadays, it seems people need a slap in the face to feel anything at all. You might have been able to get away with writing a song about your house 20 years ago and have it be interesting to people. Nowadays if you write a song about your house, it has to burn down! [Laughs]

All that stuff that appears in songs… obviously there’s a fictional element to it because I have imagination, but there’s an element that’s legit and real. – I wouldn’t be able to do it otherwise.

When you carry these songs through the years and you’re re-performing these slices of your life, or your emotional life, is it difficult to get back into that space, or do they exist and change with you.

I guess there’s a part of those songs that will always exist in me because they came out of me to begin with. But the underlying or even the immediate meaning might change for me over time. A lot of songs, when you perform the live, you really want to be attached to them, but sometimes it’s hard to be attached to a song that’s ten or 15 years old.. Sometimes you’re just singing it. And it means to other people whatever it means to them, and that’s fine. As an entertainer you are doing a job – people bought tickets and they want to hear “Gone Wanderin’” or whatever it is, and we’ll usually play it for them and I’m happy to. I can’t be expected to be 120 percent in that song every time because it’s so old for me at this point and I’ve sung it so many times. But whether it’s ten years old or brand-new, I always try to stay in the emotional space of the songs while I’m performing them, because that’s what connects people to them. That’s my job. But sometimes it’s difficult.

In retrospect, things like “Love Song 2 a.m.” or “Walking Away” seem more like they’re about a person, an episode or event, or targeted at a specific person than most of the things on your last two albums.

That’s the kind of songs they are, and that’s what I knew how to write back then. Songwriting is like anything else – you learn as you go along, and I’m still learning how to go in different directions with my writing and write about different things in different ways. I’m not sure what you’d call the kind of songs I’m writing now. But back then, that’s what I could do. I couldn’t write “Stranger in the Sand” four years ago. It wouldn’t have happened that way. For some reason, those kind of melodies and lyrics seem more natural and normal to me now.

A little off-kilter.

A little off-kilter. To get technical, there are more major sevenths on this record, which is something I’ve never done before – that pretty ’60s, ’70s stuff. The Grateful Dead do it a lot.

Have you been influenced at all by Robert Hunter’s writing?

Sure, by all the songs. Definitely, the Hunter lyrics touch me. I’ve gotten better at disguising the influence. It hasn’t escaped.

Are there old-time fans who don’t like the whole Grateful Dead thing that’s happened with you?

I think there are some. There are also some that were Jackie Greene fans before that who maybe thought of it a little bit like the Grateful Dead, in that we’re both doing a sort of Americana thing. Really, I can’t think of a better influence for me right now. Especially their “business model” of playing live all the time. That is a hundred times more relevant now than it’s ever been. It puts them way ahead of their time in yet another time. I’m dumbfounded by it. They were either ahead of their time or the luckiest band in the world. Maybe they just did what they did and they were right.

And like the Dead you’re not afraid to get lost in a jam, even with your own band.

[Laughs] You have to get lost to get to what’s good. You can’t be afraid.

It’s cool that you’ve made “New Speedway Boogie” your own.

I love that song. To me, the Grateful Dead has always been about those great songs, and they just happen to present them differently than anybody else. That’s why to me there’s no quote-unquote “jamband” that even comes close to the Dead – they don’t have the songs. You can take any of those classic Dead songs and anyone can do them.

Getting back to the new record, How did you determine how to layer the album once you had the basic tracks down?

Well, I had the demos. I’d figure out the parts at home. A lot of them were self-explanatory. When you make recordings you sort of learn and listen to what works. You can immediately throw out about half the possibilities just out of instinct. If it works, great, if it doesn’t, you have to learn to move on. You can’t force it after a point. The right part, the right sound, the right timbre.

Do you think Steve Berlin’s imaginative outlook on the production of your two previous records had a big impact on you?

Yeah, totally. In terms of my own development, almost everything I know about making records I learned from him. And one of those elements is actually using things from the demos. That’s what Los Lobos does. On this album, for instance, the nylon guitar part and the main vocal on “The Holy Land” is from the demo. On the last record, “Animal” had a lot of the demo on it.

Is that a Rickenbacker on “Shaky Ground” ?

Yeah, there’s Rickenbacker all over this album.

Six- and 12-string?

No, the 12-string I have is a Dan Electro. I have a black 360 Rickie, and there’s a Rickie bass all over it, too. That’s one of the differences with this record. There’s a lot of 12-string bass on it, so it’s got a real chorus-y sound. It’s a great-sounding instrument. They call it the “pocket piano” because each note has three notes. Paul, in the Mother Hips plays it – that’s sort of what he’s known for. It takes up a lot of sonic space.

• “Spooky Tina” is kind of a different song for you – kinda trashy rock…*

Right! Well, I’ve never had a really whimsical song. I’m at the age now where I think it’s OK to do that. When I was young and way too serious I never would have done a song like that. I would’ve looked at that said, “That’s stupid,” and it is sort of stupid, but it’s also a lot of fun, and that’s what it’s supposed to be. I’m not trying to impress anyone.

Was there a specific person or event that inspired “1961” ?

It’s the tale of a lot of people, and it’s partly my story, too. My father left my mother a long time ago and I was raised by my mother. Obviously not in 1961! There’s a reason I chose 1961, but it’s a mystery – I don’t want to say because it’s kind of dorky.

Is there any tune on the album that was harder than the rest in terms of recording?

Probably “Till the Light Comes.”

Did the coda come at the same time as the main song?

Yes. When I was writing it I went, “Should I go to a bridge here?” No – I kept going to this half-time feel at the end…like “Layla,” so I went with that. And I wanted to be emotional with all the “aahs” – that grandiose sort of ending. And then at the very end it’s just piano and guitar.

Photo by John Patrick Gatta

There are a lot of “oohs” and “ahhs” on this record. It has some of that – “Because” – “Sun King” -Abbey Road vibe.

It does. But it’s not just The Beatles. It’s the Beach Boys, The Byrds – I love vocal beds right now, especially working with Tim. He and I have learned how to sing together really well over the past few years. Sometimes we can even get the parts to where we do it on the same mike together, which sounds really good.

What’s the most vocal tracks on any song?

Probably on “Till the Light Comes” – everybody has a double at least, so maybe nine or ten; it’s hard to say.

Where did Dave Simon-Baker come from?

He’s been working at studios in Marin for a long time. I know he used to do hip-hop records in the ’90s, which is why he can deal with the low-end so well – like that 12-string bass. I met him in NY. He was doing sound for ALO and we played with them on a show. And he knew Tim, and then Tim convinced him to move to San Francisco, and he had a Pro Tools HD rig, which you see over there.

He’s a real engineer. Tim and I are fake engineers… He’s really meticulous. I tend to work really fast. I’m more like the Bob Dylan approach, whereas he’s more like George Martin.

Did you use the Studer A820 [24-track recorder] from the Dead’s studio?

Yeah, the whole record. Everything on there. It’s A great-sounding machine. Phil had it. He hired these four giant Irish guys to carry it up the stairs. It hadn’t been used in a long time so we had to care for it and we put quite a few dollars into it, but it’s a great machine. John Cutler came in and spec’d it out for us. As soon as we get a console here we’ll be able to do everything.

Do you even think about aiming songs at radio any more?

Not really. Radio doesn’t really seem to matter as much as it used to. In terms of selling records – I don’t think it’s selling any more records. The name of the game is building a live following and having a big Internet presence and you want to get people to blog about you and link your music to other people. It gets thrown around the blogosphere. And it happens fast and then its gone, but it’s moved around a lot. Radio is now the icing and not the cake.

You’re turning 30 this year: Any observations? Does that feel “old” ?

It does, actually. But then I think about people like Phil Lesh and Levon Helm, friends who are more than twice my age – both turn 70 this year! So I can’t complain. I just hope that when I turn 70 I’m in half as good a shape as Phil. They say ‘respect your elders,’ and that’s really good advice, because anything I’ve gone through or have done, they’ve probably gone through it, too.

Has Phil Lesh given you sage advice?

He has… he’s also given me dumb advice [Laughs]. He’s said all kinds of things.

And it’s not just those guys. I’ve learned so much from Tim [Bluhm], who’s just ten years older than me. Everything from relationship advice to whatever. Because they’re human beings, too. The twists and turns are different of course, but we’re all on a musical path, which tends to affect everything you do somehow. It’s great to have good friends who are different ages.

As you get more “famous,” do you find a stranger group of people is attracted to you? The people who come ’round, or want a piece of you?

God, everybody’s strange. [laughs] I don’t anything about some of the people that come around. I feel like they think that they know me really, really well, and I know that can’t possibly be the case. Or maybe they do; maybe they’re spying on me. [Laughs] I don’t give it that much thought. I just know I have to keep moving ahead and keep making tunes, cause otherwise I don’t know what I’d do. People do demand a lot more time of me.

What’s the story with that new song you played at the Mystic the other night, “One Bad Love” ? It’s a cool song. Too bad it’s not on the record.

It’s too new; I just wrote it a little while ago.

You said you wrote it for someone else…

I was going to show it to Chris Robinson. But he’s a songwriter himself and maybe he wouldn’t like it, so I decided to keep it myself. As it turns out, the band really likes to play it.

*How did “Follow That Monkey” [on the soundtrack of Curious George 2 ] come about?
They asked me to do it. “We need a title song.” Normally I write songs for myself, but that was an exercise in taking some direction – “here’s what it’s about” – and writing for someone else. I’m interested in doing more of that – tailor-made songs. I’ve had a lot of submissions for movies and you have to be able to do what they want. And there’s a real talent for that, obviously. I’m interested in trying scoring, too. I’ve worked on my own on orchestral things. I have many, many things I’ve done at home. I have the fake orchestral software programs and I’ll write out the parts and notation – actually, the software is doing it for me. It’s so much different than writing lyrics and rock music, and I really enjoy it. But it’s brand new to me. I’d love to do more. Or even write a rock soundtrack or a folk soundtrack for something.

Radio – nowadays, new music is almost exclusively in people’s blogs. There’s so much music available on the Internet and it’s gotten harder to weed it out. If you’re in a band you can put stuff up on the Internet and potentially anyone in the world can hear it. But at the same time, people move around to things so quickly, how do you keep their attention? Sometimes I look on iTunes and I’ll go ten steps beyond their recommendations. I’ll start at Iggy Pop and click to the next one and the next one…

Do you feel at all schizophrenic about being a guy who now plays the summer jamband festivals and also still does the brewery up in Chico?

Definitely. We play the part pretty well for playing the jamband scene. But we got sort of tagged with that for obvious reasons. But we also did the hardcore jazz festival circuit in Canada one year, and we do not play jazz music! But it didn’t matter. Most people were cool with it. We’ve played the Telluride Bluegrass Festival three times as a rock band – no one cares. OK, there are some guys who are shouting “Aww, this isn’t bluegrass music!” But for some reason we’re able to fit in.

I love jazz music, but I can’t play it. I’m not talented enough. I remember when we were up in Canada, a bunch of jazz guys were jamming at the hotel bar after the show and I thought, “Great, I’ll get to sit in with Ron Carter!” But once I heard what the piano payer was doing and what everyone else was playing I thought, “Uh, maybe not. Maybe I’ll just order a beer and watch.” Which is what I did. [Laughs] But that’s cool. I like being mystified by music. I like to hear music that I don’t know how it came to be. There’s magic in it.