The Contribution: Fear of Nothing

By: Dennis Cook

The Contribution

You’d be hard pressed to find five more gifted, organic, flexible musicians than Railroad Earth‘s Tim Carbone (violin, vocals), New Monsoon‘s Jeff Miller (guitar, vocals) and Phil Ferlino (keys, vocals) and The String Cheese Incident‘s Keith Moseley (bass, vocals) and Jason Hann (drums). Each is a fixture on the jam circuit, yet their new project together, The Contribution, is strikingly different from the bands these players have emerged from. Their debut, Which Way World (released March 30 on SCI Fidelity), is a fully fleshed rock album in the classic sense, where the songs and playing take one on a little trip, often to places deep inside we might not have reached without a little melodic greasing. One picks up on this different vibe immediately in the three-part harmonies and hand clapping snap of lead-off track “Come Around,” but the aura of difference – in a wholly positive way – lingers on every cut of this record birthed in the tall trees of Northern California where three friends discovered a profound musical bond.

“The three of us [Ferlino, Miller and Carbone] agreed from the beginning that we wouldn’t write unless the three of us were all in the same room. These songs are total collaborations,” says Carbone. “This might sound weird, but this is the only record in my entire career that I go back to and get goose bumps. This one, I want to put it on again and again.”

“I was thinking about the process that me and Phil and Tim went through to filter down to these tunes. People had a few ideas, but when we opened up the notebooks, got out the guitars and a couple bottles of wine it all magically emerged,” says Miller. “One of us would have a chord progression that complimented another’s lyric, or Tim would pull out a random line he’d written months ago and it would fit perfectly into something Phil introduced. We batted the ball around in this triangle, and it’s such a great way to write. When I’m writing by myself I’m my own worst critic instead of having someone there to help me shape and edit things. That’s part of what makes us such a great writing team, and we haven’t even explored writing with Keith and Jason, which we’ll do on the next record. Having someone there you trust to say what works and what doesn’t, to edit on the fly, makes things so much better.”

Phil Ferlino from myspace.com/thecontribution

“Phil is, by the nature of his personality and instrument, more of a background processing type of guy. He’s like the Spock of the operation back there figuring out chord progressions and things. To have Phil as a component of any writing process is amazing,” says Miller. “Then Tim comes in and he’s a catalyst, a spark with all kinds of creative ideas. He’ll pull his iPhone out and laptop and do searches on Buddhist words and things. It’s cool, man. He’s like a Buddhist in a coal mine [laughs].”

Which Way World is some of the most controlled, beautiful playing any of these musicians has done on record, and an album that explores the potential of the studio as an invisible but palpable member of a band.

“Jeff and Phil and I produced it together, but I sort of led the way since I’ve had a lot of experience producing records – bluegrass records, rock records, blues records [31 albums by current count, starting in 1986] – and each one you approach differently. With this one we went in with the model of a modern rock record – don’t be afraid to layer vocals or have multiple guitars doing things. Of course, we’ll have to sort that out live, but we’ll work it out,” chuckles Carbone. “We mixed it with Phil Nicolo [John Lennon, Taj Mahal, Bob Dylan], who has an amazing pedigree. We told him exactly how we wanted the record to sound and as soon as he heard the tracks he was gassed. ‘Whoa, this is a fuckin’ rock record, man!'”

“This was the most fun I ever had making a record,” says Carbone. “I loved every single minute of it, and that includes the writing of it. Phil and Jeff and I are just such a great writing team. We’re just very comfortable with each other, and we allow ourselves the latitude to make mistakes. And everybody can say anything, including, ‘That sucks.’ It’s a fine line. You can’t go in without ego – just to do the stuff we do, you need a certain amount of ego just to pull it off. You can be as humble as you want or appear to be but the bottom line is, I don’t care who you are, you need ego to pull this off. That’s what it takes. However, to an extent, you have to check your ego at the door doing this kind of writing project, and we were very successful at doing that.”

Got Rhythm

Jason Hann :: 04.03.10 :: SF by Weiand

“We talked about who we’d like to play bass and drums. I had been doing some playing with Jason, where he and I did a percussion-violin improvisational show after we’d done Nershi’s jamboree in Costa Rica, where we were basically pushed out onstage by Nershi and we crawled inside each other’s brains. I’m a very rhythmic player; I play drums as well. So, by virtue of me playing with Jason a bunch and feeling like we had a real rapport and always liking Keith’s playing and Keith as a person – and during the Summer Classic, Phil and Jeff had developed a really nice relationship with Keith – that we thought, ‘Why don’t we get those guys down to be the rhythm section?'” says Carbone. “They were totally into it, but scheduling was very, very dicey, especially because EOTO is so freakin’ busy. Believe it or not, the drum tracks were created and recorded in five days. Jason is an extraordinary drummer, and what’s beautiful about him was how he completely got the songs, which are the amalgamation of the three of us [Carbone, Miller and Ferlino] and our experiences as musicians. There’s so many different influences, even within a single song, but Jason seemed to tap into all of them and emulate the favorite drummer you could imagine on a particular tune. On the opening track, ‘Come Around,’ he’s totally fuckin’ John Bonham! Then, the next track he’s channeling Jim Keltner. Sometimes on the record it feels like he’s Ringo Starr or Keith Moon. Jason isn’t a copycat drummer but he’s so fucking good he knows exactly what to play in each situation AND make all the tracks on the album feel of a piece.”

“The band developed an identity quickly, and I can’t say enough about Keith and Jason coming into this process with Tim that has been going on for four or five years. It’s like they’d heard them their whole lives. They put together bass and drum parts so quickly and so much better than anything I could have come up with. We’d sit in the control room and listen to what they came up with and say, ‘Wow, where did these guys come from?’ And even as individuals they are the right guys for the job. We’d all loved their playing, professionalism and vibe for years and felt lucky to have them involved,” says Miller. “Where I felt [The Contribution] was truly magical was the night Jason and Keith flew in to record with us. We went straight to their hotel room with a couple bottles of wine and a case of beer and sat there and played the tunes. Jason played on his knee with his hand and Keith just sat back against the headboard with his bass, and it just instantly gelled, even without real instruments. Sitting there in the hotel room it just seemed too easy, and we realized the easy part is everyone is seasoned and experienced. The level of professionalism is exciting.”

The entire ensemble plays to the strengths of each particular song. Each man could command the spotlight with their soloing abilities but there’s a shared zeitgeist to The Contribution that blurs individual lines beautifully.

Continue reading for more on The Contribution…

I can’t emphasize enough how unbelievably joyous the entire experience was, right from the very first writing sessions up in Marin at this little house tucked into the redwoods. We worked our asses off, and when we didn’t feel like writing we walked and drank a ton of wine. It was idyllic. Really, dude, it’s everything with why I do what I do. –Tim Carbone

Photo of Carbone, Moseley & Miller by: Susan J. Weiand | 04.03.10 | Great American Music Hall | San Francisco, CA

The Contribution enjoying wine in the studio From myspace.com/thecontribution

“There’s elements on the record where we knew we needed some solos, but every one of them is heartfelt, like Jeff’s lead guitar part on ‘Not This Time.’ He played exactly what needed to be played for that song. Then on ‘Which Way World’ and ‘Come Around’ we did something that people love that we do onstage, which is the interaction of the fiddle and the electric guitar. One of the ways we did that was by having him play a solo where he leaves spaces and then I played a solo right after him that spoke to those spaces. Phil and I did the same thing on ‘Samsara,’ where all the violin/piano parts at the end were done live standing next to each in the room,” explains Carbone, highlighting the intimacy, energy and pleasant overlap of the musicians in the studio that gets picked up on in these sessions. “I can’t emphasize enough how unbelievably joyous the entire experience was, right from the very first writing sessions up in Marin at this little house tucked into the redwoods. We worked our asses off, and when we didn’t feel like writing we walked and drank a ton of wine. It was idyllic. Really, dude, it’s everything with why I do what I do.”

“How often do you sit down for a 10-course meal? Or take a vacation where you have an amazing time? It’s very much like that when I’m with these guys. We’re working really hard but it doesn’t feel like work at all. I don’t know what time it is, I don’t need to look at my phone, I’m just in it fully,” says Miller. “It rewinds you back to your childhood and why you picked up that strange looking thing with strings and plucked it for the first time. You fast forward down the road of your life and you realize you’ve been listening to George Harrison’s work for a lifetime and now you’re able to do that. I literally had that experience when [The Contribution] was in the studio. The whole process was SO fun, and that’s really the essence of playing music and everything really. If it’s not fun, then what’s the fucking point?”

“If you’ve ever read The Secret or anything like that, it seems like the one thing everybody agrees about through the ages is fun. If life is fun and you’re feeling good then you’ll probably be successful at what you’re doing. People gravitate to people having fun,” observes Miller. “I do want to point out on a more serious level that there’s a weight to this record. Some of the songs are darker and a little heavier, which emerge more slowly than the ear candy songs but are waiting there in the grooves. I had some moments in the studio where I was fighting back tears during a performance. I’m singing something or playing a guitar and it’s like a freight train going through me emotionally because it’s tender and sensitive and coming from a real place of needing to put this out there.”

Deep Water

Which Way World is a quintessential grower, one of those carefully layered gifts that only gives up its full flavor after one has savored and studied it a bit. New facets of every player are revealed, and there’s a depth to the musicianship and thematic thrust that’s born from the commingling of several lifetimes spent on the road carving sound for a living. This may be a new band but there’s a wonderfully lived-in atmosphere to these thoughtful ruminations. And better still, the lyrics, while often philosophical, skirt hippie-dippie pap that can be off-putting.

The Contribution in the studio from myspace.com/thecontribution

“Your ‘suck-o-meter’ goes off! Well, we have a suck-o-meter, too, and anytime something became maudlin or cloying we said, ‘No,'” says Carbone. “To be honest, there is a philosophical thread that runs through the album. When we first started writing this record four years ago, back then I was very deeply into Buddhism – and still am. Lyrically, I think that might have rubbed off on Jeff and Phil to a certain extent. There’s a lot in the lyrics that reflects the spirit of Buddhism. Like on ‘Which Way World,’ there’s a line that says, ‘This has all happened before.’ ‘Samsara’ is basically the wheel of pain and suffering. In spots it’s about the duality of the universe. His holiness, the Dalai Lama himself will tell that even when you’re experiencing joy there’s an element of suffering in that joy because in the background you’re clinging to that joy, and whenever that joy goes away you’ll suffer.”

“When we were deciding on the tunes and finishing them, I knew this was not going to be the kind of record that’s a pure crowd pleaser, like, ‘Hey, this is a great record to put on and dance to!’ The one thing about [the jam scene] – and this isn’t a criticism – is people are partying. They want to dance and have fun. All of our bands have been that provider on umpteen thousand experiences at gigs and festivals. So, that experience level is there, and what’s exciting about [The Contribution playing live] is seeing how we can bring that crowd pleasing factor into the nature of this project,” says Miller. “However, there comes a point as a musician where you want to get serious. You don’t go to a Neil Young concert expecting him to make you dance. You’re going to sit down, listen to the songs and he’s gonna move you in all kinds of ways, but it’s an emotional movement as opposed to a physical movement. The thing we really wanted to accomplish with the record versus the live show is you can sit down by yourself in your house or car or computer and have an emotional experience saying something you can relate to, something you need to hear that’s a salve for your heart. That’s where I’m at with writing in general – if it’s salve for my heart it’s hopefully salve for someone else’s heart, too.”

Which Way Next

It’s unlikely The Contribution will be rough trailing it through clubland. Myriad scheduling conflicts with their other projects make regular gigging a challenge, but there’s also something a touch lofty in their music, a huge souled, big sky sound ready to be ripened at rare festival appearances or inside cherry theatres with keenly attuned audiences – rare sightings that make one truly relish what these five guys do together. The band made their live debut this past week in Denver and San Francisco, and by all reports their studio chemistry is carrying over in concert, with one trustworthy pal telling me that the S.F. show had “too many sick covers to list,” though he did note their version of McCartney’s “Live And Let Die” was tremendous. It’s not a song one might obviously pick for this band, but the suspicion is The Contribution will evolve in their own idiosyncratic way and the end results will never be less than heartfelt and appealing. The group already has three songs written for their follow-up album, so this tale is far from told.

“I don’t think we’ve even really scratched the surface. We were able to go into the studio and distill these 10 songs, but there’s still a lot left over from the original writing sessions, which produced hours and hours of recordings that we sifted through to find the kernels worth keeping. You listen back and think, ‘I might have been a little drunk while I was playing that but that’s kinda cool!’ Wine is always involved, sort of the silent fourth partner of this writing process,” offers Miller. “But, two of the cornerstones of the album, ‘Come Around’ and ‘Fear of Nothing,’ came together in the extra few days we tacked onto the studio time. And we were all kind of shocked at how quickly they came together. This is just happening, and you grab a pen and just start writing it down. It was such a thrill to write a song and then three days later listen to a completed track in the studio. None of us had EVER experienced that. We’d all been in bands where you play a song live for a year before you record it. To write a song on Monday and record it on Wednesday is the greatest feeling. It’s where the rubber meets the road.”

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