 |
| |
All the songs are gateways to... I don't wanna use a cliché, but I'm about to - to just feeling the magic. Feeling something that is non-describable - where you just go, "Oh wow, good surprise... Don't try to describe it or it will go away. Just ride on it." So all the songs are gateways, and mostly for me it's getting myself back in the mode of being active and receptive.
-John Bell |
|
|
| |
|
By Jeremy Jones
Fair enough. Coming back around to some of the newer material that y'all are working on, in an interview you did with Tom Speed [Honest Tune Magazine] leading up to your break, you had talked about Ball and how, for the first time, you sort of put yourselves in the position of sort of forcing yourselves to turn it on to see if you could get the creative juices flowing and get this material to work. So with some of this newer stuff - has it been that kind of a situation or is it coming to you more naturally?
John Bell :: Bonnaroo '05
By Dave Vann |
This is more old-school. Ball occurred that way because of a request, or I wouldn't say it was a request, it was a notion, like a "What if?" by Tom Lipsky at Sanctuary. We kind of took it as a challenge to come up with all new material that the kids, you know none of our fan base has heard before. And it was part of their marketing thing too, so the radio stations wouldn't get it, the publications wouldn't get it, everybody got it the first moment it came out. It probably back-fired a little 'cause we were going against the machine.
Yeah but you know, try something different.
It was like, everybody wants their copy. But for us it was a challenge, and it was a great way to go through the process differently. So in that interview, what I was pointing out was that usually we could sit and play with songs, get them onstage, listen to phantom sounds and recapture those and remember them and say, "Hey, now let's put that in the thing." And do it at a slower pace without forcing anything. And here we were in a position of pushing it along, trying to maintain the same process, but using high-speed access. It was a new process. It was good to know you had it in ya. And the collaborative effect - that was a lot of fun, and hopefully we didn't leave too much out of it. But I'm sure if we had more time to let the songs find their own way, then there would be some rooms we haven't explored. But overall, when I listen to the album, I'm still... the content is there.
In thinking about the break again, obviously your personal life is your personal life, but in regards to Widespread Panic, what were you doing? Were you writing material?
Yeah, I was pretty much... That was the only obligation. I did feel an obligation to come back and at least share some songs, so we had new material. I also was like, "You know, if we sit down and the first song we practice is 'Pigeons' or something, I'm gonna go nuts." So Jojo and I were talking, and I was like, "Man, the first thing we do, please let's start working on new material." And that was a no-brainer. Everybody felt that way. So I put a little studio together; I'd been moving around to different rooms at different places, but here I just rented a house so I could have way more elbow room and just dedicate that space to putting tunes together. So I did that and shared that stuff with the guys - just sent CDs out with two, three, four songs at a time, something like that.
McConnell & Hermann :: 03.24.05
By J. Jones |
Sometimes I feel like fans read too much into what's going on. Sometimes a song is just a song; it's not necessarily a grand statement from the band. But when y'all came back to the Fox, those shows were obviously a pretty big event, so how did you guys go about picking openers, closers, and what to put in the middle of "Driving?" Was there a lot of thought put into that, or was it just sitting down and picking them?
No there was a real simple discussion we had that was like, "Let's bring back some old tunes that we haven't played in a while." Because at one point, George was just socked full of information, and it was like, there will be tunes that we'll get back to, but right now, you know, poor boy is bleeding notes. And let's work the new stuff into the material.
For a lot of people outside the Fox after the show, it was like, "Oh my god, I can't believe they opened with 'Holden [Oversoul].'" So was that a preconceived thing? Had that been in your mind at all, because you obviously hadn't played it yet with George, and it's a classic Panic song and that seems to be a statement of some sort.
Well it's just like, the first song, make it something! And because some of the new tunes are such new babies, and there's no recognition, you know, people would still be going, "What is this?" It would be like the German audience, [In his best older German accent] "Umm yaaa, interesting... I like it, but I do not move." [Laughter] So that one had familiarity, but nobody had heard it in two years or something.
Kinda giving you a little bit of both there.
And it's open-ended, so all of a sudden we'd be back just jammin'. "Hey, where are ya?" "I'm over in A-minor, where are you?" "A-minor." "Amen brother."
|
