Tom Hamilton Talks Babies, Kids & Being Almost Dead

Words by: Ryan Dembinsky

Most years, Warren Haynes wins the easy nod for the award for the hypothetical “hardest working musician” in the jam band scene, but this year it’d be hard to argue against Tom Hamilton. The guitarist has been pulling active duty for Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, Billy & The Kids, American Babies and Electron. Recently, American Babies released a new LP, An Epic Battle Between Light And Dark, which touches on heavy themes of mental illness on top of perceptually charged musical compositions.

Despite the recent success and prolific creative output, this album marks a turning point in Hamilton’s openness about struggling with depression throughout his adult life. The album was inspired in part by personal experiences and conversations about mental illness, as well as one particular public figure’s struggle with depression.

I caught up with Tom in the midst of an American Babies rehearsal for a profound chat about the challenges of mental health, the opiate epidemic in the jam band scene and insights into the creative process for American Babies, JRAD, and Billy & the Kids.

JamBase: Let’s start with the recent American Babies album. I read that this project was inspired in part by the loss of Robin Williams, so we were curious to hear about your connection to him and why that had such a profound impact on you?

Tom Hamilton: Well, I had a pretty shit run of relationships. At the time, I had recently – actually I believe there is now a term for it called “ghosted” – I had recently been ghosted, which is when you come home one day and your live-in girlfriend is just gone. All of her stuff was missing and there was nothing. She was just gone – disappeared off the face of the earth. So this was a pretty traumatic situation as you could imagine. She suffered from severe depression which manifested itself into this crippling eating disorder. While we were together, I put her in the hospital and nursed her back to health. It was a really intense situation there, but of course once she was better she split.

Dealing with mental illness in that form was a heavy fucking thing and I have been struggling with depression my entire adult life and seeing it manifest in this way was really intense. It fucked me up, man. So, that seed is already in there, that mental illness thing. Then me and my partner Pete Tramo, who I own a studio with and we write together a bunch, were hanging out a lot talking as two grown men dealing with depression about those days and weeks of not leaving your fucking house where you’re trying to see how many episodes of Law & Order you can watch in a row. It’s hard. It’s not really something you want to talk too much about. Not that there is a stigma, but there is a pride thing there and it is mildly embarrassing.

So it wasn’t something where we were ready to write an album about mental illness and about depression, but then Robin Williams killed himself. Now, I have loved Robin Williams since I was 4-years-old watching the Popeye movie. He’s been somebody who was always in my life. In hindsight, my parents were huge fans and I remember them watching the Comic Relief events with Billy Crystal. He was the Miles Davis of fucking comedy. Nobody could improvise like Robin Williams. He did for comedy what we do for music. He was the jam band. He was the Grateful Dead of comedy and I looked up for him. To be that funny and also that dramatic and still do things like Awakenings and What Dreams May Come, that is an amazing actor.

And then he fucking killed himself. That really brought it to the forefront for us. It was like, if Robin fucking Williams can’t get finish the back nine, what chance do any of us have? It felt like a sign for a lack of a better way to put it, so I dove into my own struggles with depression and the daily, “Is today the day I’m going to wear sweatpants all day or is today the day I’m going to be a functioning member of society?” I think it made it feel OK for me to talk about it.

JB: Which songs would you point to that really highlight the connection there?

TH: The second song on the record is called “Oh Darling, My Darling” which is a play off of [Williams’] Dead Poet’s Society role. That was the initial connection and those were the first lyrics I wrote. Robin died and that was me talking to him, instead of him reciting the poem. That song particularly is heavy handedly about depression and how I personally deal with it when I feel like the dark cloud coming over or a panic attack coming on. A lot of times I don’t have the option to let it win because I’m on the road. I have concerts to play. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Boise, Idaho and you have a concert to play. For me, a lot times when I feel that coming on, it’s saying, “All right dude, let’s tape up the windows, the storm is coming. Just let it pass and live to fight another day.”

JB: Focusing on the music a bit, one thing that I thought that was cool which doesn’t happen very often is having listened to the album and then subsequently read your press materials, practically every overt reference I heard is mentioned. Were the influences like Bowie, David Gilmour on the song you just mentioned, “Oh Darling, My Darling,” and even The War On Drugs. Is that your approach, did you try to emulate some of those sounds?

TH: [laughs] I went full on Gilmour on that solo on “Oh Darling, My Darling,” didn’t I? That was actually all the end result though. It was not the intention. If you take that guitar solo out, it doesn’t really sound like Pink Floyd at all. I think there are actually 47 or 48 guitars at the end of that thing playing all that filthy sludgy guitar work. We were trying to paint the grayest day we could paint. Then we were trying to figure out what to put over it, and I thought what if we turn off all the pedals instead of just adding another overdriven guitar, play it clean? So we tried a clean solo and it became the only thing that made sense to go over it. Since we had this very English gray day, what better to put over it than David Gilmour’s guitar?

The Bowie thing was a complete accident. It really only sounds like Bowie because of the effect that is on the vocals, which was a mistake. I went to double track a verse and one of the files got moved accidentally by the engineer and it added that effect and made it sound awesome. It sounded like Bowie, so we decided to leave it. I actually went into this record with no preconceived notions though.

JB: One more on the American Babies. You guys have a mantra of not trying to be one particular thing, but rather being open to going where the creative itch lies. What is the itch at the moment? Is the new album material the present?

TH: I finished writing that record pretty much exactly one year ago. That was when we said, “OK, we’re done writing.” Then it took the rest of 2015 to finish the record. I also flipped the band during that time, so it took the rest of the year to get the new band up to speed on the new material and the back catalog of Babies and Brothers Past songs that we want to play. This is the first time American Babies really feels like a band rather than me dragging around three other dipshits. This is now five people that are really invested in what is going on. When we are improvising, we are improvising as a band more like how it used to be with Brothers Past. It is not about one individual, it’s about the ensemble as a whole rather than just soloing. It’s less New Orleans and more classical, like let’s write a Radiohead song on the spot. It’s not just blues riffs, it’s trying for something orchestrated and magical. I’m looking forward to touring behind this for the rest of the year. Now it’s time to flex our muscles and get some swagger going.

JB: Moving on to the two Dead projects: how would you compare playing in Billy’s band [drummer Bill Kreutzmann’s Billy & The Kids] versus JRAD in terms of both personality differences and musical differences?

TH: Believe it or not, that’s the first time anybody has ever asked me this question. Thing number one, my role is different. In JRAD, it’s Joe. It’s Joe’s band, he’s calling the shots, and it is what it is. I am a sideman in that band. So there is a lot less pressure with that band. Whereas with Bill, it’s awesome and it’s flattering, but it’s also a little awkward to say – with all due respect to other guys in the band – I’m basically the musical director in Bill’s band. It’s a little more of an alpha thing there, which is a weird place to be because he talks to about it says things like, “You know, Garcia would always do this,” as far as the leader type roles like clicking off tempos and pulling the jam where it needs to go. That is a weird thing for me. Dude, I’m not Garcia. Role-wise, that is the main difference between the two bands. I have a little more say in what is going on with Bill, but again, that is certainly not saying anything against Reed or Aaron, it’s just that Bill comes to me for that role. It’s just how it always was for him, to go to Jerry, so that what he’s used to.

Musically, it’s kind of the same thing. It’s do whatever the fuck you want, especially in the whole JRAD thing. We respect what happened before, but we’re not Dark Star Orchestra or trying to recreate anything. We try to approach it like how would the Dead play their music today if they were our age? What would a 36-year-old Garcia be doing right now? More than likely, he’d be playing with a lot more piss and vinegar than the current actual alumni do. When they were our age, that was around 1977-78, they were on fire. Now of course there was plenty of cocaine involved, but there was so much swagger and energy behind what they were doing, and that’s what we try to do. Let’s go out there and fucking tear this shit apart and really have fun with it.

Playing with Bill, his thing is the same thing. He doesn’t give a fuck about what he did in 1970 or 1987. It doesn’t matter. He’s like, “Let’s go out there and just go!” All of those guys, I give them the most credit in the world. They are all advanced in their age and in the twilight of their careers and not one of them have ever said, “Hey, reel it in.” They all say the same thing, which is, “Let’s go for it.” That’s fucking awesome, man. You have a 75-year-old Phil Lesh out there pushing us more than we’re pushing him and telling us to go for it. That’s how it is with Bill too. He’s stoked on never holding back, ever. When you listen to the bands, the tonal palette sounds different, but the mentality is the same. Obviously, [Aaron] Magner is has synths and Marco [Benevento] doesn’t, Reed [Mathis] is completely different bassist than Dave Dreiwitz and of course Billy is a much different drummer than Joe, so the colors are different and the painting is different, but the way we do it is very similar.

JB: Who makes the setlists for the two bands? Is it Joe and Bill, or does everybody chip in?

TH: Joe does the setlists for JRAD. For Bill, it’s usually me and Magner. We come up with a song list and at this point Bill trusts us. At first, we would come up with song lists and we would have to get approval from Bill, but at this point we’re all pretty tight and he trusts we know what we’re doing. So we come up with an overall list and then I’ll put together the sets. The last run we did, we came up with about 30 songs for the three shows.

JB: How many songs do you guys have in JRAD at this point?

TH: Oh man, it has to be well into the 100s – maybe a buck 20 or a buck 25. I’m trying to think of the most nights we did in a row. I think we just did five nights with no repeats. That’s a lot of fucking music.

JB: Going forward, what’s the balance with JRAD, the Babies, and Billy & The Kids? Obviously Bill has Dead & Company, so that one is probably less of a commitment for the time being.

TH: Last year, JRAD did 43 shows, which is way more than any of us thought we would ever do. For JRAD, we’ll probably do 30 shows a year going forward. We all have other things we want to be doing with our creative energy, so that affords it. The beauty of JRAD is it is helping us all in our personal experiences. The Babies are definitely doing much better in the live shows. Marco and I talk about it all the time, his numbers keep going up. A lot of it is coming from bringing our voices to a different group of people and people keep whispering it down the lane.

Also, you look at a guy like Marco who’s out touring with us and he’s out with his trio a lot, but he also has a family at home with a wife and two kids. Joe is married and he is going to have a baby any day now, so that time needs to be made as well, so JRAD can only be so much. The rest of the year is going to be American Babies, which is exciting for me. There was such a long time where American Babies was second fiddle to Brothers Past and I had to compartmentalize my interests, because there were certain things I couldn’t do. The BP guys didn’t want me to play anything remotely similar to the style of Brothers Past and shit like that. If you listen to the new album, that sounds more like Brothers Past than it does the first American Babies album. For example, if you listen to “Fever Dreams,” it sounds like Ryan Adams and Broken Social Scene made a song together and “Synth Driver” sounds like Garcia and Stereolab made a song. Having all these things come together is what I always wanted to do. If I want to play a Dead tune or a Brothers Past tune, I can do it now.

JB: One last question, hopefully your band mates won’t kill us [laughs]. This is more to bullshit in general about music. Given this crazy year we’re off to with Prince and Bowie dying, a surprise Radiohead album, Axl Rose fronting AC/DC, and who knows what else is coming, what’s got your attention these days?

TH: The Bowie thing was pretty devastating, not to take anything away from Prince. I love Prince, but they are two different things. The thing that hits me the most about Bowie is that I am scared to death of dying. My mortality is something that I have been struggling with for the better part of my 30s in a real way. This is something that keeps me up at night.

I spent my 20s worrying about stupid shit, the stuff that doesn’t matter, but then I hit thirty and realized none of that stuff matters. The stuff like, “Who am I?” and, “Where is my place in the world?” Fuck off, let it go and just be. [laughs] Stop giving a shit what people think of you. So, I was able to let go off all this baggage and it felt like a dump truck was on my chest and it just left. But then, in that void of that worry, came the worry of, “Oh shit, I’m going to die someday.” I love being alive. I’m not the guy going to Wal-Mart in my sweatpants who is going to die of diabetes. I’m out there, and I get to see things, play music and meet people. The idea of not having that scares the shit out of me.

When Bowie died, he did it with so much grace. To be able to do it like that, he was OK with it at the end and he was able to say goodbye. That Blackstar record is a beautiful album and he is saying, this is the end of the line. That is a very special thing that I was able to recognize what was happening. John Lennon died in 1980 when I was 1, so I didn’t get to experience the cultural significance of it. It was really a beautiful thing to witness.

Then you have Prince. Man, how many more fucking people are going to have to go before somebody starts fucking talking about it? I mean, in this fucking scene, it is embarrassing how many fans go because of pills. It’s fucking embarrassing, and no one says anything. I’m not sitting there saying I’m better than anyone else, but when I find out that any of my fans are really struggling with drug addiction, I find them and talk to them. My batting average isn’t that high and a lot of them didn’t listen and they are dead now, but there are a couple instances where I can say thank goodness they cleaned it up and they are on the other side. That is what we should be doing as artists.

These people want to talk to the artists. Instead of being like, “Yeah dude, get fucked up and come to the show,” say, “Hey man, I hear you’re fucking up. What’s going on? It’s not worth it.” Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done my share of drugs, but I’m sure if when I was in the thick of it, if Thom Yorke or Bruce Springsteen came over to talk to me, I would have listened a lot more than if my parents said something.

There is a responsibility there. It sucks to look on Facebook once a week and see, “Billy, sucks man. The lot is never going to be the same.”

Prince easily had 20 more years of making music and it’s all gone, for what? For fucking Percocet? Are you out of your fucking mind? A guy like Prince, you think it would be something crazy like his chute didn’t open, not fucking Percocet like the guy who lives down the street from me eating Percs and smoking Newports and hanging out asking me for money at the convenience store.

In terms of modern music, I still listen to that Bowie record a lot. There’s not a lot of other shit that’s got me hard. A lot of shit just sounds like a lot of other shit. In our scene, it’s kind of rough right now. A lot of the bands coming up kind of sound like this gray/tan non-descript weird thing. At the beginning, when JamBase and Jambands.com were coming up, everybody had their own thing. Sector 9 was the weird dudes with the crystals. The Biscuits were the guys- on-ecstasy-plays-classical-music-over-trance-beats. The New Deal was drum and bass. Nobody played drum and bass like Lake Trout. BP’s role was combining electronic and indie rock. Everybody had their own thing.

Now it’s kind of like, why is Dominos serving pasta? Just make pizza. I don’t need a fucking molten chocolate cake from Pizza Hut. I don’t want a fucking tuna panini from Dunkin Donuts. Make donuts fuck face. Just do what you’re good at. It would be like if Phish started playing house music. So, sadly I think the scene is having a bit of an identity crisis, but it’ll work itself out eventually.