Interview: Tea Leaf Green Reignites the Fire

HT: With Cochrane, you mentioned he’s part owner of the studio, does that mean you sort of got free reign so-to-speak?

JC: Well, it’s a working studio, so we still have to book time, but because they are the owners, it’s a nice laid back environment. We’d go in for a week here or a week there when we got home from the road. We really worked on it over a year. We feel really at home there. It doesn’t feel like a sterile place where you have these people you don’t know. Everybody was kind of hanging out around the studio, beyond just those two [Cochrane and Jeremy]. A bunch of characters are always kind of hanging out, so you get feedback. You know, you have mini-producers and people giving you ideas and advice. When the producers are also your friends, it makes a big difference.

HT: Given his relative newness to the band, Looking West, I’m guessing was probably the first album where Reed [Mathis] really got involved in contributing to the material. On this one, did he become more integral in the songwriting and collaborating in coming up with musical ideas?

JC: Well, we had recorded Raise the Tent with Reed, but he had only been in the band for about a week. So, at that point, he was just trying to do whatever he could. Since he joined the band, we have been trying to encourage him to be a part of it in whatever way he wants. Over the years, and really with playing live and going through the triumphs and hardships that come with it together, we’ve really become a band. That’s more than just playing together. You live together, you bond and you exist together.

So, then with Looking West, we handed the reigns to him to mix it and have fun and get everybody involved. For Radio Tragedy!, he’s definitely been a big part of the arrangements. A lot of the backing vocals are his ideas. He’s really adding a lot, and now we’re really like a true band. Nobody is shy anymore, everyone’s influence is standing out, and standing out equally.

[Eternal Jamnation Comic by Josh Clark]

HT: I always thought it was a cool thing that you guys have historically embraced being a jamband. We talk to a lot of bands, and not that many really want to identify themselves with being a true jamband anymore. It’s cool that you guys seem to embrace it more, because, I don’t know, jambands are awesome and it’s sort of bullshit. So, I guess the question is how do you feel about the state of jambands and being associated with the whole thing?

JC: I think the thing about it is that in the industry, if you’re a jamband, you’re dead in the water. You know, you’re not gonna go to the cool festivals, because they think you’re playing some sort of generic thing. In the industry, it’s this generic term that means you’re a band that’s not that good. That’s what is so annoying is we have a bad ass band that can stand shoulder to shoulder with any flavor of the month hipster shit. You can print that too.

It’s actually fucking angering. It really pisses me off that a lot of doors get closed, because people think of us as this white boy generic electronic band, and there is nothing like that happening here. We’re a rock band and, you know, we open up and explore and improvise, because we can all play, but in the end we’re a rock band. We always have been.

We came up in the scene though, which was very helpful. The people who go see jambands and like jambands are the best. They don’t care about “cool” or not, they just love good music, whatever music it is. But to have these doors shut in front of your face because of a label is really frustrating. I’m hoping that this record turns that around a little. All my friends are in jambands and even the cool bands are still jambands. My Morning Jacket jams, but somehow they were savvy enough that, even though they came up through the same channel, they aren’t labeled that way. It’s almost like a death label and it’s annoying that it suffocates great bands, because of this idea that it’s some dude in tie dye jumpsuit staring off into space noodling.

When we came up in the jamband scene, it was some of the most amazing, dynamic musicians I’d ever heard. It’s too bad it’s become this suffocating blanket term, because if you think back to ’97 or ’98, there was no Bonnaroo or cool hybrid festival, it was all jambands and it was thriving. Everything grew out of that, yet for some reason now, if you’re a jamband, you’re the kid picking your boogers and eating them on the playground.

HT: Did you guys grow up going to see the Dead and Phish?

JC: I didn’t get into the Grateful Dead until later, not until after Jerry died, but I went to see Phish all the time. That was the band that wasn’t being a bullshit mainstream band. That was a real rock band and they were awesome, because they were doing it on their own terms and succeeding hugely. It was like, “Fuck you everybody, we’re gonna play this kind of music and it’s gonna win.” That was the most attractive thing about them. The music is of course great, but the idea and the way they succeeded is the most I’ve taken from that band.

HT: Back to the album a little bit. I really really like the last track, Nothing Changes, and I was trying to decipher what you guys were talking about with the Radio Tragedy theme. It that a concept that comes out of the stuff we’re talking about?

JC: Yeah, it’s about us losing lots of things and making major sacrifices. Losing love and losing life opportunities in this pursuit. It’s like this radio pursuit. That’s the gold standard right, the number one hit? Then you are set, that’s the dream, but it doesn’t always hit, so it’s tragic.

We’ve been doing this for 13 years and I have like $300 bucks in my bank account. I work my ass off, you know, and of course we have great successes, and I’m not complaining, but it’s not easy. I’m going to be 40, and there is no plan B. It’s all or nothing.

HT: That’s interesting. Not to be too intrusive, but I would consider you guys a pretty hugely successful band. That’s crazy that it’s still financially so tight.

JC: Oh yeah, there’s huge overhead. Most bands acquire massive debt as they go. It’s funny because most people think, “Oh yeah, they’re all set,” but we’re not. We all live together. We’ve been struggling since day one. That’s Music Business 101, everyone else is making money [laughs].

HT: So, you guys have gone through some relatively major hurdles with Ben [Chambers] leaving and Scott’s [Rager] ankle injury. To what you just said, in terms of morale and being pumped up to keep going out and kicking ass every night, is everyone still on-board and gung ho about it?

JC: Yeah, it’s a fire now. We’re more pissed off now if anything, but that’s good. That’s what rock n’ roll should be. Honestly, I’ve never been more stoked about music or felt more confident about making music. In a lot of ways, if Ben didn’t leave and things didn’t change, I don’t know if we could have kept going. It’s been a hard road, but it’s opened up massive artistic growth. That’s the other thing I hope this record does, that the people who remember us from 2005 and say, “Oh, I know what they sound like,” realize that isn’t how we sound. We’re a different, and I think, a bigger, better band.