In 2009, drummer Gabe Ford found himself in a rare set of circumstances: a career-defining move that was part of an impossibly difficult situation. He’d spent three years as the drum tech for Little Feat, and in August of that year began filling in at live shows for Little Feat’s legendary drummer, Richie Hayward, who left the road to battle liver cancer.

Ford, like his bandmates, saw the job as temporary: of course Richie would come back. But it was a battle Hayward lost. While awaiting a liver transplant, Hayward succumbed to complications from lung disease on Aug. 12, 2010, at age 64.

It wasn’t long after, in the midst of a painfully emotional transition, that the remaining members of Little Feat — who know a thing or two about returning from a tragedy — gave Ford the permanent drum chair, completing a move into what might be called the fourth major era of the beloved 43-year-old band.

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Billy Martin has enough in the hopper — enough friends, enough musical inclinations, enough artistic hobbies — that he’s not exactly starving for collaborators. Think of all the one-offs, duos, trios, big bands, labels, betaking and visual arts projects, and you’re still not even mentioning the iconic fusion trio he’s co-anchored with John Medeski and Chris Wood — now into its third decade.

But Martin craves freshness above all, he says, and it’s a new co-conspirator who’s captured most of Martin’s time and creative attention in the past year. That’s Wil Blades, a wicked young organist and keyboard improviser with whom Martin discovered deep musical chemistry in barely a year playing together.

Blades, 33, is a Chicago native but has been rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he gigs regularly with several combos, for most of his professional life. He was originally a drummer, but while studying jazz at New College of California, he took up the Hammond B-3 organ around age 19, and became a regular at San Francisco’s beloved Boom Boom Room, earning the attention of veteran players like Oscar Myers and Dr. Lonnie Smith, who’s mentored and taught Blades for some time now.

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Yesterday, we posted the first part of our chat with keyboardist Rob Barraco, which focused on the past, present and future of the Phil Lesh Quintet. Today, we pick up where we left off as Barraco tells Chad Berndtson how he became a member of Dark Star Orchestra, why DSO is starting to play shows from the late ’60s, what will become of Dragonflys an more.

[Photo by Adam Kaufman]

Hidden Track: Switching gears, Rob, to Dark Star Orchestra, it’s been about seven years you’ve been playing with them now, correct?

Rob Barraco: I started playing with them in 2005, basically as a favor to them after Scott [Larned] had passed away and they needed to finish a tour. I just kind of really enjoyed it — I really, really enjoyed myself — and I asked them if we could do it again, never thinking I would become a permanent member of the band. They didn’t seem to have a plan in place, and I was going out to tour again with Phil.

At the end of 2006, Phil told me he had prostate cancer and had decided to get off the road, and when he told me that, I had to have this sit-down and say, what am I going to do now — what do I want to do now. I’m not a rich man. I’ve got kids in college and a mortgage to pay. In early 2007, they approached me, and asked if I’d be willing to make a commitment. They offered me an equal share of the business. It was a no-brainer: I enjoyed doing this, I liked these guys, and there was a financial commitment.

And as soon as I make that commitment, who calls? Phil! He was asking me about more shows in 2007. I basically had to say no, and it killed me at that time to say no to him. Those guys in [Phil's camp] are always forward thinking so as soon as I said no, they had moved on. That band [the 2007/2008 Jackie Greene/Larry Campbell lineup], I really haven’t listened to it and don’t know much about it because when I got involved with DSO at a commitment, I got really immersed in doing that.

HT: Take me back to when they first called you after Scott’s death. I asked Rob Koritz about that and he mentioned they’d had you in mind, but they weren’t even sure how to get the ball rolling. How did you and DSO come together?

• HT Interview: Rob Barraco Pt. 1 – Return and Future of The “Q”

RB: Well, I don’t think they didn’t know how to contact me. Cotter Michaels, their front-of-house sound engineer — he wasn’t with them at that time but had done stuff for them years earlier — knew me, I knew him well. He made the connection. I remember, it was a Sunday afternoon. I was hoisting a couch up over a railing at my girlfriend’s house. My cell phone rings, and it’s a Massachusetts number, and I’m thinking, who the hell is calling me from Massachusetts?

I answered the phone, and it was Norman [Gopin] — their manager at the time, and still a good friend of the band’s — and he said, we’ve got a month’s tour coming up, and if we don’t do this tour, financially, we’re going to be in deep shit. He says, you’re the only guy we can think of who could come in here and do this without rehearsing with the band. I looked at my schedule, and that month just happen to fit in between the Phil stuff I was doing and the stuff I was doing with my band the Dragonflys at that time. That’s how it happened.

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HT’s Chad Berndtson recently chatted with keyboardist Rob Barraco about last week’s Phil Lesh Quintet (The “Q”) performances as well as his main band – Dark Star Orchestra. We’ll be presenting Chad’s interview with Rob in two parts. Today’s post will focus on the past, present and future of The “Q,” while tomorrow will cover the same ground in regards to Dark Star Orchestra.

To answer a burning question right off the top: Yes, there appear to be more Phil Lesh Quintet reunion shows in the works.

So says Rob Barraco, who as a core member of what is arguably the greatest of the post-Garcia Dead bands, is in a good position to know. And for many, that’s a cause for celebration – including for Barraco, who agrees that the Q was a special band with the type of musical chemistry rarely found, even among consummate pros.

[Photo by Jeremy Gordon]

After a nine-year absence, the band revisited that chemistry in late April, with four barn-burning shows at Phil Lesh’s Terrapin Crossroads in San Rafael. As reunions go, the nights were relatively rust-free – and based on the initial reception, it’s hard to imagine a fuller-blown Q return isn’t in the works in some form.

Hidden Track: Are there going to be more Phil Lesh Quintet performances?

Rob Barraco: Oh yeah. No doubt about it. It’s going to happen.

It was Barraco’s participation in the Q, and also the Dead and several other pre- and post-Q Phil Lesh bands, that helped broaden his reputation. What a resume: a decade-plus tenure in the beloved Zen Tricksters, a range of sit-ins, collaborations and ongoing work on solo material, including the short-lived Dragonflys band, and, most importantly, his role in the ever-more-potent Dark Star Orchestra, which Barraco helped rescue from a near-collapse in 2005 and to which he’s remained committed, seven years on.

Hidden Track caught up with the effusively passionate Barraco, to hear all about the Q, DSO and being a road warrior.

HIDDEN TRACK: I want to get into a lot of the stuff you’ve been doing with Dark Star Orchestra but I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about the Phil Lesh Quintet reunion from last weekend. How were those shows?

ROB BARRACO: It was pretty magical, man. After nine years, it was like we didn’t miss a beat, not only musically, but just as friends, too. I hadn’t seen Jimmy, in particular, in a while, and as soon as I saw him, it was like yesterday. We all just got right back into character and it was really wonderful. One of the days, it was great, because it was my birthday and Warren and Jimmy took me out for lunch and that just turned into a laugh fest. It was like old times.

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I’m a little late calling Steve Kimock for a planned interview, but he’s totally cool. All he needs is 10 seconds to fix a bowl of… “What is this?” he says. “Gorilla munch and Honey Nut O’s? This is a special mixture. Somebody here is four.”

“Somebody” would be Kimock’s youngest boy, Ryland Cazadero, and why shouldn’t Kimock be firing up tasty cereal treats around this otherwise nondescript Thursday lunchtime? What did you expect him to be doing?

“He’s an absolutely lovely little terror,” Kimock laughs, checking to make sure I’m asking about the youngest of his four sons: John Morgan, 22, Miles, 18, Skyler Joe, 8, and Ryland, 4.

Family played a big role in Kimock’s decision, in 2006 or so, to retire the much-beloved Steve Kimock Band, a hard-touring unit that still represents the fullest expression of Kimock’s guitar wizardry. But then, Kimock, 56, is never too far from a stage, having toured since that time with the Rhythm Devils, filled in for RatDog during Mark Karan’s recovery, reunited with his old band Zero, got good n’dirty with Melvin Seals in Steve Kimock Crazy Engine, and had numerous one-offs, guest appearances, sit-ins and quick-hit projects and tours with a seemingly endlessly variable cast of friends and co-conspirators.

But what makes the current Steve Kimock spring schedule particularly interesting is that it’s Kimock’s first stab at a full-scale band tour in at least three years. Starting Wednesday (May 9), Kimock will canvas the Northeast, Midatlantic, Midwest and Southeastern U.S., kicking off in Bethlehem, Penn. and visiting such celebrated rooms as Brooklyn Bowl (May 11), Chicago’s Bottom Lounge (May 19), Nashville’s Exit/In (May 22) and Washington DC’s Howard Theatre (June 4) before his next break.

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The Motet does so well in its home-court markets of Colorado and parts of the West Coast that getting the whole, swollen, funk- and jazz-tastic lineup out East usually requires a special occasion.

In this case, that occasion is the resounding success of Funk Is Dead, a funkify-the-Grateful-Dead concept that The Motet intended as a one-off — one of its annual Halloween interpretations, to be exact — but has taken on a life of its own thanks to fan interest.

It’s been the catalyst for finally bringing the band back to East Coast markets it rarely plays. The band has sold out every Funk Is Dead show so far, says drummer Dave Watts, and will finally bring the production to a short run of four East Coast shows – Philly, D.C., Baltimore and NYC – at the end of April.

A production, it is. The Motet’s membership has always been somewhat elastic in the 15-plus years Watts has been running it, and on top of the core – Watts on drums, Garrett Sayers on bass, Joey Porter on keys, Dan Schwindt on guitar and Ryan Jalbert on guitar – the Funk Is Dead shows also showcase Gabe Mervine on trumpet and Matt Pitts on tenor sax, and three vocalists: Kim Dawson, Jans Ingber and Paul Creighton.

Hidden Track caught up with Watts – a Boston-to-Colorado transplant who now lives north of Boulder in Lyons, Colo. — to hear about the Motet’s latest adventures, in Dead-land and beyond. (Of particular note for New York-based fans is that at following the NYC Funk Is Dead show, April 29 at the Highline Ballroom, least three members of the Motet will be also joining the last night of the Kung Fu residency at Brooklyn Bowl on Monday, April 30 – Watts and Porter with side project Juno What?! and Sayers as an announced special guest.)

HIDDEN TRACK: How did the Funk is Dead concept come about for you guys?

DAVE WATTS: Well we do this every year – cover music for Halloween – and typically it’s funk music from the ’70s and ’80s: Tower of Power, Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire, we did Michael Jackson one time. One of our favorite ones we ever did, though was Talking Heads. With that, the audience knows every song and gets excited and sings the material, and that’s exciting for us because the energy level jumps a couple of notches. With Earth Wind & Fire and Tower of Power it’s great but it’s a handful of stuff that we love and no one really knows, so we were looking to see what group would be ubiquitous, with the audience recognizing all the material. The Grateful Dead seemed to be part of that.

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Saxophonist Bill Evans came up in the jazz world, but he’s a jazz musician like his friend Bela Fleck is a jazz musician: deeply virtuosic, but hardly tethered to doctrine or idiom or genre, and definitely willing to push the envelope on music that’s endlessly variable and warrants well-thought-out, but not overly cerebral, exploration.

Soulgrass, Evans’ seven-year-old bluegrass-jazz summit, is the ideal forum for something like this. The jazz-meets-bluegrass-with-plenty-of-stopovers concept isn’t new — the Flecktones are its best-known modern purveyor — but Evans’ effusiveness and his skill in picking co-conspirators make his version sound particularly adventurous. And yet, it also goes down pretty smooth without being neat and tidy; Evans himself is so exciting a player that even his freest stuff feels accessible.

The sardine-tight Blue Note, where Evans set up a week’s worth of Soulgrass gigs in mid-April, became a staging for material for his superb new album, Dragonfly. Joining him was an all-star cast: the great, understated Mitch Stein on guitar, a how-is-he-still-unknown banjoist, Ryan Cavanaugh, Josh Dion, a protean drummer but also a sublime singer — his pipes falling somewhere between Southern rock, gospel and buttery R&B — and Etienne Mbappe, a Cameroon-bred bass player and a wicked stylist on the low end, with an all-pro approach, but also a mischievous streak not unlike, say, Oteil Bubridge’s. (Evans, who’s sat in with the Allman Brothers on several occasions over the last two years, must dig that mischief.)

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There are ties that bind in Southern music circles, and then there is Col. Bruce Hampton, who seems to have had a hand in just about every great regional collaboration — and an influence that reaches far into what emerged from the HORDE-era jam scene and well beyond — since the original Aquarium Rescue Unit sparked to life in the mid-1980s. His legacy, of course, goes back decades earlier.

No surprise, then, that Hampton played a key role in the creation of Flannel Church, a new band that features Duane Trucks on drums, Kevin Scott on bass, Gregory “Wolf” Hodges on guitar and vocals and A.J. Ghent on pedal steel.

Duane, younger brother of Derek and nephew of Butch, and Scott have played with the Colonel for several years now in the Pharaoh Gummit, and New Orleans guitarist Hodges is veteran of many bands, including the Colonel-associated Codetalkers and also Blueground Undergrass. Ghent, son of sacred steel legend Aubrey Ghent, is the latest addition.

The band made its official debut in Jacksonville just after Christmas in 2010, on Duane’s 23rd birthday, and has since played sporadic gigs with Lee Boys steel ace Roosevelt Collier and guitarist Shane Pruitt. It’s the Ghent lineup that will make its first appearance in the Northeast this week, however, playing an after-Allmans show at New York’s Iridium on Friday, March 9, and an opening slot for Bobby Keys and the Sufferin’ Bastards at the Highline Ballroom on Sunday, March 11.

This is a funky, gospely, greasy, soul-nourishing unit that draws a little bit from all of its various members’ musical pedigrees. Based on their early buzz, you’re advised not to miss out, as Duane told us in a recent conversation.

HIDDEN TRACK: So tell me about how Flannel Church came together.

DUANE TRUCKS: Well, with most bands in this region, it seems like Col. Bruce is kind of the glue that pulls us all together, so you might as well just add us to that list — he was really the reason, man. About two years ago, we did a [Pharaoh Gummit] gig in New Orleans for JazzFest at the Howlin’ Wolf, and Wolf sat in on that. Wolf and I had known each other — I’ve known Bruce since I was four years old, and I’d always see all of his different bands when I was growing up so I’d first met Wolf when I was 13 or 14 and in middle school. He’d called me and Kevin up and said hey man, I’ve got some thing I want to try, so we did that, we jammed, and right off the bat, we were like, oh shit, there’s something happening here. So we said let’s take our time, and let’s make that something happen.

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With the Allman Brothers Band 2012 Beacon Run set to kick off on Friday, we wanted to re-publish Chad Berndtson’s thought-provoking preview about what he’d like to see from the legendary band.

Dear Allman Brothers Band,

You’re old, and you’re aging well. I continue to shell out for the Beacon because your surprises and your sense of adventure can still blow past even a seen-it-all concertgoer’s most optimistic hopes — when you feel like it.

Some of the Beacon and United Palace shows I saw between 2001 and 2011 are in my Top 30 all-time nights out. Others, I feel like I overpaid — really overpaid in some cases. So here’s to keeping things interesting and renewing ABB Nation’s faith that your March shows are the one of the most reliable investments in live music — with a few gentle suggestions from a longtime and wholly devoted fan fully prepared to get ripped apart by other Nation members disagreeing with all ten.

If you’re expecting another “Ask Dickey to sit-in” request, that’s not what we’re about here. Assume that we love you already, that we will practice tough love based on how much money you charge for these shows and how good we know you really can be, and that we’re always up for some new flavors of fun.

1. Play another new original — even if it’s a sketch.

There’s been a whole lot of “definitely, maybe” talk about a new Allman Brothers Band album for years now, and we have seen snatches of new material here and there, though apart from Bag End, the vast majority of your first time plays are either new covers or songs familiar to side projects like the Warren Haynes Band or Tedeschi Trucks Band. I find it hard to believe that the current Allmans lineup doesn’t have at least something else kicking around, even in rough sketch form. What better place to workshop it than in front of ravenous Beacon fans that would know immediately — and appreciate immediately — that it’s a new original?

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Those of us who live in the New York area are lucky for many reasons, musical and non, and one is our proximity to the great Jenny Scheinman, who over the past decade and a half has become one of the most exciting nonpareils in both jazz and roots, seemingly just as comfortable in a storm of heady improv as she is playing country songs with some of that genre’s best. Violin’s her instrument, and she can also sing, but the easy description of Scheinman – and all of the styles of music she inhabits so impressively — pretty much ends there.

[Photo by Michael Wilson]

She’s a Brooklyn dweller, so it’s possible to see Scheinman many times in the five boroughs during the year and in a galaxy of different contexts, from her semi-regular gigs at Barbes in Park Slope, or at least once a year for an extended stretch at the Village Vanguard, or with Bill Frisell, Myra Melford, Robbie Fulks and a who’s who of other collaborators. One week she’ll be on the road with Bruce Cockburn or Rodney Crowell, and the next getting into it with Jason Moran. Or John Zorn. Or Norah Jones. You never know.

One of the most interesting projects Scheinman’s ever been a part of is Mischief & Mayhem, an adventurous quartet that positions her with bassist Todd Sickafoose, drummer Jim Black, and guitar wizard Nels Cline, best known — though certainly not only known — for his sideman role in Wilco.

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The Civil Wars @ Paramount Theatre – January 19

“Delicate” can be a dirty word; a few shades in the wrong direction and your sound is too quaint, or too cutesy, or too precious, or too twee, or so ethereal as to be vapor. So you have to hand it to Joy Williams and John Paul White, the singing, strumming duo that comprise The Civil Wars. They lean delicate and almost effortlessly find that sweet spot where gentle meets rich, holding steady in that spot with a combination of slightly mischievous personality, rock-solid chemistry, sturdy songwriting and that most reliable of musician crowd-slayers: the unimpeachably beautiful male-female vocal harmony.

I mean, wow. You hear these two flex their voices over song after song of longing – sometimes defiant, sometimes pensive, sometimes tragic – and your mind melts away into their narratives, hooked to every vocal cadence and gently nudged by the strum of White’s guitar or, on occasion, the twinkle of Williams’ keyboard.

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We throw around the “h” word in this scene like doomsayers for bands — and sometimes we’re right. But Gov’t Mule has had a most fruitful hiatus in 2011: a year to let the mighty Mule beast rest and exhale a bit after so many years of intense touring, and also a year to let each of Mule’s four members jump into a new project or two with both feet and have no one else feel the least bit upset about it.

While Warren Haynes has kept his namesake soul and R&B band on the road and Danny Louis has dabbled in a number of projects while touring with Stockholm Syndrome, Matt Abts and Jorgen Carlsson — the Mule’s meaty, multi-talented rhythm section — made 2011 about Planet of the Abts, a project that combines the two with guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Torbjorn “T-Bone” Andersson and yielded an album of the same name.

It’s an absorbing experience, this Planet of the Abts: a little bit loosely defined at times, but tighter and far more involved than what a band this new usually yields, and sonically, something that lands not far from Jimi Hendrix Experience territory, with tangents for spacey rock ‘n’ roll, jazz-nebula freak-outs and greased-up, rumbling blues, and also, sometimes when you don’t expect it, straighter-laced rock and pop.

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I asked Kevin Russell, vocalist and lead guitarist for the Gourds, to describe the band’s new album, Old Mad Joy, as if addressing both someone who had never heard the Austin rockers before and someone who’s been in on the Gourds for years. Musicians are usually pretty bad with — and notoriously irritated by — requests to do such a thing, but I have to hand it to Russell: a few quick turns of phrase that nail what makes the Gourds such a terrific listen.

“Great mix of rock n roll and ballads expertly played by a seasoned Austin band whilst in a barn in Woodstock, NY, at the end of a long, cold, lonely winter,” said Russell, apparently without breaking a sweat.

And for the Gourds aficionados?
“Post-ironic, subversive classic rock.”

Bam.

Call them what you want — alt-country and folk-rock are two more commonly associated tags — but the point is the Gourds have been at this for a good long while, and been underappreciated almost as long, downplayed amid higher-profile, similar-sounding acts that have their own strengths, but execute rarely with as much aplomb. It’s hard to believe the band’s been on the job since 1994, harder to believe that Russell, bassist/vocalist Jimmy Smith, keyboardist Claude Bernard, drummer Keith Langford and multi-instrujmentalist Max Johnston have been a solidified lineup since more or less 1998, and maybe hardest to believe, in this humble scribe’s opinion, that they’re still best known for a twangy re-imagining of Snoop Dogg’s Gin ‘n’ Juice — a still-called-for staple of Napster-era college dorm coolness, and for years credited to everyone from Blues Traveler to Ween thanks to over-circulated, badly-researched mp3s.

Asked if the Gourds are bothered that the Gin n Juice cover is still what most listeners associate with the band, Russell instead isolates what the problem is: the charm of a cover like that, by a band like this, is of a different era. He’s right; everyone and his brother does Kanye and Cee Lo covers these days, and shit, even String Cheese Incident has covered Nelly.

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The economy? Well, it’s waiting for its segue: an interminably dragging jam that’s lacked fire or much in the way of invention for a while now.

The jamband festival scene? Plenty saturated, especially here in the soggy Northeast. Dave Marzollo would be the first to admit that because of those reasons – and plenty of others — it just isn’t as easy to get people out anymore, let alone for more than a night.

So it’s that much more remarkable that the festival Marzollo co-founded, Catskill Chill, not only survived its first year intact but is expecting nearly triple the number of attendees in its second installment – 1,200 a year ago, and more than 3,000 this year – and can also boast nearly 100 percent returning vendors and nearly 100 percent returning staff.

In year two, it’s already grown from well-regarded curiosity to admirably buzzed-about weekend: a newer entrant to the mid-range weight class of jam-friendly festivals that’s going to more than hold its own in a year of festival fatigue in the Northeast and plenty – Langerado, anyone? – of industry uncertainty.

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Old 97′s @ Lincoln Hall, July 19

It’s unfair, when you think about it, but I’m also kind of glad the Old 97′s aren’t as beloved as many of their musical peers. Then, they’d be your band, in addition to my band.

We all have “my” bands. The band you hold tight and celebrate for your depth of knowledge and their consistently winning live experience. The band for which you’re more of an apologist than you should be when they don’t deliver. The band you spend a hell of a lot of time evangelizing and dragging less enthused pals to see in concert just because then they might finally get it.

Most “my” bands seem to have certain characteristics: a critical darling, perhaps, languishing in that concert space between rock clubs and theaters, too big for the former and not quite ever ready for the latter. You spend less time worried about whether they’ll ever make it over that hump, however, and just enjoy that they are. Rare do “my bands” ever seem to get there, anyway, unless, of course — like the band most often discussed on Hidden Track — they ascended on grassroots popularity and the wondrously shared experience of a whole lot of people who saw a true “my band” in formative years in Vermont.

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