With the metaphorical distance between artists and their fans shrinking with every new digital innovation, we may one day look back on the growth of Kickstarter as one of the most significant yet polarizing catalysts in changing the traditional dynamic. For decades, in order to bring an artistic endeavor to fruition, moviemakers, painters, musicians, writers and their ilk have sought investors who share their desire and expectation that the resulting project finds an audience expansive enough to justify the expenditure. Out of that need rose the Hollywood studio system and the major music labels.

Kickstarter, an online fundraising application that allows artists to directly solicit their prospective audience, seems to bring the entire concept of art back to patronage system of yore, only instead of wealthy philanthropists funding the art’s creation, it’s the potential audience that now funds the art it wishes to enjoy. One way of looking at this paradigm shift is that movies and albums that might not get made may now come to be realized. Another view might be that under the guise of populism and grass roots activism, Kickstarter insidiously has fans paying on both ends of the creative process.

With Zach Braff, Amanda Palmer and Veronica Mars deservedly drawing criticism for their use of Kickstarter, it’s easy to forget that it can be a vital source of income for artists working outside the sphere of corporate sponsorship. In contrast to the typical “give me money” approach, Tea Leaf Green offered their loyal and devoted fan base quite the fair bargain in their Kickstarter campaign geared towards financing the proper recording and production of their latest studio album. Rather than expect the joy of giving to suffice, TLG crafted one of the most equitable Kickstarter campaigns to date by offering autographed copies of the album, tickets to future shows, personalized recordings, personal Skype concerts, musical lessons and the ability to collaborate on a setlist as an inducement for varying levels of contribution. For practically funding the album, Tea Leaf Green would come play at your home, provided you provide backline.

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Tea Leaf Green @ Bowery Ballroom – June 1

Review and Photos: Andrew Blackstein

On the first day of June; New York City was experiencing a break from the unusual late May heat. Supported by The Spring Standards, Tea Leaf Green captivated New York City at Bowery Ballroom on the first Manhattan stop after their most recent album release.

[All Photos by Andrew Blackstein]

In The Wake just might be the band’s strongest LP as a five-piece. Trevor Garrod (keys, vocals), Josh Clark (guitar, vocals), Scott Rager (drums), Reed Mathis (bass, vocals) and Cochrane McMillan (percussion) worked an entire year on this project without testing any of the new material on the road…until this tour. The Bowery Ballroom filled with eager fans buzzing about this newly created art. But before TLG was to hit the stage, The Spring Standards impressed with passionate lyrics and catchy folk tunes. James Cleare, Heather Robb and James Smith share the vocal and instrumental duties while they poured energy and soul into the hour-long opening slot. As Tea Leaf Green made their way down the backstage steps of the Bowery, many excited concert attendees took the opportunity to get a closer view of the action. The band would follow their previous night’s pattern by playing In The Wake from front to back without skipping a track to start the show.

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HT faves Tea Leaf Green are gearing up for the release of a long-in-the-making new album, In The Wake, due on May 14th. Today, the band gave us our first taste of In The Wake by debuting the LP’s lead single – Give Me One More Chance – on MSN. While TLG has never performed Give Me One More Chance live, it has been played by Trevor Garrod and his solo band. For the studio version of Give Me One More Chance, Tea Leaf Green is joined by vocalist Lesley Grant of London Street.

The Give Me One More Chance video finds the members of Tea Leaf Green and Grant walking around their home city of San Francisco. We dig the bouncy bassline, steel guitar licks, layers of what sounds like a Mellotron and catchy lyrics. Check it out for yourself and let us know what you think…

As previously reported, HT faves Tea Leaf Green will release the long-in-the-making new studio album In The Wake on May 14th. The San Francisco rockers will follow that up with an album release party in San Francisco on May 18th, where they plan to debut some of the material from In The Wake. Late in May TLG will hit the road for the first leg of the In The Wake Tour.

Josh, Trevor, Reed, Scott and Cochrane will start the run with a pair of festival appearances at Summer Camp and Bella Music Fest before beginning a string of headlining dates in the Northeast at Toad’s Place in New Haven, Conn. on May 30th. TLG will visit Boston, NYC, Teaneck and Washington, D.C. before bringing the leg to a close on June 8th at Philadelphia’s Blockley.

Here’s the dates for the first leg of the In The Wake Tour…

5/25 – Chillicothe, IL – Summer Camp Music Festival
5/26 – Geneva, MN – Bella Music Fest
5/30 – New Haven, CT – Toad’s Place
5/31 – Boston, MA – The Sinclair
6/01 – New York, NY – The Bowery Ballroom
6/05 – Teaneck, NJ – Mexicali Live
6/06 – Washington, DC – The Hamilton
6/08 – Philadelphia, PA – The Blockley

Next up for Tea Leaf Green is an April 6th show in Crystal Bay, Nevada.

Now that the lineup for this summer’s High Sierra Music Festival is out, troubadour Nathan Moore has prepped a look at last year’s festival. The basis for the 11-minute video is Surprise Me Mr. Davis’s performance of the super-catchy, ultra-rockin’ original Sissyfuss which features a surprise sit-in from Tea Leaf Green guitarist Josh Clark.

Surprise Me Mr. Davis is such an amazing band who if there was justice in this world would be way more popular. Sadly, the band’s High Sierra ’12 set was their last performance to date and they are not yet on this year’s lineup. Mixed in with the live footage of Sissyfuss are scenes from High Sierra including parades, shots of the Hippy Fiasco camp and much more. Take a look…

Last fall jam-rockers Tea Leaf Green successfully completed a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the recording of their latest studio album. The album, which features a batch of songs the San Francisco-based band has yet to perform live, is called In The Wake and will be released on May 14th.

The group will celebrate the release of In The Wake at The Independent in San Francisco on May 18th in which they will debut tunes from the LP in the first set. In The Wake was recorded at Oakland’s Coyote Hearing and features guest appearances by Dan Lebowitz (ALO), Leslie Helpert, the Jazz Mafia Horns and “many more.” Some of those guests will join the band for the show in San Francisco.

TLG also announced that they will play a pair of shows in Southern California on May 10th (The Roxy in Los Angeles) and May 11th (Belly Up in San Diego). At those shows the group will perform two of their previous albums in their entirety: Taught To Be Proud in L.A. and Living In Between in San Diego. Those attending the L.A. and San Diego shows will be able to buy In The Wake.

Matt Butler will pull musicians from Rubblebucket, Tea Leaf Green and moe. to make up the ensemble for the Everyone Orchestra’s return to the Northeast in April. Butler will lead bassist Reed Mathis, keyboardist Trevor Garrod, guitarist Al Schnier, drummer Vinnie Amico, saxophonist/vocalist Kalmia Traver and trumpeter Alex Toth for shows in Quincy, Mass. (April 18th at South Shore Music Hall), Philadelphia (April 19th at The Blockley) and New York City (April 20th at The Cutting Room).

Marco Benevento was already scheduled to play The Blockey on the 19th, so according to the venue he’ll perform with his trio and then join EO for a “super jam.” The Everyone Orchestra will reveal ticketing details and “more special guests” soon on their Facebook page.

While the organizers of Camp Barefoot, a mid-size festival that will take place at a campground in Bartow, West Virginia on Aug. 22 – 24, will announce its full initial lineup on February 12th, today they gave a taste of what attendees can expect by releasing the names of a handful of bands on the bill as well as three “Artists-At-Large” that will sit in with other acts throughout the weekend.

Tea Leaf Green, Zoogma, the Jennifer Hartswick Band, Break Science, Brothers Past, The Motet, Toubab Krewe, Consider The Source and American Babies are set to perform at Camp Barefoot along with That 1 Guy, James Justin and Co., Ras Puma with Antero Reggae Band, Mekong Express, Danger Muffin, Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band, DJ Williams Projekt, The Broadcast, Cris Jacobs Band, Tiny Boxes and Friends (featuring Hartswick, Nigel Hall, members of The Motet and Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band) and many more regional and local acts. Hartswick, Hall and Ras Puma will serve as Artists-At-Large. Tickets for the seventh installment of the fest are currently available for $105.

Earlier this month one of the many creative workshops that took place at the High Sierra Music Festival was a tribute to Levon Helm dubbed “The Ramble Gramble” in which bassist Steve Adams of ALO brought together a number of his musical friends to tackle classics from The Band’s live repertoire. We’ve been on the look out for footage from The Ramble Gramble and finally hit pay dirt thanks to YouTuber Elk Solana.

1. Rag Mama Rag 

Railroad Earth drummer Carey Harmon handles vocals on this chestnut off The Brown Album, while his band mate John Skehan contributes the song’s signature mandolin licks. Other contributors to this Rag Mama Rag include ALO guitarist Lebo on pedal steel, Bonnie Paine of Elephant Revival on washboard, Tim Carbone and Andy Goessling of RRE on fiddle and sax respectively, Steve Adams of ALO on bass, Tea Leaf Green’s Trevor Garrod on keys and ALO drummer Dave Brogan on the second drum kit.

2. Ophelia

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HT faves Tea Leaf Green were scheduled to play the beautiful Mishawaka Amphitheatre in Colorado this Friday night, but due to devastating effects of the High Park fire, the show – along with many others at the venue – has been cancelled. Instead, the Bay Area jam band have added a second night at State Bridge in Bond, Colorado and are now scheduled to perform there on June 29 and 30. Friday’s gig will be filmed for a video release called Live at State Bridge.

The turnaround will be quick on Live at State Bridge as Tea Leaf Green expects the new release to be available on DVD and via digital download a few weeks after the show. In a most welcome move, a portion of proceeds from every sale of Live at State Bridge will be donated to the American Red Cross to help the victims of the High Park Fire. While the digital download will just contain the performance, interviews and backstage footage will be filmed that day as bonus features for the DVD. Tickets for both nights are available through statebridge.com. The first 100 people who purchase Live at State Bridge in advance will receive a free promo poster for the release signed by the band and designed by guitarist Josh Clark.

The iconography of a rock and roll band being mythologized as a rebellious pack of outlaws living by their own set of rules dates back to the ’50s, the image originating as something between a snarling, defiant Elvis Presley and a sullen, brooding Marlon Brando. As time passed, the rock and roll outlaw would take many forms: the government persecution complex of The Rolling Stones, the shamanistic rabble-rousing of Jim Morrison, the peanut-butter smearing defiance of Iggy Pop, the corporate-magazine abhorrence of Kurt Cobain, the scenery-climbing petulance of Tim Commerford and the trailer-park decadence of Kid Rock. Never has the image of the outlaw musician been more gentlemanly than when Bob Dylan co-opted the philosophy that to live outside of the law, one must be completely honest. That gallant spirit thrives within Tea Leaf Green. If ever a band has found a way to exist outside of the law of the music business, Tea Leaf Green has accomplished that mission by remaining true to their core vision.

Tea Leaf Green emerged during the post-Coventry Phish hiatus when being called a jamband wasn’t considered a death sentence and a group could find a devoted audience on the strength of a compelling live show. Despite its connection to classic rock and jazz, in today’s world, “jamming” is considered a dirty word, used to marginalize bands that have dedicated themselves to letting musicianship, not spectacle, be their calling card. Always a song-oriented band, Tea Leaf has never really been a jamband in the traditional sense of the word and their resistance to the term is grounded in more than correcting a genre misclassification within the marketing department of the collective unconsciousness. Over the course of the band’s metamorphosis into a five piece collective, there have been many opportunities to diverge from the less travelled path. Being gentleman outlaws, Tea Leaf Green has resisted the urge to change and conform, remaining one of the rare bands that plays honestly true to their inner nature.

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Over the past couple of years, Tea Leaf Green pressed on through some major obstacles from losing a founding member in bassist Ben Chambers to Scott Rager seriously injuring his ankle three days before a CD release show, but with the release of Radio Tragedy!, they are not only confident the band is at its all-time best, but they’re pissed off, fed up with the industry and ready to kick ass on their own terms.

Radio Tragedy! lays it all right out there: the music industry, the crap on the radio and the celebrity culture in the music business, it’s all bullshit. They are tired of being pigeonholed as generic jamband fodder and having doors closed because of the preconceived notions that come with being part of this scene. In speaking with Josh Clark about the album, he really opens up about the frustrations the band faces in dealing with, as he calls it, the “death label” that is the jamband. Perhaps most ironic though is that the album is radio friendly, song-oriented and without question the band’s best studio effort yet, by far.

Hidden Track: I didn’t see too much written about the new album yet. Would you mind just starting with the basic background on the process in terms of where you recorded, who produced it, and over what time-frame?

Josh Clark: It started with the making of our last record, Looking West, which was over a year ago. We recorded it in Oakland where a couple of our friends run Coyote Hearing Studios. It’s actually Cochrane’s studio, our latest addition to the band on drums. He’s part owner. Also, Jeremy Black the drummer for Apollo Sunshine, who ended up producing Radio Tragedy! is part owner.

We never really have a plan when we go into the studio. We have songs, lots of them! In fact, we laid down more songs than we can fit on one record. We basically made a double album. So a lot of the songs off Radio Tragedy! were first conjured in those Looking West sessions. Those are the newer songs, the stuff people hadn’t really heard yet. We ended up selecting the stuff that had been part of the repertoire for years for Looking West and saving the new stuff, because we wanted to focus and really push the Radio Tragedy! record. So, a few songs on this record are from those sessions, some songs we came up with later in the process that are way brand new, and some we kind of rerecorded.

We actually worked on this record longer than we’ve ever worked on any record before, because we really wanted to make it something special. It wasn’t a case of “we need to get this out by this date” or a case of money being involved, it was really our record. So, we took our time with it to make the record we wanted to make. In …

We were saddened to learn yesterday of the death of Gerry Rafferty at the age of 63. While his name is most closely associated with the saxophone-rock-hit Baker Street, Rafferty also was a member of Stealers Wheel and wrote the classic Stuck In The Middle With You. The Guardian wrote a very in-depth obituary that is worth your time. Every year the great gig in the sky gains a few more superb players, and they already have their first legend of 2011.

As always, we’ve got six more links to help you over the hump…

• Rivers Cuomo performs a solo piano cover of God Only Knows
• The Allman Brothers add five more shows at The Beacon Theater
• Roger Waters is recording six shows for a possible DVD release
• Tea Leaf Green announces an in-studio webcast January 12th
• Was 2010 the year of The Cat & The Beach?
• Trent Reznor, Tom Morello, Eric Clapton and others to appear on the first Robbie Robertson record in over a decade

Finally, it was announced yesterday that David Sitek (guitarist of TV on the Radio) was joining Jane’s Addiction as part of the “creative team” and it looks like he’ll be acting as bass player for their next album. Unclear as of now if Sitek will be touring with Jane’s Addiction or what effect this will have on his participation in TV on the Radio.

We’re still abuzz from Phish’s fantastic interpretation of Little Feat’s seminal 1978 live album Waiting For Columbus that we wanted to continue to pay tribute to the highly influential, yet somehow criminally underrated band.

This week we’re placing that act’s classic trucker anthem, Willin’, into the squared circle – a song that has been rumored as the reason that Lowell George was asked to leave Frank Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention, and thus the impetus for the formation of Little Feat. The track originally appeared on the band’s self-titled debut sung in a sparse, talking, country-blues style by George and featured Ry Cooder backing him on steel guitar. The definitive version of tune was reworked for Little Feat’s sophomore release Sailin Shoes, and given the full band treatment with country-rock harmonies and some great piano work courtesy of Billy Payne.

Contestants:

The Black Crowes have no problem wearing their influences right on their sleeve with the band owing a great debt to Little Feat’s potent mix of rock, soul, gospel, jazz, country and funk. The Robinson Brothers & Co. have been covering Willin’ consistently since all the way back in 1992, with Chris channeling the ghost of Lowell George. Source: 2009-11-07

As an added bonus, here’s The Crowes with John Popper and the members of Wilco from a HORDE tour stop on August 27, 1995…

READ ON for more covers of Willin’ from the likes of moe., Uncle Tupelo, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Dylan, The Byrds and others…

It’s been a while since we’ve touched on anything Tea Leaf Green-related, so this week’s mix tape gives them the full treatment. Here we’ve got a supple mix of originals and covers from the San Franciscan jam-studs.

We kick it off with the happy-ending anthem that makes everybody think gross thoughts, Sex in the ’70s (8/16/04). Next, we have their take on Little Feat’s classic trucker song, Willin’, which was played as a tribute to the “boys that drive the bus.” (1/20/05) From there, it’s a live take of a newer favorite and title track from the latest album, Looking West (4/16/10), and a little GN’R with Welcome to the Jungle (4/17/10). Finally, we wrap it up with the Garden Part III (9/18/08) and Earth and Sky (Coffee Bean Brown Comes Alive). Have a listen…