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Tea Leaf Green still has three of its original four members, but the band has had a musical metamorphosis since its last visit to Tahoe.
The Bay Area group has added a drummer, is allowing its bass player more room to express himself and is recording its next studio album entirely differently than it did its first six.
“The band is in a new spot creatively,” said keyboardist Trevor Garrod.
Bassist Reed Mathis has been with the band four years, but now is helping make the music instead of simply filling the role of former member Ben Chambers, Garrod said.
And the addition of Cochrane McMillan makes Tea Leaf Green a quintet.
“Cochrane joined the band by accident,” he said. “(Drummer Scott Rager) broke his foot two days before we went on tour. Cochrane had been helping engineer our record and he knew all the songs. So he helped Scott with the drumming and then he just stuck around.”
Having five members helps with the decision-making, Garrod said. There are no more 2-2 votes.
Tea Leaf Green has always road tested its songs before recording them in a studio. However, its second album with producer Jeremy Black will be different.
“Now we want to put out a record with songs no one has heard before,” Garrod said. “That's the classic way to do it. For all these years we've done it backward.”
The new process: one person who has an idea for a song will play it in the studio. Then the other members add parts.
“We'll slowly work it up from there, one person at a time,” he said “We've just had a blast doing it that way. It's more like being in a laboratory in these controlled conditions. It's a lot easier.”
The challenge before, he said, was trying in the studio to recapture a “quintessential” rendition of a song it had performed live. With no crowd to play off of, it was difficult to fully recapture the spirit.
One aspect which will remain unchanged is Garrod's vocal approach. He said he has to play the keyboard when he sings.
“For me, it's all one thing,” he said. “Engineers don't like it because they can't isolate the sound. I'll set up a keyboard and not plug it in. After years of struggling with it, that's one of the solutions I've come up with.”
Tea Leaf Green is famous for its live shows, and, as it often does, will play back-to-back nights when it appears this weekend at Tahoe. Garrod promised no songs will be repeated.
Friday and Saturday's “Super Jam Weekend” will have Poor Man's Whiskey opening the first night, then Melvin Seals JGB finish up Saturday.
Seals and Tea Leaf Green have played at the same festivals, but have never performed together. Garrod said he and Seals might have an impromptu jam, which is common for guitarists but rare for keyboard players.
Saturday's Red Room after-party will feature Garrod and McMillan in their duo Dear My Android.
“We are going to pull out our computers and keyboards and make some kind of electronic madness,” he said.
The Tahoe shows come during a two-week break between Midwest and East Coast tours. Tea Leaf Green every year tours the cold parts of the country to provide hot cups of music. And the band always has warm feelings for the Sierra Nevada.
“High Sierra (Music Festival in 2002) was our real debut as a band, kind of a coming out party,” Garrod said. “Before that we were kind of a college band playing college parties. We played that festival and then embarked on out first national tour. From that festival we just kept heading East.”
The Bay Area group has added a drummer, is allowing its bass player more room to express himself and is recording its next studio album entirely differently than it did its first six.
“The band is in a new spot creatively,” said keyboardist Trevor Garrod.
Bassist Reed Mathis has been with the band four years, but now is helping make the music instead of simply filling the role of former member Ben Chambers, Garrod said.
And the addition of Cochrane McMillan makes Tea Leaf Green a quintet.
“Cochrane joined the band by accident,” he said. “(Drummer Scott Rager) broke his foot two days before we went on tour. Cochrane had been helping engineer our record and he knew all the songs. So he helped Scott with the drumming and then he just stuck around.”
Having five members helps with the decision-making, Garrod said. There are no more 2-2 votes.
Tea Leaf Green has always road tested its songs before recording them in a studio. However, its second album with producer Jeremy Black will be different.
“Now we want to put out a record with songs no one has heard before,” Garrod said. “That's the classic way to do it. For all these years we've done it backward.”
The new process: one person who has an idea for a song will play it in the studio. Then the other members add parts.
“We'll slowly work it up from there, one person at a time,” he said “We've just had a blast doing it that way. It's more like being in a laboratory in these controlled conditions. It's a lot easier.”
The challenge before, he said, was trying in the studio to recapture a “quintessential” rendition of a song it had performed live. With no crowd to play off of, it was difficult to fully recapture the spirit.
One aspect which will remain unchanged is Garrod's vocal approach. He said he has to play the keyboard when he sings.
“For me, it's all one thing,” he said. “Engineers don't like it because they can't isolate the sound. I'll set up a keyboard and not plug it in. After years of struggling with it, that's one of the solutions I've come up with.”
Tea Leaf Green is famous for its live shows, and, as it often does, will play back-to-back nights when it appears this weekend at Tahoe. Garrod promised no songs will be repeated.
Friday and Saturday's “Super Jam Weekend” will have Poor Man's Whiskey opening the first night, then Melvin Seals JGB finish up Saturday.
Seals and Tea Leaf Green have played at the same festivals, but have never performed together. Garrod said he and Seals might have an impromptu jam, which is common for guitarists but rare for keyboard players.
Saturday's Red Room after-party will feature Garrod and McMillan in their duo Dear My Android.
“We are going to pull out our computers and keyboards and make some kind of electronic madness,” he said.
The Tahoe shows come during a two-week break between Midwest and East Coast tours. Tea Leaf Green every year tours the cold parts of the country to provide hot cups of music. And the band always has warm feelings for the Sierra Nevada.
“High Sierra (Music Festival in 2002) was our real debut as a band, kind of a coming out party,” Garrod said. “Before that we were kind of a college band playing college parties. We played that festival and then embarked on out first national tour. From that festival we just kept heading East.”
Poor Man's Whiskey opens Friday
Another Bay Area band familiar to High Sierra Music festivalgoers, Poor Man's Whiskey, will open the Super Jam Weekend on Friday.Calling its music “high octane hootenanny,” Poor Man's Whiskey has released five studio albums since 2002, including “Goodbye California” in 2011 and “Dark Side of the Moonshine,” in 2009.
Second night of jam features Melvin Seals and his Dead buddies
Melvin Seals is keeping Jerry Garcia's spirit alive with his group Melvin Seals & JGB.An 18-year member of the Jerry Garcia Band, Seals headlines Saturday's Crown Room show in the Crystal Bay Casino, the second night of “Super Jam Weekend.
Trained in the church, the Hammond B-3 organ player fit in well with the Grateful Dead crowd, once he became comfortable with all of the Dead's skeleton logos.
Here's a look at the JGB:
Stu Allen — the guitarist-singer has been in the band since 2004 and appears on the “Keepers of the Flame”' album. In the early 1990s, he co-founded the Minnesota-based acoustic-electric jam band, Blue Man Jive. H's also is a founding member of The Jones Gang , Minneapolis' premier Grateful Dead tribute band, to which he still lends his talents.
Jimmy Tebeau — the bass also is a member of the Grateful Dead tribute band The Schwag (a.k.a. Dead Ahead). He has played more than 2,500 shows since 1990 featuring the music of Jerry Garcia. He is the owner of Camp Zoe in Salem, Mo., the site of the Schwagstock music festival series.
Pete Lavezzoli — The drummer taught himself to read and play music from age 10, and became a professional drummer and vocalist in his late teens, forming the Grateful Dead tribute band Crazy Fingers. He is a respected music historian with two books to date, both published by Continuum Books of New York & London. “The King of All, Sir Duke” (2001) explores the legacy of Duke Ellington in modern jazz, rock, and R&B music. “The Dawn of Indian Music in the West” (2006) tells the story of Ravi Shankar and Indian music's impact on rock and jazz.
