Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
There is an interview with David that readers here may be interested
in at the Rex Foundation's "Musicians Spotlight" feature at
http://www.rexfoundation.org/musicianspotlight/gans.html

The Rex Foundation's home page is at
http://www.rexfoundation.org/rex_home.html
  

    

> As an independent musician yourself, do you see the web changing that equa-
> tion at all?

The web is changing the nature of music marketing, but of course it intro-
duces a whole new set of problems.  The playing field is leveled to a great
extent, but now the issue is how to raise your profile above the horizon.

For example, everyone is promoting their music on MySpace.  Im there, but I
haven't the faintest idea what I'm supposed to do there.

I recently upgraded and redesigned my own web site, www.dgans.com, and now
I've got tons of music online for free as well as text, photos, etc.  My
electronic press kit is there, and links to dozens of press clips.  So it's a
great promotional vehicle - IF I can drive traffic to the site.
  

    
That's the magic if-- --- Your press materials online are good-- but a 
targeted marketing campaign to get your materials in the right bookers 
hands is better.

I have a question which I'm not sure has been asked, David. (And may raise 
a few shitstorms)

You were (and still are)  associated with the Grateful Dead as a 
historian, journalist, radio personality, and general proponent.

Do you feel that association has been helping you or hindering you in your 
work as a musician?  (and naturally it could be both)  
  

    
Hmmm. Duck and cover? Or pull up a lawnchair?

I think I'll duck under my lawnchair.
  

    
It's a good and appropriate question, it seems to me, and I've talked
with David enough about it to know that the answer is that it's both. 
But I'll let David elaborate as he sees fit!

No need to duck under that lawnchair, Angie!
  

    
I don't know what shitstorms you're expecting to raise here, Adam.  It's a
perfectly reasonable question.

For the most part, I think it's been a hindrance.  So many people have such
strong negative opinions about the Grateful Dead that I often feel I'm being
dismissed before a note of music has been heard.
  

    

And it could, I'd imagine, even be a mixed blessing with those who have
a *positive* opinion of the GD... some of them might expect (or want)
your music to be more "Deadcentric" than it is, and might be disinclined
to give your original material a fair hearing.

OTOH, the GD association and media profile does afford a degree of name
recognition not available to many singer-songwriters trying to get their
work before the public. I'm sure you're not about to turn down gigs that
might in part result from that recognition, and it probably hasn't hurt
you on the jamband and festival circuit (even though I don't think
that's your ideal target audience).

It's a difficult juggling act, and I admire the grace and tenacity with
which you're handling it.
  

    

Thanks, Gary.  I do, on occasion, wrestle with the advisability of taking
certain gigs.

And fortunately, I've been doing this long enough to have developed an
identity of my own apart from the GFD.  There are even a few fans here and
there who know me only as a musician.
  

    

That's very good news -- and I'm quite certain their numbers will
continue to grow.
  

    
where puking never happens!
where lilacs once in the dooryard bloomed
where intellect goes to dance

what we haven't talked about is that you're a heck of a good guy.
and you put yourself out there travelling all over the place, developing
relationships with local audiences and with wonderful musicians who love
working with you.

it may be hard to rise above the fray on my space but you do a terrific job
of showing folks what a sincere working musician can accomplish on stage and
in the world.
  

    
Robert Reid writes:

Hi David, hello all,

Apologies for my tardiness, but I have a couple few questions. If
they're too late for a long answer, again, I apologize.

1. What was it like for you growing up? What were your parents like?
Siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents? Where were they from?

2. What was your experience with music like when you were a child? Did
people in your family play musical instruments?

3. Clarinet?!

4. You describe your college experience quite gingerly. Did you think
it was something you didn't want to do before you got there, or did you
decide it after having been there a while?

5. What is your favorite Grateful Dead concert memory from 1985?

6. Do you consider the controversy over whether or not you consider
your automatic mental association with the Grateful Dead by
one-dimensional people to be a help or a hindrance to your career to be
a help or a hindrance to your career? Or do you just go, "pfft"?

Thanks,
Robert
)))

--- Robert T. Reid

PS: I see question 6 has been somewhat answered already, but I'll let
it stand, since it hasn't been asked yet. It's just filler anyway, so
it can be safely ignored. . .
  

    
John Adams writes:


For what it's worth, David, I think that you had the good sense to
write a book about the Dead that focuses on their music rather than the
traveling freakshow that enveloped them makes those of us like myself
who both pay a lot of attention to music and are skeptical about the
Dead (to say the least--saw 'em twice and, well, I do keep my eye out
for a cheap CD of _Blues for Allah_) +likelier+ to go check you out,
were you to play in my neighborhood.

That you did a similar book about the Talking Heads is just gravy.

A question about looping: The first person I ever saw use it live was
Warren Zevon, playing solo twice in the mid-nineties. It was just a
short single loop, but it was so cool! Did you catch any of his shows
where he used looping? Do you have any thoughts about them?
  

    
I never saw Zevon live, sorry to say.

Looping is a cheap and simple technology today - ridiculously so, compared to
what Ned Lagin had to go through in 1974 to loop a few seconds of music
onstage, as recounted in his interview in the revised edition of
"Conversations with the Dead."  Ned programmed a PDP-11 "minicomputer," which
he had to load from paper tape before every gig if I recall correctly.
Thousands of dollars of hardware, homegrown software, and an elaborate setup
before every gig.

Now I have a $250 stomp box that stores relatively vast amounts of sound,
allows overdubbing at the touch of a button, etc.
  

    

John Adams: "Blues for Allah" was remastered with bonus tracks for the boxed
set "Beyond Desription," released a couple off years ago by Rhino.  The
individual discs are being released over time, so if BFA isn't available yet,
it will be soon.  A damn fine record - a peak of collective creativity.

And yes, thank you for your observation that my books concentrate on the
music rather than the traveling freak show.  I got into this for the music,
and over time found myself part of a community with both a strong spiritual
component and an unfortunate cultural stigma.
  

    

Robert's questions, in no particular order:

My parents put a violin in my hands when I was in grade school, but it was
soon replaced with a clarinet.  I have very little memory of playing the
violin, but I loved the clarinet; I played in school bands and orchestras
until my sophomore year in high school, and I also marched and played in the
Reseda Junior Youth Band for a year or two.

I was playing Beatle songs on the clarinet in 1969 until my brother taught me
a few chords on his guitar.  That was it for me and the clarinet.  In
retrospect, I wish I had stuck with it; I sometimes fantasize about learning
the oboe (I love the sound of the double reeds), or maybe saxophone.

My maternal grandmother was a concert violinist of some achievement.  Neither
of my parents played.  My mother and one of her sisters were accomplished
visual artists, and of the eight cousins on that side of the family, seven of
us are involved in media and/or music making.

I am descended from four lines of Eurpoean Jews.  My family name comes from
Bohemia; my paternal grandmother was born in Canada of Russian parents; my
maternal grandfather was born in England of Polish parents, and my maternal
grandmother was born in Kiev and raised in Paris.  My mother was born in Lon-
don and married my Brooklyn-born father in London during the war, when both
were 19.

My parents lived in New York after WWII, then drove across the country and
started their family in Los Angeles.  I am the middle of three (my brother
Roger is two years older; my sister Marsha is two years younger).  We lived
in the San Fernando Valley until 1966, when we moved to the San Francisco Bay
Area.  I've lived in San Mateo, San Jose, and (for the last 32 years) Oak-
land.

Although my background is Jewish, I have never been to shul and only know the
Yiddish I heard spoken around the house.  My parents practiced no religion; I
was a spiritual bblank slate until I started exploring on my own.  I'm still
pretty ignorant of religion, but respectful of spirituality and resistant to
dogma.
  

    <scribbled by tnf Fri 15 Sep 06 00:24>
  

    

I was 16 when I graduated from high school.  I attended San Jose State
College for two years and change, mostly in a program called Tutorials that
was far too unstructured for an amorphous character such as myself.  I wasn't
ready for college - I wanted to learn, but I had no discipliine and very
little motivation.  I took a few "real" classes, such as linguistics and
history of film, but mostly I played my guitar and acted out my personal
dramas.  I finally gave up halfway through my "junior" year and moved to
Oakland, where I played music and did some pasteup and photography to scratch
out a living for a couple of  years.  I got a job at BASS Tickets, which led
to a couple of years of traveling around setting up new operations.  During
the BASS years, I was also freelancing w/ BAM, a music magazine here in
northern California.  When the ticket-geek job ended, I had the option of
looking for another computer job, or taking my stack of tearsheets and
looking for more work in journalism.

From 1980 until 1986, i was a contributor to RECORD magazine, eventually
rising to Senior Editor (West Coast).  I also worked for Mix Publications,
first as an editor of MI (for working musicians), and then (after that
magazine folded) as Music Editor of MIX, the Recording Industry Magazine.
I also freelanced to other publications, including Musician, Recording
Engineer/Producer, and others.

Once I got into radio, I gave up writing for the most part.  I always had a
problem with print deadlines anyway.

I augmented my writing income with photography.  I mostly gave that up when I
got into radio; I got a digital camera a few years ago, and now I'm way into
photography as a hobby.  ( see http://www.flickr.com/photos/dgans )
  

    
I saw Zevon live lots of times but I don't remember him doing looping.

Now, how does that relate to the Mellotron?
  

    

The Mellotron was an anslog device, like an organ but each key played back a
recorded sound.
  

    
Didn't want to raise a shitstorm, and glad that it didn't.

I agree with the person above who suggested that it was a difficult 
tightwire that you are walking well.

I think that one of the hardest things is to deal with people's 
expectations of you-- because you are so associated with the Dead, it 
would be easy for people to expect you to be more like them.  I like that 
you've forged your own identity (not forged as in counterfeited, but 
forged as in constructed)
  

    

I always had my own identity.  There were long stretches of time when I
really wanted a job in the Grateful Dead world; in retrospect, having been
kept at arm's length by the organization, and fucked with by the various yard
dogs on their perimeter, was the best possible thing for me.  I was never
willing to debase myself or surrender my identity to the big dysfunctional
organism.
  

    

Robert has one more question pending, re memories of 1985 Grateful Dead
shows.

There were a lot of shwos int he Bay Area that year - Henry J Kaiser, Frost
Amphitheater, the Greek, Berkeley Community Theater, and the New Year's run
at the Oakland Coliseum.  I saw most of 'em.  It was a tough time, in some
respects.  There was a lot of drug use, both onstage and in the audience, and
Jerry's voice sounded awful much of the time.  The 20th anniversary brought a
great deal of press coverage, and in its wake a great growth in the size of
the audience.  I started contributing to the KFOG Deadhead Hour early in
1985, just before "Playing in the Band" was published.  So it was the
beginning of my professional relationship with the Grateful Dead.

I missed one of the Greek shows because I was on deadline with the Talking
Heads book.  I'd say the Frost shows in April - which is when I had freshly-
minted copies of "playing in the Band" in my mitts - were the highlight of
the year for me.
  

    
You've talked quite a bit about your current touring, and some about
your earliest years as a fledgling clarinet player (I was one too!).

But I'd like to hear something about when you started out as a
performer.  What memories do you have of your first times taking the
stage in any kind of serious way?  Were you part of a band?  A solo
performer?  How did it develop?
  

    
I played clarinet for three years.  I also wish I had kept at it.

I told an acquaintance of mine, Antonio, about this discussion.  He
asked me to say hi.  He said you would know him from the wharf rat
table.

You've mentioned some highs and lows in relation to the GD on a
professional level.  How do you feel about the band/s from a fan
perspective, past and present?  How do you relate with other Dead fans?
 Has your relationship with other Dead fans changed over time?
  

    

if it's the Antonio I'm thinking of, he came to both the Nomad and the Grand
Lake Farmers' Market last weekend.  Tell him hi back, please.

I'll have to give that Grateful Dead question some thought, Peter.  My
relationship with the Dead and the Deadheads is a complicated one, and it has
changed a lot over the years.

Gary's question about my early performing days is easier: my first
"professional" gig was at my high school's grad night party at Frontier
Village in San Jose.  My friend Craig Lueck and I played in the "saloon"
while The Joy of Cooking played outside.  I remember very littlle about the
gig, other than watching the Joy of Cooking during our break and being really
impressed with the bass player.

I played the "steak and lobster circuit" for a coouple of years, 1971-1972,
doing lots of Elton John, Cat Stevens, CSN, etc.  In November of 1972, at a
fondue joint in Fremont, the owner of the restaurant brought in a woman who
was going to play there in a few days and had never been onstage before, and
would it be okay if she sang a song or two during my break so she could get a
feel for it?  Of course, sez I.

We fell in love.

She was several years older than me, recently divorced.  We wound up
performing together on the north bay and east bay legs of the steak and
lobster circuit, and we also had a semi-regular gig in the Officers' Club at
Mare Island.  My most salient memory of the latter gig was a Marine captain
looking at my beautiful girlfriend, glaring at me, and saying, "I'll take ten
pounds of hair off o' you and make a man out of you!"

By late '73, I think, I was playing in a band called Sunrise with a grooup of
vocal majors from Hayward State.  Lots of Loggins and Messina, etc., and they
also did quite a few of my original songs.

Once I get my computer issues sorted out, I'll post a few examples (painful
as it is to hear them again) of these early incarnations.