John Hermann is chilling in his Tennessee home, clearly enjoying the privileges of being on a well-deserved hiatus with Widespread Panic. With a recent newborn, “Jojo” as Hermann is known amongst the tens of thousands of his devoted Panic fans, is just taking it easy. Well, about as easy as the songwriter, guitarist, keyboard player can play the game, as he’s just released his third solo album in four years.
Just Aint Right follows in the same honky-tonk boogie rock of his previous two Fat Possum releases, Smiling Assassin and Defector. Along with the help of fellow Smiling Assassins band mates Luther Dickinson on guitars, Cody Dickinson on drums and Paul “Crumpy” Edwards on bass, Jojo recorded this album of twelve tracks in just four days. Whether partying to a festive New Orleans twirl in “We’re Goin’ Out Tonight” or the boisterous rockers of “The Vultures Here Are A Little Slow” and “Lonely Child” Jojo’s snarling croon plants the album with a bluesy smirk, capturing the band in a raw southern light. Aside from a Mardi Gras Professor Longhair tribute band that he recently formed for this past year’s Bonnaroo festival, Jojo has been giving fellow Panic member David Schools a run for keeping it all busy.
Instead of touring for Just Aint Right, Jojo is kicking back and gearing up for his “main” project – Widespread Panic. With the band talking about reconvening after an 18-month hiatus and supposedly in the process of booking spring dates, a second chapter in the band’s history is waiting to be laid to tape.
Glide recently had the chance to speak with the jokester keyboard player about Professor Longhair, comedians, Just Aint Right, piano playing and of course the impending tour de force, Widespread Panic.
Rather than touring in support of your new solo release, Just Aint Right, you decided to take a more backseat approach, and kind of watch the momentum grow. How have you found the change of pace?
It’s been a great year off, and the studio we recorded it at – called Darkhorse – is just two miles from my house. And it’s like Shangri-La over there, it’s just beautiful, a castle and eight-acre spread. So it’s just two minutes from my door and it’s just been great.
Now that some time has passed, are you itching to get out there and present the new songs live with the Smiling Assassins?
I would love to get the band out there for a month. I would. But Cody and Luther are out there with the Allstars and Crumpy is busy with a Barbara Cue record that is coming out and I’m busy here at home – but we’ll get out there one day.
Your first album featured songs you wrote in an earlier period of your life, and then you came out with two more, so you’ve released three albums in four years. Do you like the term prolific singer/songwriter to describe yourself?
Well, I definitely don’t consider myself a singer, that’s for sure (laughs). But songwriting like three or four minute pop songs are always a hobby of mine, and so these albums just give me an opportunity to get that out of my system a bit.
Just Aint Right was recorded in four days. Is that a timeframe you prefer to work in, or do you wish you had more time to devote to it?
As far as the band goes, I definitely like four days, maybe one extra day. We all just sit together in the same room and just play them down live. And even the track with Chuck Leavell, he came in and we recorded the whole thing together in the same room live and took the first take. I like that approach to these songs, and I like the feel it gives the record. As far as vocals, I wish I had more time on vocals, because I’m really not much of a singer. Yeah, I wish I had more time to get my vocals down, but it’s a hopeless cause anyways.
So you see yourself more as a harmony singer than a lead singer?
Definitely, yeah.
Was the third time the charm in terms of getting the Smiling Assassins to sound like a “band,” rather than just a group of friends kicking some songs around.
I think, and a lot of people have said this, that this album sounds like a band. And yeah, after three albums and a couple tours under our belt, I think we are more than just a group of friends getting together and kind of knocking out a record. We have enough material now too. So, when we get out there it will definitely be like a band.
Do you consider the Smiling Assassins to be your main project at the moment, rather than labeling it your side project?
No, no, I wouldn’t go that far. Panic is the main thing. I’ve been working hard on songs for Widespread right now. With a year off it just gave me a lot of time to sit at home in my studio and do this little project.
Your set at this year’s Bonnaroo featured a Mardi Gras band and you played a number of Professor Longhair tunes. Most people in other parts of the country aren’t too familiar with his work – ever think about doing a tribute album of sorts to help get the word out?
Yeah, the Bonnaroo CD, they recorded it and yeah, I’ve always wanted to spread the gospel of Longhair. I always see myself as going back to when I was a teenager and kind of decided I would play Longhair all my life. A lot of kids have heard of Longhair, through Panic and Beanland and stuff like that, so it’s a good feeling.
You began playing at a young age, were you a piano prodigy?
No not at all, I knew how to play one thing. Well, when I was fifteen, I hadn’t heard Longhair yet, it was when I was eighteen that I had first heard Longhair. At fifteen I was playing in a Doors cover band and I wanted to be the next Ray Manzarek. I’d sit at home and play and pretend I was in The Doors. But when I was eighteen, my last year of high school, someone turned me on to a Professor Longhair record and said, “you got to check this out.” So I think after that I just went home every night after school, quit all my sports teams and just played that stuff endlessly, it just made me feel so good. It took awhile but I got the style down a bit.
Well it shows, you’ve got a real New Orleans style to your playing.
I’m a one trick pony pretty much. Those licks are all over a lot of Panic stuff too. But they don’t sound like Longhair, ‘cause the chord changes beneath them are so different. But it’s actually like, “Wondering” is a good example. The piano is a total Professor Longhair thing, but it sounds different ‘cause it’s in a different context.
Often you take the bridge from one tune and use it as a verse in another, and take a chorus from another tune and stick in a solo somewhere else. How did you first start tooling around with that kind of composing?
Yeah, just had to use all the parts, just kind of a “Mr. Potato Head” way of songwriting.
Does having such a distinct style ever steer you into a feeling of repetitiveness?
Ahh, not a repetitive feel because I only repeat… although there’s one song where I use the same thing twice. No, its like I’ll write these songs and they will almost seem kind of unfinished, so I’ll try to combine the two and end up using a verse from the first song as the chorus of the second. And then I’ll have one completed song out of that. So, I’ll take two unfinished things and just kind of cram them together. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
You mention Luther and Cody Dickinson are the best at what they do…
And Crumpy too, you can’t forget about him. The band, they are so good to work with, it’s just incredible.
How does this unit differ from working with Schools, Nance, George and Mikey when he was with us?
It’s a different approach. You know Cody’s drums, the way he just turns a piece of music into a song, he just arranges the whole thing back there, you almost take it for granted. But I’ve never really played with a drummer like Cody, he’s just the best, there’s nothing like him.
Your latest lyrics revolve around mistakes and regret. Is this coming from an autobiographical standpoint, or purely observational?
Most of it’s autobiographical, but I’ll apply it to someone else, do it to some made up character. Like “I stole the silver from my parent’s house and then they throw me out.” I give to someone else, who “stole their parents silver and got kicked out of the house.” I’ll just apply my own bad habits to other non-existent people.
Well people refer to you as the “clown prince” of Panic. Seems like you’re always singing with a smirk on your face, like there’s a joke beneath it all that only you know of.
Well that comes from Longhair a lot too, his style of lyric, like “it’s my own fault for coming home from work early last night.” Longhair really took that approach and it’s kind of a blues approach where you sing about fucking up and you sing about getting fucked over, but you take it in perspective, like “oh, well, I’ll laugh it off.” You can’t take anything too seriously.
With the free time, were there any other bands you’ve wanted to collaborate with outside the Smiling Assassins, like Galactic perhaps?
I would love to collaborate with Galactic one day. I just love those guys.
Would you lend keys or guitar work?
Well they got Rich [Vogel] back there on the keys, so they’re taken care of. I don’t know how it would work out, I’d probably doing something with Theryl, just get out there and harmonize with him.
Houseman? He just recently left the band actually….
Oh, Theryls gone? I didn’t know that. I’ve been out of it for awhile. I’m sure they’ll get another singer, but Theryl was great.
Yeah, his voice is very identifiable. When you hear your own voice, who or what does it most resemble?
Oh, I don’t know, I guess it resembles like a broken down crane or something.
Oh man, you’re hard on yourself (laughs).
Yeah, it resembles a dying whale. But you know what it is, I’m just laying the songs down. I’m basically kind of cataloging all these pop songs I have, just so I don’t forget them, and it’s a hobby of mine. I just kind of got tired of having all these songs and never laying them down, and when Fat Possum gave me the opportunity to record, I jumped at it. So, I’m just cataloging all my songs and would like to have a couple hundred when I’m done, and look back at my life when I’m an old man and remember what I actually did rather than just let it drift away.
How much of what you write nowadays is for Widespread Panic, or is that a more collaborative type effort?
Yeah, Panic on the songwriting end and arranging is a lot more collaboration. On the Assassins stuff, I pretty much write the songs at home and etch the arrangements in stone and bring them into the band right there in the studio, and they don’t even hear the songs before they show up. And they play their own parts and they play their own things, but the arrangements of the songs as far as written are pretty much done. With Panic it’s a totally different way of songwriting.
With Panic, you never really see any specific lyric credits on the liner notes.
Yeah, it’s just a big pot of stew, we’re all just throwing stuff in there.
But for instance, “Bust It Big” sounds like it has your name written all over it.
Yeah, well musically, Dave wrote the riff, but that was a real collaborative effort. Dave wrote that riff in the studio and Todd put the beat to it they came up with this glue. And then I took an old jam…what I like to do for Panic songs is go back to old live tapes and take jams and bring them into the live studio and just start singing over them. And that’s how “Bust It Big” came out.
Taking a step back, you relatively came out of nowhere when you joined Widespread Panic in the early 90’s. Prior to that you were playing in Beanland, performing in coffee houses. What did you take from that band in transferring to a band that was already pretty established and selling out clubs and bigger venues. Was that a big transformation for you?
Well, it certainly was not a tough transformation, not having to load in my own equipment – I like that transformation. But, Beanland also did a lot of covers, and I was really ready in that stage of my life to play in a band that did all originals and stressed originals and that’s why I went from one to another.
If you never got that opportunity to play in Panic, where do you think you’d be playing today?
Oh God, I’d probably be playing Professional Longhair in blues festivals in Europe. I was about to go to Europe and move over there and just become a New Orleans piano player on the streets and subways of Paris. I was a month away from doing that and then Panic called me. So I’d probably be over there just wasting away in bars in Europe.
Well you’ve definitely played a vital part in the band’s growth the past decade. Are you comfortable filling such an important role in a band so rich in history and legacy?
It’s a supportive role. I love my role in Panic. I think the keyboard player in any band – Chuck Leavell and I talk about this a lot, with the roles he’s done in all his bands. When you’re the keyboard player, you’re the guy the band looks to, to encourage and support what the other musicians are getting across and actually helping them make it happen and putting it into a tangible piece of music. I see the keyboard player…my job is to take an idea and make sure it gets on the stage and gets in the set and doesn’t take years. You just kind of take what’s going to happen and kind of make it happen faster with a little more urgency. If somebody brings in a song and it needs a bridge, you know I can add a bridge. When Todd brought in, “You’ll Be Fine” he said, “would you write a bridge for me,” I was like,” yeah.” That’s what keyboard players are for, we just kind of add what is needed at the time and kind of help things along.
JB is a central figure, but there are really no lead figures in the band.
Well JB is very reluctant, he really, really tries to spread it around and doesn’t like to be the leader. Although I look to him for the lead really, but he sets the ethic and sets the tone for including everybody and making sure everybody gets their ideas in and that it’s a free forum for people to get their ideas in.
As an equal leader in the band, there was a period where you were favoring the clavinet as a lead instrument – songs like “Disco,” “Greta” and “Rebirtha” – and then it died down. Was that a phase for you?
It did die down. The clav came back lately, but it just kind of comes and goes with the material, I think the material dictates a lot. And on Ball, our latest record, there just wasn’t a lot of clav material on it. You know those New Orleans funky grooves, I tend to go to the clav and other types of songs, I’ll go to the keyboard or organ. So, I think the material dictates what instrument I play.
What instrument is your favorite or your strongest in the rotation?
I definitely like the clav, and I like the organ for the spacey stuff and the echo. I just bought a Space Echo yesterday for the piano and clav and have been playing around with that. Everybody in the music store is like “god, nobody has come in here to ask to hook up these instruments to these space echoes.” It sounded really good and I’m kind of excited to do a lot of that stuff next year.
Nice, reinvention is important.
Yeah, without doing synthesizers which I tried very briefly. Yeah, just adding all these effects to the keyboards is just kind of fun.
Watch out, if you’re surrounded by instruments on all four sides, you’ll be like John Medeski over there.
Yeah, no shit, I wish I could play like him!
Coming off hiatus, how does the band hope to maintain the enthusiasm to play another twenty years together, and avoid the Phish situation, where they came back, but couldn’t maintain the energy and creative spark they once had?
In our case, we’re kind of starting from scratch, we’re still in wood shedding phase. So, when we come back we’re going to be doing a lot of theaters. We’re going to continue what just started to happen with our last fall tour where we just started becoming a band. You know, it’s a new band, and with Mikey gone, there’s just no way you can replace Mikey, you just have to start over. So, I still feel like we are a band that’s in the process of starting over and we’re going to go do smaller venues in the spring- we’ll do some big ones. But we’re going to go out in theaters…we’re still in that wood shedding phase. And we’re still kind of searching. It was great seeing George last fall like really start to play from his heart and not have to sit there and remember all these chord changes. It’s a long process and it’s going to take a long time, but it’s just starting to happen. So that’s kind of where we are right now, we are in a new band, starting over.
It must make you feel young in some respects, “starting over” at middle age?
It does, but it happened under tragic circumstances. But we’re a new band basically starting from scratch. At least we had a year under our belt where we started to bring back a lot of the songs. But we have a lot of old songs and a lot of old Mikey songs to bring back and we have a lot of new songs, which is really going to be what we are stressing, is new stuff.
Do you feel the band is going to take on a new sound that might surprise people?
We’re still not sure, or sure exactly, we’ve just been so busy learning and just bringing this band back and learning the old songs, that I’m still not sure what the new sound is going to be. I think it’s pretty wide open, but we’ll know in a year or two.
How do you think Widespead Panic’s part in rock history will be revered twenty years from now – looking back at more mainstream bands like Traffic, Talking Heads or even Aerosmith?
I don’t know what will happen twenty years, or the next phase, but we can never compare ourselves to bands who are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I look at us as a touring band. And I do think we will be around for a long, long time, and I do think we’ll still be playing in twenty years, I really do. I just kind of go gig to gig and have a good time and try not to put the band in any historical perspective, it takes the fun out of it.
Have you been able to catch any new acts that you haven’t had the chance to see before being on a bit of a break?
Oh, lets see, the Ryman Auditorium is a great historical theater in town here. I got to see a lot of comedy acts, that’s kind of what I’ve been doing this year. We saw George Carlin live and believe it or not, Jackie Mason, I’ve always been a fan of him since the “Aardvark and The Ant” and he was the voice of the Aardvark. We saw him and Chappelle came into town but we couldn’t get into that one. So I’ve been really checking out a lot of comedians and stealing some of the lyrics from them.
So on a final note, when are we going to see JB do a solo tour or album – you know “an evening with JB?”
Well, he only does that kind of stuff for benefits. To hear him do that stuff, go down to Hannah’s Buddies down in Orlando and just that charity thing. Yeah he sure is good at it, I mean he could do it, [but], well JB and I, we’re staying home. It’s nice, but we’re starting to chat now about next tour and getting psyched up for it. I think we’re all kind of excited to go out next year, which was what this year was all about.
