It’s early evening, cold, and the streets in the West Village are experiencing that brief lull between the end of a long workday and the beginning of another New York night. The bouncers at The Lion’s Den, obscurely hidden under scaffolding, stamp the hands of the first few people trickling in for a random opening band. Unfortunately granted the 8pm time slot, that band is destined to play for an empty room. Including the staff, there are less than a dozen bodies in the club, but the band taps out the end of their sound check with nervous energy. It’s a big night for them. In a few hours, another relatively unknown band, headliners from Burlington, Vermont, will sell the place out. And those huddled bouncers will keep the club at full capacity all night, implementing the one man leave, one man enter strategy – while the owner will be looking to book them back again soon.
RAQ is playing, and like a traveling carnival, they’re filling clubs with some devoted fans, and a lot of curious folk peering in to see for themselves all they’ve been hearing about.
The four unassuming bandmates – bassist Jay Burwick, Keyboardist Todd Stoops, drummer Greg Stukey, and guitarist Chris Michetti – are underneath it all, soaking in the classic, dive rock aura of the Den’s backstage basement. It’s early in the tour, but already the band has been hit with the flu. Michetti, still apparently drained, ironically sits on the edge of his straight back chair, an eager fire in his bleary eyes.
More contagious than the germs hovering around the room is the energy and excitement they share about the current state of the band. Less of a proving ground, more an early marathon stride, RAQ is finally beginning to settle into a balanced rhythm, one less concerned with the world outside, and tightly focused on creating their own “honest” art form. But that of course is the compelling twist to the RAQ story. One riddled with Phishy comparisons, preconceived notions and message board threads the depth of a Yankees/Red Sox debate. There’s a real stir surrounding the band, but the music is standing firm. And now that the shadow has receded, they’ve begun writing songs that capture their own identity, their own growth.
Sure it still sounds familiar, but as Jay Burwick notes, “every new batch of tunes, I feel sounds more like RAQ.”
It’s been a year since we last spoke, that was in February of 2004. So fill me in on how the rest of the year went.
CM: Wow, we’ll we played about 6,000 shows since then (laughing). And we’ve written quite a few new tunes
TS: Yeah, probably 15 to 20 new songs since last February – two batches and a whole batch last April, and then this latest batch.
CM: The fall was pretty intense – I think we learned a lot about ourselves. By Halloween we were pretty dialed in – financially, mentally, spiritually and musically. I think that we’ve kind of grown, and really come a long way in a year – on every level.
In that article, I made reference that RAQ was ironically creating its own unique identity by reinventing that “old school jamband” sound. And somehow that description seems to have really resonated with people, so I’m curious as to your own reaction, and if that depiction is really applicable?
JB: It’s definitely applicable. I thought that was great. When I read that, I thought that really summed it up. It kind of hit it on the head, like “right, that’s the world we come from.” It just made so much sense. [We’re] not trying to do this, or trying to do that, its just, you are who you are – and that’s where [the music] comes from.
CM: Yeah, you can’t try to be what your not. And there’s a lot to that. You gotta kind of find who you are, and you have to go through the whole damn thing. Before Todd [Stoops], we were just kind of doing our thing, and people started noticing, and we were so young that we didn’t even know what we were doing, or what our main goal was, or how to even describe ourselves. And I think that this past year, we’ve kind of figured it out, like, “ok, here we go – lets not worry about it, lets just do it.”
GS: I know for me personally, there was definitely a stress early on, even around [original keyboard player, Marc] Scortino, with people talking about [the band] having the buzz or whatever, and then all of a sudden, having to live up to such extreme expectations. Having audience members come in with their arms folded – “ok, thrill me.” And you’re just trying to develop your own sound.
So the new songs that you’ve written since then, are they in that same vein?
TS: The last batch, to be honest, I’d say they’re a little indie, there’s like an alt-rock vibe to some of it. There’s definitely a vibe of simplicity, where we’re not doing something to be extravagant. When we were collectively writing, we weren’t writing because we wanted to write something that would be extremely hard to play. We’re not writing for any other reason than letting the songs write themselves, and being very honest and true to the music. Which is a turning point, at least for me as a composer. And us as a band composing together, it just keeps getting better. Every batch of tunes is more evolved.
What was the writing process for the newer songs?
JB: I think the last few times, it was Todd and Chris doing storming sessions and getting ideas out and trying to get things essentially set-up. Then bringing them to where the four of us sit down and put it together, and say “ok, this makes sense, this doesn’t make sense, should we do this three times here, or four times here – should we have a pause there?” And then we work out the vocals and lyrics and things like that. That’s just the last few times, that’s the way its been going, and I think it’s a great way to do it. Just come in with ideas on the table and try to make them grow.
GS: Sometimes Todd will come in with a disc, with almost a full song, pretty much everything laid out, everything you would expect to hear. Just a straight up tune – and you just take it, embellish your part a bit, and make it your own. Not abandoning the original idea, but embellish it so that it becomes a little bit more of your own identity.
JB: And the antithesis of that, is that song “City…Fun” (laughs). Whatever [its called], it just kind of happened. We were done writing, just rehearsing for the road, getting the songs ready for the tour, and Chris was like, “well what about this little thing?” We were playing that groove for a while in soundchecks and stuff, and we just kind of threw some words over it randomly and thought “wait a minute, that’s a song – that’s a great song!” So it can happen really randomly.
CM: Stoops has the ability to really see a song. I’ll have an idea – if I’ve been playing something for like a day, that’s probably something you could bring [him]. You can just give him this little thing, and he’s playing drums on the keyboard, and doing this and that, and it’s done.
The other thing we talked about last time was the grassroots touring model, and I wanted to touch on that again now that another year has passed. If you’ve dedicated yourselves to this unique approach to the music industry – one that Phish took as far as you could take it, and most will never achieve – if you follow that model, and you’re not trying to be the next U2, with radio and album support, what keeps you going?
TS: The payoff is that one person who comes up to you after the show and says “you guys blew me away, that changed my life.” I don’t care if we’re playing for ten people in the basement of Nectar’s, or the Somerville Theatre or Bonnaroo – that’s an immense reward. The glory wears off real quick. Seeing that reaction, creating that emotion, is what at least keeps me going.
JB: You name it – financially, emotionally, physically…its taxing. But its weird, I’ll be so tired some nights – and that’s really the thing about touring, it just gets exhausting, it gets really tiring – but no matter what, it’s the strangest thing, as soon as we step on stage I have energy until the last note. And that’s one of the most amazing things. Like what Todd was saying – when you walk out at the end of the show, and these people are just blown away by what you’ve done, whether you feel the same or you feel completely different, you just have to respect and be in awe of [it all]. That’s a huge part of what keeps us motivated. And it helps you forget that you’ve been playing for no money (laughs).
Now that Phish has called it quits, and that pinnacle of the jam scene is gone, how has the climate changed?
JB: I think that relates really well to your last question. We’re [at this level], and what keeps you going? Well Phish went there, and they really did it. They went as far as anybody would want to really be – holding your own festival and selling that many tickets. I mean, that’s really any amazing thing. And they just kind of set a standard, raised the bar and showed that that’s possible. They made you see that “wow, there are enough people out there that ‘get’ weird music.”
CM: If you want to be as big as U2, you gotta think about it in a different way. You gotta weigh different things.
JB: I just watched U2 at Live Aid at Wembley Stadium in front of like 100,000 people, and this is early, early on in U2’s career, and they’re huge. So it’s hard to do, but you also see that its possible.
CM: We were watching this Phil Collins DVD the other day, and he is so good. If I wasn’t in a band, I’d just be like “he’s really good.” But there’s this one part of the DVD – its Wembley Stadium too – and he’s just playing with the audience. Making them scream – the back, the front, the sides, its like an instrument. It’s just the coolest part. I’ve watched it with a few different people, but when I watched it with Todd, we were like, “that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever fucking seen.”
TS: You’re talking 100,000 people – [he] points to the right, thousands of people screaming, points to the left, screaming, points everywhere, starts playing it like a drum kit…I mean, you get chills. It’s amazing.
With Bonnaroo leaning more towards indie rock each year, and Phish no longer playing, it seems that most bands in the jam scene have scattered in different directions.
CM: The scene right now is very “my band is better than your band” kind of thing.
JB: You know what, I like more than one band. Am I a crazy person for liking more than one band? (laughs)
TS: I noticed this in the last year, even before Phish broke up – there is a certain jamband fan, I think at this point the term jamband applies to the people who come to the show rather than the band. On any given night, you have the same people go see Yonder Mountain String Band, the next night they’ll see moe., and the next they’ll see Umphrey’s [McGee], and right down the list…and they’ll go on the internet the next day and post “Yonder Mountain blows away Umphrey’s.” Well, your talking about a pizza and a box of oranges. You’re talking about a bluegrass band and a prog band. Both awesome bands, and these people are making these generalizations because its become kind of a popularity contest.
I think I’m grateful to that affect, because like I said before, it helps to keep you honest and true to the music you’re creating. If you always have an ear out for what else is going on, you’re one step behind.
I know Jay used to be on Dead tour – but did the rest of you have similar backgrounds?
TS: I started seeing the Dead in ‘93. I know that’s pretty late, I was only 17 in ‘93, I saw like 40 or 50 shows between ‘93 and ‘95. Before that I was composing live Shakespeare. I know it sounds geeky, but I was into Rush and all that too.
CM: My first Dead show was like the sickest show – RFK, ‘91, “Darkstar” – I had no idea what was going on. They could have played all Bobby songs, and I would have been like “sweet!” (laughs)
GS: For me it was Phish. Binghampton ‘94 was my first show. That was pretty much the door that delivered me to this way of thinking. Everyone around me was really into the Dead, high school was all about the Dead, and I had really strict parents, and I could never go see a show. So at one point, a certain section of my friends in high school were switching to Phish, and I liked it ‘cause it had more of an edge than the Dead did. The Dead seemed very floaty, and for lack of a better word, mellow, and Phish just had like that rock edge that I guess I was looking for at the time. ‘Cause I grew up around skate rock, and The Dead Kennedys, the Descendants and shit like that. So it was Phish, and it evolved into Zappa, and all through UVM it was the orchestral stuff, and Zappa was pretty much the root of that.
So its been a little over a year since you released Carbohydrates. What are your reflections on the album now?
JB: I haven’t listened to it in a long time, but I love it. I think that group of songs is just a great group of songs. Right now we have a lot of new stuff, so we’ve been playing a lot of [those songs], but sometimes you go out and you play a bunch of stuff and nothing is on the album, and then you drop in one of those songs – a “Georgia,” “Carbohydrates,” or “Brother From Another Mother” and you can just see everybody’s [reaction.] And its like, “oh yeah, people actually do have that album”…and they‘re listening to it.
What’s the plan for a follow up record?
B: Right now we’re just kind of brainstorming. We have kind of a basic idea – renting a house and setting up shop with all the recording gear in the house – either far from home or close to home, but essentially just staying there 24/7.
With Shed Tech, we recorded it all in a day, fixed up parts the next day, sent it to a friend and had it mixed for a couple hundred bucks, and that’s what we had. Carbohydrates, it was like, “alright, we have X amount of dollars, we’re going in, we have 10 days in the studio, and then we have X amount of days to mix it, which you guys aren’t even going to be involved in.” So it was kind of this crazy, pressure filled, get done thing where, “well this isn’t coming out right,” “ok, well, settle and move on.” Where now I would really like to not have to settle. You know, “you messed that part up…lets do it till we get it right.”
Ok, so now that there’s a RAQ fansite, does that mean you’ve finally made it?
(All laughing)
JB: Well, it doesn’t make you feel like you’ve made it, but it does, like Todd was saying, [reaffirm] why we do this.
TS: It just reminds you there are people that are really listening. And that can be a little nerve-wracking, ‘cause you can’t just fuck around, you can’t write bullshit, you have to really put thought and emotion and honesty into it – because its growing at a pace where you just cant afford to be fake.
