Bassist Mike Gordon’s tour with his Mike Gordon Band moved to Denver last night, where Cactus was joined by four out of the five members of Dumpstaphunk for three songs
Two of our favorite bassists joined forces last night at the Belly Up in Aspen, where Vic Wooten of The Flecktones sat in with the Mike Gordon Band for the
The Mike Gordon Band’s first tour of 2011 has gotten off to a great start with five shows in five nights out west. Not only did Mike’s five-piece unveil new
To celebrate last night’s kickoff of a cross-county Mike Gordon Band tour that consists of a herculean 18 shows in 22 nights, we caught up with our favorite bass player on the planet to chat about the tour, his approach to all things techie and some amazing insights on Phish. You might want to brew a pot of coffee, because I think we caught Mike in a particularly good mood this time around. He really dives deep into some pretty interesting topics and philosophies.
[Photo by Joe Ringus]
Hidden Track: Why don’t we start off with the current tour. It seems as though a lot of thought goes into how you route the Mike Gordon Band’s tours. How involved are you in terms of determining where the band plays and the venues?
Mike Gordon: That’s funny, somebody on my hotline actually asked the same question: somewhat involved and somewhat not involved, mediumly involved.
Usually, the manager and the booking agent come with kind of a scheme, which is based on not going back too often to the same place if we had just been there, but also not forgetting it for too long before we go back. For example, last tour, we felt really good about the West Coast and we had some really good crowds, so we decided to hit it again, but not the same exact cities. We decided to hit some that are near the other ones, but different. The secondary markets as they say, but that makes it sound like we’re routing sugar cane. I never really liked that term, but that’s what the managers call them.
The problem is that there just isn’t enough time to play everywhere that we’d like to play and that people would like us to play. I end up going to a lot of places where I haven’t played in a while, because Phish played there in the early ’90s. On my last tour, I did that over and over again, and the places would say, “Why don’t you tell the Phish guys to play here,” and the answer usually is, “Well Phish is not going to play here, that’s why I am.” [laughs] Phish is looking for places that can fit as many people as would like to come, and that’s often certain ones in certain places. In the meantime, it’s really fun for me to get to visit some of these places I wouldn’t normally see.
- Previously on HT: Mike Gordon Extends Mound in Eugene, Interview – Mike Gordon’s Balancing Act
READ ON for more of Ryan’s chat with bassist Mike Gordon…
Bassist Mike Gordon and the Mike Gordon Band set off on a 18-date tour yesterday at the McDonald Theatre in Eugene, Oreg. and Cactus wasn’t kidding when he mentioned an
Mike Gordon was last night’s musical guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The Phish bassist and his solo band played a “radio-friendly” version of the Moss track Horizon Line…
Bassist Mike Gordon and the rest of his five-piece solo band will be Jimmy Fallon’s musical guest on the Friday, February 11th episode of NBC’s Late Night. This will mark
Phish bassist Mike Gordon returns to the road once again with his solo band for a three-week tour that crosses the country. The MGB’s run starts on March 5th at
Since we’ve spent the entire week recounting our favorite albums of 2010, and quite frankly you’re probably tired of reading about them, seemed like a no-brainer to end the week
For the second consecutive year, we concocted an innovative little experiment for our year-end Best Albums list. Instead of picking the old fashioned way, we opted for something a little different: a collaborative, collective list that incorporates the opinions of everybody here at HT.
To begin, we devised an all-encompassing list of well over 100 nominees, whereby most everything our contributors recommended made this list. Then, we invited our crew of writers to independently and blindly vote on each album within the list on a scale of 1 to 20 (20 = epic). We ended up with varying degrees of familiarity for the nominees as some folks voted on just about everything, while some ranked just a few. From there, we deployed our egghead algorithm for rating albums: (two times the average rating) + (the total number of votes). At that point, we took the top 25 highest scores and presto: Hidden Track’s 25 Best Albums of 2010. No bullshit, no big opinions; just the results.
Let’s kick off our week long countdown of our favorite albums of 2010 with numbers 25 through 21…
25) Sleigh Bells – Treats
Key Tracks: Tell ‘Em, Infinity Guitars
Sounds Like: Electric Guitars and Cheerleaders
The Skinny: Sleigh Bells came out of nowhere in 2010 to emerge as a break out of the highest order. Despite being a just a duo, the boy-girl tandem of Derek Miller and Alexis Krauss manage to slug out bombs with their stomping beats, cutting guitar attacks and anthemic vocal hooks. With Treats, Sleigh Bells have created a genuinely unique twist on amped-up party music.
READ ON for the next four albums in our countdown…
