Through the studio’s control room glass, Blue Traveler drummer Brendan Hill watched as Bruce Willis recorded his monologue. The results can be heard on “Free Willis, Ruminations from Behind Uncle Bob's Machine Shop,” the stream-of-consciousness track that closes Blues Traveler’s 2008 album “North Hollywood Shootout.”
“We had this loop, almost kind of like ‘The Sopranos,’ a dirty jam kind of song,” Hill says. “Bruce flew in from London and he had a couple of notes he’d written down on the plane. Out of the blue he starts saying, ‘A ’68 Chevy in the junkyard…’ And I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be cool.’ ”
In a departure for Blues Traveler, known for its live shows and mega-hit “Run-Around,” “North Hollywood Shootout” features modern R&B built on electronic rhythm tracks. “As we started this project,” Hill says, “John (Popper, Blues Traveler singer/harmonica player) had the idea of developing songs from loops. It felt good to do it that way.”
“Forever Owed” is an ode to American military set to steely arpeggios and spacey textures. The band penned the song after entertaining troops on several USO trips. (A 2006 USO show featured the New England Patriots cheerleaders dancing as Blues Traveler performed). Blues Traveler is offering veterans a free download of “Forever Owed,” as well as free admission to their shows this fall. “We were trying to think of something we could do (for the troops), and out best tool is to write songs,” Hill says.
Blues Traveler is considering re-booting H.O.R.D.E., the travelling jam-centric festival that was a pillar of early-90s touring, in 2011 or 2012. “It would probably be either one or two weekends, maybe in two different cities,” Hill says. “There’s a couple of places in the Midwest that might work, but you have to make sure you have enough cities to draw from and you’re not conflicting with the other festivals.”
How did the Bruce Willis thing come together? We’ve had this relationship with Bruce since about ’87 when he was doing “Die Hard” and we were playing the Wetlands Ballroom in Soho,” Hill says. “He came down one night and sat in and did a harmonic duel with John. It was a surreal moment seeing Bruce Willis in the studio, hearing his voice crystal clear through the speakers. The only other thing I can equate it to was when Gregg Allman sat in on “Mountain Cry” on our second record. It was so (expletive) cool. I wrote that song and that was a moment I’ll always remember seeing Gregg Allman playing the Hammond organ with his shot of tequila on the organ and just wailing this lyrics.
Tell me about opening for The Rolling Stones in the mid-90s. Of course, The Stones had the best catering you could get: lobster, steak. They had a billiard table they brought around and set up backstage in these stadiums. One night we were invited to their after-show party. Keith (Richards) and Ron Wood were playing pool together and we got to hang around and shoot the breeze with them. John gave Keith a little silver tinderbox. He opens it up and it’s filled with moss. He’s like, “What do I do with this?” You know, “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” It was a funny moment. Seeing how much energy they had in their late-50s…it was like going to school for us. And it gave us the impetus to say, “We can keep doing this until we can’t.” It was something you put on your resume: opened for Stones, yes.
There are two camps for bands that’ve had really big hits. One is to embrace it and the other to look at it as an albatross. How do you guys look at “Run-Around?” We realize it is the song that kind of put us on the map. But in a lot of ways we were doing fine before “Run-Around” came out. The same week “Four” went gold our first album went gold, before “Run-Around” came out. Even if we hadn’t had “Run-Around” our path was still rising. But we know when we play shows there are a couple songs we have to play every night. One is “Run-Around” and the other is “Hook.” I still think they’re good songs, and we wrote them because they’re good songs and not to be good hits. They’re peaks in the set, people really get into them.
As a drummer, what was interesting about working with the loops that appear on some of the “North Hollywood Shootout” songs? What our producer (Dave Bianco) said was, “When you play along to a loop, the loop never gets tired.” As a drummer, I prefer to be the timekeeper and set the dynamics, but it was an interesting process we went through.
Have you ever broken a snare head on stage and had to finish the set without that drum? Oh, definitely. There’s this awkward homo-erotic moment where the drum tech is reaching around you into your lap. That doesn’t happened as much now because we change our heads every two nights. Back in the day I used to play a snare drum head until it’s clear and all the white coating had come off it. You know when a heads about to break and think, “Should I hit it lighter and try to get another five minutes out of it?” The thing about our music is we segue a lot of songs together and so this happens at the beginning of one of those segues it can really suck. (Laughs.) The worst is when you break a kick drum head.
What do you do on the drums to signal the end of a jam or a segue into a new song? There are certain fills that mean, “Let’s hurry this thing up” or “I think we need to move on.” It happens sometimes when we have people sit in with us, they’re having a great time and maybe soloing a little too long. Then you have to throw in the super obvious loud fill or crescendo and break it way down. But the band is on the same psychic wavelength and it’s very effortless for us.
What do you miss about H.O.R.D.E.? Looking back on it, it was a lot more work to do a moving festival. We had 15 trucks or whatever and all these bands careening around the country, and sometimes bands would get a flat tire or something and not make it. A lot of hotels to figure out. But what I did like about it, it’s like when you’re having a road trip with your buddies and you have all these little experiences. You go to these different (cities) and party down at the hotel on nights off. Thirty or 40 days.
Former Wilco guitarist Jay Bennett produced Blues Traveler’s 2005 LP “Bastardos!” What was special about him as a producer? He was the quirkiest producer we’ve ever worked with. When we auditioned him as a producer he came into our rehearsal studio in Austin and we had maybe 12 or 15 songs that were on the docket. We asked him, “Hey, do you want to go to dinner?” He was like, “Nah, can you play some of the songs for me?” He just sat cross-legged on the floor with a cigarette and Budweiser with his eyes closed and we played the song. We finished the song and we’d start off with four or five really good ideas. He was ultra positive. It was really refreshing to have someone that felt like they were on our side, as opposed to someone who is always saying, “Let’s clean that up and make it very simple, dumb rock.” He was all about making this weird sound come in from the right speaker and go across “whoosh.”
What comes to you mind when you think of Bobby Sheehan, Blues Traveler’s original bassist who died of a drug overdose in 1999? Bob…the first thing that comes to mind was I miss him. He would get people together. He liked corners of bars. By the end of the night there were probably 30 people around him having a good time near him. He had that kind of charisma: if he was there it would be a good night. Some of the choices he made were not the best ones. We tried a couple times to intervene. But in music it’s really hard because everyone’s guilty of something and it’s hard to throw the first stone. But we miss him greatly. Sometimes I have dreams about getting ready to go onstage and he’s there and I’m really confused.
For more information, check out www.bluestraveler.com.
