Episode 14 of Hooked on Creek features my interview with Greg DeGuglielmo. Greg played drums in Max Creek from 1985 to 1991.
In this interview, Greg talks about:
- His introduction to Max Creek and how he became a member of the band
- His musical background, including studying with Alan Dawson
- How Phish influenced his perspective of Max Creek
- Developing a friendship and jamming with Mike Gordon
- Performing and improvising with Max Creek, including his memories of playing with Rob Fried
- Recording two studio albums, Windows and MCMXC, with Max Creek
- His love and appreciation for the fans of Max Creek
While my interview with Greg focused primarily on his years playing in Max Creek, music continues to be a huge part of Greg’s life beyond Max Creek. In addition to teaching private drum lessons, Greg has been involved in numerous musical projects and bands over the years, including Slipknot, which now goes by the name The Knot. If you are interested in private drum lessons or connecting with Greg, contact him on Twitter.
This episode features the song Stormy Monday, performed live by Max Creek at the West Hartford Music Hall in West Hartford, Connecticut, on October 8, 1988.
Episode 14 transcription
You’re listening to Hooked on Creek, a podcast celebrating the music, history and fans of the legendary jam band Max Creek. I am your host, Korre Johnson, and you are listening to episode 14.
Thank you for tuning in to episode 14 of Hooked on Creek. This is a very special episode because it features an interview with Greg DeGuglielmo. Greg played drums in Max Creek from 1985 to 1991. In this episode, you will hear Greg talk about how he became a member of the band, his experiences touring and recording albums with Max Creek and his incredible memories of jamming with Scott, John, Mark and Rob during his six-year tenure in the band. Greg also talks about crossing paths with Phish while on tour with Max Creek, and his friendship with Mike Gordon.
We have a lot to cover in episode 14, so let’s get started.
Korre: Greg, thanks for joining me on Hooked on Creek.
Greg: Thank you Korre. It’s my pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Korre: Before joining Max Creek in 1985, were you familiar with the band and their music?
Greg: It’s funny. I was, but not as much as one would think. Because given that I had a love for that style of music and bands such as the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead and Traffic and a lot of the bands that combined genres, that was a real fascination and still is. But that was early on, particularly in the early 80s, and I was going out and hearing so much live music. You’d think I would’ve gotten to a show earlier because I had heard of Max Creek. It wasn’t until I believe it was 83 or 84 that I saw my first show.
And it was really a friend of mine from Harvard who told me about them. And I’ll never forget when he first told me about them. It was this wonderful musician Michael Land was his name. He was someone that I admired as a kid growing up and ended up playing in a band with him in 80 and 81. We had a band called Hejira together and I’ll never forget what he said, because Michael was very measured in his words and very thoughtful. And he said to me, “Greg.” He said, “There’s this band called Max Creek and I really want you to hear them. I really want you to hear them.” And he made a point of saying, “You’ve got to hear these guys.” And I said, “Yeah, I think I’ve heard the name.” And he said, “You got to see them live. You’ve got to go see them live. They’re like the Dead in that sense, but they’re not the Dead. They got their own thing happened and I really think you would dig them.” And I was like, “OK, all right, well, coming from you, I will. I’ll make a point of it.”
And so, I trudged out to E.M Loews one cold fall day. I went with a friend of mine, wasn’t Michael, but it was someone else. And right from the get-go, I heard them and I was like, “Wow.” You know, Michael is right. These guys got something. There is a similarity there to the Dead, but there is something definitely unique. And I remember hearing Gypsy Blue, but a lot of the songs I had never heard before and some of them were covers that I wasn’t quite familiar with. I was a music junkie, so I listened to all kinds of stuff and I was intrigued by that. So the fact that they had their own originals, they jammed really cool and they definitely paid reverence to the Dead, but they were definitely not a Dead tribute. All those things were like really seductive to me. I made a note of it. Like, these guys are really special. But I had no idea that I was going to end up spending my twenties with them on the road and that they’d become a huge part of my heart.
Korre: How did you first get involved in music and was being in a band something you always wanted?
Greg: It’s funny Korre. I never made a conscious decision. It just happened. I mean I was 14 years old when I got my first drum kit and I had been banging on everything that I could get my hands on. And then my music teacher in junior high called up my parents and said, “Listen, you got to get this kid a drum kit because he’s destroying everything in my music closet.” So I got my first drum kit at 14, but I was listening to music from my brother’s collections and playing music, that was how I learned to play. That’s how I really fell in love with music. It was playing along to albums.
From there it was just a matter of playing in all different bands. For seven years, eight years before Max Creek, I was playing every weekend with friends and then practicing all week after school to headphones and records. Everyone really thought, and thinks to this day, that I’m this really educated drummer who’s played with and studied with one of the best teachers in the world, I was fortunate, Alan Dawson — who was a jazz legend and educator and performer extraordinaire, had that rare combination. And so when I joined Max Creek, I had been studying with Alan, which I didn’t start until I was 17. My high school teacher called him and said if you can get in with this guy, who happens to live in Lexington, Massachusetts, where I was lucky enough to grow up.
I had no idea Alan Dawson was this world class drummer who Miles Davis’ drummer, Tony Williams, and all these famous people from Vinnie Colaiuta to Peter Erskine studied with. He was the one who taught me being a drummer is being a musician. And that was when I started getting really serious. So that was 17 and 18 and I was putting in seven or eight hours a day on my instrument, just to study with him. And that’s the kind of stuff that led me to getting more serious, after the five years of just playing by ear. So it was Alan that got me going and then I studied hard with him and then college after that, where I spent a lot of time on world music. So by the time I went to that show at E.M Loews to see Max Creek, I had just a plethora or I guess they’d say a giambotta in Italian. Rob Fried, God rest his soul, my rhythm partner in crime, he used to call it a melting pot. And that’s what Max Creek was. And that’s what I’m doing to this day. I look at it as a melting pot. Being an American, we have access to so many — we’re a country of people who came from all over the world.
So there’s all this incredible music available and I’ve always been attracted to bands that took Jerry Garcia’s approach or Joni Mitchell’s approach or Miles Davis’ approach, and I don’t mind mentioning those three in the same breath because those are three geniuses that had significant eras of creating with their respective musicians. But they drew on all the music in America that they were hearing and they internalized it and played it. That’s why I was kind of ready for a band like Max Creek.
Because back in the day, Korre, being into the Dead wasn’t something musicians respected. It’s more respected now than it was back then. You were looked at as just somebody who smoked a lot of weed and was sloppy, if you were a musician. It wasn’t revered. I’ve always found that so ironic. It was hearing Creek that was part of that revolution for me, which was that that’s so wrong because the Dead were a signpost and Max Creek is still a signpost to the fact that there are multiple genres. I love how Joni Mitchell put it, “I love music that gets all the hyphens in,” she once said. The jazz, the rock, the folk, the blues, the funk, the Latin, the world music, all of it. Classical. There are influences from all over the world.
And just in our own country alone, I look at it as rock, jazz, funk and Latin. I like to break it down to those, but I have to include folk and rhythm and blues with that. And folk and jazz, like Charlie Haden, the great jazz bassist. He had a penchant for swing and jazz, but he always loved folk melodies. And those people like Garcia and Dylan and the Beatles, and Harrison, I mean they’re all hip to that fact that they’re not mutually exclusive. Joni Mitchell knew that early on. That’s a life’s work is what I’m trying to say. So it’s ironic that being into the Dead or subsequently Max Creek would have this connotation in the early 80s of being sloppy.
The people I knew, the musicians I knew, they’re all into the King Crimson and all that. You know the heavy tech, Yes. And all the technicians, all the technical players and there’s so much to be learned from them, but that stuff, as Carlos Santana put it, it was like paper bullets. They don’t penetrate. It was hearing the Dead and certain songs by the Beatles and Paul Simon, even without drums, Simon and Garfunkel. There are certain songs, Cat Stevens was another one, that would go right up my spine. I mean, it’s that feeling right? It’s ineffable. There’s not really a way to describe it. It goes up your spine. I found that really upsetting that it was looked at like that. And it still is by some people. But those bands are finally getting more respect.
But you know, this whole jam band thing, I have about as much fondness for it as Billy Kreutzmann when he said, “What the fuck is a jam band?” It’s like that’s a term that just became a term at some point. But yeah, we jam. But there’s so much more than just jamming. It’s all that stuff I mentioned.
Korre: How did you get the invitation to join Max Creek? What was that like?
Greg: I had been studying at Berkeley for a semester and a half. I was there on a full scholarship Alan Dawson had helped me to get, because his word was like gold there, and he referred me there for a full scholarship. I was a semester and a half into it. My dad had just passed in 84. I wasn’t really happy. I knew something was missing. I just knew it. It was a feeling. And one day, the fellow who I had been assigned lessons with for my first semester, Joe Hunt, he’s still playing, he said, “What’s up man?” I told him, “My dad died. I feel like I’ve been playing nonstop for seven, eight years. I got nothing to show for it.”
And there was this part of me — that old school part of me — that was like, I need to be a man or a woman and pay my way. I need to pay my bills. And I felt like I wanted to be doing it with my passion, but I never even thought about music and making a living at it. I was so into the art of it. So, Joe said to me, “Meditate on it.” And so I did. Sure enough, I think it was two or three weeks later, I got this phone call from one of my older brother’s friends. His name was Tony Betancourt, and he is still around, still playing. He works with Scott. He mentioned to me, he said, “I wouldn’t say this to anybody, but I’ve kind of followed you at a distance and your evolution as a player and there’s something you should know about that you might be interested in.” And I was like, “Why? What’s up?”
He knew Scott and he had heard that Bob Gosselin, the original drummer, was getting ready to get out and it all happened pretty fast. And he said, “They’re coming to town in a couple of weeks. You should go see them.” And I had just happened to have seen them just a couple months before that at E.M. Loews. So there was a synchronicity, that synchronicity involved here. It was something in the stars about it. So then I was like, “Oh, yeah. Well, I saw them play just a few months ago at E.M. Loews. They’re definitely players. I’ll go see them.” And they were playing at Jonathan Swift’s. And then another friend, a guitar player named Bob Greco, said to me, “Oh yeah, well I got wind of it too.” He said, “You should check it out man.” Because he knew I wasn’t happy with Berkeley.
So I went down to Harvard Square and I went and heard them that night. And it was quite a night. I got there really early. I went after class. I was still going to Berkeley and they were playing at Swift’s. I got there, I remember, really early. It was 4 or 5 in the afternoon and there was no one around. I went downstairs because you had to go down this flight of stairs at the club. And there was this woman hanging almost upside down, swearing and cussing at a light. It was Linda Edick, also known as Little Wolf and she’s the light lady — the matriarch of the Max Creek family in my book. And she’s going at it with this light. That was the first experience I had with Max Creek. It was seeing her and I laid eyes on her like, “What the hell are you doing?” And I think that’s actually what I said to her. Because she was like almost upside down and she was cursing this light out trying to get it in place. And I was thinking, “Are you all right? Can I help you? What the fuck are you doing?” I thought she was going to kill herself.
She looked at me with these wild kinda eyes and instantly there was this connection — just something, one of those ineffable things where there was this instant energy. And she’s like, “Who are you?” Those were her first words, “Who are you?” And I said, “I’m Greg and a friend of mine, two friends of mine actually, referred me to come down here and hopefully meet some of the guys in the band because I play drums and I heard that the drummer might be leaving, through them.” And she looked at me quizzically and paused. I remember there was this pregnant pause and she just looked at me. She said, “The guys are at dinner right now.” She said, “But I’ll tell you where they are, but I’m trusting you on this because I got a feeling and don’t disappoint them.” That’s not verbatim, but something to that effect.
So she told me where they were. So I went and sought them out at the restaurant they were at. I found the restaurant and they were all sitting around a table having dinner. I had to reintroduce myself and I said, “Linda, your light lady told me you guys were sitting here and having dinner. And I just wanted to say I’m a drummer and I heard your drummer is leaving and I heard you guys play in Worcester not long ago. And I would like to find out more about it, if that’s OK.”
I was really nervous. I was timid and nervous and shy, but I did it. And I remember Rob was the first one to stand up and shake my hand. He asked me where I was from and a little about my background. I mentioned I was at Berkeley at that point. I don’t think I said I had a full scholarship or anything like that. He was like, “Oh wow. So you’re like really schooled?” I’m like, “No. Not really. I actually grew up self-taught playing records.” And he was like, “Oh yeah, what kind of records?” I told him Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, Jackson Brown with Jeff Porcaro. All this stuff and all these wonderful folk musicians that didn’t even have drums on it. Because I said, “I love songs and melody, but I also love improvisation.” And he just immediately took to me.
And when I mentioned Alan Dawson, he said, “How did Berkeley happen then. Why didn’t you like …” And I said, “Well, Alan Dawson helped me to get a full scholarship there.” And he said, “Alan Dawson!” Rob’s eyes lit up. He was like, “Wow, man!” He knew more about Alan than I did and I had been studying with him. Once again, I didn’t realize until years later how heavy of a cat Alan was. People came from Europe and Japan to study with him.
So then Rob’s like, “Grab a seat, man, sit down.” So they pulled up a seat and I squeezed in between him and John. I remember feeling like, “Oh man.” Rob introduced me to everyone and I remember John being more reserved, which I think is the experience a lot of people have with John. He is reserved and he’s very measured, especially when he’s meeting people. But he was nice. None of them were arrogant or anything like that, but they were quiet. I was like, “Oh shit.” I was a little nervous. So they sensed that and they went easy on me. But it was a quick dinner and then everyone kind of disbursed. I said, “Hello” and they said, “Hello.” I can’t remember if it was Mark Mercier or John, but one of the two said, “Why don’t you come back? We’re not on for like four hours.” They would start at 10 back then and play until 2. I was like thinking to myself, “Oh man, I got class at 8. What am I going to do for four hours?”
So I just ended up killing four hours of time, going back to the club. And I went backstage. I told them I had met the band earlier and they let me backstage, one of the road crew. And they brought me up on stage. I didn’t even know I was going to play. All of a sudden, I’m backstage and I hear this, “So we got this drummer. His name is Greg or something to that effect. And he’s going to sit in on one with us.” And we ended up playing Stormy Monday, that old blues tune that the Allman Brothers made famous — which was great because I used to play to that Fillmore East album all the time. I wore the grooves out on that album. In fact, people sometimes say to me, “Man, I love your shuffle feel.” I said, “Well, I grew up playing the Statesboro Blues.” That’s the song. I just played that shuffle over and over the way the Allmans played it. I just loved it.
So anyways, we played that song, which I was very familiar with. But I wasn’t ready for the long jam we did after it. It was just going on and on. We kept jamming and jamming and then I think we went into Bertha maybe. Might have been Bertha. We went into a second song and we rocked it out.
So they asked me to come back. There was something else significant that happened that same night. Bob Gosselin listened intently to me while I was playing or from backstage. And I remember looking over at the door and seeing him looking at me, giving me this strange kind of look He was checking me out and he said to the band that night after hearing me play two songs, which I swear lasted a half hour to 45 minutes. He said, “There’s your guy. You got your guy. I’m out of here.” And he basically left that night, pretty much. There were a few conversations obviously, but I wasn’t hip to the fact that Bob was that ready to go. There was something else going on. Bob, he would never leave the band high and dry. He was waiting. He just knew. He heard me play and he just said, “You are the guy.”
So, the next thing I knew I was on the road with Max Creek and I was playing four or five nights a week. I missed all my classes for the next two months. And then I realized Holy shit, I got to go see the Dean and tell him what I’m doing. I remember talking to Rob and John and saying, “I got Berkeley breathing down my neck.” I disappeared and I haven’t even thought about it because everything was right as rain as they say.
Korre: At that point in time, what direction was Max Creek headed? Were they trying to take it to the next level? Did they have dreams of making it big?
Greg: At that point in time, there was no discussion about that. It wasn’t until I’d say 86 or 87 — a year and a half, two years later that there was some discussion about it. To specifically answer your question, the goal was just to make every show a special event, to put a concert on in a club. We had a five-man road crew. 10 people were living off the project, so we had to play four or five nights a week, 50 weeks a year just so everyone could eat and pay their bills. But as my mom always said, everything exacts a price and the people who play that often, there’s a price to be paid for it. Just like there’s a price to be paid for people who — like there’s so many musicians today who are doing the day job and then they play on the weekend, which is what so many bands including Creek are doing. And there’s a price to be paid for that, too, because everything exacts a price. But the price for us at that point was none of us had personal lives, so to speak of. I mean we were tearing through girlfriends and wives and it was brutal. You were married to the gig. That was your marriage.
Korre: During this period of the band, there was another band in the Northeast called Phish that was also touring. And I understand Phish would sometimes play the same venues and cross paths with Max Creek. Do you have any memories of those experiences with Phish?
Greg: I do have some great memories of all that. My girlfriend’s younger sister told me about this band she was going to school with one day back in 87. She said, “Greg, you really got to check these guys out. They’re called Phish and I’m friends with them.” She was actually one of their first 10 fans. Her name was Jennifer Cuker, which back then her name was Margo. She changed it to Jenny. I said, “OK, Jen. I’ll check them out.” So I had an off night and I went to the Living Room to hear them play. It was a rare off night and they happened to be playing. I think it was like a Tuesday. I don’t know. We typically had Monday and Tuesday off and we played Wednesday through Sunday. Sometimes we wouldn’t play on a Sunday night, but a lot of times we did. Thursdays and Sundays were what we called the ego-deflation gigs. They were the filler gigs. There is always something to learn from them.
But it was I think a Monday or Tuesday. I went to the Living Room and they happened to be playing. There was only like 50 people there. It was 1988 I think. We had a much bigger crowd by that point, by 88 and 89. We would sell out a lot of places like the Paradise and rooms that they were doing. What I’m trying to say is we were a bigger band at that point in time in terms of commercial success or whatever. We were the band that they were catching up to in that sense. I didn’t care if there were two people there, I was going to give it as good a listen and enjoy it as much as I do — some of the greatest shows I saw had less than 10 people there. These are monster players, so I understand all that. I walked into that night and I walked out just saying, “What the hell was that?” I mean it was amazing to me because back then there wasn’t much backbeat. Fishman wasn’t playing much backbeat back then. Everything had a lot of twists and turns, a lot of tricky corners. All the songs were really like, “How do they remember that?” It’s not even written out. So I was really impressed when I first heard them that night. There was no 2 and 4 I think for the entire night.
I remember just a few months after that show, Mike came up to me at a show we were doing way up in Burlington, Vermont, and he introduced himself to me. He said, “I play in this band Phish and I’ve been listening to your drumming and I’ve seen you guys play and I love the way you and that guitar player play together,” he said, and “I love your whole band but I really love the way you and Scott play off each other.” That was one of the first things he said to me. I said, “Aw, thanks.” Because we did. We would play off each other a lot, Scott and I. I did with the whole band, but him and I had this thing where, I mean I’m not going to put my name or his name with guys like the way Tony Williams played off Miles or the way Jerry played off the drummers or the way Elvin played off of Coltrane.
Scott deserves to be in that group more than me, but I’m just saying that there’s that axis between the soloist and the drummer that we follow. Mitch Mitchell had it with Hendrix. There was an axis between the drummer and the leader. Not that Scott was the leader, but during his songs he was the leader. John songs, he was the leader. Mark songs, he was the leader. But they were all reluctant leaders. No, there was no real clear-cut leader. But Scott and I had a natural sort of axis is the best word I can describe.
Mike expressed to me how he really noticed that. And that was one of the things he loved about Creek. And I said, “Thanks because I just heard you guys play at the Living Room. And I was amazed at the way you just weaved in and out of things and there was no backbeat.” And he was like, “Yeah, I want to get more groove going because sometimes it’s so much weaving and just not enough backbeat. Sometimes I try to tell the guys or tell our drummer. I’ve mentioned your band to my bandmates.”
Trey had come to see us before. Just him and Trey had come out. Trey liked us as well. Not as much as Mike, but Trey did like us. The other two had no interest, but they knew of us. They knew of us. Mike said — this is a funny thing that he said to Fishman one day that got him in some trouble or some heat or something for a comment he made about Max Creek and the way we improvise — “Listen to the way DeGugs plays the backbeat, but then we’ll flip things around and jam. I want to have that type of breath.” And that’s not verbatim, but basically that was what he was going back to the band and saying. They were kinda like, “Yeah, fuck yourself.” No, I don’t know what they said, but I was like, “Mike, you didn’t really say that?” Because we ended up becoming friends. He’s like, “Yeah, I did.”
This was back in 88 and 89. We became friends. So one thing led to another, we exchanged phone numbers. Then he would come to Collinsville where I was living with Little Wolf. I lived with her for three or four years. Mike would come out on a Monday or Tuesday when they would be off. He would drive from his place up in Jericho, Vermont, all the way down outside of Burlington, up near Canada. He’d drive to Collinsville and he’d just come down just to session — just drums and bass.
We did about, I don’t know, four or five of those sessions. We would play for a few hours and we taped them. I still have the cassettes. One of the guys in the Creek world who does a lot of audio stuff wants me to find them and I do have them, the cassettes of the drums and bass. They’re just buried somewhere right now because I’m in the process of moving again. We would just play grooves and experiment. Mike and I would do these drum and bass jams that were just off the charts. I mean we were trying to do stuff that, if I had to put a term to it, it was kinda like Latin funk. I was trying to apply that to the music and the jams that Creek was doing.
And Mike said to me once, he’s like, “Man, you’re the only drummer I’ve heard in this whole genre that is playing some of these types of grooves.” Because I would play like a songo or a Mozambique and then we’d jam out of it. And that’s another thing that, outside of the jazz and the swing, is hugely important if there’s any musicians listening to this. If you really want to learn how to jam, learn clave. Learn Latin music. Because that is key to being able to jam. It’s like a seminal rhythm that provides all kinds of avenues to go down. And Scott loves Latin rhythms. You know, even the most recent session we did, he was like, “Play some Latin grooves.”
Mike and I would do this in 88 and 89. We would tell each other about each other’s bands. Trey was receptive. Trey even wrote a letter to me once that I ended up giving to our keyboardist, Mark, about how he appreciated what Max Creek did and how he had heard that there was some kind of rift there about something. And he was so thoughtful and so sweet and he wrote it to me and then he gave it to me. But it was something to the extent of, “We really do love you guys and we’d like to do more stuff.”
Because at that point, we were playing similar venues. We opened for them. They opened for us, actually, once up in Vermont. And I can’t remember, we may have played one other time where it was a co-bill or something like that. I was telling them about Phish and there wasn’t really any reciprocity back. And it was probably, in everyone’s defense in the band, because we were so busy playing. And I remember saying distinctly that, “They’re doing something, guys, that I really wish we would try and do.” And they’re like, “What are you talking about Greg?” And I would say, and this was like 90 or 91, I would say, “They take time out to strategize, to rehearse, to talk about their goals — their short-term and long-term goals.” And these were all things I knew because of my friendship through Mike.
And even Mike said to me at one of those jams we did, he’s like, “We play a lot.” But he said, “You guys tour insane.” This was around 1990. He said something to the extent of, “I wouldn’t be surprised that these last five years you guys set a Guinness Book of World Records. I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said to me. And he said that, “You’ve probably played more shows in about a five-year span than anyone.” Because we did. We were playing nonstop. Like I said, we would take two weeks off a year. That was it.
Korre: What was it like to be in a band with a percussionist? As a drummer, did you consider yourself fortunate to be in a band with a percussionist, where the two of you could develop that sound and that rhythm for Max Creek?
Greg: Before that, those seven years I mentioned of studying and playing to records and playing in a myriad of bands, I didn’t work with a percussionist. I only played just solo drum kit. So I’ve done both and I’ve done a lot of solo and double drum since Max Creek, but it is different. There’s no doubt about it. Now, Rob Fried, as anyone familiar with Max Creek knows, is not your average percussionist. He was brilliant and I miss him like everybody. But Jamemurrell is doing a hell of a job, I have to say, too, with the band right now on percussion.
I found one of the first things I had to do was something that I’ve always kind of had an affinity for. It wasn’t something I learned in school or anything like that, and that was to listen. I just had to listen more because with a percussionist, a lot of things that you would normally do, to be more musical, you would leave out. Or you would try to, in our case with Rob, we were more similar to the Allman Brother drummers and the Dead drummers in that we never played the same thing. We weren’t two guys mimicking the same part, which some bands like the Doobie Brothers, they did it, and they did it great. It’s not knocking it. Every situation has its merits and there’s something to be said for that, too. But we were more into that whole idea of complimenting each other. We’re two distinct people who bring our own experiences and chops into it, and we have to treat it as such.
Sometimes with the double drums it was a little trickier because, and I didn’t come to appreciate this until years later, but Rob had an amazing groove. I mean he could groove and he had the best press role in his business. It was just unbelievable. I mean there were things he could do on the kit that were just marvelous. But there were also limitations too, because that wasn’t his primary instrument. His primary instrument was percussion. So he was a percussionist playing drums.
Back then half the shows we would do, roughly, would have big enough stages where we’d have two kits and Rob’s percussion or I should say my kit, percussion and a second drum kit. And then there were plenty of stages we played, which we would just do my kit and the percussion — that alone took up a ton of space and it worked.
I mean we would adjust. I think it wasn’t until later on in my development post-Creek that I really, really appreciated some of the things on kit that Rob did do and could play. And namely, he was heavy into just laying down a groove.
Korre: You mentioned earlier about the need to listen to Rob, and that’s making me think of that thing that makes Max Creek so special, which is that improvisational style of their music. How did Max Creek develop that improvisational style and how were you able to contribute to it and listen for it?
Greg: It happened very organically. John Rider never said a whole lot about anything to anyone, but one day backstage he said to me, and I’ll always remember it, he said, “You and I have a real connection with the bass and drums. It’s an organic thing.” Yeah. That makes sense. Organic things evolve. They’re not really planned out. They’re not really discussed a lot. And that was the case with the foundation — the bass and the drum set, which is your foundation that everything else sits on.
The improvisation? Max Creek, we were like brothers in the sense that we loved that spirit of adventure. We loved it. We shared that desire to, use that Joni quote I used earlier, “Get all the hyphens in,” which Joni did in her songs. But the Dead for instance, or Little Feat or the Allmans, they would do it in their jams, as well as their songs. We shared that. We shared that love. So really, when you really get down to it, we had a jazz mindset, that’s the key. We all shared a jazz mindset and that’s something that even the Dead tribute bands, they’re great at what they do, but I don’t even hear them doing the jams. I got to say. The jamming is something that — it’s precious to me. I love it.
It’s like when I’m jamming and I’m in the zone, I’m listening to everything, but I’m not thinking. Everything I’ve studied and thought about to get to that spot is out the window. I’m trying to get in the moment. I’m in the zone. When I’m really in the zone, I’m just flowing. I’m just flowing with everybody. And I’m not thinking in terms of notes or rhythms. I’m not even in the thinking brain. I’m somewhere else. I mean I’m in the flow. It’s a universal flow and that flow is what everybody in the band and everybody in the audience is a part of. And I know all that sounds cliché, but it’s cliché for a reason. It’s so true. It’s bigger than anyone of us. And you just get out of your own way and you let everything you’ve studied and ingest in the past have its spot, but not need to be said, but ready to go and you’re in the flow, that’s when those jams happen. And Max Creek, they’re just naturals at it. Our jams would just happen on their own. They would play us. We didn’t play them.
Korre: During your time with the band, Max Creek released two studio albums, were you able to participate in the recording sessions on those two albums and was the band able to create some of that magic that comes through in live performances while recording in the studio?
Greg: On the second album, MCMXC, 1990? Yes. The first album? No. The first album, Windows, we did shortly after I joined the band and the songs hadn’t even developed the parts yet. Relix wanted us to do some new material that ended up becoming staples and some of the tunes had started with Bob and some of them hadn’t. But we were still finding the parts.
Korre, we couldn’t take time to rehearse because we were playing. In fact, we never rehearsed. I learned everything on stage! Rob gave me this huge collection of Max Creek stuff and threw it at me and said, “Here you go.” And I was playing at night with them. And in the daytime, I had headphones on for hours at a time. I learned everything on stage. And Scott would help. Scott’s probably one of the best cueers in the world because he would guide you through things and he’d give you the best cues. He’d give you a look or a gesture, but he would always do it at the perfect time. And he really helped. And the fact that I was ready and listening and trying to play with a certain awareness and preparedness, I’d be receptive to any sort of gestures and cues that would come my way.
And that’s how we were able to learn the material, was onstage. I mean, we didn’t get to take time out. Like I said, I had only heard the band play once, so I didn’t know their originals. And then there was a whole batch of originals that Scott was just starting with that we developed parts for.
So that first album, that album was a spontaneous performance of songs that we were still developing — or I was developing parts for with the band. The first album, I wish we had gotten to do a little later on when the parts had evolved more and had solidified more. But still, there are some great things on there, too, that were fun to record and challenging. And that’s all you can do, is take every situation as it arises and do your best. We couldn’t say to Relix, “Check in with us in a year and a half — 450 shows from now. We’ll do it then.” Which would have been great. It would’ve been great just to do that album in 87 or 88 instead of 86.
But 1990, we did have that luxury, which we recorded in Bobby Harries’ house in New Hartford, Connecticut. We did a recording right in his living room of his custom-built wood house — beautiful place right on a lake, right down the street from where I was living in New Hartford. And we did something John Archer did at the time, which was pretty unheard of. I mean it had been done, but not often. And I think there was certain things we did that hadn’t been done before. But we basically did a live mix with just a few people in his house. We played like a concert. We just recorded the songs without any tracks. We just played together at the same time. Like we were playing a concert. And we knew the tunes well enough that we could do that. I mean there’s so few overdubs on that. Everything was done like one or two takes. We were ready to play those songs at that point because we’d been playing them out and they had parts. We just did a performance without the audience at that point. So that was unusual.
Korre: How would you describe the relationship between Max Creek and fans of the band. While you were in the band, was that relationship with the fans something you would look forward to when performing and is it something now, since you left Max Creek, that you still cherish?
Greg: They’re the X factor. They really are. Without them, it’s nothing. They’re as integral to it as anyone, as much as our agent back then — a fellow named Marc Gentilella, Flash Groups. We used to make jokes. He had a dart board and a map on the wall. He would throw darts at the map and that was the joke, that Marc’s playing darts again. Because one night we would be in Rochester, the next night we would be in Providence — something crazy where you’d have to drive, and then zigzag back eight hours somewhere. Stuff like that. But he was integral to us, in a different way. He was integral on the business side. And on the spiritual side, the fans — what do the French say? Raison d’être. The reason to be. They are one of a kind.
You know, the Deadheads are like that with the Dead, but Max Creek has its own thing. It always did. It always will. It has touched so many people’s lives. As Scott eloquently said recently, it’s bigger than any one of us and it really is. It truly is bigger than any one individual. There’s a huge part of my heart that’s always going to be Max Creek tattooed on it. It’s right here. I mean, I love the band. I love the fans. I love guys like you who have been bitten by the bug and have done something with it. All the people who archive the stuff. It’s just amazing. It’s a labor of love and that’s what music is. It’s a labor of love.
Korre: Greg, it’s been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much for joining me on Hooked on Creek.
Greg: Korre, thank you so much yourself. I really, really appreciate it. It’s been an honor and a privilege to talk with you. And my best to everybody in the band and the fans past and present. I love you guys. Always will.
And that concludes my interview with Greg Degulielmo. While my interview with Greg focused primarily on his years playing in Max Creek, music continues to be a huge part of Greg’s life beyond Max Creek. In addition to teaching private drum lessons, Greg has been involved in numerous musical projects and bands over the years, including Slipknot, which now goes by the name The Knot. If you are interested in private drum lessons or connecting with Greg, visit his website gregdegug.com or connect with Greg on Twitter at @GregDeGug. Direct links are in the show notes.
And if you are curious, during the introduction to this episode I played Max Creek’s version of Stormy Monday, performed live at the West Hartford Music Hall in West Hartford, Connecticut, on October 8, 1988. I would love to know what you think of my interview with Greg, or if you have suggestions for future episodes of Hooked on Creek. To get in touch with me, simply visit hookedoncreek.com and click the contact link to send me a message. And you are always welcome to join the Hooked on Creek community on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for tuning in.